Perhaps Tony Hayward (soon-to-be-former Group CEO at BP) had a valid point when he lamented the loss of his private life. Anybody who has been involved in a real crisis management role knows that it tends to absorb a lot of your time – most crises don’t stop for evenings and weekends.
My current BAU “Crisis Management” role is certainly absorbing my time to write. In fact it tends to absorb the available intellectual energy to apply to such activity as much as it eats the time to read and write.
Again that is an expected feature of any crisis response. Hopefully we all have that aspect included in our plans and strategies.
The weekly effort applied to this engagement is probably 20+% higher than my previous average working week. In resilience thinking we are often trying to find the way to ‘bounce forward’ from a disruption – the up side for my current situation is that I bill by the hour.
With my limited free-time/energy I have been able to keep up with the reading and conversations required by the Working Group to establish a set of Resilience Awards here in Australia, plus the initial effort to get engaged in the BCI’s ‘Discipline Mapping’ working group – more on both those initiatives in other posts.
As a result I find myself with >50 unread articles in my Google Reader, many feeds that deserve more time marked as read and an increasing number of blog posts on other sites that I was initially motivated to comment on. Plus an increasing sense of frustration at not having the energy or inspiration to write.
It takes a concerted effort to get started with a blog, but when you find your voice (which I guess comes from the motivation and passion) then it is amazing how it becomes a part of what we do and how we perceive ourselves.
I am constantly amazed and inspired by the output, and quality, of commentators such as Chris Brogan (on Social Media) and John Glenn (in our own professional space) – not sure how these guys keep it up.
Just wanted to let people know that I am still here and getting back into the blog habit.
Is anybody still reading and subscribed?
If you haven’t already – click the RSS Subscription link (top right) – that way you don’t have to keep coming back to check for new posts.
It’s tricky to manage, some days. There are only so many hours in the day. In about 30 hours from now (not sure the time conversion but I’m at GMT-5), I write a bit more about the TIME elements of that equation.
Thanks for the encouragement Chris – I will certainly be sharpening my pencil, and using it!
Thanks Alex, there are a couple of your posts that I have to get around to commenting on.
Hi ken, Good to see you back to the blog. I look forward to more articles and commentary.
Alex
Sure, Ken. I’m still subscribing and reading 🙂 and I too am amazed at how other bloggers in my field manage to keep a steady flow of postings and comments…don’t these guys have a day job, or a life after their day job? Since you were kind enough to encourage me not to stop, let me return the favor and tell you that there has never been a dull post on your blog. Perhaps quality is better than quantity? Anyway, once you get started again, you will soon be back in the flow of writing regularly…been there, done that, and I just made it back.
Thanks Jan, I appreciate the support.
Ken