Self-management and employability

Two things have stayed with me from the Project Management seminar I attended last month - to remember to allow time for others to respond when setting my deadlines and to value self-management as a top employability skill.
The value of self-management is something I shared with my students.
The speaker said the thing that drives employers mad about new graduates is the lack of time management skills. He said a lot of students form bad habits at uni. So students who are good at self-management have employability skills that are highly transferable.
He wasn't defining good time management just as always getting assignments completed on time - he recognised that sometimes things happen that are beyond our control and we miss deadlines. But he stressed that self-management was about how you communicate about what has happened and about making sure people who need to know what has happened know that.
That's an important message for students to take on board as they prepare to submit their final assignments for the semester. If things beyond their control have happened that are grounds for an extension or special consideration, they need to apply early, not wait until the assignment is due, or overdue, to ask. Tutors can often get them back on track to meet the deadline if asked for assistance in time. That's an important time-management skill to master.
The speaker also highlighted the benefits of drawing up a project plan, starting with a due date for project completion (insert assignment due date here) and working backwards to list the "milestones" you have to complete to get to the finish on time.
For each milestone, we had to list the tasks we needed to do to complete the milestone on time - an interesting project that didn't take long but was a good wake-up call. Most of us realised our milestones required not just work from us but from other people as well (e.g. interviewees? printers?) and we had to get moving right now to meet our targets with minimum stress on ourselves and others involved in the process.
That's advice that applies not just to study but to work situations, competition entries ... in fact to life. Time-management is something many stay-at-home parents become good at when out of the workforce - something to value and highlight on their resume because it indicates they have skills that employers think are important.
If we value what we learn at different stages of our lives we will have the confidence to inform others of the skills acquired.
Sometimes we have skills but don't know it.

Thought for the day

One thing I collect, apart from fleece and yarn, is witty remarks.
My favourite at the moment comes from the title of a book I wish I had written - the title, not the book.
If they give you lined paper write sideways.
Now that's a philosophy close to my heart.
Another of my favourite sayings comes from a friend called Lee, who was the RE coordinator at the school I taught at between children 2 and 3.
Lee used to say if you want to know what God thinks of money look at the people he gave it to.
And the light at the end of the tunnel could be an express train heading your way.
My friend Colleen used to say if you are going to be a victim make sure you can live that way for the rest of your life because things won't get any better. If you can't do that you need to stand up for what you believe, take a stand and live with the consequences.
A friend lives on long after they die through the words they pass on to the people they meet.
And when their children react as they have seen their mother do she lives on, in every instinctive action, in every word that echoes hers as they were growing up. That's eternal life and it only comes from touching the lives of others.
Colleen died many years ago, when my youngest child was a toddler but she is not forgotten. He would not be here, and neither would I, but for her influence and kindness.
And then there's Uncle Charlie, who built a shearing shed and taught himself to shear when he was in his 80s because he reckoned sheep would be easier to handle than cattle. He had a soldier settlement farm on the Nowa Nowa arm of a river in Gippsland. The farm gradually returned to its natural state as his needs grew less. He used to grow vegetables and graze through his crop, eating a few peas here, a carrot there. That was lunch until he married wife number three, having been a widower twice. He said that would stop the widows in the area from fighting over him. He had a twinkle in his eye even at 80. Charlie had been a prisoner of war on the Burma Railway. The first time I stayed overnight at his house he warned me not to be frightened by strange noises. It would just be him having nightmares. He spoke little about what caused them, simply saying in the dark all men are the same. The guards in the prison camp were fathers and husbands and missed their homes and many cried just as the prisoners did. In the dark.
Uncle Charlie said life went in cycles. There were times when people didn't want children and people treated each other badly but those times passed and the good in them returned.
He used to say God knew what he was doing when he made the young of every species because they always looked cute, no matter what they would grow up to be. He said it was good that humans didn't start life as teenagers or the human race would have ended by now. But young dogs and cats, young elephants, young humans always look so appealing. That's the key to survival.
Survival of the cutest, not the fittest. Doesn't have quite the ring of Darwin's theory but I think Charlie had something there.
They live on, the tellers of tales.

Marysville burns

Marysville is no more. Last night we watched television footage showing our house in ruins. Marysville was our ``bolt hole'', the place we went to leave stresses behind and spend time together, doing the things that families do.

We had no television in our Marysville house. Entertainment was reading, playing cards, listening to music, talking and laughing together.

All our favourite CDs were there. That's where we had time to listen to them.

Our games, a few weaving looms, a spinning wheel, oil paints and acrylics, papermaking kit, card games.

It was where we went to do the simple things we struggled to find time for at home.
Marysville for us is the centre of happy memories but it wasn't our home. We haven't lost family members in the fires or our livelihood.
Many Marysville residents have lost both in the fires.
Most have lost their homes, not just houses.
Many worked in the town's shops and guesthouses, including people from nearby towns - Buxton, Taggerty, Narbethong, Grantham.
Some of those towns are now just names, their houses burnt, residents fled.
We went to Marysville for the town, not just the peace and nearby bush.

We loved it for the fresh bread at the bakery, the coffee and chocolate cake at the patisserie, choosing a bag of mixed lollies or an easter egg at ``Fred and Val's'', buying home-made jam at the monthly market.

My favourite cardigan came from the alpaca shop. I'm almost out of the rose-scented furniture wax from the shop near the Post Office.
The Post Office had a great selection of Shirley Barber books. I planned to buy some for my granddaughter. Where will I buy them now?
The bakery is still standing. But when will the customers come back? How many survived?
I don't know if my next door neighbours survived. Their house is gone. Their ski-hire shop was razed.
The church across the road is gone. The news bulletin said many people perished there.
I want to go back and rebuild.

A town is more than a collection of houses. I don't know how many familiar faces I will see again and without them the town will never be the same.

My parents had a fear of wooden houses and the bush.
I loved both.
People used to say Marysville had never burnt - not in the '39 fires, not on Ash Wednesday. It came close when a burn got out of control a few years back but the CFA soon brought that under control.
People thought the exotic trees would save the town. Deciduous trees don't burn like eucalypts, people said.
They were right about that.
Photos taken after the fire passed show exotic trees with green leaves, seemingly untouched.
Eucalypts look like black stubble.
But the trees didn't stop the progress of the fire. In the end nature was more destructive than people believed. And now many of them have gone.
Marysville died on February 7, 2009.

Whatever returns will be different.

McMansion hits green nerve

WHEN I was working I paid someone $50 a week to clean through the house. I have never pretended to be Supermum so it was money well spent.
I worked to keep me sane and to help another woman make ends meet. It seemed a good deal.
After I resigned last year, I took over the cleaning duties and now pay myself the $50.
This morning after I finished cleaning the bathrooms and toilets I sat down to a coffee and The Age.
An ad on the front of the classifieds caught my eye.
It was an ad for a typical McMansion.
The house had four toilets, four bathrooms and three bedrooms, a library, guest suite, rumpus room and family room, as well as the usual living/dining area and kitchen.
And I thought, ``What a lot of cleaning.''
I had cleaned two toilets and two bathrooms and it had taken most of the morning.
Who wants to clean four?
They would all get used. If no-one has to wait in a queue they go more often.
That's more water down the sewer, more ``toilet duck'', more paper.
If I was in government I would put a tax on toilets. Divide the number of toilets by the number of occupants in the household and if the result is more than 0.5 slap on the tax.
In fact, my government would tax households with too much floorspace. That would raise taxes and cut house prices at the same time.
The outer suburban McMansion offered ``45sq from $252,900''.
Given that the average couple has less than two children, that's more than 10 square a person. Whole families used to live in not much more.
And who wants to clean 45 squares?
Smaller houses are cheaper, take up less land, use less resources and cost less to maintain.
That adds up to win, win and win. Good for the environment, good for the community and good for the hip pocket.
Time saved on cleaning the house and paying the mortgage could be spent exercising and socialising. Better health. Better relationships. Happier couples and children.
The government proscribed house sizes and floor plans after WWII so it can be done.
But it would take a brave government to do it today.
In the 1950s the average adult wage supported the average family with an average mortgage.
A generation later it took one adult on an average wage and a second adult working part-time to do the same.
The average family shrunk and the average home grew.
Now two adults working full-time struggle to pay the mortgage on the average home and have time with their one-point-something children.
Where to from here? It's the kids or the house. I would keep the kids but something tells me McMansions will win.

Street violence

Have you noticed how often young guys appearing in court on assault charges are still living at home?

It usually comes out when they are up for sentencing and their lawyer tries to convince the judge to go easy on them.

But I wonder if living at home is a big part of the problem rather than a sign they will be unlikely to offend again.

Drink - and bar hopping - are usually behind the assault.

But rather than indicating young people are becoming more unruly, the rise in street violence is a reflection of rising housing costs and rents.

Getting drunk costs money, and so does paying cover charges in a string of bars, money young guys could not afford if they had a mortgage or were paying rent.

I wonder how many of them have money for grog because they are sponging on their parents.

A generation ago when houses were more affordable young people saved to buy a home of their own.

Most moved out of home into a place of their own as soon as they got a full time job.

Living with their parents too long stunts their maturity and leaves them with money to waste.

And we all have to live with the consequences.