A Thought for Today

Mitch HobishGrowth, Innovation, Leadership

The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; someone strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary …

Married to an Idea: Is it Time for a Divorce?

Mitch HobishGrowth, Leadership, Productivity

I’ve been working on an in-house project for a couple of months. It’s one of those things that can (and did) become almost all-consuming, as there were many components, all of which had to fit together into a cohesive unit for optimum effectiveness. I was within days of launching it, when I realized that a major piece of it just …

Spending Time Well

Mitch HobishProductivity

I’ve been using computers since 1968. I taught myself BASIC via a time-share arrangement, using a 110 Baud teletype connected to a computer several hundred miles away. Storage was on paper tape, and execution times were glacial, but I was using a computer! Time wore on. The personal computer age arrived, and I got very familiar with command-line control, first …

When It’s Someone Else’s Turn

Mitch HobishGrowth, Leadership, Productivity

The Lovely and Talented Janice just got through a very hard week, preparing for and participating in a crafts show to support the local women’s help center. I’ve learned over the years to just stay out of her way during such periods, and to do more than my usual share of household support in addition to what emotional and logistical …

Time: Wasting It or Spending It

Mitch HobishGrowth, Productivity

A quick little note for today: A friend sent me a link to this piece of fluff. When I was finished visiting the site, my immediate reaction was, “Well! That was certainly a waste of time!” But then I reconsidered: I had spent perhaps five minutes (if that) doodling and watching to see what would come next. I enjoyed myself, …

Repurposing

Mitch HobishInnovation, Leadership, Productivity

I just spent a couple of days in fly-on-the-wall mode at the 2011 Great Divide Weather Workshop, which focused on sharing innovative science and service, with researchers and practitioners of meteorology, hydrology and related fields from across the Northern Rocky Mountains and High Plains, as well as the Pacific Northwest and Great Basin. The idea was to present and share …