Week 30--Conference Calls

Talking and thinking simultaneously for extended periods of time is hard work. It's exhausting, and perhaps something in our human evolutionary process we have not quite mastered. On an average day I spend at least 1-3 hour a day on a conference call, or a brainstorming type of meeting; the last several months (30 weeks) this number has increased to more than 3 hours a day, with two to three full days of my week committed to more than 5-6 hours of conference calls a day. I according to those type of courses that help define your "leadership style" have a collaborative style. Meaning I get my best work done by exchange of ideas, that I am somewhat "charged" up by interaction and like venues such as brainstorming, talking through issues, roadblocks and what if scenarios. Meaning I should be thriving in this type of environment. Yet I am brain dead at the end of the day and a little testy. Okay some days a lot testy.  My brain is mush.  I want to take it out of my head and simply toss it from hand to hand and drool. Yes drool, I want to be like my friends dog and have my ears scratched and lay in the grass and simply let autonomic responses take over.  I am learning that between these brainstorming sessions, I need time to let things settle around me, to allow my thought processes mature, and to formulate an action plan.  That more than 2-3 hours in a day of that sort of higher level of interaction puts me outside of my own comfort zone.   I am developing strategies to accommodate the information stream, to stretch this muscle.  I am always amazed by people who can function at this level for extended periods of time, who are always "on top of their game" we have several managers who retain the inputs from tens/hundrends of people, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year with not so much as a blip in thier baseline.  Perhaps when this 100 week project is completed, I might gain a bit of this skill.  Next week I am going to Cancun for a senior trip with the girls of troop 1900, and I have decided that I am going to lay on the beach, drink copious amounts of diet Mountain Dew, and drool. The only decision matrix will be which swimsuit to wear and whether I should go snorkeling or lay on the beach and  read a book.