DianeB of Pocket Blonde is a Manhattanite by way of Pennsylvania and a lifelong appreciator of fine pens and paper. Today, she talks about how she and her colleagues keep track of what they do at work each month.
Without fail, on the first work day of every month I send out a one-sentence email to my colleagues: so, what did you do last month? The Monthly Report is due, send them to me as soon as you can so I can put them together, format the document, and forward to our boss, the Assistant Vice President.
The Monthly Report actually began years back as the dreaded Monthly Meeting, a 90 minute endurance test where all of us would report to our two higher ups, the Assistant Vice President and the Vice President. Some of us were brief, some were wordy; a few were great speakers, most of us were not; various colleagues had too much work at one time, while others tap-danced around their lack of projects. And we all had our various delivery styles as we went through the ups and downs of the month past, ranging from Buster-Keaton-Charlie-Chaplin-silent-comedy to Ian-McKellen-Judy-Dench-The-Scottish-Play-tragedy.
But the AVP and VP got bogged down in meetings, and so we switched from a monthly meeting to a monthly written report. Which meant—horrors!—we had to write down what we did each month in order to put it in a monthly report. My colleagues and I have experimented with different ways of keeping track of our workload, including typing everything into an Excel spreadsheet (too sterile for me, but works for many), making notes on yellow stickies and pasting them to each other in long flowing lines (JD was not happy when Housekeeping accidentally cleaned his office instead of DJ’s that one time), and jotting down assignments in a planner (how grown up).
