God’s Funny – I’m Slow

billglick — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:22:43 +0000

I was telling a friend just last night (or maybe the night before) about an opportunity that I felt like I’d missed out on. I ran into an aquaintance last week that I hadn’t seen in several months. We were making small talk and he asked something about my church. Afterwards I realized that I think he was opening the door to me inviting him to church or to take the conversation a bit deeper. So, I was commenting to my friend that I felt like I’d blown the opportunity that God had placed before me — in fact I didn’t even recognize the opportunity till after it had passed. Yeah, I’m slow.

Well today I’m out to lunch with my coworkers and I see this same aquaintance come walking into the restaurant. We eventually make eye contact across the crowded room and exchange friendly waves. So, after lunch I went over and said hello again. I think I said something about it was odd to run into him again so soon. Then I took off back to work. Like I said… I’m slow.

So, tonight as I’m thinking about my day it hits me… God crossed our paths again today for some reason. Maybe it was for me to open the door a bit more with this guy. Or maybe it was just so I’d start to recognize opportunities that He puts in my day. Whatever the reason, God’s funny that way. He orchestrated my day and this other guy’s day so that we’d run into each other, just a day after I’d realized the first meeting was a God opportunity. God is funny.

Well, I’m pretty sure I’ll take advantage of the opportunity if I run into this guy again in the next few days. But, the bigger question is… How can I better recognize God opportunities when they show up?

Time Tracking with Twitter

billglick — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 23:46:00 +0000

At work recently we’ve been trying to get a better handle on how we use our time. My goal has been to document my time usage in 15 minute increments throughout the day. But, obviously this could quickly become a tedious task that is counter productive.

Yesterday I had an idea to simplify this task. I setup a new Twitter account specifically for this task. Then I downloaded a Twitter client and setup a cron entry to automatically open the twitter client every 15 minutes throughout my work day. So now documenting my work day is pretty unobtrusive. And if my coworkers ever want a glimpse of what I’m up to, they can simply subscribe to my Twitter feed.

I’ve been auditing my work time in a similar manner for the past couple of weeks and have found this extremely valuable. I’m finding 4 main benefits:

I feel pressured to be more productive so I actually have something to include in my entries. It’s a kind of accountability.
I can quickly review my week so that preparing status reports for management is easier.
I’m seeing areas where I get bogged down and am unproductive, as well as times of day that I’m simply wasting time or goofing off.
I have a historical log so that I can diagnose issues down the road. Lots of times we’ll see where one of our systems started having problems on a certain date or time; and now it’s easier to recall what might have changed during that particular time frame.

Have you ever found it useful to track your work and time in this much detail?

Do you have any other creative uses for Twitter.com?

Coworkers – Bill Glick .:. tech . art . God . life

God’s Funny – I’m Slow

Time Tracking with Twitter