"It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.” - John Steinbeck from "Tortilla Flat”

This morning, I find myself thinking of what really matters and how I will have a different opportunity to give my time to those people and things that matter to me during my retirement. During my working life, I’ve spent almost 50% of my waking hours working, or commuting to work, and these hours have been in service of what matters most because they have allowed me to do my part to support our family. I’m grateful for the career I’ve had, and the opportunities it has given us to live the life we do here at home, to travel to see family and the world around us, and to form and honor lasting friendships. I’m also grateful that my career at the university has allowed me to earn the retirement benefits that will soon let me focus more time on my loved ones and the activities that are most meaningful to me.

This week, I had an opportunity to attend a time management workshop with Chad Cooper (http://www.chadecooper.com/) that has given me some new things to think about. I’ve been to a number of sessions on this topic and I’ve become familiar with several tools and techniques to help make wise use of time. Mr. Cooper’s comments presented this challenge to me in a different light. Instead of starting with the various tasks and priorities that make a claim on my time, his approach calls us to begin by considering our values, who we want to be, and those people and experiences that are most meaningful in our lives. I look forward to reading his new book, “Time Isn’t the Problem, You Are” and to seeing how I might benefit from applying this approach as I plan for how I will spend my time in retirement.

In retirement, I look forward to having even greater freedom to make choices driven by my values and true calling in life. While I acknowledge that I’ve always had this freedom, I also see that my awareness of how my choices influence the value I can provide, and receive, from living has developed as I have gained life experience. At the same time, the reduced need to devote so many hours to earning a living will provide me a degree of freedom that is different from anything I’ve experienced since I left school and began working full time almost 40 years ago.

My greatest growth has always come in relationship with others and most especially through my relationships with my loved ones. I know that I will choose to spend more time both with them and in activities that allow me to act on my love for them. Traveling together and sharing the wonders of the world, and the joy of seeing their reaction to these wonders, will definitely be a priority for me. I also look forward to using my creativity, in the wood shop, the kitchen, and with words and music to find new ways to delight them.

I’ve also found that I grow and flourish through time for introspection and reflection. I feel a great desire to be the best version of myself that I can be. Taking time to consider what I feel, think, and believe, and how honestly I am acting on my values, is an important part of this process. I welcome the opportunity to choose a slower pace of life at times in retirement. One that allows more quiet time to reflect before I return with new energy to act on the love that provides the greatest meaning to my life.

I look forward to choosing more time for meditation, exercise, and time in nature. In spiritual practice, and in wilderness I find opportunities for a special kind of silence that clears and feeds my mind, and that refreshes and nourishes my soul. In consistent healthy activity, I find a wellspring of vitality that lets me act with greater freedom, engagement, and flexibility as I enjoy the adventure of living. In this busy career chapter of my life, I haven’t always chosen time for these practices that expand my capacity for living. I retirement, I have the opportunity to choose differently.

How I look forward to more time to write and sing and share my music! Some of my earliest memories are of music and song and I find the act of singing brings me close to so many moments of remembered joy. From the earliest memories of hearing my mother singing, and so many shared moments with loved ones when our voices have been raised in song together, to wonderful memories of making music with friends, and the delight of singing for children throughout my life. My future holds the promise of many new opportunities to share joy, togetherness, and love through music. Opportunities to open a window to my thoughts and feelings through new songs of my own. Opportunities to open a door to welcome my loved ones closer through these songs of my heart, and to have them come in, sit close to me, and sing.

There will be more time to give back to our community and there are so many options open to me for this giving! Today I am thinking of my beloved Sue’s 30 years with the Yosemite Environmental Living Program as of this spring, and of how much I admire her passion, wisdom, and dedication to that work. Especially in these past 15 years, when she left the classroom and volunteered to coordinate that program for the National Park Service, she has been an amazing role model to me for what it means to give back. I wonder how I will choose to give? I’m pretty sure time volunteering in our national parks will be one of those choices, and I can see myself reading and singing for children.

I imagine that retirement will also be a time to me try new things. By definition, I have no idea where my adventures in retirement might take me and this is an exciting notion for me. When I have more freedom to spend time in new ways, what new possibilities will open up for me? Sometimes, lately, it feels as though the things I truly want to do with my life and time are calling me more urgently. I sometimes wonder if I can last another 13 months before I drive home from the office for the last time! I imagine I’ll make it but I am beginning to feel the emotional energy building in me that could make that exit from my career into IT a shining entrance into something new and wonderful.

I know that with the freedom to choose new ways to spend my time, and my life, comes a new responsibility. I’m sure I will need time to learn how to make the best choices in this new chapter of my life. My wife, and the other loved ones and trusted advisors I am talking with about retirement, assure me that this will be an important challenge. I will make good choices, and some missteps. I will make adjustments and give myself permission to try things and to choose what to keep and what to let go. I feel the excitement growing within me and I believe I will be ready when the day comes to turn this page.

The photo at the top of my essay today is one we took while hiking the Marsh Trail at Rondeau Provincial Park in Ontario with dear friends on August 1, 2012. I believe these are Swamp-Rose Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos).

"The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.” - Loren Eiseley

Today, I’m thinking about retirement and sharing some thoughts about change. At work, we’ve been reading “Managing Transitions:Making the Most of Change” by William and Susan Bridges, so one of the ways I’m thinking about change is with their model of endings, “the neutral zone”, and beginnings in mind.

At work, we’ve been applying this way of thinking to how the organization is dealing with the transition we are going through as we implement a reorganization to align with the leadership of our new CIO. He asked each member of the leadership team to consider what is ending for each of us, and perhaps what we've lost, what is in “the neutral zone”, and what is beginning.

My thoughts about this question are influenced not only by the changes associated with our reorganization, but also by the changes that are part of my planned retirement a bit over a year from now. As we discussed our thoughts at a recent managers meeting, I shared that I’ve lost the opportunity to achieve some things I had hoped to, and to act on the, probably unrealistic, desire that my role as I moved toward retirement might help me wrap things up (as much personally as operationally). The new interim role that I've taken on comes with some significant new challenges that will likely keep me busy for much of my remaining time here.

As I retire, I recognize that I will also lose some of the professional relationships and social opportunities that have been part of my work. While there are many aspects of my work that I don’t believe I will miss, I do expect I will miss the people who have been so much a part of my daily life here. I will work to stay in touch and especially with those colleagues who have also become friends. Navigating this change from daily contact with many others to a life where I will need to seek new social opportunities will be an important part of the transition to retirement.

There is also some chance that retirement could pose challenges for me in that I could feel that I’ve lost the opportunities to make a difference that have been part of my professional career. I will be paying attention to this and looking at how I’d like to make a difference in retirement. There will be new and different opportunities in this new phase of my life and I expect I will need to try some things out to see what fits. I look forward to seeing how I may be able to make a new kind of difference for my family and to finding the right ways to engage in our community.

I also admit that I struggle with some fear of failing before I cross the finish line from my career at work to the new horizons of retirement. Will I be successful in the final assignments I’m taking on and complete my IT career with a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction? Will I falter at the end instead and feel that I have let my colleagues down by failing to achieve the results we are seeking? As I work to finish my part of the work ahead, and prepare to place the rest in the capable hands of my successor, I will continue to strive for a healthy balance to help ensure that I don’t fail physically, or emotionally, and hope that I can leave with my head high looking forward to the next adventure.

For me the “neutral zone” of things that are changing, but not yet transitioned from old to new at work, includes my current role and trying to define the next shape for the client services team I am leading in my interim position. In this process, I am leading several small groups that are working on specific adjustments we are considering, and it remains to be seen what changes we will define. I’m also listening to those who work for and with me to understand where they are in moving through this transition. It is early yet and many of them are in this “neutral zone” themselves.

In the “neutral zone” as I plan for retirement, are what options I may pursue to earn some extra money over the first couple years, and which community activities will fit best for me. I have lots of choices for fun and creative activities that I’m considering and we’ll see which of these I pursue and how the mix of different choices changes over the years. Also in this zone for me are many of my thoughts, feelings, and expectations about retirement. This is an undiscovered country for me and I will not know how useful and accurate these are until I begin exploring the new landscape of my future.

As far as what is beginning, at work I hope, and believe, that the change our university has made in bringing in a CIO will allow us to achieve something I have worked for, and felt we needed, for a long time. With this new commitment to making wise use of IT in pursuit of our mission, I believe the impact of information technology on the success of our students will be greater and more positive. While I may not see the full realization of all I've hoped to, I believe the university should be able to realize the full potential of this new approach over the next few years.

Most of the new beginnings in my personal life remain ahead of me and I am working to plan for these. I have begun talking with my wonderful partner, Sue, and with dear friends and trusted colleagues, about their experiences with retirement and what this new chapter of life may hold for me. In small ways, I have begun taking steps to prepare for these new beginnings. I am researching employment and volunteer options, looking at how to create a space in our home where I can write and play music, and talking with Sue about how I can come home in ways that will work well for us both.

I will find ways to grieve what is lost in a way that respects what I leave behind, and undone. I will work to complete the process of resolving those things that are in the “neutral zone”. I will plan for, and look forward to engaging in, the new beginnings ahead and I will remember that more transitions await me as our adventures in life continue. May I continue to grow in the years ahead and may I prove to be a good partner and companion for those with whom I am fortunate to share these adventures.

"The only thing for us to decide is what to do with the time we are given” - Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"

Today, I am enjoying a vacation with Sue and two of our closest friends so I wrote these reflections late last week. As I looked forward to our time together, I found myself thinking about what I hope to do in retirement. It will be more than a year yet before I get to act on these hopes, but it is not too soon to begin thinking about how to make the best use of these new years.

This list is in no particular order, except for this first item. Most important of all to me is to have more time with my loved ones. When I ask the most important question, “Am I doing what matters most?”, I know that when I am loving, I can be sure that I am. Oh, how I will delight in more time with Sue, and with my beloved friends and family. Each of these special ones fills my heart and my life with joy, peace, and love. I want to spend as much time sharing that with, and giving it back to, them. I think of time with our great-nieces and nephews and I am filled with happiness. It would be lovely to be a grandparent! I also realize that many of the other things I hope to do below are sweeter when done with and for these loved ones of mine.

I look forward to more time to be quiet, listen to my heart and soul, and think about what I am feeling. learning and experiencing. Most of these last forty years of college and professional life have been very busy ones and time to be quiet, and even alone, has been a very infrequent part of my life. I wonder what I will notice and realize when I have time to slow down, be quiet, and reflect with an open mind and an open heart. I know that I will enjoy including more meditation and healthy activities like tai chi in some of this quiet time.

I am very much looking forward to more time for music! This has been a joyful part of my life from the very beginning and some of my earliest memories are of music and song. I am grateful that music has been some part of my life always and I will give more time and energy to it in retirement. I’ll enjoy the joyful social collaboration of performing and singing with others, the lovely feeling of sharing music with my loved ones, and the more solitary creative process of writing music, practicing, and learning to play new music and instruments.

I will take more time for writing and look forward to setting up a little office in one corner of our guest bedroom for this purpose. I also hope to do some of my writing in my “office” in a clearing up the mountain. There is a great fallen log up there that makes an excellent bench. I’ve got notes for a few more significant essays and some ideas for fiction and poetry. I’ve always loved playing with words to find the ones that best express my meaning and it will be enjoyable to do more of this.

I look forward to having more time for woodworking and art. I have a lathe and have yet to teach myself to use it! There are many other tools I am more comfortable with and a long list of projects I’d enjoy making. I love the smell and the feel of wood and the joy of sharing what I’ve made with others. I can draw and paint a bit and look forward to practicing these arts and learning to make pictures that look more like what I intend. It would be wonderful to reach the point where I could draw and paint the faces of my loved ones in a way that helps me show the beauty I see inside them.

I will definitely have great fun doing more cooking, baking and brewing! I’ve enjoyed making food and drinks since I was a little boy working with my mother in the kitchen and I’ll be glad to do more of this. There’s something very satisfying about sharing fresh-baked bread or a favorite meal made with my loved ones’ tastes in mind. I look forward to trying some new recipes, too!

I will be looking at ways that I can spend some time giving back to my community and making a difference in retirement. There are many opportunities to choose from and some that sound interesting to me today include volunteering in our national parks, working on achieving real equity and equality for girls and women, helping people learn to read, and finding more ways to help children get involved with music.

Without a doubt, we’ll be doing more traveling together in retirement and we already have a list of places we’d like to visit that would probably be enough for another lifetime! That list keeps growing and then there are the wonderful places we’ve been that we’d like to see again. I look forward to the luxury of trips that take longer than my working life has allowed and one of these will definitely be a long road trip across the US and into Canada that will allow us to share family history and time with friends.

I will enjoy spending more time close to nature and in wilderness in retirement. I hope for some great hikes and quiet times sitting by beautiful rivers, and time to fill my soul with the peace and power of the sea. I look forward to loon calls over the lake, swimming together in the sun-warmed water, and laughing and singing around the fire before laying on our backs looking up at the bright stars filling clear, dark skies.

I will be seeking some good advice by talking with friends and loved ones who have started down this retirement road before me. I know I’ll have lots to learn and adjustments to make as I discover for myself the difference between my idea of being retired and the reality. I’ll try to ask some good questions and do lots of listening.

I hope retirement will bring me time to discover more fully who I am today, who I have become as a result of my life’s experiences and who I have always been and always will be. May I share with my loved ones a long retirement with lots of long drives, long walks, long talks, eating, drinking, singing, laughing, and sitting quietly together. May I find the right ways to show how much they mean to me and how deeply I love them.

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars." - Henry David Thoreau in "Walden"

This week, I met with one of my protégés in our mentoring program and we had a wonderful discussion of time management, strategic planning, communication, and customer satisfaction, and how they come together. We started with work that we were doing together on some specific aspects of these topics and our conversation grew into something much more global. I won’t provide details as one of the key tenets of mentoring is confidentiality, but I did want to acknowledge the wonderful opportunities for learning that mentoring provides. They tell us that the mentors learn as much as the protégés, and they are right!

I also find myself thinking about the essay I wrote last week on customer service and I’m convinced that the other topics I’m writing about this week are fundamental to our ability to meet the needs of our customers. That process will always be a balancing act between the time and resources available and the IT requirements that we are trying to satisfy. The more effectively we manage time, understand the strategic priorities of our organization, and the operational priorities competing for our attention, and communicate, the better we will be able to satisfy our customers.

Looking at time management, the key issue is to make sure we use our limited time as wisely as possible. This includes being able to recognize whether a given item of work is urgent, important, or both, and acting appropriately based on that knowledge. President Dwight Eisenhower used this approach with great effect and those who have looked at the decision matrix he used advise us to leave some time to deal with the urgent and important things that crop up, allow significant time for the important, but not urgent, work that is key to achieving our goals and objectives, delegate, or schedule specific and limited time for the urgent but unimportant tasks, and avoid spending time on things that are neither urgent nor important.

One of the better examples of urgent, but not important, work today is reading our email. We can allow this task to distract us from important work throughout the day, or we can allot a reasonable amount of time for it on a schedule that allows us to do our more important work. Email is interesting in that it, along with voice mail, workflow and work order systems, and meetings, is one of the queues of incoming work that we respond to. People in many organizations, including the one I work for, are struggling with these multiple sources of work and with how to become aware of urgent and important demands quickly and efficiently. While email can also be a useful form of communication when used appropriately, it is not a very effective way to alert someone to time sensitive issues.

As we deal with the incoming work from these various queues, there are a number of common tools that apply some similar concepts to making wise choices about how to use our time. The Four Ds approach advises us to look at each item of work and decide whether to Do, Defer, Delegate, Discard that item. Stephanie Winston’s TRAF system provide a similar set of choices and we are advised to Trash, Refer, Act on, or File the items we review. David Allen’s GTD (Get Things Done) framework provides a somewhat more nuanced approach to managing the work that occupies much of our time but all of these share some common wisdom.

There are some tasks that need to be done but require little time to complete. These are best done immediately as the time required to plan to do them later is generally time wasted. There are other tasks that require our attention but that will require significant time and these are best planned for by scheduling them at a specific appropriate time. Some work is not a good use of our time, but is best delegated or referred to others, and there are also items that aren’t worth spending time on at all.

Delegation can involve training and is best with clear direction as to how soon the work must be completed and what follow-up we expect. Setting clear expectations for how we want to receive confirmation of completion, or notice of any unanticipated delay, and how to request additional information or help is valuable to both parties. Good documentation can help support effective delegation by providing clear direction on how to complete delegated tasks and good context for independent action.

Understanding priorities clearly is key to recognizing what is important and to using any of the tools I mention above. We need to have a clear sense of our own priorities, and the priorities of those we serve. When we are deciding whether to act immediately, defer action to a more appropriate time, or delegate work to others, understanding priorities allows us to give each task the appropriate attention.

We also need to understand how readily priorities can be adjusted. Most projects have a fixed schedule and don’t allow us to defer work. One of our best tools in these situations is effective planning and communication so that we can insure needed work is completed on schedule without jeopardizing other priorities.  Some work may be deferred and rescheduled more than once in response to competing demand with higher priority.

The expectations and priorities of our customers, and our bosses, are a very significant factor as we work to manage our time. We need to understand whether these are negotiable or nonnegotiable and become skilled at negotiating schedules and communicating what other expectations might need to be adjusted to allow for competing demands.

Effective strategic planning can provide a common framework to help us as we work to make the right decisions on priorities, schedules, resource allocation and budgeting. By defining clear strategic priorities, and effective plans to achieve these, we are better able to negotiate operational priorities with these in mind. Engaging in strategic planning at many levels, organization, IT strategy, departmental, and personal, can help provide further clarity. A collaborative approach to completing these strategic plans can also help to foster clearer and more effective communication as they are shared with others and put into action. As we work to deliver effective IT services, clearly defined architectures can provide similar advantages.

Underlying effective time management, priority setting, and strategic planning is communication.

Spending time to understand the expectations of our customers, and to help them clearly understand the capabilities of the IT services we are delivering and developing, is fundamental to setting effective priorities and making wise use of our time. Regular service review, and project status/review meetings, allow us to refine our understanding as we move forward together and to maintain alignment with the strategies and architecture we’ve defined. As human beings, we are great at pattern recognition. Just as we can read a message in poor handwriting or understand spoken messages in a noisy environment, we will reach an apparently clear understanding of each other's’ intentions and expectations even when things are left unsaid. We fill in the blanks to complete the picture. It’s important to take time to verify with each other that we have filled these blanks with the same information!

The connections between time management, strategic planning, and communication are obvious as you look at these three important activities. All are informed by the priorities of those we serve, our own priorities, and those of the organization. Those priorities are informed by the strategies we define. Our choices as we strive to use time wisely are informed by our understanding of these strategies and priorities. The extent to which we communicate effectively is a key factor in the quality of all the rest.

I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to serve as a mentor ever since our program was founded several years ago. As my protégé and I talked about the value of the program this week, I was particularly encouraged that this year we have expanded what was a staff mentoring program to include faculty mentoring. We both see very real potential for the mix of staff and faculty this time to help us develop a new generation of leaders for our university that could collaborate across the existing faculty/staff divide more effectively. By learning together about how we plan for strategic priorities, allocated our time and resources wisely, and, especially, communicate about the competing demands we must balance to serve our students, I believe we will all be better able to serve those who come to us to learn.

As we manage our time and priorities, it is important to remember to give our loved ones one of the most precious gifts we have. Our time and attention. Always I will keep asking myself, "Am I spending my time on what really matters?" I hope I will have the courage to answer truthfully and act on that answer.