May 20 - Getting To Know Your Coworkers

  Back to the grind today after a lovely weekend (I think.. for memory.. this is a week and a half later now after all).  I was busy entering invoices today, preparing for cut off at the end of the week.  I stayed back late to finish up a few things and ended up having a good chat with the Duty Manager.  It is accruals deadline next week and he asked a few questions about them and how they fit in with everything.  I offered to go through accruals with him next week, to explain how they work and what they do.  He thought that sounded great so we booked in an hour for Monday 27th to go through it all.
  After that we got on to career development and planning out what you need to do to achieve your career goals.  I brought up a point that I had found rather eye-opening during a training session I'd attended once.  The question was put to me "Who is responsible for your career development?" lots of people in the session suggested that your manager should put you forward for courses and seminars etc.  "No!" grinned the facilitator, "You are.  Only you know what you want, so only you can make it happen."  They went on to explain that although your manager is there to support you and to faciliate your progress, you have to drive your own development.
  It led us to a brief discussion on Csíkszentmihályi's Flow theory.  The idea that you should take on things slightly more challenging than your skill levels to keep yourself happy, challenged and growing.  It was not so long ago that training course occurred in fact, I was already writing this blog at the time so if you want to read what my first impressions of this theory were you can click here.

  Monday's food was:

• Breakfast was 45g Carman's Classic fruit and nut muesli bar and a 35g Carman's yoghurt, apricot and almond muesli bar.
• Lunch was a 300g mild Indian masala dhal skinny soup with a toasted wholemeal English muffin spread with 17.5g of The Laughing Cow cheese spread followed by a dried pear half and a dried peach half.
• Afternoon snack was a green nashi pear, cored and sliced.
• Dinner was five sushi rolls from Sushi Sushi: cooked tuna,spicy salmon brown rice,teriyaki chicken brown rice, tempura prawn and special California roll, served with a little mayonnaise and soy sauce.
• Dessert was a 30g serve of fruit and nut sesame snaps.

  I honestly don't remember how on earth the rest of the evening went.  What little I remember of today is because I had the nouse to write a brief outline, knowing I was still running behind on blog entries.  I'll catch up eventually I expect!
  Jess