CivicActions

The Way I Work

I work primarily as a project manager at CivicActions, though I do serve in other roles as well. Being a project manager means that I am managing the schedules, workplan and budget for a number of projects at once, and that I work on one project or another with a large percentage of the whole CA team. My job requires a lot of patience, flexibility, communication, and the ability to keep track of seemingly several million details at once. It also requires a sense of humor, the ability to educate people, and sometimes, an iron will.

Physical Space

Like many of my CivicActions teammates, I work from my home, which is in Oakland, California. I do not have an office in my house, and I also like to change the view from over the edge of my laptop, so on a given day, I might be working from my couch, a comfy arm chair looking onto the park across the street, the dining room table, or a chair in my garden in the back yard (on days not full of glare). I am certain that I could do better in the area of ergonomics, but find that moving from location to location and chair to chair mixes it up enough for me.

When home gets to be too much (and it does sometimes), I go to the Nomad Cafe, an organic and sustainably operated cafe near my house that has free Wi-Fi, and gives me a discount since I am there so much. I often meet clients and teammates there as well.

I also really enjoy co-working at others' homes that live nearby, and try to do that whenever I do not have a day full of phone calls or at least once per month. These "others" are both people who work at CivicActions, and people who do not.

Mental Space

Since the projects and teams I manage span the globe (literally), it can be pretty stressful to keep everything feeling "handled" at times. This is in part because project teams have people working at almost every time of day. The way I typically manage a day is to wake up (around 7:30 am), have breakfast and check email. My email will typically dictate a lot of my to-do list for the day, along with standing items that I do every day or every week on a particular day. My to-do list gives me my tasks for the morning, which I address in order by project, to be most efficient. "Changing heads" as I call it, or context switching, is the biggest risk to my productivity, so I try to build in structures to avoid it as much as possible, but it is in the nature of my role to some extent.

For me, it works best to have a focused and intense period of work (6-7 hours) followed by an afternoon break (1-2 hours), and then work on the things that need my rapt attention in the early evenings if I have to.

Tools

I am very thankful to use a MacBook Pro, a device that I love! Previously, I was working on a mac so old that I could not keep more than one application open at a time, so this machine is a welcome relief. I also use a Logitech headset for those conference calls (that I would like to replace with something a little less bulky), and a cell phone. As long as I have these things and some wi-fi, I can work anywhere.