Quality performance feedback

Strip #1:  “I admire that you make time to read…”  This one also includes a quote from Harry S. Truman: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”

It was probably a familiar sight each day around 11 to see me close up my office and head for the cafeteria, Kindle in hand.  I have always been an avid reader, although I must confess that I am not remotely an intellectual reader.  You will find a lot more of J.R.R. Tolkein, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Anne Rice, and Frank Herbert on my Kindle than, well.. I don’t really know what authors to put here, since the point is I don’t read them much.  I have some friends who are very astute, literarily speaking, and there have been a few uncomfortable pauses in our conversations over the years, as they have mentioned an essential author that I’ve never heard of.

Still, there are biographies, histories, scientific reviews, and social analyses in my library.  Not just old textbooks or gifts, but ones I’ve actually gone and picked out myself.  Admittedly, it’s probably 1 cerebral work for every 10 fun pieces, but I have finished every one and am certain they have broadened they way I look at the world.

The other important part of this ritual isn’t so much the reading as it is the break from the schedule, from the pressures of the day, to re-set and recharge.  I often use this time as much for quiet thinking as I do to read what I brought with me.  It really helps to evaluate where I am on the day’s tasks, and to be much more efficient as I start working through the second half of the day.

Bottom line: keep putting stuff in your brain, but take time out to process it too.

-These are from a jar that my team presented me as I was leaving to accept a promotion.  They are the impressions, thoughts, and ideas that they had come to associate with me during my time there.  I’ve decided to share them, and what I remember of how they came to be, with my readers as I draw them at random from the jar-