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Career

Co-Active: Balance

Balance is course 2/4 for me this year (I’m hoping to get through the training this year, and then potentially do certification next year). Previous I took Fundamentals (coaching 101), and Fulfillment. Similar to Fulfillment, I opted for the 5 half days (0900-1330), which is exhausting enough – I can’t imagine doing any longer each […]

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Career life Reflections

Work vs Life

There was an article a while ago with Marissa Mayer’s thoughts on work life balance. Essentially it was that long hours were fine, as long as you didn’t miss out on things that would make you resent it. I try and work manageable (sustainable!) hours but sometimes my work gets prioritised over my life. And my […]

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Career life Relocating

Making Someplace New, Home

I’ve had this conversation multiple times lately, so it’s time to document it. I feel like a hippocrite offering these observations, since I don’t feel at all at home in London yet, but at least I’m mindfully unhappy about it. Even somewhat 1-dimensional workaholics have multiple aspects to their lives (they normally have somewhere to […]

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Career life Organization

Achieving the Quasi-Possible, Just About On Time

This Thursday, it will be two months since I arrived in Sydney. I came to work on a specific project, and that project came with a pretty ambitious deadline. I don’t know if anyone, including the person who thought this deadline up, really believed we would make it. But we did, just about. We as a team, […]

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Career Education life Organization

Bagels, Chores, and Compromises

I discovered something new about where I live at the weekend. The nearby drugmart doesn’t sell bagels. I’d always assumed that they would, but when I tested that theory I found it lacking. Living in a small place, there wasn’t anywhere I could continue on to and so I ended up at my boyfriend’s apartment […]

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life Organization Post-Grad Rehab

Post Grad Rehab: June/July

Mid- way through June, I paused, and wondered – why was I focusing on little things during a month of big things? I hope that end-of-May-Cate realized that this was something that June-Cate would need to stay sane. This month’s focus gave me permission to make time for small, unimportant (but important to me), things […]

Categories
life Organization

Changing Paces

I’m a little… tired and uninspired lately. Not at work – but at not-work. Once home, I’m not driven to write, or code, or read that stack of papers. I’m actually reading novels. I’ve been beating myself up for procrastination. Wondering, how do you tell the difference between being a little burnt out and needing […]

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Career email Organization

Drawing Lines Around Your Day

Arriving, stressed, on a Monday morning the other week I decided to shut the mail tab on my browser, with no intention of opening it again. This impromptu panic started a new thing – I’m checking (work) email at most once a day, if I have a meeting. No meeting days – usually one a week […]

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Organization Reflections

Balancing Acts

When I started work, I set myself a simple rule – one that I’d less deliberately followed last summer. At the end of the day, leave work computer at work. Do not put work email on phone. It works. I enjoy my evenings and weekends. I wake up excited to go to the office. I […]

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Organization Post-Grad Rehab

What is Work-Life Balance, Anyway?

Women, especially, seem to talk about work-life-balance – and it’s synonym, work-life-integration (a la IBM) a lot. But what does it mean? The cop out, d’uh, answer is, different things to everyone. I’ve come to think that what it means is that the pieces that make up your life (work, family, friends, exercise, hobbies, etc […]