Blues ….

November 20, 2011

Serious posts will have to wait for tomorrow. I was up at 0400 today to clear some work before a cab arrived at 0600 to get me to the airport for the flight to Brisbane. By the time I arrived after a four hour flight and a two hour time difference, and done the essential shopping it was 1700 and other than clear email, check twitter and post this entry my brain is not really up to anything more. although I have one client report to write before I can go to bed. Tomorrow its an early flight to Sydney and a late night flight back with three presentations in between. Wednesday an early morning start for a half day seminar, then afternoon meetings and an evening lecture followed by dinner with old friends. Wednesday an all day seminar, Thursday some free time in the morning then a drive out to Toowoomba and back for an evening lecture. Friday an 0500 flight to Melbourne for the second Cynefin seminar (the first one sold out and so has this), getting back just before midnight. Saturday is free, then Sunday I fly to Singapore for two solid days work before flying to Barcelona for a ceremony to celebrate the life and work of Max Boisot, a Heathrow hotel that night, morning meetings and then home on Friday for a few days before a day trip to Washington DC.

All of this started some weeks ago with a a few days in Washington and Ottawa, a week in Singapore then Adelaide & Sydney in week three. Week four (following a weekend flight to Bogota in the middle of the Qantas strike) sessions in Sydney followed by Darwin. Then it was Melbourne and Hobart, last week Perth this week, well I have described that. In all of that time other than Singapore and this week I have had to pack every 3/4 days and move on. In that time I have three great days out, the rest of the time generally has either seen me asleep or on the computer (sometimes both). I still have one overdue article and two major reports to compete along with a business plan, but each of those requires 4/5 hours of writing and 1/2 hours of tuning in which in the above schedule requires a degree of discipline I can’t always manage.

I’m going to write a post on packing and the ritual of entering and leaving a hotel room sometime soon. Not to mention the average number of G&Ts required to combat jet lag and strategies for sleep on different time zones.

Now I am not really complaining, I like meeting people, I am never too tired to do a presentation or run a seminar. But if one more person suggests that international travel is nothing more than a jolly I am going to take them out and feed them to the nearest poisonous or aggressive reptile (and there are plenty out here to choose from). Ditto anyone who can’t cope with the odd typo or misspelling on the blog (remember I’m partially dyslectic so if spell checker does not pick it up I won’t).

Moving between time zones (I crossed the date line three times on this trip) will always leave you weary, never fully rested, snatching sleep in planes and in the hours between meetings. The compensation is meeting new people and seeing great places which provides much mental stimulation. The downside, well I have outlined that already.

Venting over, the washing machine has twelve minutes to run, all I have to do is hang up shirts. set the tumbler dryer going for the rest and iron the shirt for tomorrow morning’s get away, oh and write that report. To everyone I owe an email or anything else, apologies but now you know why.

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The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
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