I realized today I was talking too much. It’s easy to do if people are paid to listen to you. No matter how independent they are, they will defer to you when you’re talking. So today I basically shut up so that they’d hear me better.

In the spirit of that koan, I’ll keep this post short. For a change.

I learned a long time ago with my worst-boss-ever (Adrian, I still hate you, it’s been 10+ years. You’re amazing me even today.) that the more she talked the less I heard her. I so despised her that I was able to spend most of my time in her meetings thinking about how to decode her.

So I ended up learning a lot.

Like when she’d come in and listen I noticed that when she finally said something it was really worthwhile. I noticed this because she was usually channeling Dilbert’s PHB with Catbert DNA injected.

So today we had a fair number of meetings and I sat back to listen. I even did scribe once (boy, does that job stink!) so they’d get on without me.

It was great for me - I learned a lot, and I think my folks enjoyed it more than usual.

I was tired though - it was hard work not talking.