Rachel Friedmann

On Friday morning, I went to a Bisnow event discussing “Where Do Women Stand?” The food was lacking, but the panel was amazing. The panel included anchorwoman Barbara Harrison, Kiva.org & ProFounder.com co-founder Jessica Jackley, UN Foundation CEO Kathy Calvin, and FEED Projects Lauren Bush. I could write a few blog entries about this evnet and may end up doing so.

One of the many comments that stuck in mind was a question asking if women tend to stand in other women’s way. Unfortunately, I thought of a couple instances in my life where this has happened to me. Women have come so far in the work place arena that we should be pushing each other forward, not holding each other back.

In one of my experiences, a supervisor of mine did not allow me to excel. A few told me she was threatened, but I don’t think that was the case. As women we have the tendency to control things in our lives. As the one who runs the household, we manage and control what our families activities are, what they eat, do chores, manage finances, and the list goes on. I think that for some this tendancey moves over to their work lives as well. I know women managers who tend to be micro managing and controlling of their subordinates.  I have had female friends, who have had similar experiences as well. I sit here hoping for an epihany to help those with these types of managers in their lives and can not think of a good solution.

For women managers out there, remember your employees are not your children, your partner, or your pets. As I recently read on my favorite blog – ZenHabits.net :

“Treat others as you’d want to be treated (in their place)”, but in another conception, how you treat others is how your treat yourself.

Consider: when you react to others with anger or meanness, you are putting yourself in an angry mindset, a bad mood. You’ll likely feel pretty crappy for at least an hour, if not all day.

Well, I managed to check my email less often over the last couple of days, but did not manage my twice a day goal. This world has become too demanding and time sensitive, but I am going to continue working towards this goal.

One thing I noticed was that I have been spending last time on listserv and mass emails. A while ago, I started using filters to pull emails from going into my inbox and instead moving them into a ToRead folder. This has helped me immensely. My blackberry blinks red less often and I have spent more time focusing on the important emails rather than filtering through all my other emails. In doing this, email is starting to become less of a chore.

As I continue to try to lessen my addiction to always being connected, I highly recommend Leo Babauta’s blog Zen Habits (zenhabits.net). I first heard about him while reading Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin. Zen Habits promotes simplifying your life and focusing on the things you enjoy. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts.

One year ago today, HBO announced it was canceling DC’s favorite pastime Screen on the Green. Since then an acquaintance of mine started a facebook group called “Save Screen on the Green.” Jesse Rauch’s perseverance paid off and Screen on the Green was saved. The program is still in jeopardy and in need of support. Visit http://savescreenonthegreen.com/ for more details.

In a world that requires multi-tasking and multi-apping, it can be a bit much. A while ago I read The 4-Hour Work Week (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/). While I can’t image the author’s lifestyle, I did like some of his ideas on managing your time while at work. My favorite was bucketing your time. For example, the author sets times during the week to look at his email and respond.

In this fast paced world it seems impossible to only look at your email twice a day. Every once in a while I try, and then my email addiction takes over. I often wonder if I would be more productive if I did not constantly monitor my email and social networks. I have heard that when multi-tasking it takes your brain longer to refocus from one task to the next and therefore making you less productive. I am going to try an experiment tomorrow and will report back. I will only check my email at 10am and 4pm – let’s see if it works.

Today is graduation day. After 2 years, I am finishing my masters in marketing from Johns Hopkins Univ. Sounds impressive, right? Well, today we did not walk across a stage, instead starting at 8am we gave presentations on our 2 semester long marketing research thesis. Intertwining our education and experience became imperative in our projects’ completion. As I move in to the next stage of my career, I am happy that I have both.

I can’t count how many texts I sent/received today and am afraid to know the number. Between meet-ups with friends and a meeting time change I felt like my day was spent entirely on my blackberry.

I worry as I often do about how society is changing the rules of how we interact. Are these dissected conversations we regularly have with those closest to us bringing us closer together or diluting relationships? We take for granted that our friends and families will respond immediately to a text or call and are quickly annoyed if they don’t.

The question still remains swirling around my mind – are we better off with the way we communicate now than we were 10 years ago?