In my engineering job, I've been partnered with a young lady who has a different set of experiences and capabilities. She has coding capability and has helped advance our day to day work with various automation projects. Tasks that I used to spend hours on can sometimes literally be done in a few clicks and a few minutes. The reality is with the changes I can now do in my 20 hour part time work week what used to take me 40 hours or more. Between the two of us, highest and best use of each of our times is different. For me, it's doing the "grunt" work of writing the plans and reports, for her, it's the strategic work that enables improvements and increased efficiency.
There's one resource I can't make more of: Time.
So whether I'm in the Rain or in my "regular" life, the ongoing question is: what's the best use of my time for that moment?
In the Rain, my best use of time has changed significantly over the years.
Early on, there was a LOT of time being spent in the Rain. Learning the site culture, that Pay It Forward was a huge thing here. Building relationships, leaving dozens of comments each day. Learning to blog, 10, 12, 14 posts a week wasn't unusual while I figured out what would work and what didn't. (and what doesn't work for me MIGHT work for you!).
Overall, that was time well invested.
I've got a coast to coast network of referral agents.
I learned who my peeps were :)
I learned SEO, niche blogging, tech tools and a lot more.
Flash forward and my use of the Rain has changed.
My focus overall and here in the Rain is different.
It's still touching base with other Rainers, but now, it may be via text, email, phone or Facebook messages rather than in a post's comment thread.
Most of my blog work transitioned to our Wordpress site and IDX pages.
I'm still here to write once a week.
I'm still here to pick up tips and keep up with what is happening in each other's lives.
But at this point in ActiveRain's life, I'm not looking for management to send us a Kerrie or Bob to train us, but we don't have to have that. There's an immense amount of knowledge in the Rain, and as long as the culture is to continue to share that knowledge, we can each in our own way find our individual highest and best use of our time in the Rain.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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