Mathemagenic

I always wanted to work part-time after having kids. However in my twenties that was just a professional target: to become good enough to be hired to do interesting things even if I don’t dedicate full working week to my work. I never knew how much having a day at home with Alexander would mean to me in practice.

Like now. Finishing my PhD is the worst ever experience of unbalancing work-life balance. As I wrote before, I don’t mind and even appreciate professional thinking and activities outside of work hours, and think of holidays and weekends as a time when I don’t have to work, but may very well do it if I feel like it.

Well, at the current stage my PhD is mainly what I have to do: I focus on finishing it, cutting off most of the fun (well, I do a few fun things like going to IR9 and Berlin6 recently, or occasionally reading a few blog posts or papers that have nothing to do with what I have to write). The worst thing is that PhD I-have-to-work spills off to evenings and weekends. Not that I work all my free time, I make sure I do things with family and friends, but it feels that I work all the time when I’m not busy with something necessary or social (I read a paper a while ago discussing a nice concept of pottering - this is exactly what I miss right now).

And then comes a day like yesterday. I went swimming with Alexander and admired how good he was (usually he goes with Robert, so I only get to hear the stories), sleept when he did, recovering from travel and writing induced sleep deprivation, was outside feeding animals, playing with sand, collecting acorns, getting warm in a shopping centre and then cycling to another park when it was already dark to wake up sleeping sheep to give them acorns and to look at Luna (one of a few Russian words he says) between the trees… We made pancakes together and played with the Lego train (again!), read books from my own childhood, called papa to say good night and looked at the moon once again before going to bed…

The whole day I kept feeling how precious and important it was to be like that, grounded in everyday details, feeling life as an experience, and not as the time ticking towards the moment the next chapter is due. When I wanted to work less to spend time with hypothetical kids I didn’t even come close realising how important that would be for staying sane.

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While talking with a colleague about minimalistic presentations (~ Presentation zen style) I noticed something I didn’t pay attention before: how dropping everything, including corporate templates, focuses attention on the presenter, not the organisation he represents.

And then I keep wondering if those corporate templates actually do anything - when I hear a good talk I remember the speaker, not the company. May be it’s one more illusion of corporate communication departments…

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I was about to write a post on procrastination that keeps me from writing, but now I have something better - a couple of comments my post on bloggers as public intellectuals to follow-up.

Jack Vinson [bold is mine]:

…what I take from this is the larger picture of how people work together to develop new and interesting ideas.  Academics, the focus of Lilia’s discussion, naturally talk to one another and hammer out ideas.  It’s hard enough to see where an idea truly originates even amongst a few people.

But when the conversation crosses tens or hundreds of people AND locations AND sources AND time, then the genesis of ideas is up in the clouds.  We know this - at least this seems like something I learned through my education.  But we still insist in our society on finding THE person who came up with some invention and pouring the credit upon her.

I guess those things happened before, but with current interconnectivity the process of “cloud idea generation” becomes wider and faster. It also becomes more visible - with so much of interactions being technology-mediated it’s now more easy to see how bits of ideas travel and change.

“Pouring the credit” is an interesting issue. As a person, I’m happy inventing ideas and even more happier to see them travel and being used: knowing that a bit of my thinking was useful for someone else is rewarding by itself. In this respect I don’t really need credits, but I definitely appreciate having “trackbacks” - some way of knowing where my ideas travel and what happened to them.

For me as a professional things are much more difficult: I still get hired and get paid as an individual, not as part of the cloud. The current rules that govern my work are pretty much based on the number and quality of the ideas that could be traced to me as a contributor. In this sense, credits are essential.

While I love doing research, one of the reasons I’m not planning to stay in the academic world is the system that ties formal professional growth (which is about the scale of challenges to deal with and available resources next to the salary scale) to channelling ideas into forms and spaces (e.g. A-list journals) that might work better for credits, but do not necessarily for helping ideas to travel wider and faster.

Interestingly enough, this is also the issue that makes me thinking of getting back to my HR(D) roots after I’m done with the PhD research. I believe that many new ways of working are not getting where they could be in organisations because they do not fit with the ways the work is evaluated and rewarded.

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We went again to Reboot, with all three of us. Although I really wanted to go, I have a bit mixed feelings after that. Because the people and the topics looked so exciting, but I couldn’t go to listen and to talk as much as I wanted to.

Going with a baby to a conference was a great experience (especially since it was the first one after my maternity leave). Going with 1,5 years old? Not sure. Although there was a kindergarten, Alexander is still too attached to us, so every morning we would stand in front of the schedule to decide who goes to which session and who is there for the babysitting rounds. As a result I missed a few sessions I would love to go, including the one that Robert did on Being free within organizational structures.

The good thing is that we’ve got smarter this year - staying in a hotel with many other conference participants (btw, loved it - Hotel Fox) provided an opportunity to socialise around breakfast and in the evening, after Alexander was asleep. We also took two days to drive there and back with a stopover at a German coast, turning it to a little holiday and making sure that Alexander had some fun after being so patient with lots of adults running around.

Anyway - was nice to catch up with old friends and get to know new people. I’ve got an inspiration topic-wise - those things are slowly sipping through, but would come out eventually in blog posts.

Themes to think about: architecture, structures that limit and create boundaries to play with, reinterpretation, encoding practices into structures, selfish altruism, nodal points… The “free” theme was also a perfect input for my on-going thinking about our need for structures and boundaries that comes together with the need to fight them.

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Those moments when Alexander is sick are probably most difficult in trying to combine motherhood and working on my PhD. The sleepless nights, when he wakes up every hour and needs something from me are not only tough by themselves, but they make writing the day after close to impossible, because my brain refuses to function.

Well, it seems that I might have discovered a solution: instead of struggling to write the day after the night like that, I might well write at night (taking breaks to help Alexander when he wakes up) and recover during the day when there are usually more people who can help.

Don’t know if it’s sustainable, but at least this night it works :)

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A few months ago I participated in a cultural probes study of communication at work. One of the things I had to do was writing about my ideal day at work. Found it in email today and thought of reposting - could be interesting to look back at it in 10 years :)

***

Ideally I would have a teleportation device. Something that would bring me closer to far away people I work with. Of course, we have all technology-mediated ways of working, all presence-awareness-ambient-intimacy tools, but nothing could beat having a lunch together. Even tea/coffee would do. Something “around work”, not actually working on things (this we can manage in technology-mediated ways), but bits and pieces of connecting at more personal level in between.

I would also have a little babel fish in my ear, so I would understand those speaking other languages, without becoming stressed myself or making them uncomfortable.

And I would have a “Mary Poppins” bag - I’d put my office stuff in there - books, papers, gadgets. Then I’d teleport to nice locations and work there, taking breaks to do little sightseeing or to taste local food while continuing work conversations. I’d also have a foldable “awareness” screen in the bag. It would show in some easy to decode visual way when people I work with or those in more extended professional network do something relevant to my own interests.

And my laptop will be sand-proof with perfectly visible things on the screen while outside and it would fold to almost nothing. And it would work from sun or wind or rain or movement of the train and would have internet connection even in a forest.

Or, if I have to be more practical… I don’t know… I’m working on changing things I don’t like and try to be patient with those I can’t change. I like having an office where I can put all my stuff around and work without too many interruptions. I like having opportunities to socialise if I feel like it. I could definitely do with better food, like a nice café downstairs with wifi, whiteboards and a projector. I’d book it for all my meetings and spend some other time with my laptop, piece of cake and a cappuccino.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/12/17.html#a1966; comments are here.

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Tuesday is my “mama’s day” – formally I work 4 days a week now to have one day to take care of Alexander. I thought that would be a good day to blog about things that are important, but not extremely work-related.

This Tuesday I’d like to contribute to the world breastfeeding week by sharing my own tips for combining breastfeeding and work.

Reading tips

• Read some books on breastfeeding. Ideally before you need them, but it also helps to have one in hands in case you need information later on.
• If you only can buy one book on breastfeeding and you are (planning to be) a working mom, get Milk memos (full review that got me into buying the book). It’s funny, sweet and practical (e.g. it had a section on bottle-strike that I couldn’t find in other breastfeeding books I read). Besides that the story is based on what has been written by breastfeeding mothers in a shared notebook at work, so I can even pretend that it fits my research readings as some strange kind of employee blogging :)
• Read breastfeeding blogs - pick up the one you like at one of breastfeeding carnivals.

Early days tip (from our kraamzorg). Buy a jar of jam (the cheapest one, without seeds and pieces of fruit), put a couple of spoons in a little plastic bag, freeze. When in need for a cold compress, take out of the freezer, put a thin cloth around it and apply. Because of sugars it doesn’t freeze solid, but turns into a cold gel (also handy for all other occasions).

Feeding in public tip. Buy (or make) a couple of breastfeeding outfits - they make a lot of difference by giving you an opportunity to feed discreetly, without any discomfort of being cold or trying to cover. The good ones seem to be expensive, but it pays back (I tried several, but there are two that I couldn’t do without - plain black Anna Cecilia T-shirt and Glamourmom tanktop; if buying in NL, check Prettymum).On those occasions when I took Alexander to work-related events I was especially happy with having that special “gear”: next to being plain practical, being able to feed him while listening to a presentation gave me a very special feeling that motherhood and work could be compatible after all.

Getting back to work tips

• Know your rights. Those things are different between countries (Netherlands is pretty good in this respect). Breastfeeding facilities (is there a private place to express milk? a fridge to keep it cold?), time you are allowed to take, etc. Knowing that not only helps in any conversations with your employer, but also gives some idea of what resources should be available in other organisations in case you have to be at an external meeting long enough to need them.
• Check at work if you can have extra flexible schedule for the first few weeks. I ended up working half days (to let Alexander get used to daycare gradually), going to the daycare to feed him while the whole bottle business didn’t work and working at home on the days Robert was babysitting, so I could just go downstairs to feed Alexander and then get back to work. Being able to do all that made the transition to work much easier for everyone.

Bottle strike tip [this is when your baby refuses to drink your milk from a bottle]. I guess there are no silver bullets here. What helped in our case? Ladies in our daycare. Not only they had a lot of experience of bottle-feeding babies in different circumstances, but they also tried feeding Alexander from different types of bottles, so eventually they found the one he liked (this is pretty difficult to do at home unless you want to spend a lot of money).

Expressing and storing milk tips

• Invest in a breastpump (get one indicated for “daily use”). I’ve got two used ones from friends and I could feel the difference. I use the better one (old version of Medela pump in style) regularly at work and (since I have the luxury of having two) simpler Medela Mini Electric plus very occasionally at home.
• Get some spare parts. When at work I don’t want to lose too much time by washing and cleaning pumping gear, so I’ve got packages of clean shields for every pumping round and wash everything at once at home.
• If your baby doesn’t drink as much as you express and you have to freeze the leftovers, think of using breastmilk storage bags (e.g. those by Medela or Lansinoh) for that to avoid the risk of having all your bottles in the freezer. They also take less space than bottles if you have to travel and make a perfect back-up stock in the office in a case you forget some bottles (it actually happened to me).
• Ziplock bags are great for storing sterilised parts (and lots of other things too :)
• And, finally, if you need a motivator to make expressing milk easier you might go a bit geeky by starting a slide-slow of your baby’s photos on whatever digital device is around (I run slide-show of Alexander’s photos at Flickr on my desktop :)

Some resources that might help are at del.icio.us/mathemagenic/breastfeeding.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/08/07.html#a1930; comments are here.

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In a brief moment when I’m online during my holiday I find an email invitation to an event in the US where I’d love to be. Since it’s out of question that he can join me this time, Robert decribes my choices clearly: “you either go with Alexander or with your breastpump”. Or, I add in my head, I don’t go.

After events I did with Alexander I’m pretty sure I don’t want to drag him along - intercontinental flight, jetlag and no Robert around will make any participation difficult. Travelling with a breastpump is annoying, but doable, but it’s not only milk that I’ll be taking away - Alexander is still too little and needs mama around.

So, it’s the third one - I don’t go…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/07/24.html#a1924; comments are here.

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We are talking about “Reboot and other unconferences” at work, so I have been collecting all kinds of relevant links (more at del.icio.us/mathemagenic/unconferences):

An Open-Source Conference: BarCamp by Anders Ramsay - for an impressionistic overview. Also, on “why?”:

More than just an alternative model for facilitating a rich exchange of ideas, BarCamp seems to represent a generational break from conventional professional gatherings. They usually take a year or so to plan, cost tens of thousands of dollars to execute, often have some corporate backing, and are mostly planned over email. In contrast, the first BarCamp was put together in about six days, mostly via instant messaging, SMS, and ad-hoc wikis, for a cost of about $1,500, which is less than the price of a single ticket to some of the more high-end tech conferences. Stripped away are the constructs adopted by major conferences from academia, such as keynotes, posters, formal calls for papers, and peer reviews. Gone too is the presenter/attendee divide, where those not giving talks too often are passive spectators, except maybe for the occasional end-of-talk Q&A.

and

The informal feel of the event also makes people less concerned about presenting fully developed ideas, instead, increasing the comfort-level of throwing out off-the-wall ideas just to see what the response is. And by the same virtue, an audience who, in a more formal setting, might politely listen quietly to a not-so-great presentation, is more comfortable speaking up, maybe even turning the presentation into a workshop to see how a bad idea can be turned into a good one.

Conference vs. Unconference by David Gammel - summarising the alternatives

How-to:

• high-level organisation
  • Ten Steps to Organizing a Barcamp by Crystal Williams
  • How to DIY Unconference by Kaliya Hamlin
• facilitation and specific tips
  • Participatory Conferences by David Gurteen - on specific facilitation techniques
  • Improving unconferences by Scott Berkun - on adding a bit of structure to the program in a way that benefits all
  • How to run a great unconference session by Scott Berkun - for the participants who propose a session

There is definitely more :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/07/03.html#a1921; comments are here.

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One of the highlights of Reboot for me was talking to Rob Paterson. Behind his slides on early human development (on that in a blog post) I saw traces of things that occupy my mind for a while now.

Funny enough, during our conversation Rob recommended the book of Jean Liedloff The continuum concept, which came as a reference from someone from totally different context the day before we left Reboot.

The book is based on insights about human nature that were a result of spending “two and a half years deep in the South American jungle with Stone Age Indians”. I’m still waiting for my copy of it to arrive (=I haven’t read the book), so this is how the concept is introduced online:

According to Jean Liedloff, the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution. For an infant, these include such experiences as…

• constant physical contact with his mother (or another familiar caregiver as needed) from birth;
• sleeping in his parents’ bed, in constant physical contact, until he leaves of his own volition (often about two years);
• breastfeeding “on cue” — nursing in response to his own body’s signals;
• being constantly carried in arms or otherwise in contact with someone, usually his mother, and allowed to observe (or nurse, or sleep) while the person carrying him goes about his or her business — until the infant begins creeping, then crawling on his own impulse, usually at six to eight months;
• having caregivers immediately respond to his signals (squirming, crying, etc.), without judgment, displeasure, or invalidation of his needs, yet showing no undue concern nor making him the constant center of attention;
• sensing (and fulfilling) his elders’ expectations that he is innately social and cooperative and has strong self-preservation instincts, and that he is welcome and worthy.

The bold is mine. Another quote, from Who’s in Control? The Unhappy Consequences of Being Child-Centered explains it a bit better:

[...]the Yequana [the indians Liedloff lived with] are not child-centered. They may occasionally nuzzle their babies affectionately, play peek-a-boo, or sing to them, yet the great majority of the caretaker’s time is spent paying attention to something else…not the baby! Children taking care of babies also regard baby care as a non-activity and, although they carry them everywhere, rarely give them direct attention. Thus, Yequana babies find themselves in the midst of activities they will later join as they proceed through the stages of creeping, crawling, walking, and talking. The panoramic view of their future life’s experiences, behavior, pace, and language provides a rich basis for their developing participation.

Now to my point. I believe in wisdom of traditional societies, especially when it concerns birth and babies. I also read modern research (e.g. recently finished fascinating What’s Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life), that confirms that early years are extremely important and explains why and how in a language of science. What I miss is a connection between those two worlds.

Liedloff’s observations are coming from the context that doesn’t fit the way I live. There is no extended family around to share the load of caregivers (once in a while you have to do things incompatible with holding a baby in your arms). I tried to carry Alexander while “going about my business”, but he gets tired easily from the noise of networking at events and gets bored while I sit in front of the computer and type. He is interested to look at moving things on a screen, but I’d rather show him the wind moving leaves in our garden (the only problem that ‘my business’ involves lots of typing in front of a screen).

My husband summarised the issue pretty well when I bought Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene: he looked at the cover depicting a child playing naked in a grass and said that we could go diaper free if we would live in a field…

I don’t want to sound too critical here. The books mentioned are well worth reading, but it takes a bit of imagination and lots of experiments to figure out how traditional wisdom could be applied in a modern life.

Blurring work-life boundaries mean that being with your child while going about your business could be an option. Now the only “small” thing left is figuring out how exactly.

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Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/08.html#a1905; comments are here.

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