Dear J-
The last couple of mornings, I’ve managed to blunder into a spider’s web (to be precise, one of the long support lines) coming out of the door with the dogs. By the time I get back, ten or fifteen minutes on, the web has completely disappeared, taken down either in haste or panic. They say that spiders can sense threats by the nature of vibrations transmitted through the web — a leaf isn’t going to feel the same as a trapped insect, and no doubt a giant mammal blundering through a web brings on a clear message: get out, potential predator. Likewise, the web is usually down by dawn; nothing quite so easy for a bird to spot as a spider dead-center on a web by daylight.
I can’t help but think of the efficiency of the spider and contrast it to work, where, like Kevin Bacon’s character shouts, increasingly hoarsely at the end of Animal House, “all is well.” Surely the first few reports have come back with discouraging results; I bluntly stated on Friday that we’re headed for the cliff in an e-mail that eventually got forwarded to one of our site VPs. Yes, I know we’re not going to be able to go back. Question is, what did we hope for in forging forward anyway?
I’m not much of a multitasker; give me enough balls to juggle and I can guarantee you that I’ll start dropping them before long. It feels like when I’m not on the phone, I’m answering e-mails or personal supplicants, and there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything absolutely correctly. As correct as possible, sure, but even that becomes a moving target when you get to reinvent your work processes on a daily basis.
Mike
Tags: efficiency, multitasking, questions, sense, spider web, threat
Dear J- 
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