Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

Photo courtesy of Scottishgames.net

I’m not sure if it is physically possible, but I feel like I have been in adrenalin or some kind of a rush the last few weeks. My mind is just racing with ideas and I just have not had the need to sleep. Some of my colleagues wonder how I am able to function with 2-3 hours of sleep a night and work all night. It’s hard to explain, but while I do “work” until early hours in the morning, it’s not really work, it’s just fun. Maybe I have some sort of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) of wanting to learn as much as I can, but with social media, one link leads to another and before I know it, I’ve spent all night learning some idea I just stumbled upon on twitter.

Work/life balance is a concept that comes up from to time within student affairs professionals and to me, this balance, for me personally, has nothing to do with the amount of time I spend “working” and with my personal life. For me, it’s more psychological/mental. I can spend all night “working” or have 60+ hour work week but when I find what I’m “working” on really enjoyable, then it’s not really work.

I consider myself very lucky and blessed that I have a job that I truly enjoy and I have a team I enjoy working with. I love learning and being presented with challenges, both of which my job offers me. Everyday is a learning experience and while I certainly do experience some momentary frustrations when challenges are presented to me, the thrill of being able to move projects going, get folks working together certainly more than make up for the frustrations.

Who knows what future holds for me but I’m just having a fun time right now and I am not taking this for granted.

Two weekends ago, I went to the driving range and I was hitting the balls pretty well. Then I decided to get contact lenses the following Monday because I wanted to start playing sports again since my eyeglasses had became too cumbersome. Last Sunday, with my new contact lenses, I went to the driving range and all of a sudden, I could not hit any shots at all. My swing just didn’t feel right. As I would set up and look at the ground, something felt different. The clubs look different and it seems my depth perception has changed. It took me awhile to figure out what has changed until I realized it was my contact lenses that was the difference.

As I took a break from hitting balls, it dawned on me that this concept of changing my lenses at work led to changing my perspective. I don’t mean lenses as in getting new eye glasses or contact lenses. What I mean is more of a mental lens. Before my wife went for a vacation to Seattle the beginning of September, I was getting a little frustrated trying to figure out how to promote the use of social media and cloud. Because of security and policy concerns, there were (still are) hesitation on the use of these technologies as business tools. Taking the vacation provided me some time to clear my mind and put on a new set of mental lenses which allowed me to look at the situation a little differently. I came back with the perspective that while the adoption of these technologies might be slower than I would like, I understand that it is a process that requires examining constraints and having to accept that our organizational culture and personalities will ultimately dictate the pace of adoption. I also came to realize that I can continue exploring the benefits of social media and cloud on my personal time knowing full well that the knowledge I acquire now will be of value to my organization at the time we are ready to come to terms with the risks/rewards of these technologies.