Re: Do you voluntarily develop long-term projects on the job?

[John Fleming <johntwrl -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 20:01:29 -0500 (CDT), while chained to a desk
in the scriptorium, huey -at- interaccess -dot- com ("Gary S. Callison")
wrote:

> $So far, I've gotten two "Wow, that looks really cool, wish I had time to
> $learn how to use it"s. Everybody is too busy chopping wood to stop and
> $sharpen axes.  

Isn't that the truth.

When I first started p;ugging away with Visual Basic for
Application for Excel, I wondered how I was going to find enough
time to get good at it.

I soldiered away--a few minutes here and a few minutes there--and
while I am still far from being an expert, I can do some really
cool stuff with it.

I've even got some pretty nifty macros in my tool lit now that do
things with charts that are impossible without the macros.  Not
only do the charts look sharper, but I can put them together
faster than some of my coworkers can put together more basic
charts.

Many years ago, in a company training session they had as watch a
Brian Tracy video.  In this video, one thing Brian Tracy was
saying was, "When things are good, double the training budget.
When things are bad, quadruple it."

Time put into learning skills that make it easier to do the job
better does pay off in the long run.

John Fleming
Technical Writer
Edmonton, Alberta