Applying Google’s 20 Percent Time in Practice

Nancy Hupp — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:47:14 +0000

I took a sabbatical from writing blog posts for the last six weeks of 2010. Why? Well in November, my boss, Greg Luce, challenged staff to adopt Google’s Innovation Time Off concept for the remainder to the year. For Google engineers, that means they spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Many of Google’s new product ideas hatched during these periods.

Greg, being who he is and in the job he is in, added a twist, that is, that the 20% of the work time should concern technology projects of interest to each of us.

I will admit that my first reaction was an observation that Greg just gave birth to an oxymoron, at least as far as I was concerned. Don’t get me wrong, I use technology, but admit that I rarely find technology in and of itself interesting. There, I’ve gone public. (Actually I’ve confessed to similar feelings in a previous post.) To me, technology is a means to an end not an entertainment on its own.

Right behind the first reaction, was a second, somewhat snottier observation—that Greg and some of my other co-workers would feel no pain with this assignment, while the long-suffering me would struggle under the yoke of oppression. I explained to Greg that for him, the assignment was essentially “go forth and do more of what you love to do, excel at, and will do anyway” while for me, it was “go forth and spit and swear and struggle and at the end of the period, you’ll still be the tech-lite-est one on the team.”

At this point, you may be wondering how it is that I am still employed. I’d have to credit Greg’s thick-skinned-ness when it comes to my outbursts, which he refers to as necessary and productive “push back.” Also, to my credit, he knows that at the end of the day I tend to be an obedient soul, even enthusiastic, and so it was with the 20% project. I jumped in, kept jumping, swearing, asking questions, swearing, making mistakes, swearing, asking for help, swearing. And at the end of the six weeks, I was converted. Not to technology as my plaything, but to the concept that forcing oneself to travel new territory results in newfound knowledge, but more importantly, in newfound confidence.

I experimented with various presentation software like Prezi and Mac’s version of PowerPoint, learned about jpegs and pngs and such, and really dug into the admin side of WordPress. I also learned some intangible skills:

Anything can be “Googled.” I knew this before but I previously assumed that no one would ever pose the dopey tech questions I have. Alas, dopes abound and more astonishing, there exists techies who answer without making dopes feel dopier. I not only found answers, I found that I understood them, even posed a few to the masses on the Internet machine.
My questions are not always dopey. Even those who know how to do certain things, don’t necessarily know why. I tend to be a “Why” kind of gal, so I pushed others to learn a bit in order to answer my questions and not lose face.
It would too much of a fairy tale ending to say I learned to like the struggle with things I am not naturally adept at. I will say, however, I enjoyed the AHA! feeling that came after the struggle, when I “got it.” In between curses, there were lots of those moments.
I can make my kids proud. “You did that?”

I was unable to carve out 20% of my time to experiment, even taking a sabbatical from the blog and some other tasks. My workload couldn’t be shifted that much on such short notice. So, I worked more hours to enable the experimentation. It was worth it, both for me and for the MSBA. In my experimentation time, I came up with a couple of new ideas for practicelaw. For myself, I finished another 5k, this one virtual. (The first was a real one, in October. You may not be impressed but if you knew how little I like to sweat, how slowly I ran when I first started training, and how naturally clumsy I am, you’d be awed.)

Now that I’ve dragged you through my period of self-flagellation and revival, if you are still reading, you may wonder why I thought this an appropriate blog post. Think of it as a pass-it-forward post. Many attorneys have confessed to having more free time on their hands than they’d like and everyone has things they don’t know, dread doing. This post is my start as a motivational guru, with the hopes that if the encouragement is from a regular Joe, you might hear and embrace the idea of taking some time a couple of times a week to expand your horizons. Encourage your staff to do the same. Good luck. If you need some swear words to help you on the journey, contact me. I have a passel.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Descent Proceeding Forms Now Available

Gregory Luce — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:21:46 +0000

Soon after rolling out new probate forms on practicelaw last year, attorneys and paralegals frequently asked us “what about descent proceedings?” After months of work this past winter, and as part of our continued release of 42 new probate forms, we are pleased to announce the availability of the following new forms on practicelaw:

PBT-330 Petition for Determination of Descent (Testate)
PBT-331 Petition for Determination of Descent (Intestate)
PBT-332 Notice of and Order for Hearing on Petition for Descent of Property
PBT-333 Notice of and Order for Hearing on Petition for Descent of Property, Multiple Decedents
PBT-334 Decree of Descent (Testate)
PBT-335 Decree of Descent (Intestate)

We are now busy adding all of the new probate forms, including these descent proceeding forms, to mndocs, the MSBA’s document automation and assembly system. As always, feedback about any practicelaw forms is welcome.

© Gregory Luce for Practice Blawg, 2009. | Permalink | No comments yet | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: decree, descent, Intestate, Testate

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Experimenting with Google Moderator

Gregory Luce — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:58:52 +0000

We use Google Apps internally at practicelaw to manage some of our materials, particularly in sharing and editing forms and documents and in using Google Calendar for planning. We also have the ability to add up to 500 e-mail addresses, all for free. A new service of Google is Google Moderator, which allows users and participants to suggest questions and resources and vote on those that are submitted. I’ve opened up an experimental “series” (what Google calls a list of suggested questions) to determine how this new app can be used for any number of things, including suggesting and voting on forms or other resources. Give it a try here. When it asks for a question, simply think of a form or resource instead.

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Practice Blawg » Experimental

Applying Google’s 20 Percent Time in Practice

Descent Proceeding Forms Now Available

Experimenting with Google Moderator