I honestly don’t know what day it is

Deadlines for tomorrow’s comms mean I’m living in the future.

may-2009Working within Internal Communications, I have deadlines every day for tomorrow’s key comms. Even though our company won’t fall over if I don’t publish a new ‘news’ story on our intranet, I pride myself in keeping our front page fresh through the working week.

I maintain a publishing schedule, a pipeline of urgent and upcoming stories, and so I’m constantly living in the future, mentally speaking.

I wonder if journalists feel like this. Their mother says, “gosh, look what happened with the MP expense scandal today” and the journalist offspring thinks “heck, I wrote that yesterday Mum”.

I talk to content authors about the date their article is scheduled for, but somehow the dates don’t seem ‘real’ to me until we’re actually into the relevant week. There’s so much going on each week, I don’t let myself think about next month for fear that I’ll get things confused. This means I have to have a solid schedule, and it’s crucial to me that I can trust my diary and schedule.

The file I keep my schedule in is open all day long, and I refer to it frequently through the day, and update it a couple of times due to the shifting priorities of our company.

Like, today is Thursday; I know that only because I’ve just had an important Friday deadline brought forward to today – so if tomorrow was Friday, today must be Thursday! But I didn’t wake knowing it was Thursday, I just got up in zombie mode and had my body get me on to the train and bus that make up my gods awful commute.

It doesn’t feel like a Thursday to me, I’m already worried about Monday’s main story (from an Exec Board member of course) and the manager’s cascade slides I’ve got to put together for tomorrow and Monday.

Time matters, comms must be timely, but I myself don’t care what ‘today’ is – today’s deadline is tomorrow’s news story, so for me, the weekend is the only ‘now’ I have.

[Wedge]

If you would like to share or tweet this article, the Short URL is: http://kilobox.net/1126

Photo credit: rh303 a.k.a. genitopower

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Previous Article

Where does all the time go?

Next Article

Hello?!

Related Posts

Are you chasing PageRank and SEO?

Optimising your web pages or blogs for the Search Engines shouldn't cost you the big bucks, and you don't need help from the self-proclaimed experts. Here are five simple ways you can improve your findability and get more visitors today.
Read more

Comms clangers – dropping the ball

I don't always get it right, and it's not always "someone else's fault". Miscommunication is a serious matter, and yet mistakes will happen.