Hi!

March saw me do a fun trip across Europe – to Aix-en-Provence in France, then to Minsk in Belarus, and then to Budapest in Hungary, before I headed back home to Houston.

From Aix-en-Provence (which was lovely, thank you) we did a day trip to Avignon – the old seat of the papal power and the home of the famous pont d’Avignon. The bridge’s official name is Pont Saint-Bénezet. (Apparently it did not make for a good rhyme.)

The best part (apart from being in Avignon on a gorgeous, warm, sunny Sunday): a photo, video and audio installation dedicated to the popular song in the bridge’s honor. Sur le pont d’Avignon has been sung in languages ranging from German to Polish and to tunes from barocco to swing!

After coming back to US and suffering from a serious Euro- and franconostalgia, I dug deep into YouTube. Here are the lyrics to the addictive tune:

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse, l’on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond
Les beaux messieurs font comm’ ça
Et puis encore comm’ ça

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse, l’on y danse
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond
Les bell’ dames font comm’ ça
Et puis encore comm’ ça

Jean Sablon – an adorable version from the 30s (40s?) with a very young and upbeat feel.

Mireille Mathieu – featuring a collage of historical and contemporary photos and seriously charming German lyrics: Auf der Brücke ist musique…

And the winner, Jean Sablon’s hot swing version which is seriously retro and has awesome footage of pre-war Paris. Unfortunately, this awesome video is non-embeddable, so you just need to take my word for it and click here for 3 minutes of bliss. Seriously, it’s gorgeous.

Now, having had this dose of awesomeness, I am going to do my one-minute commute: boot up my work laptop and plug into the matrix. Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday!

Dear translators of the world, you might seriously want to consider setting you out-of-office email for the hours when you are not working.

About a month ago, at 4.50pm on a Friday, I landed an urgent translation project that had to be turned around by Monday morning. It was just one sentence, but it had to be translated into 38 languages. And the world was just going into the Easter weekend, meaning that most of translators would be based in countries where Monday (and in some cases, Tuesday as well) would be a day off.

In addition to the challenge of starting a project on a Friday evening…

Now, I could search my database of translators, send out a bunch of emails and hope for the best – that on Monday, all 38 translators would have diligently responded and I just needed to compile the translations into one file and deliver them. (I could not email multiple translators per language, because then I might have ended up paying several times for the same translation.)

However, I had to assume that many translators would not necessarily check their email and respond during the weekend. And not hearing back during the weekend could mean that either they were going to checking their emails on Mondays, or maybe not.

There were some translators I felt really, really grateful for.

The people who responded by the time I checked my email on Saturday morning and either accepted the job or actually delivered the translations.

My second favorite group of translators?

The people who set up their email autoresponders.

This meant that I knew, within seconds, that I could strike them off my list and keep looking for resources. And I was really grateful to them for setting up very clear expectations about their availability. And I actually remembered their names, and because of their professionalism in communications, I would want to work with them again (when it’s not over the Easter weekend!)

Delivering accurate translation on time = very valuable.

Communication and setting up right expectations = priceless.

Do you use your out-of-office email often? What are your tips for effective email communication?

When did it start?

Probably already in kindergarten. I definitely recall an obsession with maximizing the number of red stars (hello, I was born in USSR) on my first grade “performance scorecard”.

It only escalated from there. The Skanavi’s Mathematics Problems Collection for University Applicants, a Soviet classic that has remained with me for the past 15 years, surviving 6 international moves, still bears the pencil “check” marks that I placed there as I conquered its problems one by one.

I am possibly the one person alive who actually read the Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide (easily the driest book in the history of writing) cover-to-cover and took detailed notes.

I am the kind of person who seeks out mixed up formulas, financial knots, impossibly complicated projects – and then throws herself into the often excruciatingly painful process of untangling them, transforming them into the state of shiny perfection.

And as much as I sometimes whine and complain about the process, I actually like it. And the quest for perfection is definitely an important part of my UVP.

The line between radical responsibility and pure insanity…

…is very thin and blurred.

Oh, how much I want to:

• Check every single point off my list by 5pm (30 to-dos in my Tasks folder now, some of them overdue).
• Have every email answered quickly and thoroughly (up to 20 follow-up flags in Outlook, most of them due by the end of the week).
• Get all the photos sorted out and uploaded from last year’s Africa trip (I think we are about 18 albums behind).
• Get on top of my personal projects list in My Life Organized (300+ items, thinking about declaring a to-do list bankruptcy and starting over).
• Catch up with everyone I work with now, worked before, and all the friends I have not spoken to in a while (so many people to learn from; so many people to coach; so many loved ones thousands of miles away).
• Have all my accounts and processes documented in great detail, so that if I flip my convertible speeding on I-10, someone can pick up my work where I left off (good luck to that innocent soul).

And it would be nice to have this post double- and tripled-edited, with appropriate links inserted (I am sure hundreds of people would immediately click through to Amazon and buy PMBOK), and decorated with pretty pictures.

Oh well.

I will never be fully, absolutely, 100% done. My lists will keep getting longer. And I will keep breathing and reminding myself that it’s never about done – it’s about doing.

Join the club?

It’s free admission. To-do list list liberation movement! Let’s not get it done – let’s just do something and see what happens.

Or, maybe simply take a break – breaks almost never make it on our to-do lists.

What say you? To-do lists – are they your allies or bullies?