Planning & Evaluation, according to my dog

A little bit behind with these blog posts... and actually life in general. It's been a rather hectic few weeks with work, internship, a puppy and life in general. Breakdown of what's been happening since my last blog post (and if you're interested, you can read it here). 

Life:

My mate, Rhys Grant came back from his Olympic debut and being the underdog 'old man river' from WA, it's a real big deal - you can read all about it here. The Paralympics started last Thursday and my club mates Brock Ingram and Davinia Lefroy represented Australia in the Mixed LTA Coxed Four - read about their journey here. In addition to the #Rio2016 Olympic shenanigans, we had the State Championships last weekend in which I competed in - no golden biscuit this season. Whoops. 

Internship:

Internship with the guys at the Coogee Beach Surf Life Saving Club is going pretty well and swell. Had a very productive and efficient meeting with the two Directors of the surf life saving club, now I'm onto the final report which will include all of my recommendations. I have to say with everything that has been happening in life, it is a struggle to squeeze in this aspect of my life. Thus, I have requested for my internship days to be extended for a week. Not the most ideal scenario, as I was planning to 'just get the hours done and over with', but than again, I want to actually get something out of this work experience and not just another module that I have to complete for my degree. 

On Monday afternoon, after killing the d floor with some mates celebrating the pennant season, I finally had the chance to take time off from work and internship (read: life). Took my seven months old labradoodle puppy, Scramble (you can find her on Insta: @scrambledoodle) for a brisk long walk down to the local park. And this is when I had one of those eureka moments. 

So long story not so-short: Scramble had to choose between the stick and her ball. She was trying to fit both in her little tiny puppy mouth. Tried and tried and tried. But failed miserably. After 10000 failed attempts, the doodle than took a step back and laid down. I kid you not, it looks like she was re-evaluating the situation and was trying figure out ways on how to put both the stick and ball in her mouth at the same time. After about 5 Mississippi, she grabbed the stick horizontally AND carefully scooped the ball in her mouth. Bangarang. 

This seven month old toilet paper chewer, legitimately planned and evaluated her past actions. She took a step back and revised her failed attempts, in order to re-map her strategies to achieve her ultimate goal. 

Back to the main point: We revise and revise all of the possible techniques there are in this world when it comes to planning and evaluation - between Kotter's Eight Steps and Porter's Five Forces, it can get a little bit repetitive and 'technical'. But is it really that complicated? 

Whilst writing this blog post, I have my Coogee Beach Surf Life Saving Club recommendation report up on my other screen. Got a little bit stuck finishing it. So implementing the scrambledoodle technique, I decided to take a step back and re-evaluate the current situation. I maybe taking more than 5 Mississippi to re-evaluate, but it is working! The report writing road blocks are slowly opening up. 

Who would've thought that the scrambler can teach this human a thing or two? I learnt a lot from my dog. 

The scrambler.