I’m starting three projects for the same client, and I’m still in a pleasant, setting-things-up frame of mind. It might be the rainy weather we’ve had — my neighbor is gathering two of every kind of animal she can find — but I find myself thinking about difficulties and setbacks.

That’s not from a sense of doom and gloom (I don’t think). It’s more the case that I want to remember what I’ve learned when progress has been tough.

In the last few months, my biggest work-related problems had a lot to do with different perceptions of what the project was about, what the standards were, and how the client would use the end product. I tended to focus too much on my own slice of the project pie; I’m sorry now that I didn’t more actively follow up when my main client contacts were always too busy to review drafts or apparently uninterested in details.

So, with my new work starting off well, I want to keep those problems on my mental dashboard. It’ll be easier to deal with delayed or miscommunication later on if I work at building timeliness and clarity here at the start.

Nothing startling there. But to set the overall level of challenge in perspective, I have a relative whose spouse has been assigned to a year-long training project — with the Afghan national police in Kabul.

So I’m wondering — how was your day? Care to talk about some training/learning challenge you’ve recently had . Especially if it was one you had to struggle with, what have you learned?

Rear-view photo by magpie967 / stephen turner.