Life, travel, reading…a bit of blarney — Hello, friends. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been here posting my “weekly” update. I doubt anyone noticed much, but I felt the need to write scratch insistently at the back of my brain while I took a much-needed break. This “column” has become, in my mind, an old-school…

Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome — Do you have this problem? Flylady calls it “Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome” or CHAOS. I am very publicly a Messy who talks a lot about my untidy home being a matter of priorities and offering ideas for easy housekeeping. We want our home to be fairly hygienic, but we…

Wandering around the Messy house — What I’ve been up to: Writing and speaking To Be the Best By Any Measure: Creating and Sustaining a High Performance Organization by Pat Maguire & Marie F. Jones (Torchlight, 2023) has gone to press, and should be available in an online bookstore near you this week. See mariefjones.com/to-be-the-best. My LinkedIn Newsletter Leadership by Any Measure gives an…

Messy Tips & Books to Read Tips: From Messy Desk Consulting Two new blog posts have gone up recently over at the Messy Desk Consulting website. If you are a Messy, be sure to check these out. I’m rather proud of the discovery that inspired this week’s photo. I procrastinated writing letters to book donors…

From Medium and beyond — Higher Ed is all aflutter about AI and what and how we will teach and evaluate learning when bots are a standard writing tool. It took years to encourage students to use grammar-checkers and citation-generators without calling it “cheating.” How do we teach the craft of writing? …

Really about reading this time! This column has not been what I intended when I started it in June. Weekly, I said. Reading, I said. And then my writing time was taken up with a book project. And my reading time was taken up with my day job. …

Something’s gotta give. — Sorry, friends. I set out to write a weekly column as a way to keep my hand in on Medium when life got crazy elsewhere. Then life got even crazier, and I let even this slide. Here’s where I am — about halfway through co-writing a book with a retired…

The Messy Briefcase to the rescue! — “Absentminded Professor,” my father called me when I was a child. Even then, I would forget things I needed to take to school with me. Now that I really am a professor, the absentmindedness hasn’t improved. I just have a million strategies that help me look like I’ve got my…

From a different porch — We spent a lovely week at North Topsail Beach last week. We enjoyed lazy days watching the waves, stuffing ourselves with fresh seafood, and catching up on reading. …