What the title says. I have nothing to add.
All posts by dani
The Zone Music
The music used for deep focus, deep work is something that puts you in the zone. That specific zone that specific day. Sometimes, I can actually “assign” some type of music to focusing on specific type of task – that offers a short cut to the zone.
Priorities
Choosing work or running on a beautiful winter Sunday, used to be a problem. Now, I know only maximum functioning me, can work the hours, can shake off the stress. Work is something that invigorates. Running is something, that makes you, on the lowest levels, alive.
There is one “it logically follows” hidden in there.
China-ware
We all know practically everything but food is made in China. We’ve grown accustomed to the “Made in China” moniker, where only “Designed in California” can vouch for uncompromising attention to detail, longevity, quality.
But in real-life, things are radically different. I am sick and tired of having a brand-name, fully blown and EXPENSIVE hardware, with a bunch of problem, with a bunch of limitations.
To rephrase: premium buck must bring premium experience.
At least in the world of technology, this no longer holds. We now know, that premium buck, usually brings premium experience. If you are lucky. This brings me to my premise:
Buy Chinese. No brands. No warranty. On the cheap.
Why? You will have problems. Limitations. Lower build quality. But – you will have a system, that usually works. If it doesn’t, format it, throw it against the nearest wall.
To be fair, I am aware this is wrong – we should thing long-term, think about our impact on the environment, etc. But to be honest, big brands do the same. The only thing they do differently is they charge you more, they offer you some warranty and you usually end things a bit pissed off.
So, buy Chinese. They are the heart of world’s production, they know what they are doing (most of the time) and it is usually cheap.
Snow
Finally, some snow. Wheeeee!!!
Maybe not.
I will say this: Snow is good, because it comforts the land and makes it nice, clean, magical.
Snow is bad, because people always react to it as it was something extraordinary, something that requires extreme sense of emergency. All news outlets will report on the state of the land, how much snow is falling, how many idiotic drivers screwed up, and so on.
There.
Office 365
I am a subscriber to Office365. I shamelessly admit, the main goal was to buy offline standardised office toolset for the whole family. This was based on my previous experience with the Microsoft tools, which have, somewhere, along the way, started offering something called SkyDrive (weird) and then OneDrive (less weird). I was happily typing away, formatting the documents in the required formats, making required PowerPoint presentations (after exporting them from Google Drive :P), never exploring the actual “OneDrive”.
When I finally did get to check what OneDrive actually is, I was pleasantly surprised. It offers a complete cloud-based suite of office tools – starting with disk (1TB), all the web-based Office tools, Skype, Sway, etc. Of course, there are some issues (e.g., I cannot sync Google Calendar), but overall, it looks very good. I believe it is not equal to Google Drive (and G-Suite) in terms of sharing and collaboration on the same document, but that still has to be explored.
One killer feature to finish this biased and short entry: editing something in web version of Word, clicking on button “Edit in Word”, opens the actual full version of Word with that specific document. You edit it, save it et voila, it is shown in the web version of Word. Sweet!*
* Yes, the same functionality can be obtained with InSync and Google Drive. However, it is not as integrated as this one.
The Glory of The Last Minute Attempt
Client approached me and asked for consultation. I told him such activities take certain amount of time and that we are already late. He should decide if we’re about to go forward.
Time passed (as in Electric Monk sense of Time Passing)
Even closer to the deadline, the client confirmed the go-ahead and decided to put all available resources on the task. We then proceeded with the consult and the work to be done. I won’t reveal the actual outcome, but the job got done.
Reflecting on this particular experience (and many many others), I think this behaviour is hero-like. When it matters, we can do it, we can go all-hands-battle-stations, we can pull it off against all odds.
To be honest, setting and delivering against impossible deadlines is sometimes really exhilarating experience, but the keyword here is sometimes. I followed up with this particular client and saw this pattern many times. The whole company was drama and hero worshipping oriented.
When I calculated the average hours the people in the company worked, I saw they were slightly above average (some overtime). When I evaluated productivity, it was only average.
Conclusion: in times of “normal operation”, people were tired, not really engaged, tried to get some rest before the next “damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead” event.
Stupid.
On Google State of Affairs
Full disclosure: I am full blown Google fanboy. I have been using Google free account, Google Apps for Domains (grand fathered into G-Suite Free version) for the last, 10 years or so (not sure about the actual years, but feels like this is something I practically grew up with).
I have been accustomed to certain loss of privacy, exchanging it for productivity boosts when using Docs, Sheets, even Google Calendar (= I am the PRODUCT). I will continue using most of the Google services for sure. I have no issue in paying a little for them too, but not much – after all, I am taking care for all my backups, I need the offline functionality and finally, I need precision in editing (think Microsoft Office).
What are my gripes with Google? I checked – most of them cannot be solved even if you are a paying customer.
First and foremost, they are closing their services, not providing support for long-standing industry standards. The standards may be bad, but still. The glaring example is calendar – you cannot sync with Outlook natively anymore. This an old issue, but nevertheless – it was just killed. At this point, I don’t care who’s to blame – Microsoft or Google – but the fact remains, Google shutdown the service and is now offering it through an application, for paying customers.
On the other hand, if Google is going the enterprise way, I would like to ask them if they have ever seen any task management solutions and how they are connected with the calendar. Namely, tasks are currently still practically useless and visually unappealing. Syncing Google tasks with different end-points is still a pain.
Let’s consider internal integration (something that venerable Evolution, Outlook have) – how to make an email body of the calendar appointment. This was a no-brainer – but now, you can’t do it anymore. For many managers, this directly breaks the workflow.
Let’s finish this section with another classic – threading in Gmail, or lack of it. Many use-cases actually require following who said what. This is much faster than digging through the actual emails and decoding all those indents.
What about Google Drive? For me, this is a game changer, but not without faults. Glaring problem – no Google Drive client for Linux? This has been a problem for many years now – no response from Google. On the other hand, InSync works like a charm, on all operating systems.
When you start using the Drive, notice the sharing pains – the problem is any aspect of it, to be honest. Changing rights of a group of users, removing a user from a shared folder, managing the transfer of his files … all unsolved issues for many years now.
Let’s finish with some straight blunders. Google Talk, a brilliant product, working, ahead of its time. It became Google Hangouts, which sucks. Now, Hangouts is being weirdly dissolved into Allo, Duo, something. Compare that with transformations of Skype.
Oh, and Chrome is hog :P.
P.S.: No links. Just Google It 😉
Accounting, time and money
Accounting for time spent on different tasks (when there are many and hectic) and doing the actual accounting (instead of your accountant) are both tedious tasks. Did them both today and I can say only this: If you cannot do one, you are for sure bad at another.
This leads me to the tools like Toshl and Toggl. As always, it is paramount to actually have the tools mobile, with you. This way, you can create a habit (quite the same as with myFitnessPal). You will know your finances with this approach – always. And, much more importantly, you will know how you spent your time. After all, time is finite.
Sunday, snow and being semi-stationary
Made breakfast. First snow this winter. Little one mega excited, so we had to go to the hill nearby. Was walking on the lake after… 25 years. Two major accidents avoided. Watched female ski jumping. Watched a movie.