Celebrating catholic version of events for all my life (as far as I can remember), it was a different kind of experience going for today’s Christmas. All I can say, this is crazy.
Too much to eat, drink, celebrate and dance.
Home (tech) improvement
Every once in a while, there is a need to make some rearrangements of the home computers, network, monitors and all the connected stuff.
For me, the main guiding point is the congestion we get into as we use all these devices and devise new ways of leaving them “on their designated places”. So, when I see there is a spot on my sofa, that is always completely filled with cables, hardware, etc., I tend to get itchy and do some cleaning.
First things first. Evaluate if you need all this stuff. If not, sell/donate whatever you don’t need. DO NOT store them somewhere – this will simply result in the hardware being forgotten, not used until it is completely obsolete and then … thrown away. Needless to say, if you have so much hardware, you are usually quite capable with it – clean it up, make a sale/donation – someone will be able to use it.
Do you need something new? As an addition or replacement? If you do, go about it in a smart way. Whatever you will be using with your eyes, hands – only top quality, but be smart about it. Top quality does not equal the highest price. Usually, after certain threshold, hardware providers add just gimmicks or features, you don’t really need. So, for example, when I am buying a monitor, I need to have to matrix, good and useful resolution, but no sound jack, speakers, useless lights, etc. This principle holds for practically every piece of equipment. Think about it when you see your neighbour using an iPhone for only text and calls.
Now you have both lists. What goes, what comes. After that, it is just physical labour. Important: do not go against your habits. You live in your flat, you decide where the stuff should go, but be neat about it.
Good luck and know it will repeat in roughly six months :).
Guidance, translation, understanding, incompetence
Interesting problem cropped up today. While working, it became evident that part of the people I should get concrete results from by the end of the day, got confused. We exchanged several emails, with no real progress. I tried to be very specific, wrote emails with appropriate summaries, process and action oriented – no result.
We then decided to switch to voice and organised a conference call. At the beginning, there was again some confusion. Of course, we come from different organisations, from different backgrounds – we needed to establish the basic understanding, or at least, establish basic translations between words and known concepts.
After this initial phase, things went like a charm. We finally understood each other, finally decided on the initial phase, set goals and actions.
What I took from this experience:
- Be positive. It is never easy to switch contexts, gears and vocabularies.
- Repeat after people in your own words. This enables everyone to get to grip with different vocabularies.
- Never assume people aren’t smart, just because they don’t understand your jargon. It is you, that is living in your bubble and it is you, being incompetent and not able to express concepts in layman terms.
(over)notified
Overnotification is not a proper word, obviously. However, for me it means that one has reached the state where he simply cannot do any useful work anymore, due to notification task switching. In layman CS terms, person is thrashing.
Are there ways to combat this?
Sure, most of the modern operating systems already include a mode, called “quiet” or “night”. Notifications then become silent and simply do not intrude our focus.
Of course, notifications these days may come directly from browser itself, phone, smart watch, etc. All these little screens/pop-ups are crazy destroyers of focused thought – simply turn them off. A simple procedure I usually follow is to have only one screen active – mobile is offline, with screen turned away from me, smartwatch (proud-yet-angry Pebble owner) in quiet mode, quiet mode set on computer and with notifications usually turned off in my browser. I achieve greater levels of focus working like this, leading to much more efficient use of my time.
Sometimes people need to contact you and want to get immediate answer. I tell them that in cases of urgency, they should call. Or send IM. Otherwise send email. As you can see, the order of appearance denotes the level of urgency. This procedure has a simple benefit – it educates people on what urgency actually is. Namely, when people call you with seemingly BIG problem that you can solve in seconds, this is not urgent. It simply shows they didn’t do their “due diligence” when searching for solution. Punish such behaviour at all costs and always.
I am intentionally going for shorter chunks of my time when addressing notifications. I make time for them, when I am ready. This enables me to work focused in longer stings and make the difference
Treat your time with respect, defend it at all costs.
I guess this is a practical guide to Deep Work. Funnily enough, all the approaches defined above motivated me to go, buy and read Deep Work (as reviewed in my blog post) :).
The neverchanging story.
Motivation of personnel works until they start detecting the patterns of how they are being motivated to be at a stand-still. Obviously, this is no way to work with people, to lead them and to actually, make them grow, stay, bring revenue even change to the company.
A simple message to everyone with a boss: please, check the stories being served to you. If you can detect the same meaning behind different messages, you are being duped.
An example of such behavior: if there is always some drama, which requires change, full support of everyone at the company/team and after the drama, everything is back to “normal”, this means you are running in circles. Returning to normal after “drama”, without the actual implementation of the changes in the organisation, will lead to repeated drama occurrences. You are running in circles.
In short: if you are growing, but your organisation doesn’t, run.
Šiš’s run around Šmartinsko lake
It seems every year there is the above mentioned run around the local (artificial lake). It is rather odd that I didn’t know about it, but then again, I have been always rejecting this kind of “mass events”. In any case, I am happy to say, I participated in the 42nd iteration ;).
I must admit I was amazed that my wife and daughter decided to join – actually, when my father in law decided to join, that was even more over the top. After two spine operations, this was something that I wouldn’t expect of him.
After 2.5hrs, going up and down around the lake, we made it. Tired. But satisfied.
Next year again!
2017, new attempts at old things
The past year was kind to me. It was full of challenges, but the good version of them, the ones that make you grow and not “build your character”. I sincerely hope and wish 2017 is to be the same ;).
But let’s see.
In any case, I decided to write on daily basis. It may be just a pure observation, something short, whatever – a fixed point in time where you stop, think about your day and write something down.
Let the 2017 begin. A new year, a new adventure. Or, the continuation of the old one ;).
Deep Work (by Cal Newport)
First let’s set the context of the book in my personal life. I was drawn to this book as it coincides with my personal goals – to both limit and maximise time dedicated to work, achieving maximum result. My reasoning was always that if I can set limits to the “work”, I can be more successful as a father, husband, etc.
Reality however is a bit more distressing. Focusing on work, to restore healthy work-life balance, resulted in being successful at work, but the “life” part of the balance was not so structured or good even, which triggered an action to find a strategy to hack in that direction. Also, it was a problem to really set a limit on work.
Now you understand the context. I will try and capture the book contents in a way that it helps me. To “fully get it”, I can only recommend getting the full version (AMZN link).
Deep work is Valuable, Meaningful and Rare
In a hugely distracted world, being able to concentrate on a task for a long period of time; making it progress fast and with or above desired quality, is a good, rare and very valuable attribute.
Put simply, working on things in such a way, enables you to progress with tasks you want to progress, not just tasks other people throw at you at some given moment in time.
Work deeply
Willpower is limited. Organise life around this fact. Instead of cutting nice activities to work deeply, cut deep work with pleasurable activities.
Go for deliberate practice. Ritualise your work. Try to do deep work at certain times, certain places. Make Grand Gestures.
Memorable quote: Creative people organize their lives according to a repetitive, disciplined schedule. They think like artists, but work like accountants.
Execute, execute, execute. Like a pro. Use the 4 disciplines of execution – 4DX framework:
- Focus on the wildly important: Identify what is important to you. Usually, there is a small amount of wildly important goals to you. Quantify them.
- Act on the lead measures: Lag measures are the goals (long-term, e.g. publish 4 scientific papers per year). Lead measures are behaviors, driving towards the goals (lag measures), e.g., number of deep work hours per week. Identify and act on the lead measures.
- Keep a scoreboard: Scoreboard should be a physical scoreboard, somewhere visible in your workplace.
- Accountability – regular reviews: Do regular reviews of your work – evaluate progress.
Downtime – use it. It is important for your brain. Also enjoy it, but you have to quit your work according to a certain ritual. Usually, you need to check the list of tasks (to see if something is accidentally forgotten) AND you need to make a plan for the next day – without this plan, mental shutdown cannot be complete. This latter fact also helps when the task spans over several days – make a plan for how you will handle it in the following days. Your brain will then shutdown 🙂
Embrace boredom
Key takeaway is to simply NOT jump at the every opportunity to check email, check IM, check news – be bored, when standing in line. Simply put, if you distract yourself whenever possible, this will have consequences when trying to work deeply.
Schedule emails into blocks. Schedule use of internet into goals. If you need to use internet – schedule it either into blocks or use software to help you (e.g., website blocker). Always check email. Make a plan for the day (or re-plan the day). Then QUIT the email program and WORK.
Quit social
The memorable quote is “any benefit mind-set“. Namely, we should always check if we actually reap any benefits from using the social media. If the answer is not immediately obvious, we should go for the vital few approach. This approach simply expands on the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the output is usually due to the 20% of input. We thus need to identify which activities are the required or most beneficial to our desired output (the vital few). Very rarely, this activity includes participation in the social media. If we still want to be part of it, we are subscribing to the any benefit mind-set – thus setting the bar on use of our time very low – we may or may not get benefit, which is clearly wrong. We always want to benefit from using particular tool!
Important: PLAN YOUR FREE TIME. There is no “work-life-balance”. It’s only life – plan it, so you can enjoy it productively (kids, spouse, hobbies, whatever). Don’t use internet to entertain yourself – time will fly, your life will be meaninglessly spent.
Drain shallows
Assign shallow budget. For example – 30% of your work time can be for shallow work – e.g., those simple reports, questionnaires, etc. Be careful when giving in the shallow budget!
Use a measure of “college-grad-equivalent” for checking of what requires deep work = your attention. Try to avoid/delegate non-deep tasks to people who are qualified for them.
Write a FAQ for yourself and your organisation. Make it well-known. E.g., which projects/meetings you are likely to attend. What is your email response policy. This strategy will explain your mindset to everyone and lower their expectations.
Be ruthless with your email. It’s a time waster par excellence. Make people do the work when sending you emails (emails must be concrete, not open-ended), otherwise, don’t respond (or politely ask for more data). Also, be process-centric. Think how you can remove this item from your inbox and provide meaningful and complete response.
Finally, always have a clear deadline for the day, e.g. 3PM. ALWAYS. At that point, perform a shutdown for the day.
On git.
After several years in management, one forgets how to work with git (on the contrary, one never forgets how to work with vi – I guess it has to do with the pain of the experience).
The tools: If you are working on Windows/Mac, you can get SourceTree. If you want to go vanilla, opt for official client, which is cross-platform.
I went for the latter, but still installed SourceTree – it is very good for branch visualisations, which means it is good to have at hand. Also, the official client, at least on Windows, adds git-bash, meaning you have your old linux commands at hand, along with the vi.
Let’s start with the configuration. First, config your name and email. This helps with all sorts of questions later on.
git config –global user.name “Your Name”
git config –global user.email you@example.com
Once this is done, go into folder, where you want to have the git files. Start with:
git init
git add README.md
git commit -m “first commit”
git remote add origin <whatever it says on github>
git push -u origin master
This will get the master version from GitHub on to your local repository. OK, now you have the code locally. Pay attention to the two-step process when working with git. Fetch only gets it for you, but you cannot see it. Merge will actually merge it locally with your local data. The same for add/commit and push.
Let’s discuss some customs, when working with git.
It is customary, to branch master into your own branch – that’s where you work, experiment and finally add, commit and push changes to the branch on GitHub, where you create pull requests. These are then reviewed and merged.
Let’s proceed in customary fashion and create a branch:
git checkout -b newBranch
Now you pay attention – you will see the name newBranch or master along your commands – this is important as it shows on which branch you are on.
Let’s make a change, add a new file – name is “newFile”.
To push this file to GitHub, you have to go through add, commit and push phases. First one simply adds the new file to the local repository, commit makes the commit locally and push will push it to your branch on GitHub.
git add newFile
git commit -s
git push origin newBranch
Remember: When working locally, git log and git status are your friends – you check what is going on with your repository, what changes have been applied and similar.
Now you go to GitHub and create a pull request for your branch. You now either wait for the merge (in cases where you need to work on related code) or simply create a new branch and work on another part of code.
Usually, you simply switch to the master branch, fetch new stuff and merge it to your local master. After that, you can make a new branch.
git checkout master
git fetch origin master
git merge origin/mastergit checkout -b newNewBranch
In some cases, your pull request will require some changes in the code in your newBranch (the previous branch). In that case, you switch to the newBranch, do the changes and then go for the amend and forced push (see below).
git commit –amend
In some other cases, before merge happens, they will ask you to rebase your branch to the new master. This simply means that they want to see all your code changes to be checked against the most recent version of the master and to resolve any issues yourself. First, get the master.
git checkout master
git fetch origin master
git merge origin/master
You switch to the newBranch, issue rebase command, check if everything is OK and then force the push – remember, pull request is already open, this forced push simply updates it.
git checkout newBranch
git rebase master
git push –force origin newBranch
And that’s it. There is a number of tutorials out there to get you through the basics, but this one is simple and fast – under supervision of @gberginc (thanks!).
One good tutorial: http://learngitbranching.js.org/
Location, Location, Location
People are creatures of habit (mostly). This means that we have some ingrained rituals, which we adhere to when doing certain tasks. These may simply be the need to have a coffee before “serious work”, check Facebook, Slashdot, _insert_your_favorite_page_, to get into the zone, etc. I see these as time wasters. Why? Imagine one phone call or email taking you out of your “into the zone ritual”. Almost everyone will have to repeat the “get into the zone ritual”, having wasted more time. Why don’t we Just do it? Or, how to make it easier to get into the zone when doing multiple tasks per day?
Speaking personally, I noticed I need to physically switch machines or even rooms.
This means that I do the majority of the work on my Macbook Pro. That is, work that can be switched in between, mangled, interrupted, but logged and tracked. The MBP is hyper connected, has installed Chrome with the right profile, Toggle, all the Microsoft Office tools, etc. A proper swiss army knife, trusty and fitting to practically any situation.
Now, when I need to contemplate, make new plans, think deeply, write, read – I employ my ThinkPad Carbon X1. Minimum set-up, just some writing tools, different Chrome profile, no work email, basically no messaging programs (meaning no connectivity, no interruptions). The battery lasts forever, it has a GSM module and I can go out in the woods, research the internet and basically, work on things that need to be explored, set and ultimately, explained to everyone else (who usually enjoy poking holes in such plans or strategies, hence – watertight is a must).
And then comes play. Old Lenovo T420 (best keyboard ever), maxed out specs and SSD disks. No Office software. Minimum connectivity with Sublime/Atom and terminals. Battery life shot, but it is used as development machine, in the basement, connected to Deep Bass Sony headset. One can do *whatever*, from Prolog to Go on that machine.
Switching between these three and kitchen/living room table or basement office puts me in the zone immediately and makes sure I actually stand up during the day. Funny creatures humans.