When you run a company that develops software, it makes little to no sense to lump your developers with sub-standard machines and tiny monitors. Managers who wouldn’t bat an eyelid at buying a new Visual Studio (Thank God I’m a Java/Groovy developer) license, gasp in horror and say there’s no budget when you ask for a faster machine or a bigger/dual monitor setup. Those minutes you save every day doing tasks add up to hours over a week, which add up to days over a month, which add up to maybe even a whole month over a year (in your dreams!). Personally, I’d just use that extra time to browse YouTube.
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I hate 99% of the meetings I’m invited too simply because nearly all of them are a waste of my time or someone else’s. The number of times I’ve sat in meetings and ended up not saying anything for the whole thing or watched on as 90% of the poor attendants end up not saying anything either, no doubt we would all have been more productive gouging our eyes out with hot pokers.
A lot of my hatred for meetings comes from the fact I think nearly all of them could be eliminated just by sending an email outlining the problem and asking for a solution. But my biggest gripe is what I call the “Pull one out the hat” meetings where a problem is presented to you and you’re expected to provide a course-of-action/solution on the spot. Then the moment you say “I don’t know” or “I’ll have to think about it” you’re still pushed for at least an idea. And God forbid you reply that you don’t know how long a problem will take to solve when you don’t even have a solution yet. “But can’t you give us a rough estimate?” they’ll ask, “Yeah, sometime this year.” is the safest reply. If you give something that they can use as an estimate just wait until you’re held to it even if you include the heavenly “maybe” somewhere in there! “Maybe I can do it in two weeks but I will have to go away and think about it and provide you with a more solid timeframe.”, two weeks later, “But you said it would take you two weeks!”, like fuck I did!
Until people realise development is not an exact science and that we as developers don’t hold every single bit of knowledge on every piece of code and every column of data in our numerous databases in our head then we’ll be forever plagued by meaningless, time wasting, excruciatingly painful meetings.
Don’t get me wrong, there are such a thing as good meetings. For instance, Ian does a really good job when it comes to the Faculty of Trading meetings. I get a well prepared agenda a day or two before the meeting with an open question as to whether everything will be covered or if I need anything added or removed and afterwards a well written summary and action points for each attendant. But heck, not everyone can be a winner like him!
I’ll leave you with an interesting article: Study shows meetings make us dumber
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For Christmas I got a copy of Gordon Ramsay’s Humble Pie from Emma. I’m a massive Gordon Ramsay fan so I was really looking forward to finding out more about the man himself. It’s a really short book. Even though it’s some 270 pages the print is huge and only takes up about 2/3rds of each pages printable size.
It’s always great reading about someone who came from such a horrible background and who went on to do really well for them self. A lot of people think Gordon Ramsay is just a loud mouth arrogant prick and in some respects he is, but he demands the best from the people who work for him and forcing them to work to his high standards is what has led to his food and restaurants being such a huge success. He has also rewarded the ones who stuck by and put up with him though as all the head chefs in his restaurants now are people who have worked under him for a long time.
I especially love watching his Kitchen Nightmares show. Nearly all the problems are painfully obvious, but more often then not the owners are just to stubborn to see it. Ramsay does his best to drill the message home sometimes with varying degrees of success. He rightfully says a lot of the time you need balls and it’s true. You need balls to face up to your problems, which 99% of the time, the owners don’t want to do. So they end up running away from their problems and trying to fix them buy putting their energy into the wrong solution, like putting up prices or inflating their menus.
As the saying goes “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!”
Read More- Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”
- Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.
- When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There’s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”
- With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”
- Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, “As you think, so shall you be.”
- Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don’t look too far into the future and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.
- Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
- Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
- Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched improves.
- Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.
- Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.
- Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.
- Never expect life to be fair. Life isn’t fair. You make your own breaks. You’ll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).
- Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the cofounder of Sony, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: “A wise man keeps his own counsel.”
- Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.
- There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you’re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: “We’re not here for a long time; we’re here for a good time.”
Taken from: Niche Geek
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My Indexcards from Hawk arrived today. I’m really happy that I finally got my hands on these. I’ve got a card dock, 500 5″x3″ squared indexcards, 25 dividers, five field notebooks and a pen and pencil. I must have emailed the Correct company five times at least trying to get information on shipping for these to the UK but I never got a reply. The cards are far superior to the plain ones I’ve been using up until now. It’s amazing that you can’t get squared cards here in the UK, or anywhere outside of Japan it would seem.
Hawk’s system is a really well thought out. It is based around four separate types of card: Record, Discovery, GTD (Getting things done), and Reference. I’m still trying to get to grips with keeping a handle on things I need to do. I still find myself falling into the habit or remembering something I need to do, reminding myself to make a note of it and then forgetting to. It’s obviously important to note stuff down the moment you think of it. I will write some more once I’ve used the system more.
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I genuinely hope I’m right when I say that .NET is shit, because if I’m wrong then we’re really in the shit here at work. I was moved over from Java/Ruby to .NET a month ago to help deliver a chronically late project and I’ve been contemplating resigning ever since. The code is just a disaster and I can’t tell if .NET is at fault or the existing code is just an extremely poor implementation of it. I’m more inclined to believe the implementation is at fault.
If I was in charge I’d just scrap it and move to a more agile language like Ruby, PHP or even Perl. It’s a hard decision to make and a brave one at that, but I believe it’s the right decision. Not to mention the financial savings you would make. No more Windows, SQL Server, Visual Studio license fees.
The high cost of .NET technology also makes me believe it’s impossible to find good talent. Anyone can get started in Ruby, PHP or Perl with no cost to them at all, which means more people can just pick it up and start gaining valuable experience. If I want to do some .NET at home at a bare minimum I need Visual Studio, IIS and SQL Server. I do know there are free “express” versions available, but then that defeats the purpose of gaining experience using the tools you would use in the work place. With open source tools, the knowledge I learn at home I can apply directly at work. If I use MySQL at home, I know that its exactly the same as MySQL at work, the same goes for Apache and not to mention in Ruby, PHP or Perl, I’m not tied to a specific IDE. Jesus, good luck opening a project you started in Visual Studio 2003 in Visual Studio 2005 and then trying to work on it at home in Visual Studio Express.
We’re struggling here at work to deliver the initial version of our long awaited flagship product. It’s been a good 6+ months in development and we’re aiming to have a crippled version delivered by the end of May. Looking at what we’re trying to achieve with the application, I’m pretty much 110% sure that in any of the scripted languages and with an extra pair of hands, the project could be written and delivered in under three months.
To be great you have to make painful decisions. It’s these decisions that make the deference between being great and being mediocre.
Read MoreGreat posting over on Steve Pavlina’s blog about having to be committed to your cause if you want to succeed.
In many fields you only see a 1% success ratio because the other 99% are merely taking up space. They’re just dabblers, not serious contenders. You’ll often see this 1% figure in fields with a low barrier to entry such as blogging, acting, or music. You’ll find a small percentage of people who are really committed to mastery, but the rest have virtually no hope of notable success.
Pulling away from the pack in any field is largely a matter of choice. That choice is a commitment to mastery. But very few will make this choice because it requires hard work, resolve, patience, self-discipline, and a long time perspective. A would-be actor who gives up within the first year clearly hasn’t made this choice. Nor has a blogger who quits after six months. If you want to succeed in a new field where you lack experience, you should be thinking of at least a 3-5 year commitment. If that scares you away, then save yourself the time you would have spent dabbling, and don’t bother.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreRecently our facultyoftrading.com domain has been down which is obviously something you don’t want to happen when you’re trying to run an on-line business. NetBenefit managed to completely balls up the process of transferring our domain over to 123reg. Initially all we wanted to do was change the WHO-IS information on the domain but NetBenefit wanted £50 just for the privilege and considering this might not be the only change we need to make in the near future it made no sense to keep our domain under their control, especially when 123reg don’t charge anything to do the same thing.
We placed our request with NetBenefit to transfer the domain, but rather then keeping our domain’s DNS active until after the switch they simply turned off our domain. The joyous thing was they turned it off on a Friday afternoon and by the time we realised the site was down their technical support was already closed for the weekend. The big pain though was as the DNS was down we couldn’t receive any emails and because our domain contact was set to an email address on the domain we couldn’t receive the authorisation email from 123reg! I just don’t see how you can run an ISP and not have 24/7 technical support or at least have some form of support system where you can track your support queries progress. I can understand a site’s support not being constantly available, but for a company that provides the underlying infrastructure to not be is just ridiculous.
To cut a long story short, it’s two weeks later and facultyoftrading.com is hosted on 123reg and fully operational again.
Read MoreYou may have seen my previous posting about my attempt at trying to be more organised and pro-active in my day-to-day tasks. All of that stemmed from my reading of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” which is subtitled as “How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity”.
It’s a bit of a no brainer but the tools and techniques presented do actually work. I won’t give it away but one of the ideas is that a lot of the stress associated with having things to do comes from not having a firm grasp on actually knowing what needs to be done. It also extols the ideas of breaking tasks down into their fundimental steps and also running new tasks through a specific workflow to decide how they should be delt with. As long as you know what you’re not doing then thats a step towards not stressing about everything.
Already I’m finding it’s making a difference, especially the rule of “If it takes less then 2 minutes to do, do it now”. Rather then having piles and piles of emails stack up, I’m sorting them a lot better and dealing with them a lot quicker. It does take discipline though. The author says it himself. The moment you let the system slip then you’ll no longer see it as a reliable system and will just end up not using it.
I especially liked the writing style as I found it nice light which meant you could practically scan the book and still manage to pick up the main themes. One of the things to come from the book was this whole idea of the Hipster PDA. If you do a google or flickr search you’ll find loads of examples and even some really nice templates for pocket sized GTD-based cards.
So what are you waiting for? Go and get things done!
Read MoreOne of my major downfalls is just getting things done. I end up procrastinating and getting distracted far too much. A consequence of this is that a lot of important things don’t get done until the last moment. To combat this I recently started reading David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and it’s lead me to take a more pro-active approach towards organising my daily activities.
A lot of GTD followers employ the power of the HipsterPDA which is basically a collection of cards used to organise yourself. I’ve always tried to get my shit in order using my PDA but always fail to really capture the essence of the things that need to get done. Now using this simple pen and paper system I’m finding I’m noting ideas and actions I need to do a lot more. It’s taking some getting used to, but generally I’m loving it.
Inspired by Hawk Sugano, I’m using a Moleskine squared notebook to capture long thoughts and notes which I then extract into separate index cards which I keep organised in a Moleskine Memo Pockets notebook.
Squared Notebook + Memo Pockets
Opened Memo Pockets
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