Batten down the escape hatch ...
... with Nicholas Bate.
That's the weekend sorted then
Golf ... more golf ... and even more golf. Ryder Cup weekend begins today and me and my oldest son are going to be glued to the television cheering on Rory, Graeme and the rest of the European team.
Fixie Friday - Bombtrack
These Bombtrack bikes are fantastic. Especially love the curve on the seat tube.
Getting the right customers
One thing that has continually bugged me about the Journalong journal entry screen is the social widgets that I put on there. They serve no other purpose than to inform the user about how popular Journalong is within each social network. When you are about to write your daily journal entry, the last thing you want to see is the tweet count for Journalong.
I also believe it's a pointless measure of success and amounts to nothing more than a popularity poll. I'd like to think that the customers Journalong is attracting, base their decision to subscribe on getting value from a plain text journal they can write to from anywhere.
So last night I removed the social widgets from Journalong and it's already looking like a much nicer place now.
Wishlist Wednesday - New Lurcher X9
I wants one of these ...
29" wheels and a double chain ring at the front. Ticks all my boxes.
via shedfire
How to Get Unstuck ...
... The Big Paper Exercise with Mike Vardy.It's amazing how often the lo-fi techniques that require just pencil and paper are so much easier to do than their digital counterparts.Definitely giving this a go over the weekend.
Firefighting. I've been doing this for most of the last three weeks. It's the onslaught of unforeseen tasks and issues that take you away from the work you had planned to do. It's the ad-hoc requests and "emergency" problems that try to rob you of a productive day.There's nothing less motivating than firefighting most of your time at work and gradually seeing those deadlines slip again and again and again. Thing is, too much firefighting can be averted in most scenarios. Here's a few tips which I found quite good. It's mostly common sense, but I sometimes lack this human trait!
- Identify the source of your firefighting - First of all make sure you know where all your firefighting issues are coming from. The most important step. More likely it's a single person or organisation than a random number of people or organisations.
- Filter all incoming fires - Make sure to route all firefighting issues to the right person. As a developer, I'm often mistaken as the "go to guy" for a particular project or software. In reality, these issues should first go to someone else first, before they come to me.
- Schedule time for firefighting issues - Once the issues have come in, block off some time later on in the day or week for dealing with these issues. It should be a maximum of two hours per day. Spending too much time on firefighting issues is counter-productive and a real motivation killer. Believe me, I've been there.
- Think about a long term solution - Firefighting should be a short term phase. You shouldn't allow this to be come part of your daily work. When resolving issues of this natrue, ask yourself "could this happen again?". If the issue probably will, then think about a long term solution that will stop the issue continually coming back to you.
Most firefighting work is work that we can put off for a later part of the day or week. Don't let your day go to pot with putting out fires.
E-Mail Sensitivity/Paranoia: The Checklist
I wish I read this list by Michael Wade last week when I was at my wits end with an issue at work. I probably shouldn't have sent the email, but I did anyway. As soon as I read point three, I knew I shouldn't have sent that email.
3. Are you so upset that you shouldn't be near a computer? Don't e-mail when angry.*
