Engineer2Entrepreneur

Windows is a Waste of time

Link: tingilinde: fourteen minutes a day.

This seems to hold up with my and others experiences. I have known people with very few problems and some with massive problems with their Windows PCs. It is also about as long as it takes to reboot, relaunch the browser, email, word processor and whatever productivity applications you need and get everything back the way it was. And this completely discounts the ~15 minutes it takes to get back into flow, though given the number of interruptions most people experience then you were never in it in the first place.

Losing fourteen minutes on average everyday is a massive waste of time, money and productivity. Using the concept of compounding interest you can parlay this into massive increases in personal productivity.

If you want to be 1000% more productive in 10 years, then you only need to be 30 seconds more productive every day. Taking back those 14 minutes will make you 28000% more productive in 10 years. This is ideal but I know I lose a lot less time on my Mac then on m PC. I reboot my Mac about every other week or two and that is mainly for maintenance with some download or other from Apple.

I have always felt more productive on my Mac, but this puts it in perspective.

Interruption management

Link: The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine.

Gloria Mark, a UC-Irvine professor, has been studying attention overload and multitasking among workers in a financial-services office. So far, she's found that the average employee switches tasks every three minutes, is interrupted every two minutes and has a maximum focus stretch of 12 minutes.

This is a terrible blow to productivity. You just cannot be a productive knowledge worker in that kind of environment. In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Peopleware we learn that it takes about 15 minutes to get into Flow or The Zone. If you are trying to solve a hard problem you are going to need to set aside time and maybe place to get some problem solving time in.

You need to do Interruption Management. More then Time Management or Energy Management. You need to control how often you are interrupted during the day. Admittedly you can never control all interruptions but reducing them by even a bit will boost your efficiency and effectivity.

You want to try to get a 2-3 hour block of time preferably early in the day to focus all your concentration on the problem that needs to be solved now.

I have been doing Information work since my teens and I have noticed some techniques that successful people use to get the most important things done quickly.

Let the Machine Catch the Interruption

A great thing to do is to let something else catch the interruption for you. You still need to get to it but on your terms.
Let voice mail record a message.
Let the computer catch the email but turn off the notification noise and a pop-up alert, better yet just turn off the email client completely, the server will keep it safe.
A small whiteboard or some sticky notes outside your door to let people leave you notes during flow time.
Hang a Do Not Disturb sign across the door to your cube with some string.

Create A Daily Schedule

A daily schedule will allow you and others to get into habits that will allow you to be more productive. Post it on your door so your coworkers can see it an be reminded as to what you are doing and that you are there for them at specific times.
I would recommend:
some goal setting, planning and resource gathering time right at the beginning of the day, a fast stand-up meeting to allocate resources for the day is okay.
a 2-3 hour block of flow time right at the beginning of the day when you are fresh
an email check after lunch and time for meetings, phone calls and such in the afternoon
a final email check and basic plan for tomorrow before going home.

Hiding from Interruptions

One of the most successful that I have ever seen, is to come in early, I mean really early, say 4-5am. You have about 3 hours of uninterrupted time before people come in.
This seems to be more successful for the project then staying late then staying late since when you stay late you are tired and not at your best for problem solving.

Some people have had good results from escaping their cube and taking up temporary residence in a far off conference room. This would work until someone finally found them and then a new place would have to be found to hide.

Telecommuting can work well here too if you can keep the "at-home" distractions to a minimum.

I have heard that some companies have even done this for some projects, by taking a team off-site to a hotel or someplace so they can work without all the regular interruptions that come up at work.

Conclusion
Managing your interruptions is something that can be a big productivity booster. it is a form of time management and can really help get things done.
do things on your terms and not on everyone else's and you may get far more done in far less time then you can imagine.

macosxhints - Using PDF Services, revisited

Link: macosxhints - Using PDF Services, revisited.

This is a great hint. There is a lot of power underneath that mild-mannered exterior.

gapingvoid: crowded markets

Link: gapingvoid: crowded markets.

Basically, when 20,000 people have the same biz model as you, you are dead meat.

There is a school of investing, called Contrarian Investing, whose premise is, "If taxi drivers are giving stick tips, it is time to get out of the market." In other words do the opposite of what the crowd is doing and you will likely do better then the crowd.

The same applies to job hunting. Everyone sends in resumes but no one really reads them because there are so many.

This applies to every industry.

If you are in the middle of a herd surrounded on all sides changing direction is hard, but out on the edge of the herd it is easy. While there are advantages and disadvantages to every situation, I tend to believe that greater freedom is a stronger advantage then greater security, and too often that security is only an illusion.

Mac software

Link: WSJ.com - Real Time Exchange.

Readers Weigh In on Apple And Possibility of 'Halo Effect'

Jason Sindler writes: I've owned an iPod for two years now and love it -- even more so now that I've installed iTunes on my PC and now have a commute (and books from audible.com). However, my home PC (a laptop) is fading from lack of hard-drive space and a smorgasbord of Windows patches and other security-software installs. Having convinced my wife that the home PC is toast, I'm ready for a desktop. The only answer is the Apple. Why? Because 90% of what we use it for at home is pictures (50%+), Internet, and music. the other 9% is money management (via Microsoft Money). So why get a PC and have to spend a inordinate amount of time to fix it when I can buy the Mac and have a PC designed for what I use it for? I can then use my work laptop (Windows, of course) for hardcore spreadsheet work.

I guess a lot of people still don't know that most software exists on the Mac as well as the PC. Excel was first developed for the Mac.

The Macintosh Products Guide is a great place to go, as is VersionTracker but, I will give you a sampling.

Just about every piece of major software has a Mac version.
Microsoft makes Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Internet Explorer) for the Mac.
Lotus Notes is available for Mac.
Citrix has a client for Mac.
QuarkXPress has a Mac OS X version finally.
Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, and the rest have Mac versions.

I have noticed that most people run only a few applications consistently with some Mac examples, there are many others:
Email: Mail.app, MS Entourage, Eudora
Web Browser: Safari, MS Internet Explorer, Firefox
Instant Messenger: iChat, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Fire
RSS feed: NetNewsWire, Slashdock, NewTicker
Word Processor: Word, Appleworks, CopyWrite
Spreadsheet: Excel, Appleworks
Presentation: PowerPoint, Keynote
Office Suite: MS Office, Appleworks, OpenOffice

The only major piece of software that I have found that does not have a Mac version is AutoCAD, however there are a number
of CAD programs for the Mac that are equivalent.

Games is a class of software that the PC dominates, that is okay since from the games reviews that I have seen over the last few years is that the hardware requirements for PC games are quite steep and very expensive and the gamers machines turn into almost dedicated game devices. A few posts ago I mentioned Ars Technica's hardware roundup and their high end gaming machine cost $11,000, I can get an eMac for $799.

Then there is the software that comes free with a new Mac:
Appleworks
iCal: calendar and to-do list manager
iLife Suite:
iPhoto: Photo organizer
iMovie: non linear video editor
iDVD: DVD authoring software
iTunes: music organizer

You can try iTunes for Windows And see for yourself how Apple Software works.

I am not so much anti-Microsoft as much as I am pro-productivity. I have found that my productivity is much higher on a Mac then it ever was on a PC. Yes, there is a transition period as you switch, remember-Mac is not Windows, but it only lasts a few days, then things pick up quickly.

I spent 5 years being a sys admin at a university with a mixed network. Some PCs work fine, others were nightmares, the Macs generally were neglected until I got there and started playing with them, cleaning them up and getting them working again. It was fun to try to do and I got hooked, because they were a lot less mysterious then the PCs very were, because they acted more predictably. I've had great PCs and lousy ones, I have built PCs myself, but I have chosen the Mac because it is more of a tool that just works then a toy that needs to be fiddled with all the time just to keep working. I used to love to tinker with PCs but it finally got to the point where I was spending most of my time tinkering and not much time actually working and that is just not a good thing.

Indeed.com | one search. all jobs.

Link: Indeed.com | one search. all jobs..

This is a "Why didn't I think of it?" idea and a good one.

That said it reminds me of what they said at a local Job Fair, "96% of the job listing are for research purposes (salary history required), not for actual hiring."

But you can see what companies are in your area and are doing market research. This gives you a target company to look into. If a company is worth working for, then you can create your own job within that company.

And for that you need to answer just one question .

16 . What is the single best interview question ever -- and the best answer?

Memo from: Nick Corcodilos, author, headhunter, and publisher of the Web site Ask the Headhunter.
To: Hiring managers everywhere
Re: Reinventing the job interview

The purpose of any interview is simple: to determine whether the candidate can do the job profitably. A smart interview is not an interrogation. It's not a series of canned questions or a set of scripted tests that have been ginned up by HR. An interview should be a roll-up-your-sleeves, hands-on meeting between you and the candidate, where all of the focus is on the job. Think of the interview as the candidate's first day at work, with the only question that matters being this: "What's your business plan for doing this job?"

To successfully answer that, the candidate must first demonstrate an understanding of the company's problems, challenges, and goals -- not an easy thing to do. But since you desperately want to make a great hire and get back to work, why don't you help the best candidate succeed? Two weeks before the interview, call up the candidate and say the following: "We want you to show us how you're going to do this job. That's going to take a lot of homework. I suggest that you read through these 10 pages on our Web site, review these publications from our marketing and investor-relations departments, and speak with these three people on my team. When you're done, you should have something useful to tell us." This will eliminate 9 out of 10 candidates. Only those who really want the job will put in the effort to research the job.

At the interview, you should expect (or hope) to hear the most compelling question that any candidate can ask: "Would you like me to show how your company will profit from hiring me?" The candidate should be prepared to do the job in the interview. That means walking up to the whiteboard and outlining the steps that he or she would take to solve your company's problems. The numbers don't have to be right, but the candidate should be able to defend them intelligently. If the candidate demonstrates an understanding of your culture and competitors -- and lays out a plan of attack for solving your problems and adding something to your bottom line -- you have some awfully compelling reasons to make the hire. But if you trust only a candidate's references, credentials, or test results, you still won't know whether the candidate can do the job.

Once you change the nature of the questions you are asking you become an internal entrepreneur. Become the person who figures out what the real problem is and build a team solve it.

Good Experience - Bit literacy: an overview

Link: Good Experience - Bit literacy: an overview.

This has a lice little Free .pdf on managing email. It is a good little article thought the part about managing spam is a little outdated since all the various anti-spam software has come out. Mail.app's Junk Mail filter works pretty well, though lately the spammers have changed tactics again and so a few spams have reached my inbox.

I use rules to manage things like email newsletters to get them out of my inbox and into there own folders. This leaves my inbox pretty much focused on things I really need to deal with.

To make going through the newsletters I get go faster, I use the Macs Summarize Service. This is a great little secret in Mac OS X. You highlight the text you want summarized, I generally just select-all and then select [App]>Services>Summarize, it will in seconds reduce a 12 page newsletter into a 1 page summary that I can read in a few seconds. If it sounds important I can expand it a little, a lot or all the way.

The idea is not to double your productivity today. but to find ways to be a little more productive everyday, so you can double your productivity every couple of years. If you want to double your productivity every two years you only need to find a way to save about 3 minutes a day.

It often isn't a smooth increase that nets you the most gain in productivity. It is usually a massive change in the way you have been things to a totally new way that the biggest gains are made. Sure there is a transition period of about 2-4 weeks where your productivity drops as you learn the new way and make it a new habit substituting for the old habit. But in the end the new way is far more productive where you're saving not just 3 minutes a day but an hour or more. And that pays for itself in no time at all.

Errors and Bias in Judgment

Link: Errors and Bias in Judgment.

There are lots of ways to do things wrong and this article is a great summary of what to watch out for.

Things like:
Comfort Zone Bias
Perception Bias
Motivation Bias
Errors in Reasoning
Groupthink
Status Quo Bias
Sunk Cost Bias
Supporting Evidence Bias
Framing Bias
Estimating and Forecasting Bias
Garbage In, Garbage Out

You need to ask yourself the brutal questions of:
Knowing what you know now, would you still get into it?
What is the worst that can happen?
If not me, then who?
What are we trying to accomplish here?
What is our goal and how are we going to get there?

Blog Business World

Link: Blog Business World.

 Entrepreneurship and small businesses

Some good advice here.
It is very important to start a side business, something that you can practice on to hone your skills as an entrepreneur. Those skills are very important in many ways. Even if you never want to turn this micro business into your main source of income, the skills you learn will be very valuable to your employer. And it is also a good way to show them, what you can do.

XTremeBlog » Carnival of the Capitalists

Link: XTremeBlog » Carnival of the Capitalists.

This is a good one to go through.