Life

Things productive people do

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

This is a short but great article listing 7 things that productive people do.

My experiences with them:

1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks.

That’s pretty much the way you have to do things: figure out where you want to go, then figure out how you’re going to get there, and break it down into small, manageable chunks and even break those chunks into smaller chunks if needed. Not only does it make the work manageable but it also gives you positive feedback and motivation on progress as you whittle down the list.

2. Stop multi-tasking

As much as the world touts this, it’s terrible. We’re just not made for it (maybe you are, but most people aren’t). You get a lot more done if you focus, or at least can selectively multitask across as few a things as possible. But note if you do this, have some way to preserve state when you context switch (pardon my programmer lingo). For example, I might have a few things going at once because they are tasks that take time: need to talk to Fred but he has a lengthy turnaround time, I need to debug this problem and that could take a long time. Trying to do these serially wouldn’t be the best use of my time because they both take a long time. But since Fred could take a while, I’ll go ahead and contact him first thing in the morning, probably by email if I have the choice (see points further down). Then I’ll jot in my notes (I keep a running note log of my day, because I can’t remember it all) that I emailed Fred at 7:00 AM about the thing and awaiting his response. Then I’ll start debugging and let myself focus there because…

3. Be militant about eliminating distractions.

Amen to this. Ever been deep into something and something interrupts you and there you go, blows your train of thought and either you lose the idea or if you’re lucky you can get back into it but it takes you some time and the vibe is lost? That sucks, and is a big waste of time.

I wish some managers actually understood this and enabled it. My current managers are fine, but I had one in the past that was bothered and offended by what I did. I actually closed my door, and even put a note on the door to “knock first, and wait for a response”. I did this so I could manage distractions, but they had a problem with it. Silly me for understanding how I worked and had a desire to be productive. *sigh*

And then there are those that think open cubes and other such “open, collaborative workspaces” somehow lead to productivity… a decision typically made by managers and VP’s that have 6 walls and a door and all the privacy they want. *sigh*

Close your door, ignore the phone, ignore IM, ignore email, and generally turn things off. And yes, don’t check Facebook and Twitter every few minutes — the world goes on even if you don’t keep up with it, and you’ll love. You have to have the self-discipline to say no and deny things so you can get work done.

4. Schedule your email

This was one of the best things I did many years ago. It was all the rage to poll for email every few minutes. But I found it a constant distraction to hear the “ding” of new email, especially because I would feel a pull to check and respond — interrupting my work. So I stopped polling for email and have been very happy. Unfortunately some months ago the day job finally forced me off POP and onto Exchange so my email gets pushed to me the moment I get it. *sigh* What’s worse is culture is so strong around email and this immediate delivery that you’re expected to notice and handle email the second it arrives… or maybe 5 minutes before it actually was written. *sigh*  But I don’t care. Turn it off and people can deal with it if you didn’t get and handle the email the second it got there. Quit the email app, stop polling for mail. Handle email when YOU want to.

5. Use the phone

I will agree that sometimes the phone is the more productive way to get things done, but sometimes email remains better even for longer conversations. If there are a lot of people involved, it may be the best way for everyone to converse (you may have geographic and/or scheduling issues that prevent anything else). If there needs to be a paper trail or ease of recording. As I wrote above, sometimes the delay and control you have over email sending and response works more in your favor in terms of managing your time. What’s important is to not neglect the phone as a communication device (very easy to do these days), just learn when it’s time to use each method of communication.

6. Work on your own agenda.

Yup.

Not always 100% possible, but as much as possible, do so.

7. Work in 60-90 minute intervals

You gotta rest. You have to take breaks and recharge. And that doesn’t mean switch from email or the conference call to checking Facebook. No, you should get up, get a big glass of water, have a small snack, and walk around a bit. It helps, a lot.

In fact, big glasses of water throughout the day are really good for this. Not just because having a lot of water in a day is good for your body, but since it eventually works its way out of your system, the need to go to the bathroom helps force you out of your chair and to walk around. 🙂

The cause of civilizational decline

/ hsoi

The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the originalNational Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago:

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

Every great civilization reaches a point of prosperity where it is possible to live your entire life as a pacifist without any serious consequences. Many civilizations have come to the state of devolution represented by modern Berkeley folkways, from wife-swapping to vegetarianism. These ideas don’t come from a hardscrabble existence in contact with nature’s elemental forces; they are the inevitable consequence of being an effete urban twit removed from meaningful contact with reality. The over-civilized will try to portray their decadence as something “highly evolved” and worthy of emulation because it can only exist in the hothouse of highly civilized urban centers, much like influenza epidemics. Somehow these twittering blockheads missed out on what the word “evolution” means. Evolution involves brutal and often violent natural selection, and these people have not been exposed to brutal evolutionary forces any more than a typical urban poodle.

You need to read the rest of it (h/t Jim Wendler), especially if you read the above and were offended by it; maybe you should look hard truths in the face more often.

Hey AT&T, thanx for wasting my day

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

I’m writing this to explain the situation, vent a little, make it publicly known, and to pass along to AT&T Customer Care in hopes they might actually fix their broken process in hopes other people won’t have their time and life similarly wasted.

Last Wednesday our home phone line went dead. No dial tone. Can’t make nor receive calls. I filed a trouble report on the AT&T website. I received confirmation saying the repair would be fixed by Friday 7:00 PM.

I later checked the status report to see if there was any update. It said “testing the line” and now the repair estimate was bumped to Saturday at 7:00 PM. *sigh*

Because of locked fences and our dog, I put on the original report “dog, locked fence, call first” (they don’t give you much room to enter notes). I did give them my mobile phone number to call. Saturday came and went and no call came through. There was one call that caller ID said was “BLOCKED” which maybe was them, but I wasn’t going to answer such a call. I was out on Saturday visiting relatives and what could I do? When we got home there was a tag on the door saying AT&T was there but nothing was written nor any boxes checked as to what happened or why things didn’t happen. Just a “AT&T wuz here” sort of notice.

And of course, the phone line was still dead.

I logged in to the AT&T website to check. It said that they needed access to the property thus they’d have to come back. Fine. I tried to reschedule it on the website, but the website kept failing with 404 errors and I couldn’t “continue” with the process. So I tried calling. Sat on hold for about 20 minutes before I hung up because I had other things to tend to; I planned on calling back later. Then around 7:00 PM I receive an automated phone call on my mobile from AT&T saying they tried to come, couldn’t come, and that I was automatically rescheduled with a PRIORITY appointment for Monday between 8 AM and 5 PM. My feeling there was “priority”? between 8 and 5? That doesn’t feel very “priority” to me. But whatever. Their automated system said the appointment was rescheduled so I left it alone.

And so today, Monday, I sat around all day waiting for them. Wife had to reschedule a dental appointment to accomodate this. We both had to shuffle and deal with various inconveniences so someone could be here waiting for the repairman. The hours ticked by, nothing. 5:00 PM rolls around and nothing. Figures.

I try the website again. Still same problems.

I call AT&T’s repair center. I wait 15 minutes to finally get to talk with someone and the moment they pick up the line disconnects and I have to start all over.

I know it’s not obvious from my writing, but at this point I’m pretty pissed off.

I call back, go through the plethora of menus, and sit around again. Again am told “2 minutes to talk to someone” and at least 5 tick by before I get someone. While waiting, I wondered if Twitter might be of help and so I tried tweeting to @ATTCustomerCare (and that’s why I’m writing this, to facilitate explaining things). Yes that lady was polite and nice, I don’t have a beef with her, and in fact she was very understanding that I was upset about the runaround and bullshit. Apparently tho there’s a problem with the system. For you see, it seems that because there was “dog” in the equation no, in fact I was NOT automatically rescheduled — I had to call to schedule it. Something in the system broke down. No indication that I had to manually reschedule the appointment, not by the hang tag, not by the automated call (which in fact informed me incorrectly and was the seed behind the wasted day), not the website, not anything.

So AT&T, you’ve got a problem with your system. You need to fix it. If in fact someone must manually reschedule, you need your system to manage that for them. Heck, if your automated system can automatically call them to notify them, how about having the automated system — if they get a live customer on the phone — go ahead and automatically connect them to a customer service person to get the appointment rescheduled. In fact, actually make them a priority in the phone queue (there’s that “priority” word).

If “customer service” is about serving the customer, then well… you ought to do so. By all accounts here, you’ve failed.

I know. FirstWorldProblems. I know there’s more important things in the world and this doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of the grander cosmos. But I’m human, get irritated, and need to vent like everyone else now and again.

BTW, as I’m finishing writing this, @ATTCustomerCare just replied to me on Twitter. Let’s see what happens.

“Experts” say, just give them what they want

/ hsoi

Remember ladies… just give them what they want.

“I keep thinking, what would have happened if I had that little moment where I would punch the guy and run,” she said.

But experts said she made the right choice.

“Basically, don’t show any emotion either way,” said Tilton Polcie [sic] Chief Robery Cormier. “Just give them what they want.”

Full Story (h/t The Gun Wire)

So this “expert” says to “just give them what they want”.

OK ladies… you remember that. When you’re being raped, don’t show any emotion either way, just give them what they want. This is the advice  direct from a Police Chief. An “expert” in your safety.

*sigh*

Now I admit, I’m mixing contexts. The article and the Chief are talking about a robbery, and I put their advice in the context of rape. And to be fair, many of the things they suggest in the article are actually sound: assume the robbers have a weapon, be a good witness, be aware of your surroundings, don’t attract attention, and in general yes…. don’t try to stop them. The best advice in the article is this:

“Unless you get directly involved and there is a life-threatening imminent situation, stay out of it,’ he said.

That’s right. Is there a life-threating imminent situation? And it doesn’t even have to be you in that situation, it could be a third party.

We come back to the maxim of doing what it takes to maximize your enjoyment of beer & TV (click and read if you aren’t aware of this maxim). This thought process is far superior to “just give them what they want”. The “beer & TV maxim” carries you in any situation, be it you’re the victim of a mugging, you were unlucky to be in the 7-11 as it was being robbed, or you’re the victim of rape. This is a better guideline towards helping to decide if it’s worthwhile to fight or just give them what they want.

I do not like nor subscribe to the “give them what they want, never fight back” approach to life. Think about what that means. Think about the implications of it. Think about it from an evolutionary standpoint (both evolution to this point, and what will evolve from it). Think about it in the workplace. Think about it in your personal life. Think about it in your relationships, with your spouse, with your children, with friends, co-workers. Sometimes it’s an acceptable response/tactic, but usually only because it’s a single step in a greater movement. But generally I just can’t see how we’ll become stronger and better with that sort of approach to life.

I need to buy an IR game camera

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

I live in the city. I can’t shoot any of the deer that come up through the greenbelt behind my house.

That’s ok tho… as far as I can tell, none are shooters anyways.

But they’re fun to watch, and Sasha sure loves to bark at them.

But that’s why I need a game camera… tho an IR one so my neighbors don’t get bothered by (or curious about) a flash going off at all strange hours. I’ve got a couple with a flash, want an IR one tho. Every time I go to Cabela’s I look at them then walk away because I just don’t feel right about dropping that sort of cash on one. Call me silly, but I’ve got this feeling that someone will notice and steal it and then I’m out a chunk of change.

I’m just curious about the deer that come around. Mostly it’s does, but we see a nice buck now and again. I’m very curious about those guys.

Then tonight as the sun was going down, I saw something I hadn’t seen before.

Looking out back and I see 1… 2… ah, 5 deer. A little one, a doe that’s probably 1-2 years old, a couple older does… and then a spike.

First time I’ve seen a spike around here this season. Hopefully won’t be the last we see of him… for years to come.

What can we learn from Mir vs. Nogueira – keep fighting until the end

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Keep fighting. Push beyond. Don’t give up. Be it self-defense, competition, or anything in life.

If you haven’t heard, in UFC 140 this past weekend, Frank Mir vs. Minotauro Nogueira, Mir won because Norgueira’s arm broke… not sure exactly what happened, looks like joint dislocation (maybe both elbow and shoulder) and not bone breakage, but I can’t find exact medical reports at this time. Either way, it was pretty ugly.

But the details don’t matter. There’s a good lesson to be learned from this.

Never give up.

If you know anything about Nogueira’s career, the man doesn’t give up. He fights until the end, and this was proof. Yeah he finally tapped but only AFTER his arm snapped (the ref saw and immediately stopped the bout anyways). The fight wasn’t over until he couldn’t fight anymore. He kept looking for a way to get out, to escape, to work to his advantage, to turn the fight around, to win.

This is something you have to do with anything in life: don’t give up. You can keep going far longer than you think. Our mind and bodies are programmed to stop well in advance of actual failure as a preservation technique/instinct. You have to learn to push beyond that. It will be uncomfortable, it may not be fun, but it may be what you need in order to succeed, to grow, to improve, to win.

In a self-defense situation, you have to keep going. You get kicked, you get punched, you shot shit, you get stabbed, but you keep fighting. When you’re dead, you’ll be dead and then you can stop fighting. Until that point, you’re not dead and you have no excuse to not keep fighting because you may still make it out alive. Isn’t that the whole point?

Keep fighting. Push beyond. Don’t give up. Be it self-defense, competition, or anything in life.

Generational work ethic

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Given the choice, however, I’d rather make history than simply take it in and post it to Instagram with a grainy old-fashion filter.

The Gen-Y losers in this country want to explore and revel in the greatest accomplishments of mankind’s glorious history — they just don’t want to try to participate in making history themselves.

Full article here. (h/t Dave Tate)

If you listened to Adam Carolla’s OWS rant, you’ll hear similar sentiments. Heck, an older friend of mine told me he’s interviewed for tech management jobs but they don’t want to hire him, not because he’s not capable, but because there’d be too wide a generation spread between him and the workers who all want their participation ribbons because they showed up and did the minimum requirements of their job.

That’s pretty messed up.

Is this the case across the board? No, of course there are exceptions, but they are just that: exceptions to the rule.

But here’s the kicker.

This sort of work ethic can still work out, if they can find a way to make it work. I tell my kids to leverage what you love to do and work to make a living off that. It doesn’t have to be “math and science” and that you must be a doctor, lawyer, or these days a mobile app developer. The world needs plumbers, the world needs musicians, the world needs artists, the world even needs someone to say “do you want fries with that”. Of course, I want my children to be successful, live a comfortable life, and would rather they own the empire than be a cog on the lowest rung. But I realize that well… yes, in a way the whole “Gen-Y/Millennial” mess was “our” own doing; reap what you sow, right?

I want to sow different seeds. Maybe I should say I want to sow “heirloom seeds” (hopefully that’s a good metaphor).

Youngest was watching me fix an ugly sink drain clog, pulling apart pipes and so on. He thought it was pretty cool, and I told him there’s no shame in it because people will always need plumbers and you can make a good living that way (and generally be in charge of your own life); it might be a dirty job, but Mike Rowe has demonstrated lots of jobs are dirty and we need every one of them. Many times when we have contractors working at the house, we’ll get to talking. They get all down on themselves for doing manual labor compared to me writing software, as if somehow my job and thus I am “higher” than them and their job. It always shocks me to hear this because I don’t consider myself anyone special, but I know this attitude comes from how our society has degraded manual labor. I always respond to them I can’t do what you do which is why I hired you — your job, my job, neither is more or less important, just different and both vital to making the world go ’round.

So if you love wood working, great. Now find a way to make money at it. Oldest loves to invent creations in the video game Spore, so I’m trying to get him to parlay that love of digital creation into something that could take him further… so I bought him a Wacom tablet and am having him learn how to use it and software like Painter, Photoshop, and so on. He’s actually getting pretty fluent with the tablet (I still feel awkward in using it) and doing some neat things in Painter. And yes, the world needs graphic designers, or storyboard artists, or comic book writers.

Frankly, I’d like to hope I’m not raising my kids to have the same sort of “win a participant trophy and feel good about it” attitude, because when I got one of those “participant” ribbons as a kid I knew what it meant — loser, thus I swore I’d not lose again. To me it was motivation to do better, today it’s validation that “I’m special and I’m someone.” Yesterday I told Oldest to move a large, heavy, and bulky mattress upstairs and he stared at me, then complained how it’d be awkward and worked to come up with every excuse not to do it. I gave him a “So what? Life’s full of awkward and hard to do things, but that doesn’t give you any reason or excuse to get out of doing them — they still need doing. You’ve got a brain to figure out how to do it, and muscles to enable you to do it… so get to it.” Sure he grumbled the whole time, but he did it… when he didn’t think he could. Hopefully there was small breakthrough.

If you want to work four hours a week and work on some cause-based project, go for it. Just realize that while you’re spending your 20s mooching off the little value left in mom and dad’s house, which is massively underwater, you’re going to be screwed in 20 years.

Your parents are going to be broke, 80 years old and burning off the last of their savings in a retirement home. You’re going to be fighting for work and taking care of them. You will be sitting with $100K in student loans for a graduate degree no one cares about and a resume that reads worse than a migrant worker’s while you read the “Four Hour Retirement” at the four-hour line at the unemployment office.

I don’t want this for my children, and I know they’re going to grow up in a world surrounded by it. I worry for my kids and what they’re going to have to put up with and do because of what an entitlement-based-culture is going to force upon them. But on the same token, I understand wanting to work on some cause-based project and think there’s nothing wrong with it, so long as you can find the way to fund it, manage it, and well… I’m going to be kicking your butt out of the house when you’re in your early 20’s so you better find a way to make everything work.  And if you can succeed at it, awesome. It doesn’t even mean you have to be a millionaire. If you become a monk, give up all worldly effects, and have little more to deal with than eating, bathing, praying, and running the monastery’s bakery or brewery so the bills can be paid and it’s all self-supporting, that works too!  Because in the end, it doesn’t really matter what you work at, so long as you’ve got the ethic to work at it.

Don’t Check “Asian”

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

“I didn’t want to put ‘Asian’ down,” Olmstead says, “because my mom told me there’s discrimination against Asians in the application process.”

Full story.

My mother is Korean. My father is American, with his father of German and his mother of Scots-Irish descent. So, I’m some sort of half-breed mutt. People see my name, John Daub, and how “white” can you get? They hear my voice over the phone and I sound “white”. But then they see me and my physical looks contrast against those other indicators, and it’s always amusing to me to watch people have that moment of cognitive dissonance while they try to figure me out.

I’m not offended by it because I understand we’re human and we are who and what we are. I understand the contrasts, I also understand that humans like to categorize. I understand that I present contrasts and things that don’t add up. Really, I don’t get bothered by the race issue and openly joke about it because life’s too short to get caught up in it. Of course, if someone is being hurtful well, that’s different… that’s just being hurtful or being an asshole, and I don’t care for that regardless of the context, being presented based upon my race, ethnicity, or my choice in clothing.

But just like these people don’t want to check “Asian” on their forms, I joke with people who I will check whatever box you want to help you fill your quota: I can be white, I can be Asian, whatever helps you satisfy your agenda.

I also recognize that’s the problem (and it’s part of why I joke about it, in hopes of opening dialogue).

See, a lot of people don’t view the problems presented in this article as a real problem. It’s not viewed as racist because a stereotype of “being smart” doesn’t seem like a negative thing. But, as you can read in the article, it is. It causes problems. And ultimately the problem is because of forced diversity. The schools aren’t choosing the best students, they are choosing based upon a whole slew of criteria — race/ethnicity being one of them. So maybe this person isn’t as good of a student, but because they need to have people will all sorts of skin tones walking around, they’ll choose someone based upon their skin tone over someone who may not have the right skin tone but is a better student.

Is that right?

I thought we weren’t supposed to care about the color of someone’s skin? If so, then why are we?

If we’re not supposed to care about the color of someone’s skin, then we need to stop caring about the color of someone’s skin… period. Else, you’ll always have “discrimination”-based problems. And we’ll continue to be divided and have animosity.

Start Too Light, Progress Slowly

/ hsoi

Many concepts in life are universal. We might learn them in one context, and when we remove the specifics of that context, we’ll find the concept applies to almost anything in life. While writing the last observations post, although it was about guns and shooting, some words from powerlifter Jim Wendler came to mind.

I wrote of how I felt some students would be well-served to step back to a beginners/fundamentals class before progressing further. I mentioned how that sort of thing is hard, because it’s a blow to the ego. Jim writes about “starting too light”:

My coaches emphasized this to me when I was in high school, but unfortunately, I didn’t listen. Hopefully you will. Starting too light allows for more time for you to progress forward. It’s easy for anyone – beginner or advanced – to want to get ahead of themselves. Your lifts will go up for a few months, but then they’ll stall – and stall, and stall some more. Lifters get frustrated and don’t understand that the way around this is to prolong the time it takes to get to the goal. You have to keep inching forward. This is a very hard pill to swallow for most lifters. They want to start heavy, and they want to start now. This is nothing more than ego, and nothing will destroy a lifter faster, or for longer, than ego.

Forget that he’s talking about weightlifting. He’s talking about keeping your ego in check. Start lower than you think, start lighter than you think. Maybe you think you’re the best shooter around, but you’d still be served well to take the school’s intro class — even if it’s well below your perception of your skills, there’s something to be learned. If you try to jump in at too high a level, that’s just ego and will ultimately destroy you.

I wrote:

Sometimes improvement requires taking a step back and regressing down the ladder a bit, but only so you can make your foundation more solid. To expand upon that metaphor, if you realized your ladder was planted in sand, how high do you think you could climb? But if you started up the ladder, realized things were getting shaky, then climbed back down, poured some concrete around the legs, then climbed back up, how much higher do you think you could now climb? Don’t be afraid to back down and pour concrete.

To bring it over to lifting, a hallmark of a good program is progressive/incremental resistance: the program always strives to add more weight, more reps. If you look at the Wendler 5/3/1 program, it’s divided into 4 week cycles. When the next cycle starts, you increase your weights by a certain amount (e.g. 5# on bench press) and continue along. While a 5# jump on your bench press every 4 weeks doesn’t sound like much, over the course of a year that can mean a 60# increase, which is significant!

The reality of lifting, however, is that the linear progression will not always happen — you will stall. What’s the solution? Back down. There are numerous ways to calculate this. One thing Jim writes:

You’ll eventually come to a point where you can’t make any more progress on a lift. You won’t be able to hit the sets and reps you’re supposed to hit, and the weights will start to get too heavy. When this happens, I simply take 90% of my max (either a 1RM or a rep max) and start all over again.

[…]

If you’re really starting out with 10% less than your actual maxes, you can expect to go through 5-7 cycles at a minimum before you stall out. I’ve gone through 8 before having to back off.

You see, it’s actually expected that you’ll stall, that you’ll have to back off. You don’t have to back off far, just “90%” of what you were doing, but paring yourself back just that slight bit helps you make longer term progress. If you allow your ego to remain in control, you’ll only try to forge ahead, will eventually hit a wall, you’ll never get over the wall, and ultimately you’ll fail to achieve your goals. If however you back off, if you go “beneath your skills” and maybe take a beginner class (again), you’ll come out of it stronger and able to progress further.

And so, the same with shooting. Back down. If you get to an intermediate-level class and find yourself struggling, take the class again, or maybe take the previous class in the curriculum progression and reestablish some fundamentals. Ultimately this will allow you to progress longer and ultimately reach higher goals and loftier heights. If you continue to be ego-driven, you won’t achieve your goals. Taking 2 steps back so you can take 5 steps forward only helps you in the long run.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about shooting, or weightlifting, or anything else in life. The principles are universal. Keep your ego in check, be honest with yourself. Never be afraid to take a few steps back if that means over the long term you’ll progress further.