Hello robots!

Two-minute band-aid

Interruptions, interruptions, interruptions. Ding, dong, here are another 20 emails.

All those people, who want my attention. All the things I have committed to do. Feels like they own my time and attention, not me.

“Go, go, go,” I tell myself, “you can fight it, just have to be more efficient. Come on!”.

Truth be told, you can’t fight overload by becoming more efficient. You can however try something different.

Stop. Literally.

Do nothing for two minutes. Set a timer, because these two minutes will probably feel like hours.

It is not a solution, but it helps. Let’s call it two-minute band-aid, shall we?

Application for wedding

To get officially married in Russia a couple needs to go to a Civil registry place and personally put in an application for marriage 30 days before the wedding day. This could only be done on Wednesdays from 9 am till 5 pm.

So, if you wanted to get married on July 7, 2012 (and by the way, you can only get married on Fridays and Saturdays), then you and your partner should have gone to the Civil registry today, and put in that application. Which Olya and I did. Which I am quite excited about. Yay!

iPad is not enough, yet

I was approached today by a colleague, who asked whether I was available for a short business trip to Moscow. Well, I am available for short business trips any time, but as it turns out I am not fully equipped for them.

I sold my 11-inch MacBook Air a little over a month ago, which left me with a six-year-old MacBook and the new iPad. Yet having less did not make me less productive. In fact, it may have had an opposite effect: I have, after all, written more blog posts this month than during previous two years!

I realize, however, that at this point of mobile application industry, an iPad is not yet ready to fully substitute a MacBook, say on a business trip. I just wonder how soon a time will come when it can.

Best capture tool for paper-based GTD system

When I read about paper-based GTD systems, one of the capture tools, which gets recommended a lot, is hipster PDA.

I however was never a fan of hipster PDA. I distrust a pack of index cards held together just by a paper clip. I mean, really, these things could get unclipped just as easily as the were clipped in the first place, and a precious peace of information could just slip out of the back pocket of your 501’s, and get lost, forever.

When I find myself wishing to switch to paper-based GTD system, I do not use hipster PDA to record ideas, things to do, useful information, etc. Instead, I use a very small spiral notebook.

Rules for using this ubiquitous capture tool are simple:

1. Carry two notebooks: one that you use and an extra blank one, just in case.
2. One sheet - one thought: this will help make processing it later a bliss.
3. Process daily: once sheet is processed, tear it out and throw it away.
4. Only capture: spiral notebook is for capturing things, not for storing them. Don’t keep your lists in it, there are better tools for that, e.g. Pocket mod.

There you have it - the best paper-based capture tool. In six years of practicing this stuff I have not found a better one, and I am not sure I ever will.

An artist date

This one is about my rather accidental visit to a “house concert” today.  

Stas, a good friend of mine, had his birthday this week. He mentioned he was going to be in town for a few hours today, and that the best time and place to meet him was Governor’s building at around 7 pm. I assumed there was going to be some event held there at the time, and as it turned out it was Alexander Borisov’s “house concert”. I came there a little after 7, congratulated Stas, and decided to stay for the concert. 

For two hours straight Alexander sang songs he had written. There were 10 to 15 people present: friends, followers of his creative work, and me. I must say I enjoyed not only the performance (which was good), but also the private nature of the event. It truly felt like a house concert, although technically not being one, as it was not performed at somebody’s house or backyard. 

This concert was a perfect example of an artist date, “a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you”, one of two “pivotal tools in creative recovery” suggested by Julia Cameron.

I must say my “inner artist” felt quite happy today, and I am now looking forward to exciting and productive week ahead of me. 

And how was your weekend?

Opportunities to be taken

Haven’t seen Michael, a friend from the Uni, for half a year at least. We met today for a cup of coffee.

We did not talk about the old times, rather discussed our lives today, hopes for the future, exciting new ideas. We talked about how we could collaborate and help each other out, and actually came up with a few projects.

I love how new opportunities arise all the time: you meet right people at right moments, and you help each other succeed. Just have to be willing to see those opportunities, which is a pretty hard habit to get into.

One small step after another

This week I had a chance to see how effective defining next actions could become when working in a team.

Last Saturday Andrey and I decided to build a little web utility, which would allow creating twitter search queries based on location and twitter client used to write the tweet, e.g. I could search tweets written in Birdhouse all over the world or those shared from Instagram within 1 mile radius of my location.

First step was to make a simple page with a search field and submit button.

Second step was the following: when user fills in the field and presses “submit”, open a new tab with twitter search for this value.

And so on…

We have achieved current version of Tweetsearch after 4 hours of methodical step by step functionality enrichment. The result turned out better than we envisioned it originally, mostly because we have had a chance to correct the course along the way.

This extremely small project illustrates rather well the advantages of agile methodology. It works greatly when a team has an idea of the end result, but not the exact specifications. It is easier to plan the next sprint and stick with it than to plan the entire project, especially when requirements change due to user feedback or external factors.

To summarize: do not try to build everything at once – start with the core functionality and build around it, one small step after another, moving in the direction of your goal, review your progress and adjust the goal when needed.

Time to switch

I sent a request to our admin department today asking whether it was possible to switch from my PC to a Mac mini. Turns out it is possible, I just need to have the switch approved by a delivery manager. 

Why switch after one year of working on a PC?

Let me tell you first about the things I do at work. 

I communicate with other people via

• Skype
• Lync
• Email (MS Outlook)

Track my tasks and items I wait for others to deliver:

• OmniFocus on iPad (main task management)
• Basecamp
• Speckle
• JIRA

Write meeting notes, proposals and put together project plans:

• MS Word
• MS Project
• ResophNotes with Simplenote sync (meeting minutes)
• Freemind (for mindmapping)
• myBalsamiq (for UI mockups)

Look up information, look through reports

• Internet Explorer
• Google Chrome

Share files

• Dropbox
• Public folders

Listen to music

• iTunes

Almost all of these things can be done just as easily on a Mac. I know a solution for the rest as well, because I been using Macs since August 3, 2006. 

During almost six years I have grown quite fond of the Mac OS X system, and developed numerous habits, which are relatively hard to break. 

And, well, ever since I sold my Macbook Air a month ago I have been missing some of the workflows that are unique to the Mac OS X environment more and more. 

Feels like it is time to switch.

Bikes

When I was leaving the office today I thought that it would probably be a good idea to get a bike.

There. A thought about buying a bike. Out of nowhere.

OK, I used to love bikes.

When I was three my parents got me a supercool bike with a butterfly sticker on the head tube. I adored this thing. I must have spent hours on it.

Then there was my second bike - “Orlyonok”. It was larger than my piers’ bikes and it was red. It made me look cool.

Then there was a black bike “Tourist” with 16 speeds and curled handlebars. I stopped riding it in 2003 and sold it to a friend in 2005.

Since then I think I’ve rented bikes a few times, but I don’t think I ever had a thought about buying one.

Until today. Oh well, let’s see how I feel about it tomorrow.