Productivity Tips

 Productivity बद्दलची अनेक पुस्तकं वाचून व techniques वापरून त्यातील उपयोगी वाटलेल्या काही   सोप्या टीप्स शेअर करत आहे.

1. Schedule-based tasks. 

तुमच्याकडे स्मार्टफोन आहे म्हणजे त्यात कॅलेंडर आहे. ज्यावेळी डोक्यात एखादं काम येईल त्यावेळी ताबडतोब ते कॅलेंडरमध्ये, त्यावेळी योग्य वाटते ती तारीख आणि वेळ फोनमधील कॅलेंडरमध्ये लिहून ठेवायची. ज्यावेळी एखाद्या कामाचं calendar notification येईल तेव्हा एक तर ते काम करायचं किंवा reschedule करायचं. जोपर्यंत काम होत नाही तोपर्यंत कॅलेंडरमधून काढून टाकायचं नाही.

नखं कापायची आहेत? कॅलेंडर एन्ट्री.

बिल भरायचे आहे? कॅलेंडर एन्ट्री.

पिझ्झा खावासा वाटतोय? कॅलेंडर एन्ट्री.

अंतराळवीर बनायचं आहे? कॅलेंडर एन्ट्री.

डोक्यात काहीही म्हणजे अगदी काहीही न ठेवता प्रत्येक गोष्ट कॅलेंडरमध्ये गेलीच पाहिजे हा अट्टाहास अत्यावश्यक  आहे.

2. Checklist.

Checklists या फक्त अंतराळवीर,  पायलट्स, आणि सर्जन यांच्यासाठी नसतात. आपण दैनंदिन जीवनातही त्या उत्तम प्रकारे वापरू शकतो.

उदाहणादाखल - घर बंद करून आठ-दहा दिवस बाहेरगावी जायचे असेल तर काय करावे याची checklist. 2015 मध्ये आम्ही पहिली outstation ट्रीप केली तेव्हा बनवलेली checklist मी अजून वापरत आहे व खूप उपयुक्त ठरली आहे. 

3. A place for everything and everything in its place. 

याला जपानमध्ये seiton म्हणतात. 

उदाहणादाखल - पाच मोठे बॉक्सेस घ्या. त्यावर electronics, electrical, hardware, stationary व miscellaneous अशी लेबल लावा. त्या त्या वस्तू त्या त्या बॉक्समध्येच ठेवायची सवय लावा. बराच वेळ व कष्ट वाचतील.

हाच concept आपण अनेक प्रकारे वापरू शकतो.

A time for everything and everything in its time.

A budget for everything and everything within its budget.

A process for everything and everything by the process.

4. Objective metrics for almost everything.

 ऑफिसमध्ये अथवा व्यवसायात अनेक प्रकारच्या नंबर्सवर बारकाईने लक्ष ठेवणारे आपण खाजगी आयुष्यात मेट्रिक्सबद्दल तेव्हढेच उदासीन असतो. आपल्या बऱ्याचश्या गोष्टी हवेत असतात. 

"वजन कमी करायचंय". हो, पण किती? कधीपर्यंत?

"सेव्हींग करायचंय". दर महिन्याला किती टक्के?

 जोपर्यंत आपण आपल्या dreams समोर पक्के नंबर्स मांडत नाही तोपर्यंत त्यांचे targets बनत नाहीत, आणि मुळात टार्गेटच नसेल तर तुम्ही ते गाठणार कसं?

 मथळ्यात मी almost हा शब्द जाणीपूर्वक वापरलाय. काही गोष्टी - आईवडिलांची माया, भावंडांचं, मित्रमैत्रिणींचं निर्व्याज प्रेम, आणि मुख्य म्हणजे देवावरची निखळ भक्ती व श्रद्धा - या कुठल्याही मोजमापाच्या, देण्याघेण्याच्या हिशोबाच्या पलीकडेच राहू द्याव्यात.

5. Productivity बनायचं असेल तर सर्वात महत्वाची आणि आवश्यक गोष्ट म्हणजे स्वयंप्रेरणा व स्वयंशिस्त (self-motivation and self-discipline).
चांगल्या गोष्टी, कोणी सांगतंय म्हणून नव्हे तर "मला स्वतःला अजून चांगलं बनायचं आहे" या विचाराने कराव्यात, आणि कुणी स्तुती, प्रशंसा करत नसेल तरीही शांतपणे करत राहाव्यात.

अर्थात यातील प्रत्येक मुद्यावर एक एक स्वतंत्र पोस्ट होऊ शकते एवढा हा विषय मोठा आहे. तूर्तास इतकेच पुरे.

तुम्ही यातील एखादी गोष्ट करत नसाल तर महिनाभर तरी नक्की करून पहा. तसेच, तुमच्याकडे असलेल्या productivity टीप्स जाणून घ्यायला आवडेल!

Ike

Ever since being introduced to the Eisenhower Matrix, I have been using it manually in one form or the other; so it was a delight to find a productivity app specifically based on it.
Aptly named as "Ike" -- the nickname by which Eisenhower was fondly referred to -- the app presents us with four quadrants: FOCUS (tasks that are important and urgent), GOALS (tasks that are important but not urgent), FIT-IN (tasks that are urgent but not important), and BACKBURNER (tasks that are neither important nor urgent). The user interface is sleek and intuitive and provides most of the features needed in a To-Do list, such as reminders, schedulers, and notes.
One cool feature is Location reminder: You can specify reminders about tasks to be performed at a specific location. A boon for forgetful folks like me!
The free version is good enough, but I would suggest the full version which costs Rs. 100/-. It's worth it.

App Idea: Uber for retail goods and skills?

[Disclaimer: Perhaps an app like this already exists. If so, please do let me know!]

Consider this use case scenario:

I am sitting at my desk, working. I am having a terrible headache, and realize that I need to buy medicine for it. 

Just then, my wife informs from the kitchen that we need to order some grocery items. 

My little kid is tugging away at my leg; She wants a drawing book and a set of colour pencils for her drawing class. 

(Image credit: Far Reach Inc.)

So… I open this app and enter my list: A strip of tablets, a bunch of grocery products, and a couple of stationery items. 

The app sends notifications to various shop-owners around my home. Pharmacists see the medicine list, grocery shop owners see the grocery items and stationery shop owners see the demand for drawing book and colour pencils. 

Each of them enters a 'bid' in their app. 

I see the various 'bids' on my app. Depending on the location of the shop, the brand of the product, and, perhaps my past experience with a particular shop, I select the vendors. 

For example: I need the medicines urgently, so I would select the nearest pharmacy. 

I need good quality grocery and it's not very urgent, so I would select a vendor that could be little far away but with whom I have had excellent experience in the past. 

Each of the vendors that I select gets a notification. They pack the required items and send it out for delivery. Optionally, I can also mark some items to be picked up by me. For example, for stationery items, I may select a shop that is located on the way to my kid's drawing class. 

The cost for the items delivered would be auto-debited from my account in the same app, and credited to the respective vendors' account. The app can also provide a "credit" or "EMI" option in the cases where I cannot make the payment right away.

The app would also provide a facility wherein users can give feedback about various shops. This would make the shop owners pay attention to the quality of goods and customer service. 

Furthermore, this need not be limited to goods. How about 'shopping' for skills that are available for hire nearby. For example: I need to build a website, so I can enter it in my app, and the web developers in the area would get notifications which they can bid for.

So basically... This is Uber, but for retail goods. 

What do you think?

The Eisenhower Matrix

Dwight Eisenhower was a remarkable man. He served as the Supreme Commander of military forces and one of the chief architects of Operation Overlord (the Normandy invasion) that ultimately defeated Germany and Italy in the Second World War. During his tenure as 34th President of United States of America, he consolidated the USA as an economic and military superpower, started the Interstate Highway System (one of the biggest civil construction projects in history), founded NASA and DARPA, and forewarned about the threat of military-industrial complex. 
And when he found some time from all of this, he created the Eisenhower Matrix. 

Eisenhower Matrix is a simple yet highly effective productivity tool. It consists of four quadrants along two axes (Important vs. Non Important, Urgent vs. NonUrgent) and provides a guideline for what you should for a set of tasks in each quadrant. Important and Urgent tasks must be done by you and on priority, Non-Important but Urgent tasks can be delegated, and so on.

This Matrix can be extrapolated and modified in a variety of ways depending on individual preference. This infographic shows a couple of them.

Motivation and Discipline

How to get anything done….

If you want to get anything done, there are two basic ways to get yourself to do it.

1. The first is to try to motivate yourself. This is the more popular option. And, it is devastatingly wrong.
2.  The second — somewhat unpopular but entirely correct — choice is to cultivate discipline.

What’s the difference between the two?

Motivation	Discipline
Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task.	Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
Action is conditional on feelings. You wait for the right mood to start doing stuff, it’s an invitation to the dreaded procrastination loops we all know about.	Successful completion of tasks brings about the positive state of mind that chronic procrastinators think they need to initiate tasks in the first place.
Motivation is waiting until you’re in Olympic form to start training.	Discipline is training to get into an Olympic form.
At its core, motivation is insistence that we should only be doing things we feel like doing.	Discipline aims to cut the link between feelings and actions, and do it anyway.
“How do I get myself to feel like doing what I have rationally decided to do?”.	“How do I make my feelings inconsequential and do the things I consciously want to do?”.
There are psychological problems with relying on motivation. Trying to drum up enthusiasm time and again is literally a form of deliberate psychological self-harm.	Discipline makes you feel good and buzzed and energetic and eager afterward.
Motivation usually comes in short, periodic bursts. It has a tiny shelf life and needs constant refreshing.	Discipline is usually self-perpetuating and constant.
Motivation is like winding up a crank to deliver a burst of force. At best, it stores and converts energy to a particular purpose.	By contrast, discipline is like an engine that, once kick-started, continuously supplies energy to the system.
There are situations where it is the correct attitude, one-off situations where spring-loading a lot of energy up front is the best course of action.	Discipline is the basis for regular day-to-day functioning and consistent long-term results.
Motivation is trying to feel like doing stuff.	Discipline is doing it even if you don’t feel like it.
Motivation is analogous to goals.	Discipline, in short, is a system.

Summary

Productivity has no requisite mental states.
For consistent, long-term results, discipline trumps motivation.

How do you cultivate discipline?  

By building habits.
Start as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and keep gathering momentum. Re-invest it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and build a positive feedback loop.

Forget motivation…  What we really need is discipline.

Excerpts from a blog post by Zbyněk Dráb
Blog URL: http://www.wisdomination.com/

Also available as a presentation on SlideShare:
www.slideshare.net/gautamsoman/motivation-vs-discipline

To-do list app

I had been searching for a good to-do list app for some time now, trying and rejecting half a dozen apps in the process. 
My search seems to have ended, for now, with To-Do Prime. 

It has most of the features I was looking for, syncs across multiple devices, can work offline, has no ads, and is free.

Work smart... And hard!

The worst advice I ever received was: Don't work hard, work smart.

The "Work smart" part is fine, but it's a capital mistake to think that working hard and working smart are mutually exclusive.

theme-based weekdays

In a fleeting conversation, I heard of "theme-based weekdays" and began to think how it could be implemented. Here's a possible approach.

Monday: The begin day. For many of us, the major hurdle to getting anything done is to actually start it. Hence Monday would be the day to begin all new activities.

Tuesday: Bill clearance day and repair day. The day when you pay all the monthly bills, EMIs and other dues. And place service calls to repair anything broken. Car servicing, AC maintenance, electrical repairs... And most importantly, health checkups.

Wednesday: Study day. Search for new certifications or courses. Read a book. Write a blog. Do a review of the study progress of your kids. Learn a new software.

Thursday: Communication day. Call up friends and relatives. Chat with distant ones. Wanted to meet an old friend but didnt know when? Go out and have dinner on this day. Also, this would be a buffer day to contain in any tasks that may have overflown from previous days.

Friday: Inventory day. Take a stock of your finances, as well as anything is needed in home. Check the balance sheet. Any risks? Any opportunities for more RoI? Plus, this would be a hobby day and/or social activities day, parties etc.

Saturday: Clean-up day. Remove obsolete papers and other stuff. Take backups, make space for new things. In addition, you may use this day to contribute back to the society in whatever way possible to you: Donating material to orphanages, teaching kids or planting trees.

Sunday: Family day. Spend time with your family at home. And if you need to go out, take them with you. Sunday could also be your planning day, where you sit back and think not only about the week or the month ahead but also about the medium and long term goals.

The idea here is not to limit yourself only to the activities specified for each day, but to have one focus area for every day of the week. Of course, the days and activities allotted to them would change as per each individual.

Why forget?

One activity that would immensely benefit each one of us and yet does not need any additional investment, is to decide we will never have to use the statement "I forgot". With the plethora of reminder mechanisms available -- mobile alerts, email notification, web sites dedicated to generate reminders -- it's indeed amazing we still manage to forget anything.

All relationships, be it personal or professional, rely upon commitments. And nothing is more detrimental to a commitment than to forget it to begin with.

Boot Loader

As a kid, my morning routine was rather messy, doing things haphazardly, out of sequence, wasting the time. Very inefficient. 


Then, I read about boot loader, the program that loads operating system when you start up the machine. It performs many tasks in an elegant sequence, an orchestra of files being executed in an optimal manner. I was fascinated to see a machine working so logically and rather embarrassed about my own booting up process every morning.


Since then, for the last 20+ years, I have tried to stick to what works best for me. Of course, marriage has added some subroutines like PREPARE TEA, but otherwise it remains unchanged.

No ZERO days!

The single best productivity tip I ever received: No ZERO days. 

A "zero" day is when you don't do anything towards your target/plan/goal.

Take a vow to yourself: From today, from this moment onwards, you will live in a NON-ZERO system.

Feeling too tired to study? Read just one page of chapter. Don't have time to exercise? Do just one pushup.  But DO it.

Success doesn't come in a single day;  it's a result of long string of CONSISTENT NON ZERO days. 

Microsoft Converter

Since last couple of days, I have got quite addicted to an app called Microsoft Converter. It has 20 categories (area, speed, energy, currency, time, etc.) and each category has 10 units within which you can do conversions. 

Thanks to this app, now when am gently cruising at 60 kmph, I know am travelling at 0.05 Mach (speed of sound) or, that distance from home to office (2km) is equal to 1.34x10^-8 AU (distance between Sun and Earth).

Learning from the Enterprise

While writing the article “Agile at Home”, which put forward the idea of using Agile methodology in our family life, I realized that there was in fact much more to the corporate system that we could borrow and customize to enhance our personal productivity. This article is an attempt to explore some ideas in this direction.

Quarterly planning

We often make plans, small as well as grand plans, which fade into oblivion due to the lack of proper planning. Either we set too stringent deadlines that are practically impossible to meet, or on the other extreme, we do not set any time constraints at all, thus ensuring we never get the task done.

I feel that a quarter of the year (3-month period) is the perfect time-slice: It gives some breathing space to complete or at least make a good progress on any activity; and at the same time, it is short enough to bring some urgency in the execution.

Corporate Policies

Every organization has a set of policies in place. They are carefully documented, and shared with all the employees. Every new joiner is made aware of what constitutes ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as per the enterprise.

Of course, every family has their own set of values and rules; the only difference is that almost always they are of bespoken kind. I am not suggesting that every family should write down their code of ethics; but it would definitely help everyone to share a common set of philosophy. This could be conveyed via discussions at dinner table or in any other way that makes sense.

Emergency Procedures

This, in my opinion, is one of the most important points.

What to do in case something goes wrong: Whether to act on impulse, or to follow some guidance?

I strongly feel that every family member should be educated on what things can possibly can wrong, and what should be the proper response.

Of course, nature and destiny can strike us in ways we can never imagine. But it never hurts to be prepared for the known, and let our mind free to take on the unknown.

Know Thy Numbers

All organizations, big, small and medium-sized, focus on numbers: the bottom line, the top line, the margins, the revenues. At home, I feel, we could just as possibly pay some attention to numbers, albeit of a slightly different nature. More often than not, the family members at best have a fuzzy idea of finances, and it would help if – at least – the earning members clearly know where they stand in terms of income and expenditure.

Apart from money, there is another type of numbers that matter to us, or, should matter. The BMI, the creatinine level, HDL, LDL... And so on. These numbers become more and more important with senior folks in the family and it is imperative that we not only keep a good track of their status.

Annual budget

This is a bit tricky. All corporates (and governments, of course) have an annual budget. All the expected income and expected expenses are laid out and tallied. Some provision is also made for unexpected spending. This sets the financial tone for the whole year and acts as a guidance for low or high spending in any area.

I haven’t tried this yet; but with some discipline and careful planning, I see no reason why every household can’t have an annual budget of their own. This could be an inclusive-affair, with all the senior members of the family pitching in and working together to create an annual budget that meets everyone’s requirements.

There’s much more to learn from the enterprise, of course. Each of these points should have their own blog-posts; but I hope this at least got you started thinking. 

[Presentation] The ONLY 3 productivity tools you will ever need

About 4 years ago, I has posted a blog about the 3 productivity tools you will ever need.

It is heartening to see that this belief has stood steadfast and true over the years; even after four years, these three tools continue to make the biggest impact on my productivity.

I have now converted the blog article in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. It is available for viewing and download on SlideShare. 

Agile @ Home

Participating in various Agile-related activities in our office inspired me to think about implementing Agile approach in a rather unrelated field: our family.
The Agile philosophy contains some best practices, which, if adapted and customized slightly, can help us manage our personal lives in a more structured and productive manner.

Here is a write-up which outlines this approach.

Also available on SlideShare as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation:
http://www.slideshare.net/gautamsoman/agile-at-home

Introduction

Agile is an incremental, iterative methodology used widely in software industry. Agile @ Home is a proposed approach to bring in the best practices of this methodology into our daily lives. The objective is not to make our family life a formal, mechanical process, but to bring in a structured approach to get things done without causing undue stress.

Stakeholders

Product Owner (PO)

In Agile @ Office, Product Owner creates the product backlog.
In Agile @ Home, Product Owners are primarily responsible for guidance and monitoring. They should ideally be the senior-most member of the family. They can also be someone from outside the immediate family; but someone whom the family trusts and respects; and looks up to for advice.They should help Scrum Master to resolve conflicts.

Scrum Master (SM)

Ideally a enior member of the family. Role can be rotated among two equally senior-members (husband /wife) after every few sprints. They would be responsible for tracking progress of all tasks.

Scrum Team (ST)

All members of the family unit (except infants!). The Scrum Team members should be coached by Scrum Master on Agile processes. This can be done during Sprint 0 (zero).
Preferably not more than 7 members should be under one Scrum Master. ‘Pair working’ concept can be used: two folks working on a big task.

Agile Ceremonies

Product Backlog

Just as in Agile at Office, this is the most important step. All the stakeholders (PO, SM and ST) sit together and brainstorm about everything that family wants to achieve, in the short-, medium- as well as long term.
This should be done periodically, at least once a year. Creating a solid, comprehesinve Product Backlog sets expectations clear, brings everyone on same page.

Sprint Planning & Sprint Deliverables

During Product Backlog, all stakeholders decide on time-boxed unit for a sprint. Recommended time-box is minimum one month and maximum three months. At start of every sprint, all stakeholders agree to select a chunk of product backlog.
Each family member:

• Picks up the tasks at granular level. 
• Commits himself/herself to the selected task.
• Specifies exactly what they will deliver at the end of the sprint

Daily Scrum Meetings

DSMs are a crucial part of Agile @ Office.
For Agile @ Home, they can be held either at breakfast or dinner, when SM and ST are available. In case, it is not possible for SM and all ST to meet at a common time, SM must interact with each family member and keep track of progress.

Burndown Charts

Stakeholders can decide on a mechanism to track the progress.
Some approaches to track progress:

• Verbal updates
• Note pad/Diary
• Sticky notes on refridgerator
• Kanban boards 
• Excel sheets… 

Sprint Deliverables

Agile @ Office focuses on ‘working software’ at end of each sprint.
Agile @ Home focuses on significant, measurable progress on each task. It can be:

• A tangible, physical product 
• A recommendation for a specific product/item
• A ‘SMART’ plan for a long-term activity

Sprint Retrospective

All family members share their updates, preferably at a common meeting. Completed activities are discussed and agreed upon as DONE. Unfinished items are moved to the next sprint backlog.
Sprint Retrospective should preferably be clubbed together with next Sprint Planning.

Example Scenario

Stakeholders: 

• Grandparents: Product Owner(s)
• Wife: Scrum Master 
• Husband, daughter and son:  Scrum Team 

SM and ST visit PO for product backlog:

• Husband wants to plan a North India trip in December
• Wife wants to start a jewellery shop
• Daughter wants to go abroad for higher studies after her Masters degree
• Son wants the long-promised gaming console

The stakeholders decide on the sprint duration: 2 months

Each team member picks up tasks at granular level:

• Husband will identify holiday destinations and overall budget required
• Wife to analyse feasibility of jewellery shop in the locality
• Daughter to identify admission requirements and college names
• Son to compare Sony PS3, Nintendo and Xbox and come up with final recommendation

All the stakeholders decide on priorities

• Since admission dates are close by, daughter’s admission is top priority.
• Wife’s shop is a potential source of future income, hence next on list. 
• The gaming console was promised long ago, hence is included. 
• Last is the vacation plan. 

Over the period of sprint, the SM and ST have discussions over dinner.

After 2 months (sprint exit), all stakeholders meet.

• Daughter is ready with short-listed college names and admission details. The discussion is done and she will start with admission process in next sprint. 
• Wife informs that her analysis indicates that jewellery shop is not feasible due to presence of big brands in local vicinity. Hence idea is dropped. But there is much scope for a boutique. This will be analysed further. 
• Son specifies Xbox and provides reasons (many gaming titles, etc.)
• Husband informs that finances are not sufficient to meet all above requirements and the vacation; hence the vacation plan is moved to general backlog with a provision for an abroad trip to visit the daughter.

Sprint planning is done for the next sprint… and the cycle repeats.

Using OneNote

Ever since my early college days, I have been a regular user of notepads — those small, spiral-bound things that you can easily carry in your shirt pockets. The notepads were an immense help in tracking the studies and various activities.*

When I started my IT career, I was pleased to see Microsoft Outlook. It has a great Calendar feature and a neat Tasks feature++. For a while, it seemed to me that I wouldn't need anything more.

Yet even after a few months, I was still carrying my notepad around. The reason being that Outlook doesn't have any provision for free-form note-taking. Sure, you can always type out the content and save it as drafts, or mail it to yourself, but it only adds to the clutter.

So again I was back on the road, looking for a better tool. I tried using sticky notes (both the digital and paper kind), Google Docs, Evernote, but none seemed to work. **

On  joining my current project, I was intrigued to see my scrum master, Pradnya, using an application that looked familiar but couldn't quite place it. So I asked her, and she graciously walked me through it. And thus started my journey with perhaps one of my most favourite software tools: Microsoft OneNote. 

OneNote is a digital note-taking tool, and it comes bundled with Microsoft Office suit. In fact, it has been around since Office 2003 ( and hence the notion of my being familiar with it, even though I had never tried it before). It is organized as a typical notepad: you create a notebook, which has multiple pages, and each page contains one or more sections. You can move or merge sections and pages either within the notebook or across other notebooks.

You can do all sorts of things using OneNote: type in notes anywhere at random, capture a screenshot and insert it directly into the page, record audio or video, create free-form sketches or drawings. There is no need to manually save the document, the data is saved automatically as you type.

OneNote has a seamless integration with other Office products: you can email a page directly using Outlook, you can import your Outlook tasks into OneNote, you can directly insert Excel documents or Visio diagrams into OneNote, and so on.

Another powerful feature is the wide range of in-built tags: To-Do, Highlight, Remind me later, Critical, Idea and so on. 

The search feature is quite powerful: it can search across text, images and audio recordings.

OneNote also works as a superb collaboration tool. You can use it as a digital whiteboard and share notes with other users and edit each other's notes (with required access privileges). You can invite people to view/use your notebook, share the notebook with a meeting in progress or share it on Web as a link.

And of course, you can also password-protect your notebooks :)

With SkyDrive, all the notes are automatically saved to the cloud and are available on all the devices you use (for example: office desktop, personal laptop and smartphone). You can download and 'save' the entire notebook (with all its pages and sections) either as a OneNote file or a PDF and email it to other people.

I have been using three versions of OneNote till now: OneNote 2007 on my personal laptop, OneNote 2010 on my office desktop and OneNote 2013 on my phone#. In fact, having OneNote  was one of the prime considerations in choosing Nokia Lumia Windows Phone as my new smartphone.

I would highly recommend this tool to everyone. A quick tip: Add OneNote to your start-up programs list so that it is launched every time the machine boots up.

This blog was completely written in OneNote.
And, I don't carry a notepad anymore.

If you haven't tried OneNote yet, here are a few links to get you started:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/onenote/

http://www.onenote.com/ondc#

And if you're already using OneNote, these MSDN blogs would be of great help.

http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-onenote/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/descapa/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/: a very informative and educative blog by co-founder of OneNote

Mike Tholfsen, Test Manager for OneNote crafted this wonderful poem:

My one and only OneNote : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chris_pratley/archive/2006/09/06/my-one-and-only-onenote.aspx

---

* It is a matter of nostalgic joy to leaf through these pages.

++ It's another matter that I didn't have as many meetings back then. How I yearned for those, and man, how I wish these days to have lesser meetings so that I can get some meaningful work done.

** I am surprised that Evernote — which was quite a rage back then, and is widely popular even now, didn't work for me.

# Just as am about to post this article, my office desktop is already upgraded to Office 2013 ( and hence OneNote 2013) and my personal laptop got the Office 2013 as well via Microsoft HUP. Yay!!

Non-Goals

Some time back, I read an informative book titled “One Strategy”, written by Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft and Marco Iansiti of Harvard Business School. Apart from some fascinating insights into how the Windows Team came together to pull off a mega-project like Windows 7, the book also taught me some thought-provoking concepts. 

One of such concepts was “Non-Goals”. A non-goal is a scope-limiting attribute that explicitly states some objectives which will not be fulfilled.

Wikipedia has an entry for Non-Goal.

non-goal (plural non-goals)

1. A potential goal or requirement which is explicitly excluded from the scope of a project.

That's a hard problem, but it's a non-goal for us here.

We always talk about having definite goals, things that we will or should do. It seems counterintuitive to have a list of things we won’t do, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about the complex nature of most of the projects and communication issues between geographically-distributed teams.

In a scope-definition exercise at the start of any project, we usually focus on the things we are required to do. Having a section for non-goals helps to set the expectations of project team (and also of the client)!

For example, consider a scenario: Your project team is working on product planning.  After some consideration, you decide to develop the UI only in English language in the first release, and to localize the product in the subsequent releases. So, in this case, for the first release:

• Goal is delivery of English UI
•  Non-goal is localization support

This clears the scope of work, and avoids doubts in minds of the project team.

Non- Goals are directly related to strategy. It is easy to get carried away and vigorously nod “Yes, Yes, of course!” to everything that’s being asked of us, but it takes a certain amount to courage to say “No”!

Furthermore, defining the things you are not going to do enables you to focus on the ones that you are, and to ensure that you deliver these features with the best possible quality.

Steve Jobs, one of the best entrepreneurs of our times, famously remarked that “Secret to innovation comes from saying no to 1000 things.”

At the beginning of a new year, when many of us are usually excited about planning for the year ahead,  this concept brings a clarity to our thoughts, and reminds us that while we may have almost infinite things to do,  distinctiveness  (and hence success) often comes from doing less, and doing it better.

Productivity Meme - 1: Buffer

When one talks of productivity, there are a few basic concepts that recur frequently. The implementation of the idea might change; but the fundamentals remain the same. In this series, we will take a look at some of these concepts, which I refer to as memes.

In the first part of the series, we will take a look at Buffer.

What is a buffer? 

A buffer is a quantity over and above the required quantity. Buffers act as shock-absorbers against unforeseen issues. We often refer to keeping a buffer time; however, as we will see, there are a number of buffers.

Space buffer: 

While taking driving lessons, my instructor gave me a rule of thumb: When driving or when waiting in line at a traffic signal, you should keep your car in such a way that you can see the tyres of the car in front of you. 

This simple tip has helped me avoid crashing into another car more than a few times.

Moving into a new flat? Think twice before you fill up all the rooms with furniture that is currently available in the market. Apart from the things you will really need, it usually helps to wait a while and explore for options. You are likely to find better deals, better products in future; and personally speaking, a little bit of empty space isn’t a bad thing.

Money buffer: 

Planning to buy a laptop? It would help to keep some extra cash over and above your actual budget handy. Because I can almost guarantee that you are likely to overspend. The only thing that may differ is the margin.

Whenever you step into any shop, what you see is not really what you get. The product on display is adorned with various accessories, most of which come at an extra price. There is not much point in buying a laptop without antivirus software, or a car sans a cover.

Material buffer: 

Going out for monthly grocery shopping? Buy a little bit of extra than you really need for the next week/month. You benefit from buying things in bulk from a superstore, and can avoid hassles at home if some relatives drop in unexpectedly. 

Even if they don’t; the buffer helps you stretch your next shopping until the next paycheck comes in!

Emotional buffer: 

This one is tricky… Every one of us has a threshold for each of negative emotions; be it anger or worry. When things go beyond the threshold; the mental tensions begun to build up. One way to prevent emotional outbursts is to vent off these feelings before they reach the tipping point. 

Thus you give the other party some buffer to address the things bothering you; and you give yourself an emotional buffer to help things resolve before they become critical.

Deliverable buffer:  

One of my favourite quotes is: “Do your work… and a little bit more. The work will let you stay in place; but it is the ‘little more’ that will get you ahead".

Deliver what you have promised to the customer, and toss in a little bit of extra good stuff. Customer may or may not be happy with the stuff you promised, but he is likely to be delighted to see some unexpected goodies.

There is another facet to this. Consider you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation, and you have 10 slides ready. You are confident they would be sufficient for a 30-minute session. However, it always helps to keep extra stuff handy; it may be in the form of notes or some slides. My experience is that people usually finish what they have to say more quickly than they estimate, and then are left clueless about what to do next!

Time buffer: 

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, we are most familiar with the time buffer. Going for a meeting? Give yourself a buffer in which you can reach on time and relax. Estimating time required for providing a deliverable? Add some buffer time to the estimate to account for unforeseen reasons that may cause delays. 

A good rule of thumb here is to add 20% as the buffer time to every time estimate. You are mostly likely to need it. In the case that you don’t, you can perhaps think about doing some deliverable buffers!