The annual review - do you need some New Year Resolutions?

Well, we are now at the end of one year and are about to start a new one. What's more we are also about to enter a new decade.

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. It is too easy to make "promises" to yourself that you will lose some weight, become more organised, quit smoking or take on other admirable goals, but unless you also determine how you will do it, nothing happens.

I will however spend some time tomorrow listing what I have achieved in 2009. I will also include things that I think I am now doing reasonably well. I've noticed other productivity bloggers have published their annual review online, but I won't do that. This is for me, not anyone else sorry.

Then, I will also make a list of concerns I have, or things that I am not doing as well as I would like. Some of these may be to do with the relationships I have with family, my wife, work colleagues and friends. Some of them could be to do with my own fitness. No doubt there will be at least a couple regarding my finances and ensuring I am providing for my family in the future.

Last but not least though, I will then look at each of these concerns and establish initial actions to try and fix these and add them to my task list.

To the outsider, these may seem like another form of New Year's Resolution, but if I can at least define next actions and get them onto my regular to do list, there is a good chance I can make some real changes to my life in 2010.

Good luck with your plans for the New Year. For most of us, 2009 was a tough year, but I am sure 2010 will be better.

Some travelling tips from a travelling manager

Just in case you hadn't worked it out, I travel fairly regularly for business. In my case, it is mainly overseas, but I also fit in the odd domestic business trip as well. As we wind down for the end of the year, and I am on the tail end of my last business trip for 2009, here are a few useful tips and observations I've picked up over the years from my travels.


They are not in any particular order, but hopefully you might find some of them useful.


Use packing lists. I use a base one that covers all climates/trip types and I simply ignore what I won't need. I have it on the PC, so I can print it out and go for it, which allows me to pack at short notice if required without the risk of forgetting anything major. It also has some tasks listed on it, such as turn on my "out of office" message before leaving.

Maintain a travelling toiletry bag and top it up after each trip, then you can just grab it and throw it in your suitcase, ready to go.

Explore different packing techniques. I found a way of folding shirts, pants and jackets on coat hangers in my suitcase that really works for me. They pack quite thin, and I simply pull them out when I get to my destination, give them a flick with my wrist and hang them up, quickly and with few wrinkles. I know other people who use a bundling technique where shirts and trousers are placed inside one another and a jacket on the outside, which is then all folded up into one large single bundle. Another friend of mine still swears by rolling his clothes, like the way some backpackers do. Try googling and you will find a stack of different ways to fold and pack clothes, and chances are there is a way that will help you get more in with less wrinkles or be able to pack more quickly than you do now.

Also, a steaming shower is a good way to get rid of any major wrinkles your clothes have picked up along the way, and can also help freshen up a suit after its been trapped in your case for a while. Its amazing what a difference letting your clothes hang in a steamy bathroom for 10 - 15 minutes can make.

I tend to travel with one piece of check in luggage for my clothes and a carry on bag or small case for the laptop, paperwork etc. Some hardcore travellers do the carry on thing only. Either is fine, but I prefer to have a couple of extra clothing options rather than just one basic outfit with a spare shirt and having to make do with the same clothes for all occasions. It really isn't that inconvenient to pick up your suit case at the end of each flight and get it to where you are staying.

Carry your medication in your carry on. It is easier to keep up with your regular dosage requirements if your checked in luggage goes astray enroute.

Take advantage of usb charging. Use your laptop or if you want extra capacity, take along a small usb charger such as the apple one for your phone, Blackberry, handheld gaming, ipod, camera or batteries. Much easier than packing a single charger for every single gadget in your travelling kit.

Scan heavy business documents and store on your laptop for reading. Only take print outs for meetings where you won't have access to your PC. Maintain a small file of must have monthly reports, forecasts, inventory levels etc which is compiled every month as a separate spiral bound copy for meetings as required. Can be ditched at the end of the trip if you need extra space for shopping.

Buy cheap novels from second hand book stores or garage sales for the trip and ditch them after you have finished them. Again, it gives you some space and/or weight towards the end of the trip for shopping. I also like hiding my finished ones in hotel rooms for someone else to find.

I like movies and foreign TV can sometimes totally suck, so keep a couple of favourite flicks on your laptop or ipod/psp. I also pack a small media player in my main suitcase for some chill time when I am not working, but some hotel TVs won't accept having other devices plugged into them, so my laptop also helps out in that regard.

Maintain routines. If you are a regular exerciser, keep it up on your trip. Similarly if you like to meditate or spend regular thinking time on things. I do a weekly review in the office, checking my calendar, inboxes and project files a la GTD, so I do my best to maintain this when away and not let little things slip through my fingers. I also keep a red folder in my travel bag which acts as an inbox for things to be processed later, either on the trip or when I return home.

Stay on top of your expenses on a regular basis. It is too easy to shove a receipt in your wallet and later forget what it was for. A few minutes at the beginning or end of each day is easier than spending hours in the office days trying to figure out if you have captured everything. If I incur an expense that does not issue a receipt, such as subway tickets in some countries, I send my self an email on my Blackberry so that I can process this later and make sure I do not forget it.

There's nothing wrong with comfort food from your home country when you need a break from local cuisine, but most countries have some delicious specialties that will remain unknown to you unless you give them a try. Having said that though, I have been known to attack a burger or a decent steak like a madman after 7 days of straight sushi/sashimi in Japan, and I typically eat at a Hard Rock at least once in most places I go to. I like the food, and as I am a music junkie, I love the atmosphere as a place to chill out, no matter where I am in the world.

Try the local beverages too. I make it a habit to try the local beer everywhere I go, and there are some real beauties to be had!

Have a couple of reminders of home/family with you, perhaps photos on your phone or laptop. It's amazing how useful they are at reminding you why you do what you do when you are tired, lonely or homesick when "on the road".

There are three letters that can make your travelling in strange locations so much easier. GPS. Get it on your phone, or make sure your next phone has it. My Blackberry runs Google Maps nicely, and while there are some global roaming charges associated with using it, I have lost track of how many times I have come out of a subway somewhere via the wrong exit, and can not recognise any of the landmarks, so I whip out my phone, let it get its coordinates, enter where I want to go, and then I can start heading straight there. If you are planning to do any serious driving though, hire a car with a navigator included or bring your own. They handle this task better than a phone.

I wish I could tell you that I have the easy answer to jetlag, but I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't exist. There are some things you can do to minimise the impact, but just like how a night shift worker can not typically change from day shift to night shift without taking some time to adjust, as a traveller you can not expect your body to snap ahead or behind by 8 hours or so without feeling it. I find if I do the normally recommended things like setting my watch to the destination time before take off, and try to have my meals and a nap in sync with where I am going rather than where I have come from, it is not so bad. Once I have landed, if it is day time I spend time outside walking around in the sun light to get my body clock used to the idea that it is time to be up. I also stick to the local meal times and bed time as much as possible. If I must nap during the day because I am tired, I stick to a 15 minute power nap only, and use an alarm to get back up.

There also have been some studies that found that if you fast for 12 - 16 hours before breakfast time in the destination time zone, and then eat your three meals on the first day you are there, it really helps you reset your body clock. I have generally found this to be true as well, but it can be hard to pull off if you have skipped a meal on a previous flight, and start to get really hungry in that 12 hour period before local breakfast time if you can't sleep.

The key thing is, if business travel is a regular part of your life, make it work for you, as an integral part of the whole you. If you treat it as an extra, it will always be just that, and before you know it you will be sick to death of travelling, and it will become painful and tiring. Instead, accept that you now one of the many people out there who spend a reasonable portion of their life travelling to new locations, and embrace it, enjoy it. It is a lot easier to travel and get things done once you accept that travel is part of your normal life, and you maintain your routine while you are doing it.

Media Players - a godsend for the travelling movie buff

As you might have been able to guess from this blog title, and from my profile, I travel a fair bit for work, and I also happen to enjoy movies. I love watching movies of all genres, and can usually get something out of watching anything, from a trashy piece of straight to DVD, to an absolute classic. The ultimate though is when I come across a movie I have never heard of before, and find a real gem.

There are few things that beat catching a really great piece of film for the first time with people I am close to, be it my wife, my kids, good friends or a great bunch of mates. I sometimes enjoy my movies on a very basic primitive level, reveling in the action, gore or comedy. Other times I get more involved at a cerebral level and consider the characters, the story that is being told and the point being made by the screen writers, directors and producers. Last, but not least it can be a real joy seeing actors apply their craft and breathe life into a character.

I try to watch movies whenever I can, but this is harder when I am travelling. Yes, I can catch the odd movie on planes, but it isn't quite the same on a small screen. I also sometimes will go out of my way to catch a movie in the local cinema somewhere when I am overseas. As long as the feature is shown in English, it can be a lot of fun to sit amongst people from another country in their home city, and enjoy their reactions/participation in the cinema as well as the movie itself. (I saw Braveheart in Scotland, which was one of those experiences I will never forget.)

Lately though, I have been travelling with a media player, and it has quickly become an essential part of my luggage. I have travelled with an iPod classic for years, and I used to regularly keep a few movies encoded on it so that I could plug it into a hotel TV and watch a movie when I needed a break. It worked well, but it relied on me being organised and having some movies on it, or re-encoding something to watch via my laptop, which was a pain. I would sometimes watch something on my laptop instead, which can also work quite well, but it is never as comfortable as lying back and watching it on the TV in my room.

I now have a WD TV Mini, which is a small media box with a remote control, into which you can plug in a USB drive and watch media files on a TV. It can play virtually anything that is not encoded in an HD resolution. I always have heaps of files available as Xvids, Mpeg2, DVD isos, VOBs, H264, MKVs (SD only) and the Mini can play all of these without even thinking about it. If the screen you are using supports it, you can even use component inputs and the Mini will upscale into 1080i. We need to be clear here, the Mini can not play back HD files, for that you need one of the other WD media players, but it can upscale your SD media nicely. If subtitles are your thing for catching your favourite foreign flicks, all the common soft subtitle formats are supported as well.

Any downsides? I wish it did support HD playback as I also have a bunch of bluray rip MKVs which I can't take on the road with me to play on the mini. I have plenty of other format files though, and in the end I am prepared to give up HD for the nice small compact size of the mini. Also, if your files have a DTS soundtrack, it can only pass the sound through to a DTS receiver through its TOSLink port. It will readily downmix AC3 and others into stereo but if you are stuck on a trip and your file has a DTS soundtrack, there are plenty of free utilities that can take a DTS soundtrack and remux it into AC3 in a few minutes so you can then watch it.

If you travel, and you love your movies, one of these, or another similar spec'd player for under $100 is a bargain, and it will become a permanent part of your travel kit.

My new found love for WD media players does not end here. I do also have a WDTV HD Live player for home, which absolutely kicks butt. It does everything the Mini does, plus it has HD and network streaming, but I'll perhaps rave about that another time.

Enjoy.

PS: In case you are wondering, I am not sponsored or have any commercial ties to WD, I simply came across these media players by myself and felt they were worth mentioning.

Considering what is going through someone else's mind

My family was walking through the city tonight. We thought we would do a bit of Christmas shopping, grab some dinner and then look at the Christmas lights. The lights in Perth are traditionally not a huge deal, but checking them out always reminds you that Christmas is coming, and it's something we like to do together as a family.

While walking through Perth, we came across some people who my wife used to know from her last job. I won't go into the details here because it is not important, but let's just say that her departure from that job was not planned or pleasant, but at least she exited on her terms, and moved on. She chatted with them for a while, asked how the shop where she worked was going and then we headed off to get some dinner.

About 10 minutes later, my wife was starting to get quite short with both me and my two daughters, and within about 5 minutes after that, it was hard to converse with her, because my daughters and I couldn't basically say the right thing when it came to expressing what we felt like for dinner etc.

It would have been easy to react straight back at her, or allow the situation to fester into an argument in the middle of town and ruin the evening for all of us, which to be honest is what nearly happened. As we were ordering dinner, we briefly separated into two groups to get our food. It became clear while I was waiting that this was not my normal, cheerful wife, and that something had happened. The chat with her former associates from her last job had dredged up some very raw emotions that we thought were a thing of the past.

...and as we sat down for dinner, we talked about it, everybody including my daughters expressed their regret, and we got on with enjoying the rest of our family evening.

I think it is important that when we are interacting with others, whether they be our partners, our friends, our customers, our work colleagues or even our enemies/competitors we consider what is going in their minds and take that into account when dealing with their reactions to our statements, expressions and behaviour. This might seem like stating the bleeding obvious, but when we get caught up in the heat of the moment, it is too easy to overlook, and then everyone can end up reacting inappropriately and drive the situation to a very unrewarding conclusion for all concerned.

So the long and the short of this post is that my wife is now relaxing and putting the negative bits of our trip to the city behind her, and concentrating on the positive, enjoyable family time we had with shopping and checking out the Christmas lights.

I am going to make sure I keep an eye on her for the next few days to be comfortable that she is ok.

...and try to remember to be aware of what might be happening in someone's mind when I am caught by surprise by how they react to something I've said or done.

Later.

Nothing like a project to bring a family together

Our family is going through an interesting time at the moment. We decided to go ahead with extensions on our house. We could have taken the easy route, and move out while the construction was underway, but no, that would be too easy, so we opted to save some money and stay.

It's been an interesting experience so far, to say the least. The changes are quite extensive, including tearing down effectively half of the house and then rebuilding it further out to give us a much larger kitchen for my wife and a slightly bigger home theatre for me. The driving force for these changes however were my daughters needing bigger bedrooms as they approach their teenage years. To that end, we are also adding a second storey which will feature a new master bedroom for my wife and myself, so that our eldest daughter can then move into our old master bedroom, and we will then knock down the wall between our two existing daughters' bedrooms, effectively turning them into one double size bedroom for our youngest.

At the end of the construction, it will all look fantastic, and I have no doubt that we will be very happy with our "new" home. The only challenge in the meantime, is that we have had to move everything into half of our original house space, and then live with dust and noise as the other half gets demolished and rebuilt. There is also the problem of keeping comfortable during periods of no roof over some of the area where we are still living, and trying to keep our clothes etc relatively clean. We are also also living without a true kitchen, which has also kept things interesting, but we have put together a very basic camp style kitchen using our outdoor camping stove and a basic tub on a table as a kitchen sink. It's basic, but it works.

We will have to keep living like this for another 2 - 3 months, but I think we will make it, and our family will be stronger for it. There are definitely times when we all want it to stop and get our house back, but at the same time we are taking on the challenges of making do with less, and on the whole enjoying the adventure together.

My daughters are getting a little fed up going to see kitchen fit out stores and lighting shops as we seem to spend most weekends choosing light fittings, and tapware etc for the new kitchen and other new rooms, but even this has brought us closer together as we go out and between all of us have some say in how the new parts of the house will be decorated and fitted out.

...and we are all waiting to reap the rewards when it is finished. My wife in her new open plan kitchen, my daughters in their new larger bedrooms and me in my new home theatre. It has only been a few weeks so far, and I am already missing my 132" screen and projector setup. The television we have is not a bad size, but it is just not quite the same...

Projects like this, taken on as a family, or challenges taken on by a work team from the office can sometimes stretch relationships, but seeing it through and enjoying the final outcome makes it all well worth it.

You never know, but you might also just grow a little more out of the experience as well.

Later.

Sorry for the lapse

Firstly, I must apologise for the insufferable delay between posts. As I mentioned last time, I came down with another case of iritis last month, and I have only just now got to the point where my vision is clear again. It has been steadily improving, and the pain subsided fairly quickly once the combination of drops I was prescribed started to take hold, but things were still quite blurry for the while, which made detailed work like typing and proof reading difficult.

As a result, I kept putting off sitting in front of the PC and writing this post.

Thankfully it is better now though, and I will endeavour to get back to regular posting. All being well, I'll add something more significant in coming days, rather than coming weeks.

From this I have also learnt however that taking care of myself is important, and I should also consider "little and often", rather than longer more detailed posts. I am sure I could have gotten back to this sooner than now, if I was prepared to do some small posts in the meantime.

Later.

Know your own body.

I've been reminded in this last week why it is so important that you know your own body. It is so easy when you are busy with work and family, to ignore any signals that your body might be trying to send to alert you that there may be a problem. Unfortunately, you ignore these at your peril.

I have ankylosing spondilitis or AS for short. I was first diagnosed approximately 15 years ago when I started to suffer joint and lower back pain, and after eventually getting to a specialist and receiving a correct diagnosis, I was able to get on with life, and most people who know me would not be aware that I even have AS, unless they happens to catch me during one of my rare moments of inflammation.

Last weekend however, I could feel a strange stabbing pain in one eye, which became more prevalent when I stepped outside into the sunlight, or focused on something close by with my left eye. I looked at it closely in the mirror and it seemed similar compared to my right eye in appearance. I persisted with this for a couple of hours, but realised that it was getting worse, not better, so I went around to the local emergency centre in the small country town I was in at the time. I was quite certain I was getting the initial symptoms of iritis. The doctor on duty was not sure, but when I explained that I had experienced iritis once previously and also had AS, he decided it was better to be safe than sorry and gave me some steroid eye drops. Once my eye settled down a bit, I drove home, and saw my own doctor who confirmed the diagnosis.

So now I am sitting here with one fully dilated eye with 2 hourly eye drops. It's painful, but I'm on the road to recovery.

Know your body. If you want to be successful in life, and enjoy time with your family, it will be ever so more difficult if you let yourself fall into ill health through ignoring symptoms. Your health is the biggest asset and most powerful resource you have. It is really important that you listen to what it is trying to tell you, and look after it.

Later.

(Image courtesy of www.iritis.org.)

Mark Forster has been at it again - Autofocus

Those of you who have followed my previous postings before, know that I have been playing around with different task list systems. I basically use the principles of GTD, but the way I process my task list tends to follow Autofocus. It seems to work quite well for me, most of the time. I sometimes find I either end up doing too much backlog, or too much immediate/urgent type stuff, but I am sure I am not alone in trying to get the balance right.

Since late last year, Mark has introduced Autofocus, and then two revisions before coming to the current version, which is now AF4. Here is a link to the latest AF4 news, with a demo pdf "animation" which shows how the system works, and here are Mark's initial instructions. I think the notes for version 4 are not as obvious as his previous versions, but I also get the impression there is a clearer version to come, and the one posted at the moment is a quick draft to get the system out there.

I am going to move over to AF4 and then report back how it goes, because it might just fix my balancing problem between urgent and backlog/long term tasks.

If you want to give it a go, work your way through Mark's web site, but if you are completely new to AF, I suggest you read through the earlier versions too, so that you understand the background as to why it is reported to work. The forums are also very good reading, as you will come across many others who are using the system, the problems they have experienced and how they got around them. It might save you a fair bit of time and effort, but at the same time, like any productivity system, you do in the end need to make it work for your own specific situation, which will be different from anyone else's.

What is also impressive, is that Mark publishes this for free. Despite having written and successfully sold books in the past, he seems happy to put this out there for everyone's benefit at the moment, which is admirable to say the least.

Later.

Blocked by the Great Firewall?

Hi there,

I am sorry that I haven't posted of late. I've been travelling through China, and for whatever reason I could not, for love nor money, get onto Blogger and post. The conspiracy theorist inside of me assumes it was blocked by the Chinese firewall we hear about sometimes, but it could have been technical difficulties elsewhere. I will probably never know.

I did however enjoy my time in China very much just as I always have previously. It is an amazing country that is really going places. It is steeped deep in culture and history, yet also at the cutting edge of new development. If you haven't been there, you must go and experience this for yourself, for business or for pleasure.

In any event, I am typing this now on the way back home in an airport lounge, but I will be home soon, and will then get back to posting more regularly.

Cheers.

On the road again

Hi there. I'm on the "road" again, or at least catching planes, and this will be the first time since I started this particular blog that I have done that.

One of the challenges I always find when travelling, is keeping up with my required tasks and projects. It isn't just a time thing, it is also one of focus and context. When I was a 100 % GTD zealot, I used to struggle with context. When I was overseas, was I at "work", or at "computer" or "email"? I used to have a "travel" context to capture things I was going to specifically target to get done while away, but I would then start to miss reviewing my "work" or "email" contexts often enough and things ended up being missed.

The last two trips, I used Autofocus, and I must admit this made a huge positive difference. At the time I was still getting a feel for it, and wasn't using it as consistently as I am now. Hopefully this time, it will work even better, but let's see. I like how it isn't as reliant on context, so that is probably the key that makes it work better for me when travelling. I actually use RAF, or the Revised Autofocus process as described in the above link, and this seems to capture urgent (such as recent email and phone message requests) while still allowing me to work my way back or forwards and tackle other projects, and bits and pieces.

Watch this space, and if I am more on top of things, you should see another post within the next 7 days. After I return home, I will certainly also follow up with a review of how my current system fared as well.

Until then, later.

PS: ...and I am already missing my ripstik.

Learn from trying something different

There's been a couple of instances lately, where I have tried something different, and learned from the experience. In one case, I was nervous about trying something, and probably wouldn't have done it unless I was pushed into it, and the other was something that I chose to do.

In both cases however, I came out from the other side of the experience, having gained something positive from it.

The first example was something I have never wanted to do, and had never really thought of even trying it. If you have read my profile, you will know that I travel overseas regularly for business, including the US. Whenever I have been there, I have always really enjoyed myself and have found the people I meet friendly, polite and very easy to get along with. I have however always had to rely on public transport or taxis to get around.

Recently, I went to the US to attend a trade show in San Diego, and my wife came along (minus the kids) to do a little sight seeing, and have a little holiday while I was attending the show. She also wanted to explore on the weekend, and proposed we hire a car. The mere suggestion of doing this made me break out in a cold sweat. I simply could not imagine myself driving in the US on the wrong side of the road (as far as Australians are concerned), nor was I brave enough to consider driving in LA or San Diego in what I assumed would be much busier traffic than sleepy old Perth, Western Australia. I also couldn't imagine stepping off a 20 something hour flight from Perth to LAX, jumping into a car at the airport, and driving from LAX to San Diego without having some sort of incident along the way!

We really wanted to cover some ground on the weekend after the show though, so my wife managed to twist my arm and convince me to hire the car. She used cunning arguments like "Don't worry, it will be Sunday morning when we arrive and the traffic will be quiet..." and "You'll have me helping you, I'll keep an eye on the traffic and where we are going."

As the day got closer, I was getting more nervous, but I also accepted that it was going to happen, and couldn't get out of it now.

How did it go? It went remarkably well. When I first got off the plane and started heading down the freeway to San Diego, it felt very strange and I kept having to force myself to check my mirrors etc because they simply weren't in the places where my eyes naturally wanted to go. I also found I was drifting in my lane from time to time, and getting a little too close to vehicles in adjacent lanes. My wife however kept me honest, and before we knew it, we made it to San Diego. On other days, we drove around a fair bit, and I actually started to find it very enjoyable. It was much easier being in charge of my own destiny, being free to drive anywhere, whenever I wanted, without having to rely on others.

I did have three "uh oh" moments where I forgot what side of the road I was driving on. Nothing particularly scary, more embarrassing really. The best one was where I parked in front of a hotel, hopped out, quickly checked in and then jumped back in the car to go and park it. I put on the seat belt, went to put the key in the ignition...

...and found myself on the passenger side of the car.

In the end, I absolutely enjoyed the challenge and the freedom of driving in the US, and I will now hire a car pretty much everytime I go there. I actually saved money this last time around compared to catching cabs everywhere.

The other new experience was when my daughter bought herself a Ripstik about 3 weeks ago. For those of you who are not aware, they are all the rage with kids at the moment and you will see them all over the place here, particularly along bike paths, parks and skateboarding areas and the like. I used to ride a skateboard when I was a kid and thought that these look like good fun, but not something I could do now without seriously hurting myself.

My daughter (11) had trouble getting going with hers, so I surfed You-tube, and picked up a few tips about learning how to ride one of these deadly contraptions. I then helped Emily to get onto hers and ride it a little while holding on to me. After a few attempts however, she was sick of falling off whenever she let go, and went inside.

I saw the Ripstik sitting there, and couldn't help myself. It looked like so much fun on You-tube and it had been about 20 years since I was last on a skateboard, so I gave it a go...

...and fell off.

I tried again and came off, this time taking a bit of skin off my palms as I fell to the ground.

I then tried one more time, and I manage to roll all the way down the patio before I came to a semi controlled stop. I was bitten by the Ripstik bug!

The next day, we went to a car boot sale, and there was a cheap and slightly battered Ripstik lookalike which I bought for about one third the price of Emily's. From that day on, we have been regularly trying to learn how to ride our Ripstiks together at home, in parks and anywhere else the opportunity presents itself. Neither of us are exactly carving up the pavement like you see in the videos, but we can both get going now without assistance and ride along quite confidently and dodge obstacles etc, without hurting ourselves. We're having an absolute ball, and it is quality time where we spend learning something new together.

Both of these experiences have made me realise that as we get older, it is very important that we keep trying new things. It helps us by keeping our minds active, making us more aware of things outside our normal spheres of influence and experience and it gives us opportunities to do things with those we love. It's a win win situation, and if something doesn't end up working out, we have still gained by having the new experience in any event.

So the next time you are confronted with a challenge, I suggest you embrace it, and learn something from it, rather than decide it is too hard. You won't regret it. All of this has also made me realise it is healthy to set yourself new challenges, or new things to try on a regular basis.

It can be riding a RipStik, it can be driving in a foreign country on the wrong side of the road, it can be trying out Linux for the first time, or learning a new language. The opportunities to learn are endless.

Later.

PS: There were two things that really made driving on the "wrong side" of the road much easier. Firstly, I took my TomTom navigator with me, so the worry of not knowing where I was going was completely taken away. I just followed its directions blindly without caring if it did or didn't feel right. The other was a hint I received from someone, which was to always remember that the driver had to be on the inside of the road. This made remembering which side of the road to turn into for a left vs right turn semi-automatic, thereby removing the other main worry when driving on the other side for the first time. Just keep yourself always towards the innerside of the road (not the outside edge) and you pretty much can't go wrong!

Spending quality time on a task

I was asked to prepare a product marketing strategy the other day. In my mind, such a strategy is normally presented as a fairly detailed document with sections on market analysis, arguments on where your product should be positioned within that market, and then a set of long term actions/goals that need to be aimed for, in order to get your product where it needs to be. The document will then conclude with another set of shorter term actions, which form your tactics to start implementing your strategies.

Unfortunately, as is often the case at the moment, I was given a fairly short deadline, and I also had a number of other tasks to complete (such as a 5 year sales forecast) so I had one full day to submit this marketing strategy document.

As you can imagine, I went into full report writing mode. I quickly fleshed out a skeleton of what I needed to cover as a very rough mind map, and then started populating the sections. I was basically composing on the fly, and was typing out section after section, paying little heed to formatting, and occasionally switching across from Word to Excel, to churn out a few sypporting tables and charts.

At the end of the day, the report was effectively written, but was still in only a rough form that needed some extensive proof reading, formatting and a decent tidy up before it could be submitted. I realised that I was not going to meet my deadline, but because it was set as close of business on the Friday, I knew that I could tidy it up over the weekend and email it in, so it would still be in place when the office reopened.

All the same, I decided to do the right thing, and advise the recipient that it would not be in their hands by close of business, but it would in their inbox for the start of business on their next working day. It was then that I was caught by suprise.

"Thanks, but we don't need a full marketing strategy document. All we require are perhaps 3 or 4 Powerpoint slides with broad bullet points covering the key part of your product marketing strategy going forward. As long as you get something to us by Monday, all should be fine."

I had a mixed response to this at first. I felt stupid for putting so much effort into it, and not obviously taking the time to determine just what was required. I felt relieved that not quite hitting the deadline wasn't seen to be a problem. Finally, I felt frustrated because I had "wasted" a fair bit of time and effort writing up a detailed document.

I then realised that it had actually worked out well however. My day of pounding away at the keyboard proved to be a good exercise in getting my thoughts together on the topic. I had also written many powerful phrases (well at least to me) that captured the essence of my marketing strategy, with sound arguments and backing information. The exercise of then taking this information and putting into a handful slides was easy in the end, and I actually think my submitted strategy is all the better for it.

What did I learn from this experience?

1. It is important to understand exactly what are the deliverables when you agree to provide some output for someone, be it a marketing strategy, a production report, a budget presentation or whatever. It will save a heap of frustration on both sides later on.

2. It is also however very beneficial to spend a lot of quality time, working through your main arguments for a report or presentation as if you are having to provide a lot of fine detail, even if the final output is relatively simple with only broad main points required.

3. The act of generating all the background information and arguments, and actually typing them up, or capturing them in writing does truly help crystallise the important facts that need to be covered even at a higher level.

I won't always have the time to spend the same amount of effort working through detail for what might end up being a simple, high level presentation or report, but when I can work through it as if it is a detailed document, the end result will always have much better developed main points, supported with well thought out arguments.

Later.

Linux revisited

A little while ago, I posted about my initial experience of using Ubuntu on an old box here at home. It worked remarkable well straight off the CD, and it didn't take long for me to get used to it and appreciate the capabilities of this free operating system.

After a while though, I started to recall some of things that made me drift away from Linux a few years ago, when I tried it then in the form of Red Hat and Mandrake. Any long term user of Windows who has strayed into Linux will know what I mean. Things like some function or application not working quite the way it did last time, because something else has changed a configuration file somewhere, and upset the balance of the universe. If it was Windows, it would crash, where as Linux will actually still work, but not quite as you want, and the fix is not always obvious so you end up just putting up with it. Later, you might decide to try a cool new window manager that you've read about, but then decide you don't like it, so you switch back, and again, the system doesn't quite work the way it did before. Yes, it runs without errors, but it isn't quite as smooth as before, or your preferences aren't saved between sessions, or similar.

Windows might not be as reliable as one would like, and security can be an issue, but if anything, it is consistent, and Linux still doesn't quite live up to that, yet...

It's getting much better than before though, and I am sticking with it this time.

I recently installed the latest Ubuntu on my Lenovo IdeaPad, and it runs beautifully. I also removed Ubuntu on the old box at home and replaced it with the Xfce community edition of Linux Mint, and it runs smooth as silk. For those cats who curiosity is getting the better of them, or you have tried Linux before and moved back to Windows, now is a good time to try again.

Is Linux better than Windows? I'd still say no overall.

But Windows isn't better than Linux either. They are both...different.

Sometimes you just have to say no

I've had a pretty full on last few days. It's budget time at work, and I have been spending a lot of my day and night time trying to get it finalised. Even now, after this post, I will need to get back to it and hopefully put it to bed.

Today out of left field, a request came in from a colleague for another report, with a very short deadline. I was stunned that I was even asked, given that everyone knows that most managers are swamped with budgets at the moment. Didn't they know I was preoccupied trying to meet my deadline?

I politely explained that we didn't have the resources to quickly assemble the information they were looking for, and returned to my budget.

The request came again, albeit slightly modified to make it easier to achieve, and I felt under pressure to somehow find a way to get it done, which to be honest made me feel quite stressed.

Rather than dance around it again, I got straight to the point. "I don't have the time for this because I am doing the budget. I can only do your report, or our 5 year budget, not both, and I am choosing the budget. Sorry."

I waited for the push back, or raised voices insisting I drop what I was doing and put the report together...

Thankfully though, they got the message and left me alone.

What's the point of this post? Sometimes you just have to be upfront, and rather than try to defer a request politely, demonstrate that you can't do it right now. You save the additional time of having to refuse it a second (or even a third) time, and you make it clear that you are busy on something important and the interupter will hopefully leave you alone.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my budget...

Later.

Blu ray - I love this format

Readers of my older blog, would know that I purchased a Blu ray burner a while ago, and while I found the digital rights restrictions a royal pain, the video and audio quality is mind blowing, and even on my 720p projector (rather than 1080p), it leaves DVD for dead.

One of the problems with the format is that it is difficult to view it elsewhere. I became quite used to watching my DVDs on all sorts of devices ranging from my iPod, PSP, PC, home theatre to my laptop on the road, or even streaming it to TVs in other rooms of my house.

None of this is immediately possible with Blu ray because it is relatively difficult to rip, compress or basically transfer or transcode it to something else, apart from using another Blu ray device.

I think I've now found the answer to that problem, with Ripbot264. I'm currently in the middle of some tests, and once I'm happy with it, I'll come back with a basic guide. I have it working now so that I can compress movies into 4 - 8 Gb mkv files, which are nice for media storage with minimal loss of quality. I'm also going to play with shrinking it further for playback on a couple of other devices around the home, including less powerful PCs that choke on HD.

Later.

Core Human Skills

I came across this post the other day on one of my favourite sites, The Personal MBA.


I can really relate to this site, which promotes using self learning and your own business networking opportunities for your personal development, rather than spending an extraordinary amount of time and money, completing an MBA at one of the well known business schools. I particularly support the argument that this should not been seen as a cheaper, or quicker way to get the equivalent of an MBA, but it is in reality a superior approach. A big claim yes, but the more I read from this site, the more I agree with it.

I have not put myself on the personal MBA program yet, but it is in my plans...

But I digress.

In this specific post, Josh lists a set of core human skills, that I believe really nails it. These are core skills that if you can master, you can go as far as you want to go, or do anything that you put your mind to, in the organisation of your choosing. Also, your peers, superiors and subordinates will respect you.

Like any of these productivity/self improvement type posts, they may seem obvious, but it is always good to see a list like this, just to remind us of the skills we should always be aware of, and be seeking to develop.

Information-Assimilation

Writing

Speaking

Mathematics

Decision-Making

Rapport

Conflict-Resolution

Scenario-Generation

Planning

Self-Awareness

Interrelation

Skill Acquisition

Rather than steal Josh's thunder, why don't you visit his post and get the detail to each of these skills yourself.

Then it's time to ask, how many of these skills am I proficient in, and how many do I need to work on?

Later.

PS: and just to add to the post below, the other thing to remember is that you know more they do...

Public speaking - a quick and dirty way to beat those nerves

I wouldn't describe myself as an accomplished public speaker, but I certainly need to give talks and presentations from time to time to customers, colleagues, subordinates, peers and my superiors.

It's never what I would call easy, but I find that as long as I am prepared, it is not that hard to stay on song and get the message across.

Despite spending a lot of time preparing, and being completely familiar with the topic however, I can still get a little nervous, particularly when I have to speak in front of people I have never met before. In fact I have a speaking engagement tomorrow morning, and apart from a couple of people I know from the industry, most of the audience will be completely new to me.

How am I going to stay cool, calm and collected, and perhaps even smile occasionally?

Simple...I'll do what I always do. It works every time.

I'll just look at some of the people in the crowd, and imagine them in their underwear!

As I say, it works everytime.

Later.

Hi there

Welcome to my new blog, courtesy of Blogger/Google (thanks guys). I've been on and off the web in the past, and basically blog in order to practice my writing as much as anything. I can't help but think there is still a great novel deep down in me somewhere, and I've always been one to write emails that are just a little too long or write reviews for others, almost just for the sake of it.

My web publishing started with a small web site I kicked off in 1996, called Den's den of Quake, where I would review one single player Quake or Quake 2 map per week. The site is now long gone, but I still see my name pop up in the odd text file from some of the older Quake downloads from time to time. (Thanks Neil.) I also had a sister site, called Den's den of Duke to cover user made Duke Nukem maps, but it never received the same attention from myself or the gaming community so it was retired.

Through my little website, I managed to score a brief stint as a game reviewer for the Australian edition of PC Gamer. This was a lot of fun, but also harder than I thought. Yes, I was sent games for free to review, but I was expected to play them all the way through in as short a time as possible, and give a thoughtful review. I used to find it enjoyable for big title games I was interested in, but it was bloody difficult when it came to being sent some very ordinary piece of gaming software that history would soon forget. Unfortunately PC Gamer made a good go of it, but it couldn't crack into an already fairly limited market space in Australia occupied by two other publications, PC PowerPlay and Hyper, and after about 13 issues, it went out of business, which was a shame.

More recently I turned to a basic blog, just to keep my writing brain active as much as anything.

I've only ended up here because my existing blog has just stopped working. When I decided to try and blog on a semi regular basis, I opted to host my own at the time, using Greymatter on my allocated webspace included with my internet account at iinet. The pages are still there if you want to check them out.

The Greymatter engine however appears to have fallen over, and to be honest, wasn't giving me what I really wanted anyway. I could try a little harder to fix it, as it is probably just a broken script or perhaps some changed permissions, but I think in reality it is a sign for me to try something else, so here I am!

My profile already describes me fairly well, but in essence I am a 40 something year old husband and father of two, who loves gadgets and generally just finding stuff on the web to try out. I also really enjoy movies and music of all genres, and while I come from a technical/engineering background, I turned my back on a professional music career early on, so I do have that fairly unusual mix of left brain/right brain, science vs arts aspect to me, and I am equally comfortable talking about both. Lately, as I have had more at stake with my career in management, I am also paying more attention to my personal productivity. So yes, I can sometimes get a little preoccupied with how well my own application of GTD is progressing, and more recently I have been dabbling in Autofocus as well.

Maybe one day I will get that novel out, but in the meantime, I'll keep practicing expressing myself through my ramblings as a travelling manager.

Later.

PS: I must say for my first posting, the tools here at Blogger make it very easy. I'm starting to wonder whether I should have switched to this ages ago!