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.