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What is it that you like the most about your current job?

This is a question I like to ask people I meet. I like the sparkle in the eye, as I see the brains working to find the most wonderful thing about their job. I can almost see the thoughts rushing through, going through the gate of "is this answer good enough?". Because what people have been telling me is mostly a very simple answer: they feel empowered.

But when does one feel empowered? When the individual's values are aligned with the values of the company he is working for. Simon Sinek has been talking about this in his TED talk about the power of "why", Jerry Porras touched the subject in his Leadership and vision talk, Steve Jobs has been talking about how core values keep him going.

So why is it that we still do not take into account the company values when we apply for a new job, or when we ponder why we don't grow in a job? I would guess that one reason is that individuals do not necessary stop to ask what their values are. Especially nowadays, people are happy to get a job. Only a few are actually selecting the companies that they apply to or choose to stay in. What would happen if you are very environmentally conscious, and the company would use paper cups all the time, print when not necessary, not recycle? How would you feel? How would this affect your motivation and productivity? How about your relationship with your colleagues?

Imagine that the people around you do not care about some beliefs that you simply cannot exist without. How would your relationship with them be affected? How would your commitment to your own work be affected? What would this mean in terms of company targets and own targets?

Do me a favor. Next time when you check the company's website, spend 2 minutes to read about the company values. Ask yourself, am I and the company on the same page? Do we share the same beliefs? It's just like a marriage: you need a strong foundation to have a fulfilling relationship.

A good day should start with a coffee and an action plan. The coffee is easy to get from any coffee shop or kitchen, but when it comes to the action plan, there is no one size fits all. At work, the action plan is given by the tasks that you are entrusted with. But outside work, usually there is no action plan.

Let me tell you a story.

Not long ago, I was going from task to task, fulfilling what I had on my list, and trying to relax in the remaining time. I was receiving good reviews, and that made me think that I'm doing well. I always had the drive to develop myself, but I didn't know which way to go. I was a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities and I changed my decision about my next step depending on what article I was reading or what inspiring person I was listening to. I wasn't really having any progress.

Last year, something happened. I understood what I needed to be able to build my action plan.

And it's as simple as understanding what my strengths and my weaknesses are, and knowing what obstacles and threats I should plan for. When I say strengths I don't mean the ones we usually voice in interviews, that are hand–picked to fit the job description. And by weaknesses I don't mean "I am a perfectionist". I am talking about an honest analysis, that we can use to realistically assess where we are and what is our next move. In one word, a personal SWOT analysis.

After writing my analysis, it was much easier to make an action plan, simply because I knew exactly what is it that I can be better at, how to do it and what are the things that I should leave aside.

What amazes me is that even though it is common to have a SWOT for businesses or products, I didn't hear many people making personal SWOTs. The level of clarity that they bring to one own's strategy is amazing. Give it a try.

Since the year is coming to a close, it's the popular time to draw a line and see where we are. It's the time we sit next to the Christmas tree, with the lights plugged, listen to some soft music and have a glass of wine. All this while patting our backs for the great year we had and the great things we achieved.

But how about the times we had to unlearn things that we deeply believed in? How about the times when the pain was so intense, that we had to throw out the window things that took us ages to learn? These are the best times.

1. Find your passion. 

Yes, find your passion, but don't hold your breath until you do. Imagine what happens if you do not know what your passion is. You have some things you like, but no clear winner. What happens to your work life? You get to stay on the sidelines, waiting for the miracle of passion to happen, instead of diving into work, finding what you like about it, getting more skills, and gradually picking only tasks that challenge you and keep you motivated.

2. If you work hard enough, you can achieve anything. 

In my experience, this is false. If you work hard, you just end up burned out. You need to work smart. If you have several projects ongoing, look for the common traits - common themes that are driving you. Use those themes across the projects and not only will you work faster, but you will get a deeper knowledge on what interests you. Seeing the same theme through the "eyes" of different projects or approaches, you may get fresh ideas and learn much more about the subject.

3. You can reach your goal only if you move forward every single day. 

This is false. Sometimes, you need to step back to see the whole picture and be able to take a different approach. Sometimes you will discover that moving forward is too pricey and you need to change the direction. Be brave, do it, and you will thank yourself later.

4. And speaking of goals: first you have to have a goal, and then you can start building towards it. 

Luckily, scrum can be applied in life as well. If you want to change something, start small, and re-evaluate after some time. If your direction does not make you happy, adjust it and re-iterate.

5. If you want to do more, you need to sleep less. 

False. Lack of sleep impairs at least your concentration and problem solving skills , and for some reason it's the first thing to be crossed off the list of "things to do". Instead of sleeping less, pay attention to the times when you are most productive and maximize those.

6.  Nothing less than perfect goes. 

This one is a favorite of mine. If something is not done perfectly, why do it at all? Well, simple. Because by waiting always to be perfect, you may end up doing nothing.

Embrace the change. Happy new year!

A couple of months ago,  I was in a quest to find my match. That is, my perfect project management tool. I'm not picky, but I like my tools to actually help me out in doing my tasks, so usually I comb the possibilities before investing time into anything.

The list of requirements was quite extensive:
- available on the web and on the mobile. I wasn't planning on installing anything.
- something to give some visual timeline view
- a kind of a one stop shop. I wanted to put there the tasks, to followup the progress, to attach extra information if needed
- should give an instant overview on the situation of the project, without digging up reports
- collaborative was not a must, but a nice plus
- free or not expensive

And the nominees are...

Trello

Has been recommended to me, looks glamorous in the online presentations. The idea is that you have different boards with cards - you can emulate very easily a Kanban board with it. After trying to fit in my projects, I felt like I have too many things to customize. I understand why Trello can be great - it really looks beautiful, it is visual, and simply because you can customize it in so many ways, you can make it work. But I think it was a bit too agile for me.

Evernote

I love Evernote. You can have different notebooks and store notes there. You can attach different documents, and it even has an addon for Outlook, so you can easily transform any email into a note and save it. Very easy to find anything in your notes. I've been using it for a while, but for me it's most useful in storing the information. I didn't actually see the timeline part in it, and that was vital for me. However, it was great for planning different activities and having to do lists.

Asana

Now we get to my recently found infatuation. Asana is a collaborative cross between a project management and a task management tool. You can have different workspaces with projects and tasks. You can attach documents, comment, have subtasks, deadlines. It also offers a calendar view and the stoplight system for the projects. One thing I missed was to set the duration of the tasks, but you can do this with Instagantt (http://www.instagantt.com/) which is integrated with Asana.

Are there any tools you would add to the list?

If you work in an open space, you will want to know what I'm about to tell you.

Is there too much noise?
If you need to concentrate and block the sound around you, try Noisli. The basic idea is that it provides different noise combos to stimulate the productivity or to help you relax. You can combine a lot of sounds, like birds, thunder, train, white noise. You can also set timers (remember time boxing?) and actually achieve something during that time. It helped me on numerous occasions. Give it a try, see if you like it.

Finding more privacy
If you are not comfortable talking in an online meeting while everyone else in the office can hear you, you have 2 options: 1. book a meeting room for the meeting or 2. try to find a spot in the office so that you don't see the other colleagues - or at most, see one of them. Try to be seated so that you don't constantly see people walking around. Out of sight, out of mind.

Change your "timezone"
A couple of months ago, I started coming at about 7.30 to work. By 9, when most of the people come to the office, I've already gone through the tasks of the day, ticked off some, drank some coffee and maybe also read an article. Somehow, the quiet office gives me a boost and I can achieve more, overall, during the day.

Most IT offices nowadays have flexible hours. Come earlier to work. Or leave later. It's just you and the tasks and no one can stand between you.

Have a productive day!

I bet there is not a single ear here who hasn't heard about Tina Turner and her famous "Simply the best".  Who is this lady who seems to have figured it all out? Someone who's got 11 Grammys.

However, for me, she's got 3 things:  killer voice, killer legs and well, killer horse.

Killer voice ...to kill a mockingbird

While not all of us dare to sing in public, all of us have a voice. It's about time we stop looking for the ultimate wisdom our voice should spread. Use your voice when you interact with others, and also when you interact with yourself.

Tell others your ideas, your comments, your worries.What you know plus what the other person knows might lead to interesting discussions. Why do you think TED is so popular? Because people tell what they think, what they do. You are not TED material maybe, but then again, you are not expected to talk on a stage.

Have regular conversations with yourself. Tell yourself what you are grateful for, what you are missing. That's the only way to know which way to move, evolve and grow as person and professional.

Walk the walk

To say is one thing, and to do is just the next natural step. It's not enough to just talk and dream. Take action. Connect the dots between where you are and where you want to be. Even if you don't get there, at least you are not stuck on the start position. Be persistent.

Imagine you are playing a board game, and throughout the whole game you are stuck in the start position. How happy were you to move just one position?

Complete the puzzle

Sometimes, talking and doing is not enough. That is why it's important to have the right context. If you remember Tina, we're talking about the horse now.

When the environment is complementing what we want to achieve, it makes our task easier. And we are more motivated. So, look for your right horse and make the most out of your ride.

Next, shall we talk about Dolly Parton's 9 to 5?

Ever since I remember,  I was proud of my multitasking skills. I could juggle with 2-3 projects at a time, plus some personal projects. For some reason, it was easy for me to just leave a task here, start another one there, go back to the third one. I had this system of post its, to do lists, calendar notifications. For some reason, it just worked.

Being a juggler works only in the circus

And then I found something that Gerald Weinberg said in his book Quality Software Management: Vol. 1 System Thinking. 




This means that if one person has 3 projects assigned, then from an 8 hours workday, a bit over 3 hours is time spent just trying to get in the mood of the next project. 

What amazes me is that even this book is quite old, from 1991 (so the finding is at least as old as the book), we haven't really changed our ways of working until only recently, when the idea of having small teams with high allocations for few projects started being implemented. I've heard about this idea via Agile, but maybe others heard about it earlier.



Imagine this scenario: you go to work, you have 2 projects that you are assigned to. So, you spend about 1.5 hours just flipping through emails/documents, trying to remember where some info is. What if you need to switch between the projects multiple times per day? You cannot really work in the morning for project A and in the evening for project B. Add to the mix some meetings and you've got yourself a full day of work, at the end of which your todo list is as long as it was in the morning.

Viewed from the lean perspective, this time is a waste, because it doesn't bring any value to the customer. That is, the customer would not be willing to pay for this. And still, this context switching time creeps up in our time reports and in the customer's bill. Something is not quite right.

Let's haggle the price

Until we all have the chance to actually work on one project at a time, is there something that we could do to reduce this time?

There are a couple of things that we could look at: the Pareto principle, the Parkinson's law and time management.

The Pareto principle

The Parkinson's law

Time management

When it comes to time management, I personally use a todo list that looks something like this:

Project	Task name	Urgent / not urgent	Big / small effort	When to do	Deadline	Status	Comment
name of project	name/description of task	is it urgent or not?	does it require a lot of work or is it something quick?	today / next / later	deadline of task	nothing / ongoing / wait / done / obsolete	any followup comments

The first things I ask myself is: how urgent is this task? how big is the effort? Based on that, I select when I want to do the task. All the time I have the list filtered, to hide the wait/done/obsolete tasks, and any other task that is not to be done today. Before I go home, I review the list, make sure it has the relevant info for "tomorrow". It makes my life much easier in the morning, and I know what to focus on.

A final word