l.p.g. - flammable gas

Isn't a good laugh worth its time? It sure is. And it's especially easy to have if it's all about somebody else. Like with these great pictorial short stories about your bad and ugly boss:



But just like the story behind suggests: it may just as well be all about ourselves. For self-reflection, of course.

But it works well for all of us who don't call oneself some kind of a boss. It works for those times when we are not solely concerned about workplace relationships. It works for the general idea of some regular self-reflection. Most of the little stories that show what is to blame about some pointy-haired boss at the very same time show what may just be to blame about each and every one of us.

We look in the mirror every single day. But do we know who is there? We only find out if we ask. And maybe we are in for a good laugh along the way.

Those of us who want a message to come across in a public speech, may just need two things:

1. A great message in the first place.


2. Some rock-solid presentation skills.

Nowadays, more often than not we see a slight bias towards No. 2 at the price of No. 1. And this is not just with the Toastmasters among us whose job it is to specifically not care too much about the point to make but instead about how to get it across.

But sometimes we can still witness a performance that concentrates on the message without caring much about the outer style. Like with Dean Ornish. At TED, even. Where the strongest part of his visual aids is this:



Which is an interesting variation of a well-established visual pattern. Most else he presents is bullet points. Which are some perfect food for the theory that PowerPoint makes you dumb, which we've all been knowing for a while now. But Señor Dean has a point to make. About something which is rarely talked about in a well-respected environment: obesity and how it's trying hard to hit us all.

This may be the first generation in which children lead a shorter life span than their parents

Which is, interestingly enough, a topic that was just picked up again some four years later: at this year's TED. Not by anybody, that is. But by Jamie Oliver:



Same topic. Stronger, but still weak, presentation style. Higher celebrity status.

Given that obesity and all risks it caries along are a worthy area of interest, this opens up an interesting question: does a really great message need less rock-solid presentation skills than a mere ordinary topic to be perceived just as well?

Time passes. Which is basically its job. And things change. Which is probably just a collateral coincidence. The good thing is that this may just happen to be a change for the better. Even in case something changes to be turning marginal and sinking into oblivion eventually. Like it happened with voicemail over time.

And for those of use who have been away for the last decade and missed the trend: there is a great summary of what's wrong with voicemail over at the doghouse diaries:


The one thing that turned dead faster than voicemail is the fax. Because it was obsolete the day it came out. But that's another story on its own.

This recording contains explicit language and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

Don't we all love those up-front disclaimers that make the subject of their warning ever so more interesting?

The same holds here. Not that it's necessary, though. What Señor David has to say about running the 37signals business is interesting, even though there is nothing really new that hasn't been said before. By himself or others. But some things are worth repeating.

And if somebody calls BS where BS can be found, the better it is for all of us. Explicit or not.

So, go there and listen.

For those of us who can do with a little quote every now and then to keep the motivational fire burning, here is an eBook that does the job. It is full of just about 80 quotes from more or less well-known blokes and gals.



Some are good. Others are even better. And the latter even include some of the many north-american participants. Which, yes, is a surprise.

Sometimes, the meaning of a simple message highly depends on the way we look at it.

And this sometimes may just be more often than we expect.

The Smashing Magazine recently featured an article about the great idea to design something every day and doing so by means of 15 - 20 minutes daily chunks.

Basically, this sounds like a great idea. Some small action every day looks easy, manageable, and like something that could be done.

The problem is, though, that this contradicts the whole context switching costs as charmingly described by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister in Peopleware or as Paul Graham more recently did in his piece about maker's versus manager's schedule.

Of course, the underlying motivation of the smashing article still holds: practice creates experience. But don't be fooled about the real cost of real and repetitive work. It's most likely more than just a mere twenty minutes a day. But may very well be worth every every microsecond if you can keep up the pace and stick around long enough. Or to put it more simple: inspiration is sometimes just the by-product of hard work.

Let's assume you get a marshmallow and a choice: eat it now, or wait and get a second sweety as reward.

The Marshmallow Test from Igniter Media on Vimeo.

The video shows excellently that this may sound just too easy, but that it is seriously tough in reality.

It's a question worth asking again and again: take one or wait for the other? The rewards may be many. Later. They may even be many more. Even later. They may be infinite. If you wait just as long.

The sky is the limit and some future may be bright. But a marshmallow now and not later may not only taste well but also help to shine the mood up and make aiming for the whole package independently a breeze.

If you still have some free resolution left for this new-born year, consider devoting it to some reflection on Hans Rosling's forecasts on how and when the rise of China and India will result in a complete personal economic catch-up compared to some western countries:



Scary? Healthy! And great to keep the mind fit and in shape. Which isn't too bad for the resolution season.

Happy new year, everybody!

[This is part 4 in our little spare-time project series. See parts one, two, and three for some context.]

For the planning setup of our fancy little spare-time project we talked about building the basis by means of a MindMap that includes things like a vision, a backlog, releases that could be seen as Sprints, and features that could be described as user stories.

So, we are talking about Scrum, right?

Wrong.

This is no Scrum as we are talking about a simple-simple project setup. So simple that it most likely only includes you. Nobody else. Thus no distinct roles. No meetings. And not even a need for time boxes (if we opt out of teuxdeux-part three).

So, don't be mislead. Even if two things may share some terminology, they don't need to be the same. And if we don't do Scrum, we don't call it Scrum.

[This is part 3 in our little spare-time project series. See parts one and two for some context.]

The overall project plan is set and sketched out using XMind, but using Remember the Milk for planning the nitty gritty tasks that need to be done seems overly complex? Lets try out teuxdeux for a change! It's a plain and simple todo list manager. And all its simplicity doesn't just make it easy and fun to use but also asks for cleaning up the overall planning for MFSP - my fancy spare-time project.

Create an account solely for MFSP. Teuxdeux is simple. Doesn't come with tags or anything the like. If you want to stay focused and keep clutter out of your way, don't mix up MFSP's tasks with anything else, like remembering to buy some milk.

Go for one-week iterations. A new release every week? Why not! Just jam in less and it can be done. Why? Because teuxdeux focusses on five days - one week sans some weekend time.



Given all this, you basically do what we discussed last time: Take the Releases node of your MFSP MindMap and look at every single feature therein that you thought would fit into the next release. Think about it. Throw all the tasks that you can come up with and that you will need to do into teuxdeux. Distribute them as smart as you can. Or put 'em all in one day, like the last one of your week. They will be rendered red automatically in case you don't strike 'em out before that day goes by.

Make sure that no task turns red. Ever. And you're all set. Plain. Simple. Fast.

[This is part 2 in our little spare-time project series. See part one for some context.]

OK, so we are set with a MindMap of the big picture and overall plan for MFSP - my fancy spare time project. All set. All well. All fine. All not done, yet. And this is where Remember the Milk (RTM) comes in. This is a plain and simple online todo-list manager. And the best thing about it is that is not only useful for not forgetting about the milk but caring about one's spare-time project's tasks as well.

But how does it fit our MFSP task planning? As plain and simple as it gets, of course: by using some tags and two saved searches to dig everything up on demand.

Do this by going through the Releases node of your MFSP MindMap and looking at every single feature mentioned therein. Take the feature and think about what it is that needs to be done in order to get the feature all round and shiny. This is your planning session and what you do with all your hard thinking is to spend the following three tags on everything you come up with:

• .mfsp: This is a general tag applied to everything related to our fancy project. Especially helpful for those of us who use RTM for more than just this one project.


• v1.2: A version tag that directly correlates with one of the Releases sub-nodes in our MindMap. It is applied to everything that will eventually make it into some release of the application. The numbers change from planned version to planned version, of course.


• na: This is just an abbreviation for next action. Use it to tag everything that you plan to do next on every feature of a planned release. Don't forget to add this tag to another task when you cross off the current one as done.

In addition you have the following two searches defined once and for all:

• Current Release: tag:.mfsp and tag:na and status:incomplete and v1.2


• Next Actions: (status:incomplete and tag:na) or dueBefore:today or due:today

Save these searches, do some RTM clean up as recommended at Paprika Lab's RTM for GTD post, and you get the following plain and simple navigation bar to guide you through your project's tasks:



Plain. Simple. And easy! But just in case this still looks too overkill: let's see if we can find an even simpler approach in the next part of this little spare-time project series.

If you fit into any of these:

• Your day-job is so demanding that you need to work on some side-project in order to calm down and get back on track.


• Your day-job isn't filling you out so that you feel the need to start some spare-time project in order to burn your overflow energy.


• You just happen to want to try something out that jumped your mind and now wants to get a real-life test.


• You are looking for an excuse to spend your night-hours in front of a computer just as you have been doing all day long, already.

Then maybe you are just in the right mood to get up and working on some fancy little spare-time project. And to keep the motivation on a sky-like level, it may be a good idea to still do some planning, besides it all being just a low-volume, non-essential, and nobody-really-cares kind of activity. Just avoid filling paper with boring long lists if boring long list aren't the most exciting thing you've ever seen invented. Instead, try out some mind mapping. Like this:



It is a little map created using XMind for the sake of illustrating how the following four main map nodes do a fine job in providing a roadmap for your great little project:

1. Vision: This is basically a one-sentence motivation of why you are investing your valuable spare-time at all.


2. Backlog: This is a raving list of features you came up with at three o'clock in the morning while everybody else was sleeping well.


3. Releases: This is a collection of small version-labelled nodes with entries moved over from the Backlog as you plan to do and release them sometime soon.


4. Done: Move all completed releases here as soon as you throw them out the door!

Plain. Simple. Sans magic. Which is all a good thing.

Next up will be just as simple of an idea on how to plan the individual tasks that need to be done to check off the respective Release Backlog entries.

When someone comes around and asks you to name the most amazing projects of the last four decades, how many of those that jump your mind stem from your field of work, your geographic area, your general centre of interest?

Quite a few, most likely.

Now watch this video and see how broad the topic selection just may be:



And also see how narrow the general geographic focus of the examples in the video is.

Which nicely shows how tough it is to think outside the box. Even if you deliberately intent to do so.

Not so long ago, we had some Scrum slides posted on the wall here in Gasbottle County. One thing was missing there, though: some idea on handling the limited communication bandwidth to get user stories to where they need to be for a sprint: ready. Or ready-ready as a recent Scrum and CMMI paper puts it.

Here are some slides on engaging another current buzzword for this problem: Kanban.



And if you are still not getting ready-ready for done-done, your communication bandwidth may just really happen to be: too narrow. This is not a good thing. But at least good to know. Or not?