Huge news. I may soon be able to work in the US!
On Tuesday, USCIS announced that it will be extending eligibility for employment authorization to certain H-4 Dependent Spouses of H-1B Nonimmigrants!
I cannot convey how happy this makes me. Don't get me wrong, staying at home every day and doing whatever I want is great. Every day is Saturday! But while Saturday every day does sound amazing, I can tell you that it becomes pretty monotonous, alienating and lonely - especially when you're living somewhere where you don't know many people.
I guess this means that I need to spend more of my "every day is Saturday days" learning more about coding. The clock is ticking!
-Heather
Friday, February 27, 2015
Energizer Bunny - Review: Extreme Productivity by Robert C. Pozen
Review: Extreme Productivity by Robert C. Pozen
My dad jokes that his father was an energizer bunny - always doing something. My dad's jokes are not unfounded; I swear my grandpa didn't sleep - he would just occasionally settle down for an afternoon whirr in front of the history channel.
Honestly, I aspire to be like my grandpa - I love being busy. I love having a number of things on my plate at any given moment. I feel like the busier I am, the better I am at getting it all done, but when I have one project languishing on my plate, I just stare at it and push it around unappetizingly with my fork. To use a term coined by my friend Elle, I like to "GSD" - Get Shit Done.
As such, I am extremely drawn to read books or blog posts about how to be more productive, how to be more organized, and how to be a better leader and delegate. Basically, anything that tells me how to get more shit done.
I recently read Robert C. Pozen's book "Extreme Productivity" and have found it enlightening yet confirmatory. Enlightening because Pozen touches on a few things that I had not yet thought of to incorporate into my GSD strategies, but also confirmatory because...well damn, I already do most of what he talks about.
To give some context about why Robert C. Pozen seems to know what he is talking about and why anyone should take his advice, the dust jacket says it all:
"Robert C. Pozen taught a full course load at Harvard Business School while serving as a full-time chairman of a global financial-services firm. He's written six books and hundreds of articles, raised a family with his wife of more than four decades, and served on many boards of local charities and public companies." (emphasis mine)
Pozen is a guy that Gets Shit Done.
So what are (some of) his secrets? (I'm not going to share them all with you because I think you should read his book)
Secret #1: Make sure your daily to-do list is aligned with achieving your highest priority objectives and career goals.
Secret #2: Figure out what the final product needs to be first - and then work towards it.
Secret #3: B+ work is good enough for low priority tasks. This way you have more time to focus on high priority tasks.
Secret #4: Only Handle it Once. When you receive it and read it, deal with it and move on. Don't postpone it, or you'll have to read it again.
Secret #5: Make sure your daily schedule allows you time to think and work on those high-priority objectives. If you don't schedule it, it won't happen.
Secret #6: Avoid meetings whenever possible.
Secret #7: When you are running a meeting, provide presentation materials 2 days ahead of time for attendees to review. Spend 10 minutes presenting a general synopsis of the materials and then launch into discussion.
Secret #8: Allow employees to "own their own space". "After setting clear goals for a project, give your employees broad discretion to decide how best to achieve these goals - and then get out of their way".
Secret #9: Manage your boss by matching your mode of communication with your boss' mode of communication.
Secret #10: Stick to your personal Code of Ethics. "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it" (Warren Buffet).
Aside from these secrets, Pozen has many, many other pieces of advice - like how to read and write more effectively. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes to GSD.
-Heather
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
I love lists
I have always loved making lists. Lists of my favourite movies, lists of my favourite movie hunks, lists of my best girlfriends, grocery lists, chore lists, school assignment lists, work-task lists. I take a bizarre amount of pleasure in listing all of the things I hope to accomplish in the day in my Stuff notebook and then ranking out the order in which I intend to achieve them. When I'm feeling really "plan-y", I write out a schedule of the times that I intend to dedicate to each task. As nerdy as this sounds - this is actually a great way to get lots of stuff done because I find myself racing against the clock to keep up with my schedule. I do things a lot faster and don't check Facebook as often.
Here is an example of my list for today from my Stuff 2015 notebook:
As you can see, in my brainstorm, I identify the main thing that I have to do today and the thing that I want to do. I try to reward myself with doing want-to-do things interspersed with have-to-do things.
As an extra level of hardcoreness that I usually only do on days where I feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks I have to complete, I schedule them and try to stay ahead of schedule. Although my schedule today is far from demanding, I have done up a schedule as an example.
You may notice that I scheduled some time first thing in the morning to do what I want to do. This is personal preference - I think it helps to start the day off with a pleasant task instead of diving right in to something you have to do and aren't necessarily thrilled with. The trick is to stop working on what you want to do and start working on what you have to do the minute the clock hits the minute in your schedule.
The other benefit I see to scheduling is that I am more accountable to getting the tasks that I don't want to do off my plate - without a schedule, I tend to prioritize the easy, fun tasks that I enjoy and the have-to-dos are postponed until they are "really have to stay up all night now to dos".
As I work through the tasks of the day, I cross them off - and it is unbelievably satisfying to a) finish tasks and b) stay ahead of schedule.
Here is my list by the end of the day:
Disclaimer: I forgot to bring the dry cleaning with me when I went for my walk and I checked Facebook instead of working on my resumé (shame face).
I'm not sure where I learned/inherited this penchant for list-making. My mom makes lists - but she doesn't micro-manage herself the way that I do. My dad probably doesn't spend more than 30 seconds planning what to do on a given day. My brother hates being given a list of things to do. Yet when I was cleaning out my grandparents' house after they had both passed away, I found my grandma's journals. And guess what? That's right - she micro-managed herself too and scheduled lists for every single task she had to accomplish that day. I had no idea - but she and I had basically worked out the exact same to-do list system. I'm not sure that organizational preference is an inherited genetic trait - but the only evidence I do have suggests that it skips a generation.
There is one major flaw with my to-do list system - at the end of the day, sometimes I find I was over-zealous with my planning and I don't get everything accomplished that I intended. I need a master to do list from which I choose the day's tasks based on priority and deadline. I've tried having a master to do list in my notebooks - but it was always messy and I found myself constantly re-writing it out. I explored different software applications - Evernote, iPhone Reminders, Things, but I just didn't find that the solution really worked with what I wanted to do. It was either too complicated, too simple, didn't synch nicely with my phone, or difficult to edit.
I decided to try a simple to do list in Excel with columns for project, project details, deadline, and status. It worked for a while, but I hated that I couldn't add to the list when I was away from my computer and only had my phone. Kor suggested I try using Google Sheets and having it saved in my Google Drive. I could download sheets for iPhone and update the spreadsheet on the go and the functionality allowed it to do everything that Excel could. I can also share my to-do list with my husband, which I did to show him just how much planning went into our wedding. I'm sure he avoids opening it - but one day when I am actually working on a team project, the ability to share this to-do list system will come in handy.
I currently have my spreadsheet set up so that I can filter it - right now it is filtered by Status and Priority. I filter by priority to exclude items of low priority because frankly, I don't have time to deal with low priority items right now, but I want to make sure they are listed. I filter by Status so that as I change things to complete, I can re-filter the Status column and not see items that are complete. I could also filter by things that are of a high priority, or tasks that only pertain to the Wedding, or to a specific course I am taking.
Of note, when you add rows to the sheet - sometimes the filter does not transfer to the new rows - when this happens, you have to unfilter everything and re-filter it by clicking the filter button in the toolbar (looks like a funnel).
I have been successfully using this system for 6 months, so I consider it a proven system and I am comfortable proselytizing my Google Sheets To-Do list to the masses.
Here is an example of my list for today from my Stuff 2015 notebook:
As you can see, in my brainstorm, I identify the main thing that I have to do today and the thing that I want to do. I try to reward myself with doing want-to-do things interspersed with have-to-do things.
As an extra level of hardcoreness that I usually only do on days where I feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks I have to complete, I schedule them and try to stay ahead of schedule. Although my schedule today is far from demanding, I have done up a schedule as an example.
You may notice that I scheduled some time first thing in the morning to do what I want to do. This is personal preference - I think it helps to start the day off with a pleasant task instead of diving right in to something you have to do and aren't necessarily thrilled with. The trick is to stop working on what you want to do and start working on what you have to do the minute the clock hits the minute in your schedule.
The other benefit I see to scheduling is that I am more accountable to getting the tasks that I don't want to do off my plate - without a schedule, I tend to prioritize the easy, fun tasks that I enjoy and the have-to-dos are postponed until they are "really have to stay up all night now to dos".
As I work through the tasks of the day, I cross them off - and it is unbelievably satisfying to a) finish tasks and b) stay ahead of schedule.
Here is my list by the end of the day:
Disclaimer: I forgot to bring the dry cleaning with me when I went for my walk and I checked Facebook instead of working on my resumé (shame face).
I'm not sure where I learned/inherited this penchant for list-making. My mom makes lists - but she doesn't micro-manage herself the way that I do. My dad probably doesn't spend more than 30 seconds planning what to do on a given day. My brother hates being given a list of things to do. Yet when I was cleaning out my grandparents' house after they had both passed away, I found my grandma's journals. And guess what? That's right - she micro-managed herself too and scheduled lists for every single task she had to accomplish that day. I had no idea - but she and I had basically worked out the exact same to-do list system. I'm not sure that organizational preference is an inherited genetic trait - but the only evidence I do have suggests that it skips a generation.
There is one major flaw with my to-do list system - at the end of the day, sometimes I find I was over-zealous with my planning and I don't get everything accomplished that I intended. I need a master to do list from which I choose the day's tasks based on priority and deadline. I've tried having a master to do list in my notebooks - but it was always messy and I found myself constantly re-writing it out. I explored different software applications - Evernote, iPhone Reminders, Things, but I just didn't find that the solution really worked with what I wanted to do. It was either too complicated, too simple, didn't synch nicely with my phone, or difficult to edit.
I decided to try a simple to do list in Excel with columns for project, project details, deadline, and status. It worked for a while, but I hated that I couldn't add to the list when I was away from my computer and only had my phone. Kor suggested I try using Google Sheets and having it saved in my Google Drive. I could download sheets for iPhone and update the spreadsheet on the go and the functionality allowed it to do everything that Excel could. I can also share my to-do list with my husband, which I did to show him just how much planning went into our wedding. I'm sure he avoids opening it - but one day when I am actually working on a team project, the ability to share this to-do list system will come in handy.
I currently have my spreadsheet set up so that I can filter it - right now it is filtered by Status and Priority. I filter by priority to exclude items of low priority because frankly, I don't have time to deal with low priority items right now, but I want to make sure they are listed. I filter by Status so that as I change things to complete, I can re-filter the Status column and not see items that are complete. I could also filter by things that are of a high priority, or tasks that only pertain to the Wedding, or to a specific course I am taking.
Of note, when you add rows to the sheet - sometimes the filter does not transfer to the new rows - when this happens, you have to unfilter everything and re-filter it by clicking the filter button in the toolbar (looks like a funnel).
I have been successfully using this system for 6 months, so I consider it a proven system and I am comfortable proselytizing my Google Sheets To-Do list to the masses.
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