Brain Surgery

Watch yourself when you are trying to get something done in haste. You will be angry, violent and aggressive.

I was not much surprised when I read that haste is a form of violence.

This means that you are committing violence against yourself or subordinates or kids or friends if you are asking them to deliver too much in the shortest possible time. Bad for you and bad for those who work with you.

I remember reading somewhere advice of the CEO of a mega corp (probably Oracle Corp.) to his newly inducted secretary who was overwhelmed by the volume of work. "Don't worry if something gets delayed, We do not do brain surgery.", he told her.

Most of us are not in the brain surgery business either.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a new term in IT jargon. In simple words, cloud computing refers to the software running on Internet servers. Here is a bit detailed definition from joyent.com.

"Software previously installed on personal computers is being shifted or extended to be accessible via the Internet. The term for this is “cloud computing”. In the cloud, you run your application on one (or many) virtual computers. The advantages to this approach include reduced up front hardware costs, reduced maintenance and administrative costs, the ability to match hardware and software capabilities and, most importantly, the flexibility to scale your site up and down depending on demand."

Free Yourself

Internet and web applications allow you to free yourself from physical office.

• You can check your email anywhere using web mail.
• You do your banking on Internet.
• Your branches share a single online database for all inventory operations.
• Your customers track their orders and accounts without bothering you.
• Your projects get managed through Internet from remote locations.
  
• Your pictures, videos, documents, spreadsheets, backups are all in the cloud.
  
• Your London office phone rings in Lahore.

and so on. Possibilities are endless.

But the question is, are you doing any of the above?

Intellectuals

"The first rule of intellectualism is: 'If you do not have much to say, make it as complex as possible.' A true intellectual has as deep a fear of simplicity as a farmer has of droughts. If there is no complexity, what is there to work with or write about?"

"There is no end to the complexity of descriptions. You could divide a simple pencil into ten parts if you wished and then proceed to describe all ten parts and the relationship of the parts. Once you have a handful of concepts you can choreograph the most complex of dances. There is no limit to the word games that can be played with words."

Edward de Bono in Teach Your Child How To Think page 9.

Buzzwords

UK's local authorities body has warned the British bureaucrats to stop using buzzwords, saying they confuse people and prevent residents from understanding what local governments do.

This body prepared and sent a list of 100 buzzwords which includes words like synergies, stakeholders, sustainable communities, empowerment, coterminosity, revenue stream among others.

Two years back, I attended a discussion at LCCI about developing service oriented business and exporting services. Participants were few foreign consultants, secretary of a government department and few other 'intellectuals'. This discussion was full of so many buzzwords that I had troubleg concentrating what everyone was saying. The end result of this discussion was obvious. We accomplished nothing during the 2 hours session.

If British people are having difficulty understanding buzzwords, how can our people be comfortable with these. It is time that we clear our websites, marketing material and discussions of these buzzwords.

Designing Your Website

Are you searching for the best graphics designer for your website?

Is your logo design process going through the 99th iteration?

Are the graphics on your website still not as good as you would like to be?

You just went through tons of CSS templates but nothing good was found?

Have you thought about the text or products description you will put on the website? No. That is a secondary thing and will be taken care of during the development. Right? Wrong.

Jakob Nielsen is an authority on building better websites. He has been advocating simple and usable websites with emphasis on content which is updated regularly.

In a recent interview to BBC he said how users becoming more focused during surfing and how they dislike all the widgets and promotions on websites. Users are not interested even in your home page. They search your website with google and go straight to the portion of their interest.

"Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention." and "People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,"

So you have spend a lot of money and energy building the "best looking website" but have not spent a minute or a dime to get the right content for the website?

Think again.

Interrupt Me

Sometimes your focus on work is razer-sharped. Whatever the distractions or interruptions are around you, you keep doing your work and meet the goal of your daily productivity.

Sometimes this is not the case and even the most interesting job becomes boring. You do some effort to concentrate but soon give up. Various news, games and 'other' websites come to your rescue when this happens.

But sometimes even this help is not enough. You have just visited your favorite news site for the 7th time in the last one hour but there was nothing new. Even Katrina Kaif has not done any new photo shoot for the last few days.

So what to do? Just install the latest version of 'Interrupt Me'. You will be busy as hell all the day. Your boss will be happy that you eyes are on the screen and your fingers are on the keyboard all the day. You are always doing what you are paid for.

Interrupt Me (or IM for short) is a revolutionary new software technology which helps you to produce as little work as possible when you are feeling bored.

Yes, you have guessed it. This software is also called MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk or something else depending upon your preference.

Whenever you are inclined to procrastination, IM allows you to keep yourselves busy without feeling guilty. At the end of the day you blame the "work load" for un-productiveness.

In production line scenarios, IM is not much of an issue. Work forces you to be as much productive as is required by your job. If you stop working, everyone on production line stops so you cannot procrastinate. In these situations, IM helps you to communicate quickly when needed.

This is, however, not the case if you are a programmer, writer, designer, marketer, student, CEO or in any position which requires your knowledge to produce results. You need to take concrete steps to avoid self-inflicted interruptions which include too much web-browsing or chatting.

Setting aside a pre-defined time for these passive interruptions, like 3:00 pm for all browsing/chatting, is one way to deal with them. Some experts even suggest dedicating a separate computer for this purpose at your workplace. This is necessary if your habit has become chronic.

Another possibility, if you are not feeling like doing your work, is that you do absolutely nothing. Just sit there. You are more likely to do something work related after a short period of rest.

Maintaining a list of things to be done in your career or life will help you select alternate course of action when you are bored with your regular work. Hiveminder is recommended.

If you have big plans in your life but are unable to do progress for the last so many years, it is time to question your work habits. Big plans need energy. Make sure your energy is not being drained by interruptions made possible by technology.