Year: 2006

I came across this in comments at Sanjay’s blog

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy retirement. You drink alcohol, you party, and you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no reponsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last 9 months floating with luxuries like central heating, spa, room service on tap. then you finish of as an orgasm !!!Amen”

Hilarious. And somewhat true.

Firefox crashing on me, WordPress misbehaviour, et all don’t happen to me all that often. But when something does go wrong, it usually takes The Best Post of the Millenium ™ with it. Autosave is a feature that has been present for years in word processors. It started to show up in web tools during the last couple of years, and I’d be glad to see it implemented in WordPress, as BloggingPro hints might happen very soon. But on the other hand, I’m not even desperate enough to install the plugin.

Staying focused and productive is a hot subject this days. There are plenty of tutorials and lists that suggest what you should and shouldn’t do to improve your workflow. Most of these repeat each other, without saying anything new. 18 Ways to Stay Focused at Work is yet another such list. Nicely written though.

1. Write out a daily task list and plan your day.
2. Allocate time slots colleagues can interrupt you.
3. Apply time boxing.
4. Setup filters in your email.
5. Do not check personal email in the morning.
6. Set your IM status.
7. Listen to the right types of music.
8. Use the headphones but leave the music off.
9. Fill up a water bottle.
10. Find the best time to do repetitive and boring tasks.
11. Bring your lunch and have it at your desk.
12. Don’t make long personal calls.
13. Clean up your desk.
14. Get a good chair.
15. Use shortcuts on your computer.
16. Close programs you’re not using.
17. Limit time on Digg, Delicious, news sites and blogs.
18. Change your mindset and make work fun.

Follow the link for more explanations on each of these points.

If you enjoyed those articles, here’s another one for you from Stevey’s Blog Rants. It’s caled (Not) Managing Software Developers

However, I’ll offer you one almost magical tip that can help you smooth over nearly any mistake, a tip that can get you through just about any bad situation. I’ll tell you the tip right now, with no fanfare or ado. This hint is the most important one I’ll offer you today. It’s the secret ingredient to Great Manager Sauce. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to learn. You either already understand it, down in your bones, or you have years of head-scratching ahead of you. The tip is just one word: Empathy.

It’s a nice and easy read, with a whole bunch of useful quotes. And a lot of people linked to this post and followed it up – you can read their responses too.