Tag: productivity

On working hours

I’ve recently started advocating for flexible working hours in all the offices I can get my foot into.  With our recent power cuts there was an extra possibility for a few companies to try remote working and more flexible schedules.  It went very well with some, and so well with others.  The lack of self-discipline is often mentioned as a primary roadblock to such flexibility.  I used to agree with that.  But now I don’t.  I think that internal company communication tools and channels have a much larger impact on whether flexible schedules and remote work will work or not.

Why am I suddenly speaking about flexible hours?  Because I came across this blog post by Zach Holman, one of a few GitHub employees.

By allowing for a more flexible work schedule, you create an atmosphere where employees can be excited about their work. Ultimately it should lead to more hours of work, with those hours being even more productive. Working weekends blur into working nights into working weekdays, since none of the work feels like work.

Read the whole thing, it’s not that long and it is well written.

On working remotely

Here are a few notes on working remotely from a person who has first hand experience with that:

In terms of communication I think remote employees are a massive benefit to a company, it is easy in an office to forget about proper communications channels because you can bypass them and tap somebody on the shoulder, which leads to confusion as people are now out of the loop and without information they need to work, this problem becomes even worse as your company grows. Working remotely is impossible without proper communication channels, seperate mailing lists for different working groups, bug trackers, project management tools and chat rooms for quick messaging. Everyone will be forced to use these as a part of their daily workflow which helps combat the usual lack of adoption with office tools, when I am working remotely I feel a lot more confident I know what I need to do than in an office. There are times when its easier to work face to face particularly with more high level discussions and planning so I make sure to use as much of my time visiting the office to get these done.

I wish more people considered it.

On status meetings

Web Worker Daily shares an insight on status meetings:

It will probably come as no surprise to WebWorkerDaily readers that a recent survey found that 70 percent of information workers don’t believe status meetings help them accomplish work tasks. Additionally, almost 40 percent of respondents feel that such meetings are a waste of time, even though 55 percent of respondents spend one to three hours per week attending such meetings.

The survey also found that 67 percent of respondents spend between one to four hours per week just preparing for status meetings, and 59 percent said that preparing for status meetings often takes longer than the meeting itself. In addition, 57 percent of those surveyed indicated that they multitask during status meetings — so maybe there’s more work getting done than one might think!

The survey was conducted online within the United States from June 6–8, among 2,373 information workers.

Group messaging is the next big thing

Download Squad suggests that group messaging is going to be the next big thing in mobile communications:

The next big thing in mobile communications seems to be group messaging, and that’s no real surprise. If we take a look at the currently entrenched communication platforms, not many of them do more than messaging one-to-one or one-to-a-few well. Sure you can have group chats using traditional IM protocols, but they are inherently transitory.

I have to agree with them somewhat.  I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to be the next big thing or if it will be big at all, but it is something that is needed. Today.  By many people.

Living in Cyprus, a rather small country with not many ties to technology, I am often much behind the needs of my friends from more populated areas.  There is usually a three to five year gap between the time when my American and English friends form a new communication need, and the time when I do so.  And more often than not, this gap is enough for a good solution to the problem exist before I even have the actual problem.

With group messaging it is different.  At least in the last part.  I need it now.  Yesterday even.  And there is nothing uniform, free, and convenient.  Email and Skype are the two tools I use for those purposes the most right now.  But neither of them, no together, they solve the problem.   They are good enough for when I am (as well as other group members) are online and at their computers.  But more and more often we really need a solution that bridges mobiles and desktops.

Features that I personally need are:

  • cross-platform client (Linux/Windows/Apple desktop, Android/iPhone/Blackberry mobiles, and also web)
  • server-side history with synchronization
  • offline messages (if the participant is offline, you should still be able to send the message and he should receive it when he comes online)
  • persistent groups (I don’t want to redefine same groups over and over by adding individual members to chat)
  • persistent chats (same chat can continue for days or weeks, while there can be more than one chat in progress with the same group, so archiving has to be smart)
  • UTF-8 and multilingual support
  • attachments and web friendliness (thumbnails for pictures and videos, highlighted URLs and email addresses, etc)
  • basic styling (mostly for quotes and code snippets)
  • ideally, integration with Google/Facebook/Twitter/Oauth or something else that would save me the trouble of yet another registration, pair of credentials, and all the hard work for contact/group building.