Tag: advice

In praise of unfinished projects

Do you beat yourself up for starting projects but not finishing them? Do you not even try to start for fear you won’t finish? If so, I recommend this article: Why Quitting is Perfectly Okay. — So, this is life. — Medium. It’s one thing I hope you finish. Everything else is optional.

Of course, finishing them is also good. Either way, you have something to gain by starting those projects.

And hey, it’s Sunday evening at the start of May: a great time to plan your projects for the week or the month. Give it a go.

Success doesn’t come easy for anyone, not even Elon Musk

I admire the work that Elon Musk does, be it Tesla, Space X, or other endeavours he takes on.  I also had an opinion that the success he achieves is as close to a Given as success can be. I held that option until I read this article: Elon Musk Had a Deal to Sell Tesla to Google in 2013 – Bloomberg Business. This article shows just how touch and go it was for Musk and Tesla in 2013. Among other thoughts, it reinforced in me the notion that success in challenging areas is difficult for everyone, whether it be Elon Musk or anyone.

If you are trying to accomplish something difficult, and if you think that others have it easier than you, I recommend you read this article. I also recommend it to anyone who needs to be reminded that success is never a given, but with the right effort and focus and dedication, even the most challenging type of work can be accomplished.

The last and only advice you need on how to eat

I think these rules are about the best thing I have seen on how to eat: Simple Rules for Healthy Eating – NYTimes.com.

To make it even simpler, I would boil them down to:

1) Eat less processed food, and more food you make yourself from raw ingredients

2) Eat a variety of ingredients in moderation

3) If you have to drink something, drink water

I recommend you read the NYTimes piece, though. Really good.

What you should know if you are planning to learn to code

If you are going to learn to code and you are planning to stick with it, then you owe it to yourself to read this: Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard.

It’s well written, and it has some great graphs, including this one:

I think any area of learning where you get good initial training would look similar to this. I recommend you find some mentors to help get your through the desert of despair.

P.S. Yes, I realized they borrowed heavily from Gartner’s Hype Curve. 🙂

The best restaurant in NYC and how to eat there cheaply and without a reservation

Is Eleven Madison Park the best restaurant in NYC? If you read this, Restaurant Review: Eleven Madison Park in Midtown South – NYTimes.com, you’d be inclined to think so. Regardless, it is excellent and worthy of considering a visit.

But what if you want to experience the place without having to go through the tasting menu? Worse, what if you don’t have a reservation. Well then, you need this: How to Eat at Eleven Madison Park With No Reservation and No Tasting Menu — Grub Street.

I can’t promise that will work, but it is worth considering if you want to casually experience some of the best Manhattan has to offer.

 

A mental health first aid check list you might find useful

If you know someone is physically injured, you apply First Aid to either repair the injury or limit it until you can get further help.

Likewise, I think of this list as a form of mental health first aid: Eponis | Sinope – Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up. It’s not meant to replace professional help, if you need that, but it may be the thing you need to get you through a rough patch (speaking from personal experience).

Want to start a startup? All you need for that is here

And by here, I mean this site: Startup Stash – Curated resources and tools for startups. It is an amazing collection of tools you likely will need, for one thing. Plus, it has a superb user interface that not only groups the tools well, but gives you a sense of all the things you need to think about if you are going to go forward and create your own startup.

If you aren’t seriously thinking about startups, but would like to know about new tools to make you more productive at work, then I recommend you check out this site too.

Kudos to the creator of the site. Well worth a visit.

How to pair Italian wines with pizza

Over at HisAndHerWine.com they have two great infographics on how to pair wines with pizza. I picked the one above because it focuses on specific Italian wines, but the other infographic and alot more info can be found here: 16 Best Wines to Drink with Pizza.

The best wine to drink with pizza may be the one open nearest to you, but if you want to be precise and have a better pairing, check out that site.

Should you leave your job? Find out in 10 questions (or less)

The 10 questions are from this article: The only employee engagement questionnaire you’ll ever need  and it is the kind of thing a manager would ask employees. But really, they are the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself.

I like the first three:

  1. Why are you still here?
  2. What would make you leave?
  3. Where would you be if you weren’t here? (What company would you really like to work for?)

The other seven are good too.
Anyone working anywhere should ask themselves these questions regularly.

New dietary guidelines and the science behind them

The NYtimes has a good piece on new dietary guidelines and why they are changing from what you were used to: Behind New Dietary Guidelines, Better Science – NYTimes.com. You will likely be surprised by some or all of it.

Some people have very serious and specific dietary needs, and if that is the case, consulting your doctor is the best thing to do. For others, the best advice may be the most common sensical, which is to eat a wide variety of food in moderation.

TFW the New York Times asks you: Are You on Fleek?

The NYTimes.com dips into the latest slang with this: Language Quiz: Are You on Fleek? It’s fun to give it a try: I got 9 out of 12 and I have no doubt most people can do better. If you do worse, well by the end of it, you’ve learned a few new common slang terms.

If you want a better source for translating slang, you might want to head over to a site like this. Or wait long enough until The Oxford English Dictionary folks add it to the latest and greatest version of their book.

Notes for Parents on Summer Day Camps in Toronto

My kids spent many years going to summer camps in Toronto. If you have to or want to send your kids to summer camps, you might find these notes useful.

The first two things you need to do: 1) get out a calendar and 2) determine your budget. Do this in February. Really! When you get out a calendar, you will likely see that the kids have 9 weeks off in the summer (for some reason I used to think there were only 8 weeks off for the kids). Next, get a budget, because you will need to account for camp costs as well as transportation costs and extra costs like if you have to pick your kids up late. When you have a calendar and a budget, your camp options will come into clearer focus. Also, you can start thinking about other things happening in the summer, like vacations, visits from family, work assignments, and other things that will affect you.

As far as organizations offering camps, the cheapest camps by far – by far! – are the ones run out of community centers from the City of Toronto. They also fill up really fast. By March, if I recall. Book those first.

North Toronto Soccer had relatively lower costs than most camps. Great if your kid loves soccer. Note: ask how much time the kids spend outside. That can be a very tough camp in the middle of summer. (Not just NT but any outdoor camp.)

My kids liked the film camp at NFB, and it was indoors and so good during some weather, but one year was enough. Also, doing it with kids under 10 was better.

If your kid loves to do art, the AGO camps are great. If you are thinking of becoming a member and signing up, do both: members used to get a break on camp costs.

Harbourfront had some of the most interesting camps. DD loved them, but DS did not. Also, Harbourfront has buses that take your kids to and from camp from various locations around the city. Saves time, costs money. Can be a lifesaver.

Hockey camps are the most expensive, some going for $600 a week. UCC had relatively cheaper ones, but they fill up really fast too. UCC has lots of good camps, and they are in line with camps at places like AGO and NFB, but the hockey ones always filled up right away. Sign up for those first! Also there were hockey camps at Larry Grossman arena that were good and not as expensive.

Another benefit of hockey camps: the kids spend alot of time in not hot facility. Great experience during the hot days of summer.

To save some money, put your kids in camps with long weekends. That one day can save 20-50 bucks

To save more money, take time off and spend time with your kids. Note: this may not be cheap, either. If you plan to take a week off and plan to take your kid to a different venue every day, you will see it will add up. If you want to do this to save money, your goal should be to find activities you both like that aren’t too expensive, be it going to the Islands, having picnics, bike rides, kite building and flying, etc.

Don’t be too dazzled by camp promises. You might think: wow, my kid will learn SO much at this camp. They will learn things. And they will likely have fun. But think of camp as really good babysitting/daycare. Camps are mostly run by teens, and alot of camp time is getting kids to and from locations, feeding them, tracking them, etc. My son hated that. Also some councillors are really great, others are just there to do the minimum. One week my son went to a hockey camp and loved it because the councillors were great. He went to the same camp a few weeks later and didn’t because the councilllors had changed.

See if you and your kid’s friends can go to the same camp. Talk to other parents and try to make this happen, especially if your kid is not extroverted. Camp can be stressful for introverted kids: having old friends can help. Some kids thrive on camps and love them. Others can’t wait to be old enough not to go.

Try to pick up your kids on time. Once camps are done, usually around 4, the councillors will likely round the kids up in one place and more or less have them sit around until you get there. It is super boring, and it will likely make it harder for you to send your kid to such camps in the future.

My kids were done with camp by about 11. I know there were camps that go well into the late teens, but that wasn’t for mine. Likewise, overnight camp was not really an option for mine. Yours may be different.

Keep receipts for all camps. Keep them in one spot. You should be able to get a significant tax break from them, assuming you are paying taxes.

If you are cleaning up an environment by deleting resources in Amazon’s EC2, here is a checklist to get you started

I just cleaned up an environment I had set up in Amazon years ago for a client. (The client wanted to use Amazon, so we did.) In doing so, I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind which would cause me to continue getting billed even though I was no longer actively using EC2. I believe that the following checklist was useful in insuring this.

My EC2 cleanup checkist:

  1. Delete my Elastic IPs
  2. Terminated instances – running and non-running  (I did this before deleting volumes, since it deleted alot of them for me)
  3. Delete remaining volumes
  4. Delete my security groups ( 1 will be left – the default one)
  5. Deregister AMIs
  6. Delete snapshots (you need to deregister your AMIs before you do this)
  7. Check your account balance
  8. In a few days, check your account balance to see if there are any charges you haven’t accounted for

After following this checklist, my EC2 environment was cleaned up. Depending on how you are using EC2, you may have more things to delete. Checking your account balance will help there: if you left things behind, they may incur charges. An increase in your account balance will help flush them out.

One thing to consider: you may delete something, but it doesn’t show in admin console. If that is the case, logout and then in. I did that when I was having trouble deregistering my AMIs. I logged out and then in and when I checked them, they were now deregistered.

If you want to become a consultant, you will need five key traits

That’s what this piece in the Globe and Mail says (Five key traits of successful consultants – The Globe and Mail), and as a long time consultant I find it hard to disagree. The traits?

  • intellectual capacity
  • self-confidence
  • moxie
  • adaptability
  • endurance

You could argue successful consultants have more common traits, but these are a good basis for anyone who want to provide such services to clients.  If you want to become a consultant, ask yourself if these apply to you. If you want more details on this, click on the link to the Globe.

When someone you love is dying of cancer, knowing what you might expect

It is hard to know what to expect when someone you love is dying of cancer. I know that was my experience when my mom died of cancer a few years ago. There is no What to Expect when you are Expecting books to give you an education or a perspective. Yet just like we need information for when loved ones are at the start of their lives, we need information for when loved ones are at the end of their lives, too.

Here are three essays that I believe can help you with this.

When someone you love is dying of cancer, your life becomes much more difficult. Knowledge can help with that difficulty.

Git 201: how to get to the next level with git


There are quite a few really good introductions to git. I’ve written about them here. Once you get past “git 101”, where do you go to learn more and be more productive with git? I’d like to recommend this article:
developerWorks: Learn the workings of Git, not just the commands. It should help you get to the next level. I particularly like the diagrams: there are alot of them, and they help you better understand the flow that can occur when you really start capitalizing on git.

How to be more efficient online: the very big list

The folks at Buffer have put together a very big list of 100 tools, tips and tricks to work more efficiently online. I have gone over it and there are lots and lots of good tools and tips and other advice to help you be more productive and get the most out of being online. Stop wasting time on social media** and start being more productive by clicking on that link now.

** Reading this blog does not count as wasting time on social media. 🙂

On rejecting most criticism and giving license to the best criticism

We come into a lot of criticism in the course of our lives.  Just on social media alone there is a lot. Some of it is directed at you, while other criticism comes at you indirectly. Some of it comes from people you like, while other critiques will come from people you barely know. You can be criticized for the things you say, the things you do, even for who you are: a man, a woman, a person of a certain race or financial class or nationality. Pick a trait you have and nowadays you can find someone saying something critical about it.

Given that you do have to deal with a lot of criticism, you can do take a number of actions. It’s not advisable, but you can run away from it. (For example, giving up on certain forms of social media, like twitter.) You can get into arguments with people. This seems like a good idea, but I often find it frustrating, endless, alienating, and the opposite of how you may want to be. You can learn to ignore it, though learning to ignore it is not always easy. Sometimes the criticism is invalid or worse, then it’s easy to ignore. But some of the criticism is valid and when that happens, it can get under your skin. It’s great if you are thick skinned, but if you are not, you need to do something else. You need to learn to manage criticism.

One approach to managing criticism is to use understand the idea of a license to criticize. This borrows from the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote: no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. The idea of a license to criticize is that you should only accept criticism from a small group of people, regardless of how many valid and invalid criticisms you come across. A license is different from a right. As an adult, no one has a right to criticize you: you give them that ability. Even when you do give them the ability to criticize you, it is a privilege or license.  It is a license you are free to provide or revoke. They do not own it, and you get to say when they can or can’t use it. You should treat that license as valuable, and you should only give it to people whose criticism is going to result in you and your life being better as a result of their criticism.

In your life you will want to accept criticism. Accepting criticism from people you respect and who have an interest in seeing you succeed makes sense. You become a better person and enjoy a better life from such criticism. Accepting criticism from people you don’t respect and who have no interest in seeing you succeed makes no sense. That type of criticism just makes you miserable and ruins your life.

The next time you are offered criticism, ask yourself:

  • Do you respect this person?
  • Do you respect their criticism?
  • Is the purpose of their criticism to help you succeed?

If you answer Yes to those questions, then you will likely want to accept and act on that criticism. Otherwise it is in your best interest to ignore it and look for someone who can make you answer Yes to those questions.

Finally, the number of people you should give license to criticize you should be a very small number of people. It should not be something given out to just anyone you know, never mind just anyone on the Internet.

If you are running outside, you need to warm up in more ways than one

If you are going to be running in cold weather, having a warm up to get you started will help. Here’s a good one to try: Winter Prep Workout from Runner’s World.

It typically takes 5-10 minutes to warm up when you go running. (Some people can take much longer). During those few minutes, I found I am cold and sometimes miserable. This warm up can help reduce the misery of winter running and also help you from getting injured.

Anything that makes winter running easier is worthwhile.

Is the TTC’s Metropass worth it? Yes. But it depends…

In this otherwise really good piece by Ed Keenan – Six things we learned from John Tory’s transit announcement: Keenan | Toronto Star – he made this comment

At a new price of $141.50, a Metropass costs almost as much as 51 tokens or 47 cash fares. For most weekday commuters, that math doesn’t add up.

At first thought, this seemed right to me. If you only use the Metropass to go to and from one location each business day, it isn’t worth it. For example, assuming most months have 22 working days, then that is 44 tokens, which is less than the 51 tokens it is worth.

Where the Metropass math adds up is when you start to be a heavier use of the TTC.

If you travel on the TTC daily, then you can get in as many as 62 trips/tokens on the TTC and a Metropass will be a good buy for you. Even in February, that is 56 trips/tokens. Daily users easily benefit from it. But if you don’t travel every day on Toronto transit, there are other ways to make the Metropass worthwhile.

For people who use it to go to work and then do after work activities, the Metropass is a good idea.  For example, if you take trips to and from work, as well as using it to go to meet friends or to take after work classes or to go to the gym, then you can benefit from having and using a Metropass. For example, 44 tokens for work plus 3 trips a week to classes plus one to friends adds up to 16 more tokens a month for a total of 60 tokens.

For people who have to stop to pick up their kids from childcare, the Metropass is good value. I used to pick up my son daily after work. That was 3 tokens every day, so most months that was 66 tokens.

For people who can share it, the Metropass is great value. For example, if a couple works different shifts, then together they potentially need 88 tokens each month to get them back and forth to work. Sharing a Metropass could save alot for such a couple.

Even people who don’t use the TTC all that much can still make the Metropass work for them if they can reduce the cost of it. For example, people who can buy the Metropass on subscription can get it for a lesser amount. That means you need to take less trips to break even. And if you pay enough taxes to break be able to claim your Metropasses as a tax expense, then you also need to take less trips to break even with the purchase.

If you take your total transportations costs, including taxis, Zipcars, etc, then you might find that having a Metropass is worth it. For example, you might find you grab a cab a few times each month because you don’t have tokens or cash. Switching to a Metropass, you find you do that less and therefore your overall spending on transportation each month is going down.

Cost aside, the other great benefit of the Metropass is convenience. All the hassle of dealing with buying tokens is gone. That convenience means you may be more likely to use the TTC when you have a Metropass, which leads you to make your money back from getting it. Also, you may find you enjoy yourself more by getting out more. It’s an intangible benefit, but a good one nonetheless.

I think for heavier users of the TTC, the Metropass is definitely worth it. And to be fair to Ed, he acknowledged a number of these points in a discussion he had on twitter.  Whether or not the Metropass is worth it to you will depend on your own use of the TTC and your own math.

P.S. Thanks for reading this. If you have found it useful and you’d like to say thanks by buying me a coffee, you can do so here. Thanks! That’s awesome!

Are you a couch potato? Do you want to get in better shape? Then read what former couch potatoes did

I don’t think highly of lists that supposedly help you to get in shape. I am happy to make an exception for this one: 15 Former Couch Potatoes Share Their Best Tips For Getting In Shape.

It’s not so much a list as it is 15 different stories. Each person has a different approach to getting in shape. What worked for one person may not work for you, but there is a good chance that out of the 15 stories, there will be more than a few new ideas that you can steal and use.

I also liked that it is not a list of advice from people who were athletes or people who were in good shape already. The people on this list were out of shape, and they lost weight and became fit using the sensible approaches they took.

I don’t usually recommend Buzzfeed articles, but this one is a very good exception.

If getting in shape was one of your resolutions for the New Year, this is a good thing for you to read now.

How to prevent sites from tracking you – five good links

Do you find it weird when you search for something, then go to other sites, and it seems like the product is following you around? Do you worry that sites are tracking information about you and you want to stop it?

I’d like to say there is an easy way to put an end to such tracking, but it doesn’t seem to be so. If anything, companies like Facebook, Google and others have a big financial interest in tracking you, regardless of what you think, and they are going to make it hard for you to put an end to it all.

That said,  if you still want to take action, I recommend these links. They highlight tools you can use and steps you can take to limit tracking. You don’t have to be technical to read them, but you have to be comfortable making changes to your system.

  1. How to prevent Google from tracking you – CNET – this may be the best article that I read. Mostly focused on Google. There are useful links to tools in here and plugins you can use, like Disconnect and Ghostery. Somewhat technical.
  2. Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web; Here’s How to Stop It – This Lifehacker article has more on how to deal with Facebook tracking you than Google, but it is also good.
  3. How to Stop Google, Facebook and Twitter From Tracking You – this piece from ReadWrite talks mostly about the Disconnect tool, but it does it in conjunction with discussion of some other tools. Seems less technical than the first two, if you found the first two links too hard to follow.
  4. How to Stop Google From Tracking You on the Web on NDTV Gadgets has tips that are more manual in nature, if you don’t want to download tools. Also some good information on how to deal with mobile phone tracking.
  5. Delete searches & browsing activity – Accounts Help via Google comes straight from the source of the tracking.

Some thoughts of my own:

  • Consider using two browsers: one for your Google use (e.g. Chrome) and one for other uses (e.g. Firefox or Safari). The non-Google browser you can lock down with blockers and other tools, while the Google oriented browser could be limited to just what you need to integrate with Google.
  • Avoid sites that track you, like Facebook.I know, it isn’t easy. If you have to go on Facebook — you get a call from a sibling asking why you haven’t commented on the new baby pictures there — limit yourself to a few thumbs up and leave it at that. (Knowing Facebook, they will still find a way to do something with even that data.)
  • If you are really concerned, avoid Google altogether and use other search engines, like DuckDuckGo, and other email services, such as Outlook.com. There can still be tracking, but in theory this should make it harder.
  • If you use any of tools, get into a habit of using them and keeping them up to date.
  • Don’t forget to do the same thing on your mobile devices. Facebook can track your activity on your mobile phone, regardless of what you may be doing on the web. You can be tracked via apps just as easily as you can be tracked from your browser.
  • If you do anything else, install the Disconnect plug in and then activate it and go to a newspaper site. You will be amazed just how much tracking is going on. (Also, you do NOT have to sign up for the premium version to get it working.)

Some thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, outrage, and social media in general

Well before the end of 2014, I had decided that I was no longer going to participate or contribute to anything outrageous or political on social media generally, and twitter in particular.

This week I let down my guard and did participate and comment on the recent events in France, mainly because I was stunned by the act of violence.
After considering it for over a week, I think that was a mistake and I am writing this partially to insure I don’t make that mistake again. If you are curious, the next few lines explain my thinking around that resolution. The last four paragraphs talk about what I am going to do instead: feel free to skip down to there.
I have been using social media for a long time, relatively speaking. At first it was merely a curious experience. Then it went to being a positive experience. But more and more it has become a negative experience.
Once social media, and twitter in particular, was for people sharing status. It was random: some good, some bad, nothing focused. However, one really good thing about it was that you got to know people. People you might never get to meet before: the famous and the fabulous and the funny and the friendly. It was a great experience. I know from my own experience that my life was greatly improved by this greater network that I got access to.
While my feed of updates  was once rather random, over time people started focusing their use of it. Celebrities used to to promote their work. Politicians did too. Activists started to try and rally people to their cause. Artists tried to make it into a new form of writing. That was still good.
Among people on twitter, a growing belief was that the benefit of twitter over a site like Facebook was that you could hang out with people you liked but didn’t know (as opposed to hanging out with people on Facebook that you knew but didn’t like). I never agreed with that knock against Facebook, but I did like the people I encountered on twitter. They were good people.
Then not so good people came along. People with no other interest in twitter and social media than to cause problems. It was like a pile of aggressive drunks showing up at a party and getting into fist fights with the rest. Twitter, the company, seem to have no plan in dealing with this. Perhaps it was a result of this, or perhaps it was something else, but the level of aggressiveness and negativity rose on twitter as well. It was a variation of Gresham’s Law, where instead of the bad money driving out the good, the antisocial behavior drives out the positive social behavior. Whatever it is, what I found was that the amount of positive sharing seemed to diminish. People tended to communicate with people they had a previous relationship with, and people seemed more likely to share negative things.
I believe as a result of that, we now see these ever increasing outrage storms on twitter. Where once the outrage over events of the day — if you had any at all — would be limited to yourself or your small social circle, now you can share it with hundreds or thousands of people. Those people can take that and share it with the people they know. And then to add to that, there will be people who disagree with you, and they will express their displeasure to you directly in a way they never could or would if you knew them personally.  This all adds up to an enormous cloud of negativity.
Last December, I noticed people saying 2014 was a terrible year. That surprised me. I am older than many people on twitter, but most people on twitter are educated and experienced enough to know that relatively speaking, 2014 was not a particularly terrible year for many people in the world. I could think of many years in recent memory that were much worse economically, that had much more violence, that had much more disease and suffering. There were terrible things that happened in 2014, but terrible things happen every year and 2014 was no exception.
I believe that people thought 2014 was a terrible year because all of the feedback that they constantly get that gives a strong impression that it was terrible. And feedback is the right word. More and more of the things shared on twitter are negative. Either they are personally negative or there is something in the world that we see which is terrible.
I used to think that sharing such information on twitter could make a positive difference, and that by sharing such information, even if it is upsetting, then it was worth it if something good could come from it. I no longer believe that. Topics change so frequently on twitter now that it is easy to miss them if you are not on twitter for a few days.
Instead, I find social media to be more and more upsetting and aggravating with little upside. There are times when people need to be upset and aggravated if it helps them achieve something they want but can’t achieve otherwise. But too much “stick” and not enough “carrot” is just a form of voluntary suffering.
There have been many times when I wanted to give up on twitter. Back in the fail whale days, the lack of availability was frustrating. Then I was angry when twitter started taking over my stream. In both cases there were technical workarounds to those problems. But this is a social and a culture problem, and those are hard if not impossible to fix with technology.
Ultimately I could give up on twitter. But I have come to like a lot of the people on twitter I follow, and I would hate to lose track of them and what they are doing. It would be nice if there were better ways to filter and manage the information that shows up in my feed, but Twitter the company seems to have decided it is not in their interest for me to do that.
Given all that, my own remedy is slight. The one thing I can do is try and change my own contribution to twitter and try to focus on contributing more constructive and positive updates. I’d encourage you to do the same. Enough positivity and constructive updates can make a big difference eventually.
Also, I am going to try and spend less time vegetating in front of twitter much the way other people crash and vegetate in front of TV. I actually read every tweet in my feed. (Hey, the people I follow in India and Australia and Germany tweet later so I have to read it all:)). Instead of vegetativing like that, I hope to spend my time reading more books, making things (from bread to furniture) and generally get out and do things. I would encourage you to do that as well.
Finally, I am going to look for a select group of causes I can contribute time and money to and focus on the little I can do with the limited resources I have at my disposal. I think I can have more of a positive effect on the world that way than I can contributing to the latest outrage storm on twitter. I would heartily encourage you to do that as well.
If you have made it to this point, I want to thank you for reading this. You may not agree with it, but I hope you were able to take away from it something positive and worthwhile.

Whatever resolutions you have made, consider these guidelines from Tony Schwartz (via @99u)

If you’ve made resolutions and plan to stick to them, that’s good. What may help you stick with them is this article: A Master Plan for Taking Back Control of Your Life – 99U. Essentially it is a list of general guidelines that can help you on your way as you tackle things like….resolutions. You will find it useful in other ways too.

I think it’s worth a read.  I’d also recommend Tony Schwartz in general: I’ve read a number of other pieces by him on the 99U and on other sites and I have found them to be valuable.

Happy New Year!

 

Do you feel like you do alot with little to show for it? I did too. Here’s how I turned that around.

Last year, I was discouraged: I was doing a lot with little to show for it. I would frequently be up until midnight doing chores and trying to stay on top of things and I was exhausted. Despite all that effort, I could not tell you what I had accomplished and I wasn’t getting any feedback telling me either. I decided I had to change that, and to change that, I did two major things: I started using a spreadsheet and I started using Workflowy. Let me explain how these two tools made a difference for me.

First, I started using a spreadsheet to track everything I did. Before I would write my todolists on a piece of paper, do it, then throw the list away. With the spreadsheet,  I put all my todos in there. Initially it had two columns: a todo column and a status column. Each todo had an associated status: Pending (i.e., I hadn’t started the task), WIP (work in progress, meaning I had started the task but hadn’t completed it) or Complete. As I did each todo, I changed the status from Pending to WIP (Work in progress) to Complete. I would try to only tackle tasks that were in the spreadsheet. If I did something that wasn’t in there, I started adding it there. (That last thing of capturing all todos in the spreadsheet was important.)

Very soon, I could see from the spreadsheet that I was doing a lot. In fact, the todolist expanded greatly. So I added a new column: priority. Each todo has a priority: 1-4. Once or twice a week, I reviewed my todos to see if they had the right priority. Then I ignored anything that wasn’t a 1 until the next review period. Prioritization helped me to focus.

Despite that, I still had many many todos, and still too many todos with a number 1 priority. I added additional columns over the year and this helped me manage what I had to get done. Even when my todo list had over 500 items on it, I could quickly filter out all but the 3 or 4 items I needed to focus on for a day. I added a column to help me separate Work todos from Home (not work related) todos. Then I subcategorized the Todos: there are todos related to my kids, todos concerning Money, my Home, even Me!

Of all the colums in the todo list, I found this last column of subcategories to be the most important in terms of getting a sense of accomplishment. Here’s why. At the end of each month, I took the completed todos and sorted them by subcategory. I could see from this where I was (and wasn’t) spending my time. For example, I might see that I was spending a lot of my time dealing with House issues and not enough of my time with the Kids. Having this in front of me allowed me to better focus my time in the near future. (Note: you don’t have to wait until the end of the month to do this, and when I find I am really busy, I will do weekly or biweekly reviews to see how the month is shaping up).

At the end of the month, I create a new worksheet for the new month by making a copy of the existing todo list. That way, I can focus just on the todos for that month.

After a few months of this, it was easy to do. You might think it is a lot of effort, but with the spreadsheet I have, I found it easy to add to and sort the todos. Most days I spend less than a few minutes reviewing it.

Occasionally I do things that aren’t on the list. It doesn’t matter much: most todos end up in there. The main thing is I get to see that I am getting things done and I can see where my effort is going.

That’s the spreadsheet. At first, it was all I wanted. I could see what I was getting done each month, and that felt great. I was getting a sense of accomplishment every month. But it wasn’t enough. The problem with just using the spreadsheet was that it is very granular. I could see I was doing a lot of tasks, but was that good or bad? Also, sometimes a bunch of smaller tasks add up to a bigger task that should be highlighted, but the spreadsheet couldn’t do that for me. I needed a different approach. I needed a different tool.  After thinking about this, I started using Workflowy (workflowy.com).

At the start of the month, I create a list of major activities I want to accomplish that month. (Workflowy is really  great if you like lists: that’s why I picked it.) Then I make sure my todos for that month are in line with those major activities. At the end of the month, I roll up the tasks that I did and put them in workflowy according to the major activities. Additionally, I might look and see I accomplished a number of things in the month that I didn’t expect to at the start of the month. I will add them to Workflowy, too, creating a new major activity to describe them.

What I liked about this is that month after month I could now see I was accomplishing a lot. I wasn’t just doing just a lot of little things: I was getting bigger things done. I could also see what I wasn’t accomplishing (e.g. running) and then correct that (or at least accept it in light of the other things I was accomplishing).

The other thing I realized is that if you have a lot on your plate, then it is difficult to make a lot of achievements in one month, but over many months, you start to see you have accomplished a lot. You miss that as your review your day to day activities because you are juggling a lot. Even looking back over a month, you think: wow, I barely made a dent in things. But as you look back over 3 or 6 months, you can say: wow, I made big improvements in 3 or 6 or even a dozen areas.

There are lots of improvements that can be made on this system, depending on who you are.  You may have the advantage of being able to focus in one or two areas. If so, you could use a simpler approach. If you have many major responsibilities and you want to make improvements in your own life, this approach may work for you. It works for me.

A template of my spreadsheet is here. It’s an XLS file.

As for the list I have each month in workflowy, I start with a template like this:

In Month X I plan to achieve the following

  • Concerning family and friends
  • With regards to personal finances
  • On the home front
  • With regards to staying organized
  • For special project X (whatever X is at the time)
  • Personally, I plan to do more regarding….
    • Writing/reading
    • Fitness
    • Develop personal skills
      • Develop my technical skills
      • Develop other skills
    • Explore new things

If you have read to this point: thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to do this. If you try this approach and it gives you some benefit, please let me know. Good luck! Accomplish great things!

Do you find yourself on your phone too much? Here’s a trick to help stop that

I find myself on my smartphone too much. It’s too easy to fall into that trap, and afterwards I wish I did something else instead. Did something useful. Or made something beautiful. Austin Kleon feels the same way, based on this post of his: Read a book instead. He made a screen lock for his phone to remind him to read a book and get off his phone.

I decided I wanted something similar. In my case, I found a photo I liked and used the Over app on my iPhone to create this:

test

I then saved it as my LockScreen. Now when I pick up the phone to start doing something mindless, the phone reminds me to do something better.

You can do the same thing yourself. You don’t even need an app or drawing skills. Write a reminder on a piece of paper and then take a photo of it with your phone and save it as your Lock Screen. It could be just the nudge you need.

Thanks for reading this. I hope you found it useful. If you did, then time spent doing it instead of playing with stuff on my phone was worthwhile.

Life in your 80s and 90s – some inspiration for then and now

On it’s own, this is a great piece:
Old Masters at the Top of Their Game – NYTimes.com. The woman above? 99. She sold her first painting at 89. She is now a world renowned artist. And there’s more great profiles of people in it. You should read it, and not just if you are older. I  recommend it for any age. How you read it at 20 will be different than how you read it at 40 or 60.  For me, I was struck by how  many of those interviewed say that nothing surprises them. As I get older, I find this true too, though I am still surprised. The flip side of this is that anxiety and concern about many things in life decreases. You know how to handle things, and you spend less time worrying about the things you ought not to worry about.

Another thing I thought interesting is that they don’t necessarily think of themselves as old. This is something I also found true as I age. I know when I talk to the 20 year olds in my office they must look at me and think: man, he’s old. 🙂 But other than superficial things, I don’t find my thinking or my view on the world has diminished from when I was younger. I have more experience now, and I had more natural energy then, but I don’t think: wow I no longer get this IT stuff now that I am older.

I highly encourage you to read the article. Then check out Austin Kleon’s blog because I found it there a lot with many other good things.

In Toronto and want to learn how to skate?

Then the Harbourfront Centre’s Learn to Skate program may be for you. It’s a lovely little place to skate, and you can rent everything you need. In no time you will be braving the crowds at Nathan Phillips Square and zipping around with the best of them.

If you are looking for New Year’s resolutions to make, learning to skate is a good one.

P.S. It is usually cooler down there than the rest of the city. Dress warmly.

A great little tutorial on MySQL that covers Windows, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu (Linux)…

…can be found at this link:

MySQL Tutorial – How to Install MySQL 5 (on Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu) and Get Started with SQL.

Even if you don’t know hardly anything about SQL or databases, you will find this helpful. It covers pretty much everything you need to know to get started, and it’s a great cheat sheet for people who have more experience but need to know a command format or get some other quick guidance.

Recommended.

P.S. It specifies Ubuntu, but if you are using other distros like CentOS you should still find it helpful.

Going out this weekend? Here’s a list of 5 restaurants with cheap wine in Toronto

If you plan to go out wine drinking this weekend — or any day next week — then head over to blog.to and see what they have to say on 5 restaurants with cheap wine in Toronto.

Of the restos on the list, I have known about Le Paradis for along time. Whenever I went, I’d  remark how reasonable wine prices were here compared to other places. (The food and ambiance of the place is also not bad.)  If the other places are comparable, then this is a very good list indeed.

The subversive genius that is Cracked.com

The team at cracked.com have a tested formula: take some good advice  and practically bury it in humour to get a piece that has you laughing at first but thinking later. It is a very subversive way to get people thinking on a site you wouldn’t expect to be doing so.

I first started reading cracked.com for the laughs, but afterwards thought: hey, they have a really great piece of guidance there. Here are two pieces from many good ones on the site:

There are lots of sites on the Web giving advice (including this one). Cracked does it in a way that is better than most. Worth checking out.

If you are having problems charging your fitbit flex, consider this fix

If you plug your fitbit into your charging cable and then into your computer, lights should start pulsing.  (See here for details.) If they don’t start pulsing, then your fitbit will not take the charge. How can you fix this?

Take a look at the three very small circles at the bottom of your fitbit. They should be a shiny copper colour if they are clean, and they need to be clean in order to take the charge. Ideally they should always stay clean, but it is easy for them to get dirty since they are so close to your skin.

To clean them, you need a very gentle abrasive to clean them. What worked for me was taking the end of a paper clip and very gently scraping the circle until I could see the shiny copper again. Then I plugged it back into the charging cable that was attached to my computer and the lights started pulsing.

Note! If you are the least bit concerned about breaking your fitbit by doing this, then do not do this. Instead, take it back to where you purchased it and see if they can help you. You are responsible for your own fitbit.  That said, this worked for me and my fitbit worked fine afterwards.

4 p.m. recipe(s): some good meals to make this autumn and winter (soups, salads, and rice)

I was going through my list of recipes I have been collecting, and rather than trickle them out, here are four worth trying this autumn and winter (all via Chatelaine.com):

P.S. I am a fan of recipes from Chatelaine: they are well tested, nutritious and healthy. The recipes aren’t boring, but they are easy to make and it is easy to find ingredients, even if you don’t live in a big city.

You want to take better photos with your digital camera? Henri Cartier-Bresson has 10 tips for you

Ok, it’s not advice directly from the Master. However, the author of this piece, 10 Things Henri Cartier-Bresson Can Teach You About Street Photography, has distilled 10 lessons from Cartier-Bresson’s photography that easily applies to digital photography. Anyone looking to take better digital pictures can benefit from this lessons, especially the last one:

 Always strive for more

The trick of caramelized onions

Caramelized onions are a great thing to have: many basic dishes can be enhanced by adding these golden beauties. Sound good? If so, consider this:  Why recipe writers lie and lie about how long they take to caramelize onions.
 I recommend you read this before you try to make caramelized onions, otherwise you might wonder why the burned/undercooked ones you just whipped up don’t have the appeal you expected.

Stuck for a recipe to use them with? Consider this egg dish recipe from Martha Stewart: Caramelized Onion and Gorgonzola Quiche Recipe or this pasta recipe from:  A CUP OF JO: Rigatoni with Caramelized Onions and Gorgonzola.