Adventures in home working

In this post I talked about my approach to time management.  Graham has this great story on his site that illustrates the same approach but much more eloquently!

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He asked the students if the jar was full.They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full; they agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things: your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions, things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter–like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else: The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just filler.”

One of the students raised his hand and enquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

It may be an old machine, but it is still in many ways a near perfect design.  I have listed before the problems I had with my original TC1100, and why I changed my mind, but at the end of the day fixing the problems would introduce new weaknesses.  jk of jkOnTheRun documents his decision process.

so I have ordered the HP tc1100.  The tc1100 has a 10.4″ screen and only weighs 3.1 pounds without the keyboard attached which I really like.  This is the closest device to my dream mini-Tablet in both size and function.  The tc1100 is a true hybrid Tablet with a keyboard that can be attached or detached at will so it will be the best solution for the way that I work.

In this article Nicholas Carr describes the “End of Corporate Computing” and justifies as follows:

Three technological advances are enabling this change: virtualization, grid computing and Web services. Virtualization erases the differences between proprietary computing platforms, enabling applications designed to run on one operating system to be deployed elsewhere. Grid computing allows large numbers of hardware components, such as servers or disk drives, to effectively act as a single device, pooling their capacity and allocating it automatically to different jobs. Web services standardize the interfaces between applications, turning them into modules that can be assembled and disassembled easily.

I don’t see it this way at all for the following reasons:

• Corporate computing is about people, employees, customers, suppliers etc and their interactions.  None of these people think of computing as Virtualised Servers, Storage, Grids etc.  These are the utilities that corporate computing runs upon, not the essence of Corporate Computing.  This analogy is like saying the end of corporate heating and lighting, just because electricity is supplied by a utility.
• Slightly closer to the truth is the part concerning Web Services, but again he looses me when he says “modules that can be assembled and disassembled easily”,  surely this assembly and disassembly is Corporate Computing!
• Then there are two key Corporate roles,  the modelling of processes and the orchestration of multiple components to execute them, and the ability to add value at the edge through extracting, combining and analysing information from multiple places in creative and unique ways.

Closer to the mark is this observation:

The resulting industry will likely have three major components. At the center will be the IT utilities themselves — big companies that will maintain core computing resources in central plants and distribute them to end users. Serving the utilities will be a diverse array of component suppliers — the makers of computers, storage units, networking gear, operating and utility software, and applications. And finally, large network operators will maintain the ultrahigh-capacity data-communication lines needed for the system to work.

Here he is talking about the way the IT utility supply industry will organise, and it looks about right, for the type of computing that this model will suit.

Finally he gets it right:

IT’s shift from an in-house capital asset to a centralized utility service will overturn strategic and operating assumptions, alter industrial economics, upset markets and pose daunting challenges to every user and vendor. The history of the commercial application of IT has been characterized by astounding leaps, but nothing that has come before — not even the introduction of the personal computer or the opening of the Internet — will match the upheaval that lies just over the horizon.

But this is not the end of Corporate Computing, it is an evolution of Corporate Computing, allowing it to focus on the activities that add value, rather than those that can be commiditized and delivered as utilities.

This is a great post that summarises the debate, make sure you follow the linked articles

Probably not, in the context of IT Identity Management:

“To Trust Someone is Good; To Not Trust Someone is Even Better”

For more on the topic, go to Kim’s Identity Blog

X1 Technologies on Friday started shipping a version of its X1 Desktop Search software that supports Lotus Notes, the first time that the local and network search product has deigned to deal with IBM’s messaging product.  I installed it but Notes does not appear in the list of Email systems to index, so I will have to investigate

This article describes numerous uses for RSS that go beyond the ubiquitous blog.  It’s an interesting read, especially because it confines itself to implemented uses, rather than the hundreds of uses we can envision.  On a related note I noticed this quote in an article by CRN:

Microsoft partisans imagine a day when business users get realtime pings on their Office desktop software whenever their ERP systems detect inventories below a certain level. Beneath the covers, that simple-looking alert will rely on a confluence of technologies, including Office desktop applications, Microsoft’s planned “Maestro” realtime reporting server and a back-end SharePoint Portal/Excel Server combination.

Decidedly “RSS like” capability although probably not using RSS as the format.  The same article goes on to describe some of the conditional alerting that would be enabled by Excel Server:

“You’d set up an Excel model on the desktop, export it to the server, bind it to a [database] or, via Maestro, to an application source,” he said. “The model runs constantly on the server, feeding updated dashboard data via new Office 12 tools or a [business intelligence] tool. Or [it can] send you an e-mail or an instant-messaging or a VoIP call.” Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., declined to comment.

My daughter has recently inherited by old Tablet PC, a TC1000.  She has an auto-immune disorder and secondary Raynaud’s and these conditions mean that she suffers from cold hands, is very stiff and not that strong.  As a result she often struggles to carry her bag around and with writing.  About a year ago I wrote an article explaining why I thought a Tablet would help here and a few weeks ago I demonstrated my Tablet to the school teachers and her assessors.  As a result they have agreed that they will try and get her a grant for a Tablet ready for high school which is great news.  In addition they will get her a book scanner.  Although scanned books are not perfect, nor many eBooks, as I mention here, they are often better than paper.

In preparation she is taking her Tablet into school 3 days a week to get used to the logistics and the envious kids and how to deal with them.  Since she got the Tablet I noticed that she has started using the computer at home a lot more as well.  I often find her sitting in bed browsing the web, writing her journal etc.

In this context I was interested to see this report on a trial of Tablets for kids of Jen’s age group, some interesting quotes are:

Carnegie Mellon University is conducting an experiment at The Ellis School and one of CMU’s own classes in which traditional textbooks are replaced with a Tablet personal computer. The HP Compaq 1100 Tablet PCs weigh 4 pounds and have been adapted so students can highlight key passages on the screen and write on the e-text with a digital pen. Students also can send their homework on the Tablet PCs and get material from their teachers.

They mention an important caution, which is especially an issue for A4 content, not so big an issue with text books:

“Nationally, students have not warmed up to e-texts at first because they saw little advantage in them,” said Diana Oblinger, vice president of EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit group in Boulder, Colo., interested in technology in higher education. She said the print on the screen used to be harder to read than regular texts, and the software lacked features to encourage people to use it.

That is beginning to change as new software lets students do more things than they could do with a textbook.

Others have Jen’s problem too:

Before this experiment, Chao said her 6-year-old brother Bobby could not even lift her bookbag, which often contained four textbooks and three binders. The bookbag of her classmate Heather Acuff, 14, of McCandless, was so heavy that she used to roll it around on wheels.

It has changed the way teachers work:

Nine eighth-graders at Ellis have replaced their hardback geometry and earth science texts with Tablet PCs. The geometry class uses software developed by Shadyside-based TextCENTRIC that allows students to highlight passages and trade material with their teacher.

Math teacher Russ Schopper presents a problem on a computerized blackboard. The same image appears on the students’ 8-by-10-by-1-inch computers. A split screen lets the students solve the problem on one side and refer to the textbook on the other.

Kids have the same problems we do with PC’s:

Ellis students complain of long startup times for the PC and the danger of computer crashes, but the benefits, they say, outweigh the disadvantages.

I have thought for a long time that going paperless was a good strategy. Now I know why, Microsoft has posted 3 great videos that demonstrate the dangers of office stationary.  They really are worth watching, preferably with the family as they are very funny.  Another tip,  make sure you watch them through a few times watching the background characters as well for best effect!

First up, the Elastic Band next the Paper Cut and finally the Bad Pen

Visit the web site for more information

I only work part-time and have been struggling to find a way to manage my time, it’s been a long process and has so fair failed to control overload.

I started off using a traditional task list in Lotus Notes, this failed miserably as it seemed impossible to visualise the mass of tasks in a way that allowed me to make sensible decisions.

Next I tried OneNote, but this didn’t help, just another way to get confused

Then I tried Life Balance along with the GTD methodology.  This was better, as careful adjustment of the importance of each task relative to its parent objectives allows you to balance all areas of your life. Unfortunately Life Balance has no robust concept of work content, parallel activities, progress etc.  As a result  have found I have gradually accumulated activities and become hopelessly over-committed.  Life-balance had shielded me from this by showing me the priority activity to work on each day and by hiding next actions until the current action is completed.

So after probably 9 months of trying different approaches I am now able to state my needs clearly:

1. I need a way of visualising the work content of the tasks, and scheduling them out over time, so that they fit within the limited time I have available to do them
2. I need a way of visualising progress, so that I can see if I can meet my deadlines
3. I need a way of reviewing my whole task list
4. I need a good way of modelling dependencies between tasks, and in fact in my work their are many tasks for one customer that build on similar tasks for another, which implies a sequence
5. I need a way of fitting in all of the small tasks effectively around the big ones
6. I need a good experience on my Treo and my desktop
7. Ideally I would like to be able to visualise my tasks as a mind map during reviews

As I read through this list the answer became surprisingly clear:

• I need to partition my time.  4 hours a day will be dedicated to project work.  Project work will be defined and tracked in MS project.  This takes care of requirements 1, 2 and 4
• I have added a whole range of extra columns to Project so that I can simulate GTD and also create useful views.  These include Context, Priority and Status.  This takes care of requirement 3
• I will leave 1 – 2 hours a day for “other tasks” and I will continue to manage these in Life Balance, because of it’s great auto prioritisation and handling of routine tasks, like washing the bedding, weeding, exercising etc. This takes care of requirements 5
• I will use Project@Hand to replicate project to my Treo.  The usability seems excellent and will be even better if my Treo 650 ever arrives from work. This takes care of requirements 6
• If I need to do a review I can sync my plan with Mind Manager which takes care of requirements 7

I have now transferred my Projects to MS Project and found:

• 3 of my current projects are 2–3 weeks late
• I have firm commitments out to September, rather than July as I had previously thought
• For the first time I have confidence that I can actually deliver my tasks, rather than confidence that I would not loose them!
• prior to working part-time life used to be a lot easier,  I just worked the hours that were needed to get the job done, this seems a much better option

Inspiration from this approach came from David Pollards posts about implementing GTD with a spreadsheet, Project is in many ways like a spreadsheet on steroids.