Archive for December, 2008

Happy New Year to all my awesome readers and especially those of you who comment on the posts! I wish all of you a Successful, Productive, and above all, Happy 2009!

2008 was a rollercoaster ride for Hack Your Day with its first full year behind it, I had to put the blog on hiatus for a number of reasons, but December saw a strong start, especially because I was lucky enough to join the awesome Grand Effect group! Since the beginning of December I have already gained thousands of new readers with my visitor count rising by 40%, my RSS feed by roughly the same amount, so thanks to all of you making it happen!

Since I am almost near the point I was before all the hiatus madness it’s time to take Hack Your Day above and beyond! My goal is a whopping 100,000 visitors per month by the end of December 2009, and while this will mean about a 5-8 times increase I think it will work out well! I have some great plans, including taking on guest writers and some other hush-hush stuff.

Have a Happy New Year all of you, once you read this post you must switch off your laptop and go partying (if you’re not working), or you must relax if you’re alone or at home with others. Watch a movie, sleep, read a book, if I catch you being productive I’ll be very unhappy! See you all next year!

We hear a lot about the negative effects of stress today, ranging from insomnia to cancer there are a lot of problems associated with this modern day disease. However, with the right mindset you can turn stress into an asset to make you work better, faster and more efficiently. The goal is to turn stress into a challenge and think of it as a motivator instead of a threat. You can also create some stressful events purposfully to “practice”, read on to find out how!

The most important thing you can do to battle stress is to live with it. This might sound weird, but I don’t think that a naturally stressful person can just stop being stressed and live life with a faint smile all the time. It’s simpler to live with it and learn how to handle stress by treating it in different ways. In the end you will get rid of it, since stress will become more of a challenge, a nuissance, or just a part of everyday life, but nothing special.

A lot of stress is related to deadlines. While I can’t show you how to slow time, I can srtretch it a bit. I have been working on very close deadlines in the past month and I have to say I worked at least 50% faster. This shows me that I can indeed work 50% faster if needed. Today I coded something in 20 minutes which normally would have taken me more than an hour, simply because I needed to leave home at 4pm, it was 15:30 and I really wanted to finish. So why can’t I translate this into my normal work routine. I decided to try and “time” everything and do anything I do as fast as I can with the least amount of errors. This means I can work faster, meeting deadlines easily, taking a load off my back, relieving some of the stress. I suggest that if you have issues with deadlines, try and practice by giving yourself an even shorter deadline for a task. In my experience this exercise works best with short, 20-40 minute tasks because with large projects it is very hard to estimate the time to begin with.

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You might remember that I mentioned in an older post that in my whole 5 year career now working online I have only worked with one person who did not pay me. Well now it seems that I judged character correctly, I was not mad, I didn’t even threaten or anything (I mean legal action) and almost 2 years I think after the fact the person in question contacted me saying he feels sorry and has just sent me half the amount, with the other half being sent later.

This is just one example of why it is extremely important to be nice, maintain a business-like atmosphere at all times. I have plenty of experience in doing stupid things and I know damn well, that sometimes we do things we are not proud of. I think everyone has done these things, so I wasn’t to rash to judge. I think I actually sent the person a note saying that I would very much like to be paid, but I will not be taking any action if I am not, I was very understanding. Of course I was a bit frustrated and a bit angry, but we have all gotten ourselves into some messes at some point we could only come out of by not fulfilling some obligations.

Perhaps this is karma, but the past 2 months and the upcoming one is very hard financially for me so this actually came at probably the best time. This is a clear exampel of how good manners and understanding can pay off big time, even if it may set you back in the short run. It also helps establish you as a business-person, someone who is easy to work with an flexible, who won’t back out of hard situations.

Point in case, 90% of the time it is better to be nice than an ass, you can benefit in many more ways, most probably financially too eventually. In some cases being a “hard-liner” can work, but keep in mind that many people like the one I mentioned above have problems of their own and maybe can’t keep their promises because they have problems of their own. I’d like to see some more understanding generally in people, as you can see, many times it can pay off too!

This will be a fairly obvious tip, but actually no one I know does this, and they spend hours formatting a document, when they could save at least half, if not more, of that time. Around 90% of the time people who write a Word document will format as they go along. This is probably the biggest mistake you can make when creating any document, here’s why, and how to stop doing it.

Purely productivity-wise this is a no-no because each time you get to a point you have to format you loose focus and concentrate on formatting, rather than writing, which might mean your quality deteriorates, but at the very least, you will tire more easily. Second of all, 40 pages into the doc, will you still remember the exact heading type you used for each purpose? Going back to check is a waste of time, not checking means you will make an error eventually, so let’s get out of this situation once and for all.

Now here’s the magic many know but few follow, do not format a document as you are writing it. Format it when the whole thing is done, and I mean the whole thing, not when you’re just done for the day! This will help you in so many ways and will probably save you the frustration of printing something, then realizing a heading is all wrong. The biggest advantage this gives you is consistency, because you gain the ability of thinking in terms of a document, not in terms of a section or a page. Now that you have a uniform document you can also change styles with one click, by updating the look of a heading, or choosing a new style, which will change the look of the whole doc.

Not having to go back and forth between sections, finding why the table of contents is missing an entry, why a section heading is so small and so on is well worth the pain of writing a non-formatted doc. If you really hate that 12pt Times New Roman look, change the base font to something fancy while you write, you can just update that one when done as needed.

A lot of times, especially after meals I get very tired. I’m one of those people who is completely incapable of working if tired (I was probably spoiled), so in these cases I have to find my rush. I found that a 20-30 minute nap can help a LOT! Now whenever I used to hear that I said no way, I’ll just be more tired when I wake up. While this may certainly feel true when you actually wake, but you’ll feel the goodness in a few minutes.

I’ll tell you staright up, many times it will be hard to wake, having to start the day “again”, but it is so worth it. After about 10-15 minutes after the nap I feel very refreshed and ready. The trick is choosing the nap length well. You need to choose a period which doesn’t go into the deeper part of your sleep cycle, but optimally you should sleep as much as possible. I would say 20 minutes is a safe bet, if you want a good analysis of your sleep cycle, try going to a sleep clinic for an exam. You can also sleep through your deep sleep and wake at the beginning of your next cycle, but all this is tricky business in terms of determining the exact time. If you do this more and more you’ll find the best time for you which will make it much easier to wake up.

In my experience it’s the best to lie down for a while, reading a book or just thinking about stuff for ten minutes, then sleeping for around 20 minutes. I have also found that not sleeping, just lying down for that time also helps. You should spend time doing “nothing”, not reading, not really thinking (at least not about work), this will let your brain take a break and will help you work at increased efficiency after your nap time is over.

I received a bonsai tree for Christmas and I was trying to determine the best place to put it, but for that, amongst other things I wanted to find the brightest spot in my room. Doing that by just taking a look isn’t so easy, especially since the light indoors well under a quarter of the light outside, even if you put your plant near a window. Also, I couldn’t choose the windowsill, since I have a radiator just underneath which would not be too nice for the plant. So I decided to give technology geekness a try and try and determine the best spot using my camera.

What you will need is a camera which is capable of displaying either luminosity in one way or another, or you can also base it on the shutter speed. I have a Sony DSC-H9, which can shoot with auto shutter speed settings, which change in real time as you point the camera, and it is displayed on the LCD. The more light there is in the pic, the higher the shutter speed, since the exposure time needs to be smaller. So the higher you see the shutter speed go (which means the shortest time), the more light you have.

The great thing about this is that I don’t need an exact luminosity measurement, I just need the relative light in the room in a specific point. If the average shutter speed I get outside is around 80, I am aiming for roughly the same amount inside (which is quite impossible, but the closer the better). As a point of reference, it is a very dark day, it is overcast, there’s fog and all sorts of nastiness. The shutter speed pointed directly at the sky is 800 (this really means 1/800), at the skyline it is around 400, pointed at the house on the opposite side of the road its 250, and on my balcony its around 120. From this, I would say that the average is around 250, in a room its about 60.

With this method you can find how bright points in your room are, but keep in mind that this is very rough and only for comparison. Also keep in mind that depending on your settings you might get different numbers, and remember to do this zoomed out, since the shutter speed will be determined by the light reaching the camera, not the actual subject. I am neither a photographer or a gardener, so if someone knows better, please let me know!