Healthy Hacking

So there was a dude at the office who was using a gym ball as a chair. It seemed really cool to me. Freedom to sit in strange ways in front of the computer and claim its healthy. So of course I got one for myself too!

If you are considering doing the same, here are a few things I have noticed so far:

• It’s a bit tricky in the beginning, but you get to used to it rather quickly. So no worries there.

• There are many approaches. I can think of three ways to sit on this thing:
  1. Normally. As if it was a chair.
  2. “Lotus” -like thingy, as I do most of the time.
  3. On your knees

  Pick your favorite.

• Size matters.
• Balancing on the ball is a lot of fun. It just tends to distract you from whatever you were trying to do on the computer. But it has to be good exercise for abdomen and back, so nevermind.
• This thing has never come across the word slippery. It’s impossible to move spatially on this. Which means you had better figure out a perfect location to hop on from where you can comfortably type. Any attempt to get closer leads to rolling (or better yet, compensating move and rolling backwards).
• It is very handy to store the ball beneath the table when you are not using it. Chairs do this, but this saves a little bit of floor space and looks way cooler.
• Sturdy desk would be nice in cases of emergency, a.k.a side-slide.

Not sure if this makes any sense, but so far I’m happy with the setup.

Breaking Routines

Slow commute - stopping for a cup of coffee on the way to the office

I have a routine. I wakeup, I do my morning stuff, eat breakfast, and head to the office. Generally the faster I manage to go through this process the happier I am. I have been effective! I am already in the office!

This morning I thought that I’d do some work on other stuff before heading to office. However, trying to break from the pattern seemed to be surprisingly difficult. It was confusing. I worked in a few extra hours yesterday, and was in no hurry to the office. Still, when I diverted my steps from the normal commute route and came to the cafe, I felt almost a bit guilty for not following my dull pattern. The excitement was close to the feeling of stepping on a stage and giving a presentation. And it’s definitely not the place that is exciting (although it’s very comfy and I got some good thinking done).

I really like the idea of a slow morning. So far early evening has been victorious.

Is this excitement due to doing what I really like, as opposed to what I expect I should be doing?

Don’t Panic

It’s an old, often quoted and universal advice.

It’s a natural reaction, which kicks you to action. Too bad that action is not usually thought trough. Much better option is to accept the situation and act calmly.

Today I called in to a teleconference meeting, only to find out that I was supposed to be at the meeting venue in person. Seems like I had missed some detail in the invitation (like the city it was held in). We quickly decided that I will arrive at the venue as soon as I can. In the tiny amount of panic (a.k.a. hurry) created by this unexpected situation, I did act too quickly. Only after I had jumped into the tram I realized that I could have actually listened on the meeting while traveling. Just didn’t think of taking the telco codes with me when running out of the office.

The power of Coffee

I have always been a tea person. I have only gotten to the habit of drinking coffee over the past year, and even then it’s quite infrequent. I still need my coffee to come with plenty of sugar and milk (yeah call me wussy), and even then it’s not really that good.

I started to ponder what has changed. Why did I start drinking coffee? And the conclusion was that coffee is more exciting than tea. Sad but true. Most places don’t really offer any fancy tea options, where as with coffee you have  a nearly endless list of options (ok, that’s stretching it quite far, we don’t have that many options on coffee either). But the branding is much more cool. A cup of organic coffee from from Peru (a wild guess) sounds and looks much more exciting than a cup of yellow label tea. There are some really cool and exciting tea brands available, but you can only get them from stores.

A cup of good green tea or chai beats coffee any day. So give me more variety (and not the chocolate chip tea -kind of variety)!

I want a tefé instead of café.

(after coming up with the word tefé, I checked.. and what do you know, it’s a city in Brazil which you can’t reach by road. How appropriate)

468 days, and counting

Time flies. Time crawls. But no matter what you do, you can’t make it reverse its flow.

Almost a year ago, right before my 28th birthday I was in France, having a great time with some of my nice friends. In the midst of fun games, beach life, electronic skateboards, and great food, I made a commitment to myself. I decided that I would accomplish something before I reach the mighty age of 30.

Since then a lot has happened. But all of that has been “normal” so to speak. Not taking any value out of those, but what I was after with my decision was to reach something extraordinary. Something brilliant. It doesn’t have to be anything big. As long as it’s meaningful. Something to be passionate about.

Making a commitment (or third) on this blog is as good a place to start as any.

30 years of age is a limit that means less and less the closer you come to it. However, it’s a limit that is currently sufficiently close and far for me to manage something. After all, setting personal deadlines does help in reaching your goals (or so they claim). Feel free to give me a kick if you see nothing happening.

468 days left and counting.

A Fresh Start

How often are you given a change to take a fresh start on your career?

Image by slowwkidd3923 @ PhotoBucket

New perspectives usually arise when you start at a new company or change from a position to another. It is interesting to notice how even the idea of working in a different environment, or in a different position in relation to your current environment, can lead to new insights. It does one good to sometimes stop and try to see things from the viewpoint of others. It does not only make you a nicer person, but also greatly enhances your chances of getting your own point-of-view understood by the others.

I will soonish take on the role of project manager, and I’m anxiously waiting how different things will seem compared to my experiences as a software developer. I have already spotted myself whining on things that are completely sensible for a developer to whine about, but make no sense on the project manager point-of-view. Will be an interesting road ahead…

My attemps at blogging have not really taken off. This time I’m trying to get myself back on the wagon and start writing out my thoughts on career development, IT-business and leading a happy life (talk about blog specialization another day, ok?).

Wakeup challenge conclusions

The 5-day-wakeup-challenge is now over. Even though I only got my wakeup time to 20 minutes earlier (06:00), I’m very pleased with the results. You can see my report from the week here. Here are my conclusions:

1. Waking up earlier allows for more productive time

When you wake up early, you usually get started with being productive early. It should not matter if you work from home or go to the office each day. If you work for the same amount of time that you normally would, you are free of work earlier and can spend your evenings on something else.

Of course, the amount of non-sleeping hours is not different, it’s just shifted. For several years I thought my most productive moments where those just around midnight. If this works for you, then it works for you. However, these days I feel that mornings are much more productive, as there are no friends to talk to in IRC and even YouTube is not so luring at the beginning of the day. Well, getting older and having a day job that I can’t really take home might play a part here too.

2. Slow mornings are good for productivity

Most people will agree that working while tired is not as productive as working while completely awake and focused. So if you wake up early, won’t that mean that you will be more tired as you got less sleep? Definitely not.

I would actually place more importance to allowing oneself to wake up properly than on the actual time of that wake up. Having a slow breakfast, doing some exercising, reading the news with time – all of these should guarantee that you are fully awake once you start working. If you wake up a bit earlier, you can focus on yourself for a moment before rushing to work. If waking up earlier is not an option, I would suggest going to work later. 20 minutes can make a big difference when used properly.

3. Sticking to the habit

I think I proved myself that taking time for some exercise in the morning had a positive impact on my days. The following weeks will show how difficult it is to maintain the habit.

Next challenge? Learn to wake up without alarm clock.