random ramblings

I was thinking about time management, personal effectiveness etc and how we figure out ways to keep up. I am not claiming to be an expert, but wanted to share few things that worked for me. Would like to know any better tips and techniques that have worked for others. I think at this stage, as professionals, we are expected to take care of our responsibilities, we can’t have (mostly don’t want to also) someone to followup and not supposed to make up excuses for missing something that we were supposed to do.  In short, it is assumed that we are effective in what we do. There are a lot of advice out there such as Get Things Done (GTD) etc. I have tried many things – outlook tasks, followup with red/green/yellow/orange flags, to do lists in notepad, excel, notes (on paper or otherwise) etc etc. I think the key is to find a routine that works in which we can fairly stay on top. Some of what worked for me – Use a Daily planner / diary:- I don’t do hourly planning for a ...

Is giving the secret to getting ahead? The greatest untapped source of motivation, he argues, is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other peoples’ lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves. The message sounds terrific: Feel good about your work, and get more of it done, and bask in the appreciation of all the people you help along the way. Nice guys can finish first! It is also interesting to see how this could be manipulated and types like – givers, matchers and takers. Our inconsistent ethical instincts We like to believe that the principled side of the equation is rooted in deep, reasoned conviction. But a growing wealth of research shows that those values often prove to be finicky, inconsistent intuitions, swayed by ethically irrelevant factors. What you say now you might disagree with in five minutes. And such wavering has implications for both public policy and our personal lives. I ...

After a long break. Sharing few links for now. Train a parent, spare a child During a function at my daughter’s school last week, a speaker was stating that by the time a child is 5 years old, he would have learned all the values for the rest of the life and that it is all "copied" from the main textbook which are the parents. I was thinking whether I have taught my daughter the right values and why didn’t I know that the "value graduation" is at 5 years.. Better parenting is one of the goals. economic predictions for 2013 Keyword seems to be “Cautiously optimistic”, like in our quarterly result. Btw, one good quarter changes the entire news cycle – everything that was gloomy now looks positive. What is entrepreneurship? I had read the book "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" by Peter Drucker. This article seems to be a good summary. future of programming Which programming skills to pickup? Smartphones can run consumer’s lives One of our pr...