Bringing order to chaos and clarity to confusion

Category Productivity

Ambiguity and Fear

This is worth thinking about. Unaddressed fear becomes toxic; it erodes our mind, body, and spirit. When we try to avoid our fear, we feed it. When we lean into it, we soften it. The fear-busting practices of yoga and… Continue Reading →

Best Writing Article Ever

Being your emails and blog posts off with the punch line.  Here’s why. Most people write emails and blog posts that build a case, fact by fact and piece by piece, almost like a case presented to a jury.  There’s… Continue Reading →

Right Angle Screw Driver

Until recently I’d never heard of or seen this tool before.  Then a headlight went out on my car and I had to remove three screws in very difficult location.  I found a couple of forum posts describing how to… Continue Reading →

How to Create Password Protected Zip Archives with 7zip on Linux

Mortgage Madness I refinanced again–once again with no closing costs while sacrificing some on the rate.  Interest rates are again at historic lows which meant I had to take avantage of two great opportunities–lowering my rate by three quarters of a… Continue Reading →

Five Recent Resonations

Who’s on Your Fridge by Peter Bregman In fact, we seem to rarely miss an opportunity to be disappointed. We focus on what people are doing wrong, on their weaknesses and shortcomings. We gossip and complain. We get frustrated and… Continue Reading →

Throw Me Over A Waterfall

I’ve been skimming Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson.  It’s fairly dense reading so I’ve been skimming through to sections that catch my interest. This section about innovative environments from page 148 was striking: Innovative environments thrive on… Continue Reading →

Project Management Tip of the Day

Riffing on a theme from Rework… I believe the project management structure and process framework of team should be a little less than “just enough.”  Anything more wastes people’s time and becomes more about the process than shipping (thank you… Continue Reading →

Finding the 9/11 Memorial at Logan Airport

I was at Logan International in Boston last week with several hours to kill before meeting up with my ride.  After pursuing Massport’s listing of things to do I came across the 9/11 Memorial–a memorial to all of the people… Continue Reading →

Irrelevant Employment

I tripped across a few things yesterday that seemed related in one way or another. Julien Smith has a simple guide on how to quit your job in 12 easy steps.  The quitting part might be easy, but the paying the… Continue Reading →

Shame and Vulnerability

Below is a thought provoking Ted Talk by Brene Brown called The Power of Vulnerability.  Brene talks with a sparkle in her eye and exudes a contagious enthusiasm as she explores this difficult subject.  I find vulnerability really easy to… Continue Reading →

Amazon Makes a Great Apology

A few weeks ago many users of the vendor Epsilon issued a pathetic apology for the potential leak of customer information.  In complete contrast Amazon Web Services (AWS) made a substantial  apology for the outage they experienced. Not only did AWS… Continue Reading →

Try Out OpenShift Today

I couldn’t be prouder of today’s OpenShift (PAAS–Platform as a Service) cloud announcement by Red Hat. It’s not often that you get to be project manager on a release this big or exciting. It was a massive team effort involving… Continue Reading →

Are Your Meetings Toxic?

Rework has a chapter called “Meetings are Toxic.”  Like several chapters in the book, this one closed with some punchy advice.  If you must have a meeting they suggest the following: Set a timer.  When it rings, meeting’s over. Period…. Continue Reading →

Almost Sorry

The other day I received two emails from separate companies letting me know that their database marketing vendor Epsilon had been hacked, both using the same text for their message. Dear Customer: We were notified by our database marketing vendor, Epsilon,… Continue Reading →

Turn Off The Email Torrent

With two major projects in flight and a third one heating up I’ve been looking for a better way to feel less overwhelmed by the torrent of email–a way to recapture the feeling of peace that comes working late on… Continue Reading →

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