If you read my blog regularly, you’d recall that I can be quite obsessive over my productivity. I religiously track my productivity in a variety of metrics and tools – I have a premium account at RescueTime; I use Github to track the commit quantity and quality.
Yesterday was a very good day. The above screenshot shows the RescueTime dashboard report for the day. I had spent 89% of my tracked time on productive stuff. My Github records concur. Yesterday was a good day. I committed 14 commits to my project, and git diff --stat showed in total I wrote 1703 Lines of Code, and deleted 699 Lines of Code.
By comparison, according to RescueTime’s trivia bar, yesterday I was 20% more productive than my usual productivity pulse of 74. I also only usually manage to make one commit at about 200 LoC addition per day to my projects.
I was in short, on a roll. So how did I get so productive? This entire week has been rather productive for me. I believe I may have discovered what works for me when engaging in non-creative work.
[Read More]The smell of cheese and sweaty shoes wafted in the air as I disembarked from the car. Ahead of me, a large sign that says COCA-COLA AMATIL. Walking past the three safety signs that lead to the office, the tour was about to begin. As part of a hackathon sponsored by Coca-Cola Amatil, I recently got the opportunity to learn more about logistics and operations. A tour of the CCA distribution centre was included in the hackathon and did I have a fun time!
A fridge full of Coca-Cola Amatil products greeted us as we entered the office. We were issued high visibility vests and were required to sit through 10 minutes of safety briefing, coupled with some safety tests. I sipped on a juice box as we took the safety briefing test. After that, our tour began. Our tour guide was Mark Hopkins, One Logistics Project Manager of CCA. He started off by rattling off interesting facts about the distribution centre while I furiously typed away my notes on Google Keep.
He explained that the distribution centre is entirely covered in 500kW solar panels. It was an investment that only recently paid off with the building of the new preform plant. Prior to the preform plant’s construction, the solar panels were generating excess electricity during down times, but now that the preform plant – capable of making 750 bottles per minute; and runs 24/7 – has been built and is running constantly, they now use their energies efficiently enough. Then time came for us to actually enter the warehouse.
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A few years ago, I attended an out-of-state wedding. I stayed with the bride-to-be and the groom-to-be. Not knowing the groom, I engaged in what I thought was an exploratory discussion into the groom-to-be’s life. I asked questions and let him talk about himself. Standard stuff you find in books on how to make friends.
I too have a problem. In real life (as well as online I suppose) I’ve built a reputation of being a stickler for accurate details — often to the point of pedantry I am told — there were quite a few things that he had mentioned that wasn’t quite right (as a lot of the things discussed had already been updated in the latest journals). A personality flaw of mine no doubt, was to point out that there was already updated knowledge about it.
I was later informed that the couple hadn’t been very happy with my visit. I was also told by my fiancee that I would constantly use the phrase “you mean you didn’t know?”. This phrase had become so ingrained to my speech that I hadn’t realized I had said it many times.
The problem with “you mean you didn’t know?” is that it sounds really condescending, even though I was genuinely surprised that someone didn’t know. Of course it could be meant to say that the other party is ill-informed, but it often was an expression of surprise, not one of condescension. Or so I thought anyway.
[Read More]I had just came back from a mini Chinese New Year getaway and the missus is still away. Coming home to an empty house, I had the free reign to do whatever I like. Having been previously feeling rather in the dumps, I decided to pick myself up - do something for myself a bit more.
So I took time off working on my multiple startups. I cooked, played some games and did some thinking.
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At work, the milk frother had started acting up again. No one was having their morning coffee. And everyone was cranky. Our milk frother came as a set with the coffee machine – a Nespresso Gemini CS 20 – was making milk bubbles instead of foam for our cappucinos. Not keen on waiting on a Nespresso technician, various colleagues have taken to trying to fix the machine themselves. Alas, their efforts were to no avail. I came onto the scene, stared at the machine for a while, thought for a bit, and accurately deduced the problem.
Now, lest you think this is a self-congratulatory tale of my own brilliance, rest assured it is not. Instead, it is a cautionary tale about pragmatism.
[Read More]Here’s two open letters I thought up of while on the flight back in to Sydney.
Some parts of the narrative has been edited to preserve the identities of the peoples involved. Some situations have been slightly exaggerated for dramatic effects, but they mostly happened.
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