Now recently there have been quite a large number of changes in the work I do and how I do it, my old system of crazed caffeine ridden keyboard hammering just was not cutting it, and I started detecting in myself the first symptoms of Burnout (but not due to over work, just due to bad organisation), clearly I wanted a very simple system to manage my time, something that just lets me work thought my clients requests in a way that delvers timely responses without waste and still lets me keep a grip on making sure I do not run my self into the floor (which would be no use to anyone)

After a good search round the net I choose the Pomodoro Technique

Which basically consists of:

• Choose a task to be accomplished
• Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
• Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper (or in my case PomLife for android)
• Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
• Every 3-4 Pomodoros take a longer break (15-20 mins)

  This looked perfect for me, as I tend to work off a liner task list for multiple clients ordered by if I’m ‘on site’, priority and due date/time, and it does not add any over head to the paperwork,

  In addition there are a number of studies that indicate that the human mind can only REALLY concentrate for 5-6 hours per day ( I don’t have formal references for that), this means that I aim for a minimum of 10 Pomodoro per day and a max of 12, now that does not sound much, a total of 250-300 actual mins work a day, but its not “at work” time but rather “exam level concentration” time, and I’m finding that I am worn out after doing this for a day, managers might want their staff to work like this for 8+ hours a day but frankly the human brain in general is not capable of this day in day out, where at this level I can provide excellent service comparable with a 10+ normal working day.

  I’m finding it also gives you a definite indication of how hard you are working (rather than just pottering around and thinking at the end of the day, “What have I Done?”) as I dont use my Pomodoros for stuff like reading emails, meetings and such, the only down side I have found is clients perceptions, they tend to think “oh, I only need to pay for 5 hours if that’s all your working” or that 5 hours elapsed is the 5 hours of concentration i.e. I should have done a full days work by 1.00pm, but still I’m getting more stuff done than ever before and that is a good thing for both me and my clients

  Update After a few days of using the system in anger, I am now including meetings and normal day to day tasks like email and client admin in my time allocations, but batching them up to into 25 min segments at the beginning and end of the day, rather than the constant interruptions they normally are this is saving me tons of wasted time and meaning that clients can now cope with the system as a method of keeping track of time, all this means I now do between 16 and 20 Pomodoro per day End Update

Old Comments

Andrew Magerman(22/03/2012 13:01:08 GMT)

Hi Mark,
I also use a pomodoro-system and it is unbelievable how more efficient you become when using this.

Another methodology that has worked very very well for me (and de-stressed me completeyl) is GTD, Getting Things Done. eProductivity make a replacement for your Notes Mailfile which I can also recommend. In any case, order the book, it’s one of these rare self-improvement books that isn’t utter nonsense, if you momentarily forgive the american hyperbolae ‘e.g. a dramatic paradigm shift which will revolutionize…’

It’s kind of complementary – one of the messages is that basically, you need to stay on top of the list of things you have to do to be relaxed, and to be able to communicate to your clients what are realistic delivery dates. When asked ‘When can it be by’, I used to be unable to recall all the other things I was supposed to do, then I would give an unrealisically estimate, and then, shock horror, discover other things I had to do.

Regarding your productivity, getting rid of the interruptions is key. And I would never ever go into the discussions with clients about ‘I am paying you only the time you are really productive’. When I look around me when at clients, it’s shocking to see how badly resources are allocated. Just the time spent in meetings is enough to make me cringe. They pay for your presence. The occasional bursts of creativity more than make up for the hours of unproductive scratching.

Heard your taking notes podcast, well done sir!

In my current role at my new main client I am an integration architect rather than the senior developer/architect; the difference sounds small, my deliverables are virtually the same as are the technical skills needed to produce them, but there is one huge difference and that is WHERE I am sitting. Now I am with the BAs and Accenture consultants rather than the devs, where smartness is more important than the spec of your laptop, where consistently being there and typing when your boss arrives and leaves is better than being able to pull an all-nighter to get a problem fixed.

Now this may sound like I don’t approve of being on the other side of the fence, and historically I have always been one of those who go “What the hell is this?” or “Were they drunk when then wrote this?” when faced with a new spec that rolls down to IT, but after only a couple of months I now have a completely different viewpoint on it. Previously when the business asked for something daft, I would storm up and rant at them and being a senior tech who knew the systems intimately, they would give in to some extent and we would sort it out. But the BAs and PMs are asked by the business to define the impossible and sign their name to it; the business seems to just haggle with the BAs as you would with a used car salesman, and this is a general thing. I checked with other BAs and PMs colleges that I have known throughout my career and all have the same experiences, petty political battles and attempts to hide badly patched systems are jammed into the ring and made the problem of people who genuinely just want to make a single project a success.

Come on business these people are on your side, give them a break !!

Now I’m back from IBM Lotusphere/Connect it’s back to work but just to round it up, here is the traditional review of the last week

General

— The tech was good, real improvements, stuff that I want to use and a worthy opponent to the open source and Microsoft stuff.
— Please finish off killing the Lotus brand, Microsoft’s PR work and the memory of the bad UI have done too much damage, no one will give the new tech the chance it deserves.
— Surprisingly IBM have listened, the Opening General Session was a vast improvement and a lot of other stuff has improved from last year.
— Unfortunately, there are still nutters out there, some members of IBM’s legal team really do need to get out more, and whoever organised the visit to the animal exploitation pond (or Seaworld) combined with “le’ts kill aquatic animals on stage” must be working through some childhood goldfish betrayal issues.
— The session schedule could do with some work, no matter what your interest path was, e.g. Dev/Admin/Manager, there was at least 1 day where you were scrabbling for sessions and another day you could not get to see all you wanted. The sessions themselves on the other hand were very very good.

LDC

— Far better brand recognition this year, which is what we were after and I had a number of very interesting conversations that I am hoping will yield results.
— The T-shirts went down a storm, with Mr Woodward’s designs going down the best.
— We spent more than we have done before on marketing and sponsorship stuff, we will have to see if we can follow it up and see what work it generates.

Personal

— I finally got one of these, for which I am insanely smug

It’s not an individual one (will try again for one of those next year), as I co-presented with the fine Julian Robichaux from whom I learnt how a true pro prepares and presents

— I think I have found the subject that I can expand to bring the most benefit to the IBM community, so if they get accepted you should see a session or 2 at this year’s lugs (fingers crossed that I don’t screw up my abstracts)
— Time to redouble my connections AKA web sphere + Bolt ons work
— I think I pulled a muscle laughing at the great geek quiz, thanks to Gab Davis, Carl Tyler, Paul Mooney, Tim Davis etc etc for organising it.
— Whatever they are called, the Lotus Community still beats the pants of all the other tech communities that I have met, truly, without them it would suck bad.

Misc

— There are people who do the work of 10 people each behind the scenes, people like Gab and Paul.
— For heaven’s sake, open the abstract calls earlier next year, it’s not as if the date is a surprise, you have been doing it for 19 years now!

Old Comments

Mark Myers(23/01/2012 01:13:09 GMT)

Oooo good Idea (s)

Sam(23/01/2012 00:05:43 GMT)

Totally Agree on the scheduling – someone suggested for next year:

1. Open abstracts much much earlier.
2. Include a space for speakers to “Tag” abstracts
3. Once abstracts are chosen, email the registered attendees and have them each select the 40 “top” ones they would like to see
4. Run the data all through Watson and have him/it generate the best possible schedule for everyone with as little overlap of tags as possible.

It seemed like the individual tracks were well managed – but there was little coordination between tracks. Maybe this was a result of the late call for abstracts?

The other issue – wifi. It’s IBM, for crying out loud. Come in and set up a decently managed/monitored service. If a access point gets unplugged, you should have monitoring to know about it – every access point should be accounted for and monitored for problems. If one is unplugged, then you would know, and could go plug it in!

Hi hi, here is the slide deck and associated files from mine and Julian Robichaux Lotusphere 2012 session (Write Better Java Code: Debugging, Loggin and Unit Tests) HERE and HERE

files can also be found on the London Developer Co-ops goodies page

Old Comments

Michael Ruhnau(18/01/2012 19:59:53 GMT)

Hi Mark,

I haven’t made it to your session but I am very impressed how much you covered. On question that came up to me while browsing through the slides:
Does the agent setting “Compile with debug information” have any (negative) implictions on a productive environment (performance, stability, whatever, … )?

Cheers – Michael

Andrew Magerman(19/01/2012 10:41:19 GMT)

Excellent resource. Thanks for all the effort, and for making it available.

Two or three slides elicited an “aaaah, so that’s how it works!”

Muchos gracias Mark!

Jason Hook(19/01/2012 10:22:07 GMT)

It’s now on my iPad. Looks really interesting! Good job Sir.

Martin Perrie(19/01/2012 14:00:53 GMT)

I second Michael’s comments. I’ve only skimmed through slide deck quickly, but very impressed with the level of detail and there are some tips that I can start using straight away.

Thanks guys.

Mark Myers(19/01/2012 13:37:15 GMT)

@Nick – FAB, really pleased that its useful

Mark Myers(19/01/2012 13:35:08 GMT)

@michael – all the bits we turned on for debugging and logging have minimal impact, any that do have impact are mentioned on the best practices slides

@Andrew – thank you very much , i like the “aaaah” bit

@Jason – Cool!

Nick Wall(19/01/2012 13:32:57 GMT)

The Unit testing piece…great info, many thanks.

Mark Myers(19/01/2012 16:30:17 GMT)

@martin – Awesome!

Hartford Connecticut is sometimes called the insurance capital of America so a contractor with insurance knowledge stands a good chance of ending up there sometime.

As it’s a good policy to treat your clients money as you would your own,I was doing it on the cheap also like many Londoners I tend to love public transport and dont hire a car unless I can help it (which marks me as a freak to many Americans).

There are plenty of hotels in the middle of Hartford but these tend to not only be a bit expensive but when I tried to book they were also full up, so I ended up in Glastonbury, a suburb town a few miles south with a couple of huge hotels which always seem to have rooms free and surprisingly good Internet access (the Hilton Garden Inn Hartford and Home wood Suites) these suited me perfectly as they have 2 shopping malls within 5-10 mins walking distance, both with supermarkets ( the Garden Inn has microwaves in its rooms and as the homewood suites are grander I assume they have the same or better) as well as a variety of reasonable restaurants and fast food places.

Travel wise your hub is the square round ‘Central Row’ in Hartford, all major clients are walkable from there, all the buses I describe below both arrive and leave from this area, it also contains a large round booth in the centre island that is the ticket office to buy your weekly travel pass from (the buses take cash but don’t give change or a ticket for receipt purposes).

The buses are clean, air conditioned and everyone I met on them was very nice. The ones that you will need are:

30/30x this is the airport bus between Bradford international and Hartford downtown

4/14 this is the park and ride between the two Hilton hotels at Glastonbury and down town Hartford, fast with no stops but very limited running times, you seem to have pay an additional $1.05 per trip if have a travel card (normal price $2.30), it picks you up next to the brown wooden shed on the parking lot opposite Burger king near the outdoor mall on Main street. ( the official stop is called Putnam bridge Part and ride), If you miss the 4 or need to travel on Saturday Then the 95 is the bus for you (if you need to travel on a Sunday you will have to get a taxi into Hartford)

35/64 these are the buses from Hartford to West farms mall which is Apparently the best mall in the area for souvenirs for loved ones

The http://www.cttransit.com/ site is where you will get the the details you will need. and a good set of maps can be found here

Notes:
1) Hartford dies at 6:30 pm , West Hartford is apparently the place to be (it certainly looked far posher and more residential on the basis the one meal I had there)

2) A taxi trip from the The airport to Hartford is about $30 + tip, from Hartford to Glasbury is just over $20 + tip, a taxi all the way from the airport to the Glastonbury is about $57 + tip, to a Londoner the taxis are pretty naff, not only can they say ‘no’ to your fair (quite gave me a start when one did) but they don’t know where anything bloody is!!, if you need one, pre book it from either your hotel or the little booth at the Airport.

Old Comments

Rajesh Haran(01/07/2012 19:12:22 GDT)

Hi Mark,

I live in E.Hartford let me know if you need any help or assistance. shoot me an email.

Mark(02/07/2012 11:36:59 GDT)

Coool  thank you!

Andrew Magerman(02/07/2012 20:31:39 GDT)

there can only be one Glastonbury.

chris(09/07/2012 13:40:34 GDT)

good article very informative