Daily 5 Minute Journal - April 2, 2016

Overview

In this blog post I address a number of topics that will help you succeed in life.

This will help you.

Three most important Questions

There are three questions that I've been trying to answer:

1. What to do now?
2. Where to store information?
3. How did I spend my time?

What to do now?

Is the difference between wealthy and poor people, successful and unsuccessful, happy and sad that the wealthy, successful and happy, correctly answer this question and take action on the answer?

Where to store information?

There is so much information I need to retain. Especially how I've solved a problem or an answer to a question. Google is great for data on the internet but what if the answer isn't on Google?  Then there are all the blogs, podcasts, books that have great information.

How did I spend my time?

This question can answer the question "What did I do yesterday, last week, month or year?" Tracking how time is spent is very difficult. It's been something that I've been working on for year in one form or another.

If you want to be super productive you have to know the answer to this question. Recently I've been tracking this and I'm amazed at how much time I don't spend on my computer at work. 

Monthly Goals

As March comes to an end I'm thinking about my monthly goals. I halfheartedly went after my goal of deciding what to focus on. I have come up with a list of > 100 items and have split the list into 2 groups the top half and the bottom half. I used some Excel code I have to make it easier.

I've also started rating the top 1/2 on 3 criteria

1. $ecurity
2. Longevity
3. Fun

This got a little boring after 25 items so I started blogging again.

I've created a list but I am having fun just blogging.

For April 2016 I want to focus on I2$ (Idea to Money). How to go from an idea to making money on it or moving on to next idea.

Do you have monthly goals you're working towards?  

Lost Wallet

I was on train and had my headphones on due to a noisy person. As I was leaving someone pointed to the floor and there my wallet was sitting.

Holy shit, I was lucky this guy was nice. I always try to get a persons stuff back to them if I see they dropped or left something behind. It makes me think of a new habit to create.

Check if I have my phone, wallet and keys before leaving anywhere. I have gotten into the habit of looking after I get up.

Haircut

I have an unusual skill. I can cut my own hair. I often get compliments on my haircut. But recently Evan at work didn't believe that I could do this. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. I use to hate getting a haircut. It never came out good. 

You need a good location. I use my small bathroom, You need a good pair of scissors, electric beard trimmer, brush and mirror. 

The steps are:

1. Take a shower
2. Don't dry your hair
3. Remove all things from bathroom that you don't want to get hair on
4. Taking hair in brush or in hand cut it short sections at a time
5. Brush hair in back straight down
6. Using hand held mirror and a wall mirror cut across the back
7. Using hand grasp hair and cut evenly around head
8. Using beard/hair trimmer,remove hairs that are sloppy
9. Use a hair dryer to dry and style your hair
10. Using a broom and dust pan clean up the stray hairs
11. Clean up and you're done

Now if I screwed this up I can always go to a barber and get it fixed. My main rule here is if the risk is low and it can be fixed if you screw up then take a shot.

Blogging

I've started blogging and I like it. The main suggestion came from Jeffery Gitomer who wrote the Red book of Sales.  He states that the number one thing that's helped him in his career is writing.

Music

The song "Need your Love' by Cheap Trick came up at work and a few other of their songs Auf Weidersen and I Want you to Want Me. They're a great group and their older albums are better. Some other of my favorites are at Alec Berg's Favorite Songs

Productivity tip

You can use auto-correct in Microsoft Word to type faster  and fix common mistakes you might make. For example I've been typing the word MicroStrategy and added an auto-correct of "ms". Use this for words or even phrase that you use.

New Habit

Document things in one place so you'll find the answer when you're looking for some information. I currently have a problem in that I document information I need in too many places that makes it hard to find. I currently store this information in:

• Wiki
• Word documents
• Memory

I have a "How Too" sheet with my to-do list in Excel and I'm tracking:

• date
• Subject
• Question
• Answer

So if I need to find and answer I've solved I'll look here.

Pain in the ass  shoulder

I need to do some research into prolotherapy. This was introduced to me by +Tim Ferriss and reinforced from a co-worker Robert. He said that he had wrist pain for a while but it went away after getting prolotherapy.

The other day I also had an excruciating pain on my nose from my glasses. It was so bad I spent a lot of time concocting methods to keep the glasses from resting on my nose. Eventually the pain went away. 

Time Tracking

I continue to make progress with my time tracking software. I've cleaned up a few problems and the latest issue is the code is pausing and not tracking the window I'm using.  Some issues are already coming to surface with the time I'm not at my computer or not using it for > 30 seconds.  It surprising to me how much time I don't spend on the computer. I need to track this to get a better handle on it. .

I also came up with an idea on how to better track questions and answers.  While working I often run into questions that I've already answered but didn't document the answer. I'm thinking about a way to better tell system that I have a question and tracking how long it takes, what I did and what lessons can I learn from the solution.

I want to better track how much time I'm spending with this blog post and see if I can get the time down because it's taking more than the Tim Ferriss suggested 5 minutes

Car Salesperson Asks for a 10

I just bought a car and the Salesperson's biggest concern was to give her a 10 on a questionnaire I'm supposed to receive. She said that anything under a 10 is considered a failing grade. Three years when I leased my previous Honda the salesperson gave me a similar request. 

Should I Ask for Recognition?

Today I helped a person in London with a problem she was having with some software I worked on. I couldn't tell from her description in the email what the problem was so we did a screen share. If your company is a Microsoft customer their Communicator product is very good  seeing someone's screen and diagnosing the problem. You could talk to me for hours and I might not understand what your problem is but show me and I'll get it in 5 minutes.

There are other companies that support this type of functionality:

• Microsoft Windows - Remote Desktop
• Join.me
• Webex.com
• GotoMyPc.com

All allow you to view someone else's desktop.  So I quickly resolved the woman's problem. The software is pretty interesting system that uses Python, Excel/VBA and JIRA to create an Agile dashboard to manage scrums and the backlog.

The user was very thankful for the help. At my company we have an internal website that allows you to give someone an award for helping you. I was very temped to ask her to give me one. It basically thanks you and sends your boss a copy. But I chickened out.

I had a thought that I should include a link in my signature. 

     "If my service was above your expectations please feel free to thank me via xxx.company.com"

What's your thought on this issue?

Why the Need to be Clean?

"Cleanliness is next to godliness"

Why do I and others have this need to declutter and be clean and neat. People run that gamut from clean freaks to complete slobs.

One thing about cleanliness is it doesn't fit into my 3 goal categories of Longevity, $uccess and Fun.   

I feel good when things are clean and bad when they're messy.

Yet I have a brother who is a complete slob. He must throw his garbage on the floor instead of a garbage pail.  Maybe it's related to Longevity as clutter can bring:

• Mold
• Bugs
• Mice
• Smells

It may also be related to Fun as why do people want to keep their new car clean and shiny?  To send a message that you have resources. 

Diversity at Work

At work, all they talk about is diversity. If anything at my office there aren't enough Americans. They're either Indian, Chinese or Russian.  It seems we should always be hiring based on merit and never on age, sexual orientation, etc. If diversity means to get all opinions, then I'm for that. 

There are obviously fewer women in technology than men, but I wouldn't want to hire one over a more qualified man. There are fewer blacks than whites but let's hire based qualifications and not on disversifications.

Don't Quit

I played chess yesterday with my oldest son. I use to be pretty pretty pretty good at it. I was best player on my public school's chess team.  

My son is very smart and has been playing and practicing much more than I.  

We played and very early on I lost my Queen for a Rook. I was thinking of quitting but played on. I wound up winning the game. The lesson I got is once again, "Don't Quit!"  

Neighbor's son Kicks my Son

My 19 year old son was outside talking to my neighbors 5 year old and I see the boy kick at my son. This angered me as a few days prior he was trying to kick my dog.  

I attribute this behavior to a lack of discipline from the parents. +Cesar Millan the "dog whisperer" sums it up the best with his "No rules, boundaries or limitations" quote about teaching dogs. Children are the same. I hate it when I'm on the train and a parent lets their kids do whatever they want.

New Neighbor doesn't have Blinds

The house behind mine has been empty for a couple of years. We just got new neighbors and they don’t have blinds on their windows so I can see right into their house. It’s annoying for me but at least I have a house to be annoyed. Thanks Sam Harris for your Waking Up book.

Fear of Airplanes

Sam Harris in his Ask Me Anything Podcast was talking about fears and turbulence and it reminded my how I overcame my fear of it.  

I took a flying lesson and flew a small plane. Flying a plane is fun but the thing that most people don't realize is that when you're flying, it feels like your driving on a road and the turbulence feels like a bumpy road.  The plane is very stable when flying and this experience helped my overcome my fear.

Ice Hockey

Last night I may have played ice hockey for the last time. I scored 3 goals and felt good. But since I've been diagnosed with osteoporosis I've been afraid to play. I love playing the sport but the dangers outweigh the fun. It was a very light turnout at Midnight Hockey in Ice works rink where the Islanders use to practice. I guess this goes against my "Don't Quit" advice above.

69Laws.com 

I have the website 69Laws.com and thought the tag line should be

69Laws.com  because 70 are too many and 68 are too few.

Free Yankee Tickets

My company was giving away free Yankees tickets for games in April. I really didn't want them as I know how cold it can be in April during a baseball game. I also ran into a frustrating time trying to get the tickets. System kept timing out. I couldn't press the final submit button. I think it was because I didn't check the box that I accepted the terms and conditions.

Transcribing a podcast

I've developed some software to help with transcribing a podcast but I realized that it's a poor use of my time to do this. It's much better for me to summarize the podcast with the most important information and then add tasks to my to-do list.

MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is a company that makess a software product used by business to do reporting applications. I just started with the software and am not crazy about it. It's very un-intuitive. I'm sure in a few weeks it will make perfect sense. My company has a group that supports this software. I'm trying to get up to speed quickly so someone in our support group sends 1500 pages of documents to read through. 

Thank you for your help

For some reason I always notice whether people thank me when I help them out. These words aren't optional. 

Sorry is also useful to let someone know you made a mistake. I bumped into someone leaving our kitchen at work and we both said "Sorry."

James Altucher Podcast

I just finished listening to James' podcast with Steve Scott who writes Kindle books. Very interesting content. Highly recommended if you're a writer.

Boss makes me change unused code

I'm not sure that any boss wouldn't be annoying but my boss made me do unnecessary work. I was tempted to tell him "NO."  I can't think of anything I hate more than wasting my precious time.

New Car

My new car (Honda CRV) is now 4 days old. I have 10,000 mile per year lease and I've used Excel to help manage the mileage.  With the following sheet I can enter the miles column and it will show me how I'm doing on my lease. The column to the right is the formula or data in column B.

	A	B
2	Date of purchase	3/28/2016		3/28/2016
3	Return	3/28/2019		3/28/2019
4	Days Left	1095		=B3-B2
5	today	4/2/2016 0:00		=INT(NOW())
6	Days elapsed	5		=B5-B2
7	Miles	100		100
8	Avg per day	20.00		=B7/B6
9	Estimated	21,900		=B8*B4
10	Per Year at this rate	7,300.00		=B9/3
11	Miles left	29900		=30000-B7
12	days left	1090		=B4-B6
13	Avg per day	27.43		=B11/B12

Anger

I'm working on reducing my anger. Sam Harris has helped the most. I like his book Waking Up and his self guided meditation is very good. 

I get angry about the stupidest things. I was talking to my android phone and the word "comma" kept becoming "China."  Once I said to the phone "Tim Ferriss is the Dos Equis Guy" in a tweet and the phone generated "Tim Ferriss does techie guys."

The dirty floor in bathroom, piss on the toilet seat also set me off. 

I'm just trying to not get so upset about these insignificant things. Though I'd love to catch the guy that pisses on the toilet seat and then piss on his chair at work when no one is around.

Summary

• Set monthly goals
• Don't quit
• Control anger 
• Learn/use Excel to save time

Please leave feedback if you liked or didn't like this post. Thanks for reading. I hope this helped you. Connect with me on twitter at @Alecberg