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 

Daily Journal March 22, 2016

Excel To-do List

Today I got a lot done at work.

And why?

I have a great tool to help me.

It works on a pretty simple principle. It answers the question "What should I do now?"  

Now as I get distracted it also answers the question "What should I be working on?"

In addition, it time-boxes the task so I can use Parkinson's Law to set a limit on time I spend on it.

The basic idea is to capture things I have to do into 3 columns of a spreadsheet. 

1. The first column is the highest priority stuff to get to
2. The second column is the next level priority
3. The third column is the backlog of stuff I need to get to

The I randomly select a task to do from the 1st column. The spreadsheet selects it and I start to work on it. I can select 15, 30 or 60 minutes to work on the task or skip it if I want.

When the task is selected it shows me in a form what I'm working on with the elapsed time. When I finish the task I use the Strike-through font (Ctrl+5). .  

I'm sure that doesn't make sense so I'll have to put a video together showing the power of this tool.

Caption Monitoring

One thing I'm working on is better time tracking. I was wondering how much time I spend in Outlook so I developed some Excel VBA code to monitor the Active window and track the amount of time I'm in Outlook.  I think this could be useful for detecting time other software is being used. After developing it I'm not sure that it's that useful as there is a process that I take when I get emails. There are 3 types of emails:

1. Useless stuff that I didn't need to look at
2. Information that I may need in the future
3. Some request that I need to answer

Now the 3rd item can take me from minutes to days depending on what the request is. So knowing that I was in Outlook gives me some information but it doesn't track well the issue that I'm working on. I would be nice to be able to track information related to the request that came in.

Ernie Belittles me

My friend Ernie at work belittles me because I told him about my list of  > 100 things I'm focusing on. He's a Buddhist and to him it's the opposite of focused.  "You can't do that!" But maybe I can and maybe it's exactly what I want to do. I can explore new things and put to rest tasks that I don't want to do and figure what to work on. I got the idea from +james altucher who says to be working on 20 ideas because you don't know which one will get traction. Then he minimizes my video on how to transcribe a podcast with shortcut keys.

Left out again

Not sure why I wasn't included in a meeting this morning. My boss invited everyone on the team but forgot to invite me. WTF. He realized it an then invited me after the meeting was in progress for 10 minutes.

Interesting Titles

I was at Barnes and Noble and they had a number of interesting titles. I bought War of Art

• The Art of Thinking Clearly
• This Book will make you Smarter
• Idiots Guide to unlocking Creativity
• Wired to Create
• The Art of Creative Thinking
• Why we Snap
• One Simple Idea

Voice Recognition to Transcribe a Podcast

I tried to use the Windows and the Google software to transcribe a podcast but it doesn't work. I think it's still quicker and better to just type it. The software could barely understand any words. The only thing that worked partially was playing the podcast to headphones and repeating what the guests were saying. I'm going to try a test for a fixed time say 10 minutes and see which has better results.

Yesterday I posted a video on how to transcribe a podcast using short cut keys. The main keys to use are:

Key	Action
Alt+Tab	Switch Window
Alt+Shift+Tab	Switch Window
Space	Play/Pause YouTube video toggle
Left Arrow	Back video 5 seconds on YouTube
Right Arrow	Forward video 5 seconds on YouTube
Ctrl+PgDn	Next tab in Chrome
Ctrl+PgUp	Prev tab in Chrome

Nice Guitar

While napping yesterday I awake to the following video on PBS of Paint it Black.

Daily 5 minute Journal. Jan. 2, 2016

Woke up with blood sugar 107 which is still too high. I'm not sure the Metformin is working. I've upped my dosage of metformin to 1000 mg but it hasn't seemed to lower my blood sugar.

Weighed 166 this morning which was higher than I'd like.

I have set my goal for this month to weigh less than 160, but I've been stuck where I am for so long I'm not sure if I can reach it. I have stopped putting butting and coconut oil into my coffee.

Still have a messy area and thought today that I should do the following:

1. Come up with life's goals
2. Come up with 10 year plan
3. Come up with 5 year plan
4. Come up with years goals
5. Come up with monthly goals
6. Come up with week's goal
7. Come up with day's goal
8. Do most important thing on day's to-do list

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time watching Youtube videos. I learned how street performers levitate and watched many of Project One Life videos and saw very funny Jesus pranks. This guy  I have that http://Time-creator.com software that would every 15 minutes remind me to log data about what I did the previous 15 minutes.

question of "What did I do yesterday?" I feel like I did a lot of nothing that was goal related. I had an alarm in my

• What did I do
• What goal?
• My rating for review
• Exceeds Expectations
• Meets Expectations
• Below Expectations
• What an Exceeds Expectation would have done
• What to put on resume

Walked the dog and it was very cold. Watched Larry David with son.  I'm into compiling Larry David songs and he sang two:

1. Jaiya Jaiya Jaiya I made it out of clay
2. N-E-S-T-L-E-S song (The Terrorist Episode)
3. Ah Yapa doody Ya Ya

Daily 5 Minute Journal Dec. 26, 2015

Islamaphobia. 

This term has been used in a number of ways, To me it means a fear of Islam. Islam makes me afraid as any doctrine that can get people to kill themselves and others fly planes into buildings, mass murder people who've done nothing at all is something to fear. The term seems to be used to stop people from criticizing an idea, which all religions are.  And when people talk about all the hate crimes against Muslims, there are a number of reasons people do this and the main one is what certain Muslims have done in the name of their religion. Obviously there are many good Muslims and the majority would never do these crazy things. The only question I have is that I believe the term phobia relates to an irrational fear, but I don't know that this fear is irrational.

Health

wt. 165.4 which is > 165. Blood Sugar was 93 which is better than usual. I took a lot of pills and stuff yesterday morning, maybe the affect is delayed. Saw family yesterday.

TV

I watch a weird Star Wars Christmas special that was so bad it was good. 6 is nice.

I watched Booze Traveler show which was in Guatemala. This show is giving me the travel bug. Niece is going to Thailand.

It's nice having my son home from college as he spends time with me. We watch some TV together, like Curb Your Enthusiasm (spoiler alert).

We watched the episode where Larry is going to a wedding get's hung up as he can't find his airline tickets. There is a scene where Larry and Cheryl are driving to the wedding and Larry sing's the following song. Ya dat da.

Memory

Where's my phone? This seems to be the question I ask the most these days.

I walk into the garage and forget why then realize it's to get a trash bag. I've been doing this since I was a kid where I'd get to a new room and not remember why I'm there.

I can't remember Mel Gibson's name and the movie he did with the Inca's?

Wisdom of a Dad

I recently located a hard copy of my book Wisdom of a Dad. It's a bit overwhelming figuring out how to get the information in the book into the one I've published on the web.

Current Task

I'm having second thoughts about CurTask, Which is the software that's supposed to help me reach my goals. I'm realizing that it's not working and maybe I need to come up with another method to get stuff done. The idea is something I've been working on a long time and the real name is Smart Task Selection. The idea is that a smart computer will tell you what to do and if you do it you will reach your goals.

Meditation

I meditated yesterday, using the Headspace app. I liked it. It did relax me.

Optical Illusions

I spent some time yesterday watching youtube videos on optical illusions. Mostly balls rolling up hill.

Annoyance

Annoyance that the Windows explorer to view files by descending date use to be instantaneous but with the newer version of windows it takes too damn long.

Twitter

I'm still posting to twitter and do love when I get retweets, likes or mentions. A little pissed that twitter has banned my account from advertising and I'm not sure why and they refuse to tell me.

Follow Up your way to Success

One of the most important things to do to be successful is to follow up.

Why don't people follow up?  There are many reasons people don't follow up but the main one is fear of appearing rude. Many times you contact someone like John and ask him to send you a copy of your test results.  But alas John is busy and doesn't have a good system for following up.  So John is very busy and doesn't get back to you.

But you wait and wait and wait. Eventually you forget about the test results and at some point don't follow up with your doctor.

The first thing to realize is just because you ask someone via email, in person or phone to do something it doesn't mean it will get done. What if the person is on vacation or sick?

What if John asks his employee to send  the test results but the worker forgets or is working on an urgent issue?

What if I sent John an email and he never got it because it went to his spam folder or the receptionist accidentally delete all the voice mails?

Waiting to follow up can cause issues as the longer time that passes the less likely someone will follow up.

The first thing to do is keep a list of who and when to follow up with people and check it daily. This is best incorporated into your to-do list.

On the opposite side is you're own need to follow up requests. If someone sends you an email to do a task, tell them you got the email and when you'll be able to get to it, about how long it will take and what other priorities you're dealing with.

Using Microsoft Outlook is a good way to follow up as you can mark emails with the Follow up indicator. You could also set an alarm to remind yourself to follow up.

One technique to get follow up is to copy people's bosses on emails. This can backfire as the person may get angry and go out of there way to not help you. Never address a request to multiple people, address it to one of them and cc the other.

If you send an email to a group sometimes called a DG (Distribution Group) make sure to include at least one of the actual names in the cc list.

Another way to increase follow up by others and to be very thankful when people do help you. If you can give them a subtle or direct compliment.

"Wow, that was great service... I really appreciate you help"

and copy their boss.

Another way is to use the software I helped create called http://Time-creator.com which uses Excel to create alarms that help with follow up.

Anyway if you have suggestions, comments or tips I'd love to hear from your below.

AB.