Daily 5 Minute Journal August 5, 2017

Juggling

I juggled last night at Bryant Park. Did some club passing with Joe and we did pretty well, a woman who is 49.  Talked with Alice, Iggy.  Asked Jeff if he wanted to pass but he said "no."  Worked on 5 balls, 4 balls, clubs. I juggled clubs around 180 tosses. Taught 2 kids but they were impatient and couldn't do it.   There was another guy who was learning that I tried to help and some uncoordinated guy who needs to practice.

Weight

Still struggling to get below 160. I did it once but I'm wondering if it was a scale issue. Weighed myself a number of times yesterday and got many different numbers, but I'll use 161.4 here is my latest chart. 

Goals

My goals continue to elude me. I'm trying to come up with goals for August 2017 and for the year 2017.  I do have a book http://MyGoals.87sc.com.

I was shocked at the number of sheets I had on goals in time-monitor.

1. Goals at work
2. Actions to goals
3. Three Goals Three Tasks
4. Action to goal
5. Year by Year Goals
6. Daily Goals
7. Goal Analysis
8. Monthly Goals2
9. Commitment not Goal
10. Goal Sheet - Zig Ziglar
11. Health goal of the month
12. Goal Qs
13. 10 Life Goals
14. Goal Analysis2
15. Goals at home and work
16. Monthly Goals
17. Goals
18. Goal Questions
19. Book to Goal
20. PURGE of Goals

This needs to be organized better.

It might be time to really work on STS (Smart Task Selection). I found a way to track my location via an IP address at http://ipinfo.io.

Twitter

I'm getting more people liking my stuff on twitter. I've changed my name on twitter to Al Berg from Alec Berg. as to not be mistaken for the writer by the same name from Seinfeld.

I've created a list of my tweets on twitter organized which is called 69 Pieces of My Twitter Wisdom.

I've had a couple of tweets that got more followers and I'm up to 72,783.



Popular Tweet Stats

Here is link https://t.co/XycAsM8zfC

— Al Berg 🇺🇸 (@alecberg) August 2, 2017

On average, Black women in this country make only 63 cents relative to every dollar white men are paid. #BlackWomensEqualPay

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) July 31, 2017

@ScottAdamsSays head buried in newspaper pretending like he doesn't know this crazy chick (me) pic.twitter.com/MT5JYOlzbD

— Kristina Basham (@kristina_basham) July 29, 2017

I'm working on getting my first book published on Kindle.

You can view it at https://t.co/pOrkwtxJJi#Diet #WeightLoss #Health #Excel pic.twitter.com/3JKobwMYX7

— Al Berg 🇺🇸 (@alecberg) July 12, 2017

Work

This week at work I've started completing the automation of my software to create PowerPoint slides. This is pretty cool, that I can set a command and have it run on a server in Excel. Though some work is still needed as it's not good at say asking "Are you alive?" and getting back a response, yet. Also, the process can get busy running something. Also, I have to deal with msgbox's and how to handle errors that occur.

I didn't get it to run my data verification process. Have also started on the idea of having a process that help do manual and automated tasks.

Most tasks have components of both automation and manual steps. I'm trying to find a way to better manage this process. For example, the data verification will run on two files looking for issues with the data. If it finds them a person must look at the data and create an event that will allow the automated process to continue.

I recently finished my mid-year review and I don't think I'm doing as well as I'd like. My new boss has pointed out that I'm the only one that knows VBA more than once. This is definately a risk I need to mitigate.

One way to mitigate this is to make the process so easy and useful that the value of VBA skills is seen as useful.

Books/Writing

I continue to work on books but this has stagnated a little bit. I need to do some more proof reading and then getting the book to Kindle. I'm not sure I like the way I write as it's missing something. The books are all available for free on-line write now. If you go to http://w2fo.com/showlist2.asp?parent=49304.

I also need to work on my book covers.

Books I'm Reading

I'm reading a book called The Like Switch  that well I like.  I've also downloaded too many free books from Kindle.

Time Tracking

This once and always is a problem I'd like to solve as I have to track and enter my time at work. I'd like to be able to answer some very basic question on how I spent my time and analyze if it was spent wisely.

• What did I work on?
• How much time?
• What problems did I have?
• What is wasting my time (meetings)?
• Where could I be more productive
• How is time broken down by report?
• How is time broken down by part of process
• Automating
• Research
• Testing
• Documenting
• Following procedures
• Support

Daily 5 Minute Journal - March 24, 2016

Garry Shandling died today

Twitter always seems to be the bearer of bad news. I didn't know his work that well but the few times he subbed for Johnny Carson I thought he was very funny.  Recently he was on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Garry Shandling - It's Great That Garry Shandling Is Still Alive - Episode - Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee by Jerry Seinfeld

4 Coincidences

I was sitting in the conference room at work while Evan ate his lunch. We were talking about my brother. I want my brother to meet Yanek a guy I work with. A second after I mention Yanek's name he pops into the conference room.

I'm walking my dog and we pass a male dog Rocky's house who for some reason my dog loves. All of a sudden the owner and Rocky show up in the car. It's stranged that our paths coincided at the exact same time.

I'm singing a song from Blazin Saddles the movie and my says that Madelin Kahn died at a young age. I asked her to check my list 187 Famous People Who Died Before Their Time. Tonight Garry Shandling passed away and I have to update the list

The final one was that I was working on a Comedy List today which was randomly selected for me and a comedian died so now I'll try to learn from his work.

Tweet comparison

I do two tweets and the results are interesting.

the first one was generated by YouTube when I liked the video. I didn't know it was doing this. The second was my tweet of the video. The tweets were 1 minute apart.

1. I liked a @YouTube video http://youtu.be/RkAxbHrwtpI?a  Happy Guy (1988-11-03)
2. "Time keeps ticking away" - #Devo - #Happy Guy

The key to why the second tweet had more engagements is likely the #Devo and #Happy hash-tags. I'm not 100% sure of this so I'd have to do more testing.

6 take-away's to improve your tweets

1. Use #hash-tags in your tweets
2. Keep the link at bottom not embedded
3. Use readable text in the link then a random set of characters
1. RkAxbHrwtpI vs. bit.ly/HappyGuy
4. Use an interesting quote from the video
5. Keep it short
6. Don't use the standard text from a system like YouTube

Daily 5 Minute Journal Jan. 23, 2016 #BlizzardOf2016

Blizzard of 2016 and about 6 inches of snow at noon.

Woke up with wt. of 165 and blood sugar of 105.  This brings me to one of my favorite quotes "If you do what you've done you get what you got."

Oldest son has went back to college and I'm happy I didn't have to take him.

January is coming to a close and for the 3rd straight month I didn't reach my goal.

• Nov. 2015 - Declutter
• Dec. 2015 - Lower Blood Sugar
• Jan. 2016 - W < 160
• Feb. 2016 - Learn more and take action on osteoporosis
• Mar. 2016 - Finish Wisdom of a Dad

My monthly goal idea hasn't been working.

Why?

Maybe the lack of a plan. It was my goal but not in an all out attempt. 

In terms of deculttering, I did throw out some stuff but not enough. Lowering Blood Sugar, I've started on Metformin but haven't seen a real lowering of blood sugar or measured it clearly. My weight has stabilized and seems to be trending. between 161 and 170.

One thing I've learned is that deadlines help.  If you wait until the last minute and don't have a deadline, you'll never finish.

I've been enjoying work more lately as I've been put in charge of the Tuesday meetings and it takes time to run them.  I spent a lot of time getting the Snapshots software which is a screen recorder to work but it's not working on my laptop.

Things are changing fast at work. I've started working with a new guy in a different dept. who was late for a meeting I set up. He had very long hair, rather young and had a weird bag with him. He also told be he managed $3 mm and was let go because his quota was $6mm. I gave him a presentation and he was yawning through it. He made a comment about the code (Python) didn't have enough "Try" statements. He also complained that (me60) chart on Excel didn't have units or a label.

New Rule: When meeting someone new never complain about their work even if it's bad especially if unsolicited.

I find out through a co-worker that there will be a presentation on Tableau at a weekly meeting that I probably wouldn't have attended. I need an easy way to put something on my calendar at work. I currently use email to send tasks to work when not at work and home tasks when not at home. I wish the email system could automatically add the tasks to my to do lists.

Recently heard 3 podcasts from +Tim Ferriss. One was with  @EricRWeinstein which was very interesting one with @PeterTheil and one with +Daymond John. It's always the same issue though whether it's from a book, podcast or comment; how do you do what someone says when it's good advice. I call this B2A or Book to Action. I have read many self-help books, marketing, sales books but have I done one thing in them. Even the Four Hour Work Week has so much highlighting but little action.

The books you have tells you about your goals. You could use the books to give yourself a good idea of what you want.

Annoyed that on twitter mobile I couldn't add someone to a list.

Atheism

Love the +Sam Harris quote. 

“#Atheism is not a philosophy, it is not even a world view – it is simply an admission of the obvious.” #quote @SamHarrisOrg

— Alec Berg (@alecberg) January 21, 2016

STS

Smart Task Selection. There are 2 questions:

• What should I do now?
• What did I do?

The idea is that we humans are prisoners of our habits which are extremely hard to change. If someone or something told you exactly what to do and when, could they increase their success?

Would they follow the instructions?  How would this program or recipe work?

I recently shared my idea of Smart Task Selection with a co-worker and he liked the idea. He thought it should be calendar based where I've always had it task based. I have thought about calendar based and maybe I should try this.

Presentations

I've been working on a presentation with a co-worker and have a few pet peeves that are done

• Define all acronyms in PPT
• Clarify terms with whole slides
• 10/20/30 - Ten slides, twenty minutes, thirty point font - +Guy Kawasaki 

New phone

New phone, Droid Turbo came in. It's my 3rd one. First one headphone jack failed. The second one would reboot all the time, mostly when walking in cold weather. I was able to figure out how to remove the Simm (me10) card, by using my finger nail and pulling it out, then replacing it in my new phone.  

Twitter

Still like twitter as I have a lot of followers and enjoy getting likes and retweets. Would like to find a way to make some friends out of it.

Health

Neck pain is waning, which is from sleeping on a couch and twisting my head. Having pain in left knee when walking up/down stairs.

sin

Dog Training

This week I tried to train my dog to bark and identify objects that we can't find like her collar and the remote. I did the training using a clicker. At some point she got it. When I asked my wife to come watch her do it she couldn't.  She was picking stuff at random and getting a treat. Next time I have to only reward her if she picks out the item the first time and not after trying all the items

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.