How To Efficiently Set up a new Blog

It would only be appropriate to rename my blog as: “Perils of a Procrastinating Mind”. I’ve been delaying the process of writing a new post for quite a long time, for no apparent reason. Maybe, I’m just going through a phase of extreme lethargy. Last week can be described as, for lack of a better word, uninspiring.

But now, I’ve come out of my reverie and have decided to flex my writing muscles again. Since the inception of this blog, I’ve scribbled my thoughts on various topics. Though this route has given me the flexibility of exploring various genre, it has skewed my readership in a weird way. The week before I was helping my friend, set-up a new blog called Green Blog (a blog about environment, global warming, Solar energy etc). He asked me to write the first post for the blog. In my zealous attempt to write a perfect “first blog post”, I decided to send my draft post to some of my friends for review. I realised, to my horror, that almost all the comments in the feedback had a unifying theme: “You seem too conscious while writing this post”, “You are not being your usual self” etc etc. Either they sat down together and generated the feedback OR they are *right*.

So, I scrapped the original post and painfully rewrote the whole thing, but this time I tried being myself. I also jotted down some pointers on how to set-up a new blog. I’ve learned from my own experience that setting up and maintaining a blog isn’t a cakewalk. Here are some pearls of wisdom from me:

Choose your *Blog host* carefully:

There are several blog hosting services available on the world wide web. Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal et al. There are pros and cons to each of them and it would take another post to list them out in detail. So, I’ll be brief and blunt. Blogger is very easy to set-up a new blog, but it sulks like anything when you become an experienced blogger and try to expand your blogging experience beyond publishing posts. Typepad can be called as a wonderful blogging tool, but then it is definitely not ‘new-blogger’ friendly. If you try to register yourself at Typepad, it asks you your financial details upfront before you even publish your first post, which is a big put-off for newbies. LiveJournal is more of a community site, than a thorough-bred blogging site. It has many unwanted, irrelevant features; pop-up adverts, for instance get on my nerves. WordPress has a balance of everything. It doesn’t seem too daunting to a new user and has all the right features for quickly setting up a blog without any hassles. My recommendation would be: start with WordPress, and when you’ve gained enough experience blogging, try out other advanced blog hosts.

Layout:

Alright, you’ve set up your blog account and you’re all excited and ready to dive in and start writing n publishing your posts. But hang on a sec, before you start writing, you have to decide the look of your blog. Blog page layout defines the style and look of your blog. Don’t rush through this section as this will determine your taste when it comes to design. It *is* a big deal. The way your blog looks speaks a lot about you. If your blog looks like an angry fruit salad, then nobody would wanna make a stop to devour what you have to offer. The Blog hosting site offer several default templates( blog themes) to choose from. You also have the option of creating your own page-layout via HTML, CSS etc. It, really is a matter of personal preference though, and you have to use your discretion while making decisions like: whether the blog should have three column format or a two column format; how many posts should be displayed on a single page; background colour-foreground colour and so on and so forth. My mantra is to keep the design simple and elegant.

Blog Frequently:

Now you’re all set, you’ve set up your blog account and carefully chosen the layout as well. Then you write and publish your first post. From here on, the secret recipe for a popular and successful blog is to post on a regular basis. Keep your blog alive by frequently updating it. ‘What’ you write is not as important as ‘how’ you write it. Create a niche for yourself by writing about obscure topics. The more you write about it, more the people would want to read it, and slowly and steadily you’ll have a growing stream of readers. If your blog has a consistent theme, you might end up being an expert on that topic.

No Ads Till You’ve Grown:

Avoid placing ads( via Adsense or Yahoo ad service) on your blogs till you have a wide readership. Ads on your blog will only be tolerated if you’ve proved yourself an expert blogger and are worthy enough to be read regularly. Personally, I find adverts on blog page, appalling. They ruin the whole look and feel of the blog. So, first focus all your efforts into building the pillars of your blog which will appeal to a greater mass of readers and will constantly attract them to your blog. Only when you’ve reached a readership of, say 500 hits per day, you can fancy inserting advert links into your blog page.

This is what I could come up with at the moment, but I’m sure there are many more tips and tricks to successfully start your spin-off as blogger. Look them up on google and try to put them in practise. And if you’re successful, share the idea with me as well.

How to manage a Programmer ??

How does one come up with an answer to this quandary ? To compose a definitive answer, let me elaborate the question first. I’m a full time computer programmer(part-time blogger) working for one of the best IT companies in India. I am generally happy with my job, but sometimes, I dislike the way my company treats me. I feel, they don’t see any difference between a sales-executive job profile and my profile. My question above can be translated as: How should an IT company effectively manage an IT professional, to get the most out of him ?

Why :

If you are wondering, why should we even bother ourselves with such a ludicrous question? Let me convince you otherwise. From my personal (and my fellow programmers) experience, I can see a doleful trend emerging in the behaviour of a typical IT organisation towards its knowledge workers. I am not targeting the current work culture, rather I’m trying to point out the prevalant fallacy in managing Computer Programmers. Coz a dissatisfied, frustrated programmer leads to a equally dispirited product with millions of bugs. There’s more to management of Computer Programmers than maintaining excel sheets and offering free Pizzas for staying back late.

Assumptions:

I have taken the liberty of presuming a Computer Programmer as a creative individual with a knack for solving problems. He’s a nerd, who gets excited everytime he sees his program execute successfully, and frustrated when it doesn’t. He is passionate about programming and spends(or would like to spend) most of his waking hours in front of his computer.

Here’s a guideline/tip to successfully manage a Programmer:

Entertain Geek Fashion:

A typical geek hates to wear formals. He feels suffocated, when he wears a tie. And a properly tucked-in shirt with striped/plain pants…Yuck. Geeks are more comfortable with informal-laid-back clothes like jeans, round neck T-shirts, unkempt-hair. This doesn’t mean, they’re trying to act rebellious or smart or something. The reason for their affinity of such attire is simple.They consider their profession as an art and want to be as comfortable as possible while crafting their code. If you give them the freedom to wear anything they like, to work, they’d really appreciate this gesture and might reciprocate by working harder for the project.

Give them Space:

This might not be as intuitive as the above tip, but it literally means “Don’t micro-manage them”. Don’t pester them by soliciting minute to minute update on the project. Don’t squander their time, by holding status meeting everyday (One status meeting in a week should suffice). Geeks absolutely detest micro-management. They just want you to give them the requirement spec, and they’ll get back to you with tentative deadline. Negotiate the deadline, if you can. But don’t bother them any further, trust them to complete it within the agreed deadline.

Blend Work with Play:

Google does this best. If you’ve seen pictures of Google offices around the world, you’d know what I mean. Google employees have a ball at work. They get free food, free massage, free hair-cut, they can play pool, tabble soccer etc , bring their pets along at work. So, Google gives its employees enough reasons to stay within it’s colorful office walls(Here’s GooglePlex in action). I’m not coercing you to go that far, but you can try to imbibe some elements of “Make Work Fun” philosophy in your current work culture.

Do not restrict their internet access too much. Blocking porn is reasonable, but blocking anything else is blasphemy. A quintessential geek likes to play games on-line, visit forums, solve Sudoku(or some puzzle), read tech-news. If you think, by restricting the internet access, you’d avoid wasting the programmers productivity, then you’re gravely mistaken. Give them freedom of choice, trust their discretion and they’ll turn in quality work. They look up to internet for inspiration, for information, for friends. To deny these things to them could be harmful in the long run. The biggest advantage of unrestricted internet access is, via surfing the programmer knows what’s hep n cool on the internet. What do the users like, what do they dislike, what works and what doesn’t. They’d understand their users more and keep track of the evolving trends on the Web, which in turn will help you and your organization to make/change strategic decisions on your up-coming product.

Flexi-working hours :

Probably, this tip would be the most controversial of all. Let the programmers decide their working hours. Today, almost all IT companies follow the 9-5 pattern, but this does not suit everybody. It’s like forcing everyone to wear the same size uniform, irrespective of their body size and width; The uniform will fit some people perfectly, it’ll be too loose for some or too tight for others. I’ve used this analogy to explain the dilemma of todays IT professionals. They are expected to show up at eight(ish) and leave at six( preferably late). The problem is, this paradigm doesn’t suit everybody. Some people feel that they’re more productive in the morning and would prefer to start early and leave early, whilst others might feel that they’re more productive at noon and would like to start late and leave late. Relax the rules on work time and it will eventually lead to rise in productivity.

To conclude, treat Geeks/Nerds/Programmers differently. They are artists( at least that’s what they’d like to think), and therefore they abhor restrictions. They’re inclined to be unhappy if asked to follow a bunch of company policy rules. Give them enough liberty, entertain their eccentricities, encourage their wild ideas and you’ll end up with a kick-ass product, created by a bunch of inspired, motivated programmers.

Chip in your comments and let me know if you agree/ disagree with my views on how to manage a computer programmer. Adios !!!

IM vice

Webworker daily ran an article on how IM’s are better than emails for work-life productivity. Well, even though IM’s have their advantages, the two most important disadvantages which, I believe overshadow the advantages are:

1.IM’s are one of the biggest distractors, they make you lose your train of thought and force you to multitask, which drags down productivity effectively. What I mean is, suppose you are completely focussed on one task, and someone pings you( inspite of the fact, that you’ve set your status to Busy), you’re forced to pay attention to the IM message, that leads to context switch, which is counter-productive.

2. IM messages cannot be archived properly, so, IM’s cannot be used to make business decisions. Even if the IM client can store messages, its difficult to scour through the chat history, to find the relevant conversation.

I don’t find IM’s useful, other than having a quick chat with my friends online.

Beyond Google

This NYT article about the “Race to Trump Google” made me think about the number of startups in the Silicon Valley who are struggling or hoping to grab a slice of Internet search market. It is obvious that Google is the Goliath and others are tiny Davids trying to out-seat Google from its top spot.This is not an easy job considering the fact that currently Google handles more than half of US Internet search traffic. Also, remember that Yahoo and Microsoft have been trying for a long time now. To topple Google, the competitors should be better than Google in the following areas:

1. Better Search Technology.

2. Better presentation of search information

3. Stronger and more powerful business model.

So I digged even more and found out about the following search engines which you may or may not be aware of.

Better Search Technology:

To overthrow Google, the contenders are perfecting two strategies a) Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processsing b) More people-specific search, against Google’s original PageRank algorithm.

Hakia claims to have better AI. I searched for “Who+killed+JFk” in both Google and Hakia and the results turned out to be more or less the same. But, Hakia doesn’t allow “Vertical Search” which means unlike Google you can’t search only for “blogs”, “videos”, “news”. So, Hakia still has a long way to go.

Digg and del.icio.us fall in the people -specific search category. The advantage is that you get highly filtered search. The disadvantage is, the searches are ranked on the basis of what most people find popular.

Better UI:
Snap and Microsofts Live Search have made considerable breakthrough in this directions. But, how does showing previews of the search result impacts user experience cannot be determined at the moment. Also, even if this idea takes off, it won’t be long before Google catches up with better way of displaying its search results.

The other criteria to look for is Clustering your results. To demonstrate what I am talking about, enter a search query in Clusty. This will return results clustered under various sections/tags. Infact, I found this feature very useful, since it restricts my attention to fewer search results. If developed and advertised properly, this feature can be a definitive edge over Google’s search results. But then I found SearchMesh, which is apparently Google’s lab graduate. SearchMesh has an interesting switch which displays only the headlines of the search results. It also classifies the search unders various verticals lke blogs, videos, wikipedia etc.

Better Business Model:

I can’t emphasize this point more, anybody who wants to go ahead of Google should not only focus on technology but should also try to develop a better business model. The technology improvements can be imitated by Google, but if you want to win this race, you’ve got to have a striking business model, wherein you link search results to something lucrative, something that adds value to both your company and your users. If you can innovate in this area, you can definitely have an edge over others. This ofcourse, doesn’t undermine the importance of “Better Technology” and “Better Presentation”. If they are the pillars of your company, a better business model will give you the Brand advantage, which Google currently enjoys.

I love Google, they are the best in the business now, but so were Microsoft. To Quote Randy from the NYT article:

“It is hard for me to believe that anybody thinks they can take Google’s business from Google,” said Randy Komisar, a venture capitalist who was once known as Silicon Valley’s “virtual C.E.O.” for his role as a mentor to scores of technology firms. “But to call the game over because Google has been such a success would be to deny history.”

The race to beat Google is definitely on.

I’ve started Twittering

I came across Twitter on this post on Kathy’s blog few days back and I’m already addicted. It might seem silly at first but it is an awesome utility to keep you in the zone. Well, let me first clarify, what”being in the zone” means. One of my previous post talks about how interruptions at work reduce your productivity( both personal and professional), how multi-tasking is costly to your brains processor in terms of context-switches . It’s very important that knowledge-workers understand and exploit this concept.

“Being in the zone” simply means that you are completely focused on the task at hand without any distractions. It dramatically improves your productivity and you can get more things done in less time. This will not only enable you to finish your work in the stipulated time period but also raise the quality of your work. When your brain is focussed on one thing at a time, it utilizes all its faculty to get the task done effectively. For e.g. if you’re reading an important design spec document to understand the requirements. You are totally into the document trying to comprehend every intricate detail…and…. suddenly your IM pings, or your email client buzzes to indicate new mail and if you attend to any of these activities , your brain does a context switch. And it takes a lot of effort and time to get the original context( of design spec) back. This leads to loss in productivity. If you think that such context switces are manageable, then you are fooling yourself. This kind of multi-tasking will effectively reduce your ability to focus on any particular activity thereby decreasing the quality of the output. Some of the external disturbancs like telephones, colleagues dropping in to have a chat cannot be avoided, but even if you manage to avoid the internal distractions( mentioned above), you can ameliorate your productivity by 60%-70 %.

Next question: what is Twitter ? In Kathy’s words “For those of you who don’t know about Twitter, it has one purpose in life–to be (in its own words)–A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? And people answer it. And answer it. And answer it. Over and over and over again, every moment of every hour, people type in a word, fragment, or sentence about what they’re doing right then. (Let’s overlook the fact that there can be only one true answer to the question: “I’m typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now… which is typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now.” Or something else that makes my head hurt.)”

Now, where does Twitter fit in ? Well, I’d say Twitter is kinda, on-the-fly To-Do list which we create as we move from one task to another.The only difference is , this To-Do list can be seen by the world or only by your friends. Consider this scenario: you write in Twitter: ” Working on level 1 module of ‘Riddler’ game design spec”. You subconsciously commit yourself to complete that task without checking your mails/IM’s/RSS feeds. This is because, by actually writing down your task, you become aware that your friends( or the whole world) know what you are doing, which pressurizes to you finish it off ASAP. You can have tons of argument against this, but kindly don’t argue if you’ve never used To-Do list in your life. Twittering is not a panacea and will not make you effective at work overnight. It will definitely impose self-discipline on your actions. It doesn’t matter what you’ve written on Twitter, it could be anything,

” Doing my laundry “

” Helping Roomies with Dinner “

” Solving the Zimmerman Quantum-Acoustic Problem” and so on and so forth.

It also doesn’t matter if anybody actually reads your post on Twitter. All that matters is you write it and you do it…period.

In fact, this post was a result of twittering on Twitter . I had written: “I am posting a blog on wordpress now.” Hmm..it works .

Getting Things Done

define : Productivity - 1.The relationship between production of an output and one, some, or all of the resource inputs used in accomplishing the assigned task. 2. Productivity is used to measure the efficiency of production, and is most often expressed as a ratio of outputs over inputs.

How do I become highly productive at work ? The answer to this question has always eluded me. We live in a world full of distractions. Ours is a generation with very short attention span. While at work, we are distracted by mails( most of them being irrelevant and unimportant ), by constant telephone (or mobile) calls. We also tend to procrastinate important, urgent tasks with the lame hope of getting them done ’some time later’.

I’m no productivity Guru or the most productive office gnome that you’ll ever see. But over the years I’ve become more effective at work, more efficient at creating quality deliverables. I am a voracious reader and have been reading about “Getting Things Done” for quite some time now. I had started reading about it during engineering days and started applying some of the principles at work now. I would share some of my learnings .

My tips for being productive at work are :

1. To-Do List :

This is an old school trick but it sure works its magic even in todays PDA lifestyle. A simple To-do list will keep you on track besides providing you a mental picture of the work that you have in hand. Also when you write down your tasks, you make a psychological commitment that you would accomplish them. As you complete the tasks listed in the To Do list, and you check them out , you gain satisfaction and a sense of achievement which gives you motivation to complete the unfinished tasks.

A smarter To Do List would be to break down your tasks to such a granular level that it takes few minutes to accomplish them. This will give you a positive edge that things are moving ahead. It also makes a tough job manageable. Try it out.

2.Avoid Distractions:

As a developer, I know how irritating and counter-productive unnecessary distractions can be. Your focus is 100% on the program, trying to debug a screwed up error, suddenly the phone rings or the computer beeps to announce the arrival of a new mail. If you attend to either of these, it leads to context-switch in your brain, and it is time expensive to regain the original context back.Context switch is good for your machine, but not for you. You cannot be productive while multitasking, no matter how good you think you are at MT. You’ll get things done quickly and effeciently only when your mind is completely attentive on the task at hand.

3. Kick Procrastinations ass

Procrastination is an all pervasive phenomenon. You have a list of tasks to do, you tend to complete all the easy ones first and try to procrastinate the tough ones. Even if it is important, you’re inclined to shift it down and down your To-do list(assuming you maintain one). But this procrastination leads to unnecessary stress and undue pressure when the task deadline approaches. You then over exert yourself on the task which you could’ve completed long time ago, in a systematic way.But then, it’s just a theory, and when it comes to implementation I know how difficult it is. I use a ‘Procrastination-Blues’ technique.More on this in my next post

These were tips from my experience, if you want the real expert advice, I suggest you read Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book is considered a bible of “Effective Time management tips and tricks”.
Read LifeHacker daily, or its productivity archives OR 43Folders, for that matter. But don’t just read it, try and implement the advice given in these books/articles.Reading is not enough.

Remember, if you want to have a life outside your work, try to be as productive and effective in your work as possible, so that you find time for yourself.

Ah well, I’ll sign off for now.
Chip in your comments ,thoughts on this post.
Cheers !!!