Reflections on personal effectiveness techniques and how I use them to turnaround software projects, business and achieve my own goals.
How to Rescue Failing Software Projects: Practical Proven Methods That Work
My book is finally available as an eBook, on Amazon Kindle and on Amazon. I wrote this book to share my experience in how to rescue failing software projects. When I was going through such a situation, I had no one to turn to. My hope is that the information in this book will be useful to those in similar situations. Although the information in the book pertains to software projects, I have come to realize that the techniques can be used in many other situations. I have personally used these techniques in business and technical projects.
You can read more about it here.
My book can be purchased here at Amazon.com.
Amazon Kindle version is available here at Amazon.com
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Self Effectiveness - What do you do every day? Start a time log
1. How time flies. Where did all the time go to?
2. What did I do in the last 10 years?
3. Was I a different person 10 years ago? How am I different now?
4. I had so many dreams 10 years ago. Did I achieve anything?
5. I wish I had done this activity.
6. I wish I had done that activity.
7. I wish...I wish...I wish
Will you be asking yourself these questions in 10 years time? Will you regret?
How many more 10 years we have? How many more times can we ask these questions?
The time to stop this wishful thinking and regret is NOW. Everything in life revolves around taking action. Without action, nothing changes, nothing is achieved, whether it be wealth, health, peace of mind, happiness, great relationships.
We have all heard and read about time management. In my view, its not really about managing time. Its about managing the activities we do each day and allocate the appropriate amount of time to effectively use it.
Many of us begin by planning. I beg to differ. What we should be doing first is to create a time log. That's right. I'm not being crazy. Create a time log. You wondered how time flies? Stop wondering. Get to the bottom of things. Find out exactly where time went to!
Create a time log. Record your activities in a log. If you can't measure it, you can't fix it. A simple log will contain the activity name, start time, end time, duration and classification. For example, each activity can classified into personal, health, family, work, spiritual. Keep it simple for a start. Do this for 30 days. You will be amazed where your time flew to. With the time log, you can then determine if the activities you do are directed towards achieving your goal. If it is not, then why are you doing it? Every activity consumes time. Time once consumed is gone forever.
Start now. Its never too late. I have personally found this very useful and effectively. After 30 days of continuous discipline (extremely difficult at first), I began to question myself on the activities I do. Every single activity I do gets scrutinized because when I record the activity into the time log, I cringe when it does not bring me closer to my goal, knowing that I just wasted 2 hours that is lost forever. It makes me feel uncomfortable enough to streamline my activities and drive me forward towards my goal.
Easy enough? No. It sounds easy. Its very difficult to do because it requires discipline! We are all creatures of habit. Bad habits are hard to break. Do this, and write all your time-bound activities down (as stated in my previous blog entries). You will soon see yourself in a new light.
Good luck and happy logging. Drop me a note to let me know how it goes.
Check out this book by Peter Drucker called The Effective Executive. Fantastic and in my opinion, the only book on effectiveness ever needed.
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Copyright © Bernard Ong, 2006.
All Rights Reserved
2 comments:
Hi, very interesting post, greetings from Greece!
logically
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