Tag Archives: Time Management

Motivate Me!

Posted by Tom Schultz on June 24, 2010 2 comments

Ok, more than a cry for help, I want to know what motivates people in the technology industry.

Some of you may say…”Oh, it’s obvious. We’re in the coolest industry of our time.” or “Um, have you seen these gadgets lately????”
But, I think there’s more to it than what initially fires our neurons.

Quote of awesomeness…

Unfortunately, you can advertise in all the right places, have a fantastic internship program, and interview all you want, but if the great programmers don’t want to work for you, they ain’t gonna come work for you.

That’s from the first line of Joel Spolsky’s post titled “A Field Guide to Developers“.
If you think you have this problem then READ the article.

ParticleTree.com has some brilliant writing and information that should be read on this topic as well(and many other topics).

http://particletree.com/notebook/on-motivating-programmers/

This awesome video has a good explaination that kind of falls in with Joel Spolsky’s view.

Jason Fried of 37signals has an interesting outlook on this idea of motivation as well.

So what are some things that motivate us?

  • Make money a non-issue. Salaries don’t have to be extravagant.
  • Give us a real purpose and direction.
  • Try your best to make us comfortable(Chairs, noise, etc).
  • Attempt to reduce destructive politics and micro-managing.
  • Don’t burn us out, we do that on our own.

What motivates you?


What gets me out of bed each morning and off to work?


 I have cooler stuff at work than I do at my home.

 I can't wait to see my friends!

 I'm a professional, so it's what I do.

 If Jimmy get's there first my code is hosed!

 I want to feel like I'm making a difference with what I do at work.

 Um, paycheck...duh.


Podcast Episode #6 – Way behind Schedule

Posted by Tom Schultz on May 26, 2009 None comments

Well we are extremely behind in recording these.  I hope to get caught up at some point.

Here’s some of what we talked about…

  1. Topics
    1. Win 7 RC – is it worth getting hyped up for, windows mobile sweetness – gAlarm
    2. Agile/processes – New toys (Macbook Pro, Nokia BH-503), boxee
    3. OS X Java Vulnerability
    4. IT Conversations (Stackoverflow)
Pointless Rants Episode #6 [ 40:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On Wasting Time

Posted by Eric Shull on May 20, 2009 2 comments

Well, it’s been a while, but that’s not to say I haven’t been thinking about some things. In particular, I’ve been thinking about unproductive computer time. No, I’m not talking about playing games, I’m talking about things you have to do with your computer that you don’t want to, namely searching for files or organizing files so they’re easier to find when you want them.

Tom once told me that if he can’t find a file on his computer in five minutes, he’ll just download the file again if he can, the end result being the same file in several places. I’ve had a related issue in real life: I put important forms (like tax forms) in safe places until I need them, but when the time comes to find them, I’m not as smart as I was when I put them away. Consequently, I end up hunting in all the obvious places, having completely forgotten what the safe place was.

So the question: how do you organize your files so you don’t fall prey to duplicating files or outsmarting yourself? What do you do to reduce how much time you waste dealing with files?

Making a To Do Timeline with Excel

Posted by Eric Shull on March 2, 2009 None comments

I used to use Outlook for my task-keeping, or more specifically a PDA syncing with Outlook. Recently I’ve switched to using an iPod Touch, which does not come with anything for making to do lists, let alone something that syncs with Outlook and is as helpful as what Windows Mobile uses.

Necessity, however, is the mother of invention. I’ve adopted to using Excel as my to do list, and I actually like it much better than what I used to use. Read on for details.

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