I Hate Yearly Reviews at Work

It's that time for my yearly review at work. I hate doing these. I did so much during the year but don't remember all of the useful things. That's where Time-Creator comes in. I've setup a new sheet in time creator with rows containing the months and the columns containing the days.

I also set up a daily alarm to open this sheet at 4 pm. This way, each day I can put down something that's important to include on my review and when it's time to do the review I can easily bring up this sheet and complete it without asking the wtf did I do question.

You can get the the latest version of Time-Creator at http://Time-Creator.com

Easy 80/20 Decluttering

For those of you who don't know about the 80-20 rule, simply states that you wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time for example or 20% of your tasks comprise 80% of your time, 20% of your customers get you 80% of your profits. You get the picture. There's a small, useful amount that gives you mostly what you want.

So how do you decide what's the 20% and what's the 80%. A simple method to get you to 25-75, is to take what you have whether tasks, goals, product, books to write, etc. and get rid of 50%. Then do this one more time and you've hit the 25% value.

Some ways to do this is if you have lots of books on a book shelf, then take two shelves and combine them to one. Get rid of or sell the books you want to dump. Then do it one more time.

One way to get rid of 1/2 is to go through a shelf on your book case. Make two piles, books you'll keep and books you'll get rid of. Keep the piles equal in height and you've gotten rid of 50% of your clutter.

You can do this with files in your draws or filing cabinets, junk collected in your garage, tasks or goals you're trying to achieve.

A Bad Impression on my Boss's Boss's Boss

Things are always changing. The seasons, your appearance, your job and change is difficult.  The reason is that change affects your habits and habits are what makes life easy.

Recently, there was a reorg at my company and my boss's, boss got a new boss. I'll call her Debby.

Now one of the habits I have is to eat an Atkins protein bar at my desk. It saves time, increases my productivity and prevents me from waiting on long lines to get lunch.

But, I had lunch plans this day.

I probably hadn't taken a lunch away from my desk in 3 months.  So what happens while I'm away?  My boss's boss's boss needs a report for her boss's boss (I'll call him Rob).  That's 5 levels above my position and I'm no where to be found.

I probably took a little over an hour for lunch and got back to my desk at around 2 PM.

A co-worker and my boss's boss try to reach me.

So I have to do some emergency work that needs to get out by the end of the day for Debby and Rob

Dealing with your boss's boss's boss for the first time, you want to make a great first impression. But the impression I started with is "I take long lunches."  I mention to her that I never take a lunch and now I've made a second impression "I'm not honest."  Who doesn't take lunches?

Now Debby seems smart and wants me to do a report in Excel. I'm having trouble following what she wants because she knows the new changes better than I do, because I haven't been involved with them and I don't want to appear dumb.

To make matters worse, I don't work that well under pressure and this is a lot of pressure to get out a report before the end of the day working on it with your boss's boss's boss for your boss's boss's boss's boss's boss.

So I start on the report and it's already 2:30 PM.  I've already told my wife that I'd pick her up at work.

In the morning I wound up taking my wife's keys to work with me by accident. She had to get rides to and from work. So I called her and offered to pick her up but then had to cancel on her.

So I get an number of spreadsheets from Debby and copy of email from Ron and I set out to build the requested report.

Debby keeps on changing what she wants and tells me different calculations to include that don't make sense.  First she says that a field is  A - (B - C) and then later she says it's A - B - C.

I tell her that they're not the say and she doesn't understand why.  So I send her an example

2 - (3 - 1) = 0
2 - 3 - 1 = -2

So she sends me changes and I send her back results. Now it's 8:30 PM and I'm pooped, can't think straight.

I decide to leave so I can make my 9:42 train and be home by 11 PM.  I send her the final results and leave. It turns out that the email never gets to her. It gets stuck in my Outlook outbox because I don't have enough space to send it.

I get home and 11 PM and try to log in to work, but my computer reboots and my Chrome browser can no longer access work.

By 12:30 AM I try to use IE and I get into my work computer and find out that I never sent Debby the email.

Woops.

Some lessons learned:

1. Don't take you wife's keys to work with you
2. Don't take a lunch
3. Keep up on all the new terminology of what's going on in your group or dept.
4. When sending an important email make sure it gets delivered before leaving
5. You get one chance to make a good first impression don't blow it like I did

Should I Develop Software for me or for You?

I've reached the point in developing Time-Creator that I've put out a version of the spreadsheet but I'm spending too much time on the project. Matter a fact I can't even easily tell you how much time I've spent  and that's one of the goals of the software.

I've decided to refocus my priorities to build Time-Creator for me, not that I don't like you, it's just that I like me more. And by helping me it should help you in the long run.

When it comes down to it, just getting people to try the software will be very difficult, no less getting them to pay me. The odds that I'll make $ from this project is very very low.

Now if I could develop for me and automatically give you something then that would be fine. But I'm finding that I'm spending so much time to productize Time-Creator that I'm not moving the project forward the way I'd like. It seems like 80% of my time is spent creating a product to download/sell and 20% is actually moving the project forward. Some of the things I have to spend time on is:

• Writing this blog
• Dealing with cases where Excel doesn't behave nicely
• Website
• Demos
• Marketing
• Testing. For me there can be bugs but for you there can't
• Usability
• Appearance
• Upgrading 
• Protecting the intellectual property
• Bugs I don't care about
• Different versions of the software
• Competition
• Error handling

So I'm taking a little vacation from doing it for you. Don't take it personally, in the end we'll both be happier.

So my writing to this blog will slow down and already has.

Some of the things I'll be focusing on instead are making Time-Creator the coolest project.  It's hard to change sometimes, I guess it's due to the habits we have. But without change there is no progress.

Please write, I answer all emails

Unable to connect to the Internet

I just tried connecting to the internet and got the following message:

Unable to connect to the Internet

Google Chrome can't display the webpage because your computer isn't connected to the Internet.

You can try to diagnose the problem by taking the following steps:

Go to Start > Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Troubleshoot Problems (at the bottom) > Internet Connections.
Error 106 (net::ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED): The Internet connection has been lost.

I had already

1. Rebooted my cable modem
2. Rebooted my laptop

But I still was getting the error and doing the following two steps fixed the problem in the past.

Then it occurs to me that I didn't plug the network cable into the laptop. Problem solved.

The error message should have said the top 3 things to do. Numbers 1 and 2 are listed above and number 3 is
    3. Make sure computer is plugged into the network.

New at a Job, Set a Great First Impression

If you're new to a job, don't underestimate first impressions. Prepare to be your best so you set that as a first impression. Some things you could do is:

• Get to work when everyone arrives leave when everyone leaves
• Ask questions as you're new and stupid questions will be allowed for a while
• Know who you're a threat to and who will help you
• Dress and groom your best, no bad breath allowed
• Fit in. As the saying goes "When in Rome do as the Romans do"
• Limit the number of times you interrupt people to maybe once or twice a day, batch your questions
• Spend as much time as possible getting up to speed, even when not at work
• Don't ask for vacation, remote connections, etc. until you've been around at least 3 months
• If the hiring process was weak (they didn't vet you much) they may fire quickly
• Listen and follow instructions others give you
• Don't make excuses
• Don't complain about stuff at your new company
• Try to be part of the group. Do what the group does
• Don't threaten, complain, challenge unless that's what you were hired for
• Show your boss as early as possible that he or she made a great selection
• Take notes when shown new stuff, type up and email to person to see if you got them right
• Keep a glossary of terminology you don't understand and figure out asap what they mean

If you have other tips, please post below. Hope I made a good first impression. 

Tracking your Time was Hard

I hated tracking my time. If you write status reports, or bill your time you know what I mean. Your too busy to be bothered with it. It's never accurate and you just forget to do it.

Now it's the end of the week or month and you have to write that status report or put in your billable hours and it's uh-oh. What the f@#k did I work on . I was here late but I was so busy I don't remember.

How about your employment review. Will you even remember what you did over the past year.

A tool like Time-Creator can help you in a number of ways.

First it integrates your to-do list and time tracking. You create your to-do list in Excel and then can easily track your time from any cell by just pressing Ctrl+T keystroke (the T is for tracking).

Second, it's easy to get your tasks to your to-do list because of the button bar shown below

The (X) button above will take you right to your to-do list. Time-Creator will also support a shortcut key combination to bring up your to-do list directly.

The Button bar has a small footprint and is known as an "Always on top" window. This means that other windows can't block it from your view. In the window you can see what you're working on and for how long.

You can see exactly what you're working on and for how long. As you use Time-Creator all time gets tracked to the "Log" Sheet.

Not only that you can easily track interruptions by double clicking the task, where it says "TC -Webpage" in the picture above. The button bar will show "..." (three dots) in the button bar.

Now you can replace these ... with the task that interrupted you. Just select any cell on the Time-Creator spreadsheet and press Ctrl+R (R for replace)  and that task will be tracked.

If after the interruption you want to get back to what you were working on you can press the "Re" button (4th one) on the Button Bar to Restart your previous task.

Time-Creator can also deal with the case where you missed tracking a task. Just press the "Mi" button (10th one above) and the Missed dialog will display with the current selected item on the sheet.

You can also press the "T" button (7th one) which brings you to the Log sheet and allows you to manually modify your time.

All of these function are also available from the Excel Ribbon.

There's more.  You can set up alarms say to Call client at 10 am. and when the alarm pops up, just "Accept" the alarm and your time is being tracked.

Time-Creator also can also track your time via a button on the Button Bar or auto-track based on what sheet you're on or Window you're on.

In future version you'll be able to import your time into the time system you use or even generate bills to clients.

I'll be posting a video to see how you can easily track your time with Time-Creator. You can download the spreadsheet from http://Time-Creator.com/download.html, and best of all right now it's free.

Five hour energy shot and sleep to increase #Productivity

5 Hour energy shots work for me and get this, they work exactly 5 hours. Weird huh.  Now if you feel tired and can't get yourself to exercise or work on your business, book, blog or whatever. Give it a try.

Getting enough sleep is also a way to increase your productivity. If you haven't been getting enough, try sleeping more for one week and see how you feel.

Just don't take the 5 hour energy shots near bedtime.

How to get rid of your stuff (aka crap) you can't part with?

I was thinking about why does crap build up, too many books, shoes, tasks, friends, projects?

It's because you add new things but don't delete, remove, throw out stuff. If you can't stop getting new things then get rid of the old.

Try to get into the habit of throwing out two things every time you bring one thing into your home.

It's the same with tasks. If your to-do list is too big then don't add a new item until you complete/delete two items. If you don't want to delete items then don't add an "A" priority task without making two of them "B" priorities.

Headphones Help Productivity

It's pretty noisy in my office so I decided to wear headphones while I work. The noise is from:

• People talking on the phone through their ear piece
• People on speaker phone
• People meeting next to me
• One guy loves to drum on his desk and the floor
• Co-workers talking in a foreign language

So I went with the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones. Now this has definitely increased my productivity. First I don't get distracted by others conversations. Second, people don't interrupt me as much as the did before. For some reason when you wear headphones people won't interrupt you as much as they normally do.

The only down side to this is that it may be frowned upon by your boss.  I find that if I listen to music I'm familiar with it allows me to think without being distracted.

What do you think?

Detecting Sheet Change Event in #Excel

One feature I want to build in Time-Creator.com is to change anything in the spreadsheet if a sheet name changes.

I have many places that use the sheet name so I'd like to keep stuff consistent when this occurs.

Excel VBA doesn't have a sheet change event so I coded the following in the ThisWorkbook object:


Option Explicit

Public gsEntrySheetName As String

Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)
If ActiveSheet.Name <> gsEntrySheetName Then
    UpdateAllReferences gsEntrySheetName, ActiveSheet.Name ' if user says it's ok?
    gsEntrySheetName = ActiveSheet.Name
End If
End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_SheetActivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
gsEntrySheetName = ActiveSheet.Name
End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_SheetChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)
If ActiveSheet.Name <> gsEntrySheetName Then
   
    UpdateAllReferences gsEntrySheetName, Sh.Name ' if user says it's ok?
    gsEntrySheetName = ActiveSheet.Name
End If

End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_SheetDeactivate(ByVal Sh As Object)
If Sh.Name <> gsEntrySheetName Then
    UpdateAllReferences gsEntrySheetName, Sh.Name ' if user says it's ok?
End If

End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)
If ActiveSheet.Name <> gsEntrySheetName Then

    UpdateAllReferences gsEntrySheetName, Sh.Name ' if user says it's ok?
   gsEntrySheetName = ActiveSheet.Name
End If

End Sub

Sub UpdateAllReferences(sOld, sNew)

MsgBox "Sheet " & sOld & " chged to " & sNew

End Sub

Now all you have to do is replace the code in UpdateAllReferences with whatever your code should do.

How to Estimate with the Estimating Formula

If you want to estimate it helps having a formula.

Accurate estimating is a valuable skill. It's the answer to the question "How long will it take?"  If your boss, user or customer asks this question and you answer it incorrectly it could be a problem of

• Working overtime
• Not meeting expectations 
• Not being trusted
• Receiving a lower hourly rate for your work

If your boss asks for an estimate and you underestimate the work you may be working lots of overtime to meet your commitment. Had you had an accurate estimate you could tell him what that is and hopefully not work the overtime.

If you estimate time to build a website at 10 hours, $100/hour then you'll quote a price of $1,000. But what if your estimate is wrong and it takes 30 hours. It can be hard to charge the $3,000 you worked. Don't plan on getting repeat business. An accurate estimate would allow you to do better to come in on time with the site.

The formula for accurate estimating can be answered with the question of when will you finish this 300 page book? I use the book example, because once you understand it, estimate other things will be a matter of collecting the proper information and applying the formula.

Now if you read a page a minute it will take you 300 minutes or 5 hours (300/60) to complete the book. This is the actual time to read the book but not the elapsed time. If you read an hour a day it will take you 5 days to complete it. If you read 1/2 a day then 10 days to complete it. 

This brings us to the formula 

Estimated Completion Date = 

                                                                  pages to read 

        Today's Date  +       ---------------------------------------------------

                                       Pages per min  x  Time reading each day in minutes

So this is the basics of the Estimating Formula.  This formula will soon be implemented in Time-Creator.com, but it does help you with the variables of Pages/minute and Time reading each day.

You can download as spreadsheet to see this calculation in action.

If want job security, more customers, better employment reviews it does start with simple accurate estimating.

Random is Good or God

I was way into random before the iPod shuffle came along. Years back on my Atari 800 XL I built a program called Random Album Selection. This was a time before the CD or MP3 existed and everything was on vinyl.

Using Atari Basic, I wrote a program that allowed me to enter my albums and it would randomly select an album and side to play. I realized the benefit from this as I realized that Random is Good.

I would buy new albums and play them over and over again until it would sit with my other records never to listened to again. But after developing the program, I would be listening to albums that I wouldn't normally listen to and enjoying it very much. There was something to this random stuff.

Flash forward years later and I'm working on a version of Time-Creator.com. I start to think that if random is good for albums it's probably good for selecting what I should do. If you're in the habit of doing certain things and those things aren't getting you to where you want to be then Random Task Selection might be better than you selecting what to do.

I've built this feature into Time-Creator. You can filter on your "A" or top priority tasks and randomly select one to do. Now like the iPod shuffle, random task selection is good.  Matter a fact I like to think of it as asking God what to do. So Random is Good and Random is God.

You can download the latest version of Time-creator at my website.  Note it's an early alpha version a little buggy but very useful. You do need Excel 2007 or 2010 right now to use it.

Rock Climbing and Software Development

The other day I was working on a very complex project at work and had very tight deadlines. It was a bit overwhelming.  I started to think that software development is a little like rock climbing.

When you go rock climbing, you start up the rock pulling yourself up the mountain using your hands and feet. But as you move up you reach a point where you need to grab a rock to keep moving up but none appears to be available.

This is your first hurdle. This happens in software development when you get stuck on a problem with no apparent solution. When you're on the rock it can get scary. But if you don't panic and keep looking you'll find a place to put your foot or grab with your hand to continue up the mountain.

So with software development, stay with the problem keep looking. If you do you'll continue to make progress just like rock climbing.

The Benefits of Time Tracking

Time tracking is usually a dreaded task by the people who need to do it. Lawyers, accountants, software developers, professionals need to know what they spent their time on.

The reason it's disliked is that it's difficult to do until Time-Creator came along.

There are some subtle advantages to tracking your time:

• You can identify time wasters
• You can make better estimates if you know how long similar tasks take
• A program can check if you're doing the right tasks to help you achieve your goals
• You can better balance your time by knowing that you're spending too much if it on one project
• You can be warned if you're taking too long on a task

Now time tracking isn't that easy but Time-Creator has the following features to help you effortlessly track your time:

• Auto-tracking.- Track based on the Window you are using or Excel sheet you;re on
• Track from a button press - Track time based on pressing a button that performs a task (Button Bar)
• Track from an alarm - Track your time when an alarm pops up
• Track from your to do list - If the task is in your to do list or on any cell just press ctrl+T and you're tracking it.
• Time Adjustments

These are just a few of the benefits. Try the software at http://Time-Creator.com to see how time tracking can help you.

Should I build an Excel 2000/2003 version?

As I build Time-Creator, I'm wondering if I should make the software work on Excel 2000/2003. The first requirement is that you need a copy of the software and I have one on an old laptop.

The second is will there be enough customers that use this version to make it worthwhile?  I've started on making my program compatible but then realized it's taking away from my main focus.  I could always come back to it.

As I'm working on it I'm finding a number of compatibility issues with the VBA code I'm writing using Excel 2010.  The biggest ones are:

•  Ribbon isn't available in the previous versions
• Callbacks don't work 
• Sort command issues
• New bugs introduced by changing code to support Excel 2000

I've met my first goal to get out a version of Time-Creator that user's can download. My second goal is a bug free version and third is a version that's easier to use.  The Excel 2000/2003 version will have to wait unless I hear back from lots of users who want it.

Though, it's very tempting as I've spent around 5 hours already on this I may try to get out a version.

What version of Excel do you use? Should I build an Excel 2000 compatible version

Estimating Your Work

How important is estimating your work accurately? Very important. I've spent many a late night at work due to poor estimates. Most estimates fail because many things aren't taken into account when you make your estimate. Some common things are:

• Vacation time
• Holidays
• System Down Time
• Interruptions
• Production Support
• Emergency work
• Sick
• Co-worker on vacation
• Bugs
• Time testing
• Time documenting
• Time training
• Time hiring
• Training classes
• Hard to solve problems
• QA cycle
• Meetings
• Emails
• Co-workers needing help
• Experience of person doing the work
• Support for person doing work

When it comes down to it a lot can go wrong. So the first this is to make sure you don't leave out tasks on your plan. Also it helps to have a history of how long things take to better estimate how long new tasks will take.

In addition, if you miss deadlines you'll get a poor review and can even get fired. 

Estimating is important.

Some of the things that Time-Creator can do for you is:

• Easily track your time so you can know how long similar products have taken in the past
• Track how accurate your estimating is 
• Know percentage of time is spent dealing with non-work type issues
• Help you manage scope creep so that more functions aren't added while keeping the same deadline

Take a look at how Time-Creator can help you.

30 Second Ad - Part 2

Today I worked on the 30 second ad as it kept coming up on my to-do list. The text for the ad is:

If you're overwhelmed with too much to do, Kravatz Inc. has a new product called Time-creator. It's an Excel spreadsheet, that  helps you  reach goals, stay focused and deal with interruptions.

The software features a todo list, alarms and time tracking. This will enable you to get more done in less time.

There is no product on the market like this.

Go to our website at time-creator.com to view a demo or try the software.

We are limiting the number of free downloads we will allow,  so do it today After 9 takes here's what I came up with:

 One of the things I realize about doing this work is that you won't get it perfect and the Nike "Just Do It" slogan is very appropriate. It doesn't need to be perfect, but needs to get done. Perfection can come later.

Time Management

What is time management?  It's making the best use of your time. It's easy to tell if you're not managing your time well. You're:

• Not reaching your goals
• Rushing or late for meetings
• You don't seem to have enough time
• You're always procrastinating

If you're looking for a great book on time management I would recommend Timothy Ferriss' best seller "4 Hour Work Week."

So what's the best use of your time? First figure out what your goals are then identify the tasks to reach the goals, pick one of the goals, then start doing the tasks. Adjust and repeat.

One problem I have is "too many things to do." I've recently solved this problem with software I call Time-Creator.

One thing Time-Creator does is make it easy to track how you're spending your time. Once you have this information you could look for ways to find better use of it. For example are you spending too much time on emails or non-productive tasks?  Time-Creator will show you. The beauty of of Time-Creator is that it makes time tracking as effortless as possible. Is the new guy at work taking too much of your time? How much?  Are certain people interrupting you too much? So the first step to better managing your time is to figure out how you're spending it.

I currently have 1,616 tasks to do which would overwhelm most people but only 226 are "A" priority. So to decide what to work on I use Time-Creator to randomly select a task from my "A" list and either re-prioritize it skip it, or work on it. I'll update this with a video soon so you can see how easy it is.

You can go to http://Time-Creator.com to download the latest version. Note that the current version requires Microsoft Excel.

30 Second Ad

Up pops up Blogger on my window and I remember that I've added an alarm to Time-Creator to this every day at 5 pm. This way I can remember to write each day about my software. So one thing you can do is remind you to write your daily blog.

One of the things I worked today was a 30 second ad. Actually worked on it while watching the really great TV show "Breaking Bad." I didn't get very far with the ad. I tried to answer three questions from Doug Hall's book "Jump Start Your Business Brain"

1. Overt Benefit
2. Real Reason to believe
3. Dramatic difference

According to Doug's book focusing your message on these things will increase your odds of success by a lot.

It isn't easy to write an ad, But this is my first crappy version:

If you're sick of being overwhelmed with too much to do Kravatz Inc. is working on a new product called Time-creator. It's an Excel spreadsheet that will help you to reach your goals, stay focused, deal with interruptions.

Download a demo today at http://Time-creator.com

There is no product on the market like this that will save you time

Now this ad is crappy. I'm thinking of some questions that will help me build the ad. Google had a number of suggestions for me to write a 30 second ad.

I added some new functionality today.

1. Track how many tasks I have on a daily basis by different categories to allow me to see the growth or shrinkage of my workload
2. I added a button that will filter my "A" priority tasks and randomly select one to do. 

I think I'll try to do

1.  a Google ad next
2. Come up with some questions to answer to do a 30 second ad
3. Read through the posts I found on Google