You Need a Theme Song

Pro wrestlers have them, superheroes have them, Charlie Sheen in Major League had one and why shouldn't you? No people, I'm not talking about spandex underwear, I'm talking about a theme song.

"Why," you may ask, "do I need a theme song?" Well, you don't need a theme song but it might be a good idea.

Hear me out (pun intended).

Humans by nature are very empathetic beings and our mood is often affected by our environment. How we feel can be influenced by what our five senses tell us about our surroundings -- sound in particular has effect on us in the form of the music that we listen to. For example, a recent scientific study claimed that participants who listened to sad music judged a neutral set of images in a more negative way than participants who viewed the same images after listening to more upbeat music. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394009003279)

What does this mean? Well, the music and environment that we choose to surround ourselves with has a great impact on how we perceive the world around us and how we perceive ourselves as well. Having your own personal theme song could actually affect how you deal with the world around you. Imagine starting your day listening to the Superman theme song or Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" on your way to work... you might walk with a spring in your step and feel like you could take on the world. You'd feel pretty pumped wouldn't you? And that's not a bad thing.

And that's why I think it's important for you to have a personal theme song -- listening to something positive might help psych you up the next time you're headed to another meeting at the office, or before you're about to make that presentation to the rest of the team. It'll make you feel like the hero of your own personal movie, or the champion fighter about to head into battle. Or if you're Ricky Vaughn, get the Cleveland Indians into the Playoffs.

Not Getting Things Done! (with the help of technology)

Remember my last post about "Getting Things Done (with the help of technology)"? Well there's also the flip-side.  The truth is that not all technologies help us get things done efficiently and in a smart way. 

I'm pretty sure you can think of at least one or two technologies that have a negative impact on your productivity -- no I'm not talking about watching YouTube at work (that's for another post). I'm talking about using technology that over-complicates a process or task which in turn frustrates you. If you're an engineer or software developer I'm sure you'll be able to list at least a handful of tools or software products that you've had to use that made your day just that much more difficult.

"So, what should we do with bad technology?" you might be asking.

Well, if you're using bad technology that you bought yourself, it might be time to move on and look for something else or do it manually -- there's nothing worse than continuing to use bad technology because you don't want to admit that you've made a mistake -- the bigger mistake might be in sticking steadfastly by bad technology. 

If however, bad technology is imposed on you by your organization, you've got a few of options: 

• you can grin and bear it
• you can make a point of discussing the pain points with your boss and proposing alternatives
• you can contribute to making the technology better

The first option is always an option, though not my personal favorite. I know from personal experience and depending on how bad the technology is, that "grinning and bearing it" takes a serious toll on your sanity with prolonged exposure!

The second option of discussing the pain points with your boss is a good, pro-active option if you bring an alternative technology to the table -- managers tend to listen to griping employees if they bring solutions to the table.

The last option is my personal favorite (mainly because I'm into the whole open-source scene). If you have a chance to contribute to improving a technology (easily done in an open source project), not only will you improve a technology that's giving you problems, but your name will be known throughout the land (ok I'm exaggerating) as the guy who made things better.

The point of all this is to say that you don't have to accept the status quo with technology if it's creating more trouble than it solves. What I'm trying to say is...

Only you can prevent bad technology from taking over

Get Things Done! (with the help of technology)

I wanted the title of this blog post to have been "Get Things Done!" with a subtitle of "with the help of technology" in really teeny, tiny letters... like font size 0.001tiny. I was going to do that to hint at my personal view of what technology should be -- technology (tools, gadgets, software) should be designed to help us be more productive in our tasks (either of the work or personal variety) and be as un-intrusive and easy-to-use as possible. Ideally.

Some technologies achieve this seamless integration into our lives so much so that when they break down, we're absolutely lost without them. Can you remember the last time you went a day (let alone a week) without going on the internet? It was pretty bad wasn't it? What about the last time you went a day without access to any kind of vehicle (a car, a bicycle, the bus, the train, the subway) and you had to walk to work or wherever it was that you had to get to? I'll bet that was pretty brutal too.

The truth that the best technologies are ones that are so convenient to use that they become a part of our daily routines. We drive, ride a bike or take public transportation to get to work on a daily basis (unless you work from home... lucky bast... but I digress) and the internet has become so prevalent that we Google almost everything we ever need to know -- so much so that "to Google" is now a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/google). The best technologies free up our time and some mental memory space for other things.

I'll freely admit that I'm a techie at heart -- I love technology; if I can find a piece of software or a device that will help me work smarter and more efficiently, I'll buy it; I'll bring an iPad with me to meetings so that I can take notes and have it synced up with my desktop just because it allows me to recall more information than the guy next to me; I'll install plugins and extensions to my development environment to minimize the amount of "legwork" I need to do to get things done when I program. 

Technology, should at its root be able help us work more efficiently, free up our time to do other things and be as un-intrusive as possible.

Do you really want to know what I'm thinking?

"Do you really want to know what I'm thinking?"

That's probably the question we both should be asking -- both you the reader and me, the writer of this blog -- do you really want to know what I'm thinking?

Anybody who's ever written a blog for the first time has to admit to some level of apprehension when pulling the trigger on putting pen-to-paper (or finger-to-keyboard-to-internet in the case of a blog) to share their thoughts with total strangers in an anonymous medium. Writing a blog, especially in the first-person, is by nature an invitation into the inner thoughts and feelings of the writer -- scary stuff, depending on who's writing.

"Who will be reading my words?"

"How my words be interpreted?"

"How will what I write make me look?"

These were some of the questions that I asked myself as I debated writing this, my first blog entry. As I thought more deeply about it, I began to realize that ultimately, these questions would be answered by you the reader and me, the writer. I can attract a a certain group of people by writing in a certain way; if I put enough thought and effort into crafting the tone of my blog posts I can also influence how my words will be interpreted and how my words will make me look.

"Do you really want to know what I'm thinking?"

At the end of the day, you the reader can answer your half of that question by choosing to read or ignore what I write. As a writer, I have the ability and responsibility to choose how my thoughts are shared with you, my audience. Hopefully, you'll enjoy reading my blog -- we'll learn together, laugh together, help each other out along the way and have fun.