Introducing Project Cookbook series

Hello everybody,

I have a feeling that sometimes I am running in circles and face the same issues repeatedly. What pisses me off is the fact that it takes a lot of time and thinking how to tackle a certain situation over and over again as well. That drives me absolutely crazy -- when we all were in a certain problem-solving event 1 year ago, this time it should take 50 % less time to solve it based on the previous experience, right? Right, but that's not happening. Without blaming anyone I found myself running in circles and trying to invent the solution that has been kind off FORGOTEN over time; probably due to workload or too wide focus on various issues flying around at the same moment.

I will write a small Project Cookbook -- mainly for my personal purposes and hopefully with a decent smile on my lips while doing so.

As for usual meal recipes you will ideally need quality ingredients and not forget anything from the full list otherwise the result might not be as tasty as you would expect :)

My recipes: 

One tough product decision appetizer

Overwhelmed soup by too many ingredients (preparing)

Main course from release blockers backlog (preparing)

Baked project triangle served with one vertex fixed (preparing)

Well done QE steak with customer satisfaction dipping sauce (preparing)

It looks like a ruined day, what now?

Hi readers,
after a while I am finally back and want to quickly share some of my very recent thoughts.

Let's imagine -- it's 2 AM "yesterday" and you are falling asleep, thinking about ruined "tomorrow". You know that you need something around 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, you know that you will have problems to get up soon, you somehow know that your "tomorrow" will be completely sucks, because you will be late at work, you will spend the whole day there and you will be sleepy as hell.

You are maybe a little bit drunk, you maybe lost a few League of Legends games, it's maybe too hot in your room so you can't sleep, whatever...

Now, you are lying on your bed and thinking about ruined "tomorrow", full of negative emotions, anger, dissatisfaction -- you know that feel, bro ;)

Here is my medicine! It tastes awfully but it works.

1) Set up your alarm clock around 6:30 AM

Am I mad? Maybe. But you will most probably hit end of your REM sleeping phase and this is 100 times better than be "interrupted" somewhere in the middle of your deep sleeping phase. Note that I suppose you lying in a bed at 2 AM (and you add 4,5 hours).

2) Exercise -- NOW!

Am I totally mad? How can you exercise after 4,5 hours of sleep and at 6:30 AM morning? You are asking: "WTF dude?" Shut up, do it... swim, run, joga, whatever works for you.

3) Breakfast

You think you can omit it? Poor you. Eat some rich and complex carbohydrates. You will need it more than anything else today.

4) Do the most unpleasant work immediately

Actually this shouldn't be a big problem now because you are warmed up after your exercise and you had delicious breakfast. What a beautiful day. Sure, you don't want to make it less awesome and that's exactly why you need to complete your work instead of reading emails, handling your calendar etc. This is the most rewarding part of your day and you need to make sure you will do it ASAP.

5) Take a nap 

I fully understand that this is not possible for everyone to take a nap after lunch. If you are lucky and you can take it, do it. Don't be sleepy, go nap. Alarm clock for 20 minutes and that's it. It is always better to have 20-minutes long nap instead of 3 hours of mindless staring at your PC display and doing nothing productive.

Substitution: Take a coffee, 2 cups of green tea, matte...

Extra-powerful-unstoppable man version: drink your green tea just before your nap. Caffeine needs about 20 - 30 minutes in order to start working for your body. That's a time you will be napping. Can you see that trick? :P

6) Enjoy rest of your brilliant day

Let's sum it up. You got up pretty early. You did your exercise. You had a brilliant breakfast. You did a very great portion of your work and you are proud of yourself. You took a nap (coffee) in order to be able to work even more! Now you are enjoying your day.

This time, you will go sleep around 10 PM to help your body catch up again. No more party, no more PC gaming, no more movies. Sleep, sleep, sleep as much as you can. It will pay in the end.

Seeya!

(I wrote this post using DO-IT-NOW-AND-DON'T-BE-PERFECT method)

Happy blogging with do-it-now-and-don't-be-perfect method

Hi all! :)

You are reading this stuff probably because one of my posts was pointing right here. I promise I will keep an introduction of do-it-now-and-don't-be-perfect method very short.

    The method incorporates 2 approaches. Do it now -- when you have an idea just open a Blogger and jot it down very quickly, and immediately. Of course I wanted to do this every time. So why didn't I do it? Because I was striving for a perfection in my former blog posts.

    Perfect grammar (as I'm not a native English speaker), perfect citations, perfect ideas, perfect agenda of the post, perfect structure, perfect conclusion, perfect, perfect, perfect everything.

    My brain started to think about what else do I need to make a perfect post instead of writing it right now. What I need to add, do, solve? I need to re-read it 3-4 times once the post is written to be sure there are no unnecessary mistakes there. I need someone to read it before publishing to make sure there are no completely wrong ideas stated in the post... etc., etc.

    I wanted to have it PERFECT.

    And all those tasks take simply too much time and it's too much effort to deal with them. 

    It works literally like a KILLER of my fresh ideas, fresh experience, or fresh mind stream which MIGHT be worth to share. With a perfectionism I had even no chance to find out whether it was worth or not because I didn't publish almost anything. 

    Now I declare: "FU*K you PERFECTIONISM" -- you will no longer stop my willingness to share any of my ideas.