Time!

I'd like to wish readers of my blog posts a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2019. Maybe a lot of you have made a lot of new year's resolutions, good luck with that.
I'm not much of a fan of new year resolutions. I try to bring in new changes on a weekly basis.
Agile vs waterfall if you may call it.

There's one thing I've been trying to change almost every Monday now, but struggling with it. I want to stop making the three hundred metre dash from home to the stop where my office cab picks me up. I somehow end up being late, by a minute or two - forcing me to run, thrice a week almost regularly.
There have been times when my colleague in the cab has made it amply clear that I need to be more on time. Though not the best way to start the day, I'm still OK with it.

One, I need to respect her punctuality - 6:11 AM, nine days out of ten.

And two, these two minutes help me earn close to two hours of more productive time at work.
Baffled? Let me explain.
If I reach by office cab, I am at my desk 7:20 in worst case. A quick email check, equally quick breakfast and I'm good to start my day's work by 8:00. And since my first planned meeting is not before 9:30, I get uninterrupted time alone to accomplish a lot that I've planned for the day.

On the other hand, the two days a week that I take my car, I tend to be a bit slower off the blocks. Which means that I reach office by only around 8:00 and then rush off for breakfast immediately. Which means that I can start work by 8:45 at the earliest.

Since time is the most important non renewable resource we have, I thought why not spend some time writing about it.
Maybe share some tips that I picked up over the years.

One needs to be very efficient with time, be it at work or elsewhere. Planning, discipline and prioritization are really important for this.

A known technique for better time management is the Pomodoro technique - I've personally used my adaption of this for the best part of fifteen years now.
First up in the morning, create a to-do list for the day. Keep a target end time at which you plan to end your work. Remove the non productive time - meetings, org activities, lunch, breaks, etc.
Now, breakup the total available time into equal parts, called as a Pomodoro. You may start with 25 minutes each, while I prefer 40 minutes for myself.
During this time pickup one item after the other from your to-do list, focus on it completely - no mails, no mobile phones, no self initiated talks with colleagues and so on. Working in silence, be it at office, or in the kitchen is a sign of control.
If you need to let your colleagues know that you shouldn't be disturbed during this time, you may even consider getting flags from Barbecue Nation.
If your work involves sending a lot of emails, then you may consider having a dedicated Pomodoro for that as well.
After each Pomodoro keep a 5 minutes break - where you may respond quickly to emails. 

And after four successive Pomodoros, take a longer break, say 15 minutes. Likewise, plan for a longer 30-45 minute break coinciding with your lunch break.

Please note two things here.
One, Pomodoro translates to a Tomato, which means that you are bound to get a few rotten ones - unplanned meetings, short but needed discussions and so on. So don't plan for all of the available time in the day. After a few trial and errors, you'll be a better judge of how many good tomatoes you can do in a day.
Two, if you are a developer or into testing, you may say that planning may not be straightforward. You may not have a well defined to-do list, a lot of what you do may be R & D, you didn't get the build in time and so on. Nevertheless, it's still important that you plan your work adequately well and in a very structured manner. You'll get it right with experience, and it's important that you get the first button on the shirt right.
Try practicing a similar technique for a month or two, and check if you are able to manage time better and if your overall productivity is higher.

While this was about how to manage time better, the next part is about how to avoid time killers.

A few weeks back when I was reviewing the sprint outcome of one of my teams, I found that the team had spent a whopping 25% of the total available time(at 8 hours a day) on meetings. What was even more disturbing was that most of these meetings were unstructured(without an agenda) or without preparation, or both. 

When you initiate a meeting, its good to have an agenda, and then discuss only those points which are there on the agenda. When invited for one, please request the organizer for an agenda.

A word of caution here, since most of us are operating in a hierarchical Indian environment, use some discretion with this. 

I can recollect an instance a few months back with a senior manager in our department, where I sent out the meeting invitation with an agenda. The response was "Oh, you are very being professional, meetings with an agenda!". Nevertheless, since we stuck to the agenda, the meeting that was planned for 30 minutes, got over in 9 minutes flat!

Two days back, one of the leads in our team said that people take tea breaks of the duration of a lunch break. This is a particularly irritating habit, I'm sure across all teams, in almost all companies across India. While breaks may be necessary, the duration and frequency is what needs to be in control. Self restraint, discipline and knowing one's priorities is very important here. 

And since we are talking about time here, a lot of it is applicable to our daily lives outside of work as well. In our school days, I'm sure we were taught that recreation is necessary.

In today's day and age, if one is spending more than 45 minutes a day on recreation of whatever kind - TV, internet, social media, reading novels, playing games on the mobile - they are doing a big disservice to themselves and just wasting time.

I remember that my father was very strict with time. In the summer vacations he was OK with me playing cricket in the hot sun, but never approved of me reading Hardy Boys at home. I didn't understand why when I was a kid, but now I do.

The body also needs adequate rest in the form of sleep, but we need to know to draw the line between taking rest and being lazy. 

Hours of wasted time add up to days in a few months, days to months and months to years. One can earn lost money, but never lost time.

On a more philosophical note, one needs to challenge time all the time. No matter how hard we try, Time always Wins!

Just wanted to end this post with a very profound song on Time by Pink Floyd. Its so good that I was compelled to copy paste the lyrics. If you understand this, you know what time is all about.

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again.

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone, the song is over,

Thought I'd something more to say.

Home

Home again

I like to be here

When I can

When I come home

Cold and tired

It's good to warm my bones

Beside the fire

Far away

Across the field

Tolling on the iron bell

Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spell"