Thought of the Day - Tasks I Achieve Flow In

This morning i read an article on how to achieve flow (link at bottom of post) and i realised that i really don't experience it in work a lot.

Some things in life i find it easy to achieve flow in, most notably; reading (both books and articles), researching a topic online and coding websites. At work it is much more rare, if i get some peace and quiet i can achieve it doing data analysis or creating a presentation. Unfortunately to achieve flow i normally need music on in the background, so it doesn't help that we aren't allowed to use headphones. One other area i think i might achieve flow in is delivering training, i must admit i haven't really thought about it but when i get going it does feel effortless, maybe something to look at in the future.

So if flow is an optimal state of working and i don't experience it in my job very often then am i in the right job?


Idea from: http://zenhabits.net/2008/06/guide-to-achieving-flow-and-happiness-in-your-work/

Thought of the Day - Ready, Fire, Aim

Sometimes a theory or and idea keeps coming up over and over again and in those situations it is hard to ignore. Recently i kept reading about the benefits of the "Ready, Fire, Aim" approach, it was in books, on websites and in podcasts and it made sense.

Most people use the "Ready, Aim, Fire" approach. Only it normally turns into "Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim ... maybe Fire", too much planning and not enough action. On the other hand "Read, Fire, Aim" relies on action straight away, the results of which can be used to improve your accuracy. It is like firing a gun for the first time, you don't know whether the sights are set correctly or if the barrel is straight, therefore until you fire the aiming might not matter at all.


Something i have been meaning to take action on for a long time (like since 2004) is updating my WebCV into the modern age. It was originally built like a site from 1996; a pain to update, not very modern looking and rubbish for search engine optimisation, frankly it was an embarrassment. At various times since then i have bought and read books about web design, i have felt guilty for not updating it and once or twice i have even started to put something together. But it never quite got done, i spent too long planning and worrying about how difficult it would be and how long it would take to get it perfect. Even the most recent time i made a start in March i had a big elaborate plan, it was gantt charted out over 3 or 4 months but of course after a week i lost interest and nothing ever came of it.

On Friday evening i was listening to a podcast from SXSW where various entrepreneurs who were renowned for being 'fast' were speaking on the topic. These were people who had built the likes of Twitter, Blogger etc which are rather complicated pieces of software and the timescales they were talking about from picking a concept to first release were ridiculously short, months if not weeks. At this stage i began to feel rather embarrassed, my WebCV really isn't that complicated, i have most of the skills to update it, so how come they can launch huge brands in a few months and i can't even build a website?

The answer is simple; they set a short timescale to get something out there, it may not be complete, it may not be perfect, but it is something that they can then build on going forward. Programmers call this "release early, release often". It is better to get something out and get real customer feedback about what needs changed than it is to spend years building what you think customers want only to find it isn't actually what they want or the opportunity has passed.


With this in mind i decided that 12 hours was a reasonable amount of time to build a website. I set key tasks that had to be done and decided if something was taking too long that i would accept something that was ok, rather than taking longer and getting something that was perfect. It was difficult, first off it is the weekend so it was hard to avoid distractions and secondly i had forgotten most of the CSS i used to know. But after 11 hours of work i updated my WebCV and uploaded to the site.

I would be grateful if anyone who reads this could go and have a look at my WebCV and provide any feedback they can think of through the contact link. So far my list of things to do includes:

• Validate the xHTML and CSS against the W3C standards
• Improve consistency across browsers (IE7 and Firefox 3 are ok but i suspect it needs work on IE6, Firefox 2 and IE8)
  
• Sort out the padding and margins to get the spacing between the headings and text right
• Make a better header (the current one will do but its not great)
• Make the navigation tabs a bit less bland and angular
• Think of some ways to make it more visually appealing without being tacky

At least i have something out there, a base to build on. It is a much less daunting task to make lots of small improvements than it is to come up with something brand new and perfect first time. So remember; if you are procrastinating, if a project seems to big to know where to start, set a tight timescale and "Ready, Fire, Aim".


Idea from: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/05/29/the-art-of-speed-conversations-with-monster-makers/#more-362

Thought of the Day - RSS Feeds

For supposedly being a tech-savy guy i can't believe i haven't made use of RSS Feeds properly until now.

I say properly because i have used them before, i played with Firefox's RSS reader and Google Reader a while back but it never really stuck. I think it was because i was subscribing to feeds that had a stupid number of updates a day (unfiltered news sites etc) so i was just getting overwhelmed with junk. I guess i assumed that all RSS feeds were like that until this morning when i realised that a lot of the sites i have open in Firefox and refresh on a regular basis are sporadically updated. I was just going through checking for updates, not finding any and thought "surely there is a better way" and then i noticed a pattern ... lots and lots of little orange buttons. So i fired up Google Reader, deleted all of the high volume feeds i was subscribed to (but never looked at) and added all of the blogs and other sites with sporadically updated content. So now not only have i saved on memory footprint in Firefox, i only have to refresh one page to get updates, everything is in a nice chronological order and i don't have to worry about missing anything.

In all honesty it hasn't cut down my number of Firefox tabs that much (maybe lost 10 tabs overall) but combined with moving the tabs i keep open 'for reference' to Google Bookmarks and i should get down to one window.

Thought of the Day - Life Simplification - Possessions

Something i have been thinking about for quite a while is simplifying my life, mostly in terms of possessions but partly in terms of repetitive tasks i have to do.

In terms of possessions i have an unfortunate habit of accumulating things; i might need them at some point and if i do, i want to have my own stuff. A prime example is ice skates, i haven't been ice skating in over a year and the next most recent time was like 5 years ago. But i can't bring myself to chuck out or sell my skates, the thing is i wouldn't want to go ice skating without my own skates because frankly hire skates suck. That is only the tip of the iceberg; i do the same with bikes, paintball stuff, computer stuff and hoard various other things too. The biggest problem i have is that most of my stuff is worth next to nothing if i sold it, but could be useful to me so it feels like it is worth more to me than it is to sell.

Having said the above, if i flogged all the stuff i don't really need i could probably afford to buy anything i did end up needing when i needed it. Then the problem becomes the effort required to flog all the stuff being much more than it is worth to me in terms of time. I would be happy to accept 50% less than the actual value if someone else would just take it all off my hands and sell it themselves. The problem with that is traditional 'house clearers' focus on old furniture, pictures, kitchenware etc rather than the more modern things i have.

Then the option becomes storage, but it is just such a waste that i can't justify it. Its an ongoing cost to hold on to junk that i will probably never use again, i would be better donating everything to charity and setting aside the money i would have spent on storage to buy new stuff.

So i feel like i'm stuck between a rock, a piece of steel and a hard place; selling my stuff is too much effort, giving it away just seems wrong and storing it is such a waste. What to do?

Thought of the Day - Did The British Invent 5S?

I heard an interesting story, that it wasn't the Japaneses but the British who invented 5S, the Japanese just gave it a name and applied it in factories. Hah! you may say, look at how bad the 5S is in most British manufacturing companies, did we invent it and forget?

Alas no, it was just invented and still used somewhere that most people never see - on boats in the Navy. Only in the Navy it is called being 'ship shape'. I'm sure you have all seen war films, sailors out scrubbing the decks etc. If you think about it what happens on a boat conforms to 5S;
Sort - there is nothing on the boat that doesn't need to be, space and weight are at a premium.
Set In Order - because the boat will move in the seas everything needs to be secured and hence in the right place.
Shine - things are cleaned on a very regular basis, you want to find any problems as soon as possible.
Standardize - The captain or senior officers make it clear what needs to be done and how regularly.
Sustain - The sailors get a bollocking if the previous 4 steps are not done.

In retrospect the best 5S implementation i have ever seen was onboard a nuclear submarine. Not only is space at a serious premium ensuring Sort has to be right, but you want to minimise the noise so the enemy can't detect you so your Set In Order has to be perfect (and noiseless) too.

To be honest i haven't done any fact checking about which Navy first coined the term 'ship shape' or that the Japanese didn't invent 5S thousands of years ago, but it is an interesting thought.

Thought of the Day - Process Improvements I Love To Hate

There is one process improvement in particular that i love to hate.

Anyone who has stayed in a Travel Inn or similar budget hotel recently has probably noticed the increase in Lux Shower Gel/Shampoo bottles in place of traditional soap and shampoo. If you weren't a process engineer you might wonder why. The simple reason is cost reduction, how many barely used bars of soap and mini-bottles of shampoo do you think are thrown out each year? So something that you don't have to replace after every guest is quite a big saving, huge infact, probably millions of pounds a year, especially for a hotel chain as big as Travel Inn. It is also good for the environment, the waste generated from individually packaged soap and shampoo must be orders of magnitude more than large bottles of Lux. Finally who wants to steal a huge bottle of shower gel that only fits in a mounted holder, so there must be a significant reduction in theft too.

Unfortunately i really really hate shower gel, i always feel greasy after i use it and never quite feel clean. So on a personal level i hate it but on a technical level its is a great process improvement and i only wish i had thought of it first.

Thought of the Day - UK Hotel Wifi

I'm staying at the Travel Inn (not Lodge) at Manchester Airport and it is damn near perfect; clean room, minimalist, flat screen TV, comfy bed, quiet and bliss of bliss it even has aircon.

But the one thing that kills it all is the woefully slow wifi ... it can't even save this blog post as i go along and my Tada Lists (the simplest web pages known to man) are taking >10 minutes to open. What i want to know is how on earth can this be the case? If it was free (as is the case in most of north america) i could live with it but i'm paying £10 a day for the privilege, if i was charged this rate at home i'd have a dedicated fibre line right to my flat. I'm not even going to be able to use it for the whole 24 hours; arrive 4pm leave 7am and 8 hours sleep inbetween leaves a maximum of 7 hours surfing. Worse still i'm not even doing heavy web browsing (downloading attachments or uploading anything), i'm loading some text based web pages and it is taking forever.

To anyone who runs a hotel in the UK; either stop gouging your customers for the slowest internet connection since 33.6kbps dial-up or provide a decent service for the exorbitant fee you charge.

Thought of the Day - Longest Day pt 2

Well the longest day has been and gone and i must say i have grown rather fond of light streaming in my windows at 5am. While it is a bit depressing knowing that the day length is only going to get shorter and shorter for the next 6 months a more immediate concern is how easy it will be to build the habit of getting up at 5am going forward.

At the moment it is relatively easy to get up early; it is bright, it is warm and sometimes even sunny outside. On the other hand it is infinitely harder to wake up early when it is dark, cold and raining. Given that i can't even manage to get up now i think it is time for a different technique.

I'm now getting to the stage that i am considering using Steve Pavlina's conditioned response method of getting up. I had shunned it in the past because it seemed too extreme, but as it turns out i have no willpower so i need to turn my alarm clock going off into an ingrained imperative that i must get out of bed.

Thought of the Day - Life As A Laboratory

Something a lot of people seem to find strange about me is that i experiment with things, not only that but i actually call them experiments. I don't just buy a new pair of shoes, i experiment with near-barefoot walking. I don't become a Vegan, i experiment with my diet. I don't wake up early, i experiment with my sleep.

To me life is a laboratory, all parts of my life can be optimised, improved and if necessary changed wholesale. On the other hand i think a lot of people get into a (un)happy rut and don't see the need to change, to try new things. While i am sure that i am guilty of that in some areas of my life it doesn't stop me looking to change in others. The great thing about experimenting is that if it doesn't work out you aren't committed to the path, you were just trying it out. It also doesn't preclude the possibility of future improvements or changes. For me one of the most reassuring things about science is that scientists can admit when they were not exactly right or even outright wrong. There are no absolutes, it only takes one exception to break the rules and set you looking for new rules.

I'm sure other people experiment with things and maybe it is because my experiments tend to be a little more extreme, but most people i discuss my experiments see me as strange or at best eccentric. What convinces me that i am on the right path is a lot of the most interesting people that i've met and authors who's books i've read have had a similar attitude to experimentation.

Book Notes - Why Work Sucks

Why Work Sucks by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson [2008]

Summary:
Judge people on results, not the amount of time they spend in the office. A simple and some would say common sense statement, however 99% of the world is managed in completely the opposite way. This book provides a great argument against the prevailing management methods and also what they should be changed to.

Definitions:
Presenteeism - Being physically but not mentally present in your job. (page 17)
Sludge – The negative commentary that occurs in the workplace based on the erroneous beliefs on page 23. (page 30)
Sludge Anticipation – Mental preparation you go through if you are expecting sludge, wasted time and energy. (page 49)
Sludge Justification – The time and energy taken to present your excuse to the sludger, not only wasting your time but the person sludging too. (page 51)
Black Sludge – Sludging people behind their back in groups of 2 or more people. (page 52)
ROWE – Each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want as long as the work gets done. (page 66)

Notes:
Page 13: The core problem with work is the theory that Time + Physical Presence = Results, when infact it is very easy to put in a lot of time and physical presence but not accomplish anything.
Page 15: Random Thought: If you are working in an ROWE and can accomplish your job in say 20 hours per week, what happens if your boss wants you to do more, do you get a pay rise or do you just get more to do?
Page 19: Presenteeism isn’t the employees fault it is the fault of the system, of the judges of performance. Show me how you measure me and i will show you how i behave.
Page 23: List of erroneous assumptions we currently have for work. My favourite is “if people get their work done in less time they should get more work”.
Page 24: Random Thought: I wonder how much the above statement has to do with problems in project management, one of the big things in Critical Chain is that “finish early” is never passed on to the next step, one of the reasons for this is that there is no incentive to do so, you will just get more work or be expected to do future work in less time.
Page 33: Paragraph two goes on to say that almost all companies are the same, even young ‘progressive’ ones because the people working there have the same assumptions.
Page 34: If you have a high level of demands (stuff to do) and a high level of control (you get to prioritise and manage the work) it may be hectic but it is not so stressful. However if you have high demands and low control (someone else decides what you do when) life becomes unbearable.
Page 41: Flexitime is not the answer, it is considered a perk, the company will do anything within their power to put you off doing it and you will likely be ‘sludged’ for not being committed.
Page 54: Random Thought: Is Sludge the 8th lean waste?
Page 61: Black Belt pointing out that it isn’t all about fluff bunnies and spending more time with the kids, it is about focusing on what really matters to the company and eliminating waste.
Page 66: The irony is most people go from a ROWE (college/university) into jobs that are all about how much time you spend at your desk. You go from an environment where you are completely free to select and prioritise your work (within a certain framework) to being told what to do and treated like a child. Is it any wonder that there is a serious adjustment period for graduates?
Page 82: The perception is that ROWE is a win-lose situation (employees win, employers lose) this could not be further from the truth. How can the employer lose if the employees have a focus on business results, are more committed to achieving those results because they want to keep working in an ROWE and are generally happier and more productive?
Page 85: Random Thought: Consultants and freelancers already live in an ROWE world, all ROWE is doing is bringing that ethic to companies. Maybe this is how Charles Handy’s view of the future will happen, rather than everyone becoming freelance and being bought into a company, ROWE will allow similar flexibility and benefits without the hassle of coordinating hundreds of independent workers.
Page 89: The 13 Guideposts:
1. People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customers time or the company’s time.
2. Employees have the freedom to work any way they want.
3. Every day feels like Saturday.
4. People have an unlimited amount of “paid time off” as long as the work gets done.
5. Work isn’t a place you go – it’s something you do.
6. Arriving at the workplace at 2:00pm is not considered coming in late. Leaving the workplace at 2:00pm is not considered leaving early.
7. Nobody talks about how many hours they work.
8. Every meeting is optional.
9. It’s ok to grocery shop on a Wednesday morning, catch a movie on a Tuesday afternoon, or take a nap on a Thursday afternoon.
10. There are no work schedules.
11. Nobody feels guilty, overworked, or stressed out.
12. There aren’t any last minute fire-drills.
13. There is no judgement about how you spend your time.
Page 125: The side effect of “Every meeting is optional” is that people are much more focused on why they are having the meeting, who they want to attend and why and if people don’t turn up it probably saying you got it wrong.
Page 144: Random Thought: An ROWE would eliminate the need for project reviews, it would be up to the project leaders to schedule time for coaching, mentoring and questions.

Quotes:
Page22 : “Perception is reality”
Page 29: “We have this weird permission to be shitty to one another at work.”

Thought of the Day - Results-Only Work Environment

99% of people are paid for their time and not their results. Which do you think is better for the company and the individual? Unsurprisingly for anyone with half a brain, the results method is better for both.

I really should have posted this when i came across the concept on Tuesday but i wanted to read the book (Why Work Sucks) first to make sure i really understood what i was talking about. The books notes will be up very shortly after this post but i wanted to offer some comentary that wouldn't have been appropriate in the notes.


Having just read the book it feels like the culmination of thoughts that i have been having in my career up until now. It really ties together; behavioural management, self-directed companies (Maverick, Open Minds etc), process improvement (Six Sigma, metrics etc) and even the more recent lifestyle design (4-Hour Work Week).

It also finally puts a name to something i have expereinced first hand, i am a morning person when it comes to work, i like getting up early and making a start on work. I tend to be in the office before everyone else (~7am), i don't take lunch or breaks and i know that after 3pm i'm not really at my best but i have to hang around until at least 5pm because it is expected, because people will call me a slacker if i don't. It doesn't matter if i don't accomplish anything in those 2 hours, as long as i am at my desk people assume i am being productive.
In my first job after grduating from university i took the approach of doing my contacted hours, i'd start early and finish early. The hour before my colleages arrived tended to be my most productive, so i thought logically it was good for the company. However it wasn't long before my boss took me aside and said that he didn't care if i was in early, he wasn't there so he didn't know if i was working or not and leaving before 5pm was showing a lack of comitment. Which sent the clear message to me that he didn't care if i worked or not, just that i was at my desk. It also prompted me to start recording my hours so that if he ever said i wasn't comitted again i could throw my regular >50 hour weeks in his face.
That conversation has stuck with me for the last 4 years and i still record my hours for the same reason. After reading the book it strikes me that it is a huge waste of time. A waste of the companies time because i do it in work time. A waste of my energy because i worry about how it might be perceived if my average hours drop below 45 despite the fact i am only contracted for 38. It also provides zero incentive to improve, if i know i have 2 hours of reduced productivity why not stretch things out to fill them time, the only outcome of working faster is getting more work to do in my least productive time.

I suspect this will be a recurring theme in this blog, so i have given it a tag "ROWE" if you want to group all of the posts together.


Idea from: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/05/21/no-schedules-no-meetings-enter-best-buys-rowe-part-1/

Thought of the Day - Sleep Optimization Pt 2

Well day 4 of the Sleep Optimization is not quite going to plan. I got up but it was a real struggle, i almost talked myself into going back to sleep for 1.5 hours.

But on the plus side i think i know why i almost talked myself into going back to bed. If i don't have a really clear idea of what i'm going to do or why i'm going to get up it is very easy to postpone, it also doesn't help if what i am planning to do could be done at another time. Yesterday i knew i wanted to get up early to watch 30 Days s03e02 before work, sure enough i got up. This morning i didn't have as clear a reason and therefore it was easier for me to talk myself into going back to bed.

So as a further refinement, before i go to bed each night i need to write down what i plan to do first thing in the morning, preferably something that can be done at no other time.

Thought of the Day - Sleep Optimization

Well first time i've blogged on sleeping in a couple of months, but i'm trying another experiment so figured it would be worth doing.

Previously i've gone for the 'Steve Pavlina' method of sleep optimization; pick a time to wake up (normally 5am), get up then come rain or shine, go to sleep when you are tired. The problem is that i can't always get to sleep when i'm tired and then in the morning i don't feel rested enough to get up, its a motivation thing.

Now i'm trying the 'Tim Ferris' method of sleep optimization; work out how long it takes you to get to sleep (in my case 1 hour), add that to 6 hours (4 sleep cycles of 1.5 hours) and set your alarm. So far (3 days) it is working pretty well, i certainly feel less tired through the day than i did previously (normally with more sleep) and i have more time in the mornings. There are a couple of problems i foresee; what will the effect be if i have to get up before the whole 6 hours of sleep (if i go to bed late and have to get up for work)? and will the effect last because it still requires motivation to get up?

Well we shall see how it goes, if it works i'll be happy with reducing my time in bed to 7 hours a day, if not i think it will be worth investing time in a little psychological response conditioning ...

Thought of the Day - To Do Lists

First off i will admit i love To Do Lists, normally on Post Its or on paper at home but at work if Outlook didn't remind me to do tasks they would surely be forgotten. I have a memory like a sieve so if i don't write down something i need to do then i am almost guaranteed to forget to do it.

One of the problems i had was coordinating tasks between home and work. At work i have Outlook and at home i have bits of paper, but frequently i think of something i need to do at home when i'm at work and vice versa. Previously i used the To Do List function in Basecamp (project management web-app) to manage a web-to-do-list, but it was overkill, i always forgot the web address to access it and there was too much complexity to get to the To Do List. Fortunately i recently discovered that the people who made Basecamp (37 Signals) have also made a really simple To Do List application.

Its called Tada and it is perfect! Very basic To Do List functionality, but so simple and effective you can't fault it. It is web based so you can access it from anywhere, you can create multiple lists (To Do At Work, To Do At Home etc) and prioritise the tasks within them. Sure there is no support for setting completion dates and reminders or creating sub-lists but if you wanted that you could use Basecamp, overall a superb little web-application that i would highly recommend.

Thought of the Day - Personal Crest

I came across an interesting site today, it has a flash based system to create your own personal crest:
Scion Personal Crest Creator

While it is a little tacky and random it got me thinking, what would sum me up, my values, my interests etc. I came up with the crest below:


At the top i went for a 'grease monkey' to represent my background in engineering. The circuit motif on either side represents electronics and computers which tie everything in my life together. In the middle i went for my interests; books, rock music, snow/cold and TV. Overall i'm quite happy with it, was interesting to have to only pick the 4 interests that summed me up.

Thought of the Day - Metrics

I read an interesting article about metrics, specifically it was about metrics for software projects but the main rules are applicable to all projects.

A metric should be:
1) Informative (and ideally Predictive) - It should give relevant useful information.
2) Objective - It should not matter who is determining the metric.
3) Automated - The more work it takes to generate the metric the less likely it is to get used or recorded accurately.

Idea From: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/Lies-Damned-Lies-and-Project-Metrics-Part-1/

Thought of the Day - Job Acceptance

Something that I noted down from Go Put Your Strengths To Work by Marcus Buckingham:

Before accepting a job ask yourself 3 things:
Purpose - What is the purpose of the job? Does it fit with your values?
People - Who will you be working with? Do you think you will get on with them?
Activities - What will you actually be doing? Does it fit with your strengths?

He suggests that the the top is the least important, getting more important as you go down. I would agree, if you don't like what you are doing day to day you would have to be working with some very special people or have a very strong purpose before it would be bearable. On the other hand if you love what you are actually doing the other two are easy to put up with if they aren't right.

Thought of the Day - ToC For Traffic

I just finished reading Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. First off a great book and yet again i wonder why i have left a Chuck Palahniuk book sitting on my shelf for more than a year before i read it.

Secondly i had an interesting thought about one of the concepts in the book. I could be totally wrong but the way i understand it, in the book the government split the population into day people and night people so that the roads would be less gridlocked and accidents would have less of an effect on traffic. But it is an interesting point, even the busiest, most clogged of roads tend to be just about empty between midnight and 6am. So many of the problems that we face with traffic are because we shock-load the roads at certain times of the day. The overall capacity of the roads compared to the total journeys is probably adequate but because everyone is trying to go places at the same time.

In the book the unintended side-effect of the split was that the night people became an underclass that resented the day people but i can't help but think there must be another way to better balance the flow of traffic on the roads. Every time i drive on motorways my mind drifts (more on that in the book too) to Theory of Constraints, i still haven't come up with a way to apply ToC to the roads without a massive overhaul of technology but there must be something that can be done. Strangely leveling the flow across the day hadn't occurred to me before but it would be a great way to remove the need for rigid rules and a drum-beat to pace traffic. Then the question is how to incentivize travel outside of the rush hours to balance the flow without becoming even more nanny-state like.

On the downside if the flow was leveled my 7pm to 3am drives up north would be much less effective.

Thought of the Day - Hydrofoils

Why do you only see hydrofoils in russia? I'm sure other places must have them, there must be big benefits from the reduction in drag, so why don't you see them all over the place?

Thought of the Day - Cycling

A few observations since getting back on the bike for the first time in like 4 years:

1) Don't get cocky when you haven't used SPD's before. I always used to laugh at people who couldn't clip out and fell over onto their sides because they were attached to the bike. Sadly this happened to me, i'd been out on the bike a couple of times with no problems, so i thought i would bump up on the kerb at my flat, stop and then unclip. What i hadn't banked on was the difficulty of trying to clip out while stationary, the movement of trying to clip out meant i lost balance and slowly keeled over onto my side. All very embarrassing but a learning experience.

2) I've still got it when it comes to maintenance. I fitted a whole new groupset to my bike while i was home at the end of May with no problems. I guess fixing a bike is like riding a bike.

3) Damn i am unfit, i remember going out on my bike before i went to uni and doing rides with greater than 1000ft climbing and being fine. Now i go out and a short ride with 350ft of climbing just about kills me.

4) The reason i know the above is because there is a free tool called Bikely that allows you to input a route on google maps and it tells you the distance and gives you an elevation profile. Totally awesome for someone as geeky as me.

Thought of the Day - Habits Vs Willpower

Well there was rather a large gap in my posts (almost a month), which proves one thing; i have no willpower. I can build a habit, but if that habit is disturbed i am screwed, which leads me to think that i need to ensure my habits aren't disturbed.

So to celebrate getting this habit back on track i have prepared a buffer of 5 posts so that even if i don't have a thought every day i can still make a post, the trick will be periodically replenishing this buffer when i have further inspiration.

Thought of The Day - Heroes and Planners

As has been pointed out by many people, everyone loves a hero and no-one notices a planner. By definition if you avoid a bad event happening no-one notices, the bad event didn't happen and because it didn't happen then maybe it wasn't possible for it to happen.

To borrow from The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; imagine if in 2000 someone had made locked bulletproof doors on airlines mandatory, 9/11 would have never happened. Would that person have been given awards, recognition and admiration? No, instead he probably would have, at best been ignored, at worst been reviled by pilots and airlines for implementing a 'pointless' security feature.

This leaves me in an interesting quandary, i know it is better for the companies i work for to be a planner, however the incentives at work are all set up for hero's. Is the way forward to identify catastrophes before they happen, plan for what you can do when they do happen and then let them happen? I suppose the problem, even with delayed planning, is the full magnitude of the fuck-up is never realised so no-one knows how bad it could have been.

Thinking about it from the other side, how could you incentivise planning? How do you quantify what could have been and how likely it was to occur, even if it doesn't?