I technically missed all my deadlines this week and only delivered a few of my deliverables : the outline on Tuesday (~25 mins late), WoT ratings (5 days late, dropped silently twice, the second after pm probing), updates on Wednesday for Monday and Tuesday ((after public probing and ffs, I’m only realizing now those were on last week’s plan. Derp)) and Wednesday after midnight. I allowed all the other deliverables on the plan fall by the wayside.
On the plus side, we have a request for a quote for our hardware, software and training package from the COO of the project with local presence that’s attempting to make a decentralized exchange. While a bit daunting, the placement test Jacob made was useful in verifying he has some Unix experience and won’t need to start from square one.
As far as a good match for us, there’s a bit of misalignment between his goal for project which is to bring ‘crypto’ to retail and our focus on the elite. Furthermore, they have a bit of a technology maximalist approach, i.e. bring in XYZ complex tool off the shelf instead of designing and implementing fits in head and hand. On the more positive side, based on what he has told us, he made a career from designing and implementing HFT systems for a wide range of fiat exchanges and instruments. He told us at one point he was paying $20k/month for leased lines.
With that being said, the approach Jacob and I have discussed is to deliver on our training ((Which will allow us to refine our processes further.)), generate the cashflow and develop the relationship. This should put us in a better position to a) receive referrals from him and b) show him why our approach, e.g. focus on elite clientele and Bitcoin, is more realistic. There’s also the possibility for further consulting work for his project, but it’s too early to tell if it’ll be a good fit, e.g. builds for various shitlangs would have to be done for Gales Linux for them to use it in a wider capacity. Them using Gales Linux isn’t the only thing that could be done with them, but it’s the main part we discussed.
Other positives were my Master’s help with showing us further how we sell ourselves short, causing us to rethink our approach in asserting our value in dealing with people. We also further developed a set of questions for information security auditing we can approach companies with as a secondary offering to generate cashflow and develop relationships by meeting companies more where they are now rather than where we think they ought to be.
As far as actually making my deadlines next week, it’s clear some substantial changes need to be made. I added the week to the title to help raise my awareness and appreciation for time. Back in November I was reading the Page Boy’s Pledge daily, so I’ll pick that back up again to start the day and, more importantly, act it out. The daily review has been a good anchor, how can I make it better ? First, 21:30 local time is a healthier deadline. The late timestamps on my communications these past weeks/months are not the rhythm I want, so stop pretending midnight is on the table. If I don’t like what the review says minutes before the deadline, tough, be honest with the dislike and understand why it happened and do better tomorrow. To set myself up better, instead of a blank page at the end of the day, answer the following questions :
- Am I proud of my effort today ?
- How well did I track my time ?
- Did I exercise my curiosity and ask smart questions ?
- How well did I deliver on my word ?
- What do I need to do and who do I need to talk to tomorrow to repair my word ?
- How can I better use my available resources ?
- What can I do to improve by 1% tomorrow ?
What you need to do most and first of all is to focus each and every day on what is the highest priority *according to the goals & plan previously made*, basically allocating your time purposefully. This is why the goals and plan get made with some proper thinking – because they are to provide a stable reference point in the daily chaos of competing requests on your time. But it will work of course only if you use it as such and certainly not if you make a plan only to not look at it until the end of the week at review/plan time.
Tracking where your time goes is indeed part and parcel of the above, no way around that either.
The idea of having prompter-questions to help you get started on the review may be fine but the questions as stated don’t strike me as very helpful. Overall and with larger application – there’s a marked difference between questions that require/can be answered by yes/no and those that are more open ended. You have there some yes/no questions and you would be way better off with the other type at all points.
The first question is especially unhelpful in my opinion because it is a yes/no sort of question that moreover is more likely to get you stuck if the answer is closer to “no”. I admit I’m not a big fan of this “proud of x” approach thing either – the question is not one of pride really but one of the extent to which you *acted* towards your intended goals or not. Pride is probably best left out of it entirely there.
How about those questions instead:
1. What did I spend my time on? (ie you’ll need there to end up with some timings listed so yeah, you’ll have to track time too as a prerequisite, which is as it should be)
2. Where did I ask smart questions? Where could/should I have asked *more* questions?
3. Where did I deliver on my word and where did I fail to deliver? What did I do to mitigate the fail and what do I need to do + who do I need to talk to tomorrow to sort the fail(s) out?
4. What are the priorities for tomorrow? (those should include whatever you got from 3 above, as *first priorities* and then what comes from looking at the plan and at what you did + where you are).
ALL the above are working towards improving (and hopefully by more than 1% too) but if you really want to, you can still add I suppose:
5. How can I better use my available resources ?
6. What should I do *differently* for better results tomorrow?
Comment by Diana Coman — March 1, 2020 @ 1:44 pm
I agree the open ended questions will be more helpful, thank you for the reforge, I’ll go with those.
With the pride question, the idea there was to check in re actions and effort. I think the shift to open ended from yes/no will serve that purpose well enough.
The idea with the 1% is to focus on steady, consistent progress. A lot of the opportunity for progress I have is qualitative and not easy to quantify.
Comment by Robinson Dorion — March 1, 2020 @ 6:21 pm
I can see the intention there but be aware of “side effects” – in this case the fact that the moment you involve “pride”, you *also* involve shame. And it’s not helping you there at all, quite on the contrary, I’d say. The reason I’m saying it is because it’s a more general thing worth being aware of – whenever you design a solution to something, be careful of what the proposed approach may break, too, as things are never that neatly separated to easily hit only one thing.
You are right that it’s not easy to quantify and especially not at this granularity, no. At any rate, if the number 1% as such really helps you, stuff it in somewhere, sure. Note though that question 6 there says explicitly “better” and yeah, if every day you change something for the better, that’s the very definition of consistent progress, isn’t it?
Comment by Diana Coman — March 1, 2020 @ 9:11 pm