[Garak takes a drink of root beer]
Quark: What do you think?
Garak: It’s vile.
Quark: I know. It’s so bubbly and cloying and happy.
Garak: Just like the Federation.
Quark: And you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.
Garak: It’s insidious.
Quark: Just like the Federation.

- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Way of the Warrior (S4 E01) (and here’s the video)

For a long time, I’ve been quite anti-Google. I’m certain this comes from loyalty to Inktomi, where I used to work once upon a time. In time, it was strengthened due to my dislike of the number of people who joined the cult. Google released and/or acquired a lot of cool apps: maps, Earth, calendar, mail, gears … the list is virtually endless. It could be argued that this was for the benefit of the technology-using community as a whole, but to me it seemed like an incessant grab for geek mindshare.

Eventually, people started to catch on that Google are potentially a very scary organisation. After all, they know what you research on the internet, what you read online, who you send mails to, who you meet with and why. In fact, they probably know as much about you as any given organisation possibly could, and you gave them permission!

However, many months and years of bombardment with applications and the need to be a part of the software community has meant that it is now virtually impossible for me to function without using Google’s tools. They have started to suck the resistance out of me - I’m becoming accustomed to the root beer (or the Kool-Aid, to mix metaphors).

The scariest thing was when I tried out Google Reader, and people had already shared 51 news articles with me, assuming all along that I used it. Gah! I’ve made myself paranoid all over again, just by writing this post. Time to block google.com cookies again.

(The astute among you will notice some similarities with SWOT Analysis).

To use the window, just fill in something in each of the first three boxes. Don’t worry about filling them in in order, just put them in whatever order occurs to you.

Strengths

This area includes the skills you use on a daily basis, or that people come to you ask questions about. Often (especially with software folks) we think in terms of technical skills - i.e. the skills where we actually do something or produce something, so don’t forget the so-called softer skills: communication, planning, leadership, etc.

Areas for Improvement

Things that you want to get better at. This might be particular skills that you want to learn, or some area of other knowledge you want to acquire. Many people find that they want to improve in many things, so sometimes this area gets crowded - don’t worry, that’s normal.

Goals

Goals differ from Areas for Improvement in that they are things that you can check off to say you’ve accomplished. For example “Learn to program in Objective-C” is an Area for Improvement, but “Write a commercial app in Objective-C and sell a copy to someone I don’t know” is a goal. Also, goals tend to include things that are much longer in time span than Areas for Improvement - e.g. “I want to become CEO of a company with more than 100 employees”. Make sure it’s easy to measure that you’ve accomplished them - ‘checkbox’ style items work best in my experience.

Tasks

Once you’ve finished with the first three sections, put a time frame on the Tasks section (I usually say three months) and then put specific tasks in there that you can accomplish in the next three months. These tasks must help you improve in one of your Areas or help you achieve one of your goals (or both!). Often you use your Strengths to help accomplish these tasks.

OK, so now what?

I get each of my team members to do this every three months. Then every two weeks we have a chat about how things are going (those chats are not solely about this Window, but it does come up - my job is to help them achieve all their tasks) just to make sure there aren’t any roadblocks and that all the tasks still make sense. If you’re doing this for self-development, it’s probably worth looking at this every week to see if you can accomplish any Task in the week, or work on it. Make sure you:

• check off any Task or Goal that gets accomplished
• do the exercise again after your allotted Task time elapses (i.e. every 3 months in my case)
• move Areas for Improvement into Strengths once you’ve learned what you set to learn
• look back over your Windows for the year to see what you’ve accomplished and to help motivate for the next year

I’m not sure if the form-factor of a Window actually makes any difference: it evolved from my need to write it all on a whiteboard. I do think it’s useful to have all four areas up on the board at once because sometimes your mind goes blank and writing other things helps jog your memory.

(Creative Commons Attribution license)

This is actually good news for me. I was considering selling the laptop so I could help fund various other things I needed to do. By the time I’m able to sell, the price will be low enough that it won’t be worth my while

The instructor pointed out that I kept apologizing every time I did something wrongly. She pointed out that I’d never done it before, and that I was on the course to learn how to do it. This seemed obvious, as soon as she mentioned it, but it got me to thinking about why I was apologizing.

There’s an old saying about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. People apply this to themselves as they get older as a way to say they can’t learn anything new.

The conclusion I reached is that I was apologizing for being incompetent. I’m used to being good at the things I do: whether it’s professionally or personally, after 31 years on the planet I’ve become reasonably competent at a whole bunch of things. Trying to learn new skills makes me incompetent again, and there’s a fear of failure that goes with that. It’s a lot easier to deal with now that I’ve acknowledged it - this fear is purely a fear of appearing foolish or incompetent.

Next time I’m learning something new, I just need to acknowledge that it’s OK to be incompetent

If I forget myself and accidentally order one I certainly never order a second (I usually drink hot chocolate in Starbucks).

2 - You have to pay for wi-fi so I’m never distracted by IM/IRC/RSS

In the UK, all the wi-fi at Starbucks is through T-mobile who charge £30 ($60!) a month to use their hotspots. With a 1Gb download limit.

3 - The ‘comfy’ chairs are really uncomfortable after an hour or so

One of the biggest issues I had back when I was working in a coffee shop all day was that I’d get too comfortable in the chair and not move around as much as I should (eventually I got tendonitis). At least this way I always get up and leave after an hour.