Weekend Reading: The It Has Been a Tough Week So Here's Some Random Links Edition

So, sitting out two days in the middle of the week makes you behind on things. What a surprise!

Petunia is almost all better now, but not completely. And- this is fun!- it seems that when she's sick she wets her bed. Wheee! Mr. Snarky and I are both still trying to kick this cold, too. Probably the getting up at 1 a.m. to change Petunia's pajamas and strip the sheets off her bed isn't helping.

And then I had the sort of day at work today where my to do list was ambushed by my inbox.

But I don't want to deprive you of your links! I'll just deprive you of any organizing principle to the links whatsoever.

First, this is a really good open letter to white male comics. The main point of the piece is to explain why rape jokes aren't such a good idea, but it also explains part of why I don't watch much comedy anymore. Instead of being edgy and thought-provoking, so much of it is just mean.

Tressiemc had a really good post about why being able to enter and exit and re-enter the educational system is a strength, not a weakness, of our system.

Speaking of higher education, Nicoleandmaggie had some thoughts on Harvard, and Grad Lurker posted a link to the return on investment of various undergraduate colleges. It is an interesting, but an incomplete way of looking at things. For one thing, I strongly suspect that the ROI differs for different groups (race, gender, etc- see this earlier Tressiemc post for thoughts on that with respect to the "don't go to grad school" advice that is popular these days. Tressiemc has interesting things to say about higher education. If you're interested in that topic, a stroll through her archives is likely to be a bit of a time sink.) Also, Harvey Mudd is the top of the list, but since Mudd is focused on STEM, it benefits from the fact that a large number of Mudd grads are likely to go into STEM fields, which tend to make more money, particularly at the BS/BA level that the list examines. Finally, I don't think getting a high paying job is the sole purpose of higher education. I realize that is easy for me to say from my comfortable status possessing a high paying job, and I don't think getting a high paying job is a bad thing to hope for from your higher education, I just think that it isn't the only thing you might hope for.  I still had to look up my alma mater and generally waste a fair amount of time examining the list.

On a completely different topic, Laura Vanderkam had a good post about the latest incarnation of the false dichotomy between working and enjoying your life/kids/whatever. 

I found ThinReads, a site dedicated to short eBooks, via Laura's twitter feed, since they interviewed her. I haven't had time to explore it much yet, but I like the idea of a site to help me find short eBooks- as you know, I'm a fan of them.

I really liked this Salon article from Bill Moyers and Michael Winship about the gun regulation debate, and how mind-blowing it is that almost 3 in 10 Americans think they will need to take up arms in the next few years to defend their liberties. WTF, people?!?!?!?! Way to give up on democracy and the Constitution!

Let's end on a far more lighthearted note. I loved this tweet:

I have Instagrammedthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor tumblr
— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) May 10, 2013

And these photos of London are cool, if a bit creepy.

I hope you are all healthier than we are at Chez Cloud. Happy weekend!

Sick Kids, Productivity, and the Importance of Prioritization

I was home with a sick girl today- Petunia's been running a fever for two days. Mr. Snarky stayed home with her yesterday, and today was my turn. To be honest, neither of us really minded our turn, because we're both sort of sick, too. We have an annoying low grade cold that includes a headache and a cough. And my voice is doing that thing it does when I get sick and it decides that by the end of the day I should sound like a cross between a frog and Kathleen Turner playing a role in which she is only allowed to whisper.

When she is sick, Petunia mostly wants to sit on the sofa and snuggle while we watch shows. I was able to piece together roughly 1.5 hours of work today, but that came in bits and pieces, mostly spent sending emails that would help keep my various projects on track. And of course, I had plenty of time to think about both my work and home projects while I sat on the sofa and snuggled.

I think it is interesting to look at what I do when my work time is severely compressed like this. Today, I focused on three projects. We have a big upgrade scheduled for this weekend, and I am "quarterbacking" it (tracking the tasks and making sure everyone knows when to do their part). I sent emails to make sure we were ready to go, and then sent out the email notifying the rest of the company of the outages that would be required. We have another project that is trying to get started. I read the technical specification so that the kickoff wasn't held up waiting for my input. And we have a third project that is struggling to finish, so I sent a couple of emails trying to get it over the latest hurdles. The rest of my time was spent clearing out administrative emails, so that they wouldn't consume too much time when I get back to work.

There is nothing surprising in that list- it is just an intensified version of my standard prioritization process. Every weekday morning, I write a to do list of the three to six things I want to accomplish that day. Sometimes, I'll jot down items for the next day's list towards the end of a day, but for the most part, I write the list while I drink my morning tea. It contains the most urgent and high value things that I can do that day: things in which I am holding up a project, or things that I can do that will help a project along. There is a bit of an art to writing that list- sometimes the items are obvious, sometimes they aren't. It is similar to what I said in a Twitter exchange with @creakyvoice after my kanban post-  with any project management technique, there is skill in figuring out how to structure the work, and that skill is something that gets better with practice.

Given my approach to to do lists, it is not surprising that the section about to do lists was one of the many parts of Laura Vanderkam's latest eBook, What the Most Successful People Do at Work, that really resonated with me. One of the women she profiles limits her to do list to 6 items: 3 "must dos" for the day and 3 small tasks towards bigger goals. I am not that rigid in how I structure my daily list. Some days my list skews more towards immediate deadlines, and some days my list skews more towards longer term goals. But I have always had a short daily list.

For awhile, I started letting my daily list get longer, and it crept into a two or three day list. I realized that was decreasing the utility of the list, but wasn't sure what to do about it. Then I started reading about kanban, and realized I needed a list to explicitly acknowledge the tasks that are in progress, even if they aren't on that day's to do list. I created a personal work kanban board with my backlog and in progress tasks, and switched back to true daily lists, and I have felt my days get more productive.

Maybe the years of practice in identifying the three or four top priority items makes days like today easier, or maybe it doesn't. I obviously can't do the controlled experiment. Certainly, knowing my top priority tasks (at work and at home) helps me to make the most of small pockets of time, and that is one of the things that eases the inevitable stress points in my life as a relatively ambitious and career-focused mother of small children. Kids get sick, and they rarely consult your work schedule before doing so. Petunia doesn't really care about my work deadlines, and I don't want her to. If she wants snuggles when she is sick, she mostly gets them. But even with a full day of snuggles and the fact that I also napped through half of her nap, I was able to get enough work done to keep things on track. I didn't really make any progress, but I didn't lose ground, either.

The idea of "quality time" has been so overused in the parenting realm that it has become a semi-ironic cliche, but for me, applying the same idea to work can really pay off.

What do you do when you or your kids get sick? Do you try to work, or do you let it slide?

Weekend Reading: The Modern Ethics Edition

I've got quite a mix of links for you this weekend, but the unifying theme is living ethically in these times.

First, an old article from Salon about traveling ethically. I love to travel, and I do think about how to travel ethically. This article doesn't really provide the answers for how to do it, but I think it does a decent job of raising some of the right questions, and it has links to some good resources.

Today Salon had another article about ethics- this time about buying clothes ethically. Bad Mom, Good Mom writes about this topic quite a bit, and this week she had posts about taking the wardrobe refashion pledge and the Me Made May challenge, and the impacts of those two things on her choices and behavior.

I know how to sew- I learned as a kid, and sewed into early high school. I do not currently have the time or the inclination to make my own clothes, though. It is not an activity I find relaxing. For one thing, I suck at cutting straight and that always stressed me out as a seamstress. I do, however, greatly prefer to buy fewer clothes of high quality versus a lot of low quality clothes. I'm not really into disposable fashion trends. I like high quality clothes in classic styles that flatter my body type. The trick is finding them. I've been pleased with the quality of what I get from Stitch Fix, but as much as I enjoy the serendipitous aspect of it, I do not want the number of clothes it would take to build a reasonable wardrobe solely by that approach. I suspect that I'll get at most a few fixes a year, and use them to push me out of my fashion ruts and add some variety to my otherwise pretty boring wardrobe.

I'm still planning to try out a personal shopper later this year, when my pants size has stabilized. But I'm also tempted by another online service I came across- custom shirts. Most of the online options are geared for men, but I found one called Joe Button that has a nice selection of women's button up shirts. I'm tempted because I like the way a well-fitting button up shirt looks- but I can almost never find one. I am a 38F. A structured shirt that fits my chest is usually tent-like and unflattering,  so I end up with nothing but t-shirts. Luckily, I work in a casual industry, but I'd like a few dressier options. Joe Button's website says that I can customize based on my measurements, which is a tempting idea. They use tailors based in Hong Kong.  Before I use a service like Joe Button, I'd like to do some research to see if their conditions are as good as they imply.  If I decide to give Joe Button a try, I'll let you all know how it turns out.

I have ordered clothing from far away before- I bought a pair of Sole Rebels from Ethiopa last year, and I love them (I think these are the ones I have). I don't have a problem with clothing made in other countries, as long as the working conditions and pay are acceptable (see the Salon article for more info about that). However, I'm also interested in finding some good local designers to support, assuming I can find someone here in San Diego who makes things appropriate for a 40 year old professional, and not just for 20-something beach goers. I guess I could always extend my search up to LA or even San Francisco, too. I thought that maybe I had a lead from my Stitch Fix boxes. Of the the 6 pieces of clothing I've kept, two were from a brand called 41 Hawthorn, and both of those were made in the USA. Google tells me that it is Stitch Fix's in house brand, though.

Anyway, enough about clothes. My next link is a blog post about work-life balance and being a good team leader from Jon Gallant, a dev manager at Microsoft. Anandi (who blogs at House of Peanut) sent it to me saying it was the best article on the topic she'd ever read, and I agree with her- it is a  great article. For me, caring about work-life fit is part of my ethics not just as a parent and a worker, but also as a manager. A lot of people I come across, look down their noses at management and business in general, but most people work for businesses, and the quality of the management has a huge impact on those people's quality of life. Therefore, I think that one of the most important things I need to do to be ethical at work is to be a good manager. I take the role seriously, particularly with regards to ensuring my team can have good work-life fit and that they get the career development opportunities they want. Reading posts like this one make me feel that I'm not alone in that.

My next link is an article from a guy who unplugged from the internet for a year, because he thought that maybe the internet was the source of some of his problems. It turned out that his problems came from inside himself, not the internet. It is a good read. I found it via Scalzi's post on it.

The internet does make it easier for people to be haters, though. I've written before about how I'd rather be a maker than a hater, and Wil Wheaton had a great post on that topic.

And finally, here are some everyday acts of kindness, captured courtesy of those Russian dashboard cameras that are famous for capturing accidents real and fake. It is nice to see the good things that they capture for once.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Kanban: From Work to Home and Back Again

A few weeks ago, I mentioned in my weekend reading post that I was looking at kanban ideas for project management. Kanban is a management technique that came out of Japanese manufacturing, and it is getting popular for software development projects. I am still learning about it, so I won't try to give a full description. It is a method that focus on the flow of work more than schedules, and has an explicit goal of limiting work in progress. The original reason for this was for supply chain management, I think, but it turns out to be a powerful method even for projects whose work products are produced primarily from peoples brains. The link in my weekend reading post will lead you to more information, if you're curious. I've started experimenting with it at work, in particular the idea of limiting the work in progress, and early signs are that it is going to be useful.

Before I implemented anything for my projects at work, though, I wanted to try it out. So I set up a personal kanban board for home, using KanbanFlow, a free online tool. I've been using it for about a month now, and I really like the results. I am using the default kanban board, which has columns for the backlog ("To-Do"), Do Today, In Progress, and Done. I rarely use the Do Today lane, so I may remove that. This is what my home board looks like right now:

The aspect of the kanban approach that I find most useful is the explicit recognition of a backlog, and the idea that you should limit the number of things you have in progress at any one time. I have never been the sort of person who was bothered by a long to do list, as long as I felt that everything I truly needed to do was captured on that list, and as long as I knew what needed to be done first. I had evolved a system of lists that helped with that- I had a global to do list, but then pulled out specific tasks for a monthly, weekly, or daily list, depending on my needs at the time.

Kanban takes this a step further, by encouraging me to think carefully about how many tasks I have in flight at any one time. The backlog can grow and grow, but I only move 2-3 tasks to In Progress at a time. At first, I did this just because I was trying out the system. But now I do it because it works. Moving a task to In Progress is equivalent to saying "this is my current priority." So if I have time to work on something, I can take a quick look at the board and I know which thing I should do. No more just doing what sounds most interesting, and having 20 things half done but nothing finished. Of course, I could still do that- but the visual reminder that the kanban board seems to be enough to keep me focused.

"Get the kids passports" has been on my master to do list literally for years. We've decided that we're going to New Zealand this year, though, so it was time to get it done. I moved it into my In Progress column, and it was done within a week. Same thing with "buy a new computer, " which had been on my to do list for several months. It spent roughly a week and a half in the In Progress column and is done now. Now I'm tackling checking into our options for refinancing our house and we're starting to plan our trip to New Zealand.

I also like how easy it is to throw something on the backlog, and how that is kept visually separate from my current tasks. If I remember to do something, I just pop open the board and type in a card. I can easily drag them around to prioritize my list later, if I want.

There are a lot of other features in KanbanFlow, but I make only light use of them. I've set up categories (the different colors for the tasks) and I use the subtask checklists (I love my checklists!) but haven't found it useful to try to set due dates on most things. It seems to be enough to just work on the flow of tasks. I've decided to go "all in" on this new method, and transfer all of my non-work items from my global to do list to the backlog on my kanban board. Mr. Snarky is still on the fence, but he has actually used it, which is more than I can say for the shared Google Doc that was our previous joint to do list. I think he likes the fact that he can make subtasks and also capture notes directly on the "card" for a task.

I've liked my home kanban board so much that I've set up a work kanban board, too. I'd actually prefer to have them mixed together, but my company's particular rules about putting data in the cloud preclude that. I've also given over my office whiteboard to a physical program level kanban board for all of my group's projects, and have been using that to prevent people from adding more projects to our In Progress lanes before we clear out the ones that are already there. I'm experimenting with ideas for how to use the board to avoid piling too many projects on one person at a time- we're far from ideal in that area right now, and it is showing in our productivity. There are some members of the department, most notably our director, who have a tendency to get a lot of things spun up at once. For some people on my team, that is no problem- they have their own methods for prioritizing projects and staying productive. For others, it is sapping their productivity to the point that they are practically paralyzed, as they try to move all of their projects forward at once. The board is helping us visualize the problem, and that alone is helping to solve it. I may come back and write more about that in a future post, once our use of kanban at work has had a chance to mature.

For now, though, I can enthusiastically recommend kanban to anyone who is looking for a little more order in their to do list, particularly if you find that things get started but not finished.

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This is NOT a sponsored post. KanbanFlow is just one of many kanban board options out there. I've been happy with it, but as I say in the post, I haven't really given it a thorough workout. I also haven't investigated smartphone apps for kanban, but they are definitely out there. KanbanFlow doesn't have an app, but they have a mobile website. It seems fine, but I haven't used it much. I am not someone who needs constant access to her to do list, I guess.

Ask Cloud: Handling an Annoying Co-Worker

I'm starting to get more questions in my inbox, and more of the question-writers are saying I can post the question and answer on my blog. Some question writers are even requesting I post the question and answer, no doubt because they realize that my readers are all super smart and will have great ideas. So I've decided to start an occasional "Ask Cloud" series. I considered calling it "Ask the Cloud" since the questions are as much for you as for me... but then I decided that sounded pretty egotistical, like I'm not just Cloud, but the Cloud.

The first in the series was actually my Having it All: The Logistics post, and my recent Advice for a Grad Student post fits the category, too, so I've gone back and tagged those two posts with the "ask cloud" label.

And here is the next installment, from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. I've made a few tweaks to the email to protect her anonymity, but I promise I have not changed the meaning.

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I have a co-worker, who I share an office with, whose behavior I find more and more grating. She's good at her job, it's more of some of her personal behavior that really gets to me. She eats at her desk (which I'm fine with), but she chews VERY loudly to the point where it's a distraction and it's all I can hear. She also…um…burps and farts throughout the day, which can get a bit disgusting. She also has a habit of talking very loudly to herself a lot, so half the time I don't know if she's trying to engage me in conversation. She also intrudes on my conversations, adding peanut gallery-type comments, when I'm on the phone or am meeting with someone in our office, and likes to make comments and/or laughs about what's on my computer (especially if I'm having lunch and am therefore just surfing the net or whatever).

I might rip my hair out if I keep having to deal with of this. But, I have no idea what to do. She does NOT take any sort of confrontation well. Once, she left our door open over night, and I told her (not even…I just said I noticed our door was left open, and did she remember closing it, and maybe it was the cleaners or something), and she got instantly defensive and saying stuff like "oh, who cares anyway?" (well, I care!). I've seen her in other confrontations as well, and she takes it horribly. So, I don't think I can talk to her directly…but it would be really weird going over her head and talking to our supervisor about this.

I try to leave the office when she's eating, but she eats at such random times, and throughout the day, that I can't manage that. I also no longer have meetings in our office, which can get annoying since I have to book rooms.

I don't know what else to do. Help!

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Ah, the joys of the shared office/open plan office! Management talks about their supposed benefits for collaboration, but never about how these arrangements can make you despise your colleagues....

I'm going to answer this more from a "what I would do" standpoint than a "how to get management to solve this" standpoint, because I wouldn't take this problem to your management, at least not yet.

Realistically, there is very little a supervisor can do about these problems that you could not do yourself, so if you go directly to management, you would risk coming off as someone who wants to avoid tough conversations, which is not a good impression to make on your boss. If you have a specific solution in mind, and you don't have the authority to implement it, then it makes sense to go to your supervisor. Otherwise, I'd try to solve it on my own.

I would also think carefully about which problems I wanted to bring up, and what I could reasonably expect my colleague to change. Sometimes, there are crappy situations in a shared office arrangement that are just part of the overall crappiness of the shared office, and trying to change them will just bring about new and even crappier problems.

I certainly feel your pain. Before I was moved to my current location at work, I had the misfortune of sitting in a cubicle near two guys who were doing a cleansing diet. I learned far more than I wanted to know about the state of their bowels, but they weren't really doing anything wrong, and if I'd tried to ask them to stop, it would probably have had a negative impact on my working relationship with them.

I think you are facing three distinct problems: the noise problem, the smell problem, and the interrupting of conversations problem.

I would use headphones to deal with the noise problem. You might be able to have a graceful conversation about your coworker about trying to curb her habit of talking to herself, but I cannot think of a graceful way to have a conversation about the noise she makes while eating. Ask yourself: what would you be asking her to do? Is this something she is likely to be able to control? I don't think she can control the noise she makes while eating- at least not without a huge effort. So I'd set up a Pandora account or bring in some music or just get some noise cancelling headphones, and block out the noise from her eating and also from the almost-conversations.

It is unfortunate that you have to block the noise instead of stopping it, but that does seem to be the expectation these days.  For better or for worse, headphones are the standard answer to noise in modern workplaces. I've asked for a nice wireless pair for my birthday, in preparation for my upcoming move back into a cubicle. You can experiment with different types of music and find the type that is best for work. During the Great Cleansing Diet of 2011, I discovered that female singer/songwriters work well for me, and I currently have a nice Pandora station built around Sinead Lohan, Vienna Teng, and Tristan Prettyman that is my go to mix for at work.

The burping and farting is tougher. I don't think I'd want to confront someone on this, either- I mean, what would I be suggesting the person do? Bolt up and dash out to the bathroom whenever gas strikes? I think this is another conversation that has almost no hope of going well. If the smell was too bad to just ignore,  I think I'd take a page from medieval times and douse a handkerchief in a smell I like or bring in a little ball of potpourri, and keep that on hand to discretely breath through when the smell in the office got to me. Perhaps this is one benefit of a cubicle farm over shared offices- smells dissipate pretty quickly.

The final issue, though, I think I'd try to discuss with her. I know you said she deals poorly with confrontation, but that's just tough, because she's a grown up at work not a two year old at day care, so she'll have to deal with a conversation. You can (and probably should) continue to book a room for meetings, as a good will gesture. I think a short, impromptu conversation in your office is OK, but for anything longer, and certainly for anything planned, I'd book a meeting room. I know it is a pain, but perhaps she finds your meetings as disruptive as you find her talking to her computer. And, more importantly, you can use this to tactfully bring up the topic of interruptions.

I'd say something like this: "I've noticed that it disrupts your work when I have meetings in the office, so I'll schedule meeting rooms whenever I can. However, I cannot avoid taking the occasional phone call in the office, and I have a hard time concentrating on the call when you interject into it. I know you can't help but hear what I'm saying, but could you please wait until the call is over to talk to me about it?"

Hopefully, that would open up a conversation about boundaries and you guys could then negotiate a work environment that works for both of you. If it doesn't work out, you could ask your manager about the possibility of moving, but that is only likely to be an option if there is an equivalent or less-desirable location to move to. As a manager, I would definitely try to find you a work location that works better for you- but I might not have much latitude to do so. There are often strict rules about who gets first choice on office assignments, and in my experience, making exceptions to those rules causes more problems than it solves.

That's all I have. I don't think there is any easy way to deal with any of these problems- and problems like this are unfortunately a fact of life in workplaces that are moving away from offices to cubicles or even completely open workspaces.

Readers- anyone out there have other suggestions?