productivity – Tony Tam

v0. 1 Productivity is

Finishing what you intended with minimum wait and high quality.

Staying Productive : from After Hours Podcast

Do one thing at a time, turn off notifications Saying no to almost everything, pretend if the ask is for tomorrow, would you say yes? Turn off email notifications Switch to paper Getting outside Every meeting tends to fill the time allocation, push to finish early Carving out alone time Read books to be exposed […]

by Tony Tam

In the areas of learning and development

(This post is not for you, it’s for me) It started out as 5% of my time. Just a 4-hour hands-on workshop with new hires once a month. Now it’s the following 1 engineer working on developing a hands-on workshop that will track start, finish, and verification. Able to track usage, validate answers and replace […]

by Tony Tam

Spending habits in 2019

In 2019, I wanted try something a bit different than 2018. In 2018, I didn’t buy anything that was not a consumable. In 2019, I wanted to be less extreme and only buy non consumables once every quarter. In Q1 2019 – I have bought 2 pairs of shoes and that is it. Something else […]

by Tony Tam

Mis en place

I remember my mom tried to teach me this when I was young. Put things back in it’s place. Of course she said it in Chinese. She was not very successful in teaching me. I was not a great listener when I was young. I am still struggling with this at home, everything back in […]

by Tony Tam

My Email Flow

If you send an email to me, it’s very likely (95% chance) I will reply If you are recruiting me for a position at company X – You will get a polite / canned response that “I am extremely happy at Splunk and want to be there for 4 years to help the company grow”. […]

by Tony Tam

Link: What Should We Measure?

In this blog post, Tim Ottinger shares his thoughts on what we should measure in the software industry and more importantly on what not to measure. What Should We Measure?

by Tony Tam

Kanban Team and Physical board

When I was running a scrum team at Splunk focusing on engineering productivity Quarterly goals on top Swim lanes for Ready, in progress, verify and done

by Tony Tam

link: Ten Tips on Organizing Your Mind, from Dr. Daniel Levitin – Speakeasy – WSJ

I’m using one of his tips, which is to create a high priority email address for everyone important in your life and a 2nd email for everything else. The neuroscientist that brought us bestsellers “This is Your Brain on Music” and “The World in Six Songs” has turned his attention to the problem of organization. […]