Ten tips for being happier

1. Don’t start with profundities.
When I began my Happiness Project, I realized pretty quickly that, rather than jumping in with lengthy daily meditation or answering deep questions of self-identity, I should start with the basics, like going to sleep at a decent hour and not letting myself get too hungry. Science backs this up; these two factors have a big impact on happiness.

2. Do let the sun go down on anger.
I had always scrupulously aired every irritation as soon as possible, to make sure I vented all bad feelings before bedtime. Studies show, however, that the notion of anger catharsis is poppycock. Expressing anger related to minor, fleeting annoyances just amplifies bad feelings, while not expressing anger often allows it to dissipate.

3. Fake it till you feel it.
Feelings follow actions. If I’m feeling low, I deliberately act cheery, and I find myself actually feeling happier. If I’m feeling angry at someone, I do something thoughtful for her and my feelings toward her soften. This strategy is uncannily effective.

4. Realize that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Challenge and novelty are key elements of happiness. The brain is stimulated by surprise, and successfully dealing with an unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction. People who do new things — learn a game, travel to unfamiliar places — are happier than people who stick to familiar activities that they already do well. I often remind myself to “Enjoy the fun of failure” and tackle some daunting goal.

5. Don’t treat the blues with a “treat.”Often the things I choose as “treats” aren’t good for me. The pleasure lasts a minute, but then feelings of guilt and loss of control and other negative consequences deepen the lousiness of the day. While it’s easy to think, I’ll feel good after I have a few glasses of wine…a pint of ice cream…a cigarette…a new pair of jeans, it’s worth pausing to ask whether this will truly make things better.

6. Buy some happiness.
Our basic psychological needs include feeling loved, secure, and good at what we do and having a sense of control. Money doesn’t automatically fill these requirements, but it sure can help. I’ve learned to look for ways to spend money to stay in closer contact with my family and friends; to promote my health; to work more efficiently; to eliminate sources of irritation and marital conflict; to support important causes; and to have enlarging experiences. For example, when my sister got married, I splurged on a better digital camera. It was expensive, but it gave me a lot of happiness bang for the buck.

7. Don’t insist on the best.
There are two types of decision makers. Satisficers (yes, satisficers) make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied. Maximizers want to make the best possible decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every option. Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they’re often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

8. Exercise to boost energy.
I knew, intellectually, that this worked, but how often have I told myself, “I’m just too tired to go to the gym”? Exercise is one of the most dependable mood-boosters. Even a 10-minute walk can brighten my outlook. Having trouble sticking to your exercise regimen? Here are 12 tips for staying motivated to exercise.

9. Stop nagging.
I knew my nagging wasn’t working particularly well, but I figured that if I stopped, my husband would never do a thing around the house. Wrong. If anything, more work got done. Plus, I got a surprisingly big happiness boost from quitting nagging. I hadn’t realized how shrewish and angry I had felt as a result of speaking like that. I replaced nagging with the following persuasive tools: wordless hints (for example, leaving a new lightbulb on the counter); using just one word (saying “Milk!” instead of talking on and on); not insisting that something be done on my schedule; and, most effective of all, doing a task myself. Why did I get to set the assignments? I found it hard to give up nagging—in fact, I came up with 19 strategies to try to cure myself of the nagging habit.

10. Take action.
Some people assume happiness is mostly a matter of inborn temperament: You’re born an Eeyore or a Tigger, and that’s that. Although it’s true that genetics play a big role, about 40 percent of your happiness level is within your control. Taking time to reflect, and conscious steps to make your life happier, really does work.

via happiness-project.com

Great write up that, if followed directly, can make your life happier in 10 easy steps. (Don't take it as a sales pitch though! :)

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Steven's Blank 4 steps

Here is my way:

1. Describe a customer whom you're selling to.  Height, weight and the size of underwear, please. (Customer Discovery)
2. How many potential customers do you have?  How big is your market? (Customer Validation)
3. How are you going to sell to them?  Can you repeat it? (Customer Creation)
4. Do it. (Company Creation) 

Does it fit yours model?

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

MPMM Software Giveaway

I have got a copy (actually, a few) of MPMM Professional edition that I want to giveaway to PM community.  While it's not about so trendy agile way, but more classic waterfall-and-all-around approach, one can find it super helpful in many occasions.

See the software brochure and download a free trial of it.  If you like it, read on, I can save you $495 (or $595 - whatever is on the price tag) and give it for free.

Let me quote a few things from the site:

MPMM Professional includes an entire methodology for managing projects. It steps you through every phase, activity and task needed to complete a project from start to finish. And it comes with all of the templates and examples you need, to save time. 
 
This edition also helps you customize your own project management methodologies. You can import your existing methodologies, processes and templates to manage them all in one place. And you can customize the methodology already included in MPMM, to use for your projects today. 

Sounds interesting?  It can be yours.  Absolutely free.

So here is the deal:

1. Drop me a line to my Twitter @iwhite and tell me why do you want it.
2. Follow me on Twitter @iwhite and subscribe to my blog live.prokhorenko.us. (I can't really check this and not like I'm going to, so it's pretty much voluntarily, but at least you know I've asked for. :)
3. Spread the word. I have more than one copy available and I want to make sure I'm giving it to people who will enjoy using it.

That's it.  No strings attached.  I'll send you a registration code (you have to download software yourself) and you're good to go.

P.S. If you know me personally, it's even better.  Send me an email, and it's yours.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Work'em Hard, Burn'em Out

Scrum is designed so developers can work 40 hour weeks. No more death marches. If we are now burning through good product owners, we have just shifted the constraint.

Scrum does not detail the product owner's relationship with the world outside the team. If one person cannot stay on top of all the details, presumably that individual is part of a marketing organization that can. Like all good developers, Scrum only defines the product owner / team interface. What happens on the enterprise side of that interface is someone else's problem.

via aplnoc.blogspot.com

Nice thoughts on Scrum' role that it plays in making a world with less burn-out (if it ever does).

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

MailChimp's A/B test

“Online Training” wording increased clickthroughs from the support page to the webinar page 10.4%. More importantly, webinar attendees doubled the first week the winning navigation link went live.

via whichtestwon.com

MailChimp run a simple test by changing Webinars to Online Training. My first idea was that Online Training would convert better. And, as you can see, I was right.

Why? I can't tell you exactly, but I have a strong feeling that webinars are often attributed to negative or neutral experience, while training (either online or offline) is good.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Minimum Viable Product @ Zynga

How Zynga Assesses Market Demand

- Create a 5-word pitch for a new product or feature

- Put it up on a high traffic webpage

- If it gets clicks, collect the emails of interested customers

- Build a ‘ghetto’ version of the feature

- Test everything

- Iterate constantly

via grattisfaction.com

Interesting comments on Mark Pincus' podcast on using MVP at Zynga.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Calendar or TODO ?

Today I found myself using iCal for the first time during last three to four weeks. And it looks like a trend already.

I'm not using calendar any more. I have no need for it. Everything is going to my TODO list. Think about it. Every note in the calendar should require some action, otherwise, it's not worth noting it. Birthday? Send a gift. Meeting? Make sure to arrive in time.

Well, the day representation in TODO is often loose to calendar, however, with things like TeuxDeux, it's arguable.

And you still keep the day on schedule.

So what about you?

P.S. Well, I'm cheating a little bit. I still keep the availability notes for people other than me in the calendar, to make sure that I can adjust my upcoming plans according to theirs schedule as well. However, I should find the solution to this problem shortly, too.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

First steps to effective time management

This is important to manage your time effectively, right?

For me, as for the highly addicted to emails person, I found it very important to optimize my time for emailing back and forth. Truth to be told, I never managed to use the "silent hours", when no email is accessed. I'm pretty connected all the time (except for some very rare occasions) so dropping this communication channel intentionally never sounded like a good plan for me.

However, within the time, I feel that this distracts me more and more. So I decided to review my emailing habits and find out if there is any reasonable time limits that I can incorporate into my daily schedule. What is more important, I was looking for a good excuse for setting a strict hours with absolutely no email access.

So the research comes first. I've started with a quick Ruby script to retrieve the date & time of messages in my Sent mailbox.

Here is the direct link to it: http://pastie.org/757482

This script gives me the CSV form of hour of the day and emails sent during this hour. I don't have a huge number of emails on with my current Gmail account, so it did work well for me in the way it is.

The next step is building a visual representation of these numbers. This is how it looks like for me:

Here is the direct link to it: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Akgp9DFPJgs7dGlCQlVfMEpieXFnVE9vZ1FWYjV3QWc&hl=en

Well, what can I say now. This creates a potentially different issue for me.

This chart does not look very disordered to me. But it looks busy. I feel that I can squeeze two-three hours into one. This sounds like a good idea, because the most of these things are unlikely to be important to get an answer the same minute or even hour. Say, a slack of two-three hours might be okay. Keeping in mind that they most of my contacts have my emergency contact.

However, I still feel like this is something I might want to do gradually. By cutting one piece at a time. And probably I'll be starting with the very early and very late hours first.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

My PMP exam

I don't know why I didn't blog about it before, so here is the story:

I passed the exam with success about a year ago (March 2008). The preparation process took me about 2 to 3 months. I can't say that it was very intensive, but I had a pretty solid plan and schedule and invested not less then an hour every day (with some very rare exceptions).

The whole exam-time starting from entering testing facilities and finishing with printed and stamped results took me around 2.15 hrs. PMI doesn't disclose the scores now (at least they did not that time), but gives you rating (below proficient, moderate proficient and proficient) for each of knowledge areas (plus professional responsibility). I've screwed up on one, everything else was rated as proficient.

Speaking about the preparation process. I've used three books, Andy Crowe's one, PMP Head First, and Rita's. I also have used a bunch of notes and spent a lot of time on solving exams. I believe I've solved more then 1,000 questions, plus the ones which come with every book. I didn't like Rita's book at all. This is no way one can use it to learn something. She is bringing complexities to the things that should be easy and intuitive to any manager. I didn't like her practice questions as well. She make them extremely weird and they are far from what you'll get.

PMP Head First book is very nice to read and understand. I believe that this is a best starters book, but you'll need something to add to it for details. This one book might be not enough. The questions which are in the book are simple, the "last exam" questions which come as download are very good.

Crowe's book is the best one to use with PMP Head First. The questions are good. The material is good. The way of depicting information is good. Overall, this is the best book. The questions are good for concept, but not complex enough to rely for passing an exam.

As for the sample questions, the best are PM Studies and Oliver Lehmann's. The downloadable PMP Head First are also very good. Andy Crowe book questions are good as well.

No surprises, although I had a few questions with English words I wasn't aware of. They were tough even to guess. English is not my native language and I speak three languages actually (Russian, Ukrainian and English). I didn't placed a request for translation (they gave me this option during the exam scheduling) because the translations will use different terminology and they are more confusing then helpful.

As far as I remember I didn't have any network diagram question at all. But I had a bunch of EV calculations. A lot of people are receiving NPV v. EPV question nowadays. I did, too.

No surprises at the test site. I was passing in Glendale, CA (LA county). They have a lock box for you, but they are very strict and force to take off even watches. They gave a simple calculator, although the program has a Calculator button on screen and you can use it as well. The class is not that noisy, but it really interrupts you when somebody new is coming into the class to take a seat. They have a video and audio recording of that quality that they hear even when you start writing on the scratch paper.

Basically, that's all I can remember. ;) Feel free to ask me more questions, but I can't disclose the actual questions (and no PMP should).

New personal finance startup idea

On the grounds of my last post about money management online, I came up with an idea of new personal finance Web application.

So here is the deal:

1. Make a clone of popular desktop application. Either one would be okay. Rich features of the browsers allow you to do almost everything nowadays. Keep in mind, that the most of people have Checking, Savings, Credits and Loans, at least one, for the car. Don't give up on any of these just because you think people don't need it.
2. Keep the style sticky, don't go far in the "ergonomics" and UI and UX design. The people are already stick to some specific ways of handling (and thinking!) of data. Let them stay with it.
3. Use the Google Gears or anything of this kind to let your software work offline.
4. Provide a number of communication tools to your software, like widgets, IM, SMS (text messaging from the cell phones), Web or good old e-mails. Make your software as easy as Twitter is for sending and receiving updates.
5. Don't go far in reports, you're not developing an executive software. But be reasonable in your limits. There some things that everyone wants to know. Make sure you give them a tool for that.
   
6. Give your site an iPhone application, both online and offline. Everybody wants iPhone nowadays. ;) Don't forget about other smartphones. However, it could be a simple e-mail and Web gateway.
   
7. Start with the basic features, be very responsive, provide an ultimate feedback for feature requests and their status, let people know the exact day when they'll receive the feature that they want. You know, this is just numbers, it doesn't take more then a month to add some fancy splits or CSV import. Make your (prospective) clients feel that they are part of the process. Let them know that they will get what they want. (But don't be afraid to say Sorry, but not, yet for ridiculous and unreasonable requests).
8. Make sure you have all features that let people the full visibility about their current financial situation. Don't make the wait for transactions clearance on the credit card, let them see the upcoming expenses, monitor the budget, let them stretch it for urgent needs by taking funds from other categories (for example, let people temporary save on restraunt expenses for the goal of buying a new laptop). Make this visual and straight forwarded. What you really need to deliver is a personal financial tool. People want to be in control and to be able to optimize their funds. Visual way of funds planning and optimization is the easiest way for the most of us.
9. Charge not more then 10 dollars per month (but not much less), don't mess up with different plans. I don't want to count how many accounts do I need to handle, how many transactions would be in each, etc. Give me a choice: get it free or pay for it. But make sure you give it for free. No obligations.
10. Once you're up and running, let the social networking to work. Let people give advices, mark events, whatever not. Develop content dependant advisory system. It'll pay off.
    

Yes, it'd be tough for a first three-five weeks to get the core up and running. After that you can become the next 37signals with a thousands of happy customers.

Online money management

I'm currently digging the Internet for a good, reliable money management online with full functionality on board. What do I need?

1. Accounts for Savings, Checkings, Credit Cards, Loans (different types of, as well as giving and receiving).
2. Ability to add transactions manually and sync them later through uploading any popular data format available by the Download function from the banks. Having system download the data automatically would require me to give up the passwords to it, so I am pretty concerned about sense for this function to me.
3. Split transactions (one transaction split into several categories, like Household and Food, for example). Categories management as well (custom, etc).
4. Schedule transactions and payments by loan, making sure that loan payments are also coming as a split transaction, separating the body of credit and interest.
5. Reports, not much of them, mostly Where did I spend my money during period of time?
6. Budgets, both monitoring and planning. Different budget templates are also a plus.
7. Adding accounts manually, but not only those that's got Internet access.
   
8. Notifications by e-mail and export to Calendar.
9. Import Quicken data would be a huge plus, I'll be moving from Mac Quicken.

I'm not stuck to free solutions, I'd be happy to pay for a reliable one. However, it sounds like it's too much for online money management tools that are on the market today. ;)

As for now, I'm going to give a try to mint.com, moneycenter.yodlee.com, budgetpulse.com, budgettracker.com, clearcheckbook.com, buxfer.com and mvelopes.com. I liked the concept of helpful guidance and tips from wesabe.com, but it's too different from the application that I'm looking for. I'll also try to evaluate expensr.com against my req's. After my last quick look it seemed to be the only one possible solution.

Wondering, why is it so hard to replicate Quicken for Mac, iBank 3 or Moneydance online? Sounds like an easy thing that can become extremely sticky as soon as you provide million of ways to get connected to it. This is a kind of a thing that can be done in a new way, easier and friendlier, and can rock the market.

mint.com can't add transactions manually, so it's out of my list. But it was pretty nice though. It's bad that it misses this functionality and it's very basic for me. However, people say that mint.com still in beta, so there are chances that they finally will decide to deliver this function. I'd be happy to take a look at it then.

moneycenter.yodlee.com looks like it can do everything for me, however, I couldn't pass through linking accounts to it. I couldn't find Bank of America Credit Card there (well, it is in the list, but can't get linked), and I couldn't add an account manually (while it advises me to, it never allows me ;). So, it's out of the list also.

expensr.com has no split transactions, poor account management, no loan accounts, like for a car, or a student loans. No transaction schedule or I didn't find one. I liked it, but still no-go.

budgetpulse.com has no split transactions, account management is manual only, no differentiation on account types (either Checking, or Savings, or Credit card or whatever not), transactions management is pretty weird. It's mostly like an application to monitor your upcoming expenses and incomes and keep the balance. It gives you a bigger picture, but not your day-to-day tool. Not the one that I need.

budgettracker.com looks like the one that really can do everything I need. It's free for basic functionality and extra features cost $2.95/month. Pretty acceptable, however, the interface is very awkward to me. I'm coming from Mac Quicken, so I was looking for something similar, at least, in concepts. Well, budgettracker.com is close on concept, but very overloaded. Keeping in mind the Web application needs to have fewer steps them the desktop one (just because it's Web and every step doesn't have the same response time as on desktop application), the budgettracker.com is too much overcomplexified. But I think it'll become pretty useful as soon as you get used to it. Two things I do not like about it. First, it doesn't seems very reliable and I don't know what is the future of it (it looks like a very minor player on the market). Second, I didn't like to get to know that it's advertised on For Sale By Publisher here. This might be a business model, but doesn't sound like a very solid one.

mvelopes. This one is very expensive comparing to all other choices. It has got three plan.

1. 2-Year Plan is $189.60, charged every two years and equals to $7.90/month,
2. 1-Year Plan is $129.60, charged annually and equals to $10.80/month,
3. Quarterly Plan is $39.60 and equals to $13.20/month.

All these options sound pretty expensive. But I decided still give it a try using the free 30-days trial. First thing that smelled bad was the termination policy.

Please note, due to security reasons, requests for cancellation can only be processed by chatting directly with a Customer Service Representative. As such, cancellation requests transmitted to us by any other means (e.g. email, voicemail, etc.) will not be honored.

This means that they will try to feed me to their sales people before they will let me go. I hate that. But let's go ahead. In overall picture, mvelopes looks like a pretty solid product with a lot of functionality.

However there is one thing that makes it pretty tough for me. Originally, it's not intuitive transaction-based budget system. They are starting from the side of spending categories, called envelopes there. They don't care about your transactions (actually, they do, but don't make it straight-forwarded), but they do care about how much did you spend on each category.

I should say that their budgeting system is pretty nice and one of the best that I saw ever (even in the desktop applications). However, I need to be able to easier see the direct connection between my every single transaction and spending categories. I want to apply budgets to my actual actions, but not to adjust my actions to the budget fields.

Well, you can get used to it though. Once their concept is in your head, you're cool. However, they don't have schedules (or I didn't find them). If there are schedules, they did the great job to hide them very well. Otherwise, it's even more surprising how they did such a solid system and have no schedules there. To my understanding, schedule of transactions is a very important tool to proper funds management.

Overall I liked the mvelopes the most, however, they miss the schedule and they are pretty expensive. They deliver a nice set of functionality though. I'll keep them in mind, however, their "envelope" concept is an awkward for me. I also need to see how easily they will let me go out of the trial. ;)

clearcheckbook.com looks nice and very simple. It has no loan type of accounts though. And interface is not very good. Its dashboard could be more effective and much more informative. Not that "linked", mostly manual tool. I liked it minimalism, but I hated it at the same time. Overall, it's a nice free tool, has Google and Mac OS dashboard widgets, some AJAX in a appropriate places, but can't make me stick to it.

Originally, Quicken Online sounded like a good choice, but it misses split transactions. A no-go for me, I have too many split transactions, to keep everything in order. They also miss budgets. Very important for me, almost no-go. The reports are very weak. Not a big deal for me, they have some other way for building charts, besides, this is not actually something that I'd really miss. One of the most important things is that there are too many complains in their forum for paying for incomplete product. Not a good sign.

buxfer makes me feel a little bit dumb with all its tags. It's also not very "automatic", so relies a lot of manual processing. The splitting of transactions is very weird process. It looks like it was done just check the box in the feature list, but nobody thought about people who'll be using it. As I already said, tags, words, groups: all these are very confusing jargon. I would prefer to stick to common sense ones or to be clear on the correct usage.

P.S. I'll try to keep my requirements list updated as soon as I'll recall more features that I depend on. ;)