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/productivity: tips and methods for getting things done
65 Plays7 months ago
Erik Przekop joins James and Aaron today to talk about different personal productivity methods, team dynamics, and what it means to be a consultant versus just filling a role. They dive deep into practical productivity tips, and team safety.
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Transcript
Fungibility of Team Members and Communication
00:00:07
Speaker
And a part of that is also thinking in terms of when you build a team, thinking about them as fungible resources. Like I need another, I need another Java shaped human to go into this slot. Humans have to work together, form relationships. You don't get things done because of what you know. You get things done because of how you communicate what you know.
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the Forward Slash, where we lean into the future of IT. I'm your host, Aaron Chesney, with my beautiful co-host, James Carmen. Today, we have Eric Preskopf with us. You may be asking yourself, who is Eric Preskopf?
Eric Preskopf's Professional Background
00:00:50
Speaker
Well, Eric started his career in the 90s as an independent software developer. He built custom software for dozens of clients throughout the 90s and 2000s, and helped them adopt client server, thin client and service-oriented architectures.
00:01:04
Speaker
In the early 2000s, Eric worked at a few larger companies as an employee and a manager. He learned the ins and outs of making change happen from the inside. This is also where he learned what agile means, like a cheetah, and how to use agile methods to rapidly develop solutions.
00:01:27
Speaker
He has been a leader in software consulting since 2014 and has been part of several consulting organizations of wildly different sizes.
Eric's Productivity Interests and Humor
00:01:35
Speaker
His interests include everything from large language models to personal and team productivity to transforming enterprises for business and technology agility. Well, thank you. I've never been described as a cheetah before. it's that Anybody who's seen me run would disagree with that, but but thank you for that intro. That's awesome.
00:01:54
Speaker
metaphorically. I love how he just. ad libs these intros. You know what I mean? Like just come off the cuff, does all, he remembers all this about you, Eric. This is, this is amazing. This is amazing. And another thing you might be asking yourself is who is this Eric pres cop guy? I thought we were going to be hearing from Eric per Z cop or something like your your name confuses everyone. So if they see it in the title living, they wait that the polls love their consonants. So yes, bring as many of them together as possible.
00:02:26
Speaker
We didn't misspell the title. That is actually how his name is spelled. Lizzie is first. That is true. ZB4E except after X. All
Personal Productivity Systems
00:02:38
Speaker
right. So you mentioned in your, not you mentioned, Aaron mentioned in your intro about you doing stuff with like, and I think you and I are very aligned here, but I want to hear your kind of take on personal productivity systems. that's That's a pretty interesting topic, not very dear to my heart. Actually, I'm giving a talk tomorrow on GTD, so love to hear your thoughts.
00:03:06
Speaker
I will definitely attend to your talk. I think I've already, I've already accepted that one. But yeah, personal productivity. So I can, I can be quite scatterbrained. So for me, it was kind of out of necessity. I had to really dive into that. And the more I get into it, the more I would geek out on various personal productivity systems. I started with GTD and I've moved through probably a dozen different systems. Most of them are a derivative of GTD in one way or another. So what's GTD?
00:03:37
Speaker
I thought you'd never ask. It's ah David Allen's um productivity system called Getting Things Done. and He just takes he just gives up puts a process around getting things done. Essentially, you know you capture things and you always want to have ubiquitous capture. You want to be able to pull things in.
00:03:55
Speaker
whenever they occur to you, whenever you encounter them, you need to curate that information. I don't know if that's exactly what his words are and make sense of it, put hard edges on it so that you can actually take actions on it. You need to prioritize and then actually perform the various actions. And he puts a whole process around it. There's a weekly review involved in it, et cetera. um It's a pretty well thought through system.
00:04:22
Speaker
James, you you love it, obviously, because that's something that you're I do. I do very much. I'm still kind of, I would consider myself a noob. I haven't quite got myself down to the like full on habit mode with GTD of making sure I capture things. I'm pretty good, but I feel like um I got a long way to go. And I don't know if that ever wears off or if like, there's like, you know, multiple levels of, you know, I think when it comes to it. So what's, what's putting hard edges on a task?
00:04:52
Speaker
basically making things actionable. So you might get some kind of very vague task like, I need to put together a presentation for the next all hands meeting, let's say. And that's not, I mean, it's actionable, but what are you going to put into it? What's the content? How are you going to gather the content? Thinking through those things and putting sub
Information Management with Second Brain Concept
00:05:14
Speaker
tasks into it, thinking through, you know, what are the things I have to do? What are the dependencies and laying all those things out for yourself? So essentially the planning work.
00:05:22
Speaker
and clarifying what it is you actually need to get done and how you want to go about it. Some people need more planning than others. I tend to plan quite a bit and then probably change my plans in the last minute, but I still find it valuable to do the planning exercise.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the big thing for me that helps me is, and and I'm very much like this when I think of like something big, like you're saying, I got to put a presentation together for an all hands. It's, it can feel overwhelming, right? That this is kind of a big thing, especially presentations take me forever forever, but like just, just coming up with what is the very next thing I can do to kind of get this ball moving, you know, down the field that that to me has been the the breakthrough for me to help me, you know,
00:06:07
Speaker
get get my productivity rolling and and and do better when it comes to that. Yeah, the alternative is just to wait until you've got a looming deadline and then start tackling all the details at once. um Some people work well. like I can't remember who it was, but there was some book or another that I read. The author booked himself a round trip flight to Tokyo in order to write the book that I was reading.
00:06:33
Speaker
he had all his notes on his computer. He booked the round trip because the only way he could do it was last minute and he had to be completely focused on it and for whatever reason he worked best when on a plane and for him it was and it was also right before his publisher deadline.
00:06:47
Speaker
so I don't agree with that strategy. Yeah, I think that's that's a little much. That wasn't the book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F, is it? It might have been. It might have been. I have read that, and I read another one by him more recently. I couldn't tell you what the title is because I just read too many books to keep track of them all. Yeah. and That just reminded me of him. like mark I think it's Mark Manson is the guy's name.
00:07:15
Speaker
That sounds very him to to schedule a flight and write the book on the flight. Yeah. I guess instead of work in progress, he just says things are just up in the air. yeah oh I didn't know we were at our dad jokes section already. That was a freebie. Oh, you threw that one in for free.
00:07:37
Speaker
Somebody say dad jokes. Because you know, what is it working I accidentally handed my wife a glue stick instead of chapstick. She still wasn't speaking to me. Nice. You know, I was I was reading a news article today that YouTube Twitter and Facebook are all going to merge into this new like super social media platform called you twit face.
00:08:05
Speaker
ah joke that's awesome how How do cows stay up to date? They read the newspaper, the moose paper.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, back to the interview. um ah Productivity stuff. So I do want to say, one thing I wanted to bring up too, since
Organizing Information to Reduce Mental Load
00:08:28
Speaker
we're talking about productivity is, I think you've heard of him, but a gentleman by the name of Tiago Forte, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly,
00:08:36
Speaker
um he's he's got He's got a very strange smile. He looks slightly psychotic when he smiles, but he's a really sharp guy. And he's got a couple of podcasts out there as well. He came up with this whole building a second brain idea, and I believe he's got a book by that title as well. And your second brain is essentially some kind of note system, which i've I've had those many of them over the years. And so I've now switched to Joplin, which is an open source one. That's working really well for me. It syncs across all my devices, et cetera.
00:09:06
Speaker
but the concept of building a second brain centers around having, not only having a whole lot of notes, but having them arranged in such a way that you can find what you're looking for, that your information source prompts you with what you're looking for, meaning that if, if I've got things categorized in such a way that if I'm looking at, say, consulting practices, right, I wanna give a talk on, um you know, what are the essential consulting skills that you need.
00:09:33
Speaker
I can look in there and I can see things about emotional intelligence. I can see things about communication skills and building relationships. And I've got those nicely separated under a header, or at least it's searchable. And that's the end result of spending a lot of time on doing curation on this knowledge store, this second brain, so that you don't have to keep too much in your head. Because like I can't remember a damn thing, so I have to have some kind of information source.
00:09:59
Speaker
So how how do you balance the time spent creating the second brain with actually doing the things that you're planning to do? Because I know like if if you geek out on doing all the planning and organizing all your thoughts, then you know you turn around and the next thing you know, it's Friday and deadline's here, right? So where's that trade off at?
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, it takes a long time to build it up, right? Because I might only capture one or two things in a day that are going into that. It's it's not something that I'm constantly adding to. um I have other information stores, like I keep a ah big mind map, an electronic version of a mind map handy for capturing things. And I only will pull things out of that periodically and stick that into my Joplin notes. So number one, it doesn't take a lot of time. So I'm only adding to it slowly. Whenever I go and get something out of it, if there's an opportunity to curate a little bit, like put a better like, Oh, the thing that I just found doesn't have a good description at the top of this note about what's in here. I'll add one.
00:11:05
Speaker
especially since I just read it. I kind of got that in top of mine. And that also helps me because if I had a hard time finding something, I will put a few keywords in at the top to make it easier to search from whatever mindset I'm in at the time as I'm as i'm looking for it. So those are the kinds of things. It's an iterative process, I guess is the short answer.
00:11:26
Speaker
So it kind of sounds like, like what you would do with like bookmarks for your web browser, you know, sorting them into folders and things like that, but just more advanced, like advanced bookmarking in organization. Like if you had like your topics for, you know,
00:11:45
Speaker
like, I don't know, games and travel and food and things like that, that you would bookmark in your separate folders so that you go back and find them later on. Or music or whatever. Yeah, it's funny you say that because I do have a rather extensive nested set of bookmarks in my browser. So yeah, I do that as well.
00:12:13
Speaker
But you could take those links and put them into your second brand thing like if it's like you as as like a reference point as well. yeah I often do, especially for... like Sometimes I'll take an entire folder. If I just happen to pull something together, it's sticking in my bookmarks bar in Firefox here. and If I'm pulling together a few things in there, I'll...
00:12:36
Speaker
might take that entire folder worth of bookmarks and copy pasta that into a note with some description about what sorts of things are in here because I found that useful especially if I'm working with a team on something and I want to be able to share a set of resources, a set of links. So having it in a note, I can spit out, you know, quick and dirty a PDF or just copy it because Joplin uses Markdown for its format so, you know, embedded links are are pretty easy to copy around from that.
00:13:04
Speaker
and I end up with a really nice set of curated links that I can share with people. And it sounds like I've got a great memory and I really know what I'm talking about. Sometimes the second part is true, but the first part is definitely not. I rely on notes for that. Yeah, that's probably the area that i'm that I struggle the most with when it comes to GTD is the reference side
Staff Augmentation vs. Consulting
00:13:28
Speaker
of things. I don't um' hardly ever,
00:13:31
Speaker
keep things and I mean, I'll put like notes on the tasks that have like links to things that I need to reference here and there. But when it comes to like keeping links to things off to the side that I'm going to come back to as a reference later, I, I guess my brain is like, I can find those things pretty easily or in heck with chat GBT nowadays. I can just say, what was that book that I read that talked about neurochemistry, blah, blah, blah, you know, those sorts of things. Um, yeah, that is a good question.
00:14:01
Speaker
I wonder if that's something a large language model might give us someday soon. i I actually tried to do that. There was a Joplin plugin, but it was kind of flaky. It was essentially mating up a an LLM to your individual Joplin notes and give you that semantic search capability where the language model would interpret what you were looking for, and it would also index all of your notes.
00:14:27
Speaker
in its own special way. But i it was kind of flaky and would sometimes cause Joplin to crash. So I removed it. It might have gotten better. I'm not sure I haven't looked at looked at it in about six months.
Managing Information Overload
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, I i mean, I'm kind of My system for for tracking that kind of stuff is like, I'm a post-it guy. Like i'm I'm that guy that's got like a thousand post-its across his desk. That's great for little nodes. And it's like, okay, what note was that? and And a lot of times the problem is, is the search through the pile, right? So having that kind of stuff indexed in and searchable and having it organized into
00:15:11
Speaker
locations the only thing for me is that there's I've got this weird thing with thinking with you know paper and pencil or pen and pen and paper. I I'm really old school. I prefer pencil but um because I've tried I've tried doing like the one note thing and um the ever note. I'm just like I just can't it doesn't it's not tangible enough for me. So, you know, maybe um I'll have to give this another shot with with that because I do like the idea of having
00:15:52
Speaker
ah Central source that's available on multiple platforms. So it was like oh I wrote this down at home and now I'm you know in the car or you know and on a different location and I got some information Maybe I'm at a client, you know, and I need to pull up something quick because they reference something you know being able to do that is there's a there's a lot of power to that and Yeah, it's extremely useful. And I know what you mean, though, about wanting that tangible paper. The act of writing, I think, really helps me remember something or really helps me wrap my head around it and get, you know, just give me a little extra something to grab on to some context there.
00:16:36
Speaker
I got around that to some extent by, I started using mind maps a few years ago. I use a tool called Xmind. um And it's just a, I type things in the mind map. I always use a logic chart style mind map. I don't use the, that goes off in every particular direction. But it so it's, but I can drag and drop the little nodes in there. I can add color to them, which I do. I keep a copy of icon finder open, usually in a browser at all times. And I just constantly drop little icons on them.
00:17:06
Speaker
And that is, it keeps me more interested in what I'm doing. it's It's fun, right? It's just fun to make these colorful things. And it's much more engaging to look at later. But then I can take those, grab a quick screenshot of it and drop it into Joplin, which I do often. And I share that stuff too. But you can also just copy the root node in there and paste it in Joplin or pretty much any word processor. And it'll give you an outline format of it.
00:17:29
Speaker
So you've got the searchable text and I'll usually just drop the text below the screenshot. Cause I want to look at the screenshot, but I can find it because it's got the searchable text below it. But yeah, the copy pasta from a mind map has been, that's how a lot of things get into my notes these days. Yes. I capture them first in a mind map. And then I go back and look at that a couple of times a week. I'll go back and see what the hell did I talk about two days ago with this person? You know, and as I'm digging through that, it's like, Oh yeah, I want to keep that.
Impact of Team Changes
00:17:57
Speaker
You know, one one thing I started doing too is if I do write something down and I want to utilize it elsewhere is to quick snap a photo of it, right? Because it's so easy to take pictures of things now.
00:18:14
Speaker
Take a quick photo. You can attach that in your notes. And if you wanted it searchable, you can always transcribe it down at a certain point too, right? Yeah, you if you got the right notes software, it will do it can oftentimes do OCR on any images you put in there too. Evernote did that.
00:18:37
Speaker
I don't know if Joplin does or not. I honestly never never checked. I didn't use the feature all that often because I got in the habit of typing in summaries of things.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, Aaron, the problem with your post-it note system, the key for like getting things done and for your for your brain to like relax and be able to focus is, ah my analogy I always use with people is like it's like you're having to spin plates to remember things. So there's brain cycles that have to happen to keep those plates spinning.
00:19:09
Speaker
When you offload something onto a post-it note, if you don't, if you can't rely on that system reliably and you know, this is, this is going to get processed and this is going to get taken care of. It's almost like you didn't write it down at all. Cause your brain can't like, okay, hi, I can rely on that. i I can stop spending any cycles on that anymore. I don't have to think about, it I know the process is in place where that will be taken care of and it's a clean separation. It's just done wipe, you know, wipe your hands of it. So.
00:19:39
Speaker
That's what you need to load. It's a great way of looking at it because it's, I've only got like maybe at most four bits to work with up here. So, you know, with that in mind, I have to have, I have to have someplace I can put all of it that I know I can search because like I can't remember all the things that come my way. I wish, like this is one of those, like I've tried, you know, I've got kids, I've got three daughters and And as I'm learning these things, you know, I started off in software engineering, right? So I learned everything I could about coding and all of those things, but not until later in life, like my mid 40s, did I start like thinking about like leadership and how to work well with others, right?
00:20:15
Speaker
You guys worked with me before I started doing that. So you guys know, you're like, yeah, no kidding, right? Um, especially, um, but I wish I had something like GTD when I first started. Like I wish I could like get my daughter, but of course, everything dad says, he's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about. But I'm like, you need to read this. You need to like to to bake this into your life, right?
00:20:38
Speaker
Uh, if I had it back when I was a consultant early on, I think that like, that's a crucial, I think of it like a consulting skill, right?
Franklin Planning System
00:20:45
Speaker
Like that, that absolutely could, should and could be part of my daily work to to make me more effective as a, you know, developer, consultant, whatever you want to say. Well, when I first started out, um, we were actually required to learn the Franklin planning system.
00:21:05
Speaker
which you know um I'm dating myself a little bit there, but it was, that was each one of us was required to carry and maintain a Franklin Planner as part of that. And it was it was provided by the company, the refills were provided by the company and you were expected to use it. And that was, that kind of forced us early on to kind of thinking think in this kind of prioritized task kind of format of what is it you need to get do to
Consulting Skills in Business
00:21:40
Speaker
do? What are your goals? What, you know, how do you break those goals down? Cause one of my, one of my favorite phrases for planning is don't try the, or the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Right. So, um, you know, break it down into those bite sized chunks that you can accomplish and eventually you'll get to where you're going.
00:22:05
Speaker
So that, you know, I think that was a very helpful start to my career to have that tool kind of forced that thrust upon me. You know, you will submit to the Franklin planner and beat us over the head with it. What's that? I said, you will organize information. Yes. Now, did you have to have like a kite with a key hanging from it or anything like that? Was that part of the Franklin system or, you know,
00:22:34
Speaker
Um, ah that was the digital version. oh i said that that was the electric version yeah that' the electronic the electric version yes I really got a charge out of that when that was going up with the dad jokes. That's wonderful. Yeah. I found one. Oh, go ahead. Oh, doing did you have more? You wanted to add on that?
00:22:59
Speaker
Just that, um because you were saying, James was saying it's a consulting skill, and i it it just triggered the thought for me. I think it's a professional survival skill for all of us now. We've just got so much information coming at us. And our productivity is, for any kind of knowledge work, is just through the roof. So if you don't have some kind of system in place, you either need to have just a truly phenomenal memory and recall and just you know keep things organized in your brain. And there are a few people I've known who are like that.
00:23:29
Speaker
but the vast majority of us aren't. So you got to have some kind of system if you just want to be able to keep up. And is this like something that could be trained or is it more of a, you got to dive in and kind of mold it for yourself? Yeah, I think both. I think I've never been successful with an out of the box productivity system and I've tried quite a few of them.
00:23:59
Speaker
But I have, it has given me enough. I think once I realized that I should just customize GTD and keep the parts that work for me and throw away the ones that didn't, it got a lot more useful. And that was quite a while ago though, because I think I read that book when it was still on the best seller list, which was, was that 2000 late nights? Yeah. 20 something years ago. Yeah.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. And that it's, it's so funny you mentioned that, um, like taking going by the book and throwing, you know, customizing for what that that's just reminds me of like agile, right? Like, so that's, that's exactly what everybody has to do with agile. You know, we're, we're a scrum shop. Ain't no scrum shop that does it by the book. If they do, they've been doing it for about four minutes, right? Like they'll eventually have to, to adapt and and make it their own, which it's not bad thing. I think the guidelines were there, but you absolutely have to make things your own.
Customizing Agile Practices
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, it can turn into religious scrum or or scrummer fall in that case where it's just much more of a, we're Agilent name only because we are doing the ceremonies, we are doing the daily standups, and we're not doing the actual iterative and adaptive things that go along with that, not using it for the way it was intended.
00:25:14
Speaker
Is that your anal? Is that what that would be? Agile and name only. I like that. That's good. yeah i've never know data i want I want to mix the terms zealot and agile together to make like, you know, like zealoty or something, but it's not working.
00:25:33
Speaker
agile that's a good That's a good way to put it though. that we They can be very, very much like a zealot. and I think of like when religious or litigious almost, right? Like you you you get like down and dirty, like people get really nasty about these, you know, well you have to do your standup in this way, you know? yeah Uh, just gets crazy. I saw, I see that as an opportunity when somebody says, Oh, we're fully agile. We do daily standups. It's like, Oh, okay. That's, that's, that's, that's con that's the consulting skill coming out right there is you know nas one of, uh, the most interesting retro items I think I've ever had is. Do we actually need our standups? And I was like, Oh, that's an interesting question.
00:26:21
Speaker
And so we talked about a little bit. I mean, we came out of there saying, it's like, yeah, but we need to reduce what we're saying. Because for us to get value out of it, it's got to be snappy, right?
Effective Daily Standup Meetings
00:26:30
Speaker
it's It really needs to be, this is where I'm at, this is what I'm doing. I don't have any blockers, next person can go.
00:26:39
Speaker
right um you know Marching along, um everything's good. move on and uh because ah you know a lot of people will pontificate and they'll start getting into design discussions during stand-up and everybody else is going uh you know and and their eyes roll back into the back of their head and or they start multitasking and then they're not doing no they're not participating in that especially in this you know remote jungle that we we work in now um
00:27:12
Speaker
Now that's kind of funny, remote and jungle go well together. I didn't plan it that way. It worked out. a You know, I started digging in the sand, found a gold nugget. Um, but you know, with us all being remote and stuff, it's very easy for us to get off meeting and start multitasking. When somebody starts talking about something that you're either a not involved with.
00:27:41
Speaker
or B, you don't care about, or C, you've already answered it and now they're just pontificating on your answer. um And that can be ah that can be a symptom of oftentimes other team dysfunctions too, right? If somebody feels the need to give you every last detail of what they've been working on for the last couple of days, they might not feel safe. You know what I mean? They might feel that they're their job is somehow threatened unless they can justify that they've been spending their time wisely. And maybe maybe you need to increase safety a bit for the team. Model some behavior for them. So that's an that's an interesting thought, increasing safety for team members. Can you expand on that a little bit? Yeah. How would you have to do something like that?
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Well, that's a big part of that is if people don't feel safe, they're going to be defensive, right?
Creating a Safe Team Environment
00:28:35
Speaker
if they don't And by safe, I simply mean that they feel like their job is not secure or that they're threatened either with potentially losing their role on the team or not being seen as being as good as some of the other people on the team. And you get that kind of behavior oftentimes in more traditional organizations where Especially if you've got a leader in there who tends towards the authoritarian way of doing things. So to increase safety, you might have to you know have a talk with that leader. They might not realize they're doing it. They might not understand that that these behaviors, when when you demand that somebody already has this information, it's like, why didn't you know that ahead of time?
00:29:22
Speaker
Getting them to change behaviors like that can make a big difference for the team or just getting them to not come to your meeting or having a one-off meeting, you know, and then catching that leader up later in a manner that they're more accustomed to. Um, but yeah, if people don't feel safe, they're going to be very defensible. If they say they're going to tell you everything is great, they're never going to bring problems to the team. And that means the problems don't get solved and stand up and stand up as useless. I've, I've also seen the opposite end of the spectrum on management style be an issue as well.
Enhancing Team Communication
00:29:52
Speaker
You give, you know, um, there's not enough involvement from management. Then there there's that fear and uncertainty. Like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking because they never say anything about anything. Right. Um, they're so hands off that I don't know where I stand. So I'm going to, I'm going to give more information than I need to, because I'm not getting any kind of feedback at all.
00:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's a big danger when you've got a team that's all contractor or all consultants, because nobody has those relationships yet to get you know to to go and challenge the management folks or the leaders and say, hey, we don't know what to do. You guys go need to give us some more direction here. um And that's also why That's also why staff augmentation style work isn't always as effective as people hope it's going to be. Like, I'm going to go get a group of really talented programmers from this staff aug company that i that I've heard of. And they're all really great at, you know, this they're top-notch .NET developers and we've got some good front-end people, but they can't produce anything because there's nobody on that team who's advocating for giving them enough information to work on. What are the requirements of this thing? Why are these requirements? What's the business value of doing this?
00:31:12
Speaker
You know, build the right thing, not just build the thing right. Yeah, it's a double-edged sword when you have developers who are really fast at building things. They can build the wrong thing very fast, right? And spend a lot of your money. Yeah, it's really important to to make sure you're building but the right thing. And in there're in the forming, storming, and norming is a very real thing. And you can feel it when you add when you add too much change into a team. You can really feel that that drag on
00:31:43
Speaker
your your velocity as a team unit when you make those kind of additions or changes. And it can be from any level. You add too many new developers, it'll slow down because now we've got to bring them up to speed and they've got to gel with the team. You change management. Okay, now we've got to break in a new manager and we don't know his style and and that kind of thing.
00:32:05
Speaker
um Even even like some who whatever role is writing your stories for your storyboard. And you know it could be like, okay, now we got to get used to their style of story. So we got to figure out what these requirements are.
00:32:20
Speaker
and what they're thinking when they write requirements. So, yeah. yep And having that, yeah, I know what you mean because, and a part of that is also thinking in terms of when you build a team, thinking about them as fungible resources.
Success Through Relationships and Communication
00:32:37
Speaker
Like I need another Java shaped human to go into this slot. Humans have to work together, form relationships. You don't get things done because of what you know, you get things done because of how you communicate what you know, if that makes sense. Oh yeah, absolutely. I've, I've absolutely worked with some brilliant people that were a pain in the butt to work with, um, because of their, their style or sometimes it was their, their hubrisness. Sometimes it was their, they, they may be closed-minded to opposing opinions and things like that. And you know, the typical things that, that are,
00:33:21
Speaker
you know, fostered in a two way communication. And um it can be a problem. it It could just be, you know, abruptness. In some cases, you know, ah but yeah, that's not having those communication skills readily and brilliant, it brilliant jerk syndrome, I think it's referred to as in some circles, right? That's we just call it James.
00:33:45
Speaker
yeah
00:33:50
Speaker
Hey, I have been called a brilliant jerk. I appreciated the brilliant part, right? Yeah, that's awesome. It's a backhanded compliment. Yeah, yeah. I thought maybe maybe the English wasn't their primary language or something. They didn't know what jerk meant. is what i That's what I just assumed, right? Oh, you just you just picked the wrong noun there. You definitely worked on the jerk part, then. I can tell you what. Well, so you're saying I lost the brilliant part.
00:34:19
Speaker
It's been five years since I've done day-to-day coding. So i don't I don't know if I have those skills anymore. but Oh, I'm sure you'd be fine. it's ah It's not quite like riding a bike, but it's not too far off. um i found want you if If I compare with somebody, I can usually pick up whatever it is again. If I'm on my own, it's going to take a lot longer. It's like riding a bike with a rusty chain. It takes a little while to ease it back. Yeah. Well, you you bring up a good point about the team aspect. i think that We're learning more and more. Yeah. Okay. 10 X engineers can get a lot done, but I think we're learning more and more that. A good team that works together, regardless of how you don't you don't need 10 X folks on those teams or you just need a good solid team of people working together that trust one another.
00:35:05
Speaker
and been together a while, you know, you talk about the forming, storming, norming, performing stuff. That's, that's really important. I think it's one of the areas where agile falls short is people, they're like, okay, we're going to do this agile thing. Uh, what does that mean? Well, that just means we have to come together every morning, tell everybody what we're doing. And then we go off into our corners again. And then every couple of weeks we get together and complain about everything that's wrong and the retro and All that stuff. I think people don't focus enough on collaboration, getting people together to work together because there is a tendency to like, okay, can we go there? And then going off in our own way to do our own little, you know, tasks off in the side. and And people even set it up like that when they're running the board and look at a story, everybody gets their own little task. And that means everybody just scatters and goes and does their task. And then.
00:35:55
Speaker
Nobody works together. and I think that's where Agile fails for me most of the time is that that symptom is probably the biggest thing for me. Yeah, I completely agree. i think i think ah and I'm not just saying this because my job is service delivery. But um i also I think that if you don't have somebody there who is focused on the actual delivery of the product of the software, that's where a lot of teams fall apart. You need someone who who at least one person who knows what success looks like.
Leadership's Role in Team Focus
00:36:22
Speaker
for a software team who can do those things like you know when you're on a stand-up and people are just pontificating or rambling to keep them focused. When you're in a retro, somebody to say that, okay, great, so we've got a, we've identified these six things. Which one thing are we going to work on in the next week and try to make this thing better? What do we all want to improve? Take a vote, keep things moving and keep the team keep the team focused on you know getting to their end goal.
00:36:48
Speaker
and making those little corrections, know knowing enough about how the process works to be able to see what's a dysfunctional thing that the team is doing and what what might you do to make that better. Yeah, and that can be literally anybody on the team. As a matter of fact, there's there's been teams where we would assign it as a role for, you know,
00:37:12
Speaker
When you like for meetings that had time sensitive things as part of like arcades, okay, we don't want to talk more than like five minutes on each story when we're trying to um ah refine the story and Um, you know, so we'd have a timekeeper, uh, we had a release wrangler is I think the term that we used for it. You know, it was like, okay, you're going to, you know, one of your focuses is to make sure that we have everything we need for our next release. And then we had like a cadence cop, which would, you know, be, um, you know, if you're taking too long and stand up, they're gonna be like, Hey, all right, this is, let's take it to a parking lot. Right. Um,
00:37:58
Speaker
and Well, which is what we called like our things to discuss after stand up. It's not literally, let's go outside and throw down. Put up your dukes.
Innovative Team Roles for Productivity
00:38:11
Speaker
Nice Adam Sandler reference there, I think. I think that's what that was. I think I got the talking goat there. The talking goat. What do you think? I got no dukes. I got no dukes. That was nice, Aaron.
00:38:30
Speaker
ah Yeah. ah
00:38:34
Speaker
That's why I love my co-host. Right. um Sounds like another movie I need to see, because I think I might have missed that one. it's I'm culturally- It's an audio track. it was ah It was one of his album releases. It was the What the Hell Happened to Me album by Adam Sandler. And there was this thing on there about a talking goat. So you it's very funny.
00:38:57
Speaker
It's a good bit. I like the talking go fit. That whole album was great. Yeah. All right. I don't even know what we were talking about. Agile and failures of Agile and nobody working together as a team. I call this a free ranging conversation. Yeah. Yeah. So why don't we take a break and do ship it or skip it. Ooh.
00:39:22
Speaker
and
00:39:25
Speaker
I don't know if that'll, that'll stay as the the clip, but I like it. We, we had, didn't we get a jingle last time? Our last guest came up with a jingle for us. I think we should use that. That was fantastic. Yeah. Maybe we should just have each one of our guests give us a jingle for shifters. So as your,
00:39:55
Speaker
yeah ah ship it lets one more there and che me
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah. Well done. oh
00:40:08
Speaker
What do you got for the ships and skips? Alright, so the first one on the ship it or skip it list is the Franklin planning system. It does still exist out there. um It's, you know, of course been digitized. It's no longer like paper paper folders and and notebook refills. But you're you're not going to find a Franklin Kobe store anymore. Yeah, I'd it's i say skip it. it's ah It's too structured, not flexible enough. I have seen kind of the digital version of it. But because now we have good full text search, you don't really need to put quite that much structure into it. And Franklin's a bit too limiting, I think. Yeah.
00:40:53
Speaker
I would concur with that. Uh, the, the thing that I think that, and we've talked about this a bit, Eric, right? Like the sweet spot for me for GTD is kind of that like. that middle ground with the notion of projects and Franklin focuses on those, you know, checkboxy tasks and stuff like that. Right. But, you know, you can, yes, I can check off a task, but there needs to be that placeholder of that overall outcome you're trying to achieve. I finished the very next thing that needs to be done, but I'm not actually to the outcome yet. So there needs to be a placeholder for me to anchor to that and say, okay, now I have to come up with what is the next.
00:41:28
Speaker
action to do. That's why I like GTD because it kind of covers that middle ground and doesn't let me lose sight of those those bigger kind of chunks of things that need to be done. Yeah. but One of the keys for me, just a little interjection about about GTD is ah the weekly review. i rarely do them or i don't I rarely do them on a weekly cadence. It's usually like every couple or three weeks I'll get to it, i do but I do it daily because i just things just get so messy, but i I'll do a top to bottom you know make some coherent sense out of it every couple, three weeks. Yeah. I think I want to be on the same page as James. Well, both of you actually, um, I I'm a skip it as well. I do think it's too rigid and it is very easy, even though they do have like
00:42:15
Speaker
you know, major goals, minor goals, and like a breakdown system.
Balancing Personal and Professional Priorities
00:42:19
Speaker
It's very easy to lose track of those when you're doing it. I'm also not a huge fan of their priority system, um you know, with the, with the way they prioritize tasks. It's like, well, I don't, if I have, you know, three, eight tasks that I have to do across different channels and it just doesn't, you know, it's just,
00:42:46
Speaker
To me, putting everything in one list is a little difficult, especially since you know we've got work-life balance type things. you know I've got my honey-do list and my work-do list. in you know And I've got to manage both of those things. And I want a system that I can do both of those things in so I can balance those depending on the time of day.
00:43:14
Speaker
great Yep. I mean, if it'll be of assistance to you, Aaron, I mean, at at work, I mean, if you'd like, we can call you honey so that you just have one list. Would that help? So you have a honeydew lists. Well, ah so you must have missed the memo because most people are already calling me honey. Oh, okay. I i always thought you'd look more like a sweet pea to me, but okay. He does have a sweet pea vibe about it. Doesn't he?
00:43:42
Speaker
a shu matt's blushing look we ruined it eric he's blushing all right so we'll but we've done our first shippiter skip it and we' thorough embarrassed our you um so The next one I have on the list is VR as a work tool. I've talked with some different people about this and have seen some things, but VR is a productivity tool.
00:44:11
Speaker
as a productivity tool. I don't think we're there yet. With it, I think as a as a work tool for like doing overlays when you're when you need to remotely have somebody do repairs and things like that on machinery, that's the kind of VR I think is useful as a working tool. I've seen that work in specific very specific circumstances, but VR for productivity The problem I think most of us have is just with focus more than it is with getting enough information in your face at once So I'm not I would say I would say skip it At this point I'd go more towards skip it than ship it What do you think Aaron I'll let you go next um, so I'm a little on the fence I'm leading toward ship it because having
00:45:02
Speaker
if you If you go total VR and not AR, right, which is the augmented reality, right?
VR as a Productivity Tool
00:45:09
Speaker
If you go total VR, you have that kind of sensory deprivation effect of being focused on what's in front of you. um So I do think that is it's good. i I do feel like it's a bit jarring though, especially for like doing it a long portion of the day. I feel like the weight, I think there's like physical implication implications of, you know, it's, it's hard enough sometimes for us to keep our, our heads off the desk. Um, you know, at the end of the day and adding that extra weight to it is, it may just give us more, more issues than we get from sitting at a desk. Yeah.
00:46:02
Speaker
you know So, um um, I'm kind of in the fence, but I do lean towards it because I think there's some value to that, that deprivation of external, um, stimuli, especially for a remote worker. Yeah. Um, I'm probably on the skip it for now, like, as far as like, would I use it day to day to get my work done? However, I do think I love the idea of research and development in this area. I think it's really right.
00:46:33
Speaker
for research and development. I think there could be some really cool applications. I'm kind of against, because my eyes, as I get older, I don't know if it's just an old thing or if it's because I look at screens all day. like Anything that makes me look at a screen more often is is kind of on my naughty list right now, because my eyes have just gotten worse and worse and worse so as I get older. so tend to lean away from the screen stuff, but depends on the job, right? There's not much as a software developer, you you're going to have to look at screens. Yeah. If they could do it in a way that's, that's good for the body ah as far as your eyes and and health and all of that. I think that it's an interesting aspect there. And they brought up a head and consider it as a focus. Like you can force yourself to focus and not have other things. Like if I'm just sitting here in my office, Oh look, there's my dog, you know, rolling around on the floor, but I can,
00:47:19
Speaker
But with this, it's a very controlled unit here, the headset, it's very controlled. All right, I'm ship, or skip for now, ship, maybe ship later. I'm a ship later. Yeah, I'll go along with that. That's kind of where I feel. All right, the third one, this is my favorite one of this ship it or skip it list. Keyboard genes. So if, these are, these are genes that have Integrated keyboards I provided a link in the document for you guys to look at Up in additional notes and resources, okay So I'll give you guys a second to take a look at that to form your opinions of the keyboard jeans It says keyboard pants here or keyboard pants keyboard jeans on
00:48:15
Speaker
OK, hold on. i've I've seen it. I've seen it listed as both beauty and the geek. Oh, lovely. OK. Oh, wow. I. Huh. I'm not a big fan of where the enter button.
00:48:29
Speaker
on I think that could be problematic. um Yeah, you might not want to hit enter at all if it's too sensitive. Right. There's or or a lot.
00:48:44
Speaker
This is kind of a visual joke, I apologize, but that the keyboard is centered on your lap right over your nether region, so to speak. So yeah, that's it's not, I don't like it. I think it's an interesting idea of something that's adequately geeky to be like, I think I'd wear it as like a costume maybe. And and and I do it as a joke at work just to be that guy, because I'll almost do anything for a laugh. But yeah, like from a,
00:49:13
Speaker
Would I use this day-to-day as part of my job? No, not unless they could figure out like something for the mouse. like the The mouse is still kind of like you're you're mousing on your leg. Well, you definitely wouldn't want this. I mean, HR would object if we wanted to use this for pairing. i think Yeah, pair programming this would be not.
00:49:32
Speaker
i mean Either, either way you do it. If somebody's typing on your keyboard while you're wearing it, or if you have to be pants. Yeah. Oh yeah. That to someone that either way, I think that's an HR nightmare. So you definitely don't want to be passing the keyboard over to somebody else. That's right. yeah Very true. Maybe if it was an apron.
00:49:54
Speaker
that might be a little more you know to bid as far as passing back and forth. But i having to completely take my pants off, that's that's um that's a lot for paired programming. Yeah, they made me stop doing that at the office. Oh, I remember. Yeah. No way you had to put a rule in the handbook. Thanks a lot. Yeah. that We went from no dress code to you must wear clothes as a as a dress code. it's like I just needed to help clarify the ah the the employee handbook. That's all. Well, there, there wouldn't be a sign if there wasn't a problem, right? Right. We call it the pres top protocol here.
00:50:32
Speaker
i'm going Skip. Yeah, I'll skip on that one too. I, I would say skip for now, but with, if you combine this with the custom keyboard, um, aspect of things and you had a split keyboard.
00:50:51
Speaker
Um, that was like partial on both legs. I think that could be pretty cool actually. Cause I would love nothing better than to use an actual keyboard for my phone. And so of those tiny little screen buttons that my yeah fat fingers can't seem to find the right letter on. Yeah.
00:51:12
Speaker
yeah And maybe look like such a great too. So I think, I think it's an interesting concept that needs refinement. So I will be skip it for now with the possible ship it down the road. Interesting. And that concludes our ship it or skip it list for today. This was ship it or skip it. It, it.
00:51:34
Speaker
I would be more for those, those idea of where you can basically have a keyboard anywhere. We've seen those where they kind of like they, they projected. Yeah, it's projected and it can sense where your fingers are. So you could do that. You can make anything a keyboard, which I think that's kind of interesting. That might have to go on the next ship it or skip it. That's right. There we go.
00:51:53
Speaker
Well, here's an interesting thing that we didn't quite reach into too much. We talked a little bit about staff augmentation and how that impacts teams.
Consulting vs. Staff Augmentation
00:52:03
Speaker
um what's you're dev with what In a comparison sense, how do you compare staff staff augmentation versus consulting? Where is that that difference for you in that?
00:52:20
Speaker
Yeah, and it's it's a pretty big difference. So, um staff augmentation tends to be much more centered on I need a specific very specific skill set technology skill set. you know When it comes to creating software, staff aug generally means I need a Java program, I need a dot .NET program, or to join my existing team. Consulting is much more soup to nuts. It's much more along the lines of I need to solve a business problem.
00:52:45
Speaker
i'm I'm sure it's going to need software. And I've even got some really good ideas, oftentimes, of what that software is going to have to do. So there might even be a bit of a backlog. But the consulting side of things is figuring out exactly how you're going to use the software to solve your business problem. um It generally requires a lot more skill in terms of coming up with the solution as well, or a broader skill set. um And consulting is also about just making change happen in an organization, which is not something you're going to get with just a group of programmers that you munch together. If you need to change the way that you do things, if you want to change up a process and not just a not just a chunk of software, then you really need to get more of a consulting mindset, even if even if you do have people on the team that are much more purely
00:53:33
Speaker
staff hog, you still need somebody who's got that consulting mindset and kind of pull that information out and help turn it into something that the that the team can act on. I didn't think about that, but it's like GTD with hard edges. You're taking a nascent concept and you're turning it into something much more actionable that people with the right skills can then turn into a working product. Yeah. I like i think that aspect of you know improving and continuous improvement and you know But we always kind of drive the the scouts rule into people's head. you We always want to leave a client better than we found them, right? And that's kind of a two-way street. You have to be receptive to that as ah as a client, right, for for liberty. But you know and then we also have to teach our people to want to give a darn you know about their client and their situation and look for opportunities for for those people.
00:54:23
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of it is, and and I think the behaviors you tend to get are people that are on a purely contractor team, if things aren't going the way that they expect, if it's not if it's not the style of work that they're that they really like to work in, you'll often get them throwing up their hands and, I'm just going to take my ball and go home, or I'm going to move on to the next contract over here and not really think too much about this client. Oh, they're fools. But yeah that's that's kind of the heart of consulting, is you add on to your technical skill set the fact that your client, the people that you're working with.
00:54:56
Speaker
are doing things like this for a reason. Sometimes the reason is is maybe you know in the past and maybe you can make the change. Sometimes that reason is right in their face and it's something that you have to deal with. And if you don't find a way to mitigate the problems that this cumbersome process they're using solves, then you're not really helping them. You're not leaving them better than you found them. You're gonna leave them worse off because then you've got and you've just got more disgruntled people, and you know the client now has for employees in addition to the contractors.
00:55:24
Speaker
So there's some finesse that's in there, and a lot of it boils down to, you know, it's emotional intelligence, it's how you communicate things, and it's just being able to realize, you know, once something jumped up and bit you, like, here's an opportunity to make the change, or this is not a good opportunity to make this change. Let's not die on this hill.
00:55:43
Speaker
in in one of the common drivers for um processes like that are usually fear and uncertainty. So if you can clear up those two areas for clients, then usually you can impact the change. So, you know, like in Insane release procedures is fear because something bad slipped through too many times and they want to make sure it's good before it goes out. They've checked out all their boxes, crossed all their T's, dotted all their I's. So you have to basically rebuild that trust that, you know, you can do a release without breaking things. And this is why you show those kinds of things and maybe you can make that change.
00:56:32
Speaker
um you know, the over-planning up front can be the uncertainty aspect of we're not really sure, so we're gonna make sure that we have everything planned before we move forward so that we, you know, can do that and that can lead into like giant planning sessions where you throw half the work in the second week because- Analysis paralysis, yeah. Yep. Yeah, yeah there's there can also be that kind of like,
00:57:02
Speaker
almost like series of unfortunate events that happen, right? So it's, we had a problem long, long ago, and nobody kind of took the time at that point to, how can we solve this problem, really? They they figure a workaround, and the workaround causes a workaround, which causes a workaround. And then like you get the the business processes built on all of these workarounds where if they had addressed the initial issue early on, you know, and it's really, I've said it a lot of times, it's it's surprising.
00:57:30
Speaker
what users can talk themselves into being okay, right? they'll They'll do these convoluted like, okay, the software doesn't allow you to do multi-select yet. So they'll spend an hour, I need to select a thousand records or whatever. They'll go in and click all of them and they'll think of this as just what I have to do. And they'll they'll operationalize that for years. And then you sit with the developer and you're watching what they're doing. And they' what if we put a checkbox up at the top of all those and when you click it, it clicks all of them for you automatically.
00:58:01
Speaker
Well, that would be great. Can you do that? Yeah, I called that i call that a a group's pain tolerance. How much pain are they willing to do to complete tasks or have they grown accustomed to over time ah that they don't realize they're there' causing pain to themselves when it could be much simpler or in pain free to do the same things?
00:58:27
Speaker
um And in a lot of that is is that that frog soup analogy, the temperature of the water slowly climbs and you don't realize you're getting cooked until it's too late.
00:58:39
Speaker
and You know, a lot of, a lot of those things they creep. It's like, well, we'll just do this one more thing. We'll just do this one more thing. Just one more thing. And and next you've got this big, long cumbersome process that is, is causing you all kinds of pain and you don't realize it because you've built up that tolerance over time. And it's like, well, that's just what it is. Why? Nobody has.
00:59:06
Speaker
Let's say nobody has time to deal with the problem now because they're so consumed with following this big cumbersome process. Let's hire three more people just to work this process so then we can go make the changes. Yeah, exactly. One of my favorite answers for why do you do things this way is I call it like the Bill phenomenon, like Bill, a person's name, Bill, right? Like there's like, okay, so why do we do this?
00:59:32
Speaker
Well, years ago, that guy Bill did something. i I don't know if the guy's name is Bill, but yeah that's the name I always use. That guy Bill did something and something bad, like Aaron's saying, and something slipped through or something. They did something silly. And so now we got to do this multi-step, you know, turn your keys at the same time, kind of, you know, release process or whatever the, you know, however they go about it, the convoluted stuff. And you're like, well, where's Bill now? Oh yeah, he retired years ago.
00:59:58
Speaker
not work care anymore You know, like the, the problem's gone and it could be a person, but it could also be a rule or regulation of the the state of the art, so to speak. Right. Like all, a lot of different things that do those just don't, they they no longer apply, but we're like boat anchoring ourselves because of this forever and ever and ever. And yeah.
01:00:18
Speaker
Or it could have been an old product manager that required like a certain step, you know, or report at a certain step that just, Oh yeah, we got to create the care and report. So, you know, I don't know where I pulled that name from. ah
01:00:39
Speaker
The names of the innocent have been changed or whatever, or do the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Yeah. the guilty case maybe Yeah. Or they have not been changed to call out the guilty. I'm just kidding. Right. We've left the names to the originals. to point Yes. Yes, to publicly shame the guilty. All names are actual and factual so that you can find these people. ah We'll provide you LinkedIn links. I'm kidding. and yeah We are definitely kidding. We survived on the goodwill of the people who we have worked with in the past.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, but like if you looked at my LinkedIn connections, like, I'm just saying. yeah There's only so many. oh ah
01:01:31
Speaker
Lightning round. yes tell me my enlighten we We have a ah jingle for that now, don't we? Or do we not? Did we not get a lightning round jingle yet?
01:01:43
Speaker
All right, Eric, you need to give us a lightning round jingle jingle. Welcome to the lightning round. There you go. Perfect. Quick to the point to the point. No fake lightning. Yep.
01:01:56
Speaker
So the way the lightning round works is we're going to ask you a series of questions. These are meant to be short answer questions um that have nothing to do about anything. So um we'll we'll go back and forth. We'll each ask you five questions apiece for a total of 10 questions. There are no points. And if there were, they wouldn't matter and would not be redeemable at any Walmart.
01:02:22
Speaker
so um
01:02:25
Speaker
And just for the record, this segment is not sponsored by Walmart or anybody else. I thought it was sponsored by Campbell's frog soup.
01:02:37
Speaker
good it didn't hot in here give that
01:02:46
Speaker
Sorry. All right. So who who's going to kick us off this? oh Why don't you st start today? Um, Are your grandparents mildly rude or were they? I guess it could be. Were, were my grandparents? Yes. I have no surviving grandparents at this point in my life. Were they slightly rude? well Mildly rude. Well, yeah, at least one of them was. Okay. Yeah. I think it's a generational thing too. Yeah. Would you rather be able to speak every language in the world or be able to talk to animals? Ooh.
01:03:24
Speaker
Hmm. That's supposed to be lightning rounds. I guess I should answer this quickly. I think I'd go with every language in the world. Do I have to give a reason? No. Okay.
01:03:37
Speaker
I mean, I like animals, but I don't want to talk to all of them. I don't think possums have much to say, to be honest. So don't hit me. It looks like they're doing that.
01:03:48
Speaker
What is the most number of hours you've watched TV in a single day? Oh, I i don't know. I'm sure it was when I was younger, um probably as many as six. I don't watch much TV. I don't. I never really have. Yeah, that's like Friday for me. and i I haven't watched TV and um yeah, I and can't remember the last time I watched TV.
01:04:18
Speaker
I had a particularly bad hangover in college one time. Well, I had one lots of times, but this one time I i watched, they had, you remember the move, the mini series, the deliberate stranger. It was the Ted Bundy story. Oh, okay. I watched the entire mini series in one sitting because I was so hungover and didn't want to do anything else. That was, yeah. I don't know how many hours that is, however many episodes there were in the series, but that that's what I,
01:04:47
Speaker
That's what comes to mind or perhaps when I had COVID the first time I i watched a lot of those. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. It was like the first time I had COVID, I think I watched the TV just kind of stayed on. I don't remember anything I watched, but I remember the TV being on. Yeah. ill find The only thing I could actually focus on was, uh,
01:05:11
Speaker
Yellowstone. That was the only thing that could keep my attention because I had like that brain fog stuff going on. and that was stuff So I watched a lot of Yellowstone during my first time I had COVID. This is supposed to be a lightning round and we're completely butchering a lightning round. Right. I know. Molasses round. All right. here's here's Here's an easy one. Dawn or dusk?
01:05:31
Speaker
Oh, uh, dusk for photography, especially. I just like the light better. Nice. Did you go to sleep away summer camp as a kid?
01:05:45
Speaker
I think that's the one where the guy, one of the horror movies, right? Um, what's called sleep away camp. so what Well, I mean, just did you go to a camp where you had to go away from your parents for like a week and like a summer camp? oh No, no, no, no. Nope. Never did that. I think you're thinking of the original Friday the 13th with Kevin bacon. yeah I think so. Sleep was this back when I watched movie that was camp crystal Lake. All right.
01:06:10
Speaker
All right, your turn. aa wrong What's the best age? I would say five.
01:06:21
Speaker
Five. Yeah. Good sense of wonder. I guess I'm thinking about it in terms of my kids. What's the best age to be around when they're kids? or They're you know, they can they can go to the bathroom by themselves. They don't need you know, there's no more. You're well past the diaper stage. They're a bit more articulate.
01:06:36
Speaker
can tell you what's bothering them most of the time. And they still go to bed early. So that was a great age. I love the justification and that rattled off your brain that that easily. That's like you knew that question was coming, but you didn't. I've love i've raised three only children. So yeah, I kind of, I appreciate those sorts of things. Twins at five. No, thank you. Yeah. I was not a fan of five. Seven, I think was better.
01:07:06
Speaker
uh that's you James oh yeah uh let's see would you rather cuddle with a baby panda or a baby penguin i would say probably a penguin i know they smell worse but pandas have claws well they're babies that's right you said baby not adult so baby yeah
01:07:30
Speaker
I don't know, they're both pretty cute. I guess I guess i could i'd pick the... I'll stick with my original guess and I'll say penguin. Because they're cute and fuzzy. What's for dinner tonight? I don't know, I haven't actually picked anything out yet, but it'll probably be... I was thinking I might... Oh yeah, I do i was gonna get some salmon tonight. So I was thinking like salmon and I've got some asparagus and maybe a rice dish of some sort.
01:08:02
Speaker
Man, that's just reminding me, we've got at Caliberty, one of our things we do every year around Halloween time, we argue about whether candy corn is good or not. That's like a big part of our culture. So stale Sour Patch Kids or fresh Circus Peanuts? I would say fresh Circus Peanuts, unless that's a euphemism for some kind of animal dung. yeah I'm talking about the candy, you know not like real peanut. You know the candy, the orange,
01:08:30
Speaker
that fit, that's a, it's like, got the consistency of like a yoga mat. Oh yeah. there a tough one I'm i' just culturally illiterate. It seems so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're not missing anything. They're nasty. Right. Like it's, yeah. I don't know. That was that my fourth question. I think we have one. That was your, that was your fifth. Oh, okay. This will be my fifth.
01:08:57
Speaker
which I'm going to go with what is your ideal outside temperature? Ooh, 62.
01:09:06
Speaker
I like it to be nice and crisp. I can't argue with that. Yeah, I definitely somewhere in the 60s is where I was going to go. Yes. and And below is funny too, like 55 to mid to mid 60s is kind of like my ideal temperature range. Nice. Okay.
01:09:25
Speaker
Where you don't need the heat on you don't need the AC. Oh, yeah Save some open the windows let in some pressure Love it unless your wife has allergies and then you're the one of those like okay air conditioning's on next day heats on like we can't open the windows because of her allergies, so I we We both have allergies, but we just we just sneeze. Just deal with it. Yeah, we just rather have the windows open. Just sneeze on each other. I like it. For me, it's a daily antihistamine.
01:10:02
Speaker
that's That's my coping mechanism. um
01:10:08
Speaker
So I want to thank our guest, Eric Prescott, ah for his willingness to bear witness to us today and give us all kinds of information on, you know, personal planning and organization and Agile and just shoot the breeze with us. um Thank you both very much. This was just a blast. I really appreciate it.
01:10:36
Speaker
but Um, as always, I'd like to thank, uh, James Carmen, my beautiful co-host, our production staff and editors. I am Aaron Chesney and this has been the forward slash where we lean into the future of IT. Thank you. Subscribe, listen, and stay happy.