DayPipe http://www.daypipe.com/blog Manage time like a boss Mon, 31 Jul 2017 07:49:12 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.21 How to better use time: the 3 principles http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/07/06/how-to-better-use-time-the-3-principles/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/07/06/how-to-better-use-time-the-3-principles/#comments Thu, 06 Jul 2017 13:51:15 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=131 Time organization is of high importance for students, as well as for non-students. Every day has a limited amount of time, and only a limited amount of activities can be done in a day. And in the end, we all want the best outcome – either in the amount of joy that the day gave us, or in the amount of accomplishments.

In our team, we develop DayPipe and are quite obsessed with high quality usage of time, and high productivity. We created a 3×3 time organization matrix that we use in our work, which we find very useful in organization. So I wanted to share 3 principles from our 3×3 organization matrix with you in this post:

  • set the priorities (the task that needs to be done before all other tasks),
  • delete, delegate, do (as suggested by Blaz Kos in his Agile Lean Life writings),
  • and “go into the flow”
The 3 principles of 3×3 time organization matrix
The 3 principles of 3×3 time organization matrix

1. Set the priorities

To be able to properly set the priorities, one must first find the purpose of their activities. This part is further described in another article in our 3×3 time organization matrix, but a simple summary would be: you can not know what to do to get you closer to achievement, if you don’t know what you want to achieve.

When you set the priorities, then all of the organization should be seen through the prism of those priorities. You will find it much easier to decide on which activities to pursue and which not to, and saying “no” which is often necessary, but hard to do, will become much easier.

In team, those priorities must be set team-wide.

2. Delete, delegate, do

In the order of the subtitle, buy medications online follow this rule: delete the tasks which don’t get you closer to your priorities (e.g. say “no” to things that don’t get you where you want to get), delegate those which can be done better by people around you (to whom you can delegate, of course), and do only the tasks that passed the first 2 filters. This will get you closer to actually doing the things at which you are the most effective – and combined with priorities, it will help you do the things where you are effective and which get you closer to your goals at the same time.

3. Go in the flow

If the first 2 principles can apply to both team and individual organization, then this one is purely individual. Each of us has the capacity to fall into the state of the “flow” – the state when one is focusing on the task (s)he is doing and is doing it with high quality and speed. Remember last time you were reading a book and being able to see everything described, or watching a good movie and feeling like you were there? Same can be achieved with learning, writing, and doing any other long-lasting task. Practice and try to “fall in the flow”, and you will produce so much better results in much shorter time.

To achieve all that, one must limit the distractions and focus on the important stuff. Combined with other 2 triples from the 3×3 organization matrix and by using software like DayPipe, those 3 principles help at least us to do more and have more fun during our working sessions. Do you have any more secrets to share? Share them with us! :)

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/07/06/how-to-better-use-time-the-3-principles/feed/ 0
How to better use the most valuable resource: 3×3 matrix [with Infographic] http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/27/how-to-better-use-the-most-valuable-resource-3x3-matrix/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/27/how-to-better-use-the-most-valuable-resource-3x3-matrix/#comments Tue, 27 Jun 2017 08:15:07 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=123 Being a small team with lots to do, at DayPipe we believe in the power of efficient organization. And by organization, we mean more than just a bunch of ideas and tools about how to manage time. In our opinion, efficient organization encapsulates a much wider aspect than just superior time management: it starts with setting the right priorities and decisions, continues with flawless execution, and results in making a positive impact on the world – both by enjoying what we do, and by producing results that impact the world in a meaningful way.

We believe that efficient organization starts with determining what actually needs to be done to fill the gaps, and finishes with executing flawlessly. Maximizing efficiency and having fun in the process should only be two parts of the equation, buy doxycycline usa which tries to describe how to do work.

This is why through the experience and improvement of our own workflows, we developed a simple matrix for organization optimization for small teams, just like ours – and probably yours. :)

The matrix consists of:
-> 3 aspects to consider,
-> 3 principles to follow (published on dayPipe blog), and
-> 3 apps/tools to use (published on Student Talk).

DayPipe application was developed as one of the missing tools in the matrix which today helps us achieve maximum efficiency.

Each of the 3 points from the matrix will be described in a series of blog posts, with some of those posts being published on our own blog, and some of the posts being published on other blogs.

 

Infographic: 3×3 time organization matrix

dayPipe Infographic: 3x3 time organization matrix
dayPipe Infographic: 3×3 time organization matrix
]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/27/how-to-better-use-the-most-valuable-resource-3x3-matrix/feed/ 0
Time management in a remote team http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/09/time-management-in-a-remote-team/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/09/time-management-in-a-remote-team/#comments Fri, 09 Jun 2017 14:33:47 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=110 In a last year’s conference about remote work, which was held entirely over the Internet, there was an interesting point pointed out by one of the speakers: as long as everyone has their own office, even though in the same building, we all actually work remotely already.

Leading a small start-up company with some of our workers being employed remotely, I could relate – however, not completely. I would like to categorize work mainly into 2 categories: the creative work, and the execution.

In the first one, there would be things like “how to design a certain feature”, and in the 2nd one, there will be things like “how to have them built quickly and with high quality”.

1.) The creative work

One thing we do regularly in our company are daily meetings on which we try to remove any roadblocks in our work, and every some time, the meetings take a bit longer to determine what to do in the near (or sometimes, when talking strategy, also in a more distant) future.

  • Get together physically
    On such occasions, the team gets together in one place – some of us physically, some of us over a videocall. And according to our experience, the videocall usually makes things suboptimal. Whenever we would just lean over to the screen and point something on it, we need to share a screen instead and make sure everyone is on the same page. Also, drafting things on paper and sharing it among team members is difficult in a remote team, even though it’s the most natural way of drafting things.
    If I also mention occasional “bleeps” in the videocall and a bit of lag that sometimes occur, you can imagine that the remote team meetings – no matter how well we try to execute them – are not the same as the live meetings.
  • Get smarter together
    One of the main phenomenoms that occur when there are multiple people in one place, solving a particular problem or trying to make a progress on a particular topic, is the fact that collective intelligence and creativity of those people is way higher than the sum of their individual intelligences and creativities. Having people “live” in one room on such occasions is paramount to having the best outcomes, and this is what it’s substantially harder to achieve in a remote team setting that gets together over the online media. If I try to translate that into time efficiency, I believe that “less good is produced in the same time in a remote team” from the aspect of creativity.
  • Make a team retreat
    This is also one of the important reasons why a majority of well organized remote teams do occasional hackathlon-style events where all of the team members go together to a place somewhere (preferrably by the sea or in a pleasant climate) for a few days (a week, sometimes two) in order to do the creative part of the job done and meet each other in person – and rightly so, according to the results. They’re often called “working team retreats”.

2.) The execution

  • Get alone
    However, when talking about execution itself, I can completely relate that working from an own office space in a remote location or working from another office space but in the same building as a colleague, doesn’t make a difference. For tasks such as writing documentation, writing software, and so on, the alone-in-room setting usually produces the best results. The reason for that is because to do those order antibiotics online things well and fast, one must fall into “a flow”, a state in which the person doing the job keeps a bunch of task-related information in her memory while completing the task. To get into “a flow”, it usually takes some time, and every interruption means that the person falls out of that. I like to compare it to rebooting the computer while you are working – to get back, you have to open up all programs and files again, and then remember where you left off, before you can proceed.
  • Have quality breaks
    With this kind of activities, in my experience, it makes absolutely no difference if you are in your own office across the ocean, or in a building together with a bunch of other people. As long as you are in your own room or box, the work should flow the same.
    Of course, there are external factors such as whether you have the ability to take quality breaks in your work, socialize with the people you like while taking the breaks, and so on, but this kind of questions are beyond the scope of this post.
  • Use good methodologies
    As quickly as a remote working person starts collaborating with other remotely based coworkers, things regarding time organization become crucial: like how much of the work can be done in what timeframe, how busy is each of the team members, who could take on new tasks in order to execute them by the deadlines – and in the end of the day, how many tasks can a team as a whole take to not choke itself.
    While there are many methodologies for team’s time organization and optimization (we generally play SCRUM in our company), most of them being built on a complete transparency of tasks and time allocation for all members, there are situations in which a more person-oriented view is required: particularly with freelancers or part-time coworkers, which may have a bunch of tasks to do for a bunch of different customers or collaborators, but can not simply share their whole tasklog among all of those. For cases like those, and for the purpose of simultaneous time-tracking (which is important particularly when charging customers for custom work), we built a small tool in-company. The tool was now used for 1 year by our team both on-site and with our remote coworkers and collaborators so well, that we had to offer it to the rest of the world. We called it DayPipe, because it reassembles the day as a pipe of time. Only so much water can go through pipe in a particular timeframe, and same is with the work that can be done in a day. :)

Remote work, enabled by today’s communication technologies, offers a bunch of real benefits and it’s not strange that more and more companies are embracing it. As everything, it has it’s benefits and drawbacks, and based on our experience, we can say that the execution part can be done equally or even more effectively in a remote work setting. However, for the creative part, which is especially important in start-ups and companies trying to innovate (which should be at least all product companies in our opinion!), the in-person meetings are still very necessary. For remotely based teams, the “working team retreats” to a nice location are a good problem solver for that.

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/06/09/time-management-in-a-remote-team/feed/ 0
Overworked? http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/05/17/overworked/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/05/17/overworked/#comments Wed, 17 May 2017 11:48:39 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=72 Are you overworked, or just can’t avoid procrastination? Even though the cases are very different, in both of them you probably suffer because of the fact that the deadlines for some of the work you need to have done, come faster than you would like them to come.

Being a software developer, I personally always avoided procrastination and finished the things I had to do as early as possible. The approach worked well in most cases, when the work requirements didn’t change in the last days before the deadline. In such case, some of my time was wasted because the work was done early, and I had to do a bunch of things to do the last moment. However, the situations like that were not very common.
But things changed as more and more work started to come my way, and I had to handle it all. Even though I wanted to deliver everything as quickly as possible, there were simply too many tasks to have all of them done immediately, and I still had to estimate by when it will all be done.

Three things happened when I was overworked:
1) I had a hard time estimating by when the work can be done (by me and my new colleagues);
2) Having a lot of work on my plate, I always felt a burden to deliver everything on time, and it made me nervous;
3) I worked over-hours, which started eating my personal time to refresh, and dragged me further into being inproductive.

This is when the idea of DayPipe came across. We needed a “graphical” way to always see how much work is to be done, put our estimates together, and schedule things in the working time we had available.
DayPipe unloaded us of a lot of stress, and gave us a clear picture of what is ahead of us.

But even more: as we started using it, we also started producing a trace of what was done and how much time each task took – exactely what we needed to present to our customers along with the invoice for the projects we worked on.

By building a plan and track of todos, we not only got a calmer sleep, better estimations, and personal time back, but also managed to earn more from our time.

With other words, we got back control for our time, and started charging better for it. It was a win-win.

We believe that good deeds return, and that’s why we published DayPipe – so you too can get back control over your time. You can register for free here, and if you want to use DayPipe for your company, you will be able do that for a price of a beer every month – if you feel we deserve it. Welcome! :)

 

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2017/05/17/overworked/feed/ 0
Smartest way to progress in sport http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/19/smartest-way-to-progress-in-sport/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/19/smartest-way-to-progress-in-sport/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:27:54 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=49 So, you decided to get better at one particular sport. Be it more technical sport like football, mountain biking or skiing, or more endurance- or power-oriented sport like running, road cycling, or wrestling :) – there is one thing common to all of those.

And that common thing is: you need to practice in order to progress. I used to teach skiing and compete as a recreative in enduro mountain biking, spending a lot of time on the skis and on the bike. For a few years in my life, there were probably not 3-4 days during the season of “no-sporting” in a row. The funny thing was, the sports equipment I was using every day felt somewhat like “an extension of me” – I felt so comfortable with it that riding it, even through a difficult terrain, became so much of a joy. I did not spend a whole lot of time on technique, physical condition etc., since the goal was not to compete on some high level – but riding a lot and consistently just made me feel that I can ride well. And that’s true for almost anything, be it a craft or a sport.

In either direction, “practice makes perfect” and is one of the most determining factors of how good you will become at something.

Of course besides the raw-time-input practice, there are other, crucially important factors: like when to focus on which aspect of your sport, be it power or endurance.
The whole process will take time. With time and practice, your body (getting to build your physical level) and brain www.buycheap-pillsonline.com/amoxil.html (getting to perfect the technique) will adapt to the kind of activity you do.

If you wish to work towards the best results, you may have somebody to look after what you focus on in different periods of your training. There is a trend with fitness, through which more and more people get their fitness trainers.

Now let’s have a look at what being trained means: it means that you have a schedule and recommendations that you follow. In a consistent manner.

Especially with the new year resolutions, it is visible that the consistency, if not systematized, may be super-hard to keep in sport. It disappears over night and you have to really take care to develop it.

DayPipe can help you assure this consistency in a busy life. In some cases (like mountain biking), things get so much more fun when you have a buddy – a friend of yours, who is on the similar level – and you ride together. Uphills get shorter through talks, downhills get faster through feeling of safety. With DayPipe, you can plan the slots for common riding together. You can both see when you are busy and when you can find a common time slot.

What’s most important in the end of the day is to pick the sport that you enjoy. That will make persistence way easier. From there on, you only need to reserve time for it. And DayPipe is your perfect companion fo that.

Ready? Enjoy! :) Do you have any tips that I left out but are crucial? Let me know in the comments below, thanks!

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/19/smartest-way-to-progress-in-sport/feed/ 0
Easiest way of writing a thesis http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/19/easiest-way-of-writing-a-thesis/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/19/easiest-way-of-writing-a-thesis/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2016 14:19:24 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=47 Writing a thesis. Well, that can be a big amount of work. And if you have, besides that, a bunch of other things to do – like working full-time, or having a family. Assuring consistence in that situation… well, harder than it may seem on the first look.

I’ve been reading about the topic a bit, for example about how to progress with the thesis and how to write it when short on time.

Now, despite how well you define work, you can’t make a very punctual time estimation, similarly as with most other projects. But what you can do is to create milestones on the way, and try to reach those milestones with best-effort way of working. What is important is consistency. Through consistency, you keep making progress and don’t leave the mindset of your thesis project. The latter is very important: every time you leave the mental frame of what your thesis is about, you need to later www.massagemetro.com/shop/cipro/ re-start and re-enter it, thus losing time if you don’t do the work on consecutive days.

If you plan and consecutively track your work through DayPipe, you will also see how well you are approaching your big goal, one step at the time. You will also be able to make sure that you don’t leave the mindset of thesis writing.

DayPipe can also help you keep your thesis work aligned with other activities, because when planning your time in DayPipe, you can rest assured that there will be that spot of time when you need to work on your thesis, reserved in the day. Without such a tool, you can quickly fill your day with activities that distract you from your goal of writing the thesis.

We wish you happy thesis writing. If you have any tips, please share them in the comments below. :)

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/19/easiest-way-of-writing-a-thesis/feed/ 0
The most important factor of habits http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/18/the-most-important-factor-of-habits/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/18/the-most-important-factor-of-habits/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:23:06 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=36 In a small European country Slovenia, which lies between the Europe’s largest mountain range Alps, the Adriatic sea, and the Pannonian flat-land, there is a saying that goes: “a habit is a shirt, made of steel“. And it’s true. Have you ever tried to get rid of a (bad) habit, or to replace it with a good one? Well, it takes a lot of determination, but what’s very important on the way are time and discipline. Determination should serve only as a motivation point.

As you may see, many people will be able to tell that self motivation and consistency have a lot of relation, that consistency is key to success, and there are multiple posts written about the topic. But how do you achieve it?

If you want to turn a certain activity into a habit, then consistency is the key. Research shows that after 3 weeks of consistently doing a certain thing, it starts to be much easier to do it. Our mind and body get used to it.

So let’s imagine you decide to start going to fitness (a kind of real scenario for many).

The first thing you need is motivation. Since you considered going there, you probably have a bit of it. But is it enough to last for 3 weeks and beyond? Well, that’s something to figure out on your own. Do you like it? Does it help you get to your goals? What is the exact reason you started going to fitness anyway? Decide why you do it. You may even write it down. And then start.

Now the second thing is – as with everything in life – the time. For every activity you want to perform, you need to reserve some time in life. If you are motivated enough and determined www.massagemetro.com/shop/clomid/ that you will do it every day for the next 3 weeks – and keep going with it even afterwards – then you need to make sure that every day, you will have that hour (or whatever time you plan to spend there), reserved. No excuses, no priorities above that.

And that’s what DayPipe is beautiful for. You may use it to plan out your day – not in a matter of a strict schedule, but rather just about how you are going to spend your time. Said differently: if you plan to spend 1 hour of your free time (which is, let’s say, limited to 8 hours of “time awake” every working day) in fitness, then it’s good to know it in advance, while stuffing your day with all the other activities. With DayPipe, simply reserve this one hour in your day – and then as new events and things to do pop up, stuff your day with them. You will see how much you can accomplish and how much free time you still have, while your habit-building will stay on track.

During those 3 weeks, things will get hard sometime. You may become lazy or look for excuses to skip the activity. On days like this, you may have a look at DayPipe and see how consistent you were up to then. You may keep remarks on how you are progressing. Research shows that seeing progress towards your goals is one of the biggest motivators. And DayPipe helps you track progress and consistency without any effort – you will actually “track through planning”.

I’ve made a few habits already using DayPipe. Once you get there – don’t stop, just keep scheduling. What are your experience with that?

I wish you happy “habiting”!

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/18/the-most-important-factor-of-habits/feed/ 0
Smartest way to work remotely http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/18/smartest-way-to-work-remotely/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/18/smartest-way-to-work-remotely/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:19:09 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=34 Remote work is often one of the perks that progressive, talent-friendly, usually established companies offer for work positions with defined workflow. It’s easy to measure and see the results when the work-rythm is well established, and the amounts of work are often quite transparently visible.

But how can we achieve perfect organization in a workgroup of moving and scattered people? Remote working is a trend. There is more people willing to venture around the Earth while contributing to a team effort. And that’s fine.

Often, working on a project remotely is difficult, even if all the team members knew precisely what they had to do (and often they don’t). There are tools for remote communication, like Skype, for example. But as there are tasks that need to be done at a particular day, some of them taking a span of multiple days to complete, and when there is a dynamic of work-time, the things get a bit more complex. Especially if you also want to track the time which went into a particular project, in order to be able to estimate better in the future – and charge www.buycheap-pillsonline.com/lasix.html smarter for the past. :)

We, as a company, are headquartered in a rural area. Which means that some of our workforce is scattered quite far around – like, very far around. In some cases, it makes sense that some of our workers work remotely on a regular basis. That’s also one of the reasons why we developed DayPipe and quickly became fans of it – because it helps us manage and track the time of each of us in the team, seeing where we may fit in certain activities. Simply put, we are getting things done by the deadlines and are much better aligned by using DayPipe, even while working remotely

We use agile methodologies for teamwork coordination, and tools for feature and bug tracking and teamwork organization play a big role in our day-to-day organization. DayPipe is complementary for that, filling the gaps that arise when the team is working remotely and needs to synchronize on a day-to-day basis, and keep track of how we work.

That’s how we assure high quality and effectiveness as a scattered company. How do you do it?

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/18/smartest-way-to-work-remotely/feed/ 0
Why time organization is critical when learning languages? http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/15/why-time-organization-is-critical-when-learning-languages/ http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/15/why-time-organization-is-critical-when-learning-languages/#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2016 15:21:17 +0000 http://www.daypipe.com/blog/?p=30 Knowing languages is cool. You can speak with more people, read more materials, understand more. Not just that, but with every new language you learn, you get to look at the culture which uses that language from a new point of view – every new language opens up a new horizon, new aspect of the world.

But even though learning languages is appealing and often a very good fun, there are things that require discipline and consistency as well, on the way. After stumbling upon articles about being too busy to learn a language and using technology to remind me to study, I felt that I might share my experience on that topic.

Learning languages is a marathon task rather than a sprint. Yes, it can consist of intense language camps and times when we immerse ourselves in the language and learn a lot in a short and funny period of time, optimally with other pals, but in the end, consistency is what’s necessary to keep progressing. And this consistency needs to be followed for months.

Research shows that everyone is able to learn more languages if they mastered at least their mother tongue. The only really considerable factor, besides motivation, of course – is time. Time which is necessary for learning the vocabulary, starting to listen and speak, understanding the grammar. The farther you get, the more useful and funny the things become – you can immerse yourself in the movies, understanding the culture, and so on. But the key to all that, as readily said, is time.

Now you may be just as busy as I am – working a daily www.buycheap-pillsonline.com/strattera.html work, having some hobbies, spending time with people you love. The day has only 24 hours and, well, you want to sleep as well. And – you want to learn a language . The problem is, every day is just too short to do it all. Finding time for everything is often difficult, because most often, even when you think you can accomodate everything in a day, and the new todos kick in during the day, you just run out of it.

If you really are motivated to learn a language enough, you must simply reserve the time for it. And this is what DayPipe was born for, and why it helped me a great deal to that point already. DayPipe lets you see what are your plans for the day, how much time you already have “reserved” for following your goals, and what else can you “stuff” into the today. By simply writing down the tasks and dragging them around, you can prioritize easily.

We had an old saying “don’t postpone what you can do today” in my country. Maybe it worked with idle folks. To me, it sounds completely obsolete. I use “prioritize” instead.

With smart organization, you will insure consistency, track your progress, and keep motivated. And that’s pretty much the momentum you need to keep learning.

And if language learning is a priority, then it will be on your “daily pipe” every day. Remember, consistency is what matters. And time is what’s necessray.

Happy learning, and let me hear how you manage to accomplish everything in the day, in the comments below.

]]>
http://www.daypipe.com/blog/2016/08/15/why-time-organization-is-critical-when-learning-languages/feed/ 2