Here is a suggestion on how to identify what to measure:

1. What is causing you pain?
2. What causes the pain to occur?

Step 1 is all about prioritization. Pain is bad. If something is causing you pain, you want to stop it. You need to stop it. So pick the thing/item/problem that is causing you the most pain. This is what you need to improve or fix.

Step 2 is looking at what is causing the pain to occur in the first place. Once you know the factors that are contributing to the pain, you can try to change them. If you are doing the right thing, the factors contribute less, and the pain should go down.

For example: Let us say I want to write more python code. My day job doesn’t involve much python, so I feel like I’m being left behind because all of the cool kids on reddit are talking about the fun they are having writing python code.

The pain: Not being able to write in the language I want to. The cause: Day job doesn’t use python.

Addressing the cause will affect the “pain”. If you get a different job (e.g. one that involves writing python code) then you have solved both problems.

But what if you can’t just switch jobs? Then you try experimenting with writing python code for your own personal use. Try writing it to solve scripting problems on your PC at work. If that makes you feel better, then you are moving in the right direction. If you try writing open source code in python in your after work hours, but it winds up stressing you out, then you are moving in the wrong direction. (Or you’ve identified that there might be a different problem than what you originally though there was!)

By tackling the sources of your pains, and applying small changes there, you can get a measure of where your efforts are going. Sometimes these measures are going to be cold hard numbers, and sometimes they are just going to be “feelings”. But either way, they are indicators of how you should change your processes and habits in order to become more successful.

What you can measure, you can manage.

I just watched a new video from Giles where he talks about how you can improve your programming productivity. Its a really good short video that hits the nail on the head. If you want to make a change, guessing about what to fix won’t cut it. You need to measure what you are doing, and then adjust accordingly.

The quote at the top was in the video, and I have to say I don’t think I had ever heard it before. But as soon as I heard it I knew it was 100% correct. Think about it: everyone who is in charge of things in you life (bosses, teachers, parents, etc.) track what you do to some extent. When you step out of line, they know about it and are able to let you know. Why? Because they are “measuring” you progress via grades, work done, chores completed, etc.

So if it works for them, why can’t it work for you? Track the things that are important to you, and see if you can make a positive change.

I’ve been hemming and hawing lately about tracking things like my programming projects or seeing if my neighborhood association really is increasing the house values. The time for action is now.

My first step: Putting widget on this blog to track my BitBucket RSS feed. If I’m going to work on a project out in the open why not let everyone know about it? This way if I’m not being productive, it will be pretty visible.

(As a side note, this is something that Giles has mentioned before that I really believe in: If you are a programmer, you should have some project out in the public eye. Open source is a good thing. Contributing to open source is a great thing. Being known as a programmer who contributes to open source software is the best thing.)

My next step: Start treating time tracking on my projects as a first class citizen. I’m starting a new sprint tomorrow: I’m going to track my time better. Also, I’m going to add some tasks to my Satellite Tracking project so I can make sure I’m on task when I’m working on it.

Thanks Giles, that video was a good kick in the ass.

Rate-my-resume.com

Now if you are wondering if your resume is a good match for a particular job posting, you can use my site to find out! At the moment I’m giving the score in terms of 0 (being a total non-match) to 100 (being the absolute perfect match). In this economy, the more your resume reflects the skills listed in a particular job, the more likely your resume will be looked at seriously.

If you run your resume through and it gives you a low score, look at your resume and the job posting and try and figure out what keywords are in the job posting that are not in your resume. Then, assuming you have the necessary experience, put those keywords into your resume! Be sure to add them in a way that makes sense to a person, after all humans (especially HR people) don’t like to read fragments and words peppered into someone’s resume.

Try out the site with your resume and see how you rank!

p.s. Python rocks!

Answer: More and more every day.

Today I was writing (for what seems like the millionth time) a little script to read CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. After running into the same issues over and over (picking a delimiter, escaping delimiters, etc.) I decided my sanity is worth the 30 seconds it would take to see if someone else has already written a CSV library. It turns out python has one built in. Since 2.3. D’oh.

import csv

lines = csv.reader(‘myfile.csv’)

That’s all that’s needed to read in a csv file and have it properly handle the delimiters, even when they are inside of escaped text (i.e. something like “$3,000″ will be read as $3000 instead of $3 and 000).

Python rocks again.

One that I really liked was Joel’s idea of not posting comments on a blog, rather write your response on your own blog. Its a great way of generating content and forcing you to think about the topic (similar to the idea of “you don’t really understand something unless you can teach it to someone else”). I think its a really great idea, and it seems to have stirred up a lot of debate.

And finally, the other great idea: Do it fucking now.

I’ve been feeling like whining about how all of these cool programs and games are getting released by everybody these days, and I haven’t been able to get squat done. But every time I started to think about it, I kept remembering that I have a small pile of unfinished projects that could use some attention. Some need a little bit, others need a lot.

I’m a big fan of the “pick something small, get it working, and use that as inspiration to move onto something bigger” philosophy. I use that technique all the time at work to try and get around logjams (be they mental, or load based). For the most part its pretty effective, the feeling of accomplishment builds quickly as small tasks disappear off the old to-do list.

So I decided to apply this to a python project I’ve been twiddling with for over a year. I ran one of the tests for it, and saw an error. I spent about a half hour or so playing around fixing the error and in the process managed to improve the code flow, pretty print my output messages, and uncover a potential problem before it had a chance to bite me. And you know what? It feels good to have gotten that done. A few more sessions like this one and I might actually finish this project up before the end of the year…

As a side thought on this topic: It is really important to use tools that allow you to have a maximum amount of productivity. In a situation where you are time constrained (i.e. a deadline is looming, you only have an hour to play, etc.) every second counts. If you are fighting you IDE, you are not solving your core problems. I thought about using TextMate to try and work with my python code last night, but I kept running into situations where using Eclipse was easier. So despite the “niceness” of TextMate, I had to abandon it for this project and keep on using Eclipse (and the wonderful PyDev plugin). Less twidiling, more working.

I’ve found the key is to have a small easy-to-achieve goal. Something trivial. Implement a small helper function. Wash the dishes in the sink. go for a small walk (instead of sitting watching TV). Do one small blog post.

Accomplishing one thing, no matter how tiny is a small victory. And usually I wind up thinking “Well, it was easy to wash those dishes, I should wipe off the counter too, that will only take a second”. Before I know it, I usually accomplished a quite a few small things, and that usually adds up to a big thing.

So the next time you are lacking motivation, just think of one or two small things you can knock out quickly and easily. (You do have a to-do list, right?) I’ll bet that getting a few things done will help motivate you to tackle the bigger jobs.

And speaking of bigger jobs, I’m off to try and write a few methods to try and make a class or two spring to life.

Success comes in cans, failure comes in can’ts.

So, I began making lists. As soon as things started to appear in a nice neat ordered list, it became apparent what had to be done (and the order to do it in).

A lot of programmers like to just jump into a problem and start coding. Sometimes that’s what is needed, but a lot of times what is needed is a plan (no matter how vague) of where you want to go, and how you plan to get there. A To Do list is a basic type of a plan, and once you start organizing on any level, it tends to snowball until your whole project is encompassed by the plan.

At least that’s what should happen if you want to get things done. A Big Plan is made of many Small Plans. By following through on the small plans, you are following the big plan. I can’t believe I let that wisdom escape me, its so fundamental!

So, if you are interested in GTD and are running on a Mac, go get Voodoo Pad and try it out. It rocks.