My first Pomodoro

I want to publicly announce that from now on I'll use a technique for time management named: Pomodoro Technique.

If you want to know more about it, just click the link above which will take you to Wikipedia. You can also take a look at the following flowchart explaining how the technique works (it's mainly the same shown here).

And as a last resource, for the lazy ones who don't like to read or for those who don't know how to read a flowchart, there is a video with a little explanation.

As a proof of how slow I am, it took me two pomodori to write this post, make the flowchart, find the resources and tailor it up. I just hope this technique will make me aware of how I waste my time and how to improve it.

How do you know I'm mad?

"but I don't want to be among mad people" Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that", said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice

"You must be", said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Awareness and the road

George Harrison says in one of his songs: "if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there...",, it's a good song by the way, but in the same way, it's also very easy to miss something you are not looking for.

Interesting, ain't it?
just a bonus track, George Harrison song:

Simple tricks for better results

Very useful, quite lame at the end though (How come that 90% of internet users don't know about the CTRL+F function?). Any way, it's worth to check this out and to make some practice test.


Created by: HackCollege

Sobre trabajar en grupo

En este momento estoy haciendo haciendo un trabajo en grupo muy importante. El grupo fue formado, no elegido por nosotros.

Lastimosamente no estoy satisfecho con el grupo. Somos 5 personas de 4 naciones diferentes, Libano, Francia, China (2) y Colombia. Con el frances es el primer trabajo que hago y hasta el momento va bien, con las chinas es dificil comunicarse. Una de ella no entiendo como llego hasta aca, no ha terminado su bachelor y no habla ingles decente, es triste decirlo, pero no lo hace, si no esta con la otra china para que le traduzca no es capaz de hacerse entender. Hasta el momento siento que soy el unico que tiene la iniciativa y el unico que siente que este trabajo es necesario para la graduacion, y la complejidad del proyecto es tal que si o si tengo que contar con ellos. Entonces he decidido cambiar las prioridades de el trabajo. He optado por entender que la calidad de los resultados fue mutilada desde la composicion del grupo, por ende no me voy a preocupar mucho por eso, mas bien, mi objetivo es aprender a manejar un grupo multicultural y altamente hetereogeneo, en culturas, en capacidades y en motivacion.

Desde otros trabajos del semestre pasado, en los que siempre me toco con la persona en el salon con la que nadie quiere trabajar (por inutil), decidi entender que toda la vida me encontrare con elementos asi en los grupos, entonces mas me vale aprender a sacar lo mejor de ellos, por muy minimo que parezca.

Este trabajo en grupo y sobre todo la interaccion con uno de los miembros, hace sacar mi peor parte, donde me vuelvo tajante y serio sin una gota de remordimiento, donde disfruto exponer al que pretende ser y no es, al que pretende hacer y no hace, al que es super positivo, al que hace chambonadas y el que no tiene cara para hacer trabajos llenos de popo pero bien presentados.
Esa experiencia me esta clarificando algunos de los principios o valores importantes para mi en el trabajo.
Ser sincero, y ser puntual, y tener la habilidad de disculparse, y demostrar al menos actitud para las mejorar.
En general, desprecio a quien prentende y habla mas de lo que de verdad hace, eso incluye a los sobre-positivos

Maybe I'm old school....

....but I consider the iPads and the Laptops should be drastically forbidden from classrooms!! To class you come to pay attention, participate, debate, agree, disagree, you come to discuss a topic. I completely understand that keeping the attention on boring topics and teachers is tough, and that distraction appears. I have no problem with that, it happens and it's part of the challenge of a teacher, and I also get distracted easily and even many times I fall asleep in class. But the annoying thing is when that childish attitude is ALL THE TIME!!!

There is nothing more disappointing than paying 14 thousands Euro (Yes! fourteen thousands Euros) to take a MSc, and pay at least 1000 Euro per month to survive in this city, to be 70% of the class playing with the dam iPad, Skyping, chating or Facebooking!!!!

I started to get over-annoyed by the situation, and then I got worried about it, so I have thought about it and I've taken different lines:

1) Maybe I don't understand their behavior because I come from an engineering school, where you can't simply be distracted. Where to pass a course you can not bullshit in the final exam, where you a) have to pay attention in class, b) understand and learn what the hell did the teacher said, c) practice a lot to prove that you really learned and d) get to the exam well prepared to make the dam numbers, equations and models fit to get a result. In simple words: engineering is serious stuff. I've got the feeling that this people in my course who also payed 14400 euros and came to France to play in class have never experience what is studying in reality!!!

2) That approach might not be the best because it divides between engineers and others, which I try not to do, and indeed the best student in my course is not engineer and she also uses her laptop (not to play, though), so then I just try to not to pay attention to them. It is their business and their decision to waste their money, their time and their opportunity. But then I remember that my expectations of a MSc, were also in the quality of the classmates, which are another interesting source of learning, so then I think that with their childish attitude their are also making me loose my money because they don't participate at all, they don't bring any value to the course. Even worst, they will get the same degree that I will, reducing the value of mine as well.

3) Thinking all these just makes me feel bad, their are too extreme. I should just take it easy, chill out.

4) But seeing them wasting their money and my money just makes me feel like slapping them in the face and yelling them to get the hell out of class!

5) but again, thinking that just makes me feel bad.

Then I just think that I am too old-school for this generation of over-technified students.

Note: I am not condemning those who use a laptop or iPad in class. Just those who don't stop using it between class and class, which sadly in my course are more than one.

Notes of the week

- Surprise yourself, then surprise the others

- The existence of isomorphic problems is a great source of innovation. The matter is being able to recognize the isomorphic problem to the one I am facing. ---March 25th update: There is a method of creativity taking advantange of this principle, and it is named TRIZ.

- In High Tech marketing, if I am a technology manufacturer, (as we are in Boreas, or as the IC companiess are in the cell-phone industry) it's a clue movement to address the customer of my customer.

- Important and basic equation: TCO = CAPEX + OPEX. The Total Cost of Ownership has two components, the Capital Expenditure and the Operation Expenditure, the best example to ilustrate this equation is to own a car. If you want a car you need money to: a) Purchase it, b) Operate it -fuel, parking, insurance, maintenance,...-

- GroupThinking: It's what happens in groups when in order to preserve the harmony and to avoid conflict, erroneous ideas are accepted. This leads to lack of critical thinking, individual points of views and many time to act complete outside of reality.

Colombia after 3 years

Finally, after three year I went back to my Country, and the best of it: I caught my brother by surprise, he was thinking I was skiing while he went to the airport to welcome a "customer", he didn't know that the skiing part was a complete lie and that the "customer" was me, here the moment.

I stood there 20 day of glory, the weather was perfect, and the time was even better, it was DECEMBER! which in Colombia is a crazy time. I had the chance to catch up with old friends and family. Almost all the time I was with my brother, and sadly I couldn't spend much with my mother, but still we managed to be together and update each other.

I found the city in really good shape and everything was more or less as I remembered it was when I left, there where changes in some buildings and so on. Culturally speaking (and the thing I was paying more attention to) I found one huge improvement that still doesn't fit into my mind: The stadiums are without protective fence to separate the fans from the field, and even further, to separate those who pay the cheaper ticket and those who pay 4 times more expensive ticket. It seems now we are believing in the stadium and that there is social punishment for those who throw stuff to the field and who tried to cheat the locations they paid for.

I was surprised on how bad drivers we are, and that everyone is annoyed with the automatic system to punish those who exceed speed limits or commit other traffic infractions. I thing sooner or later we've got to learn from it and accept the rules not for its punishment but because of the principle behind it.

My feeling there was much better than expected, still I felt again some sort of loneliness. Which is not in terms of being surrounded by people, but in the terms that appear in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Still, I felt so happy and I came back to France with my batteries full charged, and ready for the next semester.

The Monk and the Riddle forgotten review

Three months ago I finished my last book. It's ashaming, I know, but last semester was tough, and since then I've been reading two books at the same time. Once I finished it I shared my highlights here. There I show the soul of the book.

It's a book with an interesting style, it's not literature but it's not management style either, but it talks about how important it is to have the passion as driver for life. He creates a model or a style of life living, he calls it "Deferred Life Plan". All that is written within a nice context and life experience, the structure of the book is quite particular and you never know what really comes next.

The Deferred Life Plan is that life plan in which you think as work as a burden you've gotta carry before you retire and then you can execute those wishes you always had (run a hostel in the beach, be a football coach, live in the mountains, ...). He says that this should not be the way we plan our lifes, because in this type of plan, it is intrinsic that your job and your plans after retirement are not aligned, thus you passion and your job aren't either.

He suggests to be honest with each other and find this passion that drive us and make our life upon it, make it our job. He doesn't tell how, obviously, for that you better find what your passion is first.

Second important conclusion from the book is that it is necessary to accept and embrace failure, falilure makes us really learn and know where the boundary is, it helps us to find ourselves, he relates this within the personal aspect and the entrepreneurial aspect in the context of the Silicon Valley Economy and the Venture Capital that make it so special, Upon him, the economy in the silicon valley is completely based on failure, they embrace it in the sense that once it is accepted the fear to act will dilute and sooner than latter success will come, and will come not but chance but full of lessons.

I'd suggest the book to who ever is interested on have and startup or to hear a nice speech from a successful and honest entrepreneur.
His lesson of embracing the failure, came later as well reading a document of Alessi, the leading Italian design company, here is the article where he nicely explains the importance of failure.

Almost three months away

My last post was almost three months away!, that's not a good number having in mind that I enjoy it. Actually I didn't stop writing, I kept doing it, just in another place.

The last semester was interesting, the end was very tough, mainly because all the final assignments were due to January, which meant that I was supposed to do them during my holidays. As I knew I was going to Colombia I was not willing to leave any homework for that time, then I had to redouble my efforts to prepare the final exams and to complete all the assignments.

My first semester as a MSc student was very interesting. Before I thought I had had intercultural exchange, and indeed I had, but at the level of parties or trips, never at the level of working. This semester I worked with dutch, lebanese, chinese, indian, italian, romanian, "trinitian&tobagian", canadian, english, finish,...it was a real experience and I really learned about myself and about intercultural work.

Besides that, I had a bit hard times getting used to the "business school" coming from an "engineering school", but now I feel how my potential as an engineering can be used in the business side. The school is very nice and in general there are good teachers and methods, but as always there are bad teachers. However I learnt either by them or studying for their exams.

The courses were: Introduction to Innovation, Accounting, Finance, Innovation through design, business ethics, Managing IT for success, Strategic Management, International Business Law, Project Management, Intercultural Negotiation and Management, Economics of Innovation, Economics, Managerial Creativity and French. (I think that's all).

Since the last post I've got many ideas to write here, but obviously I forgot them, but at least I am catching up again, i'm back to the track...I just hope this semester let me keep writing a couple of times per month as usual