Geeky: Listening to music at work

"My boss told me the other day that I was spending in average 6.5 hours per day on YouTube according to the company's Internet statistics. But I'm only using YouTube to listen to background music while I work. Are they allowed to check what I'm doing online? What about privacy?

This is not an actual reader question. But I heard this story from a friend and decided to turn it into a fake reader question.

Secondly, I could start an analysis of the Swiss Data Protection Law, but I just don't feel like it at the moment. Me know, me am lazy ;-)

Thirdly, using YouTube extensibly at work doesn't make much sense to me. Whether your employer uses legal or illegal means to track your web traffic isn't the point. Anybody could walk by your desk five times a day and see that you're on YouTube.

Furthermore, streaming videos all day uses a lot of bandwidth and although many people still think that the Interwebs are for free, connecting to this cyber maze still costs a lot.

Besides, using YouTube to listen to music doesn't really make much sense to me. But that's just lil' ol' me...

So here's my geeky solution:

• buy a USB stick. The last one I bought had 16 GB and didn't cost that much anymore
• download CoolPlayer+ (a portable app) and copy it to the stick
• fill up the remaining space on your stick with your favorite mp3 songs

The beauty of portable apps is that you don't need to install the programs, you just copy them somewhere. Even if you don't have admin access to your work computer, you can use programs and it costs your company zilch in terms of bandwidth.

Alternatives:
Of course, you could just copy your mp3 files to the hard drive and use the pre-installed media player. But this wouldn't be geeky, now would it ;-)

@JT: Thank you, the Twitter message that you wrote 17 days ago and which I only saw today motivated me to write again! And your new site logo looks really cool!
.

Dressing Up For Business Made Simple

"Clothes make the man." And now I've even experienced it firsthand.

New dress code for The Happy Employee
I've been wearing a suit (including tie) for the last three weeks. And here are examples of how people reacted:

• A friend of mine almost choked from laughing too hard when he saw me (too bad the Stupid Kid didn't laugh harder...).
• On two separate occasions people apologized several times for something I thought wasn't even worth mentioning (this never happened before).
• And my favorite: The guy at the gas station always called me "buddy", now he calls me "Sir".

Business clothes have the advantage that, at least for men, the choices are quite restricted. Therefore you don't have to think too hard about what to wear. On the other hand good quality clothes can be quite expensive.

What you need to keep the thinking and spending to a minimum

• 2 pair of black shoes
• 2 black suits
• 5 white shirts
• 10 ties

This way you will always have spare clothes. Even if you don't manage to wash them every week, you could still wear each shirt twice (unless it's very hot, you're sweating a lot, etc.).

Only one decision to make in the morning
It's simple: "which tie should I wear today?" After all, any tie will match the rest of your black and white clothes anyway.

Tie Storage System
If this is still too much effort, store your ties in a row. Then select each morning the first one on the right and put it back on the far left in the evening. For more variation without too much additional effort, you can randomize the order of the first five ties from the right each Sunday evening.

Even Blacker
And yes, you could also decide to use black ties only, but your boss and co-workers might see this as laziness and you would certainly become the target of many Blues Brothers and Men In Black jokes.

Link
For more sophisticated information on dress codes check out Dresscode Guide.
.

Email Guerrilla Techniques 4

How's the cute girl from marketing doing? Still haven't had time to drink a coffee with her? In this case it's definitely time for another installment of... Guerrilla Techniques!

Did you test the previous GT's? Haven't gotten yourself fired yet? Then keep on reading.

Email Guerrilla Technique #4
Do you ever get emails with random requests sounding like a 10-year-old was sharing his thoughts about life, the universe and everything in a chat room? Or emails that don't make any sense and obviously took the requester a maximum of 10 seconds to write?

Yes? In this case, here's what you should do:

• Delete the email!
• Important: don't forget to also delete the message from the "Deleted Items" folder.
• If it was important, you will get a reminder.
• Should you ever get a reminder, apply Email Guerrilla Technique #2.

"This is just plain rude," you might say. True, but keep the following in mind:

1. The sender of the email showed you zero respect (how's that for rude?)
   
2. This technique should only be used in extreme situations when you see no other solution

And now take a break and have a coffee with the cute girl from marketing! I mean, please, how much longer do you want to keep her waiting? Just remember: It's all about priorities!

.

Email Guerrilla Techniques 3

So many emails, so little time and you're still thinking about throwing that chair out of the window. Again, desperate times call for... Guerrilla Techniques!

As always, use at your own risk since your boss may not appreciate.

But first a few links to articles that helped me go from an average of 2'000+ messages in my inbox to less than 50:

• article series Inbox Zero at 43folders and Merlin Mann's presentation at Google.
• Gina Trapani's Trusted Trio at Lifehacker.

However, my Guerrilla Techniques are more fun...

Email Guerrilla Technique #3
If you receive very long emails, you can of course try to understand what you might have to do while

• supporting the killing of innocent trees
• showing off your excellent skills in analysis and synthesis
• and drawing a cute little graphic because otherwise there's just no way you will ever make sense of this monster of an email!

Or you could use a variant of Guerrilla Technique #2 ("I have no clue what you want."). In this case, just write back:

I'm currently working on several urgent projects. Please summarize in 2-3 bullet points and state in 1 sentence what you need from me.

If this happens a lot, you can also use Lifehacker's Texter to insert a standard text in less than 3 seconds (see also this previous post for more information about Texter).

And then have a coffee with the cute girl from marketing while you wait for a reply.
.

Email Guerrilla Techniques 2 (Only Apply If Really, Really Desperate)

Does email overload sound familiar? You're looking at your inbox and don't know where to start? Desperate times call for... Guerrilla Techniques!

But first, what qualifies as being really, really desperate?
Here's an example: You're staring at your computer, can't remember what you were about to do, it's past midnight, you're still at the office, you realize you're completely screwed and you definitely feel like throwing your chair through the (closed) window.

Email Guerrilla Technique #2
If you receive emails saying "please take care" and realize that it's the result of a 15 round email tennis match where half a dozen people used their creativity to hide information here and there, or it's a single message that is just plain cryptic, then it's time for Email Guerrilla Technique #2.

• don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you're supposed to do (and risk wasting your time delivering the wrong thing).
• Within seconds of reading the message, fire back a reply saying "I'm not sure I understand your request. Please specify how I can help you."
  
• Don't wait, do it right away.
• Use your time for truly urgent and important things while you wait for a reply (or have a coffee with the cute girl from marketing).
• Celebrate as soon as you realize that a lot of your requests for clarification never get answered (less work for you!)

To be continued.
.

Email Guerrilla Techniques (Only Apply If Really, Really Desperate)

Sometimes your workload can become just too much and you have no clue how to get the situation back under control. Desperate times call for... Guerrilla Techniques!

Just be careful if you really wish to apply them since your boss and co-workers might not be too happy about it.

Does this sound familiar? Your inbox contains more messages than there are stars in the sky. You read most of them, but can't remember if and what you're supposed to do.

Email Guerrilla Technique #1

• Move all messages from your inbox to a folder called "TooMuch", "IGiveUp" or whatever makes you feel better.
• Start over with a clean slate
• Never go to this folder again unless you're looking for a specific message you know must be in there somewhere.
• Trust me, you won't go to this folder nearly as often as you might think.

More Guerrilla Techniques soon.
.

Lifehack: Don't Forget Your Lunch Tomorrow

The last time I cooked something for the next day, I arrived at work and realized that my yummy lunch was still in the fridge at home.

But today I was very proud of myself.

Last night I prepared a chicken-egg-salad. But when I went to bed, I thought "Oh no, tomorrow I'll forget to take it with me again." So I picked up an empty food container in the kitchen, put it on the table next to the door and laid my wallet and keys next to it.

Today I had a chicken-egg-salad for lunch. Looks like my obsession with productivity and life hacks is finally starting to pay off.


PS: Does anybody know how to avoid chicken getting dry when you heat it up in the microwave?

Lifehack: HR and dirty pans

Lets assume you're a hard-working HR professional. Or just hard-working, period. You come home late at night, you're hungry and you don't want to eat microwave food.

Coming home late, tired, lemme watch some TV...

So you use a pan for meat and a pot for pasta or rice. Or just a pan for meat and an egg. Once the food is finally ready, you sit in front of the TV and watch something enjoyable because you think you've earned it (or you're just tired and want to watch TV).

Your dirty pans are still sitting on the stove. But by now you're watching a movie and afterwards you'll be too tired to do any cleaning. The bad news is that tomorrow morning you'll rush out the door so you're not late for work and on the weekend you'll be faced with dirty, crusted, and just plain disgusting pans.

The best and the almost "bestest" solution

The best solution is to become a better person and to clean up everything just after you've used it.

The second best solution is to fill up your pans and pots with water, to add some dish cleaning stuff (takes 10 seconds or less) and to enjoy the movie.

Face the consequences

When you finally decide to spend some quality time with your beloved kitchen (i.e. cleaning pans and pots), it will take you only seconds to clean the greasy pans since they're not disgustingly crusted with stuff.

Perfection is for... somebody else

Just so we're clear: it's not about being perfect human beings, it's about making life easier and more enjoyable ;-)