TV Addict

I grew up watching a lot of tv.

And I have a bit of an addictive personality.

Thus, there are several shows that I watch quite frequently.

I'm trying not to add any shows to the schedule. After all, there are occasionally other things that I like to do with my time. Like watch movies.

Anyhow, there's a show that I stumbled upon last summer, and I just now noticed that it's back, and yes, it's better than ever.

It's called Wipeout and it's on ABC.

I mean seriously, this is good television.






It's a ridiculously-constructed obstacle course, complete with commentators (who yes, occasionally make some questionable jokes). But it is hilarious. The stuff that they make these people do is just insane.

Side note: while Amar and I were in India, there wasn't much on tv that we could both watch and enjoy (the Indian ones were hard for me to follow, and the English ones were not incredibly compelling). The two shows that we could agree on were 1) BBC World News and 2) Takeshi's Castle. Hopefully you can figure out the former. The latter? Potentially the most awesome Japanese gameshow of all time. Needless to say, hours of entertainment.

Anyhow, you should check out Wipeout. Just give it a shot for 5 minutes and you will be sucked in.

Or, maybe it's just me. Is it just me?

Inbox insanity

Several of my co-workers have recently started using Xobni, which is a MS Outlook plug in that claims to keep you from drowning in your inbox.

I don't normally have a problem with drowning, as I try to stay fairly organized most of the time. However, today I found myself digging through a folder that had about 2000 emails in it, trying to locate one specific email from a person whose name I couldn't remember.

And then I thought of Xobni, and thought, "What the heck, why not give it a try?"

I downloaded it, and after about 15 minutes of having it index my emails, I was able to locate that missing email in about 30 seconds.

Definitely worth it.

But the goodness didn't stop there. They have this feature called Xobni Analytics, which basically shows you a bunch of cool stuff about your email habits and trends. You can find out who you send the most email to, who sends you the most email, what your high volume hours are over the day, etc.

One thing I found curious was the "Time to Respond" metric, as I try to respond in a timely manner to most things. Here's my analysis:




If you click on the picture, you'll see that back in November, I had an average email response time of ~4 hours. Compare that with my average response time in May of ~30 minutes. That's what I call progress ;)

If you look at the data another way, you can tell the times that I'm more likely to respond quickly to your email:



You'll see that if you send me a email at 3AM, it might take me 3 days to respond to it. But if you send me an email between 6AM and noon, you're looking at an average response time of less than 15 minutes.

Is it just me, or is this cool?

It's ok, I already know I'm a nerd...this is just official confirmation.

More nerdy goodness...

Average email volume by day:



Average email volume by hour:

Twisters

Is it just me, or does anyone else have recurring dreams?

It's not that I have the exact same dream on a recurring basis. It's more like, I have recurring themes in my dreams (and no, I didn't intend to rhyme there...).

The theme: tornadoes





I think the earliest I remember having a tornado dream was in college. Since then, I can recall about 10 or so variations on that theme.

Usually when they're in my dream, they are far away. I'll be looking out over the city, or over a field and they will be there. Sometimes just one, sometimes it's a whole gaggle.

A tornado made a guest appearance earlier this week in one of my dreams, and it was pretty vivid. Rather than it being far off, I was in it. I was in the wall of the tornado and I could feel the air almost getting sucked out of me.

I'm trying to figure out if the dreams correlate to anything going on in my life, but I'm drawing a blank.

So I'm curious to know if y'all have any thoughts on this. Do you have recurring themes?

On a side note, based on a very informal survey of the couples in our small group, it turned out that most of the guys in the group didn't dream very often. This was in stark contrast to the girls in the group, most of whom had vivid and memorable dreams.

Interesting.

Telling stories

I've been noticing a personal and professional trend over the last few years: I'm getting nerdier.

Sure, I've always been on the nerdy end of the spectrum. 3 years ago when we were buying a washer and dryer, I did lots of research and put everything into a spreadsheet. Probably overkill, but it helped me think more clearly about the various facets of the purchase.

I now have an Excel addiction.

But more than that, I find that I've become a bit of a snob about spreadsheets. Everyone has their own preferences, sure. But spending 5 minutes doing some minor formatting really makes a huge difference in getting your audience to understand your data.

The same can be said about presentations, and I'm becoming increasingly nerdy about those as well.

Why spend hours crafting a deck that no one will remember? It's a waste of time and money, and it sets a tone for your future pitches. Polishing things ever so slightly can turn a bad presentation into a decent one.

But why stop at decent? What really makes things stand out? What makes them memorable?

Sure, fonts and images go a long way there. But I'm talking about really crafting your message. Telling a story.

This goes for more than PowerPoint decks. I'd argue that telling stories is most of the battle. Drawing people in, getting them to understand the context, the tension, the climax and the resolution...this is what makes it interesting...what makes it memorable.

We've all been to bad presentations, attended bad meetings, or read bad emails. That's part of what makes work feel like work.

But it doesn't have to be that way. A post from the folks at Duarte reminded me of that today. The post is about hiring professionals, knowing when you're in over your head. Check it out: here

Now, let me say this: not everyone can hire professionals. Heck, I know there's no way that would fly in my corner of cubicle city. But just changing our mindset about what we want to communicate can really help get us on the right track.

I want people to look forward to communicating with me, whether that be over email, via spreadsheets, in staff meetings or at coffee shops.

If you're digging this line of thinking, you should also check out "Death By Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni. Good stuff there as well. Very readable business fiction that will get you thinking about changing things up a bit...

Good luck out there.

Bravo

I was sad to see that Project Runway would not be seen again this year on Bravo (and I still can't picture it on Lifetime...but that's another blog entry for another day). However, I gave their new show, Fashion Show, a try this week.

Let me just say this: I cannot fathom a world in which a grey satin harem pant is a "must have."

The challenge was to create a "must have" item and build five looks around it. Now, I might not be as fashion forward as the next girl, but harem pants in the first place are just not must-haves. The other items created were ok. Jacket? Yes, it could work. The concept of a skirt? Yes, could work. But I agree with the judges on this one: the way that these looks were executed leaves something to be desired.

Granted, they only had about a day to do it. So you have to cut them some slack. But seriously - it got a little crazy and unwearable pretty quickly.

And if any of you watched the show, please try to explain to me what Merlin is. I really can't understand it.

Will I tune in again next week? Most likely.
Do I like it as much as Project Runway? Not just yet.

Your thoughts??


Harem Pants Montage




*Images courtesy of Bravo