Thoughts | Diogo Gomes Blog

Posts Tagged Thoughts

Disclaimer: This post started as a comment to a post in one my friends blog.

In the past I’ve tried the Get Things Done (GTD) methodology and quickly dropped it. I found that by focusing in a single task I was missing important deadlines. Furthermore it became obvious to me that my list was growing and not shrinking. On the other hand, I do find it important to properly manage my time.

Back to Alfredo’s post: I’ve been running something very similar with a good degree of success, although I’m not radical enough to remove the network cable as I still depend on the network to get my work done, and do get several emails during the day that require my immediate attention. That said my “standard” workday looks like:

Read all email + twitter (I only follow a very limited number of people and constantly purge some of them now and then) + limited number of blogs through an RSS reader (leaving most of them for later reading)
Exit all non essential applications (echofon, NetNewsWire) and IM accounts (gtalk, facebook) – At this moment I have only email and “work” IM.
Work the morning through
Lunch
Check twitter + Some of the blogs
Work the afternoon
Home
Babysit my child until she is put to bed
Read everything pending
Sleep

Of course this would be a perfect day. And most of my days aren’t… I have meetings almost every day + classes. That completely screws any possible GTD plan.

Bottom line: GTD is al about wishful thinking and living in a world where you work alone. You must be flexible enough to be interrupted, specially by work related subjects. In order to get Work Done concentrate instead in doing work in the working hours and leaving everything else for your breaks and after hours.

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Thesis defense

February 18, 2010 English

Today was a very important day, as I finally defended my Phd Thesis under the title “Resource Optimizations in Broadcast enabled Networks”.

I was probably a bit nervous as the defense was about the start, as shown in the above picture. The defense started with a 30 min delay, as one my jury member was held in traffic. But in 2h30m time I would be out of the room with boosting confidence levels, as I had finally successfully completed one my most important milestones.

Today I concluded a path, which started 5 years ago when I accepted the challenge of my supervisor to conduct research in an area that was then not very clear if it would become the next hit or flop in Telecom. Today we have very successful IPTV services and operators that cover several technologies (which include broadcast) under a single service platform.

I don’t think my research work in the area is done, far from that, I still believe much needs to be done and changed in the Telecom industry in order to survive in this century without becoming a fossil. But I leave all my new ideas to projects to come

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People attending a conference

July 28, 2009 English

This is something that came up during a talk in my research group, which I would like to share, in order to check if someone agrees:

It’s true that I haven’t attended a conference in a while. And my main opinion is that they are mostly not worthy the travel expenses… but that will be a different post!

Either way here is my caustic view of the 3 kinds of people attending a Science Conference nowdays:

- The authors of the papers (which usually sit in the front row) and will only ask you a question out of courtesy.

- The friends of the authors (well the folks you know, and who happen to be attending the conference that will sit there while you present, before leaving with you to go somewhere else more interesting)

- The “Others” which could actually make you a good question but will not. Either because they are polite not to shoot you down in public, or simply because there only there for the free wifi and not really for you paper.

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European Election 2009

June 5, 2009 English

European Elections are to be help during the these days around all europe, and a major abstention is unfortunately expected. Most people invoke the fact that they are tired of politicians, and that they can do nothing about it.

In my view they are wrong since politicians only exist due to us, the people who elect them. It is us that mold the profile of the politicians, being the vote our only truly democratic tool. Regardless of our political view it is important to vote and to express our opinions on how society should be governed by choosing a party.

A good way of doing soo is through a tool such as EU.Profiler that can help you to find the party that shares your view points from more then a dozen parties (yes, because there are more parties then those that show on TV).

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