Category Archives: Chatter

Chit chat and potentially mindless drivel.

7-step method to approach any new task

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I’m reading Master Your Thinking: A Practical Guide to Align Yourself with Reality and Achieve Tangible Results in the Real World. Here are seven questions to ask before you begin a task:

  1. Is this task a priority, or could I do it later?
    • If I could do only one thing today, which task would have the most impact?
    • Is this task moving me closer to my main goal?
    • Do I really need to do it right now, or can I do it later?
  2. Is this task valid, or can I forget about it?
    • Do I really need to do this task?
    • Is right now the best time? What would happen if I delay it for a week? A month? Forever?
    • Do I need to do this task, or am I doing it because it makes me feel good? In short, am I working on this task to escape from what I really should be doing?
  3. What does done look like?
    • What exactly do I need to do here?
    • What am I trying to accomplish?
    • What does the finished product look like?
  4. Am I the person to do this task, or can I delegate to someone else?
    • Is this task really worthy of my time?
    • Can someone else do it better than me? If so, can I ask for help?
    • What would happen if I simply remove/postpone this task?
    • Do I enjoy working on this task? Does it motivate me?
  5. What’s the best way to complete this task?
    • What tool(s) can I use, people can I ask, or method can I rely on to complete this task as efficiently and effectively as possible?
    • What skill(s) could I learn or improve to help me complete this task faster in the future?
  6. Can I batch this task with other tasks I need to do?
    • Can I batch this task with other similar tasks to boost my productivity?
  7. Can I automate this task, or create a checklist or template?
    • Can I create templates to reuse every time I work on this or on similar tasks? For instance, you could design templates for the specific emails, presentations or documents you need to create over and over.
    • Can I create a checklist? Checklists provide you with specific steps to follow, making it less likely you will become distracted or confused.

Wrong, wrong, wrong

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I’m reading Fundamentals of Data Engineering: Plan and Build Robust Data Systems, wherein the authors say:

Data is stored in a table of relations (rows), and each relation contains multiple fields (columns); see Figure 5-7. Note that we use the terms column and field interchangeably throughout this book.

There are two mistakes. The first is that tables are relations, rows are tuples. The second is that a field is the intersection of a row and a column, columns and fields are different things.
I have to wonder what business the authors have publishing a book on data engineering while failing to know such basic things.