Effective Software Design

I’m constantly looking for new ways to be more productive and avoid wasting my time. One of my biggest challenges is how to use some small fractions of free time, something like less than 10 minutes.

I think that, for most people today, the natural tendency would be to use these few minutes to check their social networks: go see if there is any interesting post on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. But in general this would be a way to waste our time.

How can we measure if our time was used effectively or if it was wasted? I think that a good way is to ask ourselves if we will remember what we did.

Let’s say we spent a few minutes scanning some dozens of posts on Facebook. What will we remember after that? Did we really learn something new?

Sometimes we go over our stream so fast that we don’t even pay attention to who is posting what. Depending on who are our friends and how many friends do we have, we will just see a collection of random posts.

Thus I decided to look for alternative ways to use these small fractions of time. Currently I’m focusing on book summaries. For the most popular books, such summaries are available both as videos or slides.

In the case of slides, I enjoy the collection of book quotes by GetNugget on SlideShare:

In the case of videos, I enjoy the channel FightMediocrity on YouTube:

These are only two examples. I’m sure that it’s possible to find many other ways to make good use of our few minutes of free time. And certainly there are better ways to use our time than constantly visiting Facebook or Twitter.

What about you? How do you use your small fractions of free time? Please share with us in the comments below.

I love giving talks to diverse types of audiences. I consider Public Speaking to be at the same time an extremely challenging and gratifying activity, that very often requires you to get out of your comfort zone. My first experience giving talks was when I taught an introductory BASIC programming course in my high-school in Rio de Janeiro. At that time I was 16 and had to teach other students who were a few years younger than me. Several years later, as a M.Sc. student at the Technion in Israel, I became a Teaching Assistant. It was very difficult for me, because I was still learning Hebrew at that time. Today, thanks to this blog, I am very frequently being invited to speak at diverse meet-ups and conferences.

Below: Giving a talk about finding Hi-tech jobs in Israel to a group of new immigrants at the University of Haifa.

The Challenges of Public Speaking

I think the most challenging aspect of Public Speaking is preparing my presentation. But this includes much more than simply writing the slides, adding some nice pictures and drawing charts and diagrams. I always do lots of rehearsals, planning what exactly I will say at each slide, and measuring precisely my time. I also always give a talk to myself facing a large mirror, at least once. I personally don’t make a special effort to prepare jokes in advance, but I always think about alternative ways to better engage my audience. Finally, I always imagine what kinds of questions people may ask, and think about good answers. My experience is that, when I am really well prepared, talking to the public becomes relatively easy, and I don’t feel any particular fear nor anxiety.

Below: Giving a talk about the Role of the Software Architect to a group of students at the Ruppin Academic Center.

The Joy of Public Speaking

I think the most gratifying aspect of Public Speaking is when you are able to really engage your audience. You can feel as you speak when people are paying attention and thinking about your message, when they start asking lots of interesting questions, when they nod their heads in agreement with your statements. But it is also great when someone in the audience asks a particular challenging question, which makes people in the audience turn their heads to see who is asking. This is very often an opportunity to provide a detailed answer including also additional aspects that were not mentioned in the original question, conquering the attention of the entire audience. Then you have transformed your public speaking into a Public Dialogue.

What is your experience with Public Speaking? Please share with us in the comments below.

I spend considerable time thinking about the meaning of Wisdom and Happiness:

• What are the characteristics of a wise person?
• What are the characteristics of a happy person?
• Can wisdom and happiness be measured?

Of course I also think about the relationship between the two:

• Are wise people happier?
• Can we increase our happiness by increasing our wisdom?

In the Venn diagram below I try to capture one possible aspect of wisdom: The relationship between the “things we want” and the “things that are good for us”. The set W is the intersection of these two kinds of things. I believe that the number of items in W may be a measure of wisdom, meaning that a wise person is able to understand what is good for him/her.

Consequently, happiness would be the capacity to obtain these “things that we want and that are good for us”. In the Venn diagram below, the set H is the intersection between W and the “things we have”. I believe that the number of items in H may be a measure of happiness, meaning that a happy person has many of these things that he/she wants and that are good for him/her.

Of course I’m not talking only about material possessions. I believe that the “things you have” should consist mostly of the personal goals you achieved and the dreams you realized.

So what is the the path to happiness? First you increase the number of things in W, by understanding which things are good for you and “wanting them”. Then you increase the number of things in H, by obtaining the things that you want and that are good for you.

In other words, before realizing your dreams, make sure you are dreaming the right dreams.

What do you think? Do you agree? Please share your comments below.