Management Bits and Tips

A few years ago I introduced the notion of a process parasite. After reading biographies for some time I decided to extend this to the notion of a contributing process parasite:

Let me give you an example. Recall that Einstein made his discoveries while working in a patent office where he had free time. Would have the management of that office tolerated if they knew what he was doing while processing patents for clock devices? So let’s give a definition of a contributing process parasitism:

an extension of a process parasitism between an employee and an organization in which one, the process parasite, makes a contribution to humanity or to a specific domain of activity in general.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Previously announced book (publication date is 1st of September, 2010) now got preliminary front and back covers.

Front cover:

Back cover:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Stress can be relative. Instead of internalizing stress, an employee can stay calm and stress his or her environment. If everyone externalizes stress than no one is under stress. This seems like a paradox - where has stress gone? The explanation is very simple: there was no stress initially!

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Although I still use Preemptive Multireading throughout my working day I decided to try another approach similar to cooperative multitasking used in old operating systems like Windows 3.x. I identified 30 technical books I want to read (mostly related to software engineering, software architecture, design and programming) and allocated one hour every day to spend about 2 minutes on each book. Most software related books have low information density per page and plenty of information is repeated from book to book which allows using some speed reading techniques. These books are unlike mathematics, physics and computer science books where I have to meditate on proofs, formulae and examples. So I switch to another book every 2 minutes and do this 30 times. 2 minutes is usually sufficient to read and turn a page and these amounts to 60 pages per day (one page per minute). An average 300-page book can be finished in 7-8 months and therefore I can read at least 30 books per year using this approach, read all of them together and don’t wait for a second book until I finish the first one! The last point is psychologically very important to me because I want everything now

A technical note: it might look that we still use preemptive multitasking with a fixed quantum here but in reality there are no external interrupt sources. All I do is to voluntarily yield reading control from one book to another. I can always spend one or two minutes more with a book if its current chapter is very interesting.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Many people ask me how do I manage to read all the books that I have. The trick is to employ Preemptive Multireading similar to Preemptive Multitasking using natural interrupt mechanisms. Here is an example from one of my common daily reading schedules:

• - Commuting to work from home in the morning: reading a history book.

• - Working hours: round robin reading of software engineering books and encyclopedias during breaks.

• - Lunch time: reading one of selected fiction / science fiction / health / food / chemistry / popular science books.

• - Commuting to home from work in the evening: reading a selected math / physics / popular science book.

• - Waiting for bus/train: one of selected philosophy / popular science books.

• - Home: one of selected management / psychology / parenting books.

• - Walking with my sleeping son on weekends: English language and writing books.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Follow-up and Follow-through are essential skills of every manager (bit). In the absence of specialized software use your existing e-mail system to tag important e-mail messages with keywords (tip). 

For example, when I send important analysis results and I want to look at them in retrospect after a couple of months for postmortem analysis I type the following tag at the end of my e-mail message:

[dmitry vostokov: revisit later]

After some time I just do a simple search in my inboxes to get all these tagged messages.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Reflecting on my old software engineering days I remember working for one of the biggest software factories in Russia and noticing IE windows on workstations when I was passing by. Then working for one of the biggest software factories in telecommunications domain I noticed the same screens whenever I entered engineering offices. People there obviously had plenty of time for browsing, reading and typing (not in some programming language of course). At that time I started calling them Process Parasites and their relationship to a team and an organization as Process Parasitism which (paraphrasing Wikipedia definition) is: 

a type of symbiotic relationship between an employee and an organization in which one, the process parasite, benefits from a prolonged, close association with the processes in the organization.  

What kind of benefits a process parasite gains? Obviously one benefit is time: free time to do whatever a parasite wants or needs but irrelevant to business goals. This especially happens when there are process inefficiencies and underplanning of resources.

One manager reading this post noticed the curious similarity between the word “website” and the word “parasite“.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -