For me, the time around Christmas and New Year is the best time of the year. Of course, there’s the peaceful family reunions around the christmas tree. The cozy evenings at home on the couch. Or days where you can shamelessly sleep in. In my case I am expecting my son Orell who should be born anytime.
But stop: This is a business related blog. And so I am not talking about my private life. When I say “the best time of the year” I am thinking about work. There’s no better time of year for not taking vacations. Here’s why:
- No traffic jams in the morning: Everyone’s up in St. Moritz skiing so the streets are empty. The time necessary for commuting is cut in half to 15 minutes.
- No urgent e-mails: Our clients are in Arosa snowboarding. No phonecalls. No deadlines.
- No meetings: Most of our staff is in Ischgl partying so the offices are virtually empty. No point doing meetings without participants. (As an ex-geek I admit not really liking meetings. Nevertheless they are necessary if you want your team to be happy and productive.)
Calendar check!
So my calendar looks like this:
So this leaves me plenty of time to accomplish tasks that piled up in the last few months. I can focus on them without being interrupted by Skype or an emergency board meeting. Hey, back into the flow!
Hands on time!
- I am giving all components of our new Trevi application framework a try. (Hey, Maarten, when do you post the article about it?)
- Backport the Memcache component to our legacy framework.
- Define a structure for the data in our Confluence based IT Wiki. The cherry on top is the new confluence homepage
- Work on my expert power by refreshing my knowledge about mock vs. stub objects.
- Catch up on Techrunch to learn about technologies for 2008.
- Install NewsGator Go on my HTC Tytn. (My opinion: Still very alphaish)
After these two weeks of refueling at work I am going to be ready again for days when my calendar looks like this:
And it’s also the best time to attend geeky congresses 😉