Productivity

Everything feels like work since the pandemic began. But the feeling has been more gnawing for the last couple of months. I have been working from home since 2018, but that was different! The work from home since the pandemic began is pretty adverse. The Tragedy of Lost Contexts Everything happens from the same place, things like work, seeing friends, entertainment, conferences, meetup, reading for fun, side project, etc. Earlier, there was a context and a place for each and everything. All of these other things have encroached on my workplace. Seeing friends in person is replaced by meeting them on Zoom. Watching movies in theater has been replaced by Netflix or Prime Video. Conferences had a special place for them in big convention centers in distant places. Now there are online platforms for organizing that too. A different company would host us for the meetup. There was a novelty in seeing new company spaces, a joy of talking tech for hours, that was fun. But now that too is only on Zoom, and it feels like yet another meeting. Cafes were for side projects and reading, but alas, that too happens in the same room, the same place. ...

I use different devices for consuming content from disparate streams, even for books. This post discusses each method’s various pros and cons and what fits best in what kind of circumstance. You can refer to the table at the end of the post, where I have broken down each comparison aspect. Physical Books This method of consuming knowledge became prevalent with Gutenburg’s printing press. Getting a new book always gives you that dopamine rush since it has a sense of newness, new cover, the smell of paper, etc. ...

I took the reins of the Kubernetes Bangalore Meetup back in 2017. I have been organising the meetup since then. Earlier with Suraj Narwade, Aditya Konarde and now with Prakash Mishra. Over time the meetup has grown a lot, now it boasts about 5000 members. Organising meetup earlier was a straightforward affair, especially with Narwade and Konarde being my colleagues and friends. We could chat about the upcoming meetup at any time we would like, and it was all spontaneous. Once they left in 2019, Prakash took over as co-organiser, and we are managing the meetup since then. ...

There are specific skills which you should acquire early on in your life. These skills are the foundational skills. Everything you do after developing these skills becomes better, faster and easier. I call these skills Compounder Skills. Derived from the term “Compound Interest”. The idea is that once you are laced with a particular compounder skill, you can apply it in various fields of your life. An example of a compounder skill that most humans get exposed to is “school education”. The disadvantages of being unlettered are numerous viz. being dependent for information, gullible to most straightforward scams, the limited scope of jobs they can do, etc. ...

Yes, today’s topic is typing skills. I think not many people stress about it, but it is a very underrated skill, yet useful in our daily lives. I typed the most organic way anybody starts doing it. Look at the keyboard when you are typing and fix mistakes after looking at the monitor. I moved my hand around on the keyboard and only used index fingers to touch the keys as if other fingers were glued together away from the keyboard. I learned the QWERTY keyboard’s keys placement while playing GTA Vice City with a friend since I typed cheat codes. Although I was still looking at the keyboard and typing, I did not search for the keys. ...

If you are reading this, you are definitely a Knowledge Worker. As Knowledge Workers, we rely a lot on the information we know or have access to for our day to day work. Occasionally, we will do the same thing twice, face the situation more than once, want to read that reference or try to understand the insights mentioned in that one particular blog. How do you keep track of such information? How do you find such information again after you have researched it once?! You need a knowledge management system that aids you in revisiting such information. ...

There are various ways to know about the release of your favourite new software, follow the mailing list, check the Github release page periodically, follow the project’s Twitter handle, etc. But do you know there is even more reliable way to track the releases of your favourite software released on Github. Github Releases and RSS feeds For every repository on Github, if the project is posting their releases, you can follow the RSS feed of that project’s release. The RSS feed link for any project’s release is: ...