The other day, I wrote a post declaring that I will no longer try to increase my productivity. This doesn't mean I won't read productivity blogs, and tweak things, and manage my "system". It means I no longer think about any of that stuff as having anything to do with productivity.Productivity is what happens when you're doing work. Enhancing your productivity is what happens when you do a lot of work, for long enough to get better at it.Look, throw all your stuff in Dropbox, live your life out of plain text files, use gmail to communicate, turn off tasks and chat, leave things in their de...

For designers, it’s easy to jump right into the design phase of a website before giving the user experience the consideration it deserves. Too often, we prematurely turn our focus to page design and information architecture, when we should focus on the user flows that need to be supported by our designs. It’s time to make the user flows a bigger priority in our design process.Design flows that are tied to clear objectives allow us to create a positive user experience and a valuable one for the business we’re working for. In this article, weâ€...

A manager took me aside at a recent engagement. “You know, Johanna, there’s something I just don’t understand about this agile thing. It sure doesn’t look like everyone is being used at 100 percent.”“And what if they aren’t being used at 100 percent? Is that a problem for you?”“Heck, yes. I’m paying their salaries! I want to know I’m getting their full value for what I’m paying them!”“What if I told you you were probably getting more value than what you were paying, maybe one and a half to twice as much?...

This year I'm going to try a new programming language - Go. I had this notion that compiled, type based languages are overly complex and reduces developer efficiency. However, after doing some reading about Go, it appeared to take a different path from the rest and felt like something worth trying.Acquainting a programming language is a journey. First few steps you take with it will define your perception about it. These first few steps went well for me with Go and it felt like a good fit for my repertoire. I thought of sharing my learning experience, hoping it will help others who w...

Like farming was in the 17th century, factory work during the industrial revolution, construction during the Great Depression, and manufacturing after World War II. Better, because writing code is a creative act which can be done with or without a traditional (antiquated?) office-based job, and can create enormous personal and economic value.Most young people start in jobs that don’t have much of a future. Most don’t get higher education – only a third get any advanced degree. In the past, students who missed out on a higher education learned vocational skil...

Looking at things through a microscopesometimes leads to surprising discoveriesObviously this is an utterly preposterous statement: it’s hard to think of a more ridiculous and esoteric coding requirement. I can just imagine all sorts of amusing conversations with designers and business sponsors: “No… the size of this <input> field should be 23… 24 is just too long!” Or: “We need to explain to users that their subject lines should be less than 23 letters…” Or: “Twitter got it all wrong… the 140 limit should have been 23!â€...

Here are some sequences of events:Take the rake out of the shed, use it to pile up the leaves in the backyard, then put the rake back in the shed.Fly to Seattle, see the sights, then fly home.Put the key in the door, open it, then take the key out of the door.Wake-up your phone, check the time, then put it back to sleep.See the pattern? You do something, then do something else, then you undo the first thing. Or more accurately, the last step is the inverse of the first. Once you're aware of this pattern, you'll see it everywhere. Pick up the cup, take a sip of coffee, put the cup down. And it'...

Did you know that we have a nice collection of puzzles here on less than dot? Some are harder than others so there is something for everyone. You can pic any language you want, you will see that there are solutions in Ruby, Python, Visual Basic, SQL, JavaScript, C++ and other.Here is a partial list of what we have Friday the ThirteenthsThe goal is to identify all friday the thirteenths for a given timeframeRegular PentagonGiven a grid co-ordinate (x,y) as the centre point of a regular pentagon, and the sum of the length of the sides, return the co-ordinates of each point as: "Top", "MidLeft",...