In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell said everyone should build a “bliss station”;

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation.

At first you may find that nothing happens there (yes, there are those moments some days, lol). But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen (let’s hope so,jk).

The past couple of years have probably taught us all about all the reasons why it’s important to have a good home office space such as creating boundaries, work-life balance, comfort and creativity and so on so I am not going to dwell on that today. Instead I will show you what I have built over the years, where I started and how it evolved.

My Setup Today

This is what works for me after trying and testing several electronics, furniture, desk accessories and practices over the years. Some items stood the test of time, some didn’t. Some items cost me money and some made me more money.

I like to think of all the time and money spent as an investment because this bliss station is where I do some of my best work and make a buck while enjoying it.

I have posted below the evolution of how this setup came to be what it is today with pictures, links and prices of all purchases (and sales) made throughout my WFH journey as a Business Systems Analyst, Consultant, Project Manager and Practice Head from Pre-covid till today.

Note that my setup has always been unique to my needs at the times and circumstances of the kind of work and device preferences I have so take everything with a pinch (or more) of salt.

Scroll to the bottom for items list and cost (or read on if you want the little details of history)

Evolution of the Setup

Initial Setup – (B&B) Barebones & Budget

Late 2018 – This was my very first setup when I arrived to Australia that got me through freelancing and job hunting.

Total Cost – $135

Breakdown:

• Asus VivoBook with 32GB SSD + 8GB RAM – $120 from Facebook Marketplace – Touchscreen BEAST for the price!
• Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo – Kmart $15
• Acer 24″ monitor 1600*900 – picked up from the street!
• IKEA Desk with Height Adjustable Legs – also from the street in perfect condition!

This setup lasted for more than I would have liked it to and made me my first online dollars while freelancing for a client in Canada.

Upgraded the SSD to a 120GB that I found for $20, used it for a couple of months and sold it at $150 for a profit of $10.

Total cost so far : $0 +$10 profit

V2 – Full HD Yoga Beast (Y700)

June 2019 – My employer at the time had a BYOD policy and the barebones setup wasn’t quite cutting it with performance so I had to splurge a few dollars to get some work done without the lag.

Picked up something with enough power to to run business apps –

This was a Lenovo Ideapad Yoga Y700 with

• Intel Core i7 6th Gen Quad Core Processor
• 16GB DDR3 RAM
• 320GB + 120 Dual SSD
• Intel and Nvidia (4GB) switchable graphics

Cost of Acquisition: $350 – Facebook Marketplace –

Side note: I also picked up a pretty comfy chair that did stand the test of time from the street and cleaned it up good – this got me through some of my best work at the time and lasted longer than the laptop!

The laptop had the performance but at the cost of weight and heat – given it was a gaming laptop and wasn’t the most portable – it didn’t stand the test of time although it had a decent amount of power and 1080p screen I was dying for at the time.

So I cleaned it up and sold it for a profit of $100 at $450 and splurged a little more for a neater, slicker, spectre-cular setup.

Total spend so far = $240 (350 – 10 profit earlier + 100 profit here)

V3 – The Spectre-cular Hub!

Oct 2019 – Exciting times. I was making a decent amount of money and wanted something slicker that I can take with me on client visits and also enjoy working with.

So yes, I splurged a bit (on the tech, not the chair – hey it was SO comfy, and ergonomic!)

The spectre-cular setup included;

• A certified refurbished HP Spectre x360 13-w014tu 13″ 2 In 1 – 7th Gen Core i7/512GB SSD/16GB RAM/Win 10 – Z4K16PA from Renewed Australia for $900
• HP Pavilion 25cw 25-in IPS LED Backlit Monitor – from Facebook Marketplace for $40 – absolute STEAL!
• Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000 Keyboard and Mouse – very ergonomic – also from marketplace for $20
• HP USB-C Mini Dock – marketplace – $40 – I still use it as of this writing although one USB port stopped working
• Jabra Evolve 65 UC Wireless Stereo Headset $100 from Marketplace

Total Cost – 900 + 40 + 20 + 40 + 100 = $1000

I LOVED this setup and it was well worth the money.

The laptop was smooth and slick and had all the power I needed all in a nifty 360 rotatable touchscreen that I would use as a tablet or even have it stand on its own or lay flat on the desk for whichever configuration worked at the time.

The HP Pavilion 25cw 25-in IPS LED Backlit Monitor also had fantastic display quality and brightness so the glare from the window didn’t bother my workflow.

The Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000 Keyboard and Mouse was also pretty good in terms of quietness and comfort.

The Jabra Evolve 65 UC Wireless Stereo Headset completed the circle had amazing connectivity to the laptop via USB dongle and seamlessly connected to the Samsung Galaxy S10+ Plus Android I was using for switching between calls.

I used this setup and enjoyed it for quite a while until I made the move to Mac after some experimentation. And for a long time Android+Windows person and advocate, this took some getting used to but it finally happened to me..

V4.1 Experiment – Return of the Mac

I started off with my old 12″ MacBook which I had given to my partner to study for her MBA at the time. This was the lightest niftiest laptop that existed at the time – purchased back in Sri Lanka for LKR 90,000 (which is about $350 AUD or $250 AUD).

I loved the portability but decided it wasn’t suitable for work at the time of purchase but 2 years later when I decided to give it a try, everything still worked flawlessly without affecting my workflow too much.

Client presentations and workshops and all that jazz – clients were impressed that I used a Mac (who thought) and it made my boss look good too at the time – even when he didn’t pay cent for it.

No USB A ports and a single USB C port meant I had to channel all my accessories through a dock – which I already had so I decided to use it for a couple of days and ended up loving how fluid and easy to use MacOS was – and I never went back.

It wasn’t easy to say good by to the Spectre but I ended up selling it on eBay, yet again for a profit of $200 i.e AUD $1100 and decided to get myself a MacBook Pro with the cash. Ended up buying from the same place I did the Spectre.

Unfortunately the first one I bought did have some issues but the vendors were nice enough to send me another one before I shipped it back so this is me testing out a couple of MacBooks at home until I found the right one.

I ended up buying a 2017 MacBook Pro 13″ that had a i5 1TB SSD, 8GB RAM and the fancy Touch-bar configuration!

The 20″ iMac on the side was another street pick – 2009 model which we used for Netflix – damn Aussie Hard waste is good.

V4.2 – Pro Mode

Only change here was the MacBook which I replace the beloved HP Spectre with. Bye-bye Windows!

I spent $1300 on the laptop this i.e. $1100 from the previous sale +$200 cash

Total spend so far $1500 ($1300 on the laptop and $200 worth accessories)

V5 Mo-Power Mo-Space Please

Late 2020 – COVID + Lockdown times, fully working from home. Learning new things like PowerBI – that doesn’t run on Mac! What?? But Love Mac now and its workflow and there’s no going back. And the 8GB RAM didn’t do so well with a Windows VM on it.

I also needed more space (screen real estate) and didn’t like the way dual monitors worked with the Mac so I wanted to try out the wide screen setup. This setup took quite a bit of work in terms of perfecting but it was all worth it once it was done.

The Setup:

• 2020 MacBook Pro i5 16GB 256 SSD with AppleCare until Jul 2023 – STILL UNDER WARRANTY!!! $2900 from Facebook Marketplace – I just got the keyboard and battery replaced for free – winning!
• Apple Mouse & Magic Keyboard (1st Generation) – $50 on marketplace
• Samsung 34″ Ultra-Wide WQHD Monitor – $450 on marketplace – still use it!

With money saved from not commuting and and a hefty tax return I splurged yet again on a 2020 MacBook Pro that had 16Gs of RAM and a better processor which meant it could handle a Virtual Machine so I could learn PowerBI and build those dashboards – didn’t end up doing that for long cause I ended up being promoted to a management position. My wife still uses the old MBP and its running well!

The first monitor I tried out was an LG 29WL50S – 29 inch UltraWide Full HD IPS Monitor for $250 on Facebook Marketplace. The pixel count, picture quality and sound output on this wasn’t so good so I ended up returning it for a loss of of $50 and buying the one I have above.

The story behind the desks…

I also drove an Uber at the time which meant I wasn’t totally locked down as long as I was wearing a mask and following all the safety regulations. I found an office in Docklands, that was closing down and were selling almost brand new IKEA Hilver Tabletops and Alex Drawers as a set for $100 each. I brought 5 of them for $450 and sold 5 sets for $200 each and kept the other one for myself so free desk + $300 profit.

The next most meaningful upgrade was replacing the Dual Monitor Stand, VESA Monitor Arm which freed up a lot of desk space for me and at just over $50 it’s still holding on to my heavy ass 34″ screen for over 2 years now it’s overdue for an upgrade

Note the ripped chair – after all the money spent on the tech and desks and moving house also, I am still using the chair I picked up from the kerbside in 2019 – it was so damn comfortable!

I used this setup until the end of 2021 and sold the desk for $150

V6 Slim Shady – please stand up

Dec 2021 – Jun 2022 – Bought an electronic sit-stand desk, a new keyboard and mouse (the Apple Mouse and it being so flat was giving me bad RSI!) and an iPad I use mostly for reading and annotating PDFs .

Also added some lighting and (more than a) few accessories like the Laptop VESA holder, lamps, iPad and a bigger Alex Drawer set on wheels for $50 and a Printer I got for free from the guy who sold me the sit-stand desk

• The Desk – Stilford S2 Electric Sit Stand Desk 1500mm Black/Walnut – cost $700 at Office Works (again from marketplace for $350).
• Logitech Mx Master 3 Wireless Mouse for Mac – $128 on Amazon Prime Day
• Logitech MX Keys Wireless Illuminated Keyboard for Mac – $168 on Amazon Prime Day
• 11″ iPad Pro 64GB with Smart Keyboard Folio and HyperDrive – $600 on Marketplace
• 3 in 1 Wireless Charger – 15W Qi Fast Charging Station for Apple iPhone, Airpods, iWatch
• Marshall Monitor II ANC Wireless Over-Ear Headphones (Black) – $320 from Myer with my wife’s old staff discount – mainly for noise canceling because my study is in an open space right behind the TV! and for use when I got to the office but it has also been a great travel companion especially in flights! My preference would have been the Apple AirPods Max which would complete the eco-system (for $900) but for the price I purchased this pair it’s got almost equivalent sound quality, comfort and style so can’t really complain.

Adding so many things eventually meant my desk and workspace becoming noisy and messy fast – so the next upgrade was focused on subtraction and focus meaning reducing clutter ie anything that didn’t directly contribute to my work and productivity – had to go.

V7 Productive Bliss

2023 – Clean Up! This is what my WFH setup looks like today where the overhaul focused on removing as much visual clutter and distracting elements as possible and still keep it functional. This has allowed me to gain what is most important with the work I do – CLARITY and FOCUS.

The only major purchase here was an Orbitkey Deskmat which I purchased from amazon for $134 and have been using for over 7 months now that keep my cable accessible and all working and reference neatly tucked under a felt layer. This was probably the only full-price purchase I ever made and is so worth it as I can tuck away any documents, receipts, reference cards and even my ruler etc under the mat which instantly clears visual clutter but is also a very quick catch all so I can access them easily when I need to.

I still keep the iPad sometimes if I need to refer to a book or use it as a Pomodoro timer.

So the final list as promised;

Base Setup A$ 4130 over 2-3 years

• 2020 MacBook Pro i5 16GB 256 SSD – $2900 in 2020
• Samsung 34″ Ultra-Wide WQHD Monitor – $450 on marketplace
• The Desk – Stilford S2 Electric Sit Stand Desk 1500mm Black/Walnut – cost $700 at Office Works (again from marketplace for $350).
• Logitech Mx Master 3 Wireless Mouse for Mac – $128 on Amazon Prime Day
• Logitech MX Keys Wireless Illuminated Keyboard for Mac – $168 on Amazon Prime Day
• Logitech C615 Portable Webcam, Full HD 1080p/30fps – $40 on marketplace
• Orbitkey Desk Mat | Document Hideaway | Magnetic Cable Holder (Black, Large) -$134

Extras A$ 955 over 1-2 years

• 11″ iPad Pro 64GB with Smart Keyboard Folio and HyperDrive – $600 on Marketplace
• 3 in 1 Wireless Charger – 15W Qi Fast Charging Station for Apple iPhone, Airpods, iWatch $35
• Marshall Monitor II ANC Wireless Over-Ear Headphones (Black) – can’t wait to switch to AirPods Max to complete the eco-system

So,

Is a >$5K setup worth it in terms of productive output, creativity and overall work satisfaction? For me, yes!

For the most part of the past 4-5 years I have been working from home, yes, pre-covid, and I didn’t have the environment I always wanted to so I built it up, piece by piece.

The fun was always in the process and each item added or subtracted from the setup always had a direct impact on the amount of results I’d generate and eventually the money I would make.

Is it necessary to spend that much for a good WFH setup?

Absolutely NOT. My spend above is over 3-4 years and if I were to build the same set up today I would end up spending way less and could probably have done it in half the cost. Also taking into account here that I purchased my own laptops and devices where I spent the most money on. And I still have both MacBooks with me although I have offset the amount I spent on the first one and money earns from sales of previous gear/furniture to arrive at a net position of under $4K – all of which were recovered via Tax Returns – so essentially spending close to nothing.

So if you’re smart about when and where you buy your stuff, and your workplace provided you a laptop, you could do something equally great or even better in under $1000 easily.

Let me know what you thought of this post and my approach to building a Bliss Station and don’t forget to read some of my favourite books that lead me towards this process;

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
• Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad (Austin Kleon)

and for successfully leveraging creativity throughout my career as a Business Analyst, Consultant, Project Manager and Practice Head:

• Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (Austin Kleon)
• The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work by Vishen Lakhiani

The post The Bliss Station Evolution + What’s on my desk appeared first on Trevin Yasin Nimaladasa.

1. Go to MS Learn: learn.microsoft.com —> Select ‘Browse all paths’ from the Products menu
2. In the ‘Find a product’ filter, expand ‘Dynamics 365’ and select ’Sales’
3. From the ‘Roles’ filter, select ‘Business User/Owner’

You should see the subset of MS Learn modules and learning paths relevant to you with their recommended durations (based on reading/video times). If you are already familiar with the system and want specific information on a module, you can go ahead and choose the module you want training on.

If you’re just starting out, however, I would recommend putting some time into the Learning Paths available for free that cover the core concepts and fundamentals, which as I explained should set you up for success (as a Business user or even a certified Functional Consultant, if that is something you aspire).

The 3 fundamental steps

1. Learn the fundamentals of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales – Sales Lifecycle and how it’s done in Dynamics

Sales Business Process Flow in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

2. If you have a Sales Professional license – Work with Dynamics 365 Sales Professional. You can spin up a trial license.
3. Initialising the Sales Module, basics – Set up and configure Dynamics 365 Sales

If you decide to skip the Learning path, that is fine, but make sure you watch Use sales capabilities before the following ones;

Deep dive into Sales Lifecycle specific modules

so you can learn and manage the end-to-end process seamlessly;

1. Lead Manage leads with Dynamics 365 Sales
2. Opportunity Manage opportunities with Dynamics 365 Sales
3. Quote – I couldn’t find a module specific to this but I’m pretty sure the Opportunity module should cover conversion from an Opportunity to a Quote
4. Order – Process sales orders with Dynamics 365 Sales – start with an existing quote
5. Invoice – the basics should be covered in the Order module but probably needs some config before you can use it effectively, depends on your Invoicing model – if you’re Invoicing on a separate system, you can probably ignore this for now

Once you get to a BAU level, a good one to follow is Manage relationships with relationship selling in Dynamics 365 Sales -which goes into the intricacies of how to handle not-so-common scenarios.

Given you guys are in the Consulting Service Business, Microsoft, and most partners would recommend implementing the Project Operations module (which is a whole other beast but does work), for which you will find training links in the same section. I can’t remember if IFS was also going this way, but Microsoft, over the past 3-5 years has broken apart their applications so they can sell individual licenses for Sales, Finance, Procurement, Projects etc to maximise margins.

If you already have  your Project Accounting in order, a cheaper and simpler alternative would be to use unit groups for things like Consulting/Support hours and  Manage and organize your product catalog with Dynamics 365 Sales

Don’t hesitate to use the Search bar in the MS Docs/Learn website if you have specific questions or run into errors while trying things out – search works across the MS Docs Knowledgebase and Dynamics forums and there are some pretty knowledgable people who write answers on most questions that you will have – because other businesses have had them too.

If there is something specific you can’t find through those means, hit me up and I will try my best to find out.

To do all of this, make sure you have access to a Sandbox (usually free and comes with at least 1 environment for testing purposes) or spin one up by going to trials.dynamics.com.

• This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend who asked me about how to get started with Dynamics 365 for Sales. I hope this helps you too if you’re new or on your journey to becoming a Consultant in the Microsoft Business Applications space.

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I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

I have always been a big fan of lifehacks that make getting things done simpler and easier not just because it helps me free up time in my day to focus on important things (like sleep – yes that’s where the magic happens) but also because I am super lazy (and Mr. Gates approves).

Business Analysts deal with lots and I mean LOTS of information on a daily or even hourly basis and there’s a lot of reading, thinking and writing, clarifying and re-writing before producing a decent artefact – and one of the key artefacts of any Business Analyst produces is, of course, is – a User Story.

A target of having product backlogs elaborated at least 2 sprints ahead (which meant about 40-50 stories per sprint at the time) meant I had very little time between meetings, admin, ad-hoc tasks and other BA work, I had to squeeze in at least 8-10 user stories per day. And although almost every user story is unique.

That’s when I stumbled upon this great all-in-one platform called Notion (notes on steroids) through a couple of productivity videos by YouTuber Ali Abdaal.

Notion instantly became like my swiss-army knife of apps, instantly making Trello, OneNote, even MS Word in most instances and a bunch of other tools obsolete because it was feature-packed, simple and lightweight – templating and cross-referencing being my favourite features!

How

Getting started was pretty easy because Notion comes with a set of great built-in templates that can be used straight out of the box or customised to fit your needs.

And that is exactly what I did – Stole Like an Artist I used the Roadmap template as my base to organise my tasks and it evolved over time to become a library of templates I would use to write similar types of user stories I would write on a daily basis.

With some inspiration from an Agile Coach who gave us great Agile Practitioner training, I built a dozen or so templates based on the types of user stories I would write every day, week or month and the Story Teller was born.

Now with this toolkit under my belt, I not only meet elaboration targets but constantly exceed them, and with great ease.

Instead of writing the whole user story from scratch or copy/pasting from a Confluence page or Word Doc somewhere onto Jira (or wherever the stories need to go), now I simply batch-brew my elaborations in 3 simple steps before I paste them on Jira;

1. Click ‘New’ on my Notion database
2. Pick the relevant template for the kind of user story I am about to write
3. Replace the words in CAPS with actual information (used to have the variables inside braces earlier but that was death by a thousand clicks)

A few screens below give you an idea of the templates I have made available.

Go ahead, steal like an artist, break them, brew them and make them your own

Continuous Improvement after all is the Agile way 

How to Access and Use this Template

Step 1 – Access the link below and fill in the registration form 

No Spam, I promise. This is only to know where my content goes. You can lie, I won’t be mad, but do a fellow BA a favour and share some insights if you are willing.

Click Me! 

Step 2 – Click on the ‘Duplicate’ button on the top right hand corner

Step 3 – Start using the template in Notion

• If you’re already using Notion this should be a no brainer
• If you’re new, you can sign up using either an email address, Apple or Google Account for free
• The free account does have a few limitations but is usually more than enough to get a whole lot done. I used the Personal Pro ($4) plan so I have a version history and managed to use that at no cost for at least 4 months with the credits they offer to try the pro options.
• If you managed to refine it further, then please don’t hesitate to share!  Thanks for taking the time to read through and I hope you enjoy using these templates as much as I do. Please share your honest thoughts with me (whatever they are – if you think this awesome or complete BS) and if you’ve found a simpler way of doing the same – please do tell!  Word of Caution True, you can’t go wrong with Mr Gates’ advice, but use this with caution and customise it to your needs. You still need to do the BA work and go through the detail, just (much) less admin.

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IT Transfer Lounge is a group to support and empower consultants in their journey with Microsoft products and also aims to create awareness about ERP/CRM consulting to those who are interested in transferring their existing skills in Business and Industry into an exciting career in Enterprise Applications and Business Consulting.

I have attached the slide deck from my talk below and I hope you find the information useful.

Please let me know what you thought about this by dropping in a comment below or getting in touch.

The post Talk: Essential Skills for ERP Consultants appeared first on Trevin Yasin Nimaladasa.

We all have the same amount of time in a day — 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, and 86,400 seconds. Doesn’t that make you wonder, how some people achieve more in a day than others achieve so little?

I’m no time-management guru or expert but after analyzing for a couple of weeks how I spent my time I’ve learned that the two biggest time-killers for me were being Reactive and Mult-Tasking. What I’m going to share with you are a few concepts, tips, and tricks I’ve learned from my coaches and mentors and put into practice that helped me take better control of my time and achieve more in less.

Bosses don’t pay for your time, they pay for results

Realize early on that although you get paid a salary for a set number of hours that you work for each week, month or year, that bosses don’t really care too much about how much time you clock in each day, they care more about the quality of results you generate.

You’re not in a Jail where you’re “doing time” — so throw out the mindset where working more hours in a day equates to you being more productive.

Taking Control of My Time (Money)

My boss pays me for 38 hours a week of my time and expects me to head a software practice, manage multiple client and internal projects to timelines and budget, do a couple of sales calls, learn new things, train, coach, mentor, and manage a team of about a dozen, resolve internal and client conflicts and produce predictable, repeatable and profitable outcomes — this roughly takes a couple of client visits each week, 20–25 short meetings, a couple of hundred emails, a couple of hundred timesheet entries, etc to review, digest, reply to and work through and TBH it can get quite overwhelming at times.

If I was making $1,600 a week for working a 40 hour week that translates to me making $40 per hour. If I spent 20 hours a week in meetings and had to work an extra 40 hours a week to get my work done that meant I was working for 60 hours a week for the same pay — effectively dropping my hourly rate to $1,600/60 = $26.67.

This realization is what made me want to take back control of my time (money) and not let others do so. Re-iterating the quote at the beginning of this article “if you don’t take control of your time, someone else will”, and this was true for me and my calendar until I started Time-Blocking. If my calendar was empty, people just booked it for anything and everything, even if I contributed or not. This is how I started time-blocking to manage (or at least closely manage) all of the above.

But, by the time I finish all my meetings and emails to respond to, there’s no time to get any work done

Living in the information age, we all have a hundred emails each day to read, digest, reply to, and out of them another couple of dozen of tasks to get done.

In every workplace, there are two kinds of people and you’ll notice this by taking a look at their Calendars

1. People Who Brag About Being in Back-to-Back Meetings and Multi-Tasking
2. People who a problem solvers and just get things done

The difference between these two types is that the first will always brag about how busy they are multi-tasking and have no time to do much work because they’re stuck in back to back meetings — these fellows Deeply Misunderstand Productivity whereas the latter could get a lot done working multiple projects, learning new things and also helping others along the way.

Why Multitasking Is A Myth, Backed By Science

The only way I’ve managed to move from the former to the latter was by learning to respect my own time and subsequently others, I booked fewer (unnecessary) meetings, declined meetings that didn’t have an agenda or ones that I didn’t add value to, and used email to communicate and make decisions on what can be made via email.

40 hrs per week — 8 per day

Dedicate 20% of the time for yourself

80/20 principle where 80% of the outcomes are achieved through 20% of work

Self Learning — 5 hrs per week

New technology, software skills, etc through courses, certification, blog posts, etc) — 5 hrs per week (1hr per day)

“If knowledge is power, learning is your superpower.” — Jim Kwik

Training and Mentoring Others — 1.5 hr per week

teaching people the new things I’ve learned by sharing — at least 1 hr per week

To teach someone is to learn it twice-Joseph Joubert

Walking and Thinking — 1.5 hrs per week

30-minute post-lunch walk each day to:

• avoid the midday post-lunch-slump
• think about solutions for problems

As your body moves, your brain grooves

Limitless by Jim Kwok

60% of the time for Focused Productive Work

You’ve taken 1/5 days for Learning and Coaching, you’re left with 4 days = 32/40 hours (or 30.4 hrs if you’re paid for 38 hrs per week or have 7.6 hr days). You’ve still got multiple projects with results to deliver, emails, and meetings to fit in within this.

If you’re working on 3 projects at any given time

• block at least 8hrs/1 day per week of focused time per project = 24 hrs 3 days — this will involve doing the task, reading, and replying to emails related to that project.
• spread these as 25-minute chunks of focused time per task with 5-minute breaks between each task using a Pomodoro Technique
• that’s 16 x 25-minute blocks per backlog item per project
• 16 tasks per project x 3 projects that are the potential of completing 48 tasks per week
• avoid interruptions and task-switching during this 25-minute block of focused time

Give dedicated time (20%) to others

Leave the balance — 1 day (8hrs) for Other Emails and Reactive time

Block some time for reading other emails if you don’t get to all of them during project time. Keep a reasonable allowance of time open in your calendar to give others the opportunity to make use of your wisdom.

Being “busy” all the time doesn’t necessarily equate to being “productive”.

This all might look good on paper but how can I really do this?

• Each day is a new battle to say yes to what matters and no to what matters. “Focus is a practice” as James Clear says in his book Atomic Habits. Saying “Yes” to something means you’re saying “No” to a bunch of other things
• Think, Time = Money.
• Let your calendar define your schedule— block time for your priority tasks
• Use Parkinsons Law to your Advantage — https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/what-is-parkinsons-law

You can also view this post in Medium

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Almost every profession in the service industry these days is about helping someone with a problem or issue they have, and we as service professionals always want to help fix an issue but we often get deeper into another problem ourselves when we don’t know the details of the problem the customer is facing because they haven’t given us enough information.

Imagine that, instead of your usual Saturday Cafe Brunch, you went into a local Chinese restaurant and ordered a Sichuan-Style Stir-Fried Chicken for a change. You have a severe nut allergy which you didn’t tell the waiter about and ordered anyway. What would you get? An immediate allergic reaction if you ate it and potentially being sick (and even death depending on how severe your allergy is) if you didn’t treat it, right?

We as customers aren’t always perfect ourselves when we want stuff done, so how can we expect our customers to be?

What? The Problem

Do you recall when a client emailed you or logged an issue about a specific error or that something in their computer or software system isn’t working but didn’t give you enough context or ‘steps to reproduce the problem’? I do. I’ve been getting these emails every day for the past 10 years or more.

You would have completed the implementation 6 or 9 months ago and have moved on from that project into at least 2 or 3 more projects and probably in the middle of going live with another one.

You want to help, but how can you when they don’t give you enough context or didn’t come through the right channels i.e. the support portal or email address.

The obvious and most used methods are

• to reply politely to the customer asking for more information each time or get on a screen share session to investigate the issue
• if it’s not your job to solve it cause you’ve moved on from the project or not part of the support team, saying that you’re busy and that someone else will look into it, or;
• ask your manager to ask the customer to send these issues through the right channels with enough information in it so you don’t have to go back and forth asking questions before you can finally identify the root cause before solving the problem.

The manager might implement a Support Portal with a lengthy Request form full of fields asking questions, so the customer fills in all of the details you need and the issue is presented to you with all the information in a silver platter like a Senior Business Analyst with 10 years of experience wrote the task and handed it over to you for execution.

At least, that’s the dream, right? But how often does it happen in reality?

Customers usually don’t like logging into a Support Portal and fill out a lengthy and complicated Support Request form each time they want something fixed. Think about it. Would you? Remember the Sichuan Chicken with Peanuts incident?

They’ve got other things to worry about in their business than worry about (not to mention the system issue that’s now delaying things further for them) than filling out your lengthy request form that would probably take longer than it takes for you to go and fix the issue.

They’d rather email you saying “Hey, this is broken, can you please fix it?” thinking you would already know what to do cause they trust you are the best person to do it.

How? Method

Obviously, use a template! What kind of template? One which gives you the information you need, to get to the issue fast and fix the problem, and make it accessible in one click! (i’ll $how you how to do this too;)

There are hundreds if not thousands of bug report templates out there, find one that works for you and your organisation’s customer support process and information requirements — if you can’t find one, write one that’s simple for the customer to fill enough information for you to get to the bottom of the issue and where a coordinator or first-level or admin support is involved, they can triage this to you after filling in the correct forms and details.

Here’s an example of what I have used and re-used for years, for, getting the information I needed from customers who have issues with their finance and integrated systems that my team supports:

To: support@companyname.com (The Support Email Address)
CC: support_coordinator@companyname.com (every company usually has one who is very good at what they do i.e admin and coordination but probably don’t know where to triage each issue because they’re not product experts)

account_manager@companyname.com (this could be yourself, the team leader, project manager or even CEO — decide depending on who would need to know)

Subject: CHANGE THIS to one line about the problem or request e.g. Can’t print in black and white

Describe the bug/issue: A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

Component (please tell us which system or app you are experiencing issues with):
• Software [e.g. Microsoft Word, Excel]
• System or Screen [e.g. Canon Printer]

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behaviour:
1. Go to ‘…’
2. Click on ‘….’
3. Scroll down to ‘….’
4. See error

Expected behaviour: A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.
Screenshots If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.
Additional context Add any other context about the problem here.

Make it an accessible ‘One-Click Request Form’

This time around I decided to take a step further by automating the process and making the experience (hopefully) a little bit better for the customer where they don’t have to keep going back to look for the issue template I sent them weeks or months ago, copy that into an email, find the correct support email address etc. before they can get to writing down quickly and sending the issue that needs to be solved.

I used an Online mailto code and markup generator to create a shortcut that I can send for customers to either bookmark in their browser or save to their desktop for when they want to report an issue.

The tool I used was https://mailtolink.me/

Pasted my bug report email template into this, put in the addresses I wanted the email sent to and myself in the CC field to get notified when the customer sends something in

Tested it out myself before suggesting it to the customer and easily enough — it worked.

Combine this with a polite email asking customers to use the shortcut to easily report issues in future (and hopefully the customer and your team will thank you later if any part of this process) which makes life a little bit easier.

Try this mailto link if you want to email me feedback about this article or anything in general. I promise to reply as soon as I can.

Who? Should do it

Depends on your organisation policy of who communicates such changes to clients. Always check with your up-lines and team members before making changes like this and asking clients to email you about issues instead of the way that’s written down as a process.

Luckily I’ve been working at organisations that aren’t resistant to change and are ready to try new things in hope of better results. If your manager might need convincing, first get buy-in from the team and show them that you’re trying to solve a real problem that costs everyone time and eventually wasted money for the organisation.

If your organisation has a process that already works and your clients are sending their issues through a web form with all the proper information you probably don’t want to be making a change like this — i.e. don’t break what already works.

When? to do it

Today. Quoting what my good friend James shared with me the other day:

Q: When is the best time to plant a tree?

A: 30 years ago!! But the second-best time is today!

The ugly and beautiful truths

ugly truth:

• This email template is really another form in disguise — you know it and the customer knows it.

the beauty of it:

• by implementing a strategy that makes the process easier for the customer, yourself and others, you’re saving time and money for both by reducing back-and-forth communication

Like my good friend James Clear says in his life-changing million-copy #1 bestseller Atomic Habits

If you genuinely care about the goal, you’ll focus on the system.

— James Clear (@JamesClear) September 26, 2020

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