Thursday, December 18, 2008

Oral hygiene - word about automation

How do you make sure you still have teeth in your thirties - you look after them since day one. While your parents are catching up with sleeping after several heavy in 'mommy my tooth is coming' nights you should be starting cleaning your teeth. Well, your parents should help teach you that.

Is it enough to know how to brush your teeth? Not really - far more important is to know why you should be doing it. Is it sufficient to have them brushed consistently? Still not - a special ritual has to be integrated with other rituals you have. What in case when you don't have any rituals? Well if you don't sleep every 24 hours, or eat at least once a day then state of your teeth is not your biggest problem.

So we condition ourselves to brush our teeth right after a wake up, or right after eating, or right before leaving to school. After some time it costs us more effort not to do it than otherwise. What we are doing here: we automate the process.

That takes off a lot of hassle - like checking whether teeth should be cleaned in the first place, figuring out where to fit it into our busy schedules etc.

Additionally it's the only way to do anything consistently for a longer time period (try exercising every now and then and check your average).

The same stands for your project hygiene - if you want to have something done consistently, you have to make sure that activities required are integrated into your daily routine. Automation is the key. Fortunately computers come handy there, as there is nothing they do better than stick to the clock and doing repetitive task.

And believe me if you want your project clean you need to brush it every single day. Build up your tasks, schedule them and make sure that results are being delivered every morning.

Soon enough lack of report in your mail will feel like dirty teeth and you will be able to be in software project in your thirties.

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