When people were having film roll cameras, they took it out during special occasions, clicked a few pictures,  developed them and put them into albums, which were later cherished as memories. With the advent of mobile photography, we click too many photos and sometimes we also miss enjoying the moment. 

We went on a family trip for two days, along with our cousins. In those two days, we took nearly 600 photos. In a dessert shop that had Instagram worthy background, we clicked 37 pictures. For a portrait shot inside a tea estate, we clicked 15 pics of the same person, where I just needed one photo with a good facial expression and great background.

To capture a portrait picture when my friend was best dressed for a marriage, we clicked 25 photos with 3 different backgrounds. To get the best shot, my friend posed for photos with different styles like having free hair or plaited hair, wearing spectacles or without spectacles, smiling widely or without a smile, and with the face looking at the camera or looking sideways. 

Of late, the albums are filled with too many photos, mostly because we click around 3 to 10 pictures in the same spot, so as to get the best shot and also because our cameras do not have film rolls like the old analog cameras, we don’t care how much ever we click. 

A few months down the line, I might not appreciate having too many photos per album. I prefer minimal photos per occasion, somewhere between 10-50 photos per album. So after each occasion like picnics or wedding functions, I sit and diligently delete most duplicate or unwanted photos. Deleting these photos is a very boring task! But I still do it, to keep my albums clean. As I deleted the photos, I made notes of what I deleted, so that I can share with Google requesting them to use their AI prowess, image recognition capabilities and come up with algorithms that would help users declutter the photos.

How did I shrink the size of my albums and retain the good looking photos, the ones in which people are smiling, facial expressions are positive and the background is nice? By deleting the not so good photos. Here is what I did:

• Toggle between successive shots, look for if all the people in the pic are seeing the camera, are they smiling, decide on which one is better to retain and delete the other one.
• Between multiple photos of the same frame, I retained the one that looked lively. For me, being lively means smiling. Laughing means it is livelier.
• Compared between smiles that are wide with the ones that are gentle and retained, the one looked lively.
• Deleted photos if there are non welcome objects seen in the photo, like scattered clothes, unused chairs in the background…etc.
• Deleted photos in which people were seen talking and hence the facial expression was not good. 
• Deleted photos in which people were trying to make children smile or make them look at the camera by uttering some jokes or using some gestures.
• Deleted photos in which the face was obstructed due to hand movement or some other objects.
• Deleted photos in which people were seen with eyes fully or partially closed.
• Deleted photos in which people were not smiling, seen frowning or staring rudely.
• Deleted photos if someone’s eyes or face is looking elsewhere.
• Deleted photos in which people were looking downward or the head was too up and faces were not clearly visible.
• Is the frame of the photo good? Has someone gone out of frame? Delete if someone is only partially covered in the frame than the one in which they are visible fully. 
• Deleted photos with too much or too low lightning. 
• Deleted photos if there is a glare on the face
• Deleted photos with poor shadow disturbing the frame.
• Deleted photos with hand or lip movements or if a part of the body part is blurred due to movement while taking the photo.
• Deleted if the person was giving some instructions or talking while taking the shot and the lip movements were not looking good.
• Deleted photos in which someone has photobombed.
• Deleted photo in which the baby was seen crying.
• Deleted photos if they were holding some props which are not fully visible. Ex. My daughter picked some strawberries from a farm and wanted those to be visible in the photo.
• Had multiple pics of the baby eating strawberries. Retained the one that had a lively expression.
• Deleted pictures where the costumes might have misaligned.
• If I have to cover a background with some name on the board or letters, deleted the ones where the names were partially cut
• Deleted photos that were taken from behind and were not looking great. 
• For photos taken in front of monuments, compared with poses where the person was sitting, with the ones where they were standing and deleted the one that was not looking good.
• Took photos of a strawberry farm with family members and without family members in the frame. Retained the pic with family members. Might be it were a monument, I would have retained a pic that doesn’t have anyone else other than the monument in the frame.
• If everyone is asked to pose in a certain way, are all doing the same? Ex. Pouting, thumbs up, laughing, smiling. Does the pose look natural?
• I was choosing between photos with half frame and full frame, photos with feet visible and if they are looking good or ugly.

A few patterns I noticed:

• For pictures of people with good natural landscapes in the background, landscape mode looked better than portrait mode. 
• Portrait picture with half frame, full frame and longshot. Full frame looked good. Long shots in portrait mode did not look good.
• Portrait shots with people standing far behind don’t look good.
• When there are more than 3 people in the frame, a photo in landscape mode looks good.
• In a spot, compared to a selfie, a photo taken by someone else looked good.
• When a pic was taken on hills with the photographer standing on highland and the person being photographed standing slightly below, then a photo with faceup looked better than a photo with face down. Similarly, when a pic was taken on hills with the photographer standing on lowland and the person being photographed standing slightly higher, then a photo with chin down looked better than a photo with chin up.

Let there be a Nudge: At the end of the day, if the photos app can show suggestions and provide tools to compare and delete duplicate and not so good looking photos, it would be great. The tool can prompt the reasons as to why a photo can be deleted. Ex. Someone looking away, blurred hand, foreign particles in the background, someone photobombed …etc. 

Nudges can also be applied to delete not so useful videos, forwarded memes, good morning messages…etc.

Medical Archives: I regularly take photos of medical prescriptions and test report sheets, so that I can refer to them later. It would be great if there is a separate medical archives folder. When the labs send me the reports as pdf, in email, I can save it to Google Drive. However, if I get a physical copy of the reports, I click pictures of it, which would be in Google Photos. It would be helpful if there is an integration between Google Photos and Google Drive and I can have a common medical archives folder that can be accessed from both these apps seamlessly. 

Casual Pics: When my wife had a new haircut, we took multiple pics to see if it looks good for her. I don’t intend to keep these photos for long. Also, there are lots of photos we take casually, while on a car ride or in a local train, but will not be a special long term memory and these photos can be classified as casual photos and have some option like delete these casual photos after 6 months or 2 years …etc.

Apart from albums, it would also be nice to have categories for photos, like family, friends, vacations, sports, work, medical documents, professional mode photos, other documents …etc.

Let the process of organizing and managing photos be simple and delightful and the memories cherishable. Also, clearing the clutter contributes to a sustainable earth, in a small way.

PS: Professional photographers will be able to add more ideas, to shortlist the best photos.

Thanks to Ravi for reviewing the draft of this post 🙂

A good plan makes a great day. Digital world presents us with plenty of choices and distractions. We struggle to organize our day, leading to missed deadlines, not keeping up with commitments, and as a result, loss of trust. Failing to plan also leads to working overtime, missing personal and family time which in turn leads to stress and anxiety. Also, people spend a considerable amount of time on various administrative tasks, which when delegated, simplified, or automated, frees up time for important tasks or initiatives. 

Nudge theory is a Nobel prize winning concept in behavioural economics, that proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions, to influence the behaviour. 

A decluttered and organized life enhances wellbeing and improves productivity. Nudging people plan their day, optimize the schedules, and focus better, increases productivity, and helps manage work-life balance.  

Below are the pictures of my desk board at home and the notebook I use to take notes, to-dos and plan my day.

Visual Boards & Notebooks: From my experience, visual boards, notebooks, and reminders are nudges which are right in front of my sight and have aided me in making my day organized, accomplishing tasks and being productive. 

I also have a few pages in the back of my notebook, to note down the distractions and analyse once in a while on how to eliminate them during office hours.

The hack that helps me prioritize the important tasks to start first: Just imagine power will go off in the next 2 hours. What is the one important thing you wanted to complete before that, which, when not completed can lead to missed deadlines or an escalation? The chatbot can use such hacks to help people prioritize better.

Focus Mode – Disconnect distractions, Timebox & Deep work: While I learnt exploratory testing, we used a methodology called Session Based Test Management (SBTM). A similar thing in business parlance would be timeboxing. You take a task, fix 1 hour, and commit to be focused only on that task for the next 1 hour. You just do deep work or do nothing during that time. If the chatbot can nudge people to timebox, eliminate distractions like pausing email & chat notification and commit to deep work, it will help focus better and finish tasks with ease.

Routine Tasks: Nudge users to complete routine tasks like booking cabs in advance, filling timesheets by end of every week or month, submitting expenses and tax documents before deadline, deleting old mails once in a week and decluttering. 

Habits are a superpower. What habit do you want to develop and monitor?
Ex: Did you read for 15 mins today?

Reflection: Nudge people to spend 5 mins daily evening, reflecting how the day was? And, to have a quick glance at the next day’s calendar.

Gamify: A gamified approach can create an inherent motivation. 
Ex: When the user consistently achieves his plans for all days of the week, present him with a “Hurray! You earned a 5-star badge.” Else, gently say “Oops! you missed the plans for this day. No issues. Let’s rise tomorrow.” 

Suggested Solution 

An ideal solution would be a Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace based chatbot that acts as a virtual assistant and nudges people to plan, focus and relax. 

Why a chatbot? At the office, we have goals and learning plans in various applications. We take notes physically in a notebook or keep it digitally as documents or in emails. We have emails to respond, meetings on calendar and minutes of meetings in email. We also have routine tasks like booking cabs in advance, filling timesheets by the end of every week or month, submitting expenses and tax documents before the deadline…etc. Like this there is lots of information scattered between many apps and we forget to check them all leading to missed tasks or deadlines. However, we check the chat window multiple times in a day, which has become a habit for many and hence having an AI enabled chatbot on MS Teams or Google Workspace, can assist in planning the day better, making smarter decisions and nudging users to act on the important.

The chatbot should nudge users,

• To track their long-term goals and daily plans
• To make commitments and set deadlines
• To act on pending tasks by sending reminders
• To create a habit of learning with 15 mins daily learning plan
• To take regular breaks.
• To delete mails and declutter the mailbox.
• To glance at the next day’s calendar before logging off for the day.

While nudging users, we should make the users feel confident that their privacy will not be violated, and their activities are not tracked by anyone else other than the user and be mindful that high frequency notifications can also be overwhelming. The Nudge should be framed in a way that motivates and enables rather than pressurising.

Benefits

A good plan makes a great day.

• When you can anticipate the needs of your day, you can prioritise what is important.
• Organised day helps manage time smartly and increases productivity.
• Crazy schedule feels overwhelming. An organized day reduces the stress.
• Helps us evaluate the progress.
• Striking off completed tasks is satisfying.
• We can have a clear mind and feel positive.
• We get time to relax.
• Increased work-life balance.
• We feel a sense of accomplishment and can have a better sleep at night.

The individual nudges, when multiplied by the total number of employees in the organisation, can create value at scale.

PS: Submitted this internally, when my company solicited ideas to implement AI/Chatbot/NLP based services across various functions, so as to become smarter/faster/leaner/better.

Would be nice if a similar self service chatbot can also be implemented by phone based chat applications, to help individuals better manage their day.

Addendum: I read that Wednesdays are the most stressful days of the week. I prefer to have Deep Work Wednesdays with no meetings of any type & Learning Fridays, which would helps us think, plan, learn or share something new professionally or personally. 

Additional reading:
https://ashokprabhu.com/2022/01/02/sustainable-meetings
https://ashokprabhu.com/2020/11/05/how-to-run-effective-meetings
https://alifeofproductivity.com/rule-of-three
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/02/thomas-jefferson-steve-jobs-and-the-rule-of-3
https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-case-for-finally-cleaning-your-desk
https://hbr.org/2018/03/why-you-need-an-untouchable-day-every-week
https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-you-should-work-less-and-spend-more-time-on-hobbies
https://sheilgandhi.medium.com/how-atomic-habits-improved-my-life-f3981b22797b

In continuation of my earlier post on how billions of dollars are lost every year due to unproductive meetings, I would like to share my suggestions for having sustainable online meetings.

Ref: https://ashokprabhu.com/2020/11/05/how-to-run-effective-meetings 

Lots of work related meetings are happening online leading to meeting fatigue. With the online meeting service providers having a record option for meetings, people tend to record meetings with the assumption that people can refer to the recordings in future. However, any meeting recorded for playback occupies a lot more digital space than it would, had it been saved as a transcript or as simple meeting notes. I understand from general reading that people rarely view the recordings later. These recordings sit on servers and occupy lots of space and energy. When we calculate the amount of meeting recordings for an entire company or across the world, it would be massive, and the energy spent to maintain those recordings would also be massive.

We can tend to reduce the number of meetings. If a meeting must happen, then we can think of options to take notes or transcribe the discussion points rather than recording the entire meeting.

For a learning or educational meeting, a recorded video would be useful as people understand better through demonstrations, visuals, and illustrations. However, meetings recorded for future references can be transcribed using Artificial Intelligence / Natural Language Processing and the recordings replaced with just text. Texts are also easily searchable.

Nudge 1: Firstly, when a meeting is set up, prompt the meeting organiser with simple questions like, 

• What is the purpose of this meeting? 
• Does this meeting have a clear agenda? 
• Can the purpose be solved with quick ad-hoc discussions or chats rather than a meeting?

Nudge 2: Next, when the planned meeting happens and when the meeting organiser clicks on record button, prompt him with questions like,

• Keeping in mind our sustainability goals, is it necessary to record this meeting? 
• Will anyone ever watch this recording later? 
• How long do you wish to retain this recording?
• Is this meeting recorded just for future reference or is this an educational session? 
• Will taking notes suffice rather than recording?

Nudge 3: When there is 5 mins left before the meeting ends, nudge the participants to summarise the meeting points. Show the transcript of the meeting and enable the participants to remove the noise and retain only the important points. Enable collaboration of the meeting notes so that participants can mark if their actions are done.

Nudge 4: An Effective Meeting = Agenda + Action Items + Responsible Individual + Timeline. Nudge the participants to see if all the agenda items are discussed and based on the discussion, add the responsible individuals to actions identified, along with the deadline to act on it and an option to notify either 1 day or 15 mins before the deadline ends.

Suggested Solution 

• As a meeting happens, enable a sidebar and using Natural Language Processing, capture the meeting transcript.
• Enable the participants to edit the transcript, removing the unnecessary noise and keeping only the important points from the meeting.
• Enable the organiser to do a quick check if the agenda items are discussed.
• Enable the organiser to list down the action items, assign responsible individuals and set deadlines.
• Enable the organiser to trigger alerts before the deadline approaches. Ex: 1 day or 15 mins before the deadline.

Benefits

• Any meeting involves time and money and simplifying it saves time and money.
• Not recording a meeting is an opportunity to save storage space and contribute towards sustainability.
• When we calculate the amount of meeting recordings for the entire company and across the world, it would be massive, and the energy spent to maintain those recordings would also be massive.
• Transcripts are easily searchable. Acts as quick reference. Important points from an hour long meeting can be quickly glanced and grasped probably in 5 mins.
• Employees feel overwhelmed due to too much meeting time online and hence lesser meetings and no recordings, reduces stress and improves wellbeing.
• Assigning actions with timelines, nudges participants to keep up with commitments.
• Helps follow up on the action items.
• No confusion as responsibilities can be clearly assigned.

Reading has been described as an active activity while watching videos has been described as a passive activity. Watching videos does not put the cognitive senses into any use close to how reading puts it.

Ref: https://infovoresecrets.com/reading-vs-watching-videos-what-science-says/ 

Let’s strive to have fewer meetings. And if a meeting needs to happen, let’s strive not to record and instead take notes of important actions, responsible individuals and the timeline.

A few years back, when I was preparing to give an internal company talk, my then boss suggested, I listen to a few TED Talks and improve my presentation skills. I had never heard about TED Talks before that. Over time, I developed a habit of watching at least one TED Talk per week and enjoy watching these talks and taking notes for personal reference. Based on my interest, the content, the enthusiasm of the speaker and the presentation styles, I have created my watch list and am delighted to share it here. 

The Danger of a Single Story – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What Makes a Good Life. Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness – Robert Waldinger

The Danger of Science Denial – Michael Specter

Why You Should Make Useless Things – Simone Giertz

The Happy Secret to Better Work – Shawn Achor

Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are – Amy Cuddy

Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator – Tim Urban

Less Stuff, More Happiness – Graham Hill

How to Get Your Brain to Focus – Chris Bailey

The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen – Hans Rosling

The History of Our World in 18 Minutes – David Christian

The Power of Introverts – Susan Cain

How Great Leaders Inspire Action – Simon Sinek

How a Single Voice in Your Head Can Save Your Life –  Sabina Nawaz

How to Speak So That People Want To Listen – Julian Treasure

The Puzzle of Motivation – Dan Pink

How to Make Stress Your Friend – Kelly McGonigal

Where Joy Hides and How to Find It – Ingrid Fetell Lee 

How I Made Friends With Reality – Emily Levine

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success  – Alain de Botton

Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid – Guy Winch

There’s More to Life Than Being Happy – Emily Esfahani Smith

The Art of Saying No – Kenny Nguyen

My Stroke of Insight – Jill Bolte Taylor

Strange Answers to the Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson

How to Be Happy Every Day: It Will Change the World – Jacqueline Way 

How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals – Stephen Duneier

My Journey in Design – John Maeda

Happiness and its surprises – Nancy Etcoff

What Really Motivates People to be Honest in Business – Alexander Wagner

PS: Browse the Playlists on TED
TED encourages sharing the talks, under Creative Commons license. Please refer TED Talks Usage Policy

Addendum:

The Single Biggest Reason Why Start-ups Succeed – Bill Gross

I have been reading on how to run meetings effectively and be considerate of others time. Here is a compilation from what I learnt. Studies indicate that we spend anywhere from 35%–55% of our time, and sometimes much more, in meetings. Of the approximately 11 million meetings that take place every day in the US, a third are unproductive. It comes at a cost. An estimated $37 billion is lost every year to unproductive meetings, in the US alone. 

Successful executives like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs developed their own techniques to combat bad meetings and here’s how Steve Jobs did it:

1. At Apple, any meeting should have a clear agenda. (Also, it is good to be clear of the venue and the time)
2. He kept meetings as small as possible. To Steve Jobs, the core idea of an effective meeting is for it not to be crowded.
3. He made sure someone was responsible for each item on the agenda. He called that person, Directly Responsible Individual or DRI. The DRI would own the task, facilitate discussion around the agenda item and often manage post-meeting actions about it. (Research shows that clearly and publicly attaching a name to a task fosters accountability. This, in turn, increases follow-through)
4. Conclude agenda topics with actions or next steps. Each action item will have a DRI and the deadline or time to complete.

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson insists everyone stands in meetings. If you’re standing, you’re not going to chitchat for too long, and you’re not going to have long, drawn-out conversations. 

Agile teams have standup meetings, timeboxed between 5 to 15 mins, with participants standing up to remind people to keep the meeting short and to-the-point and usually take place at the same time and place every working day, with the simple 3 point agenda: 

1. What I did yesterday?
2. What will I do today?
3. Am I facing any challenges in accomplishing my sprint goals?

Now, let’s see how to create the Perfect Meeting Agenda. Consider creating it as a set of questions to be addressed:

• Instead of a topic titled “Budget Problems,” consider a question such as, “How will we reduce our spending by 100K by the end of the fiscal year”?
• Instead of a topic titled, “Customer Process Improvement,” consider a question like, “What are the key ways of improving overall response time to customers by 25%?”
• Instead of a topic titled “Leader Succession,” try changing it to “Where are we vulnerable from a leadership turnover perspective and how might we address these vulnerabilities?”
• Instead of a topic titled “Continuing Our Strategic Planning,” try changing it to what exactly will be worked on in the meeting such as, “What is the key market threat we need to be aware of, how could it affect us, and what can we do about it?”
• Instead of a topic titled, “Miscellaneous Updates,” try changing it to “What key pieces of information do each of you have to share or need from one another?”

A question-and-answer approach makes it easier to determine your invitation list, for one: it’s the people essential to answering the questions. This approach also better informs when to actually end a meeting — when the questions have been answered to satisfaction.

• Design questions that are specific and challenging.
• Collaborate to identify questions that truly matter.
• Privilege the most important questions first.
• Execute on the agenda.

And remember: if you can’t think of any questions to be answered in a meeting, that may be your sign that a meeting is simply not needed. Give back the gift of time to would-be attendees. They will thank you.

Let’s also see a few Meeting Mistakes:

• You don’t have a strong agenda.
• You invite too many people. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos follows the Two Pizza Rule: No meeting should have more people than can be fed with a pair of pepperoni pies. This not only allows for quicker decisions, it also lets teams test their ideas without the interference of groupthink
• You don’t have a facilitator.
• You don’t establish and follow ground rules.
• Not starting a meeting on time. A whopping 37% of meetings start late, mostly because someone attending it was late
• You listen to the loudmouth, rather than the expert.
• You use your phone.
• You drink too much coffee or eat during the meeting.
• You indulge in small talk. (Leave the small talk for the water cooler.)

Term of the post: meetingitis –  An excessive tendency to hold unnecessary meetings.

To summarise: 

Effective Meeting = Agenda + Action Items + Responsible Individual + Timeline

Addendum: During a Lean Coffee meeting at office, we discussed on how to stop small talks during meetings and save time.

• Start the meeting on time and not wait for latecomers.
• The organizer can strictly stick to the meeting agenda.
• The meeting rooms shall have printed notices saying “Please keep the casual conversations at water cooler points or at cafeteria” and also some stats on the time and money wasted by unnecessary meetings, so that the participants are conscious.
• If the agenda items are discussed, close the meeting and give participants their valuable time back.

References and Additional resources:

• https://www.businessinsider.in/strategy/3-Ways-Steve-Jobs-Made-Meetings-Insanely-Productive-And-Often-Terrifying/articleshow/45555130.cms
• https://www.businessinsider.in/careers/news/12-tricks-steve-jobs-jeff-bezos-and-other-famous-execs-used-to-run-meetings/slidelist/78040564.cms
• https://www.game-learn.com/manage-your-team-meeting-like-steve-jobs-did/
• https://www.businessinsider.in/strategy/These-12-Meeting-Mistakes-Cost-Companies-37-Billion-A-Year-In-Lost-Productivity/articleshow/45220899.cms
• https://modus.medium.com/lets-have-better-meetings-92d18c2c8825
• “12 Ways to Stop Wasting Time in Meetings”
• “How to stop wasting your time — and everyone else’s — in meetings”

A pen and a notebook have been a great productivity tool for me. I take notes and ToDos. I write down deadlines and important dates. When a ToDo item is Done, I strike it off, so as to keep track of what is pending. For taking notes, I prefer to use a spiral sketchbook that is turned over by the side rather than a notepad that is turned over at the top. Why note taking has been a crucial skill for me as a tester. I take notes,

• About an application under test
• During requirement discussions
• During testing, making notes of issues
• For test idea generation
• To keep track of the queries
• To keep track of the issues
• To keep track of the deliverables, deadlines and it’s status
• To remember important points during calls and conferences
• To note down ideas or suggestions …etc.

The benefits of note taking:

• “Note taking isn’t just about recording information. Effective note taking is thinking on paper.” – Nicole Liem Yang of Show Me the Notes
• Not only do good notes help us recall facts and ideas, there’s good evidence that the act of writing things down helps many of us to remember them better.
• By jotting down what you need to remember later, you can then turn your focus on what you’re hearing or reading. You will have room to ask follow up questions or clarifications
• Notes help us to prioritize the important. 
• Notes help to eliminate the communication gap.

We have smartphones and laptops. Then why use notebooks?

• You have a significantly higher chance of achieving your goals if you write them down. This is likely why vision boards or lean visual controls have become popular. 
• We can always have that handy and in sight, thus reminding us of our priorities.

A few tips on note taking:

• Keep it short. Yet, it should be clear so that you understand when you refer to it next time.
• Don’t write down every single word.
• Focus on important points.
• Use abbreviations or short-hand writing.
• Forget spelling and grammar.

Here are a few note taking methods

• Cornell Style of Note Taking
• The Outlining Method
• Mind Mapping

One of the greatest note-takers was Leonardo Da Vinci, whose notes (Codex Leicester) were bought by Bill Gates for over $30 million and are exhibited today to the public.

References: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note-taking

The Importance of Note Taking to Being Successful

Note-taking as a Skill for Testers

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/writing-and-remembering-why-we-remember-what-we-write.html

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/advice-for-students-taking-notes-that-work.html

Lean Visual Management Tools: 5 Types of Visual Controls