technology tips and music recommendations with a personal touch

It’s that time of the year again. In fact, today marks a special milestone for me: I’m finally turning 25, that is, two and half decades!

It’s become a tradition here on the blog for me to write a “reflection” post on the year that’s passed by. I always start wondering how fast the year has passed by, and this one is no different. Well, except that 2007, the year I turned 25, has ended on a high note. It was such a dramatic year. However, if I were to make a theme for 2007, it would be this:

2007 is the year I stopped looking at the world in black and white, and starting seeing the different shades of gray within.

More on this later. For now, here’s a brief outline for the rest of this post:

1. Good things happen at last
2. The different shades of gray
3. Major accomplishments
4. 2008: the crystallizing year

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In in my last post about perfectionism, I’ve ended up posing a question: what makes an accomplished perfectionist? In other words, how does one balance the act of accomplishment with a strive for perfection? It’s a pretty thin line if you ask me, and in this post, I’m going to shed light on some of the techniques you can use to achieve that.

Accomplished perfectionism is the fusion of two separate genes: those that empower a person to get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible, and those that compels him or her to do their best possible job on these things.

To illustrate, take a look at the following phrases which are more likely to be said or thought by a carrier of each of these two genes:

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Are you a perfectionist? You know, are you the type of person who seeks completeness and flawlessness in every project and every single task you do? Do you obsess about the smallest of details, often times to the point of exhaustion? And does that often lead you to miss important deadlines, because “good” is simply just not “good enough”, at least for you?

If you’re anything like me, then you’ll resonate with symptoms of what’s called perfectionism. Being a perfectionist at work and college is something I’ve been very proud of, despite not being fully aware of it. Everybody I came to deal with including my boss and colleagues was impressed by the level of sophistication and professionalism I’d go about completing my tasks.

This, of course, also had its toll on me most of time. Long working hours in the office (by choice) trying to get that deliverable up to my standards and still meeting that deadline was the norm for me.

Then a couple of days ago I came across an article that was like a revelation. It made me realize that now I’m at this point in my career life where I have to make serious changes to my work habits if I want to be an accomplished person. This post is me trying to analyze that change and hopefully helping fellow perfectionists along the way.

I’m pretty sure you are probably wondering now: why is being a perfectionist something you would want to change? How does it ruin one’s professional life? Doesn’t it make you, I don’t know.. better than the others?

If you think about it (or have experienced it yourself) then you’d probably agree with me on this: perfectionism can get in the way of accomplishment. Well, at least a certain kind of perfectionism.

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I realized something a couple of days ago by reading an article that came as a sort of a wake-up call for me: being productive doesn’t necessarily make you an accomplished person!

I will elaborate on that so it makes little more sense to you:

There’s a common phrase I use quite often (especially at work) to describe the thing where you pretend to do something by acting as if you were really doing it, but never actually getting it done. It’s called going through the motions.

It amazes me how often we find ourselves inadvertently going through the motions of achieving things, doing everything we know we’re supposed or told to do, but eventually not reaching the finish line, or reaching it a bit too late.

I wasn’t aware of how guilty I am of this until I started my current job a couple of years ago and started to learn about the environment and work culture. Two years down the road, I’ve realized that what we actually do here at the company is far from trying to get projects done. We obsess very little about end results and a lot more about methodologies, frameworks, work policies, clearing our responsibilities and basically just getting the ball on to the other side.

Make no mistake, we do like to feel accomplished, and we’re actually getting paid to do so. But we’re lousy at that, and you know why? Because we think that by going through the motions of working on various projects, clearing many seemingly important tasks, being all productive and punctual, we’re bound to drive projects to the finish line. The only problem is, we usually don’t. Our projects carry on for years (I’m not exaggerating!). So what is it we’re doing wrong? Or to put it in a more general way:

How does going through the motions of accomplishing things not help us accomplish them?

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Welcome to the latest incarnation of Alaeddin’s Blog!

It’s been almost a week since I took the old site down and started working on it. Since this is a major redesign of the old version, taking it down was necessary to maintain consistency between my local and remote version, so I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.

This is a snapshot of the old version, which suffered from many problems:

I’ve worked hard on designing this new new version. I spent a couple of days picking out a nice-looking theme from the hundreds of available WordPress themes out there. Then I spent about a week tweaking the theme’s guts until I got something out of it that lives up to my standards and everything I’ve learned about blogging, SEO and web usability so far.

In short, I’ve focused on few key points when tweaking this theme:

1. Clear, simple and contextual navigation.
2. Separation of different topics since my blog is quite diverse in nature.
3. Bringing the content forth and make it easy to read and scan.
4. Increase the stickiness of the blog (see point 1) and make it easy to subscribe.
5. Increase the loading speed of the pages.

It’s really been a wonderful (although a bit tiring) experience to unleash the developer in me and let him work out some PHP, XHTML, and CSS magic. Of course, let’s not forget WordPress, the greatest open-source blogging platform ever made.

Having said that, I’m dying now to find out what you guys have to say about my new (vs. old) blog design. Don’t hesitate to be constructively critical, I’ve been known to be one so I naturally expect it from other people. It may also help to know this is still a work in progress so I’m not really emotionally attached to it (OK, maybe just a little bit).

Looking forward to your comments and feedback.

Despite my doubts and anxiety about the exam, I proved once again that I’m up for anything I set my mind to: I have successfully passed the Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) exam yesterday!

I waited till today to write about it because it took a little while to sink in. I mean, it’s over! The ambitious plan that started early this year with my attempt to get into the field of usability and gain some credentials has now been realized.

For new readers of this blog, Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) is a certification offered by the world-renowned usability consulting company called Human Factors International as an entry-level certification for usability professionals. It’s the perfect kick-start for people who are passionate about this field of science like me.

My plan to achieve this certification involved traveling all the way to India for a 10-days training course in July. That went pretty well. I came back and had about 2 months to study for and prepare for the certification exam. I wasted no effort reviewing all the course materials and reading lots of online and offline literature on this subject. Finally, I devised a strategy for taking the exam that involved creating a reference sheet (PDF) to lookup any piece of information I may need during the exam (it’s an open-book one). The latter proved very useful during the 2.5 hours, 100 questions exam.

With this certification under my belt, I’m now ready to delve into the world of usability and human-computer interaction. As a matter of fact, I already have a blueprint for a usability career plan. The steps of this plan go something like this:

1. Establish professional credibility by way of certification and actual practice.
2. Work towards bringing usability knowledge and practices into my workplace.
3. Start a dedicated blog and write regularly about different topics in usability such as user-centered design.
4. When I feel confident with enough usability work to back me up, I will start giving public speeches and training sessions.

What I’m really hoping to achieve is something bigger which is to bring the science of usability into this part of the world and make people (especially those involved in IT) aware of it’s critical importance. I honestly hope to look back on this post one day and say with confidence that I’m at least one step closer to achieving this grand plan of mine. It’s not completely selfless, as I’ll hopefully become famous for this effort. But in doing so, I’ll also make the lives of many, many people easier since the institutionalization of usability means we will start making (and using) many products that are usable, useful and effective. Everybody’s life will be easier. It’s what computers were always meant to do, and it’s up to us to make them do just that.

This week is going to be a silent one at Alaeddin’s Blog as the countdown begins for my long-awaited Certified Usability Analyst exam. If you guys remember, the whole point of my trip to India in July was to take a bunch of courses to prepare me for this exam.

I’ve already been through the courses’ material twice. I read countless articles and white papers, and I’ve been through couple of fantastic books about the subject. It only seems fair to believe that I’m well-prepared for taking on and passing the exam.

However, no matter what I do I can’t seem to shake off the feeling of anxiety and anticipation. It seems that no matter what you do, exams usually have their dreadful sensation which you can’t get rid of. For me, this is mainly caused by the fear of failing. Although I do have the option of retaking the exam after 3 days in case of failure, failing this exam does a couple of things to me:

1. It shakes my confidence in the career path I’ve decided upon and chose to begin with this certification.
2. It sends a bad message to my friends and coworkers, possibly lowering the credibility I’m trying to establish in the field of usability.

Not to sound pessimistic, I do however believe in my knowledge and ability to pass the exam with flying colors. I’m just skeptic, that’s all. A healthy dose of skepticism is important to ground our egos in reality and level-off our expectations, don’t you think?

While I’ve been busy lately preparing for my Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) exam on September 13, I’ve been quietly studying this blog’s performance, vision and roadmap.

I’ll admit that in the blogsphere there’s not much room for a personal blog to thrive, but my idea is that if this is the case, then I might as well build and maintain the best possible personal blog out there that provides kick-ass content and value to my friends and readers.

To that end, there are many things that need fixing (both technical and otherwise), that have piled over the last few months. For example:

• Optimize load time - Last time I checked, this blog’s load time stands at a whopping 25 seconds!
• Easier navigation – While current one isn’t all bad, I’m not fond of the menu labeling. I have ideas for improving navigation, mostly inspired by Steve Krug’s awesome book, Don’t Make Me Think.
• Browser compatibility – This problems continues to exist in minor forms, despite changing theme last May.
• Clear purpose - I want to further focus this blog and I want new readers to get at a glance what this blog’s about and where to find valuable content (again, navigation).

So in my spare time, I’ve been planning out steps I will take to meet those goals:

• I will start by switching to a more browser-friendly, fast-loading and awesome-looking theme. I already got a theme picked out.
• I will make sure everything that’s wrong with the current theme is permanently fixed in the new one upon launching.
• To celebrate the new launch, I will start writing a massive post series that’s going to be really valuable for virtually anybody who uses a computer. Stay tuned.
• To go along the post series, I will embark on a massive ad and marketing campaign to bring in fresh and interesting new readers to spice up the community around this blog.

It’s all about you!

Yes, without you, the lovely readers of this little blog, I wouldn’t have the motivation to plan and do all of this.

Recently, I’ve done something I’m really proud of: I’ve reached out to a fresh new reader of this blog and thanked him for having the interest to follow my blog. Then I asked him of what he thought of the blog, what he liked best and least. I was really amazed that he took the time and effort to reply, thoroughly describing his experience with the blog so far. He suggested some very good points that kind of reaffirmed my existing suspicions.

So now I want to generalize this concept:

In the comments, write at least one thing you like about this blog and (more importantly), one thing you’d like to see changed. Be brutal, I can take that (as long as it’s constructive).

Your comments and suggestions will feed into my lists above and the relaunch of this blog will see most of the things you like reinforced and the things you disliked hopefully patched up.