sacha chua living an awesome life

Hat-tip to Holly Tse for organizing this interview! After I transcribed it, I realized we managed to pack more than 9,000 words into one hour. So that I don’t overwhelm people, I’m going to split this up into 15 logical chunks to be published every Thursday. At the end of the blog series, I’ll put them all together in a text file and a PDF that you can read easily, and I’ll add insights you and other people might share along the way. =) Here’s the first chunk!

Holly Tse: All right, good evening, and welcome to the Lotus Blossoming Telesummit. My name is Holly Tse. I’m your host for tonight, and joining us this evening is Sacha Chua. Sacha Chua is a Generation Y tech evangelist, and she’s passionate about blogging, and she’s been writing her own blog since 2002. So, if you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, or you have a blog and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, or even if you’re a seasoned blogger, you’ll enjoy Sacha’s enthusiasm and you’ll probably pick up some great ideas tonight. So, welcome, Sacha, thank you for joining us.

Sacha Chua: Thank you very much! I’m looking forward to things we’ll find out in the conversation, particularly as I’ve managed to convince you to get into blogging again!

HT: Yes, it will be interesting to find out. I also want to mention that Sacha invites everyone to submit their questions live right now. If you’re on the webcast, you can type into the Q&A box, and if you’re on the phone… You have to press..

SC: Oh, just use the webcast.

HT: Yeah, probably the webcast is easier, yeah.

SC: if you are listening to the recording, though, please feel free to drop by my blog. I’m at livinganawesomelife.com. That’s livinganawesomelife.com. If you ask your questions there, I’d be happy to help.

HT: That’s Sacha. She’s so comfortable with technology. You can ask and she can talk at exactly the same time. That is awesome. So, Sacha, I wanted to ask you–because you have a really fresh perspective on blogging–how would you define what a blog is and how does that differ from what the “experts” say?

SC: Well, really, what a blog is, at its very core, is it’s just a list of entries that are ordered in chronological order. It’s usually the newest items first, and you go backwards from there. Now, many people think, Oh, blog, that’s for self-promotion, personal branding, or search engine optimization, or all of these new buzzwords that have sprung up around it. But you know, it’s actually a really, really useful tool to just practise writing and thinking about your life and figuring things out. And not only is it helpful to do that for yourself, but when you start sharing it with other people–and here’s the difference between having a journal and using a blog–when you start sharing your stories with other people, you’d be surprised at the kinds of insights that you get from other people: the lessons they’ll share, the encouragement they’ll share, and also the ways that you get to help other people too.

HT: So, can you give us examples, then, from your own life and your own blog, where blogging has led to some unexpected benefits?

SC: One of my unexpected benefits from this blog… A couple of years ago, I was in the habit of posting not just my thoughts, but also my to-do list online. It got to the point where I was feeling a little bit embarrassed because there were certain things I knew I had been procrastinating for weeks, such as going to the bookstore and buying this particular book that I’d heard about but hadn’t gotten around to reading. So I’d been procrastinating it for a good long while, and finally, someone went and bought me the book. Those are the funny things that happen when you share bits and pieces of your life online.

But I’ve also come across situations where I’m writing about something I’m figuring out, whether it’s my decision to take piano lessons or to stop taking them, or things I’d like to learn, my experiences with all these different hobbies and interests like woodworking or sewing, or all these things I’ve been trying in my life, right… and to be able to use that to reach out to somebody I would never have thought of e-mailing or finding elsewhere on the Web, and then having a friendship grow out of that. So it’s been really, really helpful, particularly as I– hard to tell from my voice, but–I feel rather introverted, especially around crowds, so this is a great way for me to get the conversation going without actually having to start conversations myself.

HT: I have been reading your blog and you keep saying you’re introverted, but… it doesn’t come across in your blog that you are.

SC: We often think that introverts have to be these people who find it really difficult to communicate, people who like spending time by themselves… Well, you know, we all find different ways of dealing with things. My favourite way of spending my evening is still staying at home and maybe doing a lot of reading or writing. I find conferences and networking events really intimidating. But on the other hand, when you talk about reaching people online, talking to them, maybe even becoming friends with people I’ve never really met or maybe I’ve only met once or twice… There’s nothing stopping people from doing that, and in fact, it actually really helps, because then you’re not always trying to make small talk about the same topics. You can actually get to really deep conversations that have built on other conversations.

Tune in next Thursday for the next part in this series! I’ll add new entries to the Discovering Yourself through Blogging page to make it easier for you to find them.

Andras uses Emacs Org-mode to take notes during meetings, and wanted to know how to share those notes (including tables) with colleagues afterwards. Here are some tips for sharing Org notes with non-Org people.

You can copy the information as plain text. If you don’t have too much Org markup, you can copy and paste the text into your mail message. To get tables and other segments to line up nicely, make sure you format the text with a monospace font such as Courier New or Lucida Console.

You can export the information to HTML and then copy it into your message. Export the entire file with M-x org-export or export a region with M-x org-export-region-as-html. Save it to a file, open that file in your browser, then copy and paste the information. If you find yourself working with the same files often, consider using Org’s publishing support to simplify the creation of related HTML files.

You can also publish your notes on an internal or external blog. I post many of my notes on my blog (including this one!) using org2blog.el. If you publish your posts on a blog, you can send people a link, update your post with new information, and share your post with others.

Hope that helps!

So I accidentally blew away my self-hosted photo gallery because I overwrote the directories by copying them instead of using rsync. I attribute that to being slightly out-of-sorts, but the truth is that I might’ve made that mistake anyway bright and early on a well-rested weekend.

As it turns out, I back up my WordPress blog, but not my Gallery2-hosted photo album. And I hadn’t enabled server-wide backups before. You can bet I turned that on after I realized that.

It’s no big deal. The key thing I wish I hadn’t deleted was the sketch I’d made of the highlights of 2008, but that’s in my paper backup of my blog, and the rest of my sketches are probably somewhere in my files too. It’s just stuff.

The trick to dealing with negative productivity is to catch yourself – ideally, shortly before you mess up, but shortly afterwards is fine too. Do not make things worse in the process of trying to fix things.

It’s better to detect your periods of negative productivity on non-critical operations than to, say, accidentally corrupt the source code repository for the project you’ve been working on. In addition to remembering this general feeling of out-of-it-ness, it might be a good idea for me to come up with some small test for full attention/alertness before doing anything possibly irreversible. Then I would need to make it a habit, because it’s precisely when one’s tempted to cut corners and go ahead that one shouldn’t.

Hmm, checking for patterns…

Anyway. Dealing with oopses. Instead of beating myself up about it, I’d rather fix what I can fix, learn what I can learn, and then get on with a restful evening so that I can prepare for more awesomeness. Why beat myself up over a mistake? Better to figure out how to minimize the chances of making a similar mistake in the future, and to get on with life. =)

(Well, after wringing a blog post out of it first…)

2011-04-13 Wed 20:36

I remember teasing W- about how he wears a toque to bed. (It’s a small, brimless hat also known as a beanie.) Several winter months later, I’m a convert to the cause.

Wearing a hat to bed is an excellent way to keep your ears warm. This means less work tucking yourself in and fewer late-night struggles with blankets.

A hat also doubles as a handy sleep mask that keeps the light out if someone else wants to stay up late reading. Just pull your hat down over your eyes. A little bit of light may come in on either side of your nose, but the reduction in light may be enough to let you sleep easily.

A warm hat, fuzzy socks, flannel pajamas, and microfleece sheets – that should see me through the last gasps of winter and into spring. Slowly getting the hang of this!

2011-04-03 Sun 10:24

I promised to put together a talk on learning for an IBM virtual conference for new hires. Here’s a rough draft, just to get it out of my head and into a form I can work with. I’ll add URLs internally. The next steps I want people to take are:

• Find a mentor, or even several mentors.
• Bookmark Lotus Connections so that they can easily search it in the future.
• Learn to find people based on documents and other shared information.

One of my mentors told me that at IBM, it’s okay if you don’t know something. If you don’t ask for help and things get messed up, though, that’s when you get into trouble. So I want to share with you some tips I’ve picked up on how to learn as quickly as you can, from as many people as you can.

I’ve been with IBM for almost four years. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by all the different things there are to learn: working with Lotus Notes and other applications, dealing with technologies, working with team members and clients… It can be really intimidating. Fortunately, at IBM, there are plenty of people who can help – but sometimes you need to step up and ask.

• Mentors
  

  If you don’t have a mentor yet, find one. Even better, find several mentors. Mentors can help you figure things out: the specific technology you’re learning, the tools you need to work with, the processes in your team or business unit, even your career plans.

  How can you find a mentor? Share your questions with your manager and ask your manager to refer you to some people who might be good mentors for you. Look for people on Bluepages or Lotus Connections. Take advantage of the speed mentoring events that IBM Learning sometimes organizes and see if you can connect with anyone. Attend presentations and connect with speakers or other participants. Once you have a mentor, ask him or her for introductions to other people who might be able to help.

  Maybe you’re feeling shy. Maybe you think, “Well, I’m new to IBM. Why would anyone mentor me?” I found it hard to ask people to mentor me, too, but I was amazed by how generous people were when it came to helping new people. Many mentors help others because other people mentored them. Others mentor people because they learn a lot in the process. Mentors have lots of reasons for helping, so don’t be afraid to ask.

  Social networking tip: Look for mentors and role models who blog or post updates in Lotus Connections or on the Internet. That way, you can easily learn from people in between your meetings. You can even learn from people around the world, and people whom you might be too shy to reach to right now. For example, if you’re curious about what IBM Fellows do (they have the highest technical rank in IBM), or what vice presidents are like, or so on, you can learn from their blogs, tweets, and other posts. Maybe you’ll find something you can comment on or ask about!

  How to work with mentors: Talk to your mentors about your goals and figure out how they can help you. Take the lead in setting up meetings and asking questions. Show your appreciation through thank-you notes – and even better, show your appreciation through the results that come from taking your mentors’ advice.

  Okay. You’ve got mentors. But you can’t go to your mentors for every little thing you need to learn, so you still need to figure out things on your own.

• Documentation, assets, and other sources of information
  

  You’re probably already used to searching the Internet for information when you’re trying to learn something new. It can be harder to find just the right document within IBM. If you’re new to a topic, it can be difficult to find beginner-level resources, or even to know what and where to search.

  If you’re stuck, ask your coworkers or your manager for help in getting started. Take notes! Make a list of the resources you find useful as a beginner, and you’ll be able to share that list with other people who join the project. It’s a quick way to create value – and people are more likely to invest time into helping you if they know that your notes will help them and other people save time in the future.

  Don’t stop with the documents you find, too. One of the best things you can learn from a document or an asset is where you can go to find more information. Are there related communities? Can you look up other things the author has written? When you come across a useful document, look for any author information or lists of related experts. If you need help finding the right resources or you have a question that’s not answered by the document, you might be able to ask those people for help. (Look for communities or forums first, though – this helps avoid e-mail overload, and you can ask more people for help. We’ll talk more about communities later.)

  Okay. Formal documentation is great, but there’s often very little of it, especially for new tools and technologies. What do you do when you need to learn about something that doesn’t have a lot of articles or manuals yet?

• Files, bookmarks, wikis, and blog posts
  

  When I need to find out about something new, informal, or obscure, I often check people’s files, bookmarks, wikis, or blog posts. This is where Lotus Connections really shines. You can search people’s public files and presentations for new information, search bookmarks for information other people have found useful, check out wikis to see what people have collaborated on, and read blog posts for people’s notes and articles.

  What if you still can’t find what you need, and the people you ask don’t know of any resources, either? This is where you might need to ask more people.

• More questions and answers
  

  Have a short question? Try posting it on IBM Answers. You’ll get an e-mail notification if anyone replies. While you’re there, see if you can answer any of the pending questions.

  Tip: Don’t just post your question on IBM Answers and walk away. Reach out to specific people to see if they can share anything. If you use Profile status updates, post your question with a link to the answer page.

  Regarding experts: If you have a question that needs deep expertise, you might want to give Expertise Locator a try. You don’t want to waste experts’ time, though, so if your request is non-urgent, it’s probably better to start at a lower level. People can escalate your request if needed.

  Sometimes it helps to ask many people instead of focusing on just a few. This is where Lotus Connections Communities and IBM forums come in.

• Lotus Connections Communities
  

  Whatever you’re looking for, there’s probably a community or forum related to it. Search Lotus Connections Communities to find groups related to the topic. IBM Forums has older groups, too.

  Many communities have discussion forums. You’ll need to join the community in order to ask a question. Look at other posts to see how people ask for help. Provide as much information as you can in your message, but don’t post any confidential information. Show that you’ve “done your homework” – describe how you’ve tried to solve the problem or where you’ve looked for information. That way, people might be more encouraged to help you.

  Important: Ask the community owners (see the Members tab) Some communities use the “Mail community” feature to handle questions, before mailing the community. Many communities have thousands of members, and too much community e-mail can make the community useless.

• Building your network
  

  What about all those questions that people haven’t answered before, and for which there are no active communities? This is where your personal network becomes important. When you’re faced with questions that need much broader or deeper experience than you have, or you have no idea where to even start learning, your network is essential.

  If you can’t think of anyone who would know the answers you need, try thinking of people who might know people who would know the answer. Ask them for referrals. You can also look for people in Lotus Connections Profiles or Bluepages and try reaching out to them.

  Social networking tip: Lotus Connections Profiles is a great way to ask questions and get quick responses from whoever’s available in your network at the time. You need to build your network before you can use this effectively, though. Look at the main Profiles page to see who’s been participating, and invite them to your network. If they agree, you’ll be able to see their updates in your timeline, and they can see yours. That means that if you post questions in Lotus Connections, people might see it and answer it.

  Why would people spend time checking out Lotus Connections and possibly answering questions? For many people, it’s like a quick break by the virtual office watercooler, a way to catch up with lots of people and to help out people if they can. Try it – spend a little time each day or each week building your relationships by reading people’s profile updates, answering other people’s questions, sharing useful resources, and posting notes of thanks or encouragement.

• Wrapping up
  

  You’ll need to learn a lot at IBM, and you’ll need to learn it quickly. Not everything will be written down, and you might not find everything you need using w3 or an Internet search engine. You’ll need to learn from the network.

  • Learn from managers, coworkers, mentors, and role models about things you might not even know to ask about
  • Follow the clues from people’s files and assets to find related communities and experts.
  • Search people’s files, bookmarks, blog posts, and profile updates to see the latest.
  • Check out Q&A sites for additional resources.
  • Reach out to communities and forums if you need help from more people.
  • Gradually build your network so that you can easily ask for people’s help when you have new questions.

  Good luck!

  2011-04-02 Sat 21:42

Stefan asks:

I use the “normal” QWERTY-layout but I am thinking to switch over to
Dvorak. I read somewhere that you are using Dvorak. Can you recommend
it for someone who is not a programmer and just types some messages. I
am at 54 WPM in QWERTY. What is your count in QWERTY and in Dvorak. I
am really curious about it.

Short answer: Try it out if you’re curious, but don’t expect miraculous speed gains – typing layout is probably not your bottleneck.

One of my quirks is that I’ve switched my computer to the Dvorak keyboard layout – same keyboard, just different software configuration. I taught myself Dvorak on a whim during the summer of 2002, to see how easily I could reprogram muscle memory. It took a month of typing painfully slowly, and then things clicked. I currently type at about 90wpm on both Dvorak and QWERTY.

I prefer Dvorak, though, because it feels like more even use of my fingers. This is partly because of the layout, which optimizes for alternating fingers when typing English. This is also partly because I learned how to type Dvorak using a computer-based typing program that encouraged me to use the right fingers to press each key. In contrast, I don’t remember ever learning how to type QWERTY. We must have had keyboarding exercises in school, but by then I typed faster than most people around already, and no one minded that I tended to hit keys with whichever finger was already in motion.

Choosing the Dvorak keyboard layout has a few consequences. First, it certainly increases geek cred, as odd computer-related decisions tend to do. ;) It also means that I have to switch the keyboard layout on my computer if anyone needs to borrow it. I can switch layouts, although sometimes starting up – or alternating between computers with different layouts – takes a little more thought. I’ve changed some of my keyboard shortcuts to make them more useful on a Dvorak keyboard. For programs like Nethack, I switch to QWERTY because the shortcuts feel better that way. My inclination towards Dvorak is also dependent on the keyboard size and feel – too small or too big, and I’ll switch to QWERTY. There have even been times when I have most of my windows set to Dvorak and one or two windows set to QWERTY – mildly confusing because of the context-switching, but easy enough to sort out.

Typing layout isn’t the limiting factor for me, though. At 90wpm, I can type about as fast as I need to type in order to write or program. If I want to do things faster, it’s more about thinking more quickly rather than just typing more quickly. My brain is the bottleneck, not the way the keys are arranged. (For example, this post was written at effectively 22wpm, not 90wpm.) When I’m picking up lots of passages from books, I find that dictating into Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 is reasonably fast, and it’s easier on my hands and posture too. So I don’t feel any particular urge to further improve my typing speed, just as my reading speed is fine. I still haven’t gotten the hang of dictating new text to Dragon Naturally Speaking, though. I currently find it faster and less distracting to type new content than to say it.

So:

Whether you’re on QWERTY or Dvorak, you might see a speed boost if you train yourself to type properly – pressing keys with the right fingers, keeping your fingers on the home row as much as possible, and using keyboard shortcuts and automation to reduce the amount of typing you need to do in the first place. Learning a new keyboard layout might be a way to break yourself out of bad habits. Aside from that, Dvorak, Colemak, and other layouts might be worth checking out as an intellectual exercise. Who knows, you might enjoy typing in one of them!

2011-03-28 Mon 21:47

Paul Gillin invited me to do a tweetchat on the professional and personal value of blogging. When I brainstormed some of the things I’d like to talk about, I ended up with a big list: not just the value I get from blogging, but also tips for how you can build that too. I hope you enjoy this blog series! You can also see other resources in this value of blogging series.

1. Making your goals real

Writing about your goals can be scary. You might feel that people will laugh at your goals, or that they’ll embarrass you if you don’t achieve them. You might worry about sounding over-ambitious, or not ambitious enough.

But there’s a lot of value in writing about your goals, even if you start by doing so in a private entry. When you write about what you want in life, why you want it, and how you can get to that point, that path becomes clearer. When your goals dim and your willpower fades, you can inspire yourself by reviewing your notes, reminding yourself of your goals and why they matter.

Tips: Set a goal for yourself. Write about it. Write about why it matters to you. Write about your plans for achieving your goal. Review your notes when you need a burst of energy.

2. Connecting with inspiration

The Internet can make it easy to connect with other people who have similar goals. Look for blogs that inspire you. If you share your reflections through blog posts of your own, linking to the posts or people who’ve inspired you, you can build unexpected relationships and learn from or even help your role models in surprising ways.

Tips: Comment on inspiring blog posts. If you have more to say, write a blog post that refers to theirs. Share what you’re learning from people and how you’ve tried those ideas in your life.

3. Progress

Change can be long, slow, and tiring. If you can look back at the progress you’ve made, though, you might find it easier to keep going. You can use your blog to keep track of your progress.

If you’re trying to establish a new habit, you might write about how well you’re doing, or what you can do to make it easier to do what you want to do. If you’re working on improving your skills, your blog posts can help you keep track of your growth. For example, when I started learning more about drawing, I blogged my stick figures. Thanks to my blog, I can see how my drawing techniques have evolved over time, and I get less frustrated because I know I’m making progress.

Tips: Write about your progress, and think about sharing examples of your work so far. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day, lapse into old behavior, or slide backwards. Focus on the positive, and keep going.

4. Inspiring others

Inspire others? Yes, you can do that, even if you’re just starting out. If you share what you’re learning and how you’re living life, you might be surprised by how you touch other people’s lives. And it gets even better – you might learn a lot from the people you inspire, too.

One of the things that makes it easier for me to think out loud – to share whatever I’m learning about or struggling with on my blog – is that I often hear from other people who’ve learned a little from what I’ve shared, or who are glad to find someone else dealing with similar situations, or who are happy to finally have words for something they’ve struggled to describe. We’re all in this together, and it’s great to be able to help and inspire other people.

Tips: Don’t be afraid of sharing what you’re learning, even the parts that are hard. Who knows whom you might help along the way?

And that’s the last item in this value of blogging series. Like this? You can also subscribe using a feed-reader or subscribe by e-mail to get updates. Hope this helps!