January 2016 Summaries

Coonoor Behal is the founder of Mindhatch, an organizational and customer insights firm that specializes in improv and design thinking. She often uses improv to help people learn empathy on the fly by playing different characters or perspectives. Storytelling in various forms can be a powerful tool for gaining new perspectives and creating shared understanding, especially in business where it can lead to better results and foster empathy among customers, leaders, and designers. Research has shown that stories can literally change our brain chemistry, producing chemicals like oxytocin associated with care, connection, and empathy. Effective storytelling shares certain characteristics such as using sensory details and images, jokes and metaphors, and not bogging people down with unnecessary facts and figures. By incorporating storytelling into their work, teams and individuals can generate empathy and create a better understanding of the human beings they interact with, which is essential in business today.

There are numerous tools available to help individuals improve their email communication skills, including subject line optimization, grammar and spelling checkers, video email features, calendar integration, canned emails, and more. Tools like SubjectLine.com, BombBomb, and Email Template Generator offer assistance with crafting effective subject lines, creating engaging content, and using templates for common email scenarios. Additionally, apps such as Crystal, Unibox, and Sidekick provide insights into the recipient's social media profiles and behavior to help tailor emails to their preferences. Other tools like FoxType, Alex, and Emotional Labor focus on tone and language to avoid misinterpretation or offense. Furthermore, Grammarly, MailMentor, and Hemingway offer advanced grammar and writing assistance, while Email Text Formatter, WiseStamp, and UglyEmail help with formatting and appearance. These tools can aid individuals in building a positive reputation through their email communication, making it easier to establish relationships and achieve their goals.

The endowed progress effect is a psychological phenomenon where providing artificial advancement toward a goal motivates people to complete the goal. Researchers found that giving customers a head start, such as shipping free frames or offering points for purchases, increases motivation and commitment to a program. The Zeigarnik Effect, which states that unfinished tasks are more bothersome than completed ones, plays a role in this effect. Additionally, the goal gradient effect suggests that the closer someone is to a goal, the harder they work to complete it. Expectancy, or the belief that one's effort will result in achieving a desired goal, also affects motivation. By using various tactics such as creating a head start, using abstract measurement, focusing on resources already spent, sequencing tasks into smaller steps, and being transparent about what's left to do, individuals can harness the endowed progress effect to boost motivation and productivity.

Zapier processes a high volume of outbound API requests, leading to significant wait times that equate to about four minutes of CPU time per second. To manage this workload, Zapier considered switching to Gevent from their current Python and Django setup, which relies heavily on Celery for asynchronous processing. Gevent, with its cooperative multitasking capabilities via Greenlets, could potentially reduce RAM usage and improve CPU utilization. However, the transition would require replacing third-party libraries, ensuring Greenlet-safety in the code, implementing connection pooling, and managing blocking operations. Despite successfully increasing worker utilization and reducing RAM usage during a trial, Zapier experienced a 50% slowdown in task execution times and increased code complexity, leading them to postpone the switch to Gevent. They anticipate reconsidering this transition as they continue to shift their workload to microservices, but for now, they will maintain their current single-threaded processes.

Trello is a project management tool that uses Kanban boards to help you organize your tasks visually. It has numerous advanced tricks, including keyboard shortcuts, copying and pasting multiple items, formatting text with Markdown, exporting to Excel, cloning boards, and enabling power-ups such as Calendar, Card Aging, and Voting. Asana is another project management tool focused on traditional projects and to-do lists, offering features like email tasks, adding tasks while browsing the web, tracking time, advanced search, shifting multiple deadlines, and assigning tasks to multiple projects. Evernote is a digital notebook app that can be used for collecting thoughts, pictures, audio, videos, and webpages across devices, with features like browsing by location, making a table of contents, merging notes, formatting text, and digitizing business cards. Todoist is a task management tool that offers features like viewing karma, turning on vacation mode, quickly assigning priority, changing the theme, creating uncompleteable tasks, and typing due dates. Slack is a chat app with numerous hidden features, including keyboard shortcuts, using bundles, showing bundles at specific times, creating personalized bundles, swiping right to mark messages as done, pinning messages, and sending in-line photos. Google Inbox is an email app that offers features like using bundles, sweeping the inbox, snoozing emails, setting reminders, and sending in-line photos.