It is said that music soothes the savage beast, but did you also know that music in the office cannot only increase productivity but also lead to greater creativity? There have been an abundant amount of studies on this topic with one of the first and most notable being conducted in 1993. In this study researchers at the University of California at Irvine (one of our clients found that college students who listened to Mozart’s Piano Sonata K. 448 for ten minutes prior to taking an IQ test scored eight points higher than those who did not. The concept is that listening to music might somehow enhance the brain’s ability to perform abstract operations immediately thereafter. This phenomenon is known as the Mozart effect.
This effect has not only been found to pertain to IQ tests but also contributes to and helps create a more positive atmosphere, increases focus, improves alertness, motivates people, decreases boredom and leads to increased productivity. At EMG a good number of employees have their own personal music devices in the workplace. There are also many employees who share their iTunes library. I know this was valuable for me when I first started at EMG because I got to see what types of music everyone listened to. I saw that a lot of people were into the same artists and genres as I was, so it was also a way to foster conversation and get to know people on a different level.
Some other benefits of music in the workplace are:
Being able to focus on the task at hand without having to worry about ringing phones and background chatter.
Wearing headphones could signal that you are on a tight deadline and want to zone everything out.
Offering a great pick-me-up in the afternoon and be the catalyst that gets you through the rest of the day.
It has been estimated that we endure up to 60 interruptions a day, and take 10 minutes to get back to our original focus. If you add in all the interruptions throughout the day we suspect the interruption rate is higher than researched. Music is sometimes a means of escape and a way to get in the zone. Even while you are at work you can listen to your favorite band and feel like you are somewhere different if that is what is needed.
EMG understands as a company that sometimes a means of escape can lead to the greater good and that team members being able to have that choice is a valuable notion. This is the case across the board at EMG when it comes to our 9/80 work schedule, extended lunches for working out or free healthy snacks. It is great to be at a place where we all work hard and are creative as a team but we also get to be who we are.
As John Cusask’s character said in Say Anything when asked about what he wanted to do for a career, “A career? I’ve thought about this quite a bit sir and I would have to say considering what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed or buy anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed as a career.” I think this quotes sums up perfectly why being able to do what you truly want to do is something people should strive for. Productivity and creativity are essential in any workplace and anything that may increase both of these is a win in our book.
Hobbies are a great tool used to bridge the gap between work, school, and personal time. They offer a unique opportunity to demonstrate your hidden talents or uncanny abilities in a setting, far removed from work or home. Personal expression of ourselves is crucial to maintaining the delicate balance between work and pleasure and to do the things we love without making a career out of them; although sometimes our hobbies manifest themselves into a career.
Unfortunately, when our hobbies become tied to any sort of monetary-gain they don’t hold the same value as something that is pursued purely for enjoyment. And often times, our hobbies can become an unhealthy addiction that drives us to ignore our responsibilities in life. It is important not to allow this to happen. For example, having a favorite TV show that you religiously watch and follow closely can be fun and entertaining; calling in sick to work because you want to finish season 4 of Lost to find out if Jack, Kate and the rest of the gang finally get off the island, well that’s another story.
Having a hobby can be very rewarding and gratifying; have you put any thought into what your hobbies might be? This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go out and collect stamps or study up on the latest quilt designs. There are a variety of hobbies one can engage in ranging from sports and personal fitness, concerts and music, arts and crafts to even dining out at new and different restaurants, testing your culinary intellect. Allow your hobby to be an escape from your daily grind; an opportunity to decompress from your normal routine of things; don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Feel free to even “Hobby Hop” - no one says you have to stick with one hobby forever, get out and explore as many as you can. In turn you are exploring yourself.
Can you tell the difference between a hobby and a job? Are you appropriately designating time to indulge in your favorite hobbies, while not at the expense of your friends, family and career paths?
1. Gives you a chance to turn-off (or turn-on)
A hobby can give you a chance “turn-off” and stop stressing about your day job. You can focus on things that relax you or make you smile. Hobbies can also give you a chance to “turn-on”. Your talents might not be used at your day job but your hobby lets you shine whether it’s art, music, crafts, writing, sports, etc.
2. Injects Energy into your life
Focusing on one task or subject every day, 5 days a week, can take its toll. Most of us want to go home, sit on the couch and unwind. Are we really unwinding? I think work is still on our minds. A hobby can put our focus onto something that we enjoy and give us a feeling of accomplishment. Doing this can push the reset button in our minds. It can give us different perspectives or trains of thought to solve issues we were having at our day jobs. Or, it will simply give you more energy to make it through the next work week.
3. Develop & Nurture Talents
Few of us have day jobs that fall in line with our hobby. Those few get to develop and nurture their talents every day. Even then I suggest nurturing that hobby outside of work life to keep it fresh and fun. The majority of us don’t have jobs that manifested itself from a hobby. I find it crucial for those people to pick up one. Everyone has a talent… whether its one, two, three or more. Find what you enjoy and nurture this portion of your life. It can relieve a lot of stress and give your life more meaning.
4. Chance to explore yourself
If you have no hobbies, finding one is a great way to explore who you are. You can meet like-minded people or be exposed to something different that may change your outlook on life. You may find things that you never new you would enjoy. Explore what makes you feel happy and accomplished.
Basically, someone goes out and hides something in public and posts the coordinates online. You are then supposed to go to that website, get the coordinates and put them into your GPS (hand-held GPS, not your car navigation).
The coordinates get you pretty close to the item (or “cache” as it is called) and you have to use the clues they post online to find it.
The caches ranges in size from a small matchbook to a big ammo box. Inside you’ll always find a log where you can put your name, and in the bigger ones people leave little knickknacks and toys. It’s great for kids because they can trade one of their old toys for a toy that is inside. Some caches even have stuff for grown ups like movies (my buddy got a Willow DVD out of one).
Geocaching is a great hobby for technical geeks like me who like to “figure things out” and for families who want to spend time together outdoors.
So far, me and my family have found 48 caches in and around our city. How about you? Are there any other geocachers out there?
I’ve been using Google Wave for a few weeks now. In case you somehow haven’t heard of Google Wave before, here is a description from the website:
Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
In simple terms, I see it as a dynamic message board. It’s an interesting idea, but I haven’t been hooked on it yet. It doesn’t feel conducive for everyday use. I definitely do not see it replacing email or IMing anytime soon, like some suggest will happen. Seems more for specific group projects or interest groups.
Even then, you have to be able to wrap your head around the concept and features in order to be able to use it and I think the general public might be turned off to it before they get past the learning curve.
One of the hardest things at first is that you don’t have any friends when you first join. Two things to help:
1) When you join Google Wave, you should get a wave in your inbox from Google that allows you to invite some friends.
2) In the search box, type “with: public” without quotes so you can browse and join public waves. (see below)
I just got a bunch of invites and sent it out to a few people here at EMG. Maybe I’ll have a change of heart once I start using it in a business setting.
This past week I had the pleasure of attending the Day Ignite 2009 Customer Summit in Chicago (10/28 - 10/29) as a Day Partner, care of Earthbound Media Group (my employer and Day Partner). Topics covered ranged from the upcoming Communiqué (CQ5) 5.3 preview (which I’ll comment on momentarily) to running CQ5 in a Cloud environment to the new Microsoft Sharepoint Connector - and much much more! At the conclusion of the conference, we were treated to dinner and a show at the Chicago House of Blues - Foreigner! It was pretty neat!
The first thing that I want to share is the David Nuescheler’s Top 10 list of new features in CQ 5.3:
I recently received an ‘IT Insights’ mailer from a placement company I once worked for. Included in that letter was a section on Developer Skills and what to focus on over the next 5 years. I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out, comment on, and add my own two cents to the topics in this article.
The main topics of this article were:
The big three languages
People/soft skills
Web development and services
RIA (Rich Internet Applications)
Mobile
Let me review these topics, but in a slightly different order…
In a recent project we had done in CQ5.2, I was trying to hook into the built in logging configuration that exists in Apache Felix.
What I wanted was 1 log file for each of our sub projects. This meant I needed one Logger and one Log Writer.
For example: I have an emg-commons bundle and an emg-components bundle and I would like to have a different log file for each. I’m able to create this using the configuration section of the Felix console by creating two Sling Logging Writer Configurations and two Sling Logging Logger configurations.
The disadvantages here are the the different elements are unreadable when I want to come back in and change the logging levels. They have a pId in the name when created, so i have to remember the one I want looks like this:
In addition, any time I create a new local instance for testing … I have to go in and re-create these with the screen interface. (An interface that doesn’t clear form values but does reset drop down menus leading to a headache when trying to add and edit logging configuration).
So I did what any responsible developer would do. I took an undocumented, fly-by-testing-it-out, shortcut.
I’m not a UI designer, nor any kind of authority on UI design. A Liger like hybrid of linux, java, and Ada 95 my idea of a good user interface is a giant text box with a run button and a solid –help command. That having been said, one of the more enlightening articles I have ever tripped over comes from the archives at Joel on Software. It provided me with the following quote:
UI is important because it affects the feelings, the emotions, and the mood of your users. If the UI is wrong and the user feels like they can’t control your software, they literally won’t be happy and they’ll blame it on your software.
So some time ago a service I use almost every day changed their login dialog on the web interface. When I went to sign in, by selecting a link titled “sign in”, I was presented with the following box.
Here on the EMG blog pages there will likely be information about Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. What about optimization from the other side of that equation? The painful side of the equation where you have been typing in different various combinations of search terms only to toggle between 0 results and 100,000 pages of mail archives none of which have what you are looking for.
Your suffering does not need to be completely in vain. And, more importantly, there is no reason other members of your tech team need to go through it also.
There are several customizable search engines out there, and the following could certainly be adapted for each. I’m going to look at a feature of one of the most popular monopolies search engines in the digital ether … Google customized search.
I met a lot of interesting people at Mixergy and had some great conversations. I couldn’t believe how many people turned out for the first event like this in Orange County. Mixergy was also the first event that we’ve thrown here at our headquarters since I started and it was great to hear how cool people thought our office was and to see how many people we can fit in this space. I can’t wait for the next big event here.
Big thanks to Andrew from Mixergy, the Tia Juana’s staff, and the EMG team for making this so successful.
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