Inspired by this ... The Eisenhower Matrix

You’ve got a lot on your plate. In addition to your actual projects, it feels like you also have 50 other little tasks that demand your attention. There are a ton of unanswered emails in your inbox. A coworker on another project desperately needs your input on something, and they’re on a deadline. Not to mention that overflowing laundry bin waiting for you at home.

With all of these priorities whizzing around your brain simultaneously, it’s hard to actually tackle any of them. The anxiety of not knowing where to start is leaving you in a state of analysis paralysis. You feel overwhelmed, and stuck.

But it’s not all bad news. Solutions for prioritization and decision-making are not new. In fact, one of the greatest frameworks for thinking about decision-making came over a half a century ago, from old school productivity master and very busy fellow Dwight Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix is an easy way to figure out how to prioritize your tasks so that the most important don’t fall by the wayside to the sudden, unexpected, and urgent ones.

The idea is that all of your tasks can be sorted into four quadrants, with axes of Important and Urgent on either side. These four quadrants are given number values of 1 through 4 based on their priority.

Eisenhower Matrix Task BoxImage credit: Jamesclear.com

Tasks that are both “Important” and “Urgent” receive a priority level of 1, and should be your focus. On the other end of the spectrum, tasks that are deemed both “Not Important” and “Not Urgent” should be put to the wayside. In the middle are tasks that can either be scheduled for next up, or even delegated to someone else.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple framework that helps you break out of that pernicious analysis paralysis which occurs every time you “feel like you don’t even know where to start.” By assigning each task to a quadrant, it is easy to understand what actually requires your attention this very second.


Read more on the original article... by Lauren Moon

Git - Submodules

It often happens that while working on one project, you need to use another project from within it. Perhaps it’s a library that a third party developed or that you’re developing separately and using in multiple parent projects. A common issue arises in these scenarios: you want to be able to treat the two projects as separate yet still be able to use one from within the other.

Git addresses this issue using submodules. Submodules allow you to keep a Git repository as a subdirectory of another Git repository. This lets you clone another repository into your project and keep your commits separate.

One good example of where this is appropriate is the JSON java libary located at https://github.com/stleary/JSON-java which is just the Java source files and not even arranged in a project structure.

To cope with this I used git-sub-modules and built a maven project around it.

Adding the sub-module

To add the sub-module I first created my maven project as normal.
Then I created the folder /src/main/java/org/json to contain my link to the other project.
Adding the submodule is then as easy as opening a command prompt on that folder and issuing this command:

git submodule add https://github.com/stleary/JSON-java.git

You will now have a .gitmodules file in your project.
Add it to your source control to record what you have linked to.
As easy as that!

What are your sub-modules

Later you may not recall where your sub-modules are so from the project route issue this command:

git submodule status

This will tell you the folders with sub-modules.

Getting maven to play along!

It is a good idea to ensure that you are using the correct code and that you have any changes in place when building.
When you update the project your git client may ask & check sub-modules ... it may not.
So adding the following to your POM.xml ensures that it is added.

  <plugin>
      <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
      <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
         <version>1.2.1</version>
         <executions>
             <execution>
                 <phase>initialize</phase>
                  <id>git-submodules-init-update</id>
                     <goals><goal>exec</goal></goals>
              </execution>
          </executions>
          <configuration>
              <executable>git</executable>
              <arguments>
                  <argument>submodule</argument>
                  <argument>update</argument>
                  <argument>--init</argument>
                  <argument>--recursive</argument>
              </arguments>
          </configuration>
   </plugin>

This causes Maven to execute an executable command.

In this case the sub-module init command which runs maven and initializes the content based on the project's  .gitmodules file.

And that is all it takes!

This made sense - 9 ways to improve the UX of your website content

9 ways to improve the UX of your website contentwebsite content

I read this and liked it.

Content represents the heart of most websites. So the most powerful way to improve your websites' UX is to improve its content.
Find out how. 

Cool tool of the Day: Hemingway App

Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear

This is a nice application, an online tool that helps you write clear and concise text.

 

Just click through to the app ... http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ and start editing some text.

It could be an email or a block of text for a website you wish to improve.

While it may feel a little like you are dumbing down ... you have to recall that the point of text is to communicate.