Hannes Foulds

Choose to Be Happy at Work

2011-09-06T11:19:00.002+02:00

Happiness is largely a choice. I can hear many of you arguing with me, but it's true. You can choose to be happy at work. Sound simple? Yes. But, simplicity is often profoundly difficult to put into action. I wish all of you had the best employer in the world, but, face it, you may not. So, think positively about your work. Dwell on the aspects of your work you like. Avoid negative people and gossip. Find co-workers you like and enjoy and spend your time with them. Your choices at work largely define your experience. You can choose to be happy at work.

Know that how you react to a situation is up to you
Some people are happy with their jobs, while others are not. What's the difference? Is one group just luckier than the other? Chances are that's not the case. Those who are unhappy in their profession often feel dissatisfaction with a situation happening outside of their control (such as downsizing or a merger). But their unhappiness and stress actually began with their thoughts, fears, and perceptions about the downsizing. In other words, situations are completely neutral —it is our thoughts about the situation that lead to dissatisfaction. Hard to grasp and easier said than done? Sure, because fear can easily take over our thinking. As long as you believe you are a helpless victim you will not see a positive and effective response to every situation.

Do Something You Love Every Single Day
You may or may not love your current job and you may or may not believe that you can find something in your current job to love, but you can. Trust me. Take a look at yourself, your skills and interests, and find something that you can enjoy doing every day. If you do something you love every single day, your current job won't seem so bad. Of course, you can always make your current job work or decide that it is time to quit your job.

Make Friends
In their landmark book, First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman list twelve important questions. When employees answered these questions positively, their responses were true indicators of whether people were happy and motivated at work. One of these key questions was, "Do you have a best friend at work?" Liking and enjoying your coworkers are hallmarks of a positive, happy work experience. Take time to get to know them. You might actually like and enjoy them. Your network provides support, resources, sharing, and caring.

Ask for Feedback Frequently
Have you made statements such as, "My boss never gives me any feedback, so I never know how I'm doing." Face it, you really know exactly how you're doing. Especially if you feel positively about your performance, you just want to hear him acknowledge you. If you're not positive about your work, think about improving and making a sincere contribution. Then, ask your boss for feedback. Tell him you'd really like to hear his assessment of your work. Talk to your customers, too; if you're serving them well, their feedback is affirming. You are responsible for your own development. Everything else you get is gravy.

Make Only Commitments You Can Keep
One of the most serious causes of work stress and unhappiness is failing to keep commitments. Many employees spend more time making excuses for failing to keep a commitment, and worrying about the consequences of not keeping a commitment, than they do performing the tasks promised. Create a system of organization and planning that enables you to assess your ability to complete a requested commitment. Don't volunteer if you don't have time. If your workload is exceeding your available time and energy, make a comprehensive plan to ask the boss for help and resources. Don't wallow in the swamp of unkept promises.

Avoid Negativity
Choosing to be happy at work means avoiding negative conversations, gossip, and unhappy people as much as possible. No matter how positively you feel, negative people have a profound impact on your psyche. Don't let the negative Neds and Nellies bring you down.

Be proud of yourself and your work
It doesn’t matter whether you are a restroom janitor or a president of a multi-million dollar company. Taking pride in the work you do is the first step in job satisfaction. Give it your best. Always go for quality work. At the end of the day, knowing that you’ve done your best gives you a feeling of pride and satisfaction.

Create an attitude of enthusiasm
Believe it or not, you can be happy with your current just by changing the way you approach it. If you think that your job is so boring and monotonous, it will be boring and monotonous. So start thinking that your job is exciting and challenging. Your attitude towards your job is the product of your thoughts. And since you are in total control of our thoughts, you are in control of your attitude. This is your daily challenge: Create an attitude of enthusiasm to your work, no matter what you feel. By changing your attitude, you change your feeling. And when you have that positive feeling, you will be satisfied. Try this and be prepared for a big change.

The specialist
Of course you have plans of career advancement, right? Then try this on for size: Study the work you do by taking down notes and practicing it even for just one hour a day. In a short time, you could be the company’s specialist in that discipline. By genuinely being interested in your work, you get a natural tendency to be enthusiastic because of the learning you have gained.

Find happiness in the job you have now
Many people expect the right job or the right career to dramatically change their level of happiness, but happiness research makes it clear that your level of optimism and the quality of your relationships eclipse the satisfaction you gain from your job. If you have a positive outlook, you will make the best of any job, and if you have good relationships with people, you won't depend on your job to give your life a greater sense of meaning. You'll find it in your interactions with the people you care about. Now that doesn't mean you shouldn't aspire towards a job that will make you happier; it means you should understand that the capacity of your job to make you happy is quite small in comparison to your outlook on life and your relationships with people.

The grass is greener on your side
Most amateurs think that the grass is greener on the other side. And that’s what they will always be: amateurs. Being a professional, you know that the grass on your side of the fence is greener. You don’t have to look for opportunities on the other side when all of the challenges you need are in your own company. Again, be creative in finding them and stop looking at the other side of the fence.

Two legs and only one head

2009-06-22T09:26:00.003+02:00

People have two ears and only one mouth; I guess that means we should listen more, and talk less.

Hmm. Two legs and only one head. Maybe you should think less, and fuck off.

Jy Droom

2009-01-21T11:52:00.002+02:00

Somebody tricked you to visit this URL, go kick them in the nuts and then add me as a friend in Facebook if you like ;)

YouTube Virus

2008-09-26T08:27:00.001+02:00

Packman

2008-09-18T08:19:00.009+02:00

Large Hadron Particle Collider

2008-09-15T09:02:00.001+02:00

Making Mondays feel OK

2008-09-08T09:58:00.002+02:00

It's called (Project) Management

2008-09-04T08:24:00.003+02:00

The Website Is Down

2008-09-03T14:56:00.000+02:00

Black Sheep

2008-08-22T14:35:00.002+02:00

Pen Twirling

2008-08-13T15:03:00.000+02:00

Swimming

2008-08-11T09:10:00.001+02:00

I recently started swimming, I kinda suck at it and get tired very quickly. It's scary stuff :)

BMW 1 Series

2008-07-11T20:47:00.002+02:00

Kermit the frog just reminded me once again how much I love my car, now if only petrol wasn't as expensive...

Getting very little done!

2008-07-03T09:52:00.001+02:00

I'm only happy when it rains

2008-06-26T11:22:00.000+02:00

Good thing I stay in Cape Town where it rains most of the time...

Progress and Frustration

2008-06-25T11:48:00.002+02:00

Sometimes, like today, I return home after gym feeling very defeated and frustrated. Recently I attempted to follow the Mark Pilgrim's 12 week turnaround DVD, but following it to the letter is near impossible.

Sometimes I can't find the machine mentioned (glutes machine), some of the exercises I can't perform properly and give up on them after experiencing too much lower back pain (semi stiff leg deadlifts) and lately the Western Province rugby team has been hoarding the squat rack for hours on end, and believe me, I'm not going to mess with those guys :-)

Since I know I have bad posture and perform most of my exercises incorrectly I am playing around with the idea of getting a personal trainer, but I am not sure if this will be worth the expense? I emailed them to find out how much the sessions will cost, but I guess the Virgin Active blue shirts are simply not that into the email thing as I am still waiting on a reply...

As you can see from my before/after photo it hasn't been all bad, some progress has been made! Unfortunately it feels almost like it is impossible for me to put on some muscle. I know that you have to increase your calorie intake to gain muscle, and have done this since last week or so, but now the sad fact is that this is causing me to just revert to the photo on the left.

I am feeling very frustrated, don't know what exercises to do, don't know how to eat, don't know which weights I am supposed to use, and are not experiencing any strength increase at the gym, etc.

By the way, sure I have all the books and even a DVD, but like I said, these things are so hard to follow and I end up improvising so much that in the end I have no idea what I am doing.

Perhaps I should just do what Benjine & Christo told me and simply enjoy the journey and hopefully the results will come by themselves.

Flash RTS

2008-04-27T22:45:00.000+02:00

Flash with C#

2008-04-07T09:20:00.002+02:00

Mainsoft Grasshopper has been around for quite some time now and in case you don’t know what it is here is a quote from their website:

“Grasshopper is the freely available Developer Edition of Mainsoft, a Visual Studio plug-in that you can use to create server and ASP.NET applications, or port existing .NET 2.0 applications on Linux and other Java-enabled platforms, without having to re-engineer your code in Java. Grasshopper 2.x introduces support for the Visual Studio 2005 development environment, Visual Basic, and C# 2.0, including the generics language feature, the .NET Framework 2.0, and ASP.NET 2.0 controls. Use Grasshopper and the Visual Studio IDE to code, compile, debug, and deploy your application natively on the Java EE platform.”

Grasshopper is really cool, it allows me to use my favorite development tool (Microsoft Visual Studio) to create applications in my favorite set of technologies (ASP.NET) and then host these applications in a low cost Linux Based hosting environment.

Today I’ve found yet another great product that allows you to create applications with Microsoft C# which is compiled into standard Flash (SWF) files. Again this product allows me to develop in the comfort of my trusted Visual Studio IDE!

“GOA WinForms is an implementation of the standard System.Windows.Form .NET library for both Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. It allows .NET developers to write standard WinForms applications that will run on these two RIA platforms.”

Trading Card Game Blogs

2008-04-03T08:18:00.004+02:00

I’ve found some interesting blogs on free online trading card game clients:

The Stargate game are still in its beginning phases but already have an awesome looking user interface, the MTG Rates Magic game has an ugly user interface but allow game play with rules enforcement, and finally Magic Java Thoughts seems to be thinking of proper architecture.

Try Something Else

2008-04-01T12:29:00.002+02:00

I have been making significant progress since I joined the gym in November 2007 and lost 13.6 kg to date. According to the measuring machine at the gym I also went down from 24.1% body fat to only 14.9%. I always train 6 days a week, and March I did 30 minutes of swimming every day combined with strength training every even day and cardio every other day.

Although loosing the body fat is great and I now looks much better in a t-shirt, I have however not gained much muscle since November, in fact, I estimate that I actually lost about 4 kg of muscle…

I thus feel that it is time once again for a change in my gym program. On Sunday I tried out the super circuit at the gym, which basically is cardio training (running up and down stairs) combined with strength training (all machine based), and liked it quite a bit despite the fact that my legs still hurts today. This month I will do the super circuit on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and only swim on Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday while completely resting on Sunday with the hopes of building some muscle.

The program I will be following this month is a lot less work than I am used to and I am concerned that my fitness level will go down. Currently my Polar watch measures my OwnIndex as 68, I will monitor this and my body fat levels, and if these measurements are negatively affected I will just have to work on it again next month and go back to what I know works.

Date	BMI	Body Fat	Weight	Blood Pressure	Pulse
2007-11-16	26.8	24.1%	81.2 kg	136/89 mmHg	88
2007-11-23	26.5	24.4%	80.2 kg	120/79 mmHg	76
2007-11-30	25.8	22.8%	78 kg	112/79 mmHg	69
2007-12-07	25.4	22.2%	76.8 kg	115/71 mmHg	65
2008-01-07	26.2	22.5%	79.2 kg	119/68 mmHg	84
2008-01-11	26	21.8%	78.6 kg	121/82 mmHg	64
2008-01-18	25.6	21.7%	77.4 kg	121/77 mmHg	68
2008-01-26	25.8	21.4%	78 kg	111/67 mmHg	68
2008-02-01	25.8*	21.3%	78 kg*	111/75 mmHg	65
2008-02-08	24.4	20.3%	74 kg	117/68 mmHg	61
2008-02-15	24.3	20.5%	73.5 kg	111/71 mmHg	62
2008-02-22 **	23.7	18.7%	71.8 kg	119/75 mmHg	82
2008/02/29	23.1	17.5%	70	111/74 mmHg	76
2008/03/07	22.9	19.1%	69.4	124/69 mmHg	81
2008/03/14	22.2	16.5%	67.2	114/75 mmHg	68
2008/03/22	22.5	15.3%	68	110/67 mmHg	62
2008/03/28	22.3	14.9%	67.6	111/63 mmHg	80

* Gym Scale Broken
** Quit USN supplements & measurements taken in afternoon.

The Secret

2008-04-01T07:15:00.002+02:00

Did Hitler draw Disney characters?

2008-02-26T06:52:00.005+02:00

Everybody knows at least two things about Hitler, one being that he killed Jews and the other being his banning from XBOX Live. But did you know that Hitler tried to make a living as an artist before his rise to power?

A director of a Norwegian museum now claims that he found cartoons drawn by the führer in the back of painting he bought at a German auction for about $300. Do you think these are real? Time will tell, but I think this may be yet another forgery that will make a fair bit of profit.

Positive Changes

2008-02-25T07:16:00.003+02:00

The past week I’ve decided to make some changes to my diet & gym program. Firstly I decided to quit using USN products. Sure, the packaging is attractive, the marketing awesome, and the promise that it will help you lose fat and get ripped faster is so seductive, but the shocking truth is: I would have gotten the same results if I just followed the diet and exercise program, and then I would not have been running out of money every month because I spend so much money on something so unnecessary. If gym is a good habit, then don’t combine it with a bad one!

I have also been following the suggested USN diet blindly and through a moment of enlightenment I realized that this may not be the best thing to do. I found myfitnesspal which makes calorie counting so easy. I am now actively tracking my diet and exercise and, although I may be just kidding myself, doing this gives me a real sense of better control over my health goals.

The final change I made was to do at least 45 minutes of cardio exercises every day by rowing, jumping on the tiring stepper machine, and finishing off with some interval training on the stationary bike – I still do the strength training part of my gym program as I believe this is an important part to help me not lose too much muscle with the fat. The cardio exercises usually works out to a little more than 45 min, the reason for this being is that I set the goals on each machine to 150 Cal instead of 15 minutes. Although the calorie readout may not be accurate that is not the point, the point is that if I just set it to 15 minutes, it may end up being 15 minutes of really light exercising, using calories as I goal I know that I am forcing myself to more or less work equally hard every day.

You will note that my blood pressure is also different, but I am almost a 100% sure that this variation is simply because I am now exercising and measuring in the afternoons. Although it is better to exercise in the mornings I switched to the afternoon to avoid the ridiculous N1 traffic into the Cape Town CBD.

Date	BMI	Body Fat	Weight	Blood Pressure	Pulse
2007-11-16	26.8	24.1%	81.2 kg	136/89 mmHg	88
2007-11-23	26.5	24.4%	80.2 kg	120/79 mmHg	76
2007-11-30	25.8	22.8%	78 kg	112/79 mmHg	69
2007-12-07	25.4	22.2%	76.8 kg	115/71 mmHg	65
2008-01-07	26.2	22.5%	79.2 kg	119/68 mmHg	84
2008-01-11	26	21.8%	78.6 kg	121/82 mmHg	64
2008-01-18	25.6	21.7%	77.4 kg	121/77 mmHg	68
2008-01-26	25.8	21.4%	78 kg	111/67 mmHg	68
2008-02-01	25.8*	21.3%	78 kg*	111/75 mmHg	65
2008-02-08	24.4	20.3%	74 kg	117/68 mmHg	61
2008-02-15	24.3	20.5%	73.5 kg	111/71 mmHg	62
2008-02-22 **	23.7	18.7%	71.8 kg	119/75 mmHg	82