Changing mindset between work and home

I often work from home, and one of the hardest thing to do is to move from a work mindset to a home one. If you're in the office you have the commute, the last chat with colleges or the pint at the pub. (I live in London at the moment) and avoid this

So how do you move from work to home? Specially when you're working from home or receive work call while reaching home?

I've discovered (and probably read) that the brain focus on the present, even if the present is irrelevant, and forgets about the past, even if important.

So during my transition, I do mind emptying activities like games, or mind filling things, like reading a fiction book. This helps the brain disconnect from the work and move into home with a smile. 

That's what happened yesterday, I came back from work in a "home sweet home" mindset, but received a work phone call with adrenalin triggering news that made the transition more complicated. 

To accelerate the transition I played "Alto's adventures" and my wife joined me and we ended up laughing at how bad we are and enjoying each other -rare- successes. After that it was time to sleep and so the blog stayed empty on Friday but is now filled with something interesting.

And you, how do you move from work to home mindset? Are you someone who manage this transition easily; do you ever make this transition; do you use a trick like me?

PS: Alto's adventure website is http://altosadventure.com/

Have a great weekend!

How do I extract MSI files

msiexec /a test.msi /qb TARGETDIR=c:\tmp 

to extract test.msi content in the c:\tmp directory

How do I deploy ESXi in 10 minutes? A great video

How do I deploy ESXi in 10 minutes?

Bonus vCenter Operation Manager. I think now the product has a new name... but the video is still cool

How keep your new year resolution? Share!

Hello everyone!
Today is Friday, and as every Friday in the last month I'm writing a blog article.

Today's article is special, it exists because a friend told me "It's Friday, I'll have something to read in your blog".
Oups, today has been a complicated day, with lots of work, stress and unexpected things, I had completly forgot about the blog, but now I HAVE to write an article, because you (at least one of you) is waiting for it.

Sharing your goals, your resolutions, creating anticipation will help do things! I've made a promise to someone, and I keep my promises, so here I am, writing this short article.

This concept can be applied to many things and it helps committing and after lots of forced commit, you'll have a new habit. I hope that in some month, writing something on my blog will be as natural as brushing my teeth!

less than 10 minutes to write and I feel better with myself, try it, it works.

If you have ideas or examples to add to this article, write them in the comments.

a bientot
Frank  

How do I connect to vCenter using powerCLI

C:\PS>Connect-VIServer -Server vcenter01 -User admin -Password pass

another option that will use your current  username and password settings

C:\PS>Connect-VIServer -Server vcenter01


Reference vmware

How do I parse JSON documents from PowerShell

PowerShell starting from version 3.0 has a ConvertFrom-Json and a ConvertTo-Json cmdlet

References:

• TechnetBlog - heyscriptingguy <- Fantastic blog with explanation, including from web
• Technet

How do I get the version of PowerShell I'm using

I use $PSVersionTable.PSVersion


PS C:\Users\Frank> $PSVersionTable.psversion Major Minor Build Revision ----- ----- ----- -------- 2 0 -1 -1

This is version 2.0 (old)

Reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1825585/determine-installed-powershell-version

Backstage of the Moving think tank - Sections and mindmap

I write this blog because  I love Sharing and it's also one of my values. I want to share the positive things, the experiences and new discoveries.

Every Friday I'll post something, might be long, might be short, but I'll write on Friday.

Ideas of sections and topics are organized as a mindmap 

Here is an explanation of every section and what I might write about. If you', my readers have preferences, please write it in a comment.

Reading Info is a section about pairs of posts about article in newpapers. One post is for what I think the article will talk about from the title and the second post will be about what are my comments and correction after reading the article.

Honesty. I really care about Honesty because I've been honest in a country where dishonesty is rewarded. I truly believe that a honest company has a competitive advantage, so I'm investigating various business model around honesty.

Work, should be called technical, it's all the ideas and thoughts coming while at work or related to work. By being in Virtustream, those thoughts are often around cloud, security and consumption based computing 

Thinking is the big catchall bucket of ideas. 

• At the moment I've interesting post around  how to better know your personality, in particular the "MBIT" method. 
• I have some fun thinking about how we dress and which combinations of dress are standard (shirt and jeans) which are ok (Jacket and jeans), which are a no (jacket and shorts). 
• Education is a big one for me. Schools and college are not in sync with the current world. A simple example, we all have to go to meetings but there is no training at school. There are different ways of thinking and being, of personalities while school only rewards some type of and leave the others behind. The most viewed TED presentation is about education 
• Strange investigates the things we take for granted and shake them a little to understand if there is really something behind. For example, why is dessert always a the end of a meal, could it be at an "antipasti"?

Productivity is my passion, I'm lazy and don't like to do the same thing multiple time. I use GTD as a methodology to remember what to do but also all the promises made to a customer. I always try to  find a better use of tools in my life :)

How do I? is a section where I present solutions to problems I've solved. Problems can be technical IT, productivity or anything else. Probably short posts

Thanks to read :)

a bientot  

3 usual mistakes done while writing a todo list

You (as me) have tried to organise your work with todo lists. You also discovered that they tend to work for a week and then be ignored or forgotten or not updated! I'd the same issue too. Until I read "Getting Things Done" (GTD) 5 years ago. Since then, my todo lists are organized, useful and they help me keep my brain free of things to remember. Beware, you and I do not live in a perfect world, todo lists require regular reviews and you can always try to improve them.


All 3 mistakes have a solution, and a good todo list apply all 3 solutions, but solving the main issue is a good start.

Lets do it, take your last todo list, if it's full of non done stuff, read solution 1, if it's less than 10 todo then solution 2 is for you, if it's a looooong list, solution 3 will help.


1) List of the things I should have done - the procastination effect
    This problem can be solved by writing on my todo list, not the final goal but the next physical action to do. In the case of the lamp, I would write on the todo list "Check the type of batteries for the lamp" when that action is done I would write "Put to buy aaa batteries on the supermarket list"
2) Very little list with elements with very big todos. E.g. "Conquer the world"
    Actions need to be doable, actions need to be well defined and how they end should be easy to visualize or for other to understand
3) Very very long list - maybe correct but probably too detailed
    The rule is that every action that requires less than 2 minutes to be done should be done immediately. So for example I will get all what is needed to write a letter by following the 2 minutes rules and an action named write a love letter to <wife's name>, instead of "find paper", "find pen", "check calendar for date"....

What was not working with my list?
1) List of procastination. I should do what is on the list, but I don't know exactly how to do it, or I miss some information to do it and I forget to get it.
A classic example would be "Check the boiler" but I cannot see the boiler until I've a lamp, but the batteries in the lamp are dead and I'll buy them coming back from the office. The last action never happen, coming back from the office, I might think about dinner, I might think about work, but I surely don't think about boiler or batteries.

2) Todos are to generic, it's not a single action but a multitude of actions summarized in one sentence. Just reading it makes you feel tired. It's natural, given a goal, your brain will fill the gaps between NOW and where this action end, and if the final action is far away, there is a lot to to do and your brain try to visualize all the actions at the same time. Ouf.
3) It takes more time to write in the list than to do them, result: a never ending list, with lot of details.
Example of such a list: "Write love letter to wife" becomes "find pen"; "take pen", "find paper".... .

Summary:
In your todo list write action that are
Physical activities
With a clear end
Takes more than 2 minutes to do

Tricks:
Use physical verb to start a todo element. instead of "Thinking about vacation destination" use "List potential vacation destinations"
Describe the action. instead of "comment blog" write "comment on the moving think tank blog
Read the next blog post as we'll continue to improve the todo list

a bientot
Frank