In this unusual non-fiction book, full of metaphors and insights, Steven Pressfield argues that each of us has a specific work to do. It might be writing, painting, starting a business venture, etc. The work can be recognized by the fear it causes in us. The greater the fear, the …

This is a follow-up on this post. Since the time I published it, I've made a couple of improvements that I wanted to share. First, I've started using Smartsheet reports as the data source instead of sheets. It's because there might be occasional changes to the underlying sheet (like moving …

Stephen Few, who has written excellent books on visualizing numerical data, focuses on data sensemaking in this book. The author argues: mastering modern analysis tools is not enough to understand the data; we still need to train the thinking skills. Most important of these are critical and scientific thinking skills …

In this book, Cal Newport shows that cognitively demanding intellectual work, that is deep work, is extremely valuable and rare at the same time. This includes rapid acquiring of new skills and gaining complex knowledge, as well as producing at a high quality level. If we prioritize this kind of …

Like many in the past 2020, I had more time to devote to reading books. Overall, I have read 20+ books, which is higher than usual. Below is the list of 10 books that I liked the most. The list goes in reverse chronological order. Red Famine: Stalin's War on …

Smartsheet is a powerful, spreadsheet-like tool. It helps to automate processes in your team. In my current company, we've been using it for years to support project management. Plans, issue logs, risk registers, project dashboards, task trackers - just to name a few examples of what we use Smartsheet for. However …

Using Gantt charts as a form of project schedule for fixed-price IT projects, I’ve encountered the following problems: To build a schedule, you have to put all the tasks in a specific order. It’s typically a finish-to-start dependency. However, this is not what happens sometimes. More often than …

If you needed the median function in Smartsheet, but couldn't find it, don't get upset. That function, indeed, is not present among supported functions; however, there is the percentile function available in Smartsheet. And the good news is that the median is just another name for the 50th percentile. To …

As IT professionals, we deal with quantitative information quite a lot — on a daily basis, literally. Many of us present numeric data to colleagues: be it a report, forecast, or information dashboard. However, only a few possess the basic skills to present numbers well. Most of us have never been …

To better understand my expense habits and overall spending, I used to track my financial transactions in a mobile application. I would manually put data after each payment. I was doing it for a couple of years until I realized that it didn’t quite help me. First, since most …