Tzyh Ng's Blog (4)

A firestorm erupted after chief Yahoo Marissa Mayer banned working from home in an effort to shock the moribund company culture back to life. The resulting debate over whether working from home was good for corporate innovation and productivity is, to me, not all that interesting. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t work from home even after putting in a full day at the office -- at the very least, they check and respond to office emails and make work-related calls during…

Interruptions are the annoying, disruptive, beeping, booping constant of our lives -- phones ringing; notifications buzzing; bosses, coworkers, spouses and kids clamoring for our attention. How we react to them -- and the toll it takes on our productivity and concentration -- is a well-studied subject (see Wikipedia on…

I always look for back-up options -- things I can rely on should everything go horribly wrong in a hurry. Blame it on my being a project manager. Or having lived in New York through 9/11.



While Superstorm Sandy cut a destructive swathe through the Northeast and dominated headlines in the week just past, there were odd, tiny parallels in O’ahu events that set me thinking about what basic tools and technologies I can rely on -- and, conversely, what my Achilles heels are -- when…

It always seems like we have more to do than hours in a day -- waves of work demands, constant family obligations and a cacophony of phone calls, emails, texts and reminders. Amidst this overload, it’s increasingly hard to focus on the things that are important to us and give them the level of attention, passion and creativity we’d like. Here are some basic guides I’ve found helpful for creating the mental space for making smart choices on what to pay attention to and getting these things…