Everyone has fond memories of their first car. My car was a 13 year old Citroen XM. The most amazing car that has ever been produced! An ‘executive’ size car, with a 2 litre turbo and Citroen’s amazing Hydractive suspension; pull a lever and the car ride height would actually rise and fall.

Communication skills have become a topic of focus for me over the last year. It began with a work training course about creating business ideas and pitching them to business minded people in order to receive funding. Because my company is heavily involved with engineering, the classes were geared towards geeks and had a communication-based focus about them – opposite to the technical focus we were used to in Uni at our various courses. I guess this is something they thought we needed to learn.. This is something I enjoyed very much, because time and again I felt that I had great ideas throughout uni and work-life but short of something I could code together to illustrate, the ideas never seemed to make the light of day. I was a very nervous speaker and giving speeches was the worst task I could imagine. Yet it is a very necessary part of business and idea development.

The course left me with a hunger to improve my communication skills. Previously the easiest way to stop the nerves was to avoid speeches or confrontations whenever possible. However now I was willing to face the fact that this was something that scared me and that in order to proceed, hiding away from it was not the answer.

I discovered the Toastmasters group shortly after and went to my first meeting in March last year. Since then I have attended every other week and participated in roles and speeches. In October I took the role of Toastmaster for the first time. It was a very nerve-racking ordeal but I got through it OK without dieing. On later reflection, it showed me that when it comes to social gatherings, its important not to act on nerves. Toastmasters helps to work on things like nerves, as well as communication skills in the form of feedback and speaking tasks.

One unexpected thing about the Toastmasters group is the people I’ve met there and engaging in their own views. Its actually pretty hard to get away from it when they give a speech about their favourite topics. I’ve met Life coaches, NLP practitioners, veteran Toastmasters, engineers, students and other beginner Toastmasters. By meeting every couple of weeks and hearing what they have to say, they inevitably give off a particular view to a subject which is diverse and inspiring to me and makes me challenge my own view. Quite a change from the usual haunt of workmates in the same department and friends who share the same general interests as me.

The end result of this is huge. From my initial view of wanting to improve my speaking skills, my aims have catapulted to other sections of my life such as challenging my own beliefs of the world, to more accurately planning what it takes to become more happy and goal setting. This is a topic I would like to mention later on in another post.

Plans for 2010

I aim to keep on going with the Toastmasters group. Its a very clearly structured environment and because its so encouraging for progression, I dont have to worry about planning what I’ll do. I’ll be continuing my speeches courses, taking roles and chatting to the other toastmasters.

One particular aim I’d like is to meet more people from diverse backgrounds. Its interesting to meet people from all walks of life and can have an influence over your own path. To achieve this I hope to keep on looking at more clubs and meetings which might achieve this. A few months ago I discovered meetup.com where people can join groups of a particular topic of interest and then have real life meet ups to discuss the topic. Edinburgh has loads of groups and I attended one to go for a visit to a local attraction.

Happy new year!

It has been almost a year since I began looking at personal development, and I’d like to give a quick review of some of the stuff I’ve done and what I’m looking forward to in the next year.

I’d like to have a go at breaking my posts down to smaller chunks, so I’ll post this in segments.

My path of personal development began at the start of 2009, when I entered into a course at work to develop product creation and selling skills. This was called “Dragons Apprentice”, a mixture of 2 closely related BBC TV programmes: Dragons Den and The Apprentice. Would you ever have guessed? Unfortunately due to other work commitments I had to leave the course early but it left me hungry for more. This led me to look at my personal communication skills and think more about my effectiveness when talking to other people and to get over my nerves when speaking publicly. Since joining Toastmasters in March 2009, things have snowballed with various topics, including blogging, volunteering and looking at my own beliefs of my existence.

I’ll go for a topic per post. Topics I have so far are:

• Blog
• Mind set – Beliefs
• Communication skills – Toastmasters
• Health
• Work-life
• Life – major events

Ill try to make a post out of each topic.

Blog

I started this blog in February 2009 and I am glad to say that it is something I have benefited from, though not in the ways I expected.

As far as the technical side goes, I found it very interesting to begin the process of signing up for a domain, and uploading the software to get WordPress blog software online, and tinkering with all the settings to get something which aligned to the vision which I was aiming for. I even had a go at creating my own php code for the archive page which was interesting as this was the first web-based programming I’d ever done. I’ve posted the code here (http://www.martinogg.com/2009/06/article-archive-page-added-add-your-own-archive-page-easily-code-included/)

Unfortunately this site didnt turn into the mass traffic hub I thought it would. In fact if I look at the statistics I would see less than 10 hits per week and of them I assume most are bots, considering the amount of spam that comes in. I’ve manged the hefty sum of £6 from google adsense clicks, which is still too low for me to take out! So as far as attaining recognition and making money from this venture is concerned, its been a complete failure.

But positive results have come in unexpected places. Because I took the time to set up and continue doing blogging, it has made me more aware of other people’s blogs and writing. I now find myself reading and replying to posts made by others whereas I would otherwise have just skipped over them or not replied before. The result is I have read more about different opinions and this has opened me up to other thoughts I would never have previously considered.

I made some heavy claims in the blog at the start, about how this would be the saviour for everyone who read it and how I would post almost every day! Maybe it was a bit overzealous to make these claims but making these outrageous claims and seeing the result has allowed me to reform what I can reasonably achieve and what I can aim for.

The blog has taken on a new platform in my mind. Instead of being the soap box that I can proclaim that the world is flat, it is more of an access point for people to connect to my thoughts if they choose to. I dont take offence that it appears that not maybe people choose to do that, as my skills to do this still need to be more refined. It shows me that I need to work on my visions on life and the ability to articulate my views in a way that aligns to others.

Aims for the blog in 2010 would be to blog more often! A reasonable amount would be to blog at least once a week.

I’d like also to work on the technical skills behind the blog and keep up with other communication technologies. For example, I have a facebook which I use for my friends, but I dont use twitter. I would also like to spend more time communicating online with people in the field of personal development.

To be continued…

10 years ago a good mobile phone would be small enough to fit in your pocket, have changeable covers and customisable ring-tones that sound almost like your favourite song. Nowadays a colour screen capable of watching movies on is the norm and you can use the internet to download any chart track and listen with the wireless bluetooth stereo headset. It amazing to see how the use of a phone has exploded from a basic means of voice communication to a ubiquitous communication tool to interact with people all over the world in a huge variety of ways.

The search for a new phone.

Being into tech-stuff, I usually make it my business to know about new technologies. However, when it came time for a new phone, there was an overwhelming choice in handsets and tariffs. I simply had no idea what handset I wanted to go for next.

Looking at a few review websites and local advertising showed me the latest handsets and their features, but it wasn’t much more help. They all pointed towards the latest featured touch screen phones on expensive 24 month contracts. Up until last year I was used to the concept of Pay-as-you-go phones where you only have to top up when you need to. My monthly expenditure was less than £10 per month. However if I was to get the latest new phone I would have to be willing to accept a £35 a month contract with inclusive minutes and texts, whilst being locked into the contract for between 12 and 24 months. There were other lower-range phones, but cost savings on these phones would be made at the expense of features and speed. And so came the requirement to decide on what compromises would have to be made.

Because mobile phones are become increasingly bigger investments, it became apparent that I had to do much more research on mobile phones than just to walk into a mobile phone shop.

I found it particularly annoying that I couldn’t gauge how good a phone is by testing it for a few days to get a better feel, before buying it. There appears to be no company offering loans of high end phones. The closest I got was to try out some phones in the mobile phone shops. However I found it impossible to get a good feel for them; if they weren’t trapped in plastic casings on the shop floor, they were tethered to the base stations and even if I asked an advisor for a handset to test, I had at most 5 minutes to test the phone out with an advisor staring at me asking me for a sale.

It wasn’t enough to just ask friends or the shop advisors what phones were good. To get a better idea I had to google a few review sites to get comparisons and see what advantages and disadvantages were of each.

I came across a few review sites for mobile phones. One of which I found valuable was http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/ The reviews seemed to resonate with me in terms of what they valued in phones. For example, instead of just looking at specification only (something I found shop advisors to do all the time) they looked at usability of the phones, relative price to feature and performance, and stability of the phones. They also gave a star rating for their phones, prices on contracts and also uncensored (not in a rude way) user comments and feedback for the phones and the reviews themselves.

Using this site I created a short list of features and then phones that I would feasibly choose:

• High speed internet (3G HSPA)
• Capable of running 3^rd party applications (In particular, Opera browser)
• A good fast note taker (I frequently use my phone to take notes)

These features then led me on to the handsets.

• iPhone – Firm favourite amongst friends and colleagues, but most expensive

• HTC Android phone – the operating system appeared to offer great flexibility

• Nokia N97 – A high-spec phone with a keyboard

• Nokia 5800 – What appeared to be a slightly lower spec but a price available on pay-as-you-go

• Samsung JET – A very fast phone with a reasonable price

Continuing research online, I came across this review ( http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/iphone_vs_android_vs_webos_vs_blackbery_vs_windows_mobile_vs_symbian?page=0%2C0 ) which compared different operating systems in high-end mobile phones. After reading this, it was vitally important to realise the differences between the operating systems as this would ultimately make the differences between usability and functionality.

My short list then became iPhone or an Android phone. This is because they both have application stores / market places for 3^rd party developers. Nokia Symbian does have a market place but I excluded them because of their old, slow operating system.

I was still unconvinced about the price of an iPhone, so the final choice was left with an Android phone. I opted for the first model of Android phone in UK: HTC / T-mobile G1.

I bought this phone on ebay for £133 + £7 p&p. I then bought an unlock code for this phone for £8, to allow me to use my three 3G SIM. I have also changed my contract on three to a 30 day rolling contract for £15 a month. This includes 100 minutes per month, unlimited texts and internet.

Using the G1

I have found this phone to be the best choice, and I am still happy to say that 2 weeks after getting the phone. In terms of functionality, it features all the tech-savvy items which are important to me justnow. Having fast internet, GPS, compass, 3^rd party marketplace applications and easy note-taking.

The HTC G1 is certainly no iPhone. The hardware isn’t as good as it has a slightly smaller screen, doesn’t look quite as good and definitely isn’t as fast and smooth to operate. But it is significantly cheaper and the functionality is almost identical.

Using the G1 is a different experience; I tend to use the keyboard and trackball more than the touch screen. There is a touch screen keyboard like an iPhone and it is as useable as the phyiscal keyboard but I find I am just a bit quicker typing using the real keyboard. This is important for me as I find I type a lot more into the phone.

Advice on buying a new phone

I am definitely happy with my purchase of this phone. It certainly does feel like a compromise in terms of useability to the iPhone, but the price difference is more than enough to justify this. For me the iPhone is prohibitively expensive for what phones currently do (you could very easily get a low end phone and a Net-book for the same price)

This decision wasn’t made without a lot of research first and if I were to give any advice on buying a new phone:

Dont just fall for advertising. Or the shop clerks advice. Think about what features you would really appreciate or use in phone. Even if you just want the cheapest phone, look and see what cheapest phones there are.

Look and see what phones there are and their features. Use news websites and review sites to find out what new phones are out now and which ones are coming out. It will help to discover new functionality in phones so you can decide on whether or not you want it. I remember a few years ago being told about 3G internet and how it was the equivalent of broadband on a phone. Only this wasn’t true; the only use at that time on 3G was for video calls which cost 50p a minute. So did I really want to pay over the odds for a feature I would never use?

Look at pricing deals. Do you pay for the handset, or go for a contract? How many minutes do you want? I have found I can get special deals online at the same companies than you’d get at the high-street shops. For example, the cheapest I saw an N97 was for £35 a month but online on the three store site, you can get one for £15 a month. BEWARE: please be careful of cash-back schemes throughout the life of the contract. This usually entails sending back receipts at specific times to the company for a rebate. This process is dubious because those companies will often ‘lose’ your receipts and you will lose all entitlement for any rebate. Its often not worth the effort and worry.

How long do you want the phone for? More often than not nowadays you can’t get a high-end phone without signing up to a lengthy contract. Are you really happy to sign up for a 2 year contract, even if it is cheaper per month? How do you think phones will change in that times and what would you rather have in a year’s time?

In the end, you are the customer and you should have the ability to chose what you want in a phone. The range is ever-more increasing and so too the pitfalls to getting a bad, expensive phone. Just think about the compromises you are willing to make and be knowledgeable on what models exist and their pricing.

So here I am at this point. Disheartened at the non-immediate success of my blog. When I began posting the numbers of visitors gradually increased. I had pressing issues built up over time which were begging to be written about. And I did that. But then I became lazy, putting off writing. From the heady heights of 7 views a day I am now lucky to see 1 view a day (my own view, of course, to check and see the page still exists)

This appears to be the common fate of blogs. Does a quick blog for a few days or months serve the purpose of those who write it, and those who read it? Does it teach us about the effort required to keep up such activities and how we might not be as willing to put in the effort as we first thought?

This morning the thought came to me that I should really get back into the routine of writing here. But why should I? And what would I write?

My thoughts brought me back to the reason why I created a blog in the first case. I want to be completely happy, and in some way have a positive effect on people in within my contact. Setting up a website would therefore be the best way of doing this. With this, the outreach to people in the world is far greater than humanly possible.

But the purpose of the website for me was not to set up a website in itself. My key goal is for self-improvement to become more happy.

I’ve made promises before that I would write consistently, and they have gone unfulfilled. Creating a successful website with lots of traffic is a goal shared by many a blogger. But often this goal overcomes as the reason for your blog and then this goal becomes so overwhelming its often easier to ignore it. Is your blog successful only because you get lots of views? Wouldn’t you feel success if you felt some kind of realisation or story which leads to a making a good blog post, and not the post itself?

My advice for people who may be struggling with the effort to continue their blog; think about why you created one in the first case. Does the goal still remain? What have you been doing recently to achieve that goal more closely? If you haven’t done much recently, what could you do to achieve it?

To give an example of how this has effected me, I wrote earlier about how working on communication skills was important to me to help me become more happy. After many weeks of procrastination I went to my first Toastmasters meeting. It was there that my vision of self-improvement was re-enforced and it reminded me of my key goals. Part of communication is through writing and of course and while the meeting didn’t help with that, it reminded me that this is something that I still want to improve upon. The articulation of my experiences is helpful in a cyclical manner. By writing it down, it helps me to organise the thoughts in a more meaningful way. I may get feedback from people via the website. And by the whole process, I practise my written communication skills which helps to improve them, for the next time I write about something.

So I encourage you to write something on your blog. Go do it today, even if you only have a few words to write. If you would like some feedback for encouragement, please drop me a comment with the link and I will have a look at it.

The problem I observed recently was because of pay. General annual pay raises were to be abolished for the next year because of the recent economic problems. I was invited to a union meeting to hear about this issue. There was no reason to cut costs on salaries as incoming work with the company was strong. The union has stated it will fight for a fair pay review.
In the union meeting, non-members were asked to join, or get out. And I, along with 2 others, walked out. Did I not want a pay raise? Did I not want to be treated fairly by the company?

The reason I didn’t join was because I didn’t believe it would make a difference. Would one person’s support make a difference in this situation? Would I see a difference whether I joined or not? My feeling to this is that the staff will see a pay rise or not regardless of my participation. So I stand to benefit either way. However, if I join, I have to pay a monthly subscription based on my salary. So if I did join and that one membership did make the difference, the increase in salary would have to be higher than the cost of membership to not make a loss. Based on the price of the membership, I am not confident of this occuring.
Another issue is that I don’t personally see an issue with the lack of a general pay increase. I have never had any sizeable pay increase in any of my previous jobs for doing the same job and I believe that, after tax, any increase would be barely noticeable to my standard of living, so why is it an issue whether I get it or not?
If I did have an issue with salary, then of course I would want to take actions to get it increased. I would ask my manager for a salary increase, based on my performance and what benefits I  bring to the company. I would climb the ladder, go find another job which pays more with my new level of experience from this job. If I had reached the limit to what this type of job can offer, I would look further afield into different areas or supplement my experience by acquiring knowledge and skills in new areas.

But then after some thinking about this decision later on, I came to realise how selfish this decision was and how in fact it does not benefit me at all…

So let’s think about a corporate organisation. An organisation is a group of people. A group of people achieve more than what is possible by individuals. It then seems more beneficial for us all if we all work together. When it comes to companies, they employ many people to do specialised jobs which together achieve much more. The job diversity created allows people like me as a computer programmer to contribute to much larger scale projects than what I could on my own.

Now we have a company which is big enough to be recognisable and has customers all over the world. Iconic brand images which we all know and love such as Sony, McDonald’s and Vodafone. These corporate identities take a life of their own, each fighting in their own domains for survival and superiority. Each company must compete by being leaner, faster, cheaper, better than others in its field in this cut-throat business world, or it will be superseded by the company which beat them to it.

The way companies strive to survive and expand is by exploiting resources to its gain. Using brand image, intellectual property and utilising its skilled workforce pushes the company ahead. Of course they must do this, as this maintains their survival and we need the companies to be healthy in order to keep our jobs. But what if the company starts to abuse its resources and push them too far?…

The example of no pay increase is evidence of this. In order to maintain the company’s superiority, every part of the company’s resources are squeezed. But this is good, right? If the company is better than the competition, then it does better and because we work for them, we are doing fine? Well its not so good if our working standards as individuals drop to support this goal. After all, the whole purpose of organisations are to help increase the standards of living for the individuals.

Lets say I don’t like the unchanged salary and I move somewhere else to work. I move to big software company who offer a slightly higher wage. However, last financial year, they decided not to entitle 30 days annual leave, but rather 15. And they can only be taken according to HR’s planning schedule. It turns out that the workers who were not happy with this had left the company. And so it goes around and around; the companies impose more strict working conditions, the workers move to other places with even more strict conditions. Pretty soon every company in that field can get away with anything. I know this to be true with computer games companies, as some I’ve heard of don’t pay overtime or weekend work; this is the “nature of the job”

So the individualist attitude is detrimental to us as individuals. We all stand to suffer if we only think of ourselves, thinking we can just leave if unfavourable conditions come our way. And so my reason to join the union. Whilst it doesn’t help my current situation (in fact it will most likely decrease my net salary) this event has shown me that conditions could stand to get a whole lot worse, regardless of which company I work for, in ways other than just salary. Unions are there to prevent, or at least slow down this process.

Unions come at a cost, but without them we stand to lose much more.

Please let me know what you think of this by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

In a post last month I made the promise to write 1 post every 2 days for 30 days. The deadline I set ends in 2 days time, and in 28 days I have written 5 posts (including this one!) I think its pretty safe to say that I will not be completing my stated task. Fail! Failure is bad because not only does it not achieve what was required to fulfil the task, it also discredits the person in the future for the capacity to execute future tasks. Would I trust myself to write 15 posts in 30 days starting from tomorrow? Could I expect anyone else to trust me to do it?

The task was failed but does that mean you are a total failure? Can’t anything be taken from this failed task. Yes! Not only can something good be taken from this failed promise, but I believe something even better can be found…

The point of a post process review is to discover what went wrong, and how to learn from the experience so that similar failures don’t occur again. The first step is to ask questions:

Why did I want 15 posts written in 30 days?

To get more on the site, having 15 posts more would treble the amount of content and therefore provide a relatively quick way of bolstering content and hopefully traffic to the site.

Is this a reasonable request?

This answer to this is debatable. It is certainly possible for at least one person on Earth to provide this and I believed I could have been one of them. Unfortunately, other constraints on my life prevented me from spending the full time I required to complete this task. Certainly I could have spent my free time completing such a task, but it would be at the expense of other, possibly more valuable, promises which were not delivered.

What is the outcome of the failure?

In this case, the failure to complete this task has little consequence. Though it is impossible to tell what would happen if I had more content on this site, perhaps I would suffer the loss of insight in my life for not articulating more thoughts.

By answering these questions I have thought of some conclusions for the outcome of this task. The goal was rather far-fetched considering my relevant experience. My lack of experience did not allow me to accurately predict time required for writing.

So how can I avoid such short comings in the future? Well the first step is to not accept such unreasonable requests! The request may be doable by some people but it was not by me at that point. The next stage is to try and work on making that goal attainable. For me that is the combination of working on freeing up enough available time and working more on my writing skills.

In addition, I have researched and found opinions on what makes a good blog and one response was to post regularly to maintain readership. This may not require a large blast of posts in a relatively short time but rather a consistent line of timely posts. So the best solution to solve the original request would really be work on a continuous strategy, not a quick fix or short burst.

When thinking about situations in every day life and work, the possibility of failure is always present. Different scenarios carry different levels of possibility of passing and different levels of severity if failed. Its always good to consider different outcomes, even if they are unfavourable. Doing this as early as possible will help to avoid major catastrophes. For example, if you need to drive to the airport for a trip but your car seems to be acting up recently, then it may be good to take the car in to get repaired. Perhaps also investigate other methods of travel, e.g. Taxi or bus. Then again, if you miss the trip because the car wont start, then the next time I’m sure you would learn your lesson and make sure you know the bus timetable!

This is draft 2 of my introduction. Let me show you what I wrote first time round..

“I am a computer programmer and have been working for 3 years or so since graduating from university in 2005. I have been working in various companies (check my CV page) and I have been at QinetiQ, Edinburgh for just about a year now.

I started this website because I would like to look more into personal development and learn the skills associated with it.”

A self introduction might be a reasonable way to start a weblog but I went to get something to eat and when I came back to this I realised this was wrong. Why am I creating a weblog ? Is it only to tell everyone who I am and how great I am?

Recent events have started me thinking about where I am in life and how happy people are. Work-loads are ever increasing and free time is diminishing for everyone. People’s valueable savings over the years have collapsed in months due to the financial crisis. People buy expensive mobile phones on 18 month tariffs to find the phone doesn’t work most of the time and you dont use much of your 1200 minutes a month tariff. Whats the point any more ?

So why am I creating this weblog? I want to make you happy. Making you happy makes me happy. To do this I need help first. I realised that my skill set is not good enough to help anyone except computers to run software, so work needs to be done to become more helpful with other people.

I have just changed the title from “Introduction” to what it is now. Why should you read this blog? Because I am going to make your life great! And if its already great, I am going to make it even greater. Unfortunately I dont yet know what needs to be done to enable this, but in the next post I will let you know!

If you have any comments then drop me a line. martin@martinogg.com or just comment on this post.

Martin Ogg