English or Brazilian Portuguese?

When I started this blog I faced a dilemma. Should it be in English or in Brazilian Portuguese?

In Brazilian Portuguese, my mother tongue, it would be easier to write. I would make fewer mistakes and it would probably take me less time (and effort). I can also use more local expressions that would make my text more natural.

In English I would (potentially) reach much more readers. Since I don’t like to loose time, reaching more people seems to be a greater return on investment.

As most of my friends and colleagues read English, I’ll keep the “better ROI” approach. If you are a reader and you’ll facing difficulties with this approach or would like me to change to Brazilian Portuguese, please drop me a comment.

Comments

TimeTo

I just licensed a new software for my personal organization system: TimeTo . It tries to conciliate your schedule with you to-do list, automatically scheduling your tasks based on priorities and deadlines. It has helped me in maintaining the concentration on what I’m doing at each time and how much time I spend on doing each type of task. Additionally, I have a very powerful way to complete my timesheet. I can tell you exactly what I was doing at a specific time in the past. It is not easy to conciliate it with GTD and I still keep my lists on my Palm but I have improved my focus and I’m achieving more. I suggest you to give it a try.

Tools for blogging

Maintaining a blog sometimes is a difficult task, specially when you’re in the middle of a battle. It takes discipline and the belief that your ideas and experience could improve someone else’s. There are some tools to assist you in writing a blog but I discovered that my old palm and a simple sheet of paper can work better than new editors or browser plugins that allow you to post from any webpage. Maybe I’m facing a corollary of KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid). On the other hand, reading many blogs is almost impossible without a specific tool. I had a good time using RSSOwl and now I’m using GreatNews , both are free. I tried the Google Reader version of it but I’m usually offline when reading the blogs – usually at the airport. I also use my iPod to follow podcasts. If you’re a project manager I recommend Jerry Manas Project Results Podcast . What are you using to follow my blog? Leave your experience as a comment here!

Running a lot...

I’ve been running a lot recently. My team received a lot of attacks… I guess the best piece of advice after this period is: be diligent and systematic on the project basics. I mean, you should focus on project progress and in keeping scope clear, setting and updating a workplan, keep writing your progress reports. Even when it looks you should focus on other things, do not forget to keep the basis of project management. After the turbulence, nobody will remember that you were doing the “other things” and they will ask for the basic items. More than that, even during the turbulence, your team depends on you to keep project progress. Go back to PMBOK if you don’t understand what basis is. PMBOK is not perfect but it contains a solid foundation. Agile PM only means (to me) that you don’t have to create and sign formal documents. But you have to materialize this tools: post-its, whiteboards pictures (read previous posts) work well enough.

Wronowski

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