WORK LIFE: Do or do not keep meetings short?

I just read this blog: https://timdenning.com/overly-productive-people/

I actually put on my resume and accomplishments that I have shortened meetings from 2 hours to 30 minutes, so I thought this read was interesting and I do agree on a lot of the points it made.

I do a lot of small banter, small talk, and weather. I agree that it is important to connect to people.

The post also mentions to avoid saying that I am busy because it makes it seem my time is more valuable than others. I also agree with this. In my meeting, I say that I want to keep it short to save everyone else's time.

I think this post does a good job of too much trimming to short meetings. I do believe a lot of meetings ARE too long but for reasons not listed on the post (which makes sense as it is not the point of the article).

For me, it is important to keep topics that seem to only address less than 10% of the attendance to a separate call. I do give them a minute or two because it usually takes me a couple minutes to know if the conversation is going off tangent. I do my best to interrupt and side-bar the conversation. (I do not understand why people still do not understand this concept after working with them for 4 years now but that is outside my control so I do my best to change course.)

Sometimes the small talk goes a little too long. I found the most affective way is to just continue the meeting topic. If I add something to the banter, this may trigger someone to rebut or one-up or just wanting to put in the final word. After 10 years, no one has complained about this method and I haven't noticed anyone take offense to it. Most people have complimented me on my meeting management and I also get the highest attendance rate in all companies I have worked for. That is including upper management who I rarely see in other calls.

I also make sure that the majority of my attendance are impacted by the majority of the meeting agenda. I do not like having full teams on my calls for status updates. I recommend team leads to join the calls then they can distribute the information as needed. This also encourages team leads to know what is going on (which I think is helpful for the team leads that are not leaders; I hate having team leads that just delegate to another individual for status because to me the basic team lead should at least know the status).

If I see managers forward to another individual that I do not believe will be helpful to them, I do remind the individual of the meeting agenda and their presence may not be needed.

Of course I am biased to my own meeting style, but I find the frequent attendees of my meetings are much more relaxed and focused which I believe is through the small communications that is mentioned in Tim Denning's post.

Take the title with a nuanced take on the topic. The content has some good things to say and is a recommended read.

LIFE: I am sad that I find coupons and discounts still feel too expensive to buy

Just received some coupons for fast food restaurant. I remember in my youth when these were great deals, but now even the discounted price seems too high too buy. 

$X.00 off? No longer even 50% off the item good.

BUY 1 GET 1 for $X.00? No longer BOGO?

Plus how expensive fast food is lately, I can only count my blessing that I am past the age of convenience. Inflation is also crazy... X%? It's more like 200%. My groceries typically cost around $100 just a year ago but now $300 for the same items.

Coding: Design Pattern Factory: Comparing Tutorials

 I had some difficulties understanding the design pattern factory and watched a few tutorials.

The tutorial I found most helpful for understanding: Christopher Okhravi's Factory Method Pattern – Design Patterns (ep 4)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcFVTgRHJLM&ab_channel=ChristopherOkhravi)

This tutorial was good too and for me a good supplement to Okhravi's tutorial: Code with RaiGenics' Factory Method in C# I Design Pattern (Part 3) - How and When to use Factory Method
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMOdeewTnc&ab_channel=CodeWithRaiGenics)

This may potentially due to it being later and I have been understanding a bit more after each video. I do not think so but wanted to mention for transparency. Below is the order that I watched the videos.

Microsoft Video Studio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEk7B_GUErc&t=427s&ab_channel=MicrosoftVisualStudio

This just did not help me understand why I needed a factory. There was an example about pizza which I later learned from my recommended video by Christopher Okhravi that this is from a book called "Head First Design Patterns" which sounds like the exact same example.

PRO: Robert Greene asked a couple good questions. Otherwise, nothing obviously helpful to me. It was the first video I watched. Watching again after understanding does not seem useful. 

CON: The tech guy (Phil Japikse) is not very good at answering or describing the questions by host (Robert Greene).

IAmTimCorey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PXAfSfvRKY&t=246s&ab_channel=IAmTimCorey

I am usually a fan of IAmTimCorey videos but this video was very hard for me to follow as there were too many new terms for me to learn and understand like delegates, dependency injections, and Blazor. This may be good for those who have more experience.

PRO: This may be helpful later when I get into Blazor.

CON: Too advanced. I need to understand delegates, dependency injections, Blazor, and probably a few other things that I do not understand enough to even not understand.

Code with RaiGenics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMOdeewTnc&ab_channel=CodeWithRaiGenics

This was a bit too technical to start off with but is also a good tutorial. This is include a good example in C# which is what I ultimately needed too.

PRO: Used most basic example and basic code to demonstrate factory design pattern.

CON: Seemed too technical at first but upon reviewing it again later, this video probably would have been fine. Although this had the best code example, it was just short of one of my biggest question. After I create the object, it is in the base class like IMobile. After I get the object, what if I want to use a specific method in the sub-class like SamsungA9? I am sure I can look this up and could be unrelated. I personally would have preferred that it added that one bit anyways.

Christopher Okhravi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcFVTgRHJLM&ab_channel=ChristopherOkhravi

PRO: I understood the example better. I agree the example about the pizza was a bit confusing to me too. The pizza example is still a bit confusing even after understanding the factory pattern. The UML diagram was also helpful in answering my question on what is the difference between interface and factory pattern. The other tutorials almost seemed like it was just explaining how to use an interface. The UML diagram helped me get over that hump. I would recommend this video is a good overview for the design pattern. For me, it was a bit better than RaiGenics'.

CON: No code example but it obviously was not meant to have one as it was a generic overview. For example, RaiGenics' was the most helpful. For more advanced, Tim Corey may eventually be an ultimate code example as I do plan to eventually work with Blazor.

Summary

My recommendation is to start with Christopher Okhravi then RaiGenics and finally Tim Corey. MS Visual Studio was not helpful to me before or after understanding.