How do I improve my processes?
First and foremost, to improve any process you need to start by writing the process down. All the steps or things you need to consider should be written in a document. This will allow you to review this document over time and improve it as you find ways to make the process better.
When you perform the process, look at your document and see whether you are applying all of the steps you wrote down. Identify the steps that are more critical than others, in which order you complete them, how long it takes you to accomplish them, whether some steps are sometimes relevant, etc. You want to capture information about the process as you are going through it in order to identify sources of improvement. If a step takes the majority of your time in a process, ask yourself whether this is expected and whether it would be possible to optimize or automate this step in order to reduce the time spent on it.
If possible, share your processes with others. Have them share with you how they would go about doing the same things you do and take notes. Some of the things that may be different between you and others are the order in which you accomplish the steps, which steps you consider critical and how much time is spent on each step.
Even though some of the processes you follow on a daily basis may appear trivial to you, you might end up realizing that those processes are quite complex in nature, especially if you need to write them down.
Try playing around with doing steps in parallel vs doing steps sequentially and see which one is more efficient.
In order to improve your processes, you need to define what it is you want to improve. In my case, I want my processes to be efficient (doing things right) and effective (doing the right things). Compared to myself, a process is improved if I need less time to accomplish it while producing the same quality of results or if for the same amount of time I produce higher quality of results.
Run your program with python -m cProfile -o profile.cprofile my-script.py
Install snakeviz (pip install snakeviz) to visualize the generated profile.
snakeviz profile.cprofile
Alternative approach
Install pyprof2calltree to convert the cprofile to a kcachegrind compatible profile.
pyprof2calltree -i profile.cprofile -o callgrind.profile.cprofile
- Keep all RFCs under a single location
- Uniquely identify RFCs
- Use a shared template
- Editor: Name <email>
- Status: Draft/Review/Approved/Abandoned/Implemented
- Required approvers: Name <email> (why), Name <email> (why), ...
- Approvers: Name <email> (date), Name <email> (date), ...
- Created on: <date>
- Updated on: <date>
- Overview: A high level description of what you're describing in the document
- Background/Context: Context relevant to understanding the document
- Problem description: Describe what you are currently cannot do and want to be able to do
- Motivation/Why: Why is it relevant to solve this problem now?
- Drawbacks/Why not: What are the downsides of solving this problem?
- Proposed solution: What is the best solution proposed?
- Alternative solutions: What are the alternative solutions considered and why aren't they the proposed solution?
- Impact and risks: What will be the impact of this change on existing systems, processes, or stakeholders?
- Unresolved questions: What are the questions that need to be answered but don't have an answer to yet?
- References: Documents/URLs that can be useful to consult
- If a RFC is abandoned, the reasons why should be made explicit in the document
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments
- https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blob/master/0000-template.md
- https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Checklist_Request_for_Change_RFC
- Sourcegraph RFC template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TRVmwpLzTgYWhBqPwkSWpzPYvXI3Z2miJSmBN2G7ygc/edit
- https://about.sourcegraph.com/handbook/engineering/rfcs
- https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/scaling-engineering-teams-via-writing-things-down-rfcs/
- https://github.com/golang/proposal/blob/master/design/TEMPLATE.md
Note that most of the process is guided by a long term investment strategy. In other words, we expect to keep the assets we purchase for as long as possible, only selling to rebalance our portfolio.
- Do not put all your eggs in one basket (stock), diversify.
- Use indexes to determine which stocks to buy.
- Start small (10% of what you want to invest in total) and do not invest everything at once, learn from your mistakes.
- Do not sell when your stock drops, as it will drop in value at some point while you're holding it
- When you start, there will be a period of time where some of your stocks value will go into the negative. Ignore it and wait a few months before deciding whether to part from it or not.
- Pick stocks with good $R^2$ score and positive slope.
- The idea here is that we want to invest in stocks which have shown to be highly predictable in the past, while also displaying linear growth (as such, this is not a useful indicator for stocks which have explosive growth).
- Invest some percentage of the portfolio in stocks which provide regular dividends, this is to replace holding "high yield" saving accounts.
- Opt to invest in REIT, which will offer monthly dividends as well as attractive growth in their value while you hold them.
- If you want to keep things simple for yourself, buy ETFs.
- VFV.TO is an ETF that tracks the S&P 500 in CAD and has a low expense ratio.
- Compare your portfolio's performance against indexes.
- If you perform more poorly than indexes over 6 months/1 year, sell the stocks you have and buy the index you compare against.
- Write/prepare an agenda listing the items to be discussed
- Indicate the duration and responsible/lead of each
- Aim for a meeting to last under an hour. If more time appears to be required, then prior work should be done in order to reduce the amount of time necessary for the meeting.
- Define the list of invitees, try to keep it short, possibly under 6 people
- Share the agenda with all the attendees
- Schedule the meeting around boundaries (beginning/end of day, before/after lunch)
- Present the agenda
- Designate a person that will make sure that the agenda is respected
- Determine next actions
- Define deadlines for each next action
- Assign a responsible for each next action
- Create tasks in a task tracking system for the next actions
- In the case where a recurrent meeting needs to be scheduled at a different time than usual, specify in the body of the message the reason of the change.