CTO, Life.
As CTOs, our work is managerial, technical and above all stressful. Though we all adapt to this demanding lifestyle, we can all use some tips to make life easier. The following are not hard recommendations, but just examples from a typical workday in my life, which hopefully might shed some light on how I survive, and with what tools. (The interesting thing is that looking back on this article in a few years, these tools and tasks described below will certainly look archaic. So, if you have stumbled upon this article and it is the year 2016 or later, please avert your eyes!)
BEGIN
It’s 4:30 in the morning, and the first alarm rings on my Mutewatch[1]; then, a 2nd, 3rd and 4th vibrating alarm on my wrist. I slowly start to wake up and finally at 4:56 – this is it! I enjoy the Mutewatch as it’s possible to sleep with it, and the vibrating alarm will wake me up without disturbing my wife or children.
Now that I’m awake, I swap the Mutewatch to my LG Urbane [2], a nicer watch, which will synchronize GMAIL, Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn as well as a few other applications directly to my wrist! This ensures that I receive alerts if any emergencies arise, even during my meetings. With many setups and software developers around the world, you get all kinds of emergencies.
A quick weigh-in on my Withings [3] helps keep my weight in check. The fact that from this smart scale, you get a graph with a trend (gaining, losing weight), makes it a lot easier to control your snacking!
A few regular hygiene maintenance tasks completed, and off for a few emails on the sofa using my Android smartphone (lately a Samsung Galaxy S6) [4]. A change of clothes in my bag and dressed in sports gear, next I go for a jog with my faithful Bluetooth headset. The run will last around 20 minutes, door to door, to my office. This morning run is good when you can shower or at least do a quick wash up afterwards, as it really makes you feel happy and healthy.
At the office:
Arriving at the office. Alarm deactivated, lights and some other devices activated (thanks to a few WeMo sensors [5]) now it’s off to my daily routine: LinkedIn checks, messages. A few tweets to keep the account alive, and a bit of completeapp to add the personal tasks of the day.
Out of my bag and onto the desk I put the following: eye drops (Optrex), anti-allergy spray (Beconase), and my beloved Guarana shot (GoGo Jungle Elixir). The latter is my favourite way to pick up the pace, “nearly naturally”.
Reading yearly and high level strategic goals that I have set up last year, doing a round of JIRA [6] to see sprints of software and integration projects, continuing with a round of Taiga [7], which shows me sprints and KANBANs of operational projects (websites).
At the end of the rounds, of course, as already lack of sleep starts to kick in, as not everything is at it should be, I try to contain my frustration and move on to see what specific actions must be completed or need follow up today. Even if not in the technical field, as I really like to disrupt the company in my own way. After all, we are in an industry which is based on ability to see things differently, adapt and modernize.
Another issue with the low sleep level is that you tend to get paranoid on your performance and colleagues very quickly – this is an issue that only your mind (or more sleep) can fix. It might be one of the most challenging issues to me.
As the frustration and paranoia finally pass, a few boomerangs [8] surely arrived in one of the five email accounts I use to control the various companies I am involved with, and it’s time to reply and add recurring tasks in my already full technical calendars [9] which are split by colour depending on which company and in what time zone I will have to follow up a task/project with. By the way, every Friday I schedule most of my follow up emails to be sent for each day the calendar indicates, using Boomerang “Send Later” feature.
Every day: Meeting with the head of web/projects is at 9AM until 10AM. (It’s a bit of micromanagement, however it’s a great way to get some important things done perfectly.)
Then, most meetings are with product managers, security officer, content manager, etc. Some would be using Skype, others Polycom [10] (when reaching out to another team in a remote location). And most of the time, even if shy by nature, I believe it’s a lot better to speak face to face.
The interesting thing about these meetings is that I always make sure to write down notes for myself (in a Word document), during the meeting. These notes feature organization, status, and actions to take, and the name of the person that will be responsible for the pending items. This way, I can remember whom I work with (It’s easy to forget), and I can make sure that some of the action items that I deem critical are done. That amounts at about 6 to 8 staff meetings every day. Added to this, I would have to do one or two client meetings to gather feedback, and to ensure smooth collaboration between technical teams and the client.
With that many meetings, thanks to my son 9-year old son Bryan, we have created my very own little app to make sure that I don’t waste too much time on each meeting: “Bryan’s Timer” [11]. The app was created using Java/Android SDK, as well as Construct 2 [12]. It’s still a bit buggy, but I will not get upset with Bryan for it.
The bad part of the day is mostly when other C*, investors or others suddenly want to interact/disrupt within products or the main technical plan. Speaking of which, I hear that from many fellow CTOs. Again, disruption being good, I try to keep my cool – but still, it takes lots of effort to avoid frustration when explaining how things should be done. Anyways, I always keep notes of these ideas, as some of them can be pretty good.
Of course, technical organization permits that no sudden task can be given, thanks to a few steps of validation. Just in case, I have also this small tool “Email your frustration”[13] which funnily enough works quite well. I can mock-send mail to whoever frustrates me, and mock-reply, by simulating what they would say. This little role playing game is very helpful to reduce stress levels.
The (very short) rest of the day is split between research and development (I love coding in C, any tool, ranging from fuzzing [arjfuz] to domain name hunting [domainhunt]), taking a good look at “Product Hunt”, “TechCrunch” to find out what’s the next big thing, and sharing any worthwhile discoveries to my teams.
Back Home :
With evening setting in at around 7:30pm, a quick run back home, shower, news, mandatory hour with the kids, and Asia wakes up. Skype with oversea team, and some TV.
Finally, it’s time to (deep) sleep for a few hours, and restart the day all over again.
To Conclude :
This is my life, and a few of my tools. Do you see anything similar in yours? How do you cope with your stresses? Please do not hesitate to let me know !
END;
Notes :
[1] http://www.mutewatch.com/
[2] http://www.lg.com/us/smartwatch/urbane
[3] http://www2.withings.com/uk/en/products/smart-body-analyzer?
[4] http://www.samsung.com/uk/galaxys6/
[5] http://www.belkin.com/uk/Products/home-automation/c/wemo-home-automation/
[6] https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
[7] https://www.taiga.io
[8] http://www.boomeranggmail.com/
[9] https://www.google.com/calendar/
[10] http://www.polycom.com
[11] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bryan.timer
[12] https://www.scirra.com/construct2
[13] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sa.frustration
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