Stand ups

It seems that people have a fear of justifying their work during standups rather than focusing on what can be done.
Last week I created a big visible chart (story wall) of actions, how and when columns and stuck it to the wall for everybody to look at. This helped people to become focused and they started signing up for tasks as oppose to a push system which managers assign tasks to programmers.
We also tried to prevent people from going into detail. Initially we were showing the red card as a signal but recently adopted yawing for indicating too much into detail sign. Yawing is very contagious - start yawning couple of times when a meeting gets boring, you’ll be amazed as to how many people will get infected and start to yawn.

The twenty happiest countries

According to the study by Adrian White the twenty happiest countries are (the world map of happiness):

1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Costa Rica
14. Malta
15. The Netherlands
16. Antigua and Barbuda
17. Malaysia
18. New Zealand
19. Norway
20. The Seychelles

Other interesting data: USA (23), France (62), China (82) Japan (90), India (125). This seems like a good list of places to travel to. I am thinking about spending my next vacation in Costa Rica (ranked 13th).

Guide to success

From Richard St. John, author of Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and Rich: Spike's Guide to Success.