In late 2019, some months before all of us moving to “living at the office” and eternal remote work mode, I wrote an opinionated post about using video – at all times – during Teams’ meetings. In essence, I argued… Read More »Using video during meetings – why, or why not?
I’ve spent a considerable time during my career automating and scripting things. I started with plain old MS-DOS .BAT files moved to Unix shell scripts and evolved via Perl to a collection of “hey, let’s use awk/sed/grep/find” VBScript. Eventually, I… Read More »An in-depth look at Microsoft Power Automate Desktop and building Robotic Process Automations
For the past few years, I’ve used Microsoft Edge (the one based on Chromium source code) as my primary browser – on all of my devices. It was pretty great, and switching from Google Chrome to Edge was an easy… Read More »Switching away from Microsoft Edge
This time we’ll build a modern solution using legacy hardware – my old HP LaserJet color printer. The idea is that I can share the printer through the cloud and then print from anywhere – as long as the printer… Read More »Building a print-anywhere setup using Universal Printing and an old HP LaserJet
This is a quick one, but I wanted to share this as I did not find enough guidance on this previously. I’ve had a three-display setup for several years now: The thinking I’ve had is that whenever I read something… Read More »Altering my productivity with a new display setup
Besides working on my Executive MBA since early 2019, I wanted to deepen my understanding of marketing. The Kellogg School of Management has teamed up with Microsoft to offer full-time employees a selection of courses, so I had a look… Read More »Insights on passing the Kellogg: Modern Marketing program
About two years ago, I decided I don’t need Facebook in my life. In early January 2019, I went through the settings and deactivated my account. I didn’t choose to delete it fully for two reasons – one, perhaps I’d… Read More »Reflecting on my decision to deactivate Facebook two years ago
This is part 3 of the working remotely guide (and how not to feel miserable about it). If you missed the previous parts, see part 1, and part 2. Table of Contents Part 1: Let’s define Working from Home/working remotely/remote… Read More »The comprehensive guide to working remotely and not feeling miserable about it (Part 3)
My first mobile phone was a Nokia 2110, which I purchased in 1994. Before that, my dad had the predecessor to GSM phones in his car, an integrated NMT phone (NMT stands for Nordic Mobile Telephone, and we were immensely… Read More »Insights: Regaining my focus by not focusing on my phone anymore
This is part 2 of my guide on how to work remotely, and not feel bad about it. If you missed part 1 (the basics), see here. Table of Contents Part 1: Let’s define Working from Home/working remotely/remote work/flex work… Read More »The comprehensive guide to working remotely and not feeling miserable about it (Part 2)
I’ve previously written at length on working remotely, both in Finnish (Don’t work in the evenings), about my then-new desk, and generally how I feel about working from home. I also like writing – a lot. This guide was a… Read More »The comprehensive guide to working remotely and not feeling miserable about it (Part 1)
I’m a huge fan of the Your Phone Companion app that is now available for Windows 10. It was first made available in mid-2015, but since 2018 it has been actually useful. The app allows you to utilize your phone… Read More »Supercharging your productivity with your Android phone and the Windows 10 Your Phone Companion app
I often end up automating a lot of things in my life I find too repetitive, or too boring to do manually. This might not always be the smartest thing to do, as learning how to do something esoteric might… Read More »Insights on building robust business process orchestrations using Power Automate, Logic Apps and Azure Functions
I’ve been wanting to build a little command-line tool to manage my tasks and to-do items for some time now. I initially set out to build something fun a few months ago, but couldn’t get it working properly. So, this… Read More »Building a custom command-line tool for Microsoft To Do
For the longest time, I’ve relied on Ninite to deploy my tools. The software that I rely on a daily basis – and for this, I’ve had a simple script to drop the tools for new VMs, servers, laptops, and… Read More »Modernize your tooling deployment with Windows Package Manager (winget)
Years ago, I found this cartoon: In the 1990’s, once you got an email it was a fun and enjoyable experience. “Someone is thinking of me!”, and you really set time aside to craft a considerate and careful response. Things… Read More »Back to basics: Two simple Outlook rules to reclaim your workday
I’ve been taking a few vacation days this week. That is probably one of the considerable differences for me – last year I was still a business owner and entrepreneur, so vacation days simply meant getting more work done without… Read More »Understanding Developer Velocity to achieve better business performance
Fresh off from Microsoft Build 2020, we now have the very first versions of the Microsoft PowerToys Run available for testing. PowerToys are useful little tools and utilities, which are open-sourced and frequently updated. Currently, the tools include: FancyZones, a… Read More »Microsoft PowerToys Run is simply amazing
I’ve been meaning to write about how I manage my tasks and organize my work for a good couple of months by now. Then work got in the way, so while I was heading home from the summer cabin, I… Read More »Achieving internal efficiency by managing your time and organizing your tasks
I wrote about working from home a few weeks ago, and now that I am back from my winter vacation, I wanted to revisit this subject. We started more serious social distancing and self-quarantines in Finland around March 13. It’s… Read More »We are all working remotely now – how does that feel after the first month?
