It's been a crazy few days and I know Musing #50 is long overdue - sorry! However, now that I am not doing a musing/thought a day I can foresee myself not religiously updating on Sundays any more, rather I will aim to put up a musing roughly once a week. So, without any more random ramblings, here are some random musings…

Don't forget your weaknesses, but pay more attention to your strengths.

This advice came from a work colleague few days ago. As summarised above, although you should not completely ignore your weaknesses your time is probably better spent concentrating and making your strengths stand out even more. My understanding of the reasoning behind this is if you spend a whole tonne of precious time and effort in building up your weaknesses, it will make you better overall, but you won't stand out. Since you have spent the time working on your weakness (and 'neglecting' your strengths) you will be able to do a good job at most tasks but it'll be harder to do a spectacular job at something.

On the other hand, if you concentrate on your strengths and make them even better you'll be an "expert" at particular tasks and you will be able to stand out in that area. So when someone needs someone to do a job in that area, you will come to mind as the person most suitable to get the job done well.

Of course you can't just not work on your weaknesses at all, for example, there are many 'weaknesses' that you can't just ignore completely - eg communication. If communication is not one of your strengths, I believe you should work on it so you can communicate comfortably and effectively; but there is no need to stress too much that you can't deliver speeches as well as the guy on the stage - after all, public speaking may as well be one of his strengths that he is working hard on improving.

Small invisible 'surprises' that make usability better

Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome...are all web browsers and all have their good and bad bits (except Internet Explorer which only has bad bits). Firefox has the "Awesome Bar"; Safari is faster in comparison; and Chrome is even faster! Everyone has their own browser they prefer which is expected (though if you are still using Internet Explorer - I recommend you change to another browser, you'll never look back!).

I recently saw this invisible "feature" of Chrome that made me smile and marvel at the intricacies of usability design. As a super short summary - in Chrome when you want to close multiple tabs in succession with the mouse, you close the first tab, and the second tab's close button will land right under your mouse pointer ready for you to click again and close. While in Safari (and Firefox too) depending on which tab you close the next tab's close button may not be right under you mouse - thus requiring you to move your mouse to close the next tab. It's only something small, but it shows that Google has thought about it. Another 'plus' is it works so well you generally don't realise unless you are looking specifically for it - a true sign of something that is well designed in my opinion.

Despite the usability in Chrome being evidently thought out very well, I'm still sticking with Firefox for now - I can't live without my multi touch gestures, add-ons and the awesome bar! The super fast Chrome speed is something I'm hoping for but will have to live without for now.

Mini portable notebooks - www.pocketmod.com

A friend introduced me to this awesome discovery she made some time ago - make a simple notebook out of a single sheet of paper. No glue, just some folding and a cut in the paper! With the knowledge of how to fold a "PocketMod" you can quickly create a small notebook to jot your ideas/to-do list down. I've found that even though the area you can write in is technically the same (if not less) as the unfolded piece of paper, because it is now smaller and more notebook-like it is easier to carry around, write in and keep intact. Being able to turn a "scrap piece of paper" into a mini notebook is definitely useful.

Cool procrastination video

Not so much of a musing, but I am sure we all procrastinate. So here's a short video (~4min) about Procrastination for those who are in a procrastinating mood :)