I’ve been thinking about this lately and distilled 4 ways to push your thinking and get more insightful.

Change your shoes

This is all about changing your perspective. Looking at things from the outside can be daunting and unfamiliar. One approach is to put yourself in other stakeholders’ shoes.

Imagine yourself as the customer, business partner, colleague, etc. Think about struggles and challenges they face and what motivates them. Now that you’re wearing their shoes… what do you want? What excites you? What makes you mad?

Getting inside others’ heads can uncover overlooked motivations and opportunities.

Find parallels to things you know

Relate new scenarios to similar scenarios you understand well!

Maybe you’re trying to think of loyalty programs for enterprise software… Think about the loyalty program at your local sandwitch place. What about it works? What doesn’t? What are other products and services you’re loyal to?

Though parallels may seem dubious at first, even distant relationships can lead to surprising insight.

Ask ‘how’ and ‘why’ to dig deep

Wearing ‘new shoes’ and drawing parallels leads to early insights. Dig deeper by asking why. Ask over and over until the root causes of successes and set backs become clear.

How and why are also keys to understanding deep connections. Everything is connected – figure out those connections by asking how things are connected, how the connection works, and how it could be changed.

Get super specific

It’s easy to get into the habit of thinking the abstract. This lets you speed through lots of ideas, but when you catch something exciting – stop to make it real. Think about specifics of the implementation, specific actions required, and the implications of those. Go further to the secondary and tertiary implications.

Getting “real” can open up new avenues of curiosity and will ultimately make your insights more powerful and actionable.

Hope this was useful – please chime in with other ways to boost insight!

Instapaper is a “read later” service that has changed my life. It allows you to easily capture content from multiple sources and store it in the cloud so you can consume it at your leisure.

Simply click, “read later” across Instapaper’s many incarnations and the service comes through the internet to capture text and images from an article. That content is now available to read whenever and wherever you have some free-time.

It’s a ubiquitous and beautiful reading experience that I never knew I needed.

• You’ll find new time in your day
• It goes where you go

Read on to find out more, and check it out at instapaper.com.

You’ll find new time in your day

Like I said… HOURS per week – and I’m smarter, more amused, better informed as a result.

On the subway I pop open my phone and read an article or two from McKinsey Quarterly, WSJ, or the Times on the way to work so I can say smart things to clients.

Standing in lines or on the way home is a great time to catch up on articles from twitter, friends blogs, or the latest angst from href=”http://thoughtcatalog.com/”>Though Catalog.

Waiting for friends is still a great time for facebook and texting, but once that’s done… Instapaper! When waiting on chronically late comrades, I get way ahead of my intellectual article quota and have something interesting to talk about.

It goes where you go

On my iPhone, on my Kindle, and in my browswer… Instapaper is there, which means I never miss an opportunity to capture content or read it.

On my iPhone/iPad I have the Instapaper app, which lets me capture content from twitter, tumblr, and email by sending it right to the app. A simple copy-paste allows the phone to capture links and save them for later. Also, since the iPhone is always in my pocket, I can always squeeze in a quick read. (I don’t actually have an iPad -yet- but I imagine this still holds true)

On my Kindle. Instapaper sends daily updates of your “read later” queue to your Kindle. These articles arrive as a ‘periodical’ so they are easy to navigate… This allows me to catch up on articles from all-over within Kindle’s delightful reading experience.

In my browswer. The plug-ins available for browsers allow you to capture content from any website (including Google Reader, twitter, news sites, etc.) with a simple click. You can also navigate to Instapaper.com to read articles you’ve captured. The simple interface is charmingly devoid of ads and on-screen distractions.

Competitors and other uses?

I realize that Instapaper isn’t the only app like this. ReadItLater, Spool, Reading List, etc. all offer similar functionality. Do y’all have ideas about which is better or why I should switch? How about other ways to use Instapaper? Leave it in the comments!

• Learn before you hack
• Make it pretty
• Document everything

These three hints apply to lots of life’s endeavors,
but let’s talk about how they apply to Excel.

Learn before you hack

Excel is built so anyone can use it. Work-arounds do exist, which makes it tempting to hack and kludge your way to inelegant solutions. Avoid this!

Learn keyboard shortcuts. My Tao of shortcuts applies here, too. Invest in getting lightning-fast with keyboard shortcuts. Yes, you can point and click, but in the end all that clicking will take hours out of your life! (also on that note… go ahead and stop hiding from Excel 2007!)

Learn pivot tables. Pivot tables are the most valuable tool in Excel. If you can’t use them, you’re missing out. I won’t explain them in this post because many others already have, but learn them one way or another. Pivot tables let you perform cuts, filters, and sums on huge amounts of data with speed and grace. It’s the best way to get familiar with a dataset and do many analyses.

Learn functions. You know it’s time to learn a new function when you find yourself struggling to link lots of “if” statements together or manually re-typing data to get the format right. A function probably exits to solve your exact problem. Use Google, built-in help, or your friends to find the answer, but DO NOT do things the slow, hacky way. The elegant solution will solve the problem better and save you hours down the road when you have to do the same thing again!

Make it pretty

Spending time on the aesthetics has several benefits. Pretty Excel models inspire confidence in clients and coworkers and are easier to use and build.

Understand the ins and outs. Take time to identify key inputs and outputs. Ensure these are easy to find when you lay out the model. Next, list other inputs and outputs and sketch a plan for linking the two before starting. A planned model looks cleaner than an haphazard one and is easier to build!

Organize your tabs. Keep inputs, outputs, and data on separate tabs to help people find what they’re looking for. Also try organizing tabs into groups and color-coding them to reinforce the structure.

Use consistent colors. Settle on a single, non-hideous color scheme. This makes models easy to read and nice to look at! Plan the colors you’ll use in advance and stick to your plan.

Document everything

An elegant, beautiful model is no good if people can’t use it. Plus, you’ll never know your model as well as the day you build it. For those reasons, document! Your boss will think you’re a superhero, and you’ll significantly reduce the number of emails asking for explanations!

Summarize and give instruction. There should be two tabs at the beginning of any Excel model. One summarizes what it’s for, why it was built, when, and by whom. The other gives instructions on key inputs and outputs, what users can change, and what they should leave alone.

Record your assumptions. Let me say that again… Record your assumptions! It’s a shame this is last on the list because it’s the most important. If you make an assumption, DOCUMENT IT. Every sheet with calculations or inputs should have an “assumptions” column. Total stranger should be able to explain your model… This helps catch mistakes, gets your thinking crystal clear, and gives you bulletproof answers to the age-old question “what’s happening in this cell?”

Epilogue

If you commit to making elegant, beautiful, well-document models, you’ll be ahead of most… Of course, there are countless other best practices I didn’t mention. What are yours?

I came home from a weekend trip to Atlanta to find my apartment swarming with fruit flies. Luckily, I’ve done battle with these little bastards before… (I keep fresh fruit and don’t spend much time at home) By the next morning all the fruit flies were gone. Here’s how I did it.

1. Build the trap
2. Hide the prize

1. Build the trap

The trap alone is SUPER effective at eliminating flies (the trap pictured above had been on my counter for about an hour – those are flies inside).

You’ll need:

• red wine and/or apple-cider vinegar
• a tall glass
• paper
• tape

Pour about 1/2 an inch of bait into the glass. I find 50% apple cider vinegar 50% red wine works the best, but flies will go for either one alone, too. Next, roll a sheet of paper into a funnel with a hole slightly larger than a fruit fly and use tape to secure it. Finally, put the funnel into the glass pointy-side-down and use tape to ensure a tight seal around the rim of the glass.

The top of the funnel should be an inch or two from the liquid in the bottom of the glass. The flies smell the bait, fly in through the funnel and can’t find their way out… stupid flies!

I release the flies outside if they opt for the trap; otherwise I clap them to death with great relish… A first in this particular battle was when killed 2 flies with 1 clap! I rule!

2. Hide the prize

While it’s nice to have bananas, avocados, and kiwis out to ripen you have to make sacrifices in war…

Take out the trash, wipe down counters and the stove/range to remove any crumbs or oil remnants, and put all the fruit in the fridge overnight – cold kills any eggs and hiding other food drives flies toward the trap.

Finally, pour a little bleach to make key areas especially inhospitable:

• In sink drains
• In toilet bowls
• In bottoms of trash cans

Epilogue

Getting rid of other food and setting up “the trap” should leave you fruit-fly-free in 6-12 hours. I use this trick a few times every year!

A proactive habit I get into in the summer is having a “peels” trash bag and a “trash” trash bag. The “peels” go out every morning while “trash” goes out when it’s full… this helps keep the fruit flies from coming back.

These are a few tips, tricks, and time-savers that I’ve learned that have made packing an afterthought instead of a project…

What to buy

If you’re going to do this, you may as well do it right. Pick up a few essentials and invest some time up-front.

Start with a sturdy rolling carry-on. Bags are like shoes – If you go all cheap, you’ll regret it later. Some features you want to look for: big wheels and a tall handle. The little bitty casters are handy, but they break fast. As for the tall handle, nothing is worse than catching your ankle while you run for a plane.

I recently bought a Victorinox NXT and I love it. Aparently, it’s also elephant proof.

Consider buying flat workout shoes. I talked about Vibram five fingers in an earlier post. I work out in these while I’m on the road. Running in them feels amazing, and not having to pack normal (gigantic) running shoes saves a ton of space.

Double up on stuff you always take. There is some stuff you take every time you travel (toiletries, workout gear, chargers). Leaving it in your suitcase ensures you don’t forget anything and saves the time normally spent hunting for all of it each time you pack.

Pick up these other essentials as well: earplugs and an eye mask (sleep is too valuable to risk), nail clippers (useful for nails and great as a multi-purpose tool), and a sewing kit (wardrobe malfunctions happen).

What to do

Make a packing list and stick to it. It’s a short time investment up-front but saves a lot of headache down the road. If I try to pack all hap-hazard, I bring too much AND forget something! Here’s my go-to list for a business trip.

Learn to fold properly. I could do a whole post on folding (and I might), but here’s the short version: Fold suit jackets like this. Lay t-shirts on top of dress-shirts and pants before you fold them to reduce creasing. When you get to your hotel, hang everything up in the bathroom and run a VERY hot shower. Done.

Ignore security precautions. Unless you have a LOT of liquids in your carry-on, they don’t stop you if you just leave it in your bag. One less thing to worry about.

Share your tips. I know lots of you reading this are pretty jet-set yourselves. Let’s hear your tips in the comments!

I recently worked with a colleague who uses a work-planning structure that breaks big, wide-open questions into actionable next-steps. The Question-Data-Action framework is thorough, thought provoking, and easy to communicate with 4 simple steps:

1. Define key questions
2. Refine to sub-questions
3. Determine what data is needed
4. Identify actions to get the data

Each step gets you closer to an actionable workplan that will make your life easier and help you communicate timing and deliverables with clients and colleagues.

The 4 steps

1. Defining key questions is the first step of any pursuit. These should be the questions that sum up what are you trying to learn or accomplish. They may come from a manager or client, but ultimately defining and agreeing on a written set of key questions ensures everyone is aligned and prevents scope-creep as the project gets under-way.

2. Refining to sub-questions may or may not be necessary depending on the complexity of your key questions. Create sub questions by asking what you would need to know to answer each key question. Iterate until you’re at a set of answerable sub- (or sub-sub-) questions. You end with a tree of increasingly-specific questions. Check the tree by working your way back up. Make up answers to each question and think, “if I had the answer to each of these sub-questions, could I answer the question above?” If not, revise your questions or add new ones!

3. Determining data/analyses needed to answer each question will depend on your resources (i.e., what data/analyses will be easy), your level of rigor (i.e., how thorough do you need to be?), and your judgement (i.e., what will really help you answer the question?). Again check the needs by asking, “If I had this data (or completed this analysis), would I be able to answer the question?”

4. Identifying actions to get the data or do the analysis is the critical last-step that gives you an actionable work-plan. For each necessary piece of data or analysis, think about next steps to get it or create it. This could mean conducting primary research and analysis, searching online, tapping friends/clients/colleagues, or a host of other techniques to get your hands on what you need! Take the time here to think how long getting each piece will take.

Tips on communication

Building a workplan with this structure eases communication with your managers, direct reports, and clients because each engages at a different level.

Everyone involved in the project will benefit from the clearly defined objectives and scope that result from articulating and agreeing on key questions.

Managers and clients can engage on key-questions and sub-questions to feel confident that the team is bringing a valuable answer with an approach that makes sense. The presence of actionable next-steps and a hierarchy of questions gives the ability to predict timelines with more accuracy.

Direct reports can engage on sub-questions, data, and next steps. Sub-questions inform work-streams and facilitate delegation of work. Direct reports can then create a first-draft of the data/analysis needs and next-steps. As a manager, you can then suggest improvements and ensure the level of rigor matches available resources.

Examples

Here is a quick example answering the key question, “Where should my friends and I go to dinner?”

How will you use this? Have you had success with it, or can you suggest improvements? Put it in the comments!

Experience questions break into two types; simple chit-chat questions and serious in-depth questions. These are both quite important, and I’ll talk about how to prepare for each:

Preparing for Chit-Chat Interview Questions

You should probably have 30-90 sec. answers to a variety of likely “chit-chat” questions in mind.

• “So, why are you interested in consulting?”
• “What is the lay-person version of what your thesis is about?”
• “Why abandon your research when it seems so important?”
• “I won’t ask if your interviewing with our competitors, but… why our firm?”
• “How was your morning?”

Have your answers ready. These questions might get asked in the very beginning of the interview before you even know that it has started. This chit-chat can be very important, though. You’ll want to show that you have thought carefully about why you are interested in consulting and why the firm you’re interviewing with is a good fit.

Preparing great answers to these questions can also help you explain what you’re doing to your friends and family!

Example In-Depth Experience Questions

These questions should give you an idea of the kinds of things you’ll be asked. You can make up hundreds more questions by varying the themes in the samples below.

• Give me an example of a time that you had to take a team in a new direction in order to save a project under a tight deadline.
• Tell me about a time when you set a specific goal for yourself and accomplished it.
• What was the biggest challenge within your PhD and why?
• Give me an example of a time when you tried to change someone’s mind in an important situation. (Could be successful or unsuccessful) For this example, try to think of something where the person was very firm about their position?
• Consider a time when you were forced to go against a group decision. How did you know that you had to do what you did, and what did you do afterwards?
• Tell me about a time when you had to tell a superior or supervisor they were wrong.
• Tell me about a time when you worked with someone that was very challenging. Try to think of a situation in which you had to directly confront this person.
• Recall a time when you had to confront someone for poor work on a project.
• Tell me about a time when you had to influence a large group of people (try to think of something that isn’t school/work related).
• Give me an example of when you had to lead a team through a crisis?
• Many times in consulting we have to work directly with CEOs and other executives. Tell me about an experience when you had to meet with someone very high up in an organization.

Preparing for In-Depth Experience Questions

In-depth questions like those above help the interviewer gauge how you think and how you have solved real problems in your past. They also will cause you to show a lot of your personality if you answer them well. Here are some things to remember.

Prepare at least 5 stories. Each story should be flexible and detailed enough to answer two or three of the sample questions depending on how you tell it. Having at least 5 stories in mind should give you plenty of variety to handle any question the interviewer throws at you.

Use a compelling title. If you have a story about how you had to convince your boss to re-write a chapter in a grant application (for example), Don’t just jump into the story. First, present the title: “This story is about a time when I influenced my supervisor to make a last-minute change that saved our group’s funding.” The short, exciting synopsis sets the tone for the rest of the question.

Have at least 10 minutes of talk for each story. Hopefully you’ll get some breaks, and you won’t have to talk the whole time. Fill your stories with hooks that deliberately bait the interviewer into asking further questions (which you also have answers to). Be interactive throughout the story. Ask the interviewer if they’re following and stop to answer any tangential questions the interviewer may have.

Don’t forget your structure. Prepare by remembering all the details, writing down key bits of information, and trying to impose a structure on the narrative. Come up with lots of 3-bullet-lists to use in the story. 3 Observations you had, 3 problems you faced, 3 things you tried, etc. These will lend structure to the story, help the interviewer know where you’re headed, and keep you focused.

Consider a layout like this:

1. Start with a hook or “headline” (10 sec.)
2. Set up by telling why its important and how it relates to the question (~30-60 sec.)
3. Mention what the 3 major problems were. (10 sec.)
4. Talk about the 1st problem and the solution (120 sec.)
5. Talk about a 2nd problem and the solution (120 sec.)
6. Talk about a 3rd problem and the solution (120 sec.)
7. Give a nice conclusion and epilogue and say what you learned. (30-60 sec.)

Be very detailed about your thought process. Shoot to give details without being prompted, but realize that the interviewer might jump in and ask for clarifications here and there. A big difference between consulting interviews and normal interviews is that consultants want the details. Be sure to tell why you did things, how you reached your conclusions, and what specifically you did about them.

It’s like being at a party. You want to be engaging, suspenseful, and impressive. You should let people jump in to ask questions, but you should be able to roll with the story if no one does. This also means you should use real stories. Pull from research, class projects, past jobs, personal life, hobbies, etc., but don’t make stuff up.

Other ideas for practicing for experience interviews? Leave a comment.

Conclusion

Well, folks. That wraps it up. We’ve covered building your brand, honing your resume, prepping for case interviews, and now, talking about your experience. With these tools and some careful practice you should be able to go in and rock those interviews!

I wish you the best of luck in finding the consulting job of your dreams!

• Series Intro: A PhD’s Guide to Getting a Consulting Job
• Part 1: Branding Yourself and Making Making a “Wow” Resume
• Part 2: Preparing for Your Case Interview to Get Bulletproof
• Part 3: Talking about Your Experience and Sounding like a Bad-ass

Disclaimer: I recently went through the application and interview process with a top firm, came out with an offer, and signed it! In this series, I share my experience and give some ideas for people on a similar path. However, at the time of writing (July 2009), I do not have any inside information on how any company conducts their hiring. These are just my thoughts!

Despite all the hype, twitter seems unbelievably stupid…

I thought so too when I first tried out the service, but by taking a different approach it is starting to seem like a useful tool.

You should follow me on twitter (@shawnlankton).

If you’ve never used twitter: It is essentially the same technology as facebook status updates. Short messages from people you ‘follow’ get collected in a single stream for you to quickly review when you’ve got a spare second.

Twitter as a micro-blog

I keep this blog to write long-ish articles and posts about topics that interest me and that I think can help you, the reader. However, on a good day there are lots more ideas and discoveries than time. Enter, the microblog.

Twitter provides a medium to post very short ideas, comments, and links to interesting content found elsewhere. I endeavor to make each tweet a stub for a potential blog post… just without my elegant prose. That means every time I post something I want it to be useful to the reader, not just some pointless info about my life. This suddenly transforms twitter from a self-indulgent distraction into the realm of useful tools for recording ideas and adding value.

Lots of people I follow use this same formula.

Twitter as ubiquitous content capture

When you find a link, hear a quote, or get an idea that you’d like to remember and share, you may not be near a computer. Twitter can be your ubiquitous information capture tool in those cases. By sending an SMS or updating twitter via iPhone the content gets sent to a centralized, searchable, shareable place to be found or referenced later.

Twitter as a social tool

Right now my list of followers and follow-ees is rather short. To really leverage the power of the medium there need to be lots of connections between friends and colleagues interested in similar subject matter. This gives you the opportunity to get quick answers and collaborations by asking questions of your followers and responding to their questions.

If you want to see my microblog without joining twitter, an embedded version can be accessed via the μblog tab at the top of the page.

Any other ideas on how to use twitter? Leave a comment.

It took a bit of searching, but eventually I found RSS feeds for many of the journals I’m interested in and loaded them into google reader. It is now quick to scroll through new abstracts as papers appear on-line prior to publication. Below are links to RSS feeds for some computer vision journals I’m keeping up with.

RSS Feeds for Computer Vision Journals

Finding RSS Feeds for Other Journals

It takes a bit of hunting sometimes, but I can’t imagine that a journal would not have RSS these days. IEEE Journals are easy to find, and I found that inezha.com was a good resource for finding some of the other ones I have listed.

Any good feeds I missed?
Other good ideas for keeping current?

Leave them in the comments.

Brown noise is similar to white noise; it sounds like random static. However, brown noise is at a slightly lower pitch so it’s easier to listen to. That means that I can work for hours without hurting my ears!

You can download some free random noise MP3s to play on your computer or iPod, or listen to some right from your browser. Both work great.

This works better than my previous method (using ear plugs) because the sounds aren’t just blocked, they’re all scrambled up by the static. I get so much input from my ears that my brain ignores sound all together and focuses on work!

Anybody else tried this? How else do you keep focused?