Daily crono

Daily crono

I was not feeling exactly well today. I had terrible headache, which more or less prevented all intellectual activities. Physically, I was still present in the risk analysis class, in a group meeting about disruptive technologies, in Apollo class, and I even talked at length about my thesis proposal. We also polished our stakeholder analysis for the Air Policy-class. Quite much anyway. In the evening, I slept for some hours, spent some hours by doing risk analysis assignments, and read something. Rather normal day after all.

It is fashionable to work in groups. Sometimes working with a group is more efficient than working alone, but most of the times it is not. There are several conditions which must hold if the group is going to be more time-efficient than individual work: 1. We must be able to divide the task into parts. These parts must be either independent, so that we can work on them at the same time, or serial (so that different members can work on them after each other. For example: one defines the stucture and contents of a document, and the another does the actual writing). 2. The group must have some common idea what to do. 3. The members of the group must trust in each other. 4. The group members must have same level of ambition. 5. The members must be of the same intellectual capacity. If any of these conditions is not true, working in a group does not add any value. Or it may add value, by allowing us to complete more assignment in a given time, but with very low quality. Now, I understand why working in groups is fashionable. I see two reasons. 1. there is less material for the professors to read, and 2. in the exceptional cases in which the group really adds some value, the results are really good.

My prepaid SIM-card ran out out minutes. So, I have no working mobile phone at the moment. I will get one next weekend, I have already some plans for cheating the phone companies.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs February 2005".