Some of it just looks like being close to fireworks but some is startling and I wanted to share it with you:
Author: William Gallagher
Regrets, I’ve had a few
Such as if I told you about them, I’d have one more. But there is an argument that regret can be good for you. I can see that. There’s a thing I regret from a few years ago that I was forced to confront yesterday and it was such an easy confrontation, it left such a little mark compared to what it would’ve done at the time, that I think I’ve grown.
Or aged.
But Time writer Eric Barker says not only is regret good for you but you can get the benefits without all the feeling crap. I think that might be crap, but:
Why? Even though it’s very unpleasant, we see value in regret. We can learn from it.
But can’t we learn without the godawful nagging pain? That’s the real question. And the answer is we can.
But we need to understand how regret works before we can beat it. Let’s get some answers.
Read How to Overcome Regret and Seize the Day — Scientifically.
Running with scissors
Not productive, at least not for you and I, but mesmerising to watch:
Is this safe? Using passwords as positive reinforcement
I honestly thought that this was just me – and I thought I couldn’t tell you because writing it here would mean I was putting online a Very Big Clue to one of my key passwords. That last bit may yet be true and I may yet regret it if I’m not circumspect enough, but it isn’t just me and it is useful. Just be wary of this: take it as a thought experiment rather than a recommendation. But:
You can set a password that helps you mentally
My example. A couple of years ago now, I had an important project on and it was many things from exciting to fun but with a dollop of queasiness in the middle because it was so big. Literally big: not as in important, though it was, but physically heavy and prolonged lifting. The kind of thing that you think you’ll start tomorrow, it’ll be fine.
I changed one of the passwords I use every day to be approximately a word from this project. I wasn’t entirely daft, I didn’t use a single plain word, I dressed it up with 3s instead of Es, that kind of thing. But during the life of that project, I reckon I typed that password six or seven hundred times. And each time, every single each time, it kept the project in my head.
The project is long done now and I’ve changed the password, I don’t have anything on at the moment that particularly makes me want to do this password trick again. But friend-of-the-site Daniel Hardy just sent me a link to this article on Medium, How a Password Changed My Life. Its writer, Mauricio Estrella was going through a divorce and not going through it all that well, when he gets into work in a hurry and his computer won’t let him on until he’s changed his password.
I was furious that morning. Tuesday, 9:40 a.m. – It was so hot that my torso was already sweaty even though I just got to work. I was late. I was still wearing my helmet. I think I forgot breakfast. Something tastes like cigarette in my mouth. I need to get shit done before my 10 a.m. meeting and all I have in front of me is a huge waste of my time.
So there it was… This input field with a pulsating cursor, waiting for me to type a password that I’ll have to re-enter for the next 30 days. Many times during the day. Then, letting all the frustration go, I remembered a tip I heard from my former boss.
I’m gonna use a password to change my life.
It was obvious that I couldn’t focus on getting things done with my current lifestyle and mood. Of course, there were clear indicators of what I needed to do – or what I had to achieve – in order to regain control of my life, but we often don’t pay attention to these clues.
My password became the indicator. My password reminded me that I shouldn’t let myself be victim of my recent break up, and that I’m strong enough to do something about it.
My password became: “Forgive@h3r”
How a Password Changed My Life – Mauricio Estrella, Medium (15 May 2014)
Now, he doesn’t and I don’t want to get into the details of his divorce. It’s true what you’re thinking, there are two sides to this, but I think divorce is such an overwhelming thing that when you’re going through it, the sheer scale means you can only handle there being one side. Your side. So whether his ex would agree or not, for him “forgive her” was central to his coping and recovery.
In my mind, I wrote “Forgive her” everyday, for one month.
That simple action changed the way I looked at my ex wife. That constant reminder that I should forgive her, led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into.
He’s okay now and one hopes his ex is too. But having used this password as positive reinforcement, he now uses other passwords to do similar things. He used it to stop smoking (“I shit you not”) and to motivate himself into things.
Read the full piece over on Medium for exactly what he did and exactly what his passwords were for them.
It’s not enough to have all your work with you
It has to really be with you and you need to know what it all is.
Follow. Earlier this week, I did a trio of writing workshops at a university and I think it went great: I had a tremendous time. (Quick aside? It was all for school kids who were being shown the university and I learnt afterwards that as well as the main schools I’d been told were coming, there was a small contingent from my own old one. I found out far too late to ask who was from there so it is a little bit freaky. I have this week taught Year 10 kids from my own school and I don’t know who they were.)
After all that was done, though, there was a presentation and if there had been enough time, each of us writers working there that day could’ve performed a piece of their work. I usually write books and scripts, things far too long to rattle off in a couple of minutes. But while Cat Weatherill told a story and Alan Kurly McGeachie recited a poem with verve and gusto, I searched my iPad.
I’d been asked during the presentation if I had something I could read and I did say yes.
But.
There was no internet reception in that hall.
So even though I could see some items in Evernote, I couldn’t open them. (You can choose to make a notebook and all its contents be permanently available on your device, but you have to be connected to the internet to say you want to do that.) Pages and iCloud did better but I couldn’t easily see what I’d got because documents are shown as big icons which is great because you see the shape of page 1 and can readily know what each one is. But it’s rubbish when you’re scrolling through, searching for something short.
I found the start of a novel in Pages. It’s a bit violent but I reckoned it worked. I found a short story called Elite Death Squirrels which fit a lot of the things I’d been talking about with the kids all day.
But both were pretty long, even the excerpt from the novel was just too long. So with time pressing, I didn’t get to perform.
I would’ve liked to. But what narks me is that I wasn’t able to provide what was asked of me. It wasn’t a big deal from their point of view and it came up unexpectedly, yet that is a big deal from my point of view and I imagine I’m always ready. When you’ve done a few workshops you end up having this little mental toolbox of things you can reach for. Mine wasn’t full enough.
What narks me even more, though, is that I did have something the perfect length and which would also have spoken to the points I was making during the day. It’s a two-hander script I wrote during a young writers’ session and I rather like it.
I know I wrote it, I remember the lines, I’m wondering if I even kept it. Because it wasn’t on my iPad and even now, sitting here with full internet, I can’t track it down. That is unusual and disturbing.
But the take away from all this is that you need to keep your work with you and make sure you can actually get to t. Plus, know what you’ve got before you just say ‘yes’ to anyone who asks.
The Zeigarnik effect
Never heard of her. But Bluma Zeigarnik was very perceptive and also diligent: what she noticed and then tested in the 1920s is a human truth that applies today, will surely always apply, and which helps your productivity.
From Alina Vrabie on the Sandglaz Blog:
Some accounts have it that Zeigarnik noticed this effect while she was watching waiters in a restaurant. The waiters seemed to remember complex orders that allowed them to deliver the right combination of food to the tables, yet the information vanished as the food was delivered. Zeigarnik observed that the uncompleted orders seemed to stick in the waiters’ minds until they were actually completed.
Zeigarnik didn’t leave it at that, though. Back in her laboratory, she conducted studies in which subjects were required to complete various puzzles. Some of the subjects were interrupted during the tasks. All the subjects were then asked to describe what tasks they had done. It turns out that adults remembered the interrupted tasks 90% better than the completed tasks, and that children were even more likely to recall the uncompleted tasks. In other words, uncompleted tasks will stay on your mind until you finish them!
If you look around you, you will start to notice the Zeigarnik effect pretty much everywhere. It is especially used in media and advertising. Have you ever wondered why cliffhangers work so well or why you just can’t get yourself to stop watching that series on Netflix (just one more episode)?
As writer Ernest Hemingway once said about writing a novel, “it is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.” But the Zeigarnik effect can actually be used to positively impact your work productivity.
Read how to apply it to your work and to exploit it in yourself – plus see a photo of Dr Zeigarnik herself – on Vrabie’s full article.
The Sudoku approach
My wife Angela Gallagher taught me how to play Sudoku. She did it during one of our hospital visits when she was being treated for breast cancer. Not the happiest of times for either of us, really, yet there were moments. We would routinely spend five or six hours waiting, never knowing how long it would be, and she would play Sudoku on her iPhone. I can picture the seat I was in when she explained the rules and since that day I have played thousands upon thousands of games.
I still associate it with those times, even years later and when her treatment has been a success, but along the way I promise you that I have also learnt some productivity lessons. From a game. From a game Angela taught me in order to burn up some time waiting.
There is something to how you make decisions in this game where you don’t know where a certain number goes but you can make conclusions about it anyway. It’s got to be in one of these two spots, you’ll tell yourself, and that’s no use in that square but it does block out a line. Without knowing where it will go exactly, you do exactly know its impact on the rest of the game.
I think I’ve learnt from this that you don’t have to wait until you have a definite final answer, that sometimes you can draw enough of a conclusion that you can get on with something else.
But without doubt, this is the one thing I have really learned from playing Sudoku:
Walk away and come back later
I have struggled with a Sudoku puzzle, struggled and then when forced to go away to do something else, I’ve regularly come back and immediately seen the answer.
I have been of the school that says you work at something until it is done. But sometimes it’s better to stop, do something else, and then come back.
By the way, I’ve only ever played two Sudoku apps and the first one, the one Angela taught me on, is no longer available in the App Store. But this one is for iPad, this one I’ve taken the screen grab from, that’s Sue Doku which is a just preposterously cheap 69p UK, 99c US. I’ve played this for hundreds of hours now, I can’t believe the pleasure and the productivity lessons I’ve got from a whole 69 pence.
Watch why you should use 1Password
Forget all the security stuff, just look at how it works zooming you to websites and logging in for you.
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Read all the 1Password coverage here on The Blank Screen or just go buy 1Password from its makers, Agile Bits.
Day One journal app goes free (briefly)
Even if you can’t get around to looking at using it yet, grab this now: the acclaimed Day One diary app has just been made free for iOS.
I bought it a couple of years ago and it changed things. I recorded more diary details than I ever normally do and I enjoyed it.
I made a calculated decision to move away from it, though, because I use Evernote so much. I thought it would be the same, that I would journal just as much. Technically speaking, I was right. There’s no real difference between tapping out a diary entry in Day One than there is a note in my Journal notebook in Evernote.
Except that there is a massive difference. For the months I used Day One, I bet I wrote an entry every day. In the year since I stopped, maybe I’ve made two notes.
I should go back to Day One and if you haven’t already, you should go get into it now.
Why you need and how to get energy
The productivity blog Asian Efficiency – blog isn’t a big enough word, AE is a huge deal I should check on more often – argues that you should stuff productivity and instead focus on your energy. Because without energy, you can’t be productive. This feels like a theme of the week for me because writer Thang Pham begins with sleep:
Sleep is the first thing we tend to sacrifice when life gets busy, but it should be the last. When we don’t get enough sleep, our decision making skills, quality of focus and engagement drastically go down. Every book on neuroscience I’ve read verifies this.
The problem is that we tend to mask it with 3 cups of coffee a day but that doesn’t fix the root cause. Then when friends and family come to me for a solution, they look at me weird when I tell them to sleep more.
It sounds so counter-intuitive, but it’s that one thing that actually makes a huge difference.
Forget about time management. Focus on this instead – Thanh Pham, Asian Efficiency (undated)
I’m not sure it’s the best article Asian Efficiency has done. I’ve got a lot of OmniFocus advice from the site before and this one feels a bit lecturing. But the advice in the full piece is good, I think.