Author: William Gallagher

Get paid to quit your job

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I’ve worked with people for whom I would’ve chipped in a lot of money if it meant they’d leave. But it’s becoming a thing. If you can have a thing where only two firms do it.

Riot Games, the maker of the hugely popular PC game “League of Legends,” pays unhappy employees up to $25,000 to quit their jobs — even if they just joined the company. The company does this because it doesn’t want to keep staffers who are struggling or who aren’t a good fit with the company culture.
“Rather than allow mismatches to fester, we want to resolve them quickly. This is good for the company, and good for the professional. … we’ll learn from this and make better hiring decisions as a result,” the company said in a blog post announcing the program.

This Company Pays Employees $25,000 To Quit — No Strings Attached — Even If They Were Just Hired – Jim Edwards, Business Insider (20 June 2014)

I’ve not heard of Riot Games or of League of Legends but I have heard of a little startup company called Amazon:

The second program is called Pay to Quit. It was invented by the clever people at Zappos, and the Amazon fulfillment centers have been iterating on it. Pay to Quit is pretty simple. Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit. The first year the offer is made, it’s for $2,000. Then it goes up one thousand dollars a year until it reaches $5,000. The headline on the offer is “Please Don’t Take This Offer.” We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay. Why do we make this offer? The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want. In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.

Amazon Pays Its Staff Up To $5,000 If They Quit — No Strings Attached – Jim Edwards (10 April 2014)

You can see how either system might be abused but you can also see that you wouldn’t want to be offered the get-out money from Riot. Maybe if you qualified for the full $25,000 you might think about it some more, but even in computing, it doesn’t look great to have a two-month job on your CV and the explanation that they paid you to go away and never come back.

I’d rather be online

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Forbes magazine profiles a ‘digital detox’ camp and on the one hand, it has some nice photography of a typewriter and on the other, the people in it make some valid points about our dependency on technology.

Unfortunately, I have a very low threshold for tolerating happy-clappy felgercarb and it is way lower than this. Way, way, way lower.

William aka “When Can I Leave”

Someone else’s OmniFocus 2 for Mac review

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There is definitely an irony to how I keep not getting around to writing a review of OmniFocus, the software that keeps me on track with everything I have or want to do. I think it’s because the software is so important to me that I want to do it justice. Anyway, here’s a review from someone who wasn’t an existing user of the earlier version, isn’t that fussed about any To Do managers, and says up front that they came to OmniFocus as a skeptic.

Spoiler alert: they like it now.

I don’t agree with how it argues the iPhone version is too expensive, though, and they are mistaken about the iPad one:

This brings us to our one main criticism, though: Omni Group have chosen to make the iPhone (and forthcoming iPad) version of Omnifocus equal to the Mac version in virtually all respects, thus allowing mobile-centric users to buy and use just the mobile version alone if they choose. While we applaud this, it also means that Mac users who have paid $40 for the regular desktop version ($80 for the Pro version) will have to pay an additional $20 for the iPhone version, essentially just for syncing and quick-entry or editing in the case of some users. The company may want to consider also creating a more lightweight free or low-cost “companion version” for those who primarily use the Mac version and just want some basic on-the-go functions.

Hands on: Omnifocus 2 for Mac – MacNN (22 June 2014)

The iPad mistake first: there already is one and has been for some time. Their confusion is that it is on its first version and a second is currently being developed. Last September we got OmniFocus 2 for iPhone, now we have OmniFocus 2 for Mac, at some point soon we’ll have OmniFocus 2 for iPad.

It’s an interesting little dilemma for me as someone who recommends this software a lot. Rewind a beat to before the 2 versions began coming out: it was very easy to say you should buy the iPad edition. That was easily the best with a mix of OmniFocus’s powerful features and a particularly easy design. OmniFocus for iPhone was fine but you would struggle to use it without one of the other versions in your life. And OmniFocus 1 for Mac was this bionic behemoth that had more power than you’d need to crack a concrete slab but was extremely hard to use.

Now OmniFocus 2 for Mac is the easiest to use and, I think, the best version. I like the iPad one but it’s weird how old it seems compared to the new design. And where I used to always turn to my iPad when I was doing a lot of OmniFocus work like the recommended regular reviews, now I tend to save that up until I’m at my Mac.

Nonetheless, you can do everything most users would use most often usefully on the iPad version. If it weren’t that we know for certain that – and don’t know at all when – there will be an OmniFocus 2 for iPad, I would say the iPad is still the one to get when you can only get one. It’s portable, powerful and easy to use. OmniFocus 2 for iPhone is much improved on its previous version – I liked the previous version a lot, I just like this one more – but I still believe the iPhone version needs one of the others.

MacNN thinks this more strongly than I do. Its argument is that you shouldn’t have to pay so much for an iPhone OmniFocus app if you’re only going to use it to add the odd task in during the day. I’d say that’s fair enough, but there are other ways to add tasks. If you don’t have OmniFocus for iPhone, just email a task into OmniFocus. I do this a lot wherever I am because so much of my work comes through email. It’s just tap, forward, send, gone into my To Do list.

So I don’t agree that one has to use OmniFocus 2 for iPhone. But I suspect you will. I’m not certain now how I got into this but I’m pretty sure I bought the iPhone one first and tried to last with that for a while, tried to get used to it and to test it out. But caved within a day or two and bought the iPad one. Then, inexorably, I bought the Mac one.

That was all version 1 of the software and if you’re wondering, yes, I did. I bought version 2. Both OmniFocus 2 for iPhone, on the day it was released, and OmniFocus 2 for Mac, on the day it was released. Individually they are more expensive than many To Do applications and jointly they are a punch to the bank account – but only if they aren’t right for you. If they are, they are worth the cost and then some.

Wait, this is turning into my own review. I should really get on that.

Boredom is vital

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Seriously, the last time I was bored was in 1979. But I should take the time to get bored again, according to psychoanalyst Adam Phillips:

“Boredom … protects the individual, makes tolerable for him the impossible experience of waiting for something without knowing what it could be.”

Legendary Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on Why the Capacity for Boredom Is Essential for a Full Life – Maria Popova, Brainpickings (19 June 2014)

Brainpickings writer Popova expands on this in her full feature:

When was the last time you were bored — truly bored — and didn’t instantly spring to fill your psychic emptiness by checking Facebook or Twitter or Instagram? The last time you stood in line at the store or the boarding gate or the theater and didn’t reach for your smartphone seeking deliverance from the dreary prospect of forced idleness? A century and a half ago, Kierkegaard argued that this impulse to escape the present by keeping ourselves busy is our greatest source of unhappiness. A century later, Susan Sontag wrote in her diary about the creative purpose of boredom. And yet ours is a culture that equates boredom with the opposite of creativity and goes to great lengths to offer us escape routes.

Learn more from Popova and follow her links through to Phillips’ book On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored (UK Edition, US Edition).

Sushi is a McGuffin in this theory of life

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But it’s an interesting one. Really this is about discipline and patience but Creativity Post sums up a theory of living well and productively under the catch-all heading of Seven Life Lessons from Making Sushi.

It begins:

To get a seat you must make a reservation months in advance. The courses are carefully planned and the creation and serving of the meal is a multi-course symphony of sushi that some guests have even described as “stressful” yet an experience like no other. Jiro himself serves each course to his guests and carefully examines their faces as they taste his elegant works of edible art. What follows is the wisdom distilled from the great sushi chef on how to master your craft.

1. Learn from the best. Sometimes you must learn to fail before you learn to succeed. Yamamoto, a renowned Japanese food writer, says: “When you work for Jiro, he teaches you for free. But, you have to endure ten years of training. If you persevere for ten years you will acquire the skills to be recognized as a first-rate chef.”

In Jiro’s restaurant, many apprentices do not make it to the next level. Yet there are those who persevere. For example, one of the apprentice sushi chefs tried over 400 times to make egg sushi that met Jiro’s standards of being worthy to be served. When he finally received Jiro’s approval, he was overwhelmed with joy and cried.

Take away lesson: Only when you understand what it feels like to fail and try again will you be able to cherish the moment when you achieve success.

Dr Jonathan Wai, The Creativity Post (20 June 2014)

Not the takeaway I’m thinking of now. But despite my rumbling stomach, let’s both read on for the other six lessons.

I am fabulous and you love me

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Oh, stop looking like that. Give me this one, would you?

You’ve heard this idea that looking yourself in the mirror and saying “I’m a tiger!” will turn you into a salesperson. I can barely write about this stuff without feeling itchily sarcastic, so I liked this paragraph on Lifehacker:

Some people have a level of success using self-affirmation mantras like “I’m great and people like me.” Others find them trite and unhelpful. The distinction may boil down to self-esteem and, more importantly, how much self-affirmation causes conflicting internal thoughts.

Positive Self-Affirmation May Backfire on People with Low Self-Esteem – Eric Ravenscraft, Lifehacker (20 June 2014)

I’m listening. Tell me more.

A study conducted at the University of Waterloo found that repeating self-affirmation statements like “I’m a loveable person” boosted self-esteem in some subjects. However, in subjects with already low self-esteem, they found that repeating the mantra only made the situation worse. They theorize that this is because the conflict between self-perception and the statements themselves caused more stress, leading the subject to feel worse.

Read the full article.

Clean your desk. Go on.

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One half of my office desk is fantastically tidy and clean. Because Angela needed to use it. I cleared it all up so she could sit there without feeling queasy. But really I just moved everything to the other half which is simply frightening.

But go on, writer David Burkus, tell me what half tidy and half appalling means:

We can learn to structure environments to suit our goals and help use more effectively achieve those goals. If you’re trying to bring some more order, healthier choices, and a more generous perspective into your life, then maybe you should start by cleaning up your office and home. However, if you need a creative insight or breakthrough idea, that same tidy office could be stifling your creative thinking.

Clean Your Desk for Productivity (but Keep It Messy for Creativity – 99U (20 June 2014)

He can’t, can he? But he has more to say.

No Eureka moments

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Remember how Wuthering Heights has this weird structure where it’s really a story told to someone who tells it to someone who tells us? (I may have lost track there.) Here’s a story where I’m telling you something Time magazine says author Keith Sawyer recounts the story of researcher Vera John-Steiner who talked to creative geniuses.

She asked ’em “What nourishes sustained productivity in the lives of creative individuals?“ and she expected some bits about eurekas. Instead:

Creativity started with the notebooks’ sketches and jottings, and only later resulted in a pure, powerful idea. The one characteristic that all of these creatives shared— whether they were painters, actors, or scientists— was how often they put their early thoughts and inklings out into the world, in sketches, dashed-off phrases and observations, bits of dialogue, and quick prototypes. Instead of arriving in one giant leap, great creations emerged by zigs and zags as their creators engaged over and over again with these externalized images.

Strokes of Genius: Here’s How the Most Creative People Get Their Ideas – Eric Barker, Time (21 June 2014)
http://time.com/2907776/strokes-of-genius-heres-how-the-most-creative-people-get-their-ideas/

Guy Kawasaki on innovation

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He’s an interesting guy. Kawasaki was originally best known for being an Apple Evangelist – official. That was his job title. He’s written a book called The Macintosh Way that’s still pretty good and another one I’ve forgotten that isn’t so great. But I like this talk. Kawasaki’s got this line that we should strive to change the world and there are plenty of people who say that. In fact, hang on…

Go change the world.

There you are, I’m another one. But Kawasaki does it alongside a pragmatism. Specifically this: he argues that changing the world is indeed a ideal goal but since we have to eat to survive, people who really do change the world tend to make some money.

He’s interesting, he’s funny, this is a TEDx talk, do take a look: