Begin at the beginning, and do not allow yourself to gratify a mere idle curiosity by dipping into the book, here and there. This would very likely lead to your throwing it aside, with the remark “This is much too hard for me!, and thus losing the chance of adding a very large item to your stock of mental delights.
A Random Walk in Science, writers include Lewis Carroll (UK edition, US edition)
Via Brainpickings, this feature is about Carroll’s four rules of learning and what he tortoise.
Previously… I told you about Apple’s long-standing Human Interface Guidelines that I read first as a paperback book in the 1990s but is now a free iBook. I just find the intense thought and detail fascinating, the care and the thought. Take a look at me enthusing and then get the iBook too.
Now Google has something in the same ilk. I’m telling you this moments after learning about it so I don’t yet know how interesting it is. But one of the key reasons I don’t use the free Google Docs is how clunky it is. I do change my mind every time I see that price, but still, it’s just not a pleasant experience and I would be facing that unpleasant design for 12-15 hours a day if I used it.
So I am very interested in what design improvements Google has been doing. If you are too, take a look right here.
The downside of having our phones with us all the time is that we have our phones with us all the time. We end up getting calls we don’t want and there are times when we either have to make calls we’d prefer not to – or we are obliged to give out our number. You can’t stop all that but you can make it less of a problem.
Next time you get Unknown Caller and it is another sales call, do whatever you normally do and after you’ve got that out of you system, put their number into your system. Take that moment to add it under the name Spam. And the next one who calls, also Spam.
After a while you will build up this contact called Spam with an awful lot of phone numbers. But it’s surprising how often the same spam numbers call you so while this won’t cure all such calls, you will regularly see the name Spam as Caller ID and can just tap the decline button.
As for making calls, get a burner phone. You’ve seen this in movies: the baddies and/or the goodies who are falsely accused of being baddies and are on the run, they all get burner phones. They’re just another mobile phone that you buy anonymously and you only use for a specific job before throwing them away or planting them on your enemy.
Cheaper and handier than buying new phones all the time, you can just buy an app. Burner is a free iPhone app that gives your phone a new, temporary number. You only get a very limited-use number for free but you can buy new temp ones and delete the old ‘uns at any time.
If you’re thinking that you simply can’t remember the last time you were on the lamb, pursued by the police forces of Illinois and needing to run some interference for the mob, you can also use Burner for eBay. Craigslist, eBay, anything where you need to give out your number to someone but, seriously, you don’t want them phoning you for the next ten years trying to be your buddy.
I don’t get that a lot. But most every woman I know does. For them – or at least for women in the US – here’s my favourite phone trick that will surely, hopefully come to the UK too:
The experience is all-too familiar for many women. An overly aggressive suitor asks for your number. You feel uncomfortable or unsafe, manipulated or just want to end the interaction. Sometimes, it feels easier to hand over your digits than to reject the person outright; but you don’t want to field unwanted text messages or phone calls.
Been there? Over it? Go ahead and memorize this number: (669) 221-6251.
That’s the hotline for the new Feminist Phone Intervention, which automatically replies to calls or text messages from unwelcome admirers with an automatically-generated quote by renowned feminist writer, theorist and professor, bell hooks.
As the anonymous saviors behind the hotline write on Tumblr, “Why give any old fake number, when you can have bell hooks screen your calls?”
I’m afraid I hadn’t heard of bell hooks. In following that link through to Feminist Phone Intervention, I didn’t learn a lot more but it was a lot more sobering. This is that site’s explanation for why its makers set up the service:
because we’re raised to know it’s safer to give a fake phone number than to directly reject an aggressive guy.
because we’re raised to know that evasion or rejection can be met with violence.
because women are still threatened and punished for rejecting advances.
because (669) UGH-ASIF, WTF-DUDE, and MAJR-SHADE were taken.
because why give any old fake number, when you can have bell hooks screen your calls?
so next time, just give out this number: (669) 221-6251
tech to protect.
Not a great world, is it?
We’ve had a meeting, us seven dwarves and, I’m sorry, we don’t need you.
Once you’ve got 7 people in a decision-making group, each additional member reduces decision effectiveness by 10%, according to Marcia W. Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, and Paul Rogers, authors of Decide & Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization. Thus, a group of 17 or more rarely makes any decisions.
Have they been sitting in on BBC meetings?
Via Lifehacker.
Back in the olden days, like thousands and thousands of years ago, you’d propose enough times that someone said yes. And then you were off to the races, if the races were myriad wedding-planning problems.
Back in the not very olden days, like an hour ago, you’d be considered fancy if you had an actual wedding planner. A person. Films have been made about this.
But today, you need your smartphone and a whole category of apps made just for you:
Wedding apps have become increasingly popular in the last few years as millennials begin to wed. “We got Facebook in college, we got the first iPhones,” 27-year-old Ajay Kamat, who co-founded the photo-timeline app Wedding Party, told TIME. “We have an expectation that when we travel or shop or do anything, there are services and apps that will help make that experience better for us.”
These smart apps—which are trying to break in to the $53.3 billion wedding industry—help brides and grooms send invites, organize guests, hire local vendors, gather all the photos guests take, register for gifts and crowdsource money for honeymoon activities. Apps like Appy Couple, Carats & Cake and Wanderable are becoming favorites among savvy couples who want to streamline the logistics associated with events like bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, wedding and honeymoon.
With This App, I Thee Wed – Eliana Dockterman, Time magazine (12 June 2014)
Bet the iPhone apps are better than the Android ones.
From New York Magazine (via 99U): it takes just three seconds to break your concentration and make it hard to carry on with your task. So yes, sure, answering the phone is guaranteed to do that – but so is just hearing it ring.
Things like text messages, social media notifications, or a random email notice may be all it takes to distract you. Even if you don’t read the messages, check the notification, or open the email, as this new research shows: all it takes to break flow is a quick chime from your browser or buzz from your phone.
Even a 3-Second Distraction Can Screw You Up – Melissa Dahl, New York Magazine (14 May 2014)
Dahl’s article doesn’t say a huge amount more but it does reference the original research so check that out. And hat tip to 99U for spotting it all.
I would like this because it fits how strongly I believe you should get on with one thing at a time:
I see a lot of abandoned websites out there in the world. What a turnoff to go to your website and see you haven’t blogged since 2012 or updated your copyright date either. Have you lost interest? If you’ve lost the love for that website and that business, why will anyone else love it? What a waste!
And yet you don’t want to let it go. I get that. You’ve put time and money into it way back and you have a sense that there’s potential in it for you. One day. And so you keep it on your project list but you haven’t got time to attend to it properly or give it the love it deserves right now and that fact alone is emotionally draining.
And you’ve got one of those for every business idea you’ve ever had but you’ve not made any decent money from any of the businesses or websites because you haven’t got enough time or focus to do that project justice.JUST PICK ONE!
One thing at a time, Sweet Jesus.
That’s the solution. It’s a horse race. Pick the one you believe will win and put all your time and energy into that one. Either your favourite or the favourite you will back to win the money race, the one which will get you into financial integrity. Make the others your hobbies in your leisure time, if you must, but please but your 9-5 business focus on the front-runner.
Morgan does often point out that she’s talking to men as well as women but the interesting thing for me is how much I agree with her about abandoned sites. If I’m working with you or need to pitch, I will check out your website and it does tell a tale if you haven’t updated it in years. This is one reason why a blog is a particularly good tool: just regularly writing a new blog post makes your whole site feel fresh because it’s get new material all the time.
She has other points about how and why to concentrate like this, do check out her full piece.
Read all about it – not only productivity news, not only an Android Buy of the Week, but also the sad tale of how I drooled over someone next to me at an event.
To find out more about the news and of how well she did or didn’t take that, read this week’s free newsletter now – and then go get it sent to you automatically every week.
Earlier this week I was advising some schoolkids on their pitch to a TV company. Last weekend I was directing a group of kids for a show. And in both places, I had the same advice for them:
You are on until it is done
In the case of the show I directed, the group of kids had to act as if they were on stage from the moment the first of their parents arrived. Perfect behaviour, everybody with a job to do, the show has already started. They did it and they were ace.
With the pitching, each group had up to six people all contributing and it’s so hard: once you’ve said your bit and the next person has taken over, you automatically feel relieved that it’s all done. But it isn’t. It is on from the moment you step onto the stage and it is on until the moment you reach the bar. (An age-appropriate bar, obviously.)
I treat interviews the same way. And this week learn the following that makes me glad I do:
When David Cancel interviews potential candidates for engineering jobs at HubSpot, he brings a cup of water into the interview with him. At the end of the meeting, the chief product officer leaves the cup on the table and waits to see what the interviewee does with the garbage. If the person picks up the trash, he is probably a good fit for the job. If he doesn’t, that signals he probably wouldn’t work well on the team.
It might sound like an unfair trick or gimmick, but Cancel insists that it works. “I’ve tested it over 100 times at this point, and it has always turned out to be pretty accurate for me,” Cancel told Fast Company. “The people who didn’t go and reach to take the cup were always the people who weren’t a great cultural fit.” Since starting at HubSpot in 2011 when HubSpot acquired his startup Performable, he has hired more than 100 of the company’s almost 700 employees.
That is the only trick this fella reveals but others in this company-I’ve-never-heard-of-before use and you will quickly glance at the ceiling at some of them. But you’ll also readily understand why they do it and what benefit it gives them. Read the whole piece.
Some nice typography on a few of the screens in this, if you can really still call them screens.