Author: William Gallagher

Turn up the music, I want to work

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Penny Anne O’Donnell of Relaxation Direct came to one of my The Blank Screen workshops and in the Twitter nattering that’s followed since, we were in a conversation about the use of music while working. Her advice:

It depends on the music, learning style and ability to focus. Baroque and Mozart are conducive to focused attention

@relax_therapy

Right now I’m listening to Hallelujah by kd lang from Hymns of the 49th Parallel and – no, wait, now it’s Useless Desires by Patty Driffin. I have an iTunes playlist of music that I especially love. Just single tracks that have got in my head and stayed there, that I have played so often and so much on repeat that I can hear every instrument in my head. I call it Discoveries and there are current 146 songs in it, apparently the lot lasts me 9 hours 34 minutes. Very often now I will start that playlist on shuffle and get to work.

Sometimes it makes me concentrate tremendously, sometimes it doesn’t. (Like now when I’m very conscious of it all because I’ve said to you what’s on. Currently Four Leaf Clover by Abra Moore. Some years ago I discovered Lilith Fair and there is a lot, I mean a lot, of music from that in this playlist.)

When it stops me concentrating, I’ve recently turned to iTunes Radio. You can currently only get this in America but I have both a US and a UK iTunes account so I can swap to it and listen away. At first it was tremendous but lately there’s ever more ads in it and I could get those from commercial radio here. For some reason I can take spoken word, I just can’t work through an ad. I used to listen to BBC Radio 4 all day but it got strange. I’d not consciously realise I’d heard a minute of it but I’d go switch on the TV news and know every detail of every story.

I’d like to now take you through my every musical thought – I’ve started skipping just so I can tell you that next up is You, Me and the Bourgeoisie by The Submarines and then Monday Morning by Liz Lawrence and I Know I Know I Know by Tegan and Sara – but there has to be a better way. A more statistically useful way. And by chance, Lifehacker this week decided to look back into its archive for exactly this purpose:

This week, we’re reviving a particularly old post listing some of the best music and sounds for productivity, as crowdsourced by the Lifehacker commentariat of 2009.P

Does Music Really Make You More Productive? The answer falls somewhere between “Listening to Mozart makes you a genius” and “Just be quiet and work.”P

The most often cited study into the question of music’s effect on the mind involves the so-called Mozart effect, which suggests that listening to certain kinds of music—Amadeus Wolfgang’s classical works, in particular—impacts and boosts one’s spatial-temporal reasoning, or the ability to think out long-term, more abstract solutions to logical problems that arise. The Mozart effect has been overblown and over-promised, and even outright refuted as having “bupkiss” effect, but that doesn’t mean a great mind-juicing playlist can’t be created.

The Best Sounds for Getting Work Done – Lifehacker

Check out the full article because it might be a bit inconclusive about the answer to whether you can work better with music, but it does have a lot of links out to different types you can try.

I’m now on Mississippi by Sheryl Crow, incidentally. Want my complete Discoveries playlist? You’re mad. But here it is:

Across the Universe (Fiona Apple)

Afortunada (Francisca Valenzuela)

After All (Dar Williams)

Ageing Superhero (Newton Faulkner)

Another Green World (Brian Eno)

Answer Me (Barbara Dickson)

Backstreets (Bruce Springsteen)

Because the Night (Patti Smith)

Been It (Cardigans)

The Bell & the Anchor (Catherine Feeny)

Better Love Next Time (Caryl Mack Parker)

The Big Bang Theory theme (full)

Bitch (Meredith Brooks)

Boom Boom Boom (The Iguanas)

Born to Hum (Erin McKeown)

Brand New Day (Ryan Star)

Breathe (Alex Murdoch)

Brilliant Disguise (Bruce Springsteen)

Brimful of Asha (Cornershop)

Broadcast News

Building The Barn (Maurice Jarre)

By Way Of Sorrow (Cry Cry Cry)

Change of Time (Josh Ritter)

Dance Me To the End of Love (Live) (Leonard Cohen)

Dance The Night Away (The Mavericks)

Devils & Dust (Bruce Springsteen)

Don’t Come Around Here No More (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)

Don’t Let Your Feet Touch Ground (Ash Koley)

Don’t Look Back (She & Him)

Dry the Rain (from High Fidelity) (Beta Band)

Dulce (Francisca Valenzuela)

The Enterprise (Star Trek) (Jerry Goldsmith)

Everywhere I Go (Lissie)

Fall At Your Feet (Crowded House)

Fall to Pieces (Avril Lavigne)

Find The River (R.E.M.)

Fine (Julia Fordham & Paul Reiser)

Fools Rush In (She & HIm)

Four Leaf Clover (Abra Moore)

Hallelujah (k.d. lang)

Handle With Care (Traveling Wilburys)

Handy Man (James Taylor)

He Thinks He’ll Keep Her (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

Hero (Regina Spektor)

Ho Hey (The Lumineers)

Hounds of Love (Kate Bush)

How Deep is Your Love (Sharleen Spiteri)

I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) (Stevie Wonder)

I Don’t Wanna Be The One (Patricia Conroy)

I Don’t Want A Lover (Texas)

I Know I Know I Know (Tegan And Sara)

I Turn My Camera On (Spoon)

If Anyone Falls (Stevie Nicks)

If I Can’t Have You (Sharleen Spiteri)

If You Could See (Lucy Kaplansky)

In Demand (Texas)

An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)

It’s Sonata Mozart (The Kids from Fame)

It’s Too Late (Carole King)

Jack and Diane (John Cougar Mellencamp)

Jive Talkin’ (Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately)

King Of The Mountain (Kate Bush)

Kiss Me (Sixpence None the Richer)

Let Loose the Horses (The Rescues)

Life Boat (Miranda Lee Richards)

Linger (The Cranberries)

Linus and Lucy (Vince Guaradli Trio)

Living Next Door to Alice (Smokie)

Love Is Everything (k.d. lang)

Mary’s Prayer (Danny Wilson)

Memories Of East Texas (Michelle Shocked)

The Men Below (Latin Quarter)

Michael And Hope’s New Baby (W.G. Snuffy Walden)

Mississippi (Sheryl Crow)

Monday Morning (Liz Lawrence)

Moonlighting Theme – Al Jarre (Al Jarreau)

Muredete la Lengua (Francisca Valenzuela)

My Freeze Ray (Neil Patrick Harris)

Never Coming Back (Lynn Miles)

New Soul (Yael Naim)

New Year’s Prayer (Jeff Buckley)

Ocean and a Rock (Lisa Hannigan)

One and Only (Mary Black)

One Small Day (Midge Ure)

Ordinary People (Chantal Kreviazuk)

People Have the Power (Patti Smith)

Queen of Hearts (Dave Edmunds)

Radio Radio (Elvis Costello and the Attractions)

Railroad Man (Eels)

Real Gone Kid (Deacon Blue)

Rise Again (The Rankin Family)

Runaway (The Corrs)

Runaway Train (Soul Asylum)

Rush Hour (Jane Wiedlin)

Sad Eyes (Bruce Springsteen)

Sanctuary (Donna De Lory)

Self Control (Laura Branigan)

She Will Have Her Way (Neil Finn)

Shine Silently (Nils Lofgren )

Simon & Simon (extended)

Simple Song (The Shins)

Sleep (Texas)

Soak Up The Sun (Sheryl Crow)

Soda Jerk (Buffalo Tom)

Somebody That I Used to Know (Gotye)

Somebody That I Used to Know (Parody) (Key of Awesome)

Someday We’ll Be Together (Vonda Shepard)

Something New (Tanita Tikaram)

Space 1999 Year Two extended

Speaking With The Angel (Cry Cry Cry)

St Elsewhere (full theme) (Dave Grusin)

Stargate Universe

Stay (Cyndi Lauper)

Stay (Lisa Loeb)

Steppin’ Out (Joe Jackson)

Stop! (Erasure)

Summer in the City (Aztec Camera)

Sweetest Decline (Beth Orton)

Theme from Mission: Impossible (Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen)

The Thief (Lucy Kaplansky)

Thieves (She & Him)

(This Song’s Just) Six Words Long (Weird Al Yankovic)

This Woman’s Work (Kate Bush)

Trouble in the Fields (Nanci Griffith)

Truly Madly Deeply (Savage Garden)

Underneath It All (No Doubt)

Undertow (Lynn Miles)

Unravel (Lynn Miles)

Useless Desires (Patty Griffin)

The Valley Road (Bruce Hornsby)

Voodoo Child (Rogue Traders)

Walk On By (Cyndi Lauper)

“Walk on By (Live (Revamped)” (Cyndi Lauper)

Walk on By (Tony Moran mix) (Cyndi Lauper)

Wander My Friends AAC (Bear McCreary)

We Didn’t Start The Fire (Billy Joel)

What About Us (Texas)

What I Am (Edie Brickell)

What’s Up (4 Non Blondes)

Who Let In The Rain (Cyndi Lauper)

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (She & Him)

The Worst Day Since Yesterday (Flogging Molly)

You Just May Be The One (The Monkees)

You, Me and the Bourgeoisie (The Submarines)

Zoo Gang (Paul McCartney & Wings)

Tell me you didn’t really read this far. Go make your own list. And stop looking at me like that for mine.

Have courage of one’s vocation – Picasso

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Pablo Picasso on how hard it is to work as a creative individual and yet how important it is to keep at it – and not give in to having a second, more financially stable career too:

When you have something to say, to express, any submission becomes unbearable in the long run. One must have the courage of one’s vocation and the courage to make a living from one’s vocation. The “second career” is an illusion! I was often broke too, and I always resisted any temptation to live any other way than from my painting… In the beginning, I did not sell at a high price, but I sold. My drawings, my canvases went. That’s what counts.

Well, success is an important thing! It’s often been said that an artist ought to work for himself, for the “love of art,” that he ought to have contempt for success. Untrue! An artist needs success. And not only to live off it, but especially to produce his body of work. Even a rich painter has to have success. Few people understand anything about art, and not everyone is sensitive to painting. Most judge the world of art by success. Why, then,leave success to “best-selling painters”? Every generation has its own. But where is it written that success must always go to those who cater to the public’s taste? For myself, I wanted to prove that you can have success in spite of everyone, without compromise.

Do you know what? It’s the success I had when I was young that became my wall of protection. The blue period, the rose period, they were screens that shielded me. Picasso on Success and Why You Should Never Compromise in Your Art – Maria Popova, Brainpickings

Don’t just read more in the Brainpickings article, go on to read more in the book it features: Conversations with Picasso by Brassaï (UK edition, US edition). The conversations are absorbing but there’s also the engaging and encouraging story of how they came to happen at all.

Not all hours are equal

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I tell people that I work in one-hour bursts and of course it’s true, I wouldn’t lie to you. I also point out that many folks follow the Pomodoro technique of working for, say, 25 minutes, then breaking for 5, working for 25, break for 5 and so on. Whatever works for you, works for you. But it does all unthinkingly assume that every hour is the same.

It’s a qualitative lens instead of a quantitative one. Focusing on your time management skills sounds great but all hours are not created equal.

We’re not machines and the time model is a machine model. Our job isn’t to be a machine — it’s to give the machines something brilliant to do.

Do you accomplish more in three hours when you’re sleep-deprived or in one hour when you feel energetic, optimistic and engaged?

This may sound fluffy but it’s an important perspective to take: 10 hours of work when you’re exhausted, cranky and distracted might be far less productive than 3 hours when you’re “in the zone.”

So why not focus less on hours and more on doing what it takes to make sure you’re at your best?

Time Management Skills are Stupid. Here’s What Works – Barking Up the Wrong Tree (September 2013)

Eric Barker writing in his productivity blog. He goes on to recommend that we work like athletes do:

Use the analogy of an athlete. They might train for long periods of time but the focus is not on monotonous hours of uninspired grind.
For athletes, it’s a focused explosion of effort followed by rest and planning before another all-out push.

I don’t know. I find what works for me is the steady drip, drip, drip. Some days I fly and that’s when I am at my most creative, when I am simply creating the most, but the mountain of work gets climbed in small steps for me. But Barker writes persuasively: see what you think in the full piece.

 

Notability app briefly free

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Not only is Notability Apple’s App of the Week, it’s now free. These facts may be related but let’s go download it right now for iOS. 

UPDATE: it looks like I got this news very late – the app has been free for most of the week. Seriously, stop reading and go get it. We can find out together whether it’s worth the rave reviews it always gets.

Final Draft storm

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logo-finaldraft-wb_lo-res

Final Draft is the closest thing to an industry standard for film and television script writers: it’s a word processor that takes a lot of the repetitive formatting drudgery out of writing in this particular form. “Just add words” is the company’s strapline and most films you can think of the last very many years will have been written in Final Draft.

But.

You should see this software. For all its power, it looks ancient and I do very much believe that you’re going to be face to nose with an application for twelve hours a day, it would be good if you liked looking at it. If it just looked like it could do all you need. Then the company irked me beyond all reason with its iPad version. From my own book, The Blank Screen (UK edition, US edition):

I like Final Draft but it lost a bucket of brownie points with me for Final Draft Reader: after years of everyone waiting for an iPad version of the app, they released that. More, they said it was because this was what we wanted. Sure, if you ask someone whether they’d like to be able to read their Final Draft scripts on their iPad, they’re going to say yes. Ask them if they’d prefer to be able to read and write them instead, you get exactly the same answer yet that yes is 100% different. That spin and some bugs in the first release put me off. But I do have it on my iPad and I do use it.

The Blank Screen: Word Processors – William Gallagher (UK edition, US edition) 

I don’t use it very much. But then I don’t use Final Draft on my Mac all that much:

I do like it on my Mac. I turn to it to write scripts far faster than I ever do Pages or Word because it does make the job easier. If you don’t yet write scripts, you won’t yet get why that’s even possible. But, for instance, when you’re writing a very strong exchange of dialogue between two characters, it is a boon to be able to hit Return after one speech and immediately start the rejoinder and know that Final Draft will pop the right character names in for you.

I first bought a version of Final Draft a good fifteen years ago and I’ve probably only written twenty scripts in it – my Doctor Who work has to be delivered in Word so I tend to write it there or in Pages – but I stick with it because I have it and what I like about it, I like a lot.

I have version 8.something.or.other and the reason I’m telling you about this today is partly because version 9 is out. It’s partly because version 9 doesn’t add anything that makes me want to upgrade. And it’s mostly because Final Draft is getting a lot of criticism for not adding much, for being such an old-fashioned application, and for costing £154.99 (Amazon UK) and $178.68 (Amazon US). I’ve put Amazon links there rather than directly to FinalDraft.com because the savings are substantial: the US one is officially $299.99.

It’s specifically got a lot of criticism on Scriptnotes, a podcast co-hosted by Craig Mazin and screenwriter John August. He also develops a rival to Final Draft called Highland (£20.99 UK, $29.99 US in the Mac App Store but you can get a trial version if you go via the official Highland store). You would expect August to be critical of Final Draft: not so much because it’s a rival to his own software but because he developed that software to replace Final Draft in his own work. August wrote Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Choccolate Factory, Big Fish, the Charlie’s Angels movies and more. He should be the prime target audience for Final Draft but he and Mazin have been critical enough of it that Final Draft’s CEO Marc Madnick and product manager Joe Jarvis came on the podcast to discuss the software.

It did not go well.

Marc: Hey, we made a lot of bad decisions over the years. You live and learn. This is what running a business is. We’re 40 people. There’s not an office really in the world that has 40 people dedicated to one thing. And that’s screenwriting and screenwriting software. And, quite frankly, we listen every day. We service our customers. We listen every day. We love the good comments and we listen to the negative ones. Believe me, we take them to heart.

Craig: Do you think I’ve had any interesting or reasonable criticism for your product, or you think it’s all just a bunch of bunk?

Joe: I read every single podcast.

Craig: I’m not asking if you read it. I’m saying do you agree with me?

Joe: I want to absolutely know. Do I, well –

Marc: Sure, yes. Yes, some of your criticism is warranted.

Joe: I can’t think off the top of my head.

Marc: I don’t remember those. I remember the ones that aren’t warranted.

Craig: I think that’s weird. I would remember the ones that are warranted.

Marc: Hold up. This is our business.

Craig: Yes.

Marc: We know exactly, top to bottom, what the customers want, what they need, and we listen. You have to make business decisions on how you do it, when you do it, how you implement it, not implement it. It’s really what it’s all about. But we know. We’re engaged. And we understand. And we hear the criticisms. And some of your criticisms are warranted. And some of them are, I feel you might be misinformed.

Scriptnotes, Ep 129: The One with the Guys from Final Draft — Transcript

I am so impressed that this podcast has a transcript every week. I read it because listening was proving a bit painful. I don’t have Highland, I do have Final Draft, I’ve not listened to John August before, I have seen some of his films. The headline summary from this Scriptnotes was that the Final Draft people came across as not listening.

Craig: But I can now purchase an entire new software program for half the cost of what you’re charging for an update that has a few features thrown in. And that to me seems out of whack. That’s where I just say, look, I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong. The market doesn’t have right or wrong. It’s just a market.

Marc: You are in the minority. Fact.

Craig: Well, I’m in the minority now. But, I guess I’m just sort of surprised that you guys are sort of going, “And you’ll always be in the minority. We don’t see a problem. We don’t see any icebergs.”

Take a listen to the podcast here. It was actually recorded and aired in February but that episode caused enough of a flap that the next edition was about the storm it caused too. Then apparently another, different podcast took up the story and this week MacPowerUsers did too. That’s how I heard about it, I regularly listen to MPU.

So I heard about it there as MacPowerUsers interviewed John August – not just about this story – and then I went off down a rabbit hole of following the links and uncovering more. MPU linked to Scriptnotes linked to the next episode linked to the transcripts. It’s been a weird little storm took so long to reach my shore but now it’s here, I keep thinking about how Final Draft handled it and how the software itself feels like an embodiment of its makers. All software does yet you can’t always feel it as clearly as you do here.

The Scriptnotes podcast and many of the places that have followed made the analogy that Final Draft may be the QuarkXPress of its day. Quark was the page layout software that every magazine you’ve ever heard of used – until every magazine you’ve ever heard of switched to Adobe InDesign. That was partly because InDesign is just better but also Quark was fatally slow to respond and its responses were inadequate. It takes a lot to get people to switch away from a particular piece of software but once they’ve gone, you can’t get them back.

I’m not buying Final Draft 9. I haven’t regularly updated it, I think I skipped versions 6 and 7, for instance. So maybe I’ll be back for version 10. But it’s not as compelling or appealing as it once was.

The power and the risk of saying “Hello”

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npr-home

It’s not like you can do a great deal about it, you are going to have to say hello to people – but the moment you do, you’ve given them an impression of what you’re like.

“From the first word you hear a person speak, you start to form this impression of the person’s personality, says Phil McAleer, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, who led the study.

In his experiment, McAleer recorded 64 people, men and women, from Glasgow, reading a paragraph that included the word “hello.” He then extracted all the hellos and got 320 participants to listen to the different voices and rate them on 10 different personality traits, such as trustworthiness, aggressiveness, confidence, dominance and warmth.

What he found was that the participants largely agreed on which voice matched which personality trait. One male voice was overwhelmingly voted the least trustworthy, “the sort of guy you’d want to avoid,” McAleer says. The pitch of the untrustworthy voice was much lower than the male deemed most trustworthy. McAleer says this is probably because a higher pitched male voice is closer to the natural pitch of a female, making the men sound less aggressive and friendlier than the lower male voices.

You Had Me at Hello: the Science Behind First Impressions – National Public Radio (5 May, 2014)

It’s not as if the impression people get is what you’re really like. You’ve made that impression and it is sticking. Have a read of the full NRP article and also listen to the radio station’s feature about it – plus test yourself and your own reactions to a series of voices.

More viruses, no more anti-virus

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SYM_Vert_RGB-72dpiSo this guy, right, he rings me up to ask what I think of him installing anti-virus software on his PC.

“Have you got the box there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Read the back to me.”

He did. Rattled off every detail on the back and said: “So what do you think, William?”

“I think you now know ten times more about anti-virus software than I do.”

I’m not blind to the problems of viruses and security on computers but I am on a Mac, it is true that I don’t have to think about it so much. I’ve grappled with the issue when setting up people’s PCs enough that viruses are one reason I stopped ever doing that: I can’t tell whether you’ve got a virus because I did something wrong or because nobody could’ve stopped it.

Apparently nobody could’ve stopped it. Symantec, long-time maker of anti-virus software, says that there’s no point to it: anti-virus doesn’t work. Brian Dye, Symantec senior vice president for information security told the Wall Street Journal that anti-virus “is dead”. Now, he then went on to say: “We don’t think of anti-virus as a moneymaker in any way.” That’s a significant difference: I’ve no reason to wish Symantec stops making money, but your lack of cash income doesn’t equal my having to give up on anti-virus.

That Journal interview is focused on what the company is doing with its business and it’s true that Symantec is moving away from anti-virus software. It’s also true, unfortunately, that it’s because such software isn’t working any more. Says the Wall Street Journal:

Symantec Corp. SYMC -0.05% invented commercial antivirus software to protect computers from hackers a quarter-century ago. Now the company says such tactics are doomed to failure.

Antivirus products aim to prevent hackers from getting into a computer. But hackers often get in anyway these days. So Mr. Dye is leading a reinvention effort at Symantec that reflects a broader shift in the $70 billion a year cybersecurity industry.

Symantec Develops New Attack on Cyberhacking – Wall Street Journal

Very broadly, anti-virus software works by recognising virus code – and it recognises it by comparing it to a database of existing viruses. That always meant that a brand-new virus would get by because it didn’t match any previous one and this is, again very broadly, why you’d have so many updates to anti-virus software. Now viruses and other malicious code tend to be new. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Mr Dye estimates anti-virus now catches just 45% of cyberattacks”.

What this means for Symantec is that fewer people are buying its software. What this means for users is harder to tell: Symantec, McAfee and Norton are reportedly moving to software that detects suspicious activity more than it does this code-comparison.

Sales are productive, right? Take a look at Hukkster

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This is what should happen. You signup for Hukkster, add a little button it gives you for your web browser, and then tap that button any time you’re shopping online and see something you fancy. It should go into a little list that Hukkster monitors for you and come the day that your item goes on sale, you’re notified.

I’m sure that is what happens in reality too, if you’re in the US. Here in the UK it doesn’t seem to work but the company says there it works on “select international sites” outside America. Nothing seems to happen when I try it on Amazon UK, though.

Take a look at it if you tend to buy a lot of items online. I’m not entirely sure I remember when I used to buy things in shops, but.

Hukkster

Free today: face-detecting automatic camera app

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It’s called FaceSnap and it reminds me of films like Mission: Impossible 4 where whizzy glasses pop a green square around the face of everyone in sight and then run some spy algorithms to do some spy stuff. Snap just puts the green box around the face and takes a photo.

And takes a photo. And takes a photo. It’s probably handy while running through somewhere but there is also an element of how in the dear god can I switch this thing off now?

Especially if you have the sound up and this making faux camera shutter clicks every time.

I’m off to see if I can quieten it down. May I recommend that you go download it? It’s for iPhone and it is free today.

Be all you can be, you complex little soldier you

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I like quotes. I am genuinely inspired by certain quotes. There’s this one from Steve Jobs –

Great artists steal

Though actually what I find inspiring about it is that Jobs stole it from Picasso.

Then there’s this from Cervantes:

Translation is like reading the back of a tapestry

Though actually what I find most inspiring about this one is that Cervantes presumably said it in Spanish.

What I don’t like are quotes that seek to inspire. That seek to be a touchstone for your life. I’ve written before about the worth of finding a line that encapsulates the piece you’re writing – such as a sentence about its real theme so you don’t keep wandering off – and as ever and always, what works for you works for you.

So maybe you’ll take this new free app more seriously than I do. Maybe you’ll find it helps. In which case, go grab it: Daily Productivity Quotes is out now on the iOS App Store. It’s an iPhone app so it looks a bit ugly on an iPad but I’m not very likely to be opening it often.