Author: William Gallagher

Your career today. Start here

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Good advice that you'll use, good advice you'll wish you had used: this piece about careers has everything – and a lot of everything. It's definitely a Pocket or Instapaper read-later kinda gig but whether you skim it now or read it properly over the weekend, do take a look:

Having spent over 35 years in business in global firms, I have seen tens of thousands of career trajectories–from the first steps of entry-level millennials to the long journeys of Fortune 500 CEOs.

What I see: Most people have the wrong approach to careers. They think about the immediate next step, not the pathway. They treat a career like a sprint, when in fact it is a 40-plus-year marathon. They are more focused on getting promoted on Tuesday than about having great choices when it really matters–in their 40s and 50s.

I have been thinking about careers for decades and lecturing on the topic for the last dozen years at places like Yale, MIT, Harvard, Columbia, McGill and NYU. Here are some of the things that you might not be thinking about your career, but should be.

Career Rocket Fuel by Brian Fetherstonhaugh

Excess Baggage

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I once arrived at BBC Television Centre to find that the laptop in my bag had a broken screen. Since then, I've been careful verging on paranoid everywhere I go and I've learnt a lot.

Specifically this: don't carry a laptop.

A few years ago I'd have said that to you very deadpan seriously but of course it would've been a gag. Today, not so much. I've got a day of meetings and I'm at a café having a mug of tea before the first one. (Also a late breakfast bacon sandwich which is reminding me of a friend's advice only last week: always bring a second shirt. Alas.)

The bag in front of me is a Knomo that I bought years ago for carrying my MacBook Pro. It was designed for that: the MacBook fits it incredibly snugly. But I haven't put the MacBook in there in years. Instead, that snug MacBook bag is a roomy iPad one. I have an iPad Air with a Belkin keyboard case and a sleeve that my wife Angela Gallagher designed and made for me. Alongside her sleeve, I keep a Mophie battery charger, a Mu travel plug – it's gorgeous, it folds down flat – plus one Lightning cable and one micro USB cable. Oh, and Apple earbud headphones.

That's it.

That's everything I need today and actually most days. The iPad is a wifi-only model but with my tariff with 3 UK I can tether it to my iPhone without limit. It's been on 4G for months as I was part of 3's 4G beta test and I regularly forget to switch the iPhone's wifi back on. But whether I tether or borrow firms' wifi on my travels, I have everything I need because I use iCloud, Evernote and Dropbox. I used to be able to remote control my office iMac via LogMeIn but that company wants me to pay a greater-than-worth-it-to-me subscription to keep using the service that I bought on the vowed guarantee that its one-off cost would be all I'd ever pay. The fact that they've changed this and, last time I looked, their website still makes the old claim, means I'm not a fan. I'll find an alternative but for the moment, I haven't looked, I've just stopped remote controlling my Macs.

One more thing. Like many bags, this Knomo is buckled to one side. The shoulder strap connects to two hard-wearing metal clasps that are stitched into one side of the bag. I always put the iPad Air into my case with the screen facing toward the side with the clasps. It'll be in its case, it'll be in Angela's sleeve, but that's the direction it faces. So that I always know which way around it is without opening the case. So that I can put that case down and know, can decide, that the delicate screen won't be on the side I just smashed down on there.

Usually I think productivity is about making the most of your time but occasionally it's just about not being bleedin' stupid and slapping your computer equipment around as you travel.

Pattern Weeks part 7 – yes, well, maybe it was a good idea

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Previously on previouslys…

Previously… in an attempt to get more done in huge week, I’ve scheduled some important slots. I’ll do certain things for certain projects at certain times so that they are done and I know they are done and they are always progressing instead of ever coming to a pause. I call this schedule the pattern for the week and it’s named after the term ‘pattern budget’. That’s the money you’ve got to spend on each one of many things, like episodes in a TV series. In practice, you shovel that cash around so your first episode can be really big. You just save the money later and it works out. Similarly, my pattern weeks get disrupted by other events: if I’m booked somewhere for a day, the people who booked me get me for the day. I don’t go off taking meetings or phoning other people.

Pattern Weeks part 6 – Not So Much – The Blank Screen, 16 February 2014

Week 7 has been a long time in the making, hasn’t it? The six-week week has gone sporadically dreadfully and occasionally okay. I find I have rarely looked at my plan wallpaper yet just seeing the edges of it peek out have meant that I’ve stuck to certain parts of it.

Specifically the part where I told myself to make phone calls during these times. Oddly, that’s the one part that I found most hard before and it’s the one part I really created all this to make sure I did. So, er, success, I suppose. Bizarrely, I’ve found I’ve still fallen behind on my OmniFocus reviews, though, and that’s something I actually enjoy doing.

Especially today when I did it and found I only had seven projects to review. (Because all the rest were reviewed recently enough that I didn’t have to check them again.) That mean the review took 15 minutes instead of an hour so I went off to make some more tea.

I definitely like pattern weeks when they involve tea.

 

Pattern weeks part 6 – not so much

Warner Bros caves on Veronica Mars mistake

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First: it is nothing short of wonderful that Veronica Mars has returned. Second: the movie is bliss. Not flawless by any means, but watching it in a cinema was bliss.

But.

The one fly in this whole Kickstarter campaign tale came with the digital download copy of the film that backers got. On release day, we got an email telling us how to download it for free – and because those instructions said we had to use Flixster/Ultraviolet, I just went and bought it from iTunes.

I backed the movie. I got that digital download and still I paid again to buy the movie from iTunes. And I did so because, strange fella that I am, I wanted to be able to watch the thing I downloaded.

True, I still went to see it in the cinema and actually I sat there with the film on my iPhone in my pocket. It was like the reverse of piracy: I could've played it for the audience right there.

The flash-forward quick ending to this is that Warner Brothers has caved in and said okay, enough already, you don't have to use Flixster. I'm sure there must be conditions but I've emailed my iTunes receipt to info@veronicamarsthemovie.com and will report when I get the refund.

Here's the thing, though. I would like you to see Veronica Mars because I enjoyed it so very, very much, but the reason to talk about it here on The Blank Screen is that I think there are productivity lessons to be learnt.

The positive one is that when you know something is wrong, fix it. Warner Bros has quite quickly responded to the criticism of the Flixster debacle and you have to give them credit for that.

But the more negative one is the same: when you know something is wrong, fix it – and Warner Bros did not. Flixster and Ultraviolet is an astonishing disaster of a service. No exaggeration. More than a year ago, I attempted to use it to get digital copies of The Big Bang Theory: I'd bought the DVD, I wanted to watch it on my iPad, it came with all the rights and the download details to do this for free. But I lost an evening trying to get it work. At all. To work at all.

I emailed the support team and explained that the service did not work. Literally did not work. They replied that they were sorry my first experience had been sub-optimal.

That was all, by the way. They had no answer for how to make it work, they just had hopes that I would keep trying.

I do understand why several studios have decided they'd rather not go via Apple's iTunes service. I get that and I'd be the same: naturally Apple takes a cut and the studios would rather keep the money for themselves but also it's risky being beholden to another firm. Apple has them over a barrel if iTunes is the only way to sell films. It isn't, there's Amazon too, but it's no better being beholden to Amazon. So of course some firms got together to make a new service.

Except they didn't.

They didn't get together and they didn't make a new service.

It's not a new service because it isn't a service: it literally does not work. You cannot take that Veronica Mars download code or that Big Bang Theory DVD and get what you want to watch and what you've paid to watch. In more than a year since I first tried it, they have improved one thing: you have to sign up to just two online services instead of three. I think. I may have successfully signed up to one last year. Honestly cannot tell you.

There is now also a bit of PR spin: some poor sod has written a paragraph about why hey, it's great to have two sign-ins!

No, it isn't.

Two (or three) sign-ins is visible evidence of them not getting together and the PR spiel is visible evidence of them recognising that this is crap but not doing anything to fix it. Having to sign up to two or three online sites in order to get one service is more as if all of the companies involved agree that they want to avoid being beholden to Apple and Amazon, but they also don't want to be in any way beholden to each other.

Fine. That makes sense.

Productivity means getting stuff done. Productivity for these fellas is getting films to us. They don't like that their choice is between being beholden to Apple and Amazon or being beholden to each other, but in technical terms that is just tough shit.

Make the choice, any choice, and do it.

If you want to get a particular project going and you can see what your choices are, make a choice now. Do that now. Especially if waiting more than a year means pretending something works when it simply does not. Especially if you manage to pull off something like Veronica Mars.

This film had an audience waiting for it. They paid $5.7m as proof. There are few absolute guaranteed audiences in this world but Veronica Mars had one and there is not one single pixel of doubt that every qualifying backer would download the movie the instant it was available. The audience was coming to Warner Bros and it was the perfect chance to show that iTunes is not the only player in town. The perfect chance to get people actively choosing to use your system and then even to come back to it again to watch this movie again.

This was Flixster's chance. It wouldn't have been easy because of people like myself who had sub-optimal first experiences and would never willingly try a second time. But if it had worked and all these fans were loving that movie immediately, even I would've gone back to try again.

Actually, I did try at one point: it became a game to see if I could figure this stuff out.

But for actually watching the movie, no. I read the email saying it was to be on Flixster and I went straight to iTunes. How bad does your service have to be that someone who has already paid for the film on it would instantly go to your biggest rival and pay money again to get it there?

By the way, do catch it in cinemas if you can. The joy in that auditorium was wonderful.

Ask Me Anything… nicely

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Go take a look at this and bookmark it: a new site is taking the text from Reddit Ask Me Anything interviews and formatting them so that the bleedin' things are readable. Seriously, have you tried reading those on Reddit? If you're online at the right time, as they unfurl, fine. But if you're not, they are an exasperating mess where you just give up trying to follow what question threads led where and which are or aren't being shown when you do or don't click on one bit and God help us, there's more?

I question the moral right of a site to take another one's content but this links back properly so far as I can see and it adds value. Specifically, it adds the value that you can now read this stuff.

Not every Reddit AMA is up yet but it's got a lot already and it's adding more here.

Over on Self Distract – Go Cucumbers

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This week's personal Self Distract blog is about not waiting for permission, not waiting for anyone but yourself when you want to do something:

Two years after these writers lot met, they are still meeting and they are still writing and they are producing theatre with a company of actors. And they're doing it at the Birmingham Rep.

I think it's an inspiring story – and my wife Angela is one of the ones doing it.

Do please read more right here.

It’s all down to you. Good.

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I spent today chairing sessions at the Royal Television Society's Birmingham Film and TV Summit and had one big belief of mine reinforced over and over.

It often seems in careers such as media that you have to do everything yourself. You have to put the show on right here. And it's true. If you don't push, nobody else will push you.

I know this to be true but what I believe is that it is good.

For this reason. If something needs to be done and it's down to you, you can and you will do it. If you're waiting for someone else to do it, they may not.

That's it. Not groundbreaking. But take on as much of the job as you can and you will do it.

I sound like a Hallmark Card so I'll shut up now.

Windows alternatives to OmniFocus

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Pity me. I go around doing workshops about being a productive writer and I've even written a book about it (The Blank Screen: Productivity for Creative Writers, UK edition, US edition) And it all makes sense, it all works – I promise you that and I have such gorgeous tweets and emails from people telling me so – but there is a big problem. It's the To Do list.

When I started this, the problem was that I'm on a Mac and quite a few people go for that there Windows thing. And my To Do manager of choice only runs on Macs. Actually, I say it's the To Do manager of my choice, I think it's more the To Do manager of my heart and soul. It used to be that in a workshop I would put up a slide showing you OmniFocus and where to get it. And then I'd say: “If you know a Windows equivalent, it would be a huge help for me to hear about it.” Or something like that.

But there are two problems now: I can't automatically and easily evangelise OmniFocus because the app is in a bit of a flux as new versions are coming.

OmniFocus for iPhone has already been radically updated and I like it a lot. OmniFocus for iPad hasn't and won't be until OmniFocus 2 for Mac is done. Do you buy now or wait? It's easy with the iPhone version: buy it. It's sort-of easy with the Mac one: buy the current OmniFocus 1 for Mac and you'll get version 2 for free when it's released. But OmniFocus 1 for Mac is hard work. I understand it now and I adore the power, but it took me a long time to get there. Even last year's failed OmniFocus 2 beta was a significant improvement in some key areas so surely OF 2 will be too. So I'd wait for OmniFocus 2.

When you buy any Mac version of OmniFocus, do it from the main Omni Group website itself, don't go through the Mac App Store. As handy as that is, there are problems upgrading for free when you have bought via the App Store.

You have no choice with the iPad and iPhone ones and that's also why I hesitate: the iPad one is already the best of the three, can they actually make it any better? Very likely.

But here's the thing. I have all three versions of OmniFocus and I use them all. But when OmniFocus 2 for iPad or Mac comes out, I'm buying them again immediately.

Because I truly don't know of any other To Do software that is this good.

I ask about that and about Windows and so far so far nobody has ever piped up with an answer during the workshop, during the after-session nattering (possibly my favourite part) or over the many emails I get later.

That's not a scientific or statistically valid sampling of people to call from. For the most part, I don't presume any computer knowledge and I don't ask anyone in advance what equipment they prefer to use. But most festival or university blurbs that describe my talk use one of the many texts I give them and they they invariably include the phrase “make your computer work harder for you”. If you were deeply into Windows software already, or Mac for that matter, I don't think that line would sell the workshop to you. So very broadly, I think one can expect fewer than average power-users in a typical workshop. Which means we can equally expect fewer people to know Windows software well enough to tell me what they've got that is as powerful as OmniFocus.

I know I'm right in all this but I want to tell you that I doubt it matters. I doubt that there is actually an equivalent to OmniFocus in Windows. But telling you that now, six years into this post, feels a bit rich. So let me show you what I've been working on for the workshop I'm doing next week. This is a special limited-number workshop for a specific group of writers that I work with on Writing West Midlands' Room 204 programme. I know them so I have an idea of how they like to work and what kit they use. Many are PC fans and I will ask them for advice but I think it's time I stepped up.

So I've been looking into this in detail. Or at least as much detail as you can without owning a Windows PC. I've checked reviews, I've tried all the online web versions I can find and I've downloaded iOS companion apps. No Android, I don't have the facility to test that nor the patience of Job to go through all the Android permutations.

There is nothing in Windows that is as strong as OmniFocus for Macintosh.

However.

I've boiled it down to a few that have one of the core things of OmniFocus: the start date. Let's just take a second to think about that term and what we'd use it for. If I enter a new task in OmniFocus then I can, if I'm fussed, also give it a deadline date. An end date. If I want to, though, I can also stepm in and add what's now called a Defer Until date. In my head it's still a Start Date. But whatever you call it, OmniFocus uses it and uses it for this one specific purpose: to hide it from you.

It's little short of disturbing. You enter a task, tap in a start date and you're sure you've saved it, you're sure, but you cannot see it anywhere.

That's not entirely true. You can see it whenever you do a review of all your tasks. (Reviews are a big part of Getting Things Done, the ideas behind many successful To Do apps like OmniFocus and yet, weirdly, not many systems include it. Note, too, that the iPhone version of OmniFocus hasn't got reviews either. I truly don't understand why and I think it's a big gap. I'm okay because I just do my reviews on the iPad, where it is a gorgeous system. I do think once you start on OmniFocus you'll buy all three versions, but again, they're in flux. I don't know what to suggest.) There are other ways to find and see this new task but the kicker is that you don't get to see it on your main To Do List. It ain't there. At all.

It isn't there on your list and it isn't going to be there until that start date comes around.

Here's a typical, practical use for that. I'm doing The Blank Screen workshop at the Stratford Literary Festival in May. I've done everything I need to do to get that going, now I don't even have to think about it until mid-April when I'll update and rewrite the presentation. So get it off my list until April. I don't want to see it and I don't want to have to keep thinking “Is it April yet?” (Tell me I'm not the only person who would have to stop to think that.)

Typical, practical and shorter example: if I'm doing a particular job every week on a Tuesday, keep things off my list until the Monday when I need to think about them.

I could talk to you all day about OmniFocus and it would just be cruel if you're on a PC. But if we just and only talk about start dates, then we've got some options here. The following are all Windows apps with web versions that work crossplatform: if there's one you fancy, see whether it has a companion app that works with your phone.

Toodledo
By default, there are no start dates. But go to Account Settings and look for the many fields you can choose to switch on for a task. One of them is start dates and once you've ticked that, every task you enter has the option for a start date.

Appigo To Do
I was a big Appigo To Do user until I found OmniFocus. Since then it's become a little suite of programs including a web client and I'm honestly a little confused over what option gets you what. But as of a few months ago, Appigo To Do includes Start Dates.

It's rather poorly done on the iPhone version: you have no way to realise that this icon is for setting the end date and that one is for setting the start date. None. Do what I did: press everything. When you know which button it is, though, you're set.

Well, nearly. Appigo doesn't have the same control as OmniFocus so it's a touch less refined in what does and doesn't show you. But a task with a start date that isn't today will get separated from more urgent tasks on your list.

Asana
This is team-wide To Do management and that would put it outside my usual sphere of interest: I want to make you, personally and specifically you, more productive. Not companies. I reckon if everyone in a firm is as good as you then that's great, but it's you I'm working with.

It also tends to mean complex. Enterprise-wide software takes some learning and I haven't done that. But Asana promises start dates. It's even an automatic thing. Yet I couldn't figure it out.

There's a line somewhere between To Do apps and Project Management software. I think it might be here.

I'm disappointed that there are no start dates in the best-named To Do software ever: Remember the Milk. Going by the chatter on its support forums, there never will be either. So I'm afraid that means RTM is out for me.

They all are, I suppose: I've said before that you'd need Primacord explosive around my waist to get me away from OmniFocus on a Mac, iPhone and iPad. But there is Primacord, it is possible and I thought – I still think – that it will happen that some day there's going to be a better To Do manager. But it isn't today and it unquestionably isn't on a PC.

Gaming productivity

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I’ve written before about using a mad-dash hour to get over problems. If you’re feeling low – like I have a cold coming on at the moment – or you’re just overwhelmed, agree with yourself that you’re going to spend an hour working. Just an hour.

And then list ten things that you want to get done in that time.  That’s what I wrote about in New Hour’s Resolutions – Not Year’s, Hour’s (2 January 2014) and that’s what I did:

Consider this a live post: as I write to you now it is coming up to the top of the hour and from that hour I am going to do ten things. I can’t tell you what they are because they’re specific and they involve other people who don’t know you and I are talking like this. But I took a shower, decided on this overall idea of ten things in the next hour and realised that if I do it, I’ll feel I’ve got somewhere today. And usually that’s all I need to keep getting somewhere each day.

I wrote down a list of eight things immediately. Had to check my OmniFocus To Do list for the other two and got a bit bogged down because there was so much to choose from. But the point of ten is that it’s not easy but it is achievable. Whatever you’re working on, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that there are ten really fast things you could do right now if you put your mind to it.

And I bet at least one of those is something you don’t want to do.

It’s getting on for three months later and I haven’t had need to do that hour again – until today. Today my head is just tilting into a cold and, moreover, for some reason I have things on my list that I kept putting off. I truly don’t know why: it was just an email I had to send someone. I think maybe part of it was that I couldn’t remember why I and to email them. I’d written the task in OmniFocus as “Email XXX about the YYY event” but honestly went blank on what that YYY event was. At least, blank on enough detail that I could coherently tell the fella about it.

Thirty-one minutes ago, I started a mad-dash hour with ten new things including that email. I made that email the third thing on the list after two other items I wasn’t especially looking forward to but would at least be quick. And when you start quickly, I’ve learnt that writing down the time you did it next to the item really motivates you to bound on to the next. Where I am guilty of thinking I’ll just make a mug of tea now, for this hour with that list and those times, I don’t.

I’m writing to you because even as I drew up the list, I knew this felt different to last time. I was seeding the list with things I didn’t want to do and – this is the killer difference: I am hiding the list from myself.

I wrote it in Evernote and hit return a few times so that the list vanished off the top of my screen. So now the sequence is: 1) Race to the top of the document, see the next thing, 2) race to the bottom, make a note of it or anything I need to write to get it done, 3) get it done, 4) note down the time next to it. Rinse, repeat.

I put writing to you as the fifth of the ten things so that I could know how it was going this hour, so that I also had something to look forward to if I’m honest with you, and also because it’s not a quick and easy thing, writing to you. I have to think about: I don’t want to take your time up with rubbish. (Usually.) So this was fun but substantive.

And because it’s taking more than the average 7.5 minutes that the preceding four tasks took me, I find that my list was written long enough ago and referred to long enough ago that I truly can’t remember what item six is.

But I’m about to find out.

Today (and UK) only: The $100 Startup just £1.49

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That’s the book by Chris Guillebeau, not some strange cross-currency deal where you startup for even less money. The $100 Startup is an entertaining and actually rather thought-encouraging book about people going into business. It’s part of the guy’s many ventures like the World Domination Day you may keep hearing people refer to it.

He’s also the guy who is attempting to visit every country in the world and he may now have done it. I think there was a thing where a new country was created just to stymie him. But if he hasn’t pulled it off yet, he’s shockingly close. And along the way is a big Evernote user documenting it all.

But go take a look at the book: I saw him at an event and bought the paperback for a lot more than this £1.49. But note that as I say in the subject above, this is only for today and it is only for the UK. The $100 Startup is an Amazon UK Kindle Daily Deal here.