Søren Kierkegaard nails it about internet trolls – in the 19th Century

There is nothing really new. And nothing old that doesn’t apply today, at least unless it involves floppy discs. The invariably interesting and absorbing writer Maria Popova’s latest entries in her Brain Pickings site includes a piece about trolling and bullying – in the 19th Century, not the 21st. The crux of her article is this quote from philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:

There is a form of envy of which I frequently have seen examples, in which an individual tries to obtain something by bullying. If, for instance, I enter a place where many are gathered, it often happens that one or another right away takes up arms against me by beginning to laugh; presumably he feels that he is being a tool of public opinion. But lo and behold, if I then make a casual remark to him, that same person becomes infinitely pliable and obliging. Essentially it shows that he regards me as something great, maybe even greater than I am: but if he can’t be admitted as a participant in my greatness, at least he will laugh at me. But as soon as he becomes a participant, as it were, he brags about my greatness.

That is what comes of living in a petty community.

Why Haters Hate: Kierkegaard Explains the Psychology of Bullying and Online Trolling in 1847 – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – (13 October 2014)

Just as I did, just as I’m sure you did, Popova sees the Ben Franklin effect in that passage. I have Benfranklined people now I know of it, I can think of people I need to Kierkegaard too.

But just as I urge you to read this one piece on Brain Pickings I’ve already read it so I’m off to continue my regular poking around the whole Brain Pickings site. Join me when you’re done.

Tidy up before you clean up

Before beginning her career as a successful author and speaker, Patsy Clairmont did something unexpected. She washed the dishes.

She wanted to take her message to the world, but as she was readying herself, she felt nudged to start in an unusual way. She got out of bed and cleaned her house.

In other words, Patsy got rid of the mess. And it put her in a position to start living more creatively. We must do the same.

Bringing your message to the world does not begin on the main stage. It starts at home. In the kitchen. At your desk. On your cluttered computer. You need to clear your life of distractions, not perfectly, but enough so that there’s room for you to create.

Clutter is Killing Your Creativity (And What to Do About It) – Jeff Goins, Goins, Writer (undated, probably 14 October 2014

Read the full piece.

Keep 1Password 4 around after you upgrade

I’m waiting to hear back from the makers Agilebits and will update this as I can. But my copy of 1Password 5 is lacking five passwords – that I know of. It happens that I created five this week as part of a particular job so I both know they were in 1Password 4 and I needed them today for that work.

Not a sign of them in 1Password 5 or, where I first went for them, the mini 1Password in my Mac’s menu bar.

But they are all still there in 1Password 4.

Now, Agilebits doesn’t recommend you having two versions of 1Password and if they tell me that’s my problem, I’ll believe them. Except, I’d dragged 1Password 4 to the wastebasket.

It is fluke that I hadn’t emptied it. And if I had, I’d have lost those passwords.

With the previous Dropbox bug that Agilebits had eventually copped to, that makes nine passwords I’ve lost – that I’ve found out about.

More when Agilebits responds.

Overwhelming technology and how to shrug about it

A friend posted this on Facebook today:

Dropbox, We Transfer, #, twitter, UHDTV, Clouds, uploads, downloads, TECHNOLOGY OVERLOAD!!!!!!!! Not a bloomin clue.

I want to tell you what I told her, just in more detail and hopefully more usefully.

Here’s the thing. If I work this out on my fingers – hang on, you should always show your working out. Okay. Today I have used…

Drafts 4, Mail, Word, Pages, Evernote, OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, Awesome Clock, TextExpander, Calendar, Fantastical, MailChimp, Twitter, Facebook, Buffer, WordPress, Safari, iTunes, live-streaming radio, Podcasts, iCloud, OmniPresence, Dropbox and probably more.

That’s nice. But I only know that because you asked me. If you’d just said oi, what have you done today, I wouldn’t have thought to mention the tech, I’d have said:

It’s been a good day. I wrote about 3,000 words.

There was an interesting profile of Jonny Ive in Vogue the other day that touched on how we feel about technology:

In 1985, the year [Steve] Jobs was forced out of Apple, Jony Ive was in design school in England, struggling with computers, blaming himself. “Isn’t that curious?” he says now. “Because if you tasted some food that you didn’t think tasted right, you would assume that the food was wrong. But for some reason, it’s part of the human condition that if we struggle to use something, we assume that the problem resides with us.”

A Rare Look at Apple’s Design Genius Jony Ive — Robert Sullivan, Vogue (1 October 2014)

I’ve seen this. I’ve had people wail down the phone, convinced they had a virus because actually Word did something to their text. And I think you can see the same assumptions in my friend’s Facebook post there: “not a bloomin’ clue” is there synonymous with her feeling she should, wondering how people do and, if I can put thoughts into her head, maybe even resentment that she has to deal with all this stuff.

Look at my day. I didn’t get up thinking oooh, I’ll start with Drafts 4. I thought god, I’m late writing this piece and have to get it done before I can do that. If I did get up thinking, right, I’ll use Drafts 4, I don’t think I’d be a writer, I’d be someone who likes fiddling with technology.

Plenty do, plenty of people enjoy the intellectual challenge of getting Windows to work, and that’s cool but I think that’s a hobby. I think that’s the tech being someone’s aim and interest where I and I suggest my friend there are more interested in our work. It happens that I use a lot of tech to do mine and she would rather not.

I enjoy these tools and I can’t make my friend do that but I can tell her to shrug. If you’re not using twitter, so what? If you are using OmniFocus, cool. If you are using Windows, we can get you the help you so badly need.

You will never learn how to use anything by sitting there with a manual in your hand and a song in your heart. You will learn how to use everything when you have a need for it. You want to get a huge file to someone, you’ll see how to use Dropbox. You want to take minute and have a chat but you’re working alone, you’ll find Twitter. You want to waste your life and become aggravated to the point of coronary, you’ll buy a PC.

I believe this and I know it to be true: you learn from necessity and you learn a lot, you learn everything. I would now say I know Photoshop well but it’s from fifteen years of needing to use it to do the smallest, tiniest things. There was a tiny, trivial, even tedious little task at the Radio Times website that meant someone had to use Adobe InDesign: I did it because it meant once a week for two years I was using InDesign to find more and more.

InDesign is a big, daunting application but that weekly dose of it was far more useful than a lesson would’ve been. Enough so that I later got a freelance gig specifically because I knew how to use InDesign.

So don’t study, don’t look at this as opportunity to learn or a requirement to catch up, just do your job. Maybe you could keep an ear out for tech that helps you because I promise it transforms my work. But in principle, shrug. Alright?

How to fix problems updating 1Password (yet again)

I enthuse about 1Password all the time and there genuinely isn’t a day and possibly not even a couple of hours that don’t see me using it. But allow me this one grumble because it’s infuriating: there simply is never a 1Password update that works the way it should.

Previously I’ve written about how I’ve lost passwords because of 1Password bugs: an update changed a setting and makers Agile Bits didn’t mention it until I complained. Previously I’ve not written about the teeth-pulling that went on using 1Password 4’s automatic updater from version 3 that was so automatic you couldn’t do it manually and yet you really wanted to because it wasn’t updating automatically. I didn’t write about that because we weren’t here: that was pre-The Blank Screen.

Now is that 1Password will prompt you for a free update to version 5 and it will give you a detailed software update screen that tells you what extra goodies you’re getting. But when it fails to update, you have to go hunting through the Agile Bits support page until you find a bit that says yeah, that can be a problem, you need to re-download the application before the updater can work.

Even then, even now, my Mac has just popped up a 1Password warning. I downloaded the application and was going to move it to my Applications folder to overwrite the old one but didn’t get a chance. It launched itself and gave me a warning that it was launching from my Downloads folder, did I surely not want to move it to Applications? Why yes, I did. It moved itself, which is nice, but it didn’t replace the old one.

So right now I have a fairly plaintive error message saying “Please make sure you have only one copy of 1Password on your Mac.”

Tomorrow I will love 1Password again. But today and every day that there is a big update, I’m close to wishing I please had no copies of 1Password on my Mac.

Case study part 2: Melissa hits a brick wall

Previously in part 1… Melissa Dale (not her real name) has never used any kind of To Do list before this week but now her work has ballooned and she’s writing lists “to tame” the job and stop being overwhelmed. She’s got her list and she’s cracking on with it. Now read on.

It’s yesterday afternoon, I’m working away here and this email lands:

From: Melissa.Dale@acme-psuedonym.com
Date: 15 October 2014 13:56:24 BST
To: wg@williamgallagher.com
Subject: RE: Case studies

Number one on my To Do list only just completed! 🙁

Notice the time. She started at 09:00 and this was just before 14:00. That’s getting on for five hours spent on the first of what is an enormous To Do list. I think that when this happens to you, you end up looking at me and saying nuts to all your advice, it clearly isn’t working.

It isn’t.

But on the one hand I think it still will in the end and on the other, I don’t see an alternative. Trying to do her new duties the way she did before is just not going to work. I can admire Melissa for having coped with her job for a long time without To Do lists but in a way that’s hurting her now: she’s not had to be prepared to handle so many new tasks at once. So she’s got these new tasks but she’s also got the task of handling the tasks. That doesn’t go on a list but this doesn’t make it any easier.

We have a slight complication in that Melissa can’t show me her To Do list: there’s too much on there that is confidential. So I’m trying to help her with the theory, it’s down to her to apply it. And that’s fine, that’s really how it ought to be, but Melissa’s in the trenches there and I think she’s going in with a list that isn’t helping her.

To Do lists are dangerous things. If you’re the type of person who just likes To Do list, that’s happy for you. Most of us like having done things and the list is the way to do that, so we like the list’s effect. We’re not OCD-organised list fans. Melissa is certainly not a list fan. But she’s been forced to use one because of the sheer volume of work and the thing with sheer volumes is that they tend to also come with sheer timescales. She has not got the time in her day to step away and concoct a perfect To Do list.

Ordinarily, I’d be glad about that: I want you spending time doing things, not twiddling with lists of things.

In this case, though, she dumped every single thing out of her head and onto the list – so far, so great – and has then immediately begun working through it. Exactly as it is, right in front of her.

I’ve advised her to take a few minutes to look at all of the tasks. Look for ones that belong together or have anything in common. Phone calls, for instance, she’s got plenty of those. Whatever task you’re doing, there is the task itself and there is the run up to and the lead away from: with a phone call it’s perhaps getting a desk or a space where you won’t be interrupted, it’s looking up the number and then after the call it’s noting down what has happened and what tasks have come out of it. If you do the next call tomorrow, it’s exactly the same thing. But if you do the next call right now, it isn’t.

You’ve found your quiet space, you’ve got all your phone numbers, make as many calls as you can in one sitting. Think about all the calls you can make. Every job is divided into many projects – Melissa now has responsibility for different areas of the UK so you might well create a North East list or a South West one – but ignore that division and make as many calls across as many projects as you can. You save a little time before each one by already being there, already being ready, and what’s more you have just attacked your To Do list in many different projects. You’ve pushed them all forward.

Melissa didn’t sound very convinced by this but she’s going to try it. And she’s going to look for the same thing in other areas: can you group all your emails together, for instance? If two tasks on two projects require you to be in the same place in the North East, can you arrange to do both on the same day?

One last thing. One last thing that Melissa wasn’t just unconvinced of but actually gave me that jerk of the head that says yeah, right, sure, a likely story. When she goes through her whole list she will find that there are tasks in there that she doesn’t have to do.

I promised her and I promise you. It is always true. Dump everything out of your head and then work your list: you’ll have done some things already, you’ll be able to group others and there will be yet more that you simply do not have to do.

I’ll tell you how Melissa gets on.

It sounds like a joke but addiction to Google Glass is real

Maybe it’s more surprising that anyone has used it enough to get addicted yet. But The Guardian reports of a man who had been wearing one for his job and it’s caused problems:

Scientists have treated a man they believe to be the first patient with internet addiction disorder brought on by overuse of Google Glass.

The man had been using the technology for around 18 hours a day – removing it only to sleep and wash – and complained of feeling irritable and argumentative without the device. In the two months since he bought the device, he had also begun experiencing his dreams as if viewed through the device’s small grey window.

The existence of internet addiction disorder linked to conventional devices such as phones and PCs is hotly debated among psychiatrists. It was not included as a clinical diagnosis in the 2013 update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official reference guide to the field, and many researchers maintain that its effects are merely symptoms of other psychological problems.

Google Glass user treated for internet addiction caused by the device – Azeen Ghorayshi, The Guardian (14 October 2014)

Read the full piece.

Tips for working from home

These aren’t mine. Though I do work from home and I have a lot of thoughts about it. Probably chief among them is that it’s easier to have a boss telling you what to do all day. A lot easier.

This fella acknowledges the benefits but cautions about the problems and has a lot of advice:

You have the freedom to do things that you wouldn’t normally be able to do if you had to head to an office every day.

But that’s not to say that working from home isn’t without it’s disadvantages to. Most notably, it’s easy to get caught in a routine that is not overly productive. If you’re feeling tired, the couch is right next to you.

Another danger that I experience is that if I’m not careful, I’ll go days without leaving the house, affecting both my mood and my productivity.

After working from home for a few years, I’ve developed some tips and tricks to help me become a more productive entrepreneur.

1. Establish a Morning Routine
I found that my morning has a profound effect on my entire day. It affects my focus, my energy level, and yes, my productivity.

You can say that if I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I’ll be perfectly useless for the rest of the day.

Productivity Tips for the Home Based Entrepreneur – Greg Digneo, Biz 3.0 (Undated)

Read on for the rest of number 1 and all the other tips.

Check your calendars and contacts: iOS 8 not syncing reliably

If you check this out online with a swifty Google search you’ll find many reports and some solutions to a problem about syncing. For instance, this: Apple Support page.

But it’s not working for me. And given how reliant I am on this stuff, it’s becoming a big issue: calendar entries on my iPhone don’t make it to my iPad and vice versa.

I’ve no solution myself but wanted to warn you: check your calendar to see that it’s all copying across the way nature intended.

Cramming doesn’t work: space out learning and revision instead

After six hours of looking at study material (and three cups of coffee and five chocolate bars) it’s easy to think we have it committed to memory. Every page, every important fact, evokes a comforting feeling of familiarity. The cramming has left a lingering glow of activity in our sensory and memory systems, a glow that allows our brain to swiftly tag our study notes as “something that I’ve seen before”. But being able to recognise something isn’t the same as being able to recall it.

Different parts of the brain support different kinds of memory. Recognition is strongly affected by the ease with which information passes through the sensory areas of our brain, such as the visual cortex if you are looking at notes. Recall is supported by a network of different areas of the brain, including the frontal cortex and the temporal lobe, which coordinate to recreate a memory from the clues you give it. Just because your visual cortex is fluently processing your notes after five consecutive hours of you looking at them, doesn’t mean the rest of your brain is going to be able to reconstruct the memory of them when you really need it to.

Memory: Why cramming for tests often fails – Tom Stafford, BBC News Online (18 September 2014)

I don’t know, I’d need to be more organised in order to have the time to space out when I revised or crammed. But read the full feature for more, if you’re not currently cramming.