Advice

Grab this now: Localscope for iPhone is free, briefly

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It’s an app for finding places and services near you: I just used it to find the nearest supermarket in general and the other day to find a coffee shop in particular.

Stop reading, go getting. It’s free now, I don’t know when it will go back to it’s regular price. If you’re reading this late, go get it anyway. It’s worth it.

Well.

I alternate between Localscope and Where To? – whose name I have to fight to get right because its icon has the word Exit so prominently that I call it that.

Both do the same thing, both must surely use the same sources. But in general, I’ve found Where To? is more accurate yet Localscope is good and looks great. Where To? just looks to old.

But I’ve just been talking while you downloaded Localscope. Now you’ve got it, try it out.

Don’t wait

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Yes, it’s easier to put that phone call off and yes, you’re probably right that you wouldn’t get the work. Everybody is calling, everybody is more qualified than you.

Just promise me that the next time something like this comes up, you say yes or you phone immediately to ask about it. This is easy for me to say because I suspect I have more faith in you that you do, you daft eejit, but because it’s easy for me to say, I’m saying it. Maybe you won’t get the gig but you can do it, you can do it in the way that only you can. Don’t write off an opportunity.

This is also easy for me to say because most of the time, I do it. It is hard, I grant you. Especially the phone call part: for some reason that is a killer for me. If I’m doing a job for you, fine. And I’ve been a journalist for years, it’s natural and second nature to pick up the phone then. But for myself, calling about something I want, it’s tough.

But whenever I haven’t called or I have hesitated, I’ve got nothing.

And whenever I’ve said yes, it’s worked out. Sometimes better than others. Occasionally I’ve looked around wondering what in the world I’m doing here and how will I make it through another two days of this. But usually, it works and works out well.

I can see where I was when I got a round-robin email from a colleague on the Writers’ Guild committee saying he wasn’t able to go to a thing, would one of us want to do it instead? I said yes and filling in for him at one single meeting has led to nearly a year so far of very many and varied jobs that all sprang from there. I get to work and have a really great time with people I’d not heard of before I said yes.

It is true that there are better qualified people than me, there are simply better people than me. But so long as they hesitate and I say yes, I’m okay with that.

Do bring technology on holiday, but…

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I once brought a typewriter on a romantic holiday. Bizarrely, we’re still married. But while I was undeniably stupid then, we are all now quite a bit stupid because we bring the modern equivalent with us everywhere. Plus, nobody tried to send me messages through my typewriter.

Well, Angela did lift it over my head one morning, but.

Along with our newish ability to bring our work with us everywhere has come an insistence that we shouldn’t. That this is all A Bad Thing. But the Harvard Business Review suggests that since we’re going to do it anyway, since we are going to bring this stuff with us and keep checking our screens, let’s at least be smart about it.

The biggest obstacle to disconnecting isn’t technology: it’s your own level of commitment or compulsion when it comes to work. If you work 80 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you may find it pretty hard to get your head out of the office – and even harder to break the Pavlovian association between hearing the ping of an incoming email and immediately shifting into work brain.

That association is exactly why it’s so useful to develop strategies that put your devices in vacation mode. You probably don’t leave Oreos in the cupboard when you’re dieting; for the same reason, it’s best to put work out of arm’s reach when you’re on vacation. Instead of relying on sheer willpower to keep you from checking in on work, you can use your vacation tech setup – and a little up-front planning – to support your efforts to minimize work time.

With that setup in place, you’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of online connectivity and digital tools, as well as the benefit of disconnecting from work. And instead of apologizing for bringing a phone on vacation, you’ll be able to relax even with your devices in tow.

The Right Way to Unplug When You’re on Vacation – Alexandra Samuel, Harvard Business Review (15 July 2014)

I’m with Samuel on how it’s less a matter of technology per se and more how we think of this stuff. But she also has specific examples and suggestions in her full piece.

Who knew karma meant work?

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At least, it did in 1895 when Swami Vivekananda when Brain Pickings says:

The renowned Indian Hindu monk and philosopher Swami Vivekananda, then in his early thirties, traveled to New York, rented a couple of rooms at 228 West 39th Street, where he spent a month holding a series of public lectures on the notion of karma — translated as work — and various other aspects of mental discipline. They attracted a number of famous followers, including groundbreaking inventor Nikola Tesla and pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James.

Swami Vivekananda on the Secret of Work: Intelligent Consolation for the Pressures of Productivity from 1896 – Maria Popova, Brainpickings (15 July 2014)

Oh, you are smart: you’ve seen that the title of that article includes 1896 when the quote says 1895. Very good, very impressive. But it’s okay: the article date refers to when these lectures were published as a book. You’ll never guess when. You’ll definitely not guess the title: it’s Karma Yoga (UK edition, US edition)

As ever with Popova’s work on Brainpickings, the article is about a book yet contains so much that it is an absorbing read by itself. Read this and you don’t have to read the book. Though equally, read this and you’ll want to.

Among the most timeless of them is one titled “The Secret of Work,” in which Vivekananda examines with ever-timely poignancy the ways in which we mistake the doing for the being and worship the perspirations of our productivity over the aspirations of our soul.

Read the full piece.

So you haven’t done what I told you, so what?

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This has come up a couple of times recently. I have a natter with someone – because they asked, come on, I don’t accost people in the street with productivity advice – and it seems to go well.

I think they get a good idea of what’s really on their plate and which of it matters to them. There’s usually a new project that they want to do and after a hour or so with me, they tend to have a plan. And most importantly, I think, that new project has turned from a nebulous, unwieldy thing that’s overwhelming them into something they can do. And will do. Talking it through invariably leaves you physically no further forward yet in every other way extremely far down the line. The intangible is at least well on its way to tanging.

But.

What’s happened these couple of times is that armed with their own new plan and, I believe, fully enthused at what they’re going to do, they haven’t done it.

They tell me this with something approaching guilt and I feel terrible. I like people thinking of me as someone to account to if that is what helps them, I loathe it when they think I’m judging them, damning them.

So here’s the thing.

Bollocks to me and what you think I think of you. What I actually think has not changed at all: I think you had this great idea and it wasn’t working out but now you have a plan, now you know you can do it. Whether you do or not almost doesn’t matter.

I want you to do this thing: it is exciting and it’s you, only you can do this and I want to see how it turns out. But what I needed, if we’re to get all personal about this, was to help you go from this stage of it being a mountain ahead of you to your seeing the path you need to take.

I promise you that I will never think badly of you for not having started on your path yet. I’m struggling to think of a situation where I would think badly of you. Come on, it’s you. How could I think badly of you?

And here’s another thing.

That plan you came up with, that simple set of steps to get this project of yours started, it’s still there. You may have changed: your interest in it may vary, your ability to fit it in with everything else you’re doing may very well have varied, but the plan is true and you can start it any time.

And let’s have a mug of tea sometime.

Travel advice: The Man in Seat 61

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Flashback. Only to last night, I don’t flashback very far. A man I’m working with mentions how much better organised train travel is across mainland Europe compared to the UK. I find that a bit hard to believe because – flashback now to last year – I lost half a day just trying to book a series of trains across France.

He told me about a train travel website that would’ve done the job for me in seconds. Less than seconds. Moments. And it would’ve saved me the worry over whether I’d accounted for different time zones at different ends of the journey. And it would’ve probably meant I’d have had longer than six minutes to get across what turned out to be a very big station.

It might also have meant I didn’t get a few hours in Paris on the way there and back again, so that wouldn’t have been good.

But from now on, I’m using The Man in Seat 61. The man is Mark Smith and his site explains why it’s called what it’s called.

Dar Williams on productivity and creativity

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I’ve said this before: I wouldn’t kill to write like songwriter Dar Williams, but I’d maim. She has a fine and long body of work, a now substantial discography but interestingly, she’s against being disciplined and productive. I’m obviously paying more attention and notice because I rate her so much but I think she makes these points particularly persuasively.

She makes them in an old interview on Songfacts where am unnamed interviewer presses on the point thisaway:

Songfacts: When you look at this collection, does it amaze you that you’ve accomplished what you have? I don’t want to ask you to brag, but there must be some moment of pride to be able to look at all these songs and re-visit some of your accomplishments over the years. How does it make you feel when you look at the songs that make up this collection?

Dar: Well, when I was in college, I put a stick-it on my computer, which was huge, that said, “Whatever you do is enough.” I had totally lost my mind, and I was coming back from that. So I would say to myself, you know, you’re supposed to do a ten-page paper, if you do one page you’ll get a D+. If you do two pages, you’ll get a C-, or if you do three pages you’ll get a C-. So that’s all better than an F, so why don’t you do a page?

And it was really, enormously helpful to me. And then a friend of mind was kind of coming back from her lost moment, and I put the stick-it on her computer, and she took a very playful approach to this paper, really appreciating the fact that she wasn’t writing about something very tangible, and just giving it a very playful approach. And she got an A. Her professor said he read it for his wife. It was like, by letting the pressure go and allowing herself to do what she could in that moment, she released a sort of joy in the meaning of the whole assignment.

So it’s like I have a little stick-it on my inner computer that says “Whatever you do is enough.” And I don’t force lines, and I don’t force myself to write every day, and somehow out of that came seven albums that don’t, to me, feel forced. And that’s the only thing I’ll boast about is that there’s nothing about it that to me sounds like I said, “I have to write for 2 hours a day,” with lines where there were no inspiration. I felt it when I wrote it. And I think that experience coming back from being totally insane and putting that stick-it on my computer was a good beginning to a less forced work ethic.

Dar Williams – Songfacts (3 November 2010)

Be sure to read the whole piece: this is all she says on productivity but it’s a wide-ranging interview and she’s smart across it all.

Thanks to @groggy for pointing me at this.

Using your travel time

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It’s been a long time since I drove very much at all. There was a time where, for several years, I would drive from Birmingham to London and back on a day at least once a week. But that would be a three-hour drive in the morning, leaving around 5am, and a four-hour drive back in the evening.

Plus I’d do eight to ten hours work in the middle.

So that was, what, help me count here: up to 17 hours away from my home office. And all but a ten-minute lunch break of it spent working.

When I got my first book contract, it obviously came with a deadline and I could not afford to lose 17 hours on a London day each week. I also obviously couldn’t afford to walk away from the eight to ten hours paid work, even if I hadn’t enjoyed it. This was Radio Times, easily one of my favourite writing jobs in my career.

But I could reclaim at least some of the travel time. If I gave up driving and instead went by trains or coaches – very often coaches because, wow, the price of trains that early in the morning – I could write. Not all the time. Once or twice on a train coming back I’d take a look at the crowd with me and feel wee bit uncertain about getting out a couple of thousand pounds of computer equipment. And sometimes I’d just be too tired.

Quick aside? The train from London Euston to Birmingham New Street goes via Birmingham International where there is the airport and the National Exhibition Centre. Amongst very many other things, the NEC hosts rock concerts. One night, I fell asleep on the train and woke up with my face pressed against the window.

And on the other side of the glass were a group of AC/DC fans pressing back and grinning at me.

Anyway.

I forget how long this went on for but it was probably three months. The book was published in November 2012 – it’s BFI TV Classics: The Beiderbecke Affair and I am deeply proud of it, I feel honoured that I got to be the one to write about that – so this would be late 2011, maybe early 2012.

But what I remember with total clarity was that when it was done, when I had delivered the first draft and could go back to driving, I had saved slightly over a thousand pounds in petrol.

Now, that’s not an accurate figure for saving because it doesn’t account for all the money I spent on trains and coaches. But it was a shock of a figure. Shock enough that to this day I refuse to let myself think about all the months of petrol I’d paid up to then. At least ten years with at least once such drive per week. You add it up, I feel ill.

It was also shock enough that I could not go back to doing it again.

So from that day on, I stuck to trains and coaches for my London work. I sold the car, even.

We still have a car: Angela has one and I use it when necessary or when we’re both going somewhere, I will usually be the one who drives us. Gives her a break from all the driving she does in her work.

Today it was necessary. I dropped Angela off at a place this morning, drove to a couple of jobs, then to a Theatre Cuppa gathering in the early evening and back. Then Angela was off to a production meeting for her theatre work (you cannot believe how proud I am that I can say that to you, I just find the very words delicious) and I was off to a Writers’ Guild committee meeting.

My meeting was quite short but it then took me an hour and a half to get home by bus. I’d driven 170 miles in about six hours today, the last 10 miles were a 90-minute series of bus rides. And those bus rides had more adventure in them. I got to see stand up rows between passengers and drivers, I somehow got to see one woman passenger flash another one even as I actually couldn’t quite see why. The flasher was not complimenting the flashee.

But I missed a lot because I was writing. I wrote nothing all day except some notes at the various places I drove to so I was behind. But on these buses, while keeping an eye on timetable information through my various iOS travel apps, I got to write.

I didn’t enjoy that it was 90 minutes, I didn’t enjoy the drizzle as I got off the last bus. But I got things done and so instead of feeling knackered and pointless tonight, I feel I’ve got on with something and that I secretly deserve to watch the first episode of Community, Season Two, which the finest of fine people has just loaned me.

There are 24 episodes in this season. That’s my productivity destroyed for the rest of the week.

Be bad. A bit.

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Seriously, this is not the point of a 99U article I read today and that I want to recommend to you. The article is really about being good all the time: specifically, don’t reward yourself with bad treats just because you’ve been good and productive this week.

But there is more to life than being steadily productive and good. And if bad is a dark chocolate Mars bar, you need to live a little more. What’s the point of being a writer if you don’t stray from the Boy Scout code?

Within limits, said William thinking of the legal ramifications of anything illegal you might now be considering.

That’s what I believe, as a writer with a chocolate problem. But take a look at 99U’s position – if not to agree with it, then at least to enjoy feeling bad.

How to prepare yourself for maternity leave

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I don’t have children: I’m a civilian. And in my ignorance, I think I rather assumed impending labour would drive all other thoughts from a mother’s mind. Mind you, I have always believed that there isn’t a man in the world who could survive labour pains.

Still , there’s also no man in the world who’d be daft enough to go through it twice.

But since we do seem to keep having children and our work isn’t always as accommodating as it might be, as our working and artistic needs and desires may not be replaced even by the overwhelming nature of parenthood, and as so much of what we do cannot survive a prolonged absence, you need to plan.

Harvard Business Review:

What the experts say
“Part of running a 21st-century company with a 21st-century work force is establishing systems that allow for women to go out and return from maternity leave with minimal impact on the company or on their careers,” says Joan Williams, founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. Yet few organizations offer clear guidelines on the nuts-and-bolts of managing leave. Often, you’ll need to figure out how to prep colleagues, outsource work, stay in touch with the office, and re-enter with minimal disruption entirely on your own. It’s a challenge, particularly for the many women who start families at the same time they’re taking on greater professional and managerial responsibilities. But “planning for your maternity leave is an opportunity to demonstrate to everyone that you’re in the game,” says Carol Walker, president of the consulting firm Prepared to Lead, which trains young executives. Here’s how to take ownership of the process and ensure a smooth transfer of responsibilities before you leave, while you’re away, and when you come back.

How to Prepare for Maternity Leave – Julie Mosow (14 July 2014)

A lot of the detail of this piece is specific to US laws and practices but the issues are the same and it’s a useful read if your head isn’t already spinning.