Advice

Snap review: Sky Fibre

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Get it.

Is that snappy enough, do you think? I think you need a little more, you need a link to follow. So let’s say my snap review is this: get it.

Sky Fibre is ultrafast broadband and that link will tell you more about it plus let you check whether it’s on your area. Take a look at BT Infinity too. It’s the same or similar and you may find that only one is available to you. I had a recurring task in OmniFocus for a year that prodded me to check whether BT Infinity was yet available to me and though it isn’t, it was on one of those regular prods that I found Sky Fibre had come.

I’ve always had very slow broadband so if yours is already nippy, maybe you won’t notice the difference so markedly. For many years, I would get calls from different broadband suppliers saying they could get me something like 10Mb/s and I’d go yeah, prove it. They’d type something and go Oh. And I’d say yeah. Tell me about it.

My house is about as far away from the nearest telephone exchange as it is possible to be without actually being on the next exchange along. And that distance, whatever it is, has crippled my broadband.

On a good day, when the wind is in the east and I am the only person on the street using broadband, I could get up to a dizzying 3.6Mb/s. More typically, I got 1.7Mb/s and pitying looks from friends.

We’ve now changed to Sky Fibre and at this very moment we have two Macs, two iPads and two iPhones working away online and my speed here is 20.13Mb/s.

I tell you, it is like when we went from dialup to broadband.

So, seriously, get it.

Ego versus productivity

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I am a man so, yes, I want to be right. But it’s more important to me that the thing we are doing together works, is the best we can make it. And if I am wrong, bollocks to my ego, you have to tell me and I have to take it immediately because we must fix it now.

The time you spend trying to gently point out a problem to me is kind but it is also exactly as much a waste of our joint effort as the time I spend puffing out my chest and grudgingly accepting that this is not the most right I’ve ever been.

Sometimes it genuinely can hurt to be wrong. I’ve had blood running cold – which I thought was a nonsense phrase but, my lights, it is spot on – and I’ve been shown to be wrong when other people were depending on me. Compared to that, most day to day moments of being wrong are trivial. And in every case, you and I are better off putting things right.

You’re wondering if something has happened to make me think this today.

No.

Not today.

Not that I’ll admit to you anyway.

Instead, it is always a thing with me because it always a thing. Tell me I’m an idiot, rave at me if you must, but do it now and do it quickly so we can fix this and get on to the next crisis. There is always a next crisis. And if upsetting me means we move on, let’s just move on.

 

You don’t know what you do

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You know what you're doing, but you don't know what you do. I'm writing to you from a school where I'm just a guest at a Royal Television Society project getting kids into television careers. I am the tiniest part of it, I am merely a live version of one PowerPoint slide that lists various jobs people can do. But of course it's not me who matters, it's what I've done and in this case how I started at a school like this one.

Not as good, to be truthful: I'm very impressed with schools today in comparison to my old one. (I should go to my old school sometime: that would be so strange.)

But you forget that what you do every day is something that you hopefully wanted to do, it's certainly something that you had to work hard at doing. And there are people starting out who maybe want to do the same but certainly need to see that it can be done.

That was the problem in my school: I am a writer but then writing was something I believed other people did, it was something the school discouraged. If a writer, any writer, even me, had come in to the school, I would've started my writing career ten years earlier.

Maybe I would've benefited from that push more than most. The kids in this school are easily the smartest I've met so far and they are asking very sophisticated questions. But the fact that they have the Royal Television Society in here, the fact that actually at this moment all of the kids are working on a genuine practical exercise – not a theory, not an ideal, but a real television project – it is fabulous to witness.

And of course it's a honour to be included. But it's also sobering: I always feel as if I'm just starting out but if I'm made to look back, there is plenty to see that the school-age me would be very proud of.

I don't know what I do. Mind you, I also don't know what I'm doing, so.

Decision paralysis

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When you're faced with two choices and you have to decide right now, the correct answer is… either of them. It is better to do either than neither.

I was at the Library of Birmingham all day today doing writing sessions with schoolkids. But my slot was 45 minutes and with about half an hour to go, I was paralysed over a decision.

It was because I have a writing exercise I love. If I'm working with adults, it spins off into all sorts about radio drama and if I'm with children, it becomes a Doctor Who writing session. I'm not always happy about the jump to Doctor Who, it isn't as obvious and necessary a step as the radio writing one seems. So, faced with a shorter running time, I held my head in my hands trying to decide whether to skip it and go straight to Who or not.

I've been thinking about this for around ten days. But at 10:25 this morning, I was alone in a room with my notes in my iPad, trying to juggle times and even – I'm only completely ashamed – using an online random choice generator to try to decide. Start with the usual exercise or go straight to Doctor Who.

Truly, this is not a hard decision.

But I could not make it.

And then the first group came in half an hour early and I had to decide in the space of time it took to stand up.

I did the intro exercise. I love it. I'd tell you every detail but I hope to try it out on you some time.

The thing is, none of the kids or their teachers would've known if I had gone straight to Doctor Who. Nobody would've known any difference, except I'm adamant that they'd have lost out by not doing this introduction bit.

So I did do it but I could have as easily chosen not to. And neither would've been wrong, so either would be correct.

The only thing that would have been wrong is standing there for another half hour throwing a coin in the air.

What to do when you’ve cocked something up

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Tell everybody right now.

Last Monday I had an email confirming a thing I'd agreed to do and I had the stomach lurch when I realised I had entirely misunderstood the gig. I'm glad to say that this is rare but it happens and it always happens for the very silliest of reasons – and it is invariably entirely my fault.

For this one, I could and later I did work out the whole chain of reasons why I went wrong. There is a certain logic to it, I can sort of see how it happened, I can see what I did. Not why, but what.

I did spend a few reeling moments on this at the instant I found out but then I parked trying to rationalise it all, I made some tea, and I emailed the person back putting my hand up.

That's got to be a scary email to get so I did spend as much time reassuring her that I was on the case now as I did apologising for my cockup.

And then I had to go through it all again with an entire group of people I happened to be representing. I'd told them what I had believed but now I had to tell them the truth and get their help to fix it.

I told them the truth.

They fixed it.

We fixed it.

And I got a lovely note from the woman I was working with. I had cocked up my part of her event but because I told her right away, because I then fixed it all, the note said I was one of the few people who just did what he agreed. No grumbling, no messing, no need for a thousand reminders, I just did it.

She's kind of right. She's definitely kind.

But I'm telling you this from the heart and the stomach. When you see a problem you've created, you can't hide it. No good comes of trying. Just own up and sort it out. It's easier said than done, naturally, but I started the week with actual pain in my stomach and I've ended it feeling a lot lighter in my heart.

Stop churning and just do it

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Look, you're reading this but you know you should be doing that thing. Five minutes, you're giving yourself five minutes. And a mug of tea. Obviously you have to phone your accountant, that's not prevaricating. And if you don't plan the week's food shopping, nobody will.

Stop.

And start.

That's possibly a mixed signal there but you know what I mean and you also know it already. In your heart of hearts and your head of heads, you know you should be doing that thing right now.

All I'm adding to that is this single point: you didn't really enjoy that mug of tea, you didn't fully concentrate on that accountant phone call. If you could genuinely put something out of your mind then maybe you could really prevaricate, maybe it would even be a good thing to be able to clear your head like that. But you can't so you can't and it isn't. Add up all the time you spend churning over this thing and it is invariably far longer and more insiduously painful than just doing the bleedin' thing right now.

It won't be easier for doing it now. It won't magically be all okay and sunshine.

But it will be done.

Boundary pushing

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I'd not heard of her before this very minute and I'm not yet clear who she is, what she does or where she does it. But Gayle Allen makes a lot of sense about pushing one's boundaries and a lot of it is deliciously uncomfortable:

80% and go: lose the desire to be perfect. If you can get to perfect the first time, you’re probably not dreaming big enough. Give it 80%, get it out there, and get ready for feedback. It’s coming. It’s okay. Use it. Learn from it. That’s how you’ll get to 100%

Read her guide to being a startup.

A quick fix for days you’re below par

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A quick fix when your problem is you and how you're feeling. This works especially if you're feeling slow and lethargic, it's good if you're feeling in any way too below par to get any work done.

Go see somebody.

I don't mean a doctor. I mean arrange to get a lunch or a coffee with someone now.

It may well be that what you ought to be doing is staying right where you are and getting this bastard piece of work done, but the odds are good that you would just continue pushing the pieces around without getting anywhere. And the odds are high that whatever you do accomplish will be about as below par as you.

So if the hour or the day is not going to work out, spend that time or a key part of it going to have a coffee with someone.

Because it does three things.

The obvious first one is that coffee will perk you up, you use a percolator to perk you up now.

But there is also the business of who you go to see. There's the issue of whether they can see you, but before you pick up that phone you need to have thought of someone to call and you need to have an idea of what to call them about. Maybe you can just phone them with the idea of getting a coffee; I tend to need something more to offer them, like it's a coffee about doing this or it's a tea about doing that. Whatever it is, you have to pick the person and you have to think of what you'll say and you have to phone them.

And you'll then have to do that with the next person if your first choice can't make it.

Then when you do meet them, though, that's when the third and by far the biggest boost comes. This works with anyone you meet, anyone at all. But it's greater if it's someone you like. Greater still if it's someone you in any way admire. It is beyond measure greater if you also fancy them.

Whoever they are and whatever you think of the way they flick their hair, you will be performing for them.

There is just no possibility that you will present yourself as this half-dead sloth who could barely type a word. You will bounce. You will lie.

And the lying and the performance will pick you up.

Then get back to work as quickly as you can before it all fades.

Eeek. Erase things to remember them? Right. Sure.

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Shudder. Hack College suggests that you should erase something you've memorised in order to fix it in your head. I think I went pale at the thought. Write something down, commit it to memory and then hit delete. I swear I just hallucinated a popup dialogue saying “This operation cannot be undone”.

But if you're braver than me, there is more about this and 19 less scary ideas for people with bad memories on Hack College's 20 Memorization Techniques for College Students. Also a great photo.

Spotted by Lifehacker