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What you wish for may turn out a bit meh: Word is free on iPad

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I’m not a fan of Microsoft. It’s been years since the problems and the failings of Microsoft Word outweighed all its benefits for me but it did and it does have those benefits. Microsoft Excel is and always has been very good. PowerPoint – well, let’s not do that. No need to be rude.

So for years my only interest in whether Microsoft would bring its Office software to the iPad was a kind of business fascination. It used to be that Word was so big, nothing else breathed at all. You can be certain that there were people in Microsoft who believed that keeping Word and Excel off the iPad would kill Apple’s tablet. Be certain of that. Because they were.

And, demonstrably, they were wrong. I think they were wrong enough that it has damaged them. Not because selling Microsoft Word for iPad on day one of the iPad would’ve brought in a lot of cash and kept on doing so for all these years. But because refusing to do it meant people had to find other word processors and other spreadsheets.

Once millions of people found they really, really did not need Word, they recognised that they really, really did not need it. Microsoft may have believed people would avoid the iPad because it wouldn’t run Word and being wrong there would’ve been bad enough. But being freed of Word on iPad means free of Word anywhere.

There are other factors that have made Word stumble and I don’t know what they are. But it’s now getting on for eight years since Microsoft switched Word over to the .docx format and still people send you the old .doc ones. Nearly a decade and people have not upgraded.

In The Blank Screen book I mention discovering after a month that I hadn’t got Word on my MacBook. And a little while ago I thought I was going to write you a news story about how Microsoft Word, Excel and the other one are now available for free on iPad. But instead, I’m thinking about how tedious it would be to switch to Word again.

Let me explain one thing. You have been able to download Word and Excel and the other one for some months now and you could read documents, you just couldn’t create or edit any – unless you paid a subscription.

As of today, not so much. You still can and you still get benefits from having that but you can use Word without it. All you have to do is sign for a free Microsoft account and off you go.

I signed up and off I went. And I also linked my Dropbox account so I could get to a lot of my current and recent documents here on the iPad. It was a chore looking through them all for documents I could open and in the end I just wrote a new one.

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Microsoft Word for iPad is good. It feels better than the PC and Mac ones. But it’s too late for Word to be anything other than a curiosity to me now. I wondering whether that’s the case for most people.

Go take a look for yourself: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft The Other One are all on the iOS app store now.

The city that never sleeps but does stop working early

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When I step out onto Manhattan’s streets, I am taller. Can’t explain that, can’t justify it and I’ve long given up trying to understand it myself. But it is true. I love New York. But apparently it’s not as energetic there as I thought:

People in the Big Apple are pretty productive in their mornings but social media distractions solidly take hold by lunchtime – and the rest of the day is really a wash after that.

That, at least, is one observation from a new Twitter heat-map that aims to take the pulse of the bustling metropolis by analyzing New Yorkers’ Twitter activity over a 5-month timeframe. Researchers behind the map say it demonstrates that Twitter could be a valuable resource to understand human behavior in urban environments.

The Exact Moment When New York Office Workers Start Slacking Off – Carl Engelking, Discover (4 November 2014)

Frightening, much? Read the full piece.

Take naps, just not like this

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Today was the 276th day that I got up to work at 5am and I say this not entirely to boast – actually not to boast much at all as it’s only 276 and I’ve been doing this lark for nearly two years now – but rather to bitch about how I still struggle with going to bed. Two hundred and seventy-six times I’ve got up at 5am. I spelt that 276 out in full because it was the start of a sentence.

(If you kill me and threaten my pets, I still could never begin a sentence with a digit. Partly because I’d be dead, you did that in a stupid order. But I might even be relieved at that instead of the certain knowledge I will soon be writing about 1Password again and it is a right bugger finding different words to put in front of it.)

Anyway. Can’t start a sentence with a digit. But also writing it out in full just underlines how many two hundred and seventy-six times is. It is enough that I should surely to god have worked out how to go to bed at such a time or in such a relaxed way that I don’t want to cry when the alarm goes off.

I’m not there yet, I’m not close. But I’m getting close to being close.

And the latest experiment is the nap.

Lately I’ve been starting at 5am and working through to about 7pm and on days that I take a nap around mid-afternoon, that is a doddle. In fact, I work then to 7pm not because oh-I’m-so-busy but because I’m just into the work and not noticing the time going.

So. I’m not the first to say this and it makes me feel so very old saying it, but here you go, here I am: take a nap.

The good things first. For some reason I really enjoy the sense that I’m getting two days out of every one. I mean, I often feel like this morning was yesterday. Or last night was a week ago. It’s partly my body getting confused but also that when this is working, I am flying through things and it feel as if I am getting so much more done that I must be having more time in which to do it.

So yes, you get refreshed and you do more. Great. The energy you get from a nap, terrific.

But.

I can’t go to bed, even though I work at home. Can’t do it. So I have been napping in my office chair. I tell Siri to switch on Do Not Disturb on my iPhone and then to set a timer for 15 minutes, then I sit there with my eyes closed. And on a good day – I’ve now done this a whole four times, I’m an expert – I go into a remarkably deep sleep.

Except.

Lately it’s been a bit cold and my office tends to be the coldest spot in the house, even though I have a heater in there. So just occasionally and not because I am officially 120 years old, I have a blanket. For three days running now, I have pulled the blanket over my head as I sat there napping.

And.

Today it didn’t work.

I sat there, timer running, Do Not Disturb do not disturbing, with a blanket over my head. And that head of mine thought the words “Our little reading group isn’t perfect, I’ve never said it is.” You’re thinking that’s very random and the part of me that wants to appear in any way mysterious is tempted to just shut up now.

Okay, that was never going to happen. This quote is the opening line of a short story I was commissioned to write. It’s called “The Book Groups” (the plural is everything) and I am going to be reading it at an event later this month. It’s written in first-person prose by a (very) unreliable narrator and that means to me it’s dialogue. It’s a script. I am a scriptwriter even in this short story.

Now, I reckon if you’ve read this far then you’re in, you’re committed, you’ve invested time here and I can tell you something those lesser people who don’t read to the end of articles will never know. It’s this. I am very proud of how often actors have told me that learning my scripts is easy because the dialogue is good. It’s natural and real and it is what the characters would say. I am very proud of that. I recognise that if you don’t happen to be a scriptwriter you might not feel the import I do, but I am and I really do.

And, whisper it, I think I agree now.

Because I can perform The Book Groups. Not read it, I don’t have to read it anymore, I can perform the entire story from memory and in character.

This is relevant because of what happened in the nap today. I sat there with the blanket over my head, I mostly-silently performed The Book Groups, practicing away. I looked like I was furniture that had a drape cloth over it and was moving like a ghost in response to unseen and unheard drama.

I looked like a prat and a half of full-cream milk.

And Angela was working at home today.

Don’t look at what you’ve got to do, look at what you’ve got

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This is really interesting. It’s crouched behind whatever the opposite of a come-on title is – it’s called The Power of Asset-Based Approaches – but it is fascinating. The core of it, or at least the core that immediately appeals to me, is that taking stock of what and who you’ve got produces better results than you all bitching about what problems you have to solve.

Do you know, when you put it that way…

Writer Donnie Maclurcan puts it differently:

The underlying message is that when we start by exploring people’s strengths, we value people as human beings. When applied to community development, the asset-based approach is one of the most powerful ways to mobilize for social change because it proposes that everyone has something to offer and therefore everyone is needed. It shifts thinking to building from opportunities rather than responding to problems, and in the case of group processes it reduces the kinds of participant fears that often lead to unhealthy behaviours (such as power plays and passive aggressive behaviour). Equipped with such knowledge, groups can then move forward in a respectful, highly productive way with the work that attracted their member’s involvement in the first place.

The asset-based principle is also transferable to project planning. When you design a project that starts by highlighting its participants’ strengths, user uptake rapidly increases. Similarly, an article that starts with positives or neutral facts will draw-in and retain more readers than one that starts with a controversial opening statement, even if that controversial statement appears later on in the article. Highlighting this phenomenon in the real world, the U.K. sustainability communications agency Futerra compiled a 2009 report demonstrating just how important it is for climate organizations to begin their arguments and reports by ‘selling the sizzle’, i.e., focusing on what’s going well.

The Power of Asset-based Approaches – Donnie Maclurcan, Post Growth Institute (9 September 2014)

Read the full piece, I recommend it. And thanks to Angela Gallagher for the heads up.

Video: Programming your mind for success

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Right, listen: I know that neuro-linguistic programming is really just talking to yourself tarted up with a more commercial-sounding name. I know it actually sounds scientific, but I reckon it’s clear that the scientific-ness of the name has commercial value and I suspect nothing else. But.

But.

Watch this video by Carrie Green. I first saw Tim Clague do this same opening exercise and with her as with him, it opened my eyes just a bit. It’s about how we put barriers in front of our doing things. Pretty much anything.

Pardon? Microsoft embracing Dropbox storage

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This removes another block to my using Microsoft Word for iPad. Up to now – and remember that isn’t very long, it’s not a huge time since Word and Office first came to iPad – you have had to use OneDrive for storage. That’s Microsoft’s equivalent of Dropbox and iCloud and it’s convenient if you’re an Office 365 subscriber. If you’re not, it isn’t. Not so much. Certainly not as handy as being able to save and open documents directly with Dropbox.

I’d have said Dropbox was an obvious route to go. But I’d also have said Microsoft would never do it. And the result was I never even thought about it enough to write it. So this was a surprise:

Microsoft and Dropbox are teaming up today to more closely integrate Dropbox into Office. The surprise partnership will benefit Dropbox users who use Office across desktop, mobile, and the web as Microsoft’s productivity suite will soon become the standard way to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files stored on Dropbox storage. Office for iPad will benefit the most, with an update coming in the following weeks that will allow Dropbox users to link their account directly to the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint iPad apps.

Dropbox and Microsoft form surprise partnership for Office integration – Tom Warren, The Verge (4 November 2014)

This isn’t just that you can fiddle your way into sometimes using Dropbox, it is that you can seemingly even choose to skip OneDrive completely.

Now, if only Microsoft would sell a version without an annual subscription. Read the full piece.

Is Inbox Zero for Sociopaths?

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No.

The campaign by productivity experts to convince us that all successful people have achieved Inbox Zero is directly at odds with our very human desire and need to stay in touch and sustain our relationships. We need to ask ourselves if the guilt we feel for not having a totally empty inbox is worse than the guilt we feel for treating heartfelt communiqués from those we love as just another task we have to complete.

Which is all to say that you should maybe feel a little horrible for not responding to those long emails. Keep them around until you have time to really respond to them—even if takes months. Jot a brief note to the sender letting them know it might be a while, but you will respond.

Is Inbox Zero for Sociopaths? -Melissa Kirsch, Cafe

Read the full piece.

But, seriously, what? I like – no, I love – long emails, I just don’t see that equals my having to keep them in my inbox. Takes all sorts.

Do something else at 2pm

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Writer JD Arbuckle has a longish piece about studying your habits and rhythms in order to improve your productvity. It’s interesting but this is the bit that grabs me:

Move into a completely different task between 2PM – 3PM. Most people suffer from a mid-afternoon crash during this time. The worst thing you can do during this hour is try to grind through the crash. Instead, head to a local restaurant and meet a friend. Switch into workout clothes and run the lake. Go run errands and pick up groceries. After this break, you will return to finish the rest of your work completely re-energized and focused (If you haven’t already finished everything between 9-2)

5 Strategies for Maintaining Peak Performance Levels – JD Arbuckle, Conquer Today (12 June 2014)

Read the full piece.

How books shape writers in unexpected ways

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Quick: who is this?

just finished “Moby-Dick,” which scared me off for a long time due to the hype of its difficulty. I found it to be a beautiful boy’s adventure story and not that difficult to read. Warning: You will learn more about whales than you have ever wished to know. On the other hand, I never wanted it to end. Also, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” by Gabriel García Márquez. It simply touched on so many aspects of human love.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time, and your favorite novelist writing today?

I like the Russians, the Chekhov short stories, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I never read any of them until the past four years, and found them to be thoroughly psychologically modern. Personal favorites: “The Brothers Karamazov” and, of course, “Anna Karenina.”

Bruce Springsteen: By the Book – (no author listed), New York Times (2 November 2014)

Bugger. The link there gives it away. That’s Bruce Springsteen listing and discussing the books that shaped and stay with him. I just think it’s interesting how the books you remember are the ones that define you. Read the full piece. And also take a look at Brain Pickings, which spotted this, and would now be on my all-time website reading list.