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Fight! Fight! Fight!

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When we write we know to put characters in conflict but in real life, we avoid that all we can. And quite reasonably so. But sometimes, it might be worth a bit of a scrap:

While some people plow through conflict to get their way, a 2010 study by Provo, Utah-based leadership training firm VitalSmarts found that 95% of employees have trouble voicing differences of opinion, which results in a loss of roughly $1,500 per eight-hour workday in lost productivity, doing unnecessary work, and engaging in active avoidance of co-workers for every crucial conversation they avoid.

“We’re constantly faced with choices and conflicts. We work through the vast majority. The conflicts that get the most attention are the ones that go bad or go wrong,” says Peter T. Coleman, psychology and education professor at New York City’s Columbia University and author of the forthcoming Making Conflict Work: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement.

Somewhere between browbeating and caving in every time you’re faced with someone else’s preferences, there’s a middle ground out of which can spring innovation and ideas.

How to Use Conflict to Your Advantage at Work – Gwen Moran, Fast Company (31 July 2014)

Moran’s full piece goes on to give five pointers on how and when to do it, starting with choosing your battles wisely.

Wunderlist 3 – the best free To Do app?

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Usually a question in a headline means the article will conclude ‘nope’ but this time, it’s more ‘perhaps’. When I do The Blank Screen as a full-day workshop, I include a section on To Do apps that begins with why you should use OmniFocus but pretty quickly goes on to why you shouldn’t and what you can use instead.

The reasons you shouldn’t use OmniFocus boil down to two: it doesn’t work on PCs or Android so if you do, there’s no point. And as reluctant as I am to say this since it has been such a big part of my life for a couple of years now, OmniFocus is not for everyone. It’s powerful and it’s complex and it costs a lot more than free.

Personally, it’s worth it. But if you’re just looking into this whole business of To Do apps, it’s hard to slap down a lot of cash straight away. Still, any To Do app is better than none and all of them are better than working on Post-It Notes that you keep losing.

So I recommend Wunderlist. Full disclosure: I’ve barely used it myself as I came across it after I’d swapped to OmniFocus. But I like what I see very much and, more importantly, it’s been recommended to me by attendees of The Blank Screen workshop too.

Now version 3 is out and the makers say:

Ten months ago – after launching Wunderlist 2, introducing Wunderlist Pro and Wunderlist for Business – we set out on a journey that we knew would take some time. Seeing millions of you organize your daily life with Wunderlist, share your grocery lists, track your favorite movies and run your business, we made a plan to rebuild Wunderlist from scratch, with the goal to make it better, faster and most importantly, ready for the future.

Although you couldn’t see the complex technology behind Wunderlist 2’s simple interface, you certainly felt the bumps in the road. Your lists didn’t always sync smoothly from your phone to your computer, you were missing a more modern interface or you wanted Wunderlist to be integrated with your calendar and others apps you were using.

Today, with Wunderlist 3 we are introducing the product we’ve always envisioned. One that sets the foundation for all the great new features and regular improvements that are going to come until the end of the year and beyond. It’s the fastest, simplest and most powerful Wunderlist you’ve ever used.

Wunderlist 3 is here – Wunderlist official site

Take a look at the makers’ video:

And now go download Wunderlist for iOS, Android, Mac, PC and more on the official site.

This is design

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It angers me – actually angers me – when people insist design is making things pretty. You get this a lot from PC users who say Mac ones are fools paying extra for pretty boxes when Windows is just as good. It’s like script writers who claim dialogue is a tasty little extra you add on your final draft. These are both bollocks but they’re pervasive and persuasive bollocks because they’re said by writers who can’t write dialogue and they’re usually said by PC users who couldn’t afford a Mac. I have more time for the PC users, I think scriptwriters who can’t write dialogue are like taxi drivers who can’t drive.

But it’s still bollocks. Dialogue and design are things you see on the surface but which reach down to the very bones – or they don’t work at all.

And here’s an example. I got this from an article on Business Insider which ran a report about an internal Apple University. This place tries to convey to new employees what design, and everything else, means to Apple. And it reportedly includes a point where a lecturer will show employees an image of a TV remote control. Business Insider believes it’s this one:

google-tv-remote-1

That’s a Google TV Remote built by Sony. It’s a TV remote. A remote control for your TV set. It looks like one of those model helicopter controls coupled to an ancient Blackberry or perhaps a label maker, but it’s a TV remote.

And then of course the Apple professor shows Apple’s equivalent:

apple-tv-remote-1

Yes, it’s prettier. But you’ll also use it. That’s the thing: not fancy aesthetics, not pretty pictures, but something that you will use to do something you want to do. Design is not about device per se, it’s about you. Making it work for you.

That’s design.

“If you work with assholes, no To Do list will help you work efficiently”

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So says designer Jessica Walsh. Don’t you love her for that? She was answering a question about how she works, what specific processes she has for handling her job and her full reply was:

The obvious answer is to-do lists and apps (Evernote, Clear, Sparrow, Text Expander, iCal). Most importantly though, I’d say to choose good clients and coworkers who are nice and open to interesting creative work. If you work with assholes / ego-maniacs / lazy people, no to-do list will help you work efficiently.

Designer Jessica Walsh quoted in 15 Designers Reveal Secrets For Staying Productive – Carey Dunne, Fast Company (8 August 2014)

I liked her pithy summary the best but the article is about her and 14 more designers all being asked various questions to do with their work and it’s an interesting read. It’s also a summary, really, of a much bigger project:

Since April, Samara, Russia-based designer Yevgeny Yermakov has been asking designers a series of five questions–about work habits, favorite books, career challenges, and creativity–and publishing their answers on his website. The project, “5 Questions for 100 Designers,” is growing into a trove of wisdom from the industry’s leading minds. Forty-four interviews are up so far, with designers from Jessica Hische to Debbie Millman to Michael Bierut.

Read Fast Company’s article for more extracts and links out to the growing 5 Questions project.

It’s okay to use Facebook Messenger

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It’s not great, but it’s okay. The security and privacy and just plain tedious issues around it have been exaggerated. True, Facebook is to privacy what Microsoft is to taste and, true, Facebook only profits by what it can leverage out of us. It’s becoming a saying: if a product is free, then you are the one being sold.

However, the specific issues around Messenger aren’t what they seemed. The complaint that most spooked me was that the app uses your iPhone’s microphone. It does. If you agree to it. Don’t thank Facebook for that qualification, thank Apple: apps cannot access your microphone, your photos, your contacts or anything else without asking you first. Android isn’t so bothered.

Facebook does make it sound as if it wants your mic for nefarious purposes where really it’s to allow you to send audio messages. I didn’t know you could, but apparently it is or it is going to be like the voice-text kind of thing that is currently in WhatsApp and will shortly be in iOS 8.

It also says that it might make calls on your behalf. Hmm. But that’s muddy-speak for if you tap a contact’s number on your Messenger screen, Messenger will dial them for you.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, it’s still a pain to deal with Facebook’s constant pressing for more access. I find it extremely annoying that I’ll get a notification on my Facebook icon for a new message in Messenger. Open one, then have to open the other, tap to go back, tap to get out, it’s just ugly.

But it’s not as murderously objectionable as I thought. Read more about this and what’s really going on over in TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog).

If you search for it, it will come

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You’ve done this. You’ve searched eBay for something from your childhood – maybe Spangles, if they wouldn’t have gone off by now, maybe that particular blue-and-white-striped Cornishware teapot that your mother has asked you to find and by God you’ve searched every antique shop there is in existence and still there’s no sign of the bloody thing.

(There is, by the way. Look at TG Green’s website for genuine Cornishware stuff. I’d have found that several years sooner if I’d know that blue and white stripes are a Cornish thing. Who knew?)

But if I hadn’t found the real thing, there’s a good chance I would eventually have found the fake.

If enough people search for something on eBay, they will find it because it will be made for them.

“We send [manufacturers] data about what people are looking for on eBay and they respond and turn it around incredibly quickly,” president of eBay Marketplaces Devin Wenig told me. “We have a really big China export business to Europe and the United States. And they respond very, very quickly to consumer taste, whatever it might be. It’s really remarkable to see how quickly the manufacturing base adapts to the demand signals they get.”

In other words, that red wool-blend Cross Colours hat on eBay might not be the relic from 1989 it appears to be, but instead a newly manufactured replica. (It is, of course, against eBay’s policy to sell counterfeit items.) Yes, there’s a huge and thriving “new vintage” manufacturing sector built around—and tailored to— your online searches. It’s why, for instance, you can find something like an original 1960s-era Pan Am tote bag, and its new “vintage style” counterpart.

Why eBay Tells Chinese Manufacturers What You’re Searching For – Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic (6 August 2014)

Let’s do it. Let’s make up some fictitious 1980s craze and see if we can’t get it made for eBay. It’ll just be like a convoluted form of 3D printing.

Read LaFrance’s full piece for more.

New York Times on the need to take a break

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I slept in this morning. It’s my first Monday back working and I slept in. Woke at 8am, it’s now slipping a wee bit past 9am and if you can really call nattering to you work, then this is the first work I’ve done. I am hours behind and I feel great.

I’m going to have to think about this. But as if to aid me thinking about it, I just read this:

Every day we’re assaulted with facts, pseudofacts, news feeds and jibber-jabber, coming from all directions. According to a 2011 study, on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information, five times as much as we did in 1986. As the world’s 21,274 television stations produce some 85,000 hours of original programming every day (by 2003 figures), we watch an average of five hours of television per day. For every hour of YouTube video you watch, there are 5,999 hours of new video just posted!

Hit the Reset Button in Your Brain – Daniel J Levitn, New York Times (9 August 2014)

I know what you’re thinking: who’s the slacker who didn’t make it 6,000 hours?

But Levitin’s point is that we need to step away from all this once in a while. And apparently, for a great number of people in the US, that once in a while is right now:

This month, many Americans will take time off from work to go on vacation, catch up on household projects and simply be with family and friends. And many of us will feel guilty for doing so. We will worry about all of the emails piling up at work, and in many cases continue to compulsively check email during our precious time off.

But beware the false break. Make sure you have a real one. The summer vacation is more than a quaint tradition. Along with family time, mealtime and weekends, it is an important way that we can make the most of our beautiful brains.

Is your brain beautiful? Or is this like football, which I think is called the beautiful game for absolutely no reason whatsoever?

Levitin’s full piece is an opinion article in the New York Times but it’s opinion backed up by some academic research that he and his colleagues have done. Read the lot for a bit more waffle but also a great deal more concrete bits about handling how our attention is so assaulted.

To work better, work less

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I feel busted. I am guilty of every single thing in this article about our attitudes to working long hours. And I am going to do something about it, even if I have to work all the hours god sends me.

It has long been known that working too much leads to life-shortening stress. It also leads to disengagement at work, as focus simply cannot be sustained for much more than 50 hours a week. Even Henry Ford knew the problem with overwork when he cut his employees’ schedules from 48-hour weeks to 40-hour weeks. He believed that working more than 40 hours a week had been causing his employees to make many errors, as he recounted in his autobiography, My Life and Work.

…It seems silly that many work long hours simply for the sake of having worked long hours. Perhaps the reason people overwork even when it is not for “reward, punishment, or obligation” is because it holds great social cachet. Busyness implies hard work, which implies good character, a strong education, and either present or future affluence. The phrase, “I can’t; I’m busy,” sends a signal that you’re not just an homme sérieux, but an important one at that.

There is also a belief in many countries, the United States especially, that work is an inherently noble pursuit. Many feel existentially lost without the driving structure of work in their life—even if that structure is neither proportionally profitable nor healthy in a physical or psychological sense.

To Work Better, Work Less – Cody C Delistraty, The Atlantic (8 August 2014)

Why? Microsoft releases celebrity app

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So far it is only available on the US iTunes Store but Microsoft has released a free iPhone app that lets you stalk – I mean, track your favourite celebrities. Seriously, why?

Okay, I’ve never bought a celebrity magazine, I have never chosen a film based on the actor in it – or the director, for that matter, though I have because of the writer – so I’m not the target market here.

I’m also not someone who would find the app’s name anything but irksome: it’s called SNIPP3T. All caps and with the 3 instead of an E. Cool. Like a naff password. If you’re interested and if you have a US iTunes account, knock yourself out here.