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Advice for negotiators

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By far, by very far, the most popular post on this Blank Screen site is one from April called Negotiate like the FBI. Don’t ask me why, but I get hundreds of spam comments through that one story, far more than through anything else. What does it tell us that spammers are attracted to tales of the FBI?

Its real point was how we can all in our pitch meetings use the same strategies that have meant the FBI saves lives. Not all the time, mind, but more than I would’ve pulled off. So there’s that.

Now there is the altogether less analogy-heavy advice from Ambassador Tommy Koh of Singapore. Not to knock the guy but if you want to be bored, go read the top of the Harvard Business Review article that reprints his advice. It begins with a CV that impresses as much as it dominates as much as you start quickly scrolling down to see what he’s got to say.

He has a lot. So much that Harvard doesn’t quote him all that much, they chiefly paraphrase in a list of key points that are all worth reading. Then they also have links out to videos of him. But here’s the one main direct quote from Koh:

The beginning of wisdom is to understand that we all live in our own cultural box. We should therefore make an attempt to understand the content of the cultural box of our negotiating counterparts. This will help us to avoid violating cultural taboos such as serving pork to American Jews or food that is not halal to our Malaysian or Arab friends. At a deeper level, it will help us to understand how our American, Chinese, and Malaysian friends think and how they negotiate. Armed with this understanding, we will able we will be able to customize our negotiating strategy and tactics to suit each negotiating partner.

Ambassador Koh quoted in A Great Negotiator’s Essential Advice – James K Sebenius, Harvard Business Review (9 July 2014)

Do read the full piece. Just scroll down a bit first.

Go ahead, worry some more

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A friend used to write for Z Cars, back when it was done live, and he told me once that they used to place buckets in between the sets. For the actors to throw up in as they ran between scenes. I once had a pitch meeting where I was so scared I arrived early, opened the car door in the carpark and vomited.

I then went into the pitch meeting and did it again, more metaphorically.

So clearly vomit is key. But if you go through this, you also go through the circle of worrying why you worry, you wonder if you’re inadequate. And then if you’re ever a little bit okay about something, you worry why you aren’t worrying. You worry if you’re now less adequate still. And of course you wonder why you went into this stupid career or how you ever thought you could this stupid thing.

But that might be okay.

New research from East Asia provides a solution for this apparent paradox. It finds that, for certain people, worry can actually enhance creativity.

Call it the Woody Allen effect.

“The emotions that benefit creativity may not be the same for all individuals,” concludes a research team led by psychologist Angela Leung of Singapore Management University.

If worry is your default state, intensifying it slightly may actually prompt more flexible thinking.
Its study finds that, when the pressure is on, worry appears to be a motivating force for neurotic people. “Higher levels of intrinsic motivation in turn predict greater flexibility in idea generation,” the researchers add in the journal Emotion.

Leung and her colleagues describe three experiments that provide evidence for their thesis. One of them featured 274 Taiwanese university students, who began by filling out a questionnaire designed to measure intrinsic neuroticism. They were then asked to recall a happy, worrisome, or neutral experience.

Half were then instructed to memorize an eight-digit number, which they would later be asked to recall. This placed them in a stressful, high-cognitive-load state. The others memorized a two-digit number, a far easier task.

At that point, all were instructed to come up with “as many uses for a brick as possible.” After doing so, they recorded whether they found the experience interesting and fun.

The result: Under the heavy cognitive load, neurotic people displayed more flexible thinking after recalling worrisome events. This was in contrast to people low on the neuroticism scale, who displayed the most mental flexibility after recalling neutral events.

For Some, Worry Inspires Creativity – Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard: the Science of Society (26 June 2014)

I don’t like the Woody Allen peg, that feels like an excuse for a stock photo when they’ve got nothing else to use. But at least it gives me an excuse for an apposite quote from him:

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

My Speech to the Graduates – Woody Allen, included in Complete Prose (Amazon UK, Amazon US (originally written 1979)

via 99u

Cheer yourself up and have another go

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I’m British and I’ve been a journalist: I don’t know from positive thinking. And the moment you tell me to smile and how this means the population of the planet will grin inanely back at me, I’m looking to see what you’re selling or how I can get away from you.

You know there’s a but coming.

I’m not sure there is, though. I would like this to be a but. I think for me it might just be peeking out above an “Ye-ess?”

From TED.com:

We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity. (Filmed at TEDxBloomington.)

And here is that video. See what you think, would you?

 

Want: Uiee battery charger

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uiee2This has just started raising money on IndieGoGo – Uiee is a small battery charger for topping up phones. It looks like a roll of tape but I think its biggest advantage is that distinctive shape and unmissable bright colour. I have a small slate-gray Mophie Juice Pack which I’ve actually forgotten to pack because a) it blended in with my desk and 2) I’m stupid. I don’t see Uiee fixing the latter, but it could help a lot with the former.

Mophie’s Juice Packs do charge you more in both senses: they has more power in it for topping up your phone and they do cost more. Uiee looks like it will retail for $50 US (no UK pricing yet that I know) where I spent around $80 on the particular Mophie I bought. (Have a look at the range of Mophie battery chargers on Amazon UK, Amazon US). When I got my Mophie, it was able to recharge my iPhone twice over; now, about two years later, it’s down to doing a little under once. Uiee claims to top up your iPhone by 55% so that’s a lot less than a full charge but it’ll add hours to your working day.

I wish we didn’t need these things but we do and nobody’s expecting the next iPhone to be any better with its battery power. Have a look at the Uiee video and then go its IndieGoGo page to lay down some Kickstarter-style cash.

 

 

New mobile site design

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And it was news to me. This is what you get for basing your site on a WordPress template: it can make major changes in the next update. But fortunately I like this one a lot.

If you’re already reading this on an iPhone or I presume Android too, you are hopefully seeing a much slicker Blank Screen than before. If you’re not seeing that, maybe it’s taking a time to roll out everywhere. But as of just now, this is what you see if you read the site mobily:

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Video – and now top 5 productivity apps for iOS

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This is more of a curio, I think: it’s the top 5 productivity iOS apps from someone who clearly prefers Android. He has that Android fiddle-with-new-toy-itus where the ability to root your phone is more interesting than getting any work done.

And he says iOS is less interesting because you’ve heard of all the best productivity apps for iOS already. O-kay.

Herewith, then, five you haven’t heard of. I think that knocks the word ‘top’ off the description but I only disagree with one – I’d recommend 1Password over LastPass, though doubtlessly for the same reason he does, it’s the one I use myself – and there’s only one I have never heard of. Find out what in the world 30/30 does here:

Update: Microsoft restores Skype missing feature

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Previously, Microsoft updated Skype for iOS and took away voice messages. That old thing. Who’d use that? And wouldn’t be willing to trade in their iPhone for an Android device in order to listen to a voicemail message? See Microsoft Taketh Away.

You know it wasn’t a plan to rob iPhone users of a core feature but the way it was handled, it sounded as if it was and anyway, the result is that we were robbed of a core feature. And because of Apple’s usually handy automatic app updating, we got this improvement without noticing.

It’s now fixed. But Skype/Microsoft really doesn’t like to admit to a mistake however obvious. So the return of voicemail messages is not a bug fix and they obviously won’t apologise for the problem. Instead, it’s a new feature you should be grateful they’ve added in. I was grateful before, it is a good feature, but we had it and this is like ten fishing for compliments after screwing us around.

From the official blog:

We have been reading and listening to your feedback ever since we launched the new remastered Skype for iPhone and have been hard at work incorporating your suggestions. With Skype 5.1 for iPhone we included the ability to delete a conversation, edit a message and added a “Skype”-only contact filter, to name a few. Today, Skype 5.2 for iPhone adds more of the features you want most:

Voice message support: When you receive a new voice message from someone, it will show up in the conversation. To listen, just press play.

Skype 5.2 for iPhone – blog (7 July 2014)

Thank you: Google Docs and Drive explained

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Because I’ve been getting these confused.

Google’s recent upgrades to Drive have made clear the company’s going head-to-head with Microsoft on productivity services. Unfortunately, in its efforts to emulate the industry standard, Google’s made its cloud-based apps every bit as Byzantine as Office365.

Google’s services overlap and their names aren’t self-explanatory. This problem is aggravated by the company’s propensity to change those names, consolidate services under one moniker, or simply discontinue them.

Fortunately, underneath the confusing nomenclature you’ll find that Google is currently offering three major productivity services to the public. (While you’ll find dozens of additional products on the company’s master list of products , we aren’t focusing on non-productivity business services like Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Payments, and so on in this story.) Here’s an analysis of each to help you decide whether one (or more) is right for you.

You don’t know Docs from Drive: Google’s productivity apps, explained – Christopher Null, PC World (7 July 2014)

Read the lot, do.

Go somewhere boring to write

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I’ve had recommendations via friends-of-the-site before, I’m having a recommendation from wife-of-the-blog.

That sounds dreadful. That sounds like a 21st Century version of phrases like “her indoors”. My wife’s name is Angela Gallagher. You and I are having a recommendation from Angela which is this piece she got from traveller Chris Guillebeau:

Don’t go to paradise to get something done. Go to Bali, or any place like Bali, for lots of reasons. (I went there for a birthday by myself.)

But if you want to find a place to write, don’t go to an interesting place. Go somewhere where you can withdraw from the world, fully free of engagement. Go somewhere where there’s nothing to do.

If You Want to Write a Book, Go to a Boring Place – Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity (7 July 2014)

Do read more but don’t just read more: delve on in to his The Art of Non-Conformity, and when you’re fully engrossed, remember to thank Angela. I can pass messages on.