Productivity

Productivity

Screens Are Bad

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I think we knew this. What I really want is for someone to explain that monitors and phone screens are bad for us – and here’s the solution. Er, the solution that continues to allow us to do what we do and use what we use. In the meantime:

FOR MORE THAN 3 billion years, life on Earth was governed by the cyclical light of sun, moon and stars. Then along came electric light, turning night into day at the flick of a switch. Our bodies and brains may not have been ready.

A fast-growing body of research has linked artificial light exposure to disruptions in circadian rhythms, the light-triggered releases of hormones that regulate bodily function. Circadian disruption has in turn been linked to a host of health problems, from cancer to diabetes, obesity and depression. “Everything changed with electricity. Now we can have bright light in the middle of night. And that changes our circadian physiology almost immediately,” says Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut. “What we don’t know, and what so many people are interested in, are the effects of having that light chronically.”

Screens May Be Terrible for You, and Now We Know Why – Brandon Keim, Wired (18 March 2015)

Read the full piece – on your screen.

Don’t ask for permission

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There’s the old idea in writing and possibly most of all in journalism: don’t ask for permission first, just do it and apologise afterwards if you’re caught. But there is another thing you can do that avoids the pitfall of permission and the way that abdicates your responsibility to whoever said yes. There is another thing that takes this lack of permission and produces productive results:

Instead of higher-ups making decisions, often far removed from the real problems that team members face, you give the decision making power to those that are closest to the problem.

24 People, No Managers: Our New Experiment in Getting Work Done at Buffer – Leo Widrich, Buffer (6 October 2014)

I’m not sure that gives you the whole picture. But then the full piece goes into a lot more detail than I think you need. So here’s the halfway skinny: don’t ask for permission but do ask for advice.

Buffer is a technology company and author Widrich details how they go about making decisions on the way from idea to product. It’s rather empowering: have a read.

Also a hat nod to 99U for their take on this.

Unfair review of “Getting Things Done” 2nd edition

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Look, you should probably get this book. How’s that for an unfair review? Also, much of what started me off doing The Blank Screen can be traced back to David Allen and Getting Things Done so, you know, I do entirely believe that the man is smart and that this GTD is clever.

But.

After more than a decade, he’s released an updated version of the Getting Things Done book and I can’t get through it. I got the opening 30 pages or so from iBooks as a sample and the book is only £6.99 but I can’t do it, I can’t buy it because I just know I won’t be able to press on

I just don’t think Allen is a writer. Brilliant ideas and such great, great experience, but not a writer. For instance, I don’t think he always knows what he’s conveying. Follow. This new book is a complete rewrite except that he admits it’s more a complete re-type: he did retype the entire book and he added and changed bits along the way. I can’t tell how much is new but the core ideas are the same and that’s how it should be.

Except.

For this edition I grappled with how much attention to continue to devote to paper-based tools and materials… as many in the younger generations have come to believe they don’t have to deal with paper at all.

Tell me I’m wrong, do, but I can see him tussling over the phrasing of this and trying to not sound like paper is best and we’re all eejits for not seeing it. I’m fine that he believes in paper but he doesn’t sound like anyone else’s belief could be valid. This is about paper and whether you make scribbles instead of typing into your phone yet it’s rankling like a religious issue.

Maybe that’s partly because in the run up to this passage I’ve been finding the writing a slog. Maybe it’s because a sentence or three later he can’t resist going “so there” on us with:

Ironically, there is a growing resurgence of interest in the use of paper among is the most sophisticatedly digital.

Is there? To give the man credit, he may write that line like a defensive drinker in a pub argument but he pops a footnote asterisk next to it. There’s no answering footnote in the sample so let’s give him credit and the benefit of the doubt too.

But even if this is correct, it isn’t me. So he’s not writing about my world and he isn’t writing well; he doesn’t have to do the former but he does the latter and that’s why I’ve got to skip the rest of the book.

“Lose sight of the shore”

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I don’t even care what this was about, I am just very taken with a phrase that Apple’s Tim Cook just used in an interview about the company.

Still, so you get the full context, here’s the thing. Apple is unusual in that it will ditch popular things because it thinks they’re on the way out. That sounds impossibly arrogant and the company’s rivals which hang on to everything sound like they’re doing us a favour. But time and again, Apple turns out to be right and every manufacturer ditches the floppy drive, the CD, the DVD and more.

Actually, Apple’s even ditched bigger things: once it ceased production on the world’s most popular MP3 player – I can’t remember which iPod it was but one of them – in order to bring out a complete replacement. Which then did better.

Enough. Here’s the quote in context:

“Part of the reason Microsoft ran into an issue was that they didn’t want to walk away from legacy stuff,” Cook says. “Apple has always had the discipline to make the bold decision to walk away … We changed our connector, even though many people loved the 30-pin connector. Some of these things were not popular for quite a while. But you have to be willing to lose sight of the shore and go. We still do that.”

Tim Cook on Apple’s Future: Everything Can Change Except Values – Rick Tetzeli and Brent Schlender, Fast Company (18 March 2015)

Actually, have a read of the whole thing as it’s a rather absorbing piece. But, it’s that line, isn’t it? Lose sight of the shore and go.

Reminds me of Dar Williams’s lyric from We Learned the Sea that “the stars of the sea are the same for the land”.

Self-perception and other stories

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Look, you do this and I do this. I very do this. I very do this a lot. You set out aiming to do something or be something or learn something – and then as soon as you’ve done it, you dismiss it.

It must be easy, you think, because you did it. Therefore anyone can.

But the consequence of this is that everything ahead of you is a mountain and everything behind is just piddling about in the water.

When you do something amazing, accept that it’s amazing.

Okay? There. You’ve been told. And so have I. You got it from me and I got it from a chat with coach Alec McPhedran who ran career advice sessions today as part of Digital Birmingham.

OmniFocus contexts for all

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Context is a thing. If you can be bothered, you can set a context for any particular task you need to do. Back in the olden days, like thousands and thousands of years ago, typical contexts were Home and Work. So you’d say this bathroom tap you have to fix has a Home context, this sales call has a Work one. Hold that thought.

While you hold that thought, add in that this is actually useful. Maybe not in this example but in general. You could go in to work, get out your To Do list and have it only show you the things you can do there. Nothing about the tap or the spanner you need to buy, because you can’t do anything about that here and now.

The trouble is that you can make that sales call from home now.

So maybe you have a context that is Worky Stuff. Okay.

Traditionally, the people who use contexts in this way are followers of the Getting Things Done system that advocates them. I’m resistant to some of this GTD stuff but I use contexts and I also use OmniFocus which is a To Do app that features them.

Traditionally, OmniFocus users have believed that you should have very few contexts or it all gets messy. I get messy. I have contexts for places so that I can say to Siri “Remind me to email Des when I get home”. Lots of places. Lots of contexts. I have been naughty.

Except there is this writer who says nuts to that, have many, many, and three times many contexts. For this reason:

OmniFocus’s role as an Everything Bucket often seems to be overlooked by those looking for just a to do list. Which is fine. I’m a big believer that whatever system works for you, well, works for you.

For me, I like the idea that there’s one place that all my tasks end up. I like that it’s not my email inbox, and I like that it means that I have a quick answer when someone asks me if there’s anything they can help with…

…In actual fact, I have hundreds of the damn things, and not just because I have a context for just about every person I interact with. Seriously, it’s how I ninja’d that meeting: I had a context for my colleague and had been collecting “things to ask” over the course of a couple of weeks.

Meetings, awesomeness and potential bodily harm: an OmniFocus story – Relative Sanity (21 January 2015)

Read the full piece. Hat nod to http://simplicitybliss.com for spotting this and making me happy.

Citymapper app

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I spend a hell of a lot of time travelling by public transport: it is the handiest thing ever, when it works and when you can find your route. You won’t be surprised to know that I try a lot of apps for this purpose and I’ve just reviewed this one for MacNN.

Actually, review doesn’t cover it: I’ve evangelised Citymapper.

Give Citymapper a round of applause: its taxi listing includes the typical price for that distance – and it does so in the local currency. If you need the convenience and speed of a taxi, this info is a real benefit.

Distressingly, it also tells you approximately how many calories you’ll burn off if you walk. Let’s just gloss over that.

Hands On: Citymapper 5.01 (iPhone) – William Gallagher, MacNN (17 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

Firefox and Chrome users stay in their jobs longer

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Now if it this were about Internet Explorer, you could joke that users stay longer in their jobs because that browser is slower. But it isn’t about that, so we can’t. Instead, a firm has found that people who uses these other two browsers have certain characteristics.

Cornerstone’s researchers found that people who took the test on a non-default browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, ended up staying at their jobs about 15 percent longer than those who stuck with Safari or Internet Explorer. They performed better on the job as well. (These statistics were roughly the same for both Mac and PC users.)

People Who Use Firefox or Chrome Are Better Employees — Joe Pinskermar, The Atlantic (16 March 2015)

The thinking is that these are non-standard browsers. That is, if you use them, you chose to go get them and it’s the act of even looking into alternatives that marks you out with these distinctive characteristics.

Read the full piece.

A month of networking

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Sounds like torture, doesn’t it? But writer Rachel Gillett did it so you don’t have to – and yet you may want to take her advice. She documents the whole month so do read the full piece but here’s why she did it plus the opening of week one:

I spent the past month doing something most people dread: networking.

As an introvert, the month-long challenge to work my way up to being a superconnector was both a painfully difficult and surprisingly rewarding experience.

WEEK 1: GET TO KNOW YOUR COWORKERS
During the first week of the challenge, I eased into networking by inviting coworkers to lunch. This low-pressure situation promised to help us practice our conversation skills. I asked my coworker Rose to invite another colleague, David, to join us for lunch—and on the walk to our lunch spot I felt very deeply the true awkwardness of this scenario.

I think we were all aware of the social connotation when someone asks you to lunch. One can’t help but wonder, what’s the motivation here, what’s the angle? So as we sat down to eat, I wanted to dispel any fears of a hidden agenda. Our networking lunch was simply an occasion to get out of the office, get to know each other better. After brushing the initial awkwardness aside, we enjoyed a delicious family-style meal of somosas, saag paneer, chicken tikka masala, lamb korma, and naan. We ate like kings, kvetched like yentas, and it was great.

“Be you, be real,” Judy Robinett, author of How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule, suggested during our live chat. “Connections happen on a personal level first. You want folks with a good head, good heart, and good gut.”

My Painful (And Sometimes Fun) Month Of Networking – Rachel Gillett, Fast Company (16 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

Using Evernote to write books

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It’s a piece from Evernote.com so, you know, there’s not going to be a lot of criticism here but still:

Every day, people rely on Evernote to compile, catalog, organize their research and writing.

For author and chief Business Insider correspondent Nicholas Carlson, Evernote was the primary tool he used to write a 93,000 word book. In six weeks.

That boils down to an average of 2,500 words every day.

This week, Nicholas stopped by our Redwood City HQ to talk about how he used Evernote as the comprehensive writing workspace for his newly published book, “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!”

How to Write a 93,000 Word Book With Evernote – Taylor Pipes, Evernote Blog (18 January 2015)

Read the full piece.