Shudder. I mean, I understand but, still, shudder.
Via The Atlantic.
Productivity
Productivity
Not convinced: making Mondays better
I do like Mondays. I think you can finally get to do some serious work and all the things you’ve thought up over the weekend now snap into action. But there’s this fella who has more specific motivational ideas about making your Monday fantastic.
They’re a bit saccharine for me, bu he says that the most successful people begin their Monday in specific ways starting with:
They start with a positive attitude.
So much time and energy is used up by a bad mood. Super productive people don’t like to waste any energy and they certainly don’t want the week to lag from a bad start. They focus their mind on joyful productivity from the moment their feet hit the ground in the morning. They revel in the excitement of what they can accomplish. Instead of lamenting going to work, focus on where you truly want to be and what will take you forward.
5 Simple Things Super Productive People Do on Monday – Kevin Daum, Inc.com (9 March 2015)
Read the whole piece for more.
Move your deadlines up
There’s an interesting piece on Contently about coping with deadlines and this is my favourite one:
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. It’s not just a funny observation; it’s called Parkinson’s Law. If you’ve felt unproductive or if you want to increase your output, move your deadlines up. That’s right, giving yourself less time could actually make you more productive.
According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, deadlines set near the present encouraged people to get started on their work, while deadlines set further in the future (e.g., early next month, early next year) encouraged procrastination.
Instead of setting your deadline for next Monday, try moving it up to this Friday. You may find yourself more compelled to work throughout the week. If you’re used to catching up with work on weekends to meet a Monday deadline, moving your deadlines up to Friday could mean finally getting to relax on Sunday.
And you don’t necessarily need to tell your editor about the accelerated deadline for it to be effective. It might sound counterintuitive, but shorter deadlines could also clear your head and help you think straight.
5 Ways to Use Deadlines to Your Advantage – Herbert Lui, Contently (25 February 2015)
Read the full piece for four more ideas.
It’ll just take a minute…
There’s some smart and simple advice from productivity writer Grace Marshall: get a stopwatch. Well, if you have a phone, you have a stopwatch, but get it and use it. Time what you do.
Time your distractions
Next time you tell yourself you’re just going to have 5 minutes on Facebook – set a stop watch and see how long you actually spend. It may only take 5 minutes to post your update, but if you start scrolling, clicking and exploring links, how long is that actually taking?Test those two minute jobs
We all have things we perpetually underestimate. What are yours? For me it’s the bitty jobs. The things I think will only take two minutes (e.g. email file) but actually take anything from 5 minutes (connect to server, wait, find file, type email, press send) to 15 (oh wait, that’s the wrong format, fix that, change the date, add that other bit of information, save it to PDF, check it looks alright, now type the email and send it…) Next time you tackle your simple, mundane or bitty jobs, use a stopwatch and see what you discover.
Stop the clock – Grace Marshall, grace-marshall.com (undated but probably 9 March 2015)
I think by excerpting this bit I make it sound like a time and motion study but in her full piece, Marshall is relaxed and persuasive about how it’s a small thing that helps a lot.
Damn them: I didn’t want a new MacBook
See what they did to me? I was watching the Apple Keynote specifically to get pricing details for the new Apple Watch and as well as that, I’ve started lusting after the new MacBook.
I will resist.
I will resist.
It costs from £1,049 but, hey, you know, free delivery counts for something.
But look. More details on Apple’s site.
Under-promise and over-deliver
This is from last year but it’s a goodie from Lifehacker: it’s advice for freelancers about time management. Each section has a good summary of the issue and then links out to much more detailed Lifehacker articles. Here’s my favourite:
Picking the right projects and charging what you’re worth are the foundation for your life as a freelancer. The other main part is simply scheduling.
We’ve recently posted tips for how to better estimate time for projects, but you might want to double that time estimate or at least add some “buffer time”… That extra time is especially important when you’re tackling a new project area or it involves something highly susceptible to Murphy’s Law (e.g., when writing an article about upgrading a computer—everything will go wrong, trust me).
The more generous you are with estimating your time, the better you’ll be able to follow through on your commitments and follow the golden rule in business: Under-promise and over-deliver.
The Freelancer’s Guide to Time Management – Melanie Pinola, Lifehacker (28 August 2014)
Read the full piece.
Jony Ive interview
The Financial Times has an interesting interview and profile of Jony Ive, chief designer at Apple, the company that today announced details of its Watch. Ive is credited with the Watch and, says the FT, with getting Apple to its current incredible financial worth:
In great part, that valuation rests on the shoulders of a 48-year-old Englishman. Yet as he lopes towards me down the corridor, in his comfortable suede shoes, bright-blue trousers and baggy, long-sleeved yellow top, his kindly features creased up in a welcoming grin, those broad shoulders seem remarkably unbowed.
Ive is arguably the most influential designer in the world, and yet he does that slightly disingenuous self-effacement thing characteristic of confident people who say they are just part of a team. There is a gentleness about him. He talks quietly and articulately in an accent unaffected by two decades in America. Even when he describes those who copy Apple as little better than thieves, it is with a smile and softness of tone that suggests he would far rather the unpleasant subject had never been brought up.
The man behind the Apple Watch – Nick Foulkes, Financial Times (6 March 2015
Read the full piece.
UK pricing for Apple Watch
Let’s cut to it. The one you’re going to get is the cheapest. Except the Apple Watch comes in two sizes: 38mm and 42mm. For once the smaller device is the cheaper – doesn’t it cost more to squeeze components down? – and that will cost you £299.
The 42mm one will cost you £339.
This price level is called the Apple Watch Sport and I am not a sporting kinda guy but I will pretend I am as the next level up is a big step. Oddly, the next one is just called the Apple Watch: there’s no qualifier, no extra word in the name. It has the same two sizes and the smaller is £479.
Then there’s the Apple Watch Edition, the gold one. That starts from £8,000.
Told you that you’re going to get the cheapest. I have zero problems with this in terms of the watch: I neither want nor can afford to spend £8,000 on a watch. But the standard straps on the cheapest one do look cheap. I don’t have zero problems with that, I have something just above zero. It’s just that I think they might be uncomfortable: they look uncomfortable.
Still, whatever watch you buy, you can buy other straps, they’re just ranging from doable to silly money.
Nonetheless, they had me since last year.
Read more about the Apple Watch including all the UK pricing details on the official site. You’ve got up to 24 April to save.
Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac Preview
Quick version: it looks good, mostly – no, wait, here’s how I summed it up for MacNN:
Testing this new beta is, actually, slightly weird: the Mac versions of Word and Excel now look like the iPad versions. That’s mostly true when you first start them up and they present a dialog box with New and Open options, plus templates. Choose one and go into it to edit the document, and the resemblance fades a little.
One thing that made the iOS version of Office a pleasure to use was that it was pared back, that some of Microsoft Office’s more esoteric features were removed. That even makes the Ribbon toolbar more useful, and this new Mac version also tries to balance features with a more minimalist look. We’ll have to see what it’s like after weeks and months of intense use, but at first blush it feels better than it was.
There are points where items seem a bit oversized: certain icons in the Ribbon feel excessive, and intro text as you set up the applications feels loud. That’s not a bad summary of the entire experience of using Microsoft Office 2016; it mostly looks better, Word feels good to write in, Excel feels powerful.
Hands On: Microsoft Office 2016 Preview (OS X) – William Gallagher, MacNN (6 March 2015)
If you’ve got a Mac and some time to kill, go get the Office 2016 preview here. It’s entirely free while it’s in beta and the best way to find out about anything is to use it. Do remember that it’s a beta, though: it’s not complete and it is always possible that you’ll lose work. So don’t do anything important in it.
Also, you could read the rest of my MacNN piece.
Your smartphone is making you thick
Our smartphones help us find a phone number quickly, provide us with instant directions and recommend restaurants, but new research indicates that this convenience at our fingertips is making it easy for us to avoid thinking for ourselves.
The study, from researchers at the University of Waterloo and published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, suggests that smartphone users who are intuitive thinkers — more prone to relying on gut feelings and instincts when making decisions — frequently use their device’s search engine rather than their own brainpower. Smartphones allow them to be even lazier than they would otherwise be.
“They may look up information that they actually know or could easily learn, but are unwilling to make the effort to actually think about it,” said Gordon Pennycook, co-lead author of the study, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Waterloo.
In contrast, analytical thinkers second-guess themselves and analyze a problem in a more logical sort of way. Highly intelligent people are more analytical and less intuitive when solving problems.
Reliance on smartphones linked to lazy thinking — ScienceDaily (5 March 2015)
Read the full piece on your iPhone.