Productivity

Productivity

Beaten to it: the Christmas productivity gift guide

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Well, it’s really the techie or geeky Christmas gift guide. And there’s much in it that I wouldn’t have thought of, let alone picked. But if they only picked the things I would, there’d be no point telling you about them.

And them is Katie Floyd and David Sparks of MacPowerUsers. The latest edition of the podcast is their annual gift guide. They have a thing about not repeating gift recommendations from previous years and I see the point but I don’t see the point: if it’s still the best thing to buy, it’s still the best thing to buy.

Still, here are the best things to buy for Christmas according to MacPowerUsers.

If Omni makes, it’s worth a look

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I don’t honestly know what OmniGraffle is for. Hang on:

OmniGraffle is for creating precise, beautiful graphics. Like website wireframes, an electrical system design, a family tree, or mapping out software classes. For artists, designers, casual data-mappers, and everyone in-between.

OmniGraffle – The Omni Group blog (XXXXXX)

Thanks. For some reason I read that, I understand it, but I forget it. And the next time there’s a new version of OmniGraffle, I get to wondering: what in the hell is OmniGraffle?

It’s not for me, that’s the other answer and it’s the explanation. I don’t need graphics like this, I don’t create them, I can’t create them. So in my productively-focused brain, it wouldn’t get into my head and it wouldn’t get a spot on The Blank Screen. But it’s by the Omni Group.

I am wedded to this company’s To Do software OmniFocus. If it ran on Windows and Android, I would skip a whole chunk of my workshops and just recommend OmniFocus to everybody. As it is, I recommend OmniFocus to everybody. Buy a Mac first, if necessary.

Then if I’m wedded to that, I’m having a fling with OmniOutliner. This is the outlining software that changed my mind about outlining. I used to do it solely when contractually obligated. Now I am still an explorer on the page but if I have to do anything quickly, I whack down some thoughts in OmniOutliner and let them grow until they find their own form. I’ve done books like this. Interviews. Events. I’ve done things where having juggled the outline around until I’m happy, I’ve then sent that outline directly into OmniFocus where it’s become a whole series of tasks.

I am now planning a lot more events and I’m toying with OmniPlan chiefly because it’s made by the same firm. So when the Omni Group announces a new version of OmniGraffle, I notice and am compelled to tell you about it. I’m just rubbish at actually telling you anything about it. So do go read the full piece on the Omni blog.

Music for concentrating by

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This isn’t for me. I work to music a lot. A lot. If I’m writing something with pace I might use iTunes Radio’s Eighties Hits station. But usually I have various playlists and selections and albums and artists and I play them on whims. Also on headphones. Whims can be loud.

Actually, that’s the thing: usually if I need pace and energy then I’ll turn the volume up. Once or twice recently I’ve found I have to turn it down instead or occasionally stop it completely. (You cannot listen to Kate Bush in the background. Cannot. You listen to her properly. No choice.)

I think I’m lucky in that I hear lyrics, I hear the human singing voice, as just another instrument. Only when I’m working, that is. If I’m listening properly, lyrics are crucial. I wouldn’t enjoy Dar Williams so much if her lyrics weren’t so gorgeous. But when I’m working, I can have Meredith Brooks blasting out and it invigorates me, it doesn’t distract me.

Apparently it’s more normal for people need instrumentals. Normal enough that I just found this 45-minute video for you. Presumably you don’t watch the video, you just listen to the sound – like you do when the only YouTube copy of a rare track is one set to fan-made photography and badly transcribed lyrics. See if it does any good for you.

The coffee pot that only works in windy weather

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Seriously. Coffee when it’s windy. Not because it’s cold outside and the coffee is warming. Instead because it’s windy outside and it’s the power from a turbine that’s warming the coffee. Researchers at Lancaster University have developed the Windy Brew, a kettle which can only boil when there is exactly enough energy from a nearby wind turbine.

Read more about how and in particular why.

Jony Ive: design education is so poor it is “tragic”

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He’s surely the most famous living designer in the world and what he’s famous for is the highest of high tech. But Jony Ive says colleges are failing students by giving them too many computers. It’s more than an observation, it’s the result of difficulties the current education system is causing for industry. We keep hearing that arts projects are bollocks and colleges should teach practical disciplines that get jobs but right now education isn’t doing that:

“So many of the designers that we interview don’t know how to make stuff, because workshops in design schools are expensive and computers are cheaper,” said Ive.

“That’s just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one.”

Design education is “tragic”, says Jonathan Ive – no writer listed, DeZeen Magazine (13 November 2014)

Read the full piece. Actually, scroll down a bit first: the top is an article about Apple designer Jony Ive’s talk at London’s Design Museum but underneath it is a fuller transcript and puts some of the quotes in a better context.

Buy of the week: Email – the MacSparky Field Guide

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I use email every minute of every day and so do you. I thought I understood it and I really thought I was using it well but the original version of this book gave me so many Damascus moments. I’ve made tiny changes to my email now that get me more time to write and keep the distractions away.

And the new edition, just out, has been updated with new sections on services to mass unsubscribe you from all or your choice of those endless emails companies send you. Lots on the new changes in iOS and Mac Mail. gmail. Outlook 2014.

The best version of it is an iBook: that’s what I have and it’s gorgeously designed and readable. But you can only get that on iPads, iPhone and Mac and the email advice applies to every one of us, everywhere. So there is also a PDF version. Have a look on author David Sparks’s website for details.

Do you want caffeine to be good for you or what?

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Here’s the thing. If you want it to be an aid to your writing, there are reasons to be cheerful. If you want to think that it’s dangerous in any way, here you go.

There are a lot of people who don’t drink coffee, and it is easy to assume that there are plenty of writers who are very creative without resorting to caffeine intake at all. Coffee may stimulate creativity for some, while for others it may result in the mind’s being too alert for creativity to freely flow. Coffee may have health benefits, but there may also be negative effects if one drinks too much of the beverage.

As for me? I started writing this article while drinking a hot cup of coffee, but now my cup is empty. The buzz of caffeine alertness is gone, and I’m considering having a second cup. Or, perhaps to encourage creativity, I should just let my mind wander instead.

Ellis Shuman Writes: Does Caffeine Make You a Better Writer? – Ellis Shuman (19 March 2014)

Read the full piecefor balanced but leaning-toward-coffee detail.

Evernote’s new Context feature isn’t for you

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Well, the odds are that it isn’t. This is the new feature that scans your entire Evernote database and tells you exactly how many relevant articles there are in the Wall Street Journal. I could tell you that now: none. Ever. Not a one.

I can also tell you, though this is more of a guess, that Context scans your Evernote notes really slowly. Because when the new feature appeared in an automatic update on my iPhone, Evernote became unusable for hours. Buttons wouldn’t respond, screens wouldn’t scroll. I filed a bug report and I’m a premium user – I pay for various extra bits above the very good free offering – so I knew I’d get a response and maybe a solution within 24 hours. That didn’t help me right there and then when I needed some information in order to get where I was going.

And it didn’t help me within 24 hours, either. I got my first support response back at just under 240 hours. But in fairness, they apologised and extended my paid premium subscription by a few months.

And the app had righted itself by then. So I suspect that the slow down was due to Context indexing the articles but I can’t prove it and there’s little point asking an idle fact when a support request that says Evernote has been rendered literally unusable gets ignored for ten days.

The result of that indexing, by the way, was of course nothing. There never will be any relevant article in the Wall Street Journal and I could’ve told you that. I did tell you. Moments ago. But now I can tell you with gusto because it didn’t find any to flag. Maybe, though, things are going to change now – because the Japanese media firm Nikkei has joined the party. Any second now, Evernote will go looking through my notes to find relevant articles there. What are the odds?

Nikkei is the first international news source that has been integrated into Evernote Context and the partnership is expected to become available to Evernote Premium and Evernote Business subscribers by early 2015.

Evernote Context looks at data in your files and feeds you news articles and other information that it thinks you will find relevant. As TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden noted last month, this builds into Evernote’s attempt to build its content discovery play, a similar strategy to the ones taken by Facebook and Twitter as they seek ways to encourage people to spend more time on their sites. Libin has said that Evernote is considering an IPO within the next few years.

Evernote’s partnership with Nikkei is also interesting because it’s a reminder that a good portion of its international user base comes from Japan.

Evernote Raises $20M From Japanese Media Giant Nikkei, Forms Content Partnership For Evernote Context – Catherine Shu, TechCrunch (9 November 2014)

Cool. But I hope the Evernote users who do have anything that could be called relevant to Nikkei or the Wall Street Journal like the fact that they do. And that the rest of us can switch the stuff off.

Editors like you to negotiate your fee – within reason

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Flashback. Some time in the 1990s. I was doing copywriting for various firms and one rang up with an emergency. What would it cost them to do this right now and send it back? I could hear the desperation and I’m ashamed to say I upped my regular rate by some vast amount. (I’m not being coy, this is ages ago, I can’t remember the figures.)

“Sold,” she said.

Instantaneously.

So much so that I knew I should’ve asked for more. But I did do one savvy thing: having upped my rate for this one emergency job, I never lowered it again for the ordinary ones that followed.

On the other side of the deal, though, I can tell you that I have never had a freelance writer question a fee or ask for more money.

The website Contently has good piece now about exactly what editors can do financially – short answer: not a lot – and what they think of writers who do negotiate – short answer: quite a lot.

Sometimes, asking for more money is a dead-end; but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. “Most of my clients have a specific budget for content,” said content strategist Jessica Ashley, a former senior editor at Yahoo! Shine who now works as editor-in-chief for TapGenes.com. “I lobby hard to get writers fair compensation, but I appreciate when writers negotiate their fees. It’s just good business, and I appreciate writers standing up for what they can offer to the site.”

However, standing up for fair compensation does not mean you should pretend to be a hardline agent. The way you present your request will definitely have an impact on how it’s received.

“It’s important to be both confident and kind,” Ashley said. She suggests explaining what you can offer for your proposed rate using “ands” instead of “buts.” For example begin with a direct stance: “My current rate is $200 per post, and I would be thrilled to contribute to this site because…”

How Do Editors Really Feel When You Negotiate Rates? – Meagan Francis, Contently (10 November 2014)

Read Francis’s full piece for more.

How to find your passion in life and work

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I knew my passion was drama and writing and while I went the wrong way for a time, I still think I was lucky to have these obsessions that I could eventually do something with. I don’t often like to use the word lucky to do with writing because it isn’t luck or chance, I wanted what I do now and I worked for it and I got it. But I started from the advantage of know what I wanted to do, even as I didn’t think I could do it. It’s much more common to not have a single clue.

It’s much more common still to then feel that the answer is to find this thing you’re passionate about, then you could do it, then you could be as happily workaholic as I am. And by extension, if you can’t find it, you can’t. Writer Oliver Emberton has a smart piece about this:

Too many of us believe in a magical being called ‘passion’. “If only I could find my passion”, we cry. “Finding my passion would make me happy”.

Well, passion is real, and very powerful. But almost everything people believe about finding it is wrong.

Childhood is where passion goes to die

In theory childhood provides a great opportunity to try a bit of everything, find your talents, and with them, your passions.

But think for a moment how badly the system is stacked against you. Say school lets you try 20 subjects, ranking you against thousands of other children. Those aren’t good odds. Most kids are, by definition, around average. And it doesn’t matter how much we improve education, because people need to feel exceptional to feel passionate, and improving education simply moves up the average.

Say you’re one of the lucky ones, and you’re top of your junior math class. The education system will keep rising your difficulty until you find a level – like college – where you’re not exceptional anymore. Even if you actually are objectively pretty great, once you feel merely average, you’ll find your passion slipping.

And that’s if you’re lucky. What if your passion was for art? From an early age that passion is compromised by its social consequences. “It’s hard to make a living from painting” say your parents. “Your cousin is doing so well from engineering. Why can’t you be more like him?” And so you put your passions to one side, and let them wither.

In a population of billions, it’s obvious that not everyone can be unusually great at a handful of academic subjects. What if your true skills are in speechwriting, or creative dance, or making YouTube commentaries of videogames? None of those things are even on the syllabus.

And so most people grow up without much passion for anything.

How to find your passion – Oliver Emberton, personal blog (undated but probably 10 November 2014)

Makes me think of UK Education Minister Nicky Morgan’s asinine comments about arts subjects. Which then makes me think of poet Jo Bell’s calmly smart and classy rebuttal.

But back to the passion point. Emberton presents that as one of several rules to getting beyond the passion issue. Read the full piece for the rest of the rules plus some apposite illustrations.