Productivity

Productivity

Bounce an AA battery to find out if it’s spent

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I don’t exactly know that I needed the whole of this 5’32” video to grasp the concept: if you drop an battery it will bounce if it’s empty, it won’t if it’s full.

Empty. Full. Really I suppose I mean empty as in used up, full as in still has a charge. The folks behind this video call them good batteries vs bad batteries, though that just seems harsh.

Watch the start for proof and a demonstration of how you don’t have to throw the batteries on the ground to test this. Then carry on for an examination of why it may all be true.

Mindmapping iOS software iThoughts on sale (briefly)

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It looks to me as if there are really two contenders in mindmaps for iPad. I have one – MindNode – and the other is iThoughts, which is now briefly on sale.

I’m more of a text guy than a visual thinker, though that varies and I’ve found directing is like writing in 3D, but I’ve found mind maps useful for starting projects. You have this mass of ideas and you don’t know how or whether they fit together. Actually, you’re having a hard time getting all this stuff down because there’s so much and oh, yes, if I do that, I could do this, and then there’s that. And the other.

Mind mapping software lets you – forgive me – just vomit up everything you can think of. And keep adding. Keep doing your doings. Then drag two things that seem like they should be together. Drag a third. Drag these bits over to somewhere else. Delete something. Add something else.

You reach the point where your initial mess becomes rather structured – and with both MindNode and this briefly-on-sale iThoughts you can then shove the map off to your To Do list.

I love that. The visual mess becomes the organised visual mess becomes the text list in my OmniFocus.

Take a look at iThoughts on sale on the App Store.

Your boss can read your mind, a bit, with some help

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Imagine one of your managers walks into their subordinate’s office and says, “Our data analysis predicts that you will soon get restless and think of leaving us, so we want to make you an offer that our data shows has retained others like you.” Would your employees welcome the offer, marveling at the value of your HR analytics? Or, might they see images of Big Brother, and be repelled by a company snooping on the data they generate as they work? Predictive analytics can enable a customized employment value proposition that maximizes mutual benefit for organizations and their talent; but at what point do predictive analytics become too creepy?

Predict What Employees Will Do Without Freaking Them Out – John Boudreau, Harvard Business Review (5 September, 2014)

I think predictive analytics are creepy, full stop. I’m just okay with it up to the point when some bloke – you know it’d be a man – says anything to me like “Our data analysis predicts that you will soon get restless” and says it with a straight face.

But if figuring out that someone is going to leave means bosses take steps to keep you happy, I’m good with that. The full piece goes on to show that it’s worth these company’s time and investment in analytical software. Unfortunately, it also goes on to creep me out more:

Consider this object lesson from marketing. Pregnancy is an event that changes otherwise stubborn purchasing habits, so retailers want to know about a pregnancy as early as possible. Duhigg’s New York Times story reports that Target marketing analysts built a predictive algorithm to identify pregnant customers based on their purchasing habits and other demographic information. They sent those customers ads for pregnancy related products. What could be wrong with helping pregnant women be aware of products or services they need, as early as possible?

Apparently, women responded negatively if it was obvious that they received pregnancy ads before they revealed their pregnancy. They responded more positively if they received “an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers.” Duhigg reports one executive saying, “as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons…As long as we don’t spook her, it works.” Duhigg also reports that Target company executives said the article contained “inaccurate information,” so the story may exaggerate, but the lesson remains: Effective predictive analytics depends on how real people react, not just on the elegance of the analytics.

Let’s just repeat a sentence there: “Apparently, women responded negatively if it was obvious that they received pregnancy ads before they revealed their pregnancy.” I am torn between saying “Well, duh” or “You think?”

It’s interesting to me that these quotes are from the same Harvard Business Review article but HBR didn’t spot the connection. If a marketing firm can accurately predict when you’re pregnant, so can a personnel department. If given the same data anyway. So you’re at work, you haven’t told anyone you’re pregnant – because you’re never going to tell anyone before the first 12 weeks, are you? – but your boss knows. I don’t like where that’s going.

Caffeine Naps

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There’s a bit in The Blank Screen book where I quote songwriter Dar Williams. I’m prone to quoting her a lot but in this case it was to do with inspiration and specifically to do with caffeine.

Asked by someone about getting into the mood to write and create, she said:

You have to walk around a lot of museums, a lot of sculpture parks.
And time your caffeine so that you are in an open, wide, contemplative space for when it takes hold.

I like that and I like it a lot and I intend to do it more, but I’ve not connected it with another caffeine option before. The Caffeine Nap. When you’re tired and have to press on, drink some strong coffee, set your alarm for twenty minutes and have a nap.

Twenty minutes later, you’re woken by the alarm and the caffeine is in your bloodstream doing its wonderful job.

Don’t trust public wifi

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You’ve done this: you’ve seen a public wifi and you’ve glommed onto it with barely a pause to send silent mental thanks to the shop that is providing it.

Fine.

I do exactly that.

But I won’t log on to any site that way. The login details are not safe because there could well be something watching that apparently free wifi signal.

If it sounds like I’m building up to saying you should always pay for you wifi, I’m not. I’m building up to saying this: if you’re on your iPhone or Android device and you use a free public wifi, come off it to do anything sensitive.

Just tap the Wifi button off and your phone reverts to 4G and away you go.

Switch back to the free wifi to download something big or just browser faster. And if you do this a lot, consider paying for a VPN.

The other benefit of writing To Dos as if someone else will write them

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First, the original benefit. The benefit I thought of and that I explain during The Blank Screen book and workshop.

Instead of writing “Email Tom”, write “Reply to Tom re secret tryst”.

Frankly, if that’s your task then I don’t know that I’d write it down my list. I’d just do it. I might call him on an untraceable burner phone, but that’s just me.

The thing is that tomorrow when I come to my To Do list, it’s right there. What I need to do, what it’s about. See that, do it, done.

But a woman on today’s workshop pointed out an extra benefit that I like so much I’m going to use it in all future workshops and claim it’s my own. When you write out a To Do as if someone else will do it, you soon see what’s important and what isn’t. What is important enough that it would really be worth giving someone.

I loved that. I’m having that.

From today’s The Blank Screen workshop in Newcastle

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I do this Blank Screen productivity workshop a lot but I particularly enjoy doing it for the Federation of Entertainment Unions. They hire me occasionally to speak to members from their four associated unions: the Writers’ Guild, the Musician’s Guild, the National Union of Journalists and Equity.

It’s very special talking with these because all of us in the room are working full time in our creative fields. It’s especially exciting for me because actors and musicians have different needs to writers, journalists and authors so I work to find out what they need and how to help them.

I should say: to help them with this business I do of remaining the creative person we are, yet becoming a lot more productive. It’s not about knocking out work faster, it is about handling your time so well that you can do much more. That’s a subtle but an important difference.

But whatever group I talk to, there seems to be a collective mood. There’s so much in the workshop, especially the full-day version like today’s, that I spend some time at the end getting the attendees to recap. I think it helps them focus on what they’re going to take away but I know it helps me see what’s worked best.

Today what went down the best was a thing called Bad Days.

This is all about the worst times you get in our work, the time when are overwhelmed. That can be because you have too much to do, it can be exactly the opposite: you have nothing going on and have to pick which project to kickstart.

I actually have a solution. I’m proud of this and I’m proud of how the Bad Days chapter has been the most popular one in that first book. I’m fascinated by how I wrote that chapter right there during a really bad day. It was like I was writing live from the scene. The text is a little painful for me to read now: it’s clear and makes sense and does its job but I can feel the undertow.

But, hey, I’m a writer: nuts to my being uncomfortable, I’m simultaneously proud that there is an undertow.

I don’t want you to have bad days. But I do want you to have Bad Days, the chapter. Everyone I worked with today will get a copy of that via the FEU and I want you to have it too. It’s a single, blunt chapter from The Blank Screen and a PDF of it is all yours. Have it for free, use it, share it around if you think it will help people, and you’ll make me very happy.

Download it here.

I would be happier still if you fancied getting it in the book as I hope there is a huge amount of other advice in there that will help you. But the Bad Days PDF is the thing.

Making email addresses as secure as passwords

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I do know someone who deliberately picked a hard-to-remember email address, something like 9fytyth@hotmail.com because that looked professional. No, I have not one single idea either. I’d email to ask her why, but I can’t remember her address.

However, friend-of-the-blog Daniel Hardy has spotted another, better, easier-to-do way of making an address that’s hard to guess. Easy to remember, hard to guess. He tweeted:

I remember you saying you use this to combat spam, turns out it’s good for security too
Tweet – Daniel Hardy (3 September 2014)

The thing I’d use to counter spam was creating sort-of fake email addresses. They’re only sort-of fake because they really work. But they’re not your real one. What I really recommend is getting your own domain name so that you can make up any address, any time. So I might sign up for Tesco with an address of tesco@williamgallagher.com and it will work. But should Tesco ever sell out its email address to, say, an alien invasion force from beyond the stars, I can just block anything sent to tesco@williamgallagher.com.

But there is now also a very smart way to do this without the trouble of getting your own domain name. If you’re a Gmail user and your address is, say, Al.Phabet@gmail.com then you can give Tesco the address Al.Phabet+testco@gmail.com and it will work. It will work, the fine people at Tesco will be able to email you whatever it is they burn to email you, but at any time you can nobble this new address. And at no time do they know your real one.

Dan saw this on The Verge which goes on to say:

Now, this is not a security panacea by any stretch. You should still be using a password manager to help you keep track of all your different passwords — and now, different email addresses. If you forget the specific email address you’re using, you’re even more out of luck than you are if you forget your password. If you don’t even know the email address you registered with, you won’t be able to even get to those security questions. I personally use 1Password, which I like because it securely stores my data in the cloud (yes, there is an irony there), but there are others like LastPass that seem generally trustworthy.

How to make your email address as hard to guess as your password – Dieter Bohn, The Verge (September 3, 2014)

The full piece does cover the times that this can’t work. And while this particular trick is specific to Gmail, the piece goes on to at least begin covering some similar things you can do with Outlook and others.