Self Distraction

Self Distraction

Don’t rob banks

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I adore this. The economic reasons why you shouldn’t rob a bank. This is only the introduction, the full piece has the figures:

The UK’s banking trade organization decided it wanted an analysis of the economic effectiveness of adding security measures to bank branches. The professors did that, but in the process, they also did an analysis that looked at the economics of bank robbery from the thieves’ perspective.

The results were not pretty. For guidance on the appropriateness of knocking over a bank, the authors first suggest that a would-be robber might check with a vicar or police officer, but “[f]or the statistics, look no further. We can help. We can tell you exactly why robbing banks is a bad idea.”

Economists demonstrate exactly why bank robbery is a bad idea – John Timmer, Ars Technica (14 June 2012)

Read the full piece.

Contact has been made

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I do get told that I am a networker. I get told this a lot. Why does that feel wrong, though? Why does it feel wrong enough that I don’t believe it? Maybe because of this:

Research has found that people who engage in “instrumental networking,” where the goal is career advancement, made people actually feel physically dirty. So dirty, in fact, that they thought about showering and brushing their teeth!

Stop Dirty Networking: Make Friends, Not Contacts – Hamza Khan, 99U (1 October 2014)

Really.

In my case, I’m just more interested in everybody else than I am in me. I know that sounds false and possibly even stupid but the way I see it, I know all about me, I was there, I saw me do it. Everybody else is new and isn’t that interesting?

This 99U article is about a couple of other sources which you can read if you slog through the full feature. But for once the article is the better bet: as short as it is, it’s to the point. And it suggests:

Opt for spontaneous networking, where the goal is the simply the pursuit of emotional connections and friendship.

Read the full piece.

Haaaaaave you met Ted?

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There is an argument – posited by Cadence Turpin on Storyline and picked up by Lifehacker – that you shouldn’t introduce someone by saying “This is Bert, he’s an investment banker”. You should instead say something like “This is Susan, she snores louder than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Okay, maybe not. But as an example of making a memorable introduction, about valuing someone and about revealing a bit too much, that works. I just have trouble coming up with an example introduction that is neither job-related nor frankly annoying. Yet I get and like the point:

Introducing your friends for who they are rather than focusing on what they do will remind them they are loved before and beyond their titles. It’s an easy way to remind them that you see them for their hearts instead of their accomplishments.

Our resumes are just paper.

I want people to know my friend Carolyn is amazing at her job, but more than that, I want people to know the stuff inside her that makes her a great friend. The stuff that makes you want to stand by her at a party, in hopes that her thoughtful observations and quick wit might rub off on you.

Let’s stop introducing the people we love based solely on what they do, who they cash their checks from, or what’s on their twitter profiles. Let’s instead start reminding them of who they are. Let’s start conversations that don’t begin and end with who has the most interesting job in the room.

A Better Way to Introduce Your Friends at Parties – Cadence Turpin, Storyline (12 August 2014)

Read the full piece and see if you can do better than I. That’s a thought, I could introduce you as the one “who does better than I”. Cool.

Airplane days, trains and pretend commutes

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I read somewhere of a fella who goes flying in order to avoid phone calls. That’s excessive, even for me.

But having found that necessary business trips came with unexpected benefits from being out of contact with email and the web, he now regularly conjures up a cheaper and greener equivalent. He just decides that today is a Airplane Day and switches everything off.

Similarly, there are people who do pretend commutes. They have to be people who are working at home because otherwise their pretend and their real commutes would overlap, creating a paradox that might unfurl the entire space-time continuum. Granted, that’s a worst-case scenario.

But otherwise they do a real pretend commute. They ‘leave’ at the same time – they don’t go out of the house but they dress, they hurry to finish breakfast and down one last gulp of tea. And then they shut themselves away for 15 or 30 minutes. It’s usually the same length of time that they used to have as a genuine, real-life commute and usually I think it shortens a bit as the years go by and they’re under more pressure to work.

This is all about releasing and controlling and channelling pressure, though.

During a genuine, real-life commute, there isn’t much you can do. True, these days you can work on your phone or iPad, but you could also see those being nicked away from you.

So you read.

The news, a book, anything.

The fact that you cannot do anything else means you do it and for that 15 or 30 minutes, you’re calm.

It’s easy to do when you’re really commuting, it is much harder to make yourself have a pretend commute – but the benefits are the same. You start the working day ready and composed. You take in information, you learn things, you just enjoy thinking about different things. And for everyone, that’s fuel.

For us as writers, it’s the sand that becomes the pearl.

And I say this sitting on a train doing exactly the work I’d be doing at my home office. Well. I did read a book, though. Come on. I read all of it.

Reddit speaks – online community names best productivity apps

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This isn’t an award show. There isn’t a single winner nor even a short list, really. Actually, as lists go it’s rubbish from the sense that to get on the list you just had to be named. But it’s also therefore comprehensive and you know that every app on Reddit’s selection is there through passion.

Maybe sometimes the passion of the manufacturers but usually the passion of a genuine Reddit user.

Take a look at the whole list – and yes, OmniFocus is right there.

All you need in life…

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…is to have enough cash that money isn’t a constant worry, and to have done things so that they are not a constant pressure on you.

You will want other things and maybe strictly speaking you do need them, but get those two right and you’re flying. Everything is suddenly possible. Everything is pretty good.

Yes. I’ve just finished my taxes. Not sure about the bit of having enough cash but tax preparation has been weighing on me for six months and I’m lighter now it’s done.

And naturally, inevitably, it took far less time than I spent putting it off.

There’s a lesson there, though I can’t imagine what it is.

Alternatively, beg them to SHUT UP

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Someone at Harvard Business Review has had enough and decided to write a Very Heavily Pointed article that even now they are innocently forwarding to the one of the bosses who will for god’s sake not shut up.

The article points out that there may be some things you can do about a boring boss, starting with:

Diagnose the problem. Many senior leaders are long-winded in some situations and not others. Does your boss tend to deliver an Oscar acceptance speech only when big clients come to the office and meet you in the conference room? Will your biggest client complain for hours about his divorce case over lunch, but not if he stops by the office? Are management monologues more likely to occur when there’s no formal agenda, if you’re on a phone call with no time constraints, or when no one asks any questions?

Take note of when your culprit tends to dominate the conversation so you can change the setting or circumstances. All of these clues can indicate what the core problem is — and help you devise a plan of attack.

Advice for Dealing with a Long-Winded Leader – Joe McCormack, HBR (9 January 2015)

Read the full piece.

Give yourself a “should-less” day

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Even I read that and think it says “shoulderless”, as in strap, but it’s a day in which you do not do things that you should. That’s not to say you need to spend it robbing a bank or having a tryst but all that stuff on your plate, all those bloody tasks you should be doing, don’t do them. Just for a day. Just for a single should-less day.

This isn’t my idea, though I love it. Instead, it’s actor Ellen Burstyn who originally said it on the WNYC’s Death, Sex and Money show. It was picked up by Science of Us in New York Magazine like this:

I have what I call should-less days. Today is a day where there’s nothing I should do. So I only do what I want to do. And if it’s nap in the afternoon or watch TV and eat ice cream, I get to do it. I had that kind of day yesterday.

Should-less days, I recommend them. Because what I figured out, is we have wiring, I have wiring in my brain that calls me lazy if I’m not doing something. God, you’re so lazy. … And that wiring is there. I haven’t been able to get rid of it.

But what I can do is I can put in another wiring. I can put in should-less days. So when that voice goes off and says, You’re being lazy, I turn to the other wiring in my brain that says, No, this is a should-less day, and I’m doing what I want.

Give Yourself a ‘Should-less’ Day — Melissa Dahl, Science of Us, New York Magazine (undated, probably 31 October 2014)

Read the full piece. Also, hat tip as ever to Lifehacker for finding it.

Eight years and two days ago

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I really wonder what I’d be doing now if this hadn’t happened back on 9 January 2007.

The Blank Screen probably wouldn’t exist and I certainly wouldn’t be doing exactly the job I am today. Hopefully I’d have been having as much fun but it’s astonishing how one thing shapes so many others. And you’re either going to nod in agreement or wonder why I’m saying this at all.

Because what happened eight years and two days ago was the announcement of the iPhone. Now, seriously, if you loathe Apple then fine – but look at your Android phone. I’m not impressed with them but even you would be thinking they were crappy if the iPhone hadn’t come along. Google saw this launch and scrapped the plans it had been working on for years.

This is the presentation Steve Jobs made. That’s one man standing up there representing for, what, a few hundred men and women who had been responsible for this phone? But the number of people affected by it is in the billions.

I might be back on the tenth anniversary.