Self Distraction

Self Distraction

Networking tips from the smug and irritating

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That’s very unfair. But Jon Levy who described by Lifehacker as a behaviour expert is also called a master networker by Business Insider and you just aren’t warming to him, are you? This will seal the deal:

At one of Jon Levy’s house parties you could find yourself, as we recently did, making fajitas with Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Regina Spektor and leading snake venom expert Zoltan Takacs before watching live presentations from Bill Nye the Science Guy and break-dancing pioneer Richard “Crazy Legs” Colón.

A Master Networker Shares His Top 20 Networking Tips – Richard Feloni, Business Insider (27 January 2015)

O-kay. Not sure why that irritates me so but it does and I’m man enough to be open about it even as I tell you I’m a fan of Regina Spektor, I’ve only heard of Bill Nye the Science Guy via The Big Bang Theory and I’ve no idea who the break dancer is.

Nonetheless, Business Insider was happy to be in this party and I wasn’t invited, so what do I know? I know that it wasn’t a casual get together, it was a show: Levy runs what he calls Salons for getting people together. That feels contrived and artificial to me because it’s contrived and artificial. But among the things Business Insider got out of Levy there are some undeniably good ideas, if crouched in corporate-speak:

[You] should be thinking of how you can add value to a potential connection without expecting anything in return, at least immediately. Levy is a proponent of Wharton professor — and Influencers member — Adam Grant’s theory on “givers,” those who seek out opportunities to help people they respect and appreciate. “If you’re a giver, then you build quality relationships, and with those relationships you’re exposed to opportunity over the long term,” Grant told Business Insider last year. “You actually increase your own luck so far as you contribute things to other people.

I can’t disagree: when I’ve done things for people just to be a mensch, it has often led to things for myself later on. I just think that if I went in expecting that, doing something nice becomes less nice. Plus, it is just exciting to see two people you’ve introduced go off to do something brilliant together. Isn’t that enough?

It’s not network leverage, it’s being a mensch. So, okay, I have the kind of wet and liberal arts mind that means I have to translate corporate-speak into Yiddish, but in principle I agree with Levy on this one. I just don’t on this:

“When people ask me what I do, I try to be a little elusive just to create some interest. So I tell people I spend most of my life trying to convince people to cook me dinner. Which is true,” he says, laughing. “A lot of my time is really spent around logistics, phone calls, and emails and all that. But the benefit of [my introduction] is that it sounds so different and then it’s much easier to connect.”

I haven’t just walked away from him but my mind’s switched off. If you ask me what I do, I tell you I’m a writer and then we can get on to what you do and what you care about. I know all about me, I was there, I saw me do it, I have zero interest in tricking you into hearing my CV, I have full and complete interest in knowing about you.

All of which is, I think, a slow way of saying that there’s this article about a right article who does networking and that with some caution, you might like to read it. I could’ve just said that, couldn’t I?

Minimum Necessary Change

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I’m not going to quote you anything here because I got this idea from a book that has no quotable excerpts from. Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity is brilliant when you’re a teenager, substantially less so when you’re not. It’s a novel with eye-poppingly great ideas, it just makes you close your eyes wincing at how poorly it’s written. Asimov was a permanent schoolboy, that’s all. Yet there is an idea that sticks with me.

It’s called the Minimum Necessary Change and in his millennia-spanning time-travel tale, it means this. The most gigantic event can be traced back to the very tiniest of things. I think an example he gives is of a war being prevented because a tea cup is moved. In the book’s world, this cup or whatever it is being moved to a different shelf means it’s not where some fella expects it to be and it takes him a minute to find it. That delay means he leaves the house a minute later than he would have done and so he gets caught up in traffic or something, he’s late getting to a big meeting, he doesn’t annoy someone who therefore doesn’t start a war.

Okay, I may have skipped on a few steps there but you got the idea and you saw where it’s going.

It’s in my mind because I read a thing this morning, a factual article rather than a naff novel, recommending what it said was the Minimum Effective Dose. You can read that here but the piece says that’s a medical term to do with finding the very least medicine dose you can give someone before it works. With the idea that giving them more than that is a waste and/or dangerous. The article takes that idea and applies it to productivity and says that you should look for the least you can do to get what you want.

And I don’t like that.

I’m not sure why since it makes sense and any effort you don’t apply to this job you can apply to another. Yet somehow I read that and I take away an idea of not trying. Of pushing papers around, of getting by. I want to do things that matter to me more than that.

And as I pondered away about this MED thing, Asimov’s MNC popped into my head from a couple of decades ago. His is a time travel thing and works by seeing this great big war and tracking back to the smallest possible origin, finding the point where with the least twiddling you can get the result you want. I just prefer that.

The reason for the Minimum Necessary Change is not laziness or the conservation of energy, it’s that you could accidentally set off a different war if you do the wrong thing. That’s it, I’ve got it now: both Asimov’s MNR and this article’s Minimum Effective Dose are about getting the most by doing the least, but MED is apathetic and MNR is precise. Minimum Necessary Change says you do this and exactly this to get that. MED says you do enough to get what you want.

I don’t know how doctors calculate the MED, though presumably there’s a lot of research data to call on. I also don’t quite know how you can time travel back to a point where moving a tea mug will save the world.

But I really like the idea that the smallest thing you do right now can make massive changes in your life later. Plus, I’m going to tidy my shelves, so there’s that too.

Animated guide to the 4-Hour Work Week

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A four-hour working week? I think I need to sit down. Can I have a glass of water, please?

There’s this book called The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. I haven’t read it. But someone who calls themselves FightMediocrity has done an animated version. It’s really FightMediocrity’s review with doodles and arrows but it’s busy and absorbing. See what you think of it and this entire concept of decimating your hours.

Short thought: productivity is like gardening

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Chiefly because I’m just back from looking around a National Gardens Scheme spot, this has just popped into my head.

You plant stuff, you water it regularly, it grows. Just concentrate on the soil and the garden grows.

This is all far too cutesy for me, even though I mean it, so I will just add that sometimes you have to get the builders in to reroute that stream.

Don’t ever say or think ‘that’s good enough’

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Brian Grazer, producer of 24 and Arrested Development on how there are no rules to how you achieve success – except maybe on.

“Every once in a while I rationalize quality,” [Brian Grazer] continued. “There are so many decision you make, and you’re trying to do excellence. We know what excellence is. We know what better food is versus not good food. But there’s a rationalizing process—that’s good enough. Anytime the light bulb goes, that’s good enough, it’s shitty!”

Brian Grazer Talks ’24,’ ‘Arrested Development,’ and Regretting ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ at Aspen – Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic (4 July 2015)

Read the full piece.

Getting just a wee bit too close to technology

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Hand on heart, I don’t give a damn about technology. If you know me above a minute, you think I do because I’m dripping with Apple gear and I talk a lot about how great certain software tools are for my work. But if you are technology-minded and you know me above 90 seconds, you know I’m not in your league and I know nothing.

Specifically, I know nothing about gigahertz and processor speeds and for one example, I can’t follow why one Android phone is better than an iPhone because its processor runs at twice the clock speed yet when I hold them in my hand, the Android is slow as a dog and I’ve already finished what I’m working on with the iPhone.

That’s really my interest: the work. I could not have the career I do without all these tools and when something is that useful to you, when something has directly and measurably changed your working and your actual life, it’s hard not to get attached to it.

I freely admit I may have gone too far. But late last month my iMac got recalled by Apple because of some potential fault. They took it in, they fixed it, they returned it and they did all that for free – but it still meant I was without my frankly beloved iMac for about a week.

I did get two articles out of the experience, though, and actually I really like both of them. Consider this a weekend read and do have a laugh at how broken hearted I got. Here’s Living Without the iMac part 1 and Living without the iMac part 2 – it’s back over on MacNN.com.

Weekend read: the Man Who Solved Cicada 3301 – and so what?

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Did you know about this? There’s been an annual puzzle called Cicada 3301 which is online and bloody hard to solve but one man did it – only to find that he was too late.

“Hello. We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in the image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few who will make it all the way through. Good luck.”

3301 (4 January 2012)

Fast Company has an absorbing account of this mysterious puzzle – there are lots of explanations for why it’s being set but nobody actually knows, or at least nobody who isn’t behind it – and reports:

Joel Eriksson is one of the few known people to have actually solved it since the first challenge appeared online.

“I stumbled upon it on one of the image boards the first image was posted to in 2012,” says Eriksson, a 34-year-old cryptosecurity researcher and developer from Sweden. “Unfortunately, I didn’t see it until some time after it was originally posted, and thus had some catching up to do,” Eriksson says. “Initially, I just thought it would be a nice little brainteaser. I’ve always been interested in anything that can challenge me, and I never give up. In the case of Cicada, the puzzle in question turned out to be a lot more than I thought it would be when I started it.”

Tackling the puzzle would lead Eriksson to rely on a host of skills from steganography to cryptography, to an understanding of ancient Mayan numerology and a familiarity with cyberpunk speculative fiction. As he worked his way from solving one piece of the puzzle to the next, the journey would lead him to discover that the answers lay not just in the digital domain, but in the real world: From clues left on the voicemail of a Texas telephone number to flyers taped to telephone poles in 14 cities around the world. The quest would ultimately return to the deepest layers of the digital world: the dark web.

Meet the Man Who Solved the Mysterious Cicada 3301 Puzzle – Michael Grothaus, Fast Company (25 November 2014)

I have a puzzle of my own: why has this article popped back up into life when it was written eight months ago? I’ve no idea but I’ve checked into it and the Cicada 3301 stuff is still as unknown and mysterious as it was. Read the full piece.

Get more energy without caffeine

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I have to ask: why? But over on Reddit, there is a discussion I’ve just seen about how to stir yourself instead of your coffee, specifically:

I know a lot of people whose morning habit is to down a cup of coffee to get them ready for the day. Not only have I seen many articles knock that as a bad thing, but I am also not a lover of hot drinks. At the moment of writing this, it is 10am in the morning and I only woke up 2 hours ago. I am feeling tired and could easily jump back in to bed.
So, how do you increase your energy without consuming caffeine?

How Do You Increase Your Energy without Caffeine? CallumVlogs, /r/productivity (27 April 2015)

He – I just somehow sense it’s a man, I don’t know – is still getting replies today, that’s how it floated up in front of me, but he also got responses immediately including this one:

take a nap – it is overused and trivial, but it works like a charm
take a cold shower – cold is key. Warm relaxes you, cold gets you perked up
make yourself a green smoothie – kale / spinach + a fruit of your choice + water + nuts. The greens will give you quite a boost, the fruit will make the taste good, the nuts will give you some energy lasting energy
juice some veggies – carrots / celery / beats
juice some citrus fruits – lemons / oranges / grapefruits – the vitamin C will give you an energy boost
do some HIIT exercises – you’ll have to push yourself mentally past the barrier of “I don’t have the energy for it”, but you’ll feel like a champ after that

Stormperk

Read the full piece and contribute a strong defence in favour of Pepsi Max, would you?

Weekend read: A Brief History of the Wristwatch

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On July 9, 1916, The New York Times puzzled over a fashion trend: Europeans were starting to wear bracelets with clocks on them. Time had migrated to the human wrist, and the development required some explaining.

“Until recently,” the paper observed, “the bracelet watch has been looked upon by Americans as more or less of a joke. Vaudeville artists and moving-picture actors have utilized it as a funmaker, as a ‘silly ass’ fad.”

A Brief History of the Wristwatch – Uri Friedman, The Atlantic (27 May 2015)

Read the full piece.

The polarising new MacBook keyboard

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This is a very specific kind of Blank Screen post: it’s ostensibly about one product that, statistically speaking, you are unlikely to have and, also statistically speaking, you are unlikely to ever get. I’m really selling this to you, aren’t I? Okay, try this: it’s to do with keyboards, which we all spend a lot of time with and which you, admit it, have strong opinions about.

Okay, it’s just me. But I’ve been pulling 16-hour days at the keyboard lately, the feel of these things is hugely important and the potential risk to my wrists is gigantically important to me. Then Apple’s gone and brought out a new keyboard, a new type of keyboard and, seriously, when Apple does something, the rest of the industry mocks it while working furiously to copy it.

(Are you on a notebook computer now? See the way the keyboard is toward the back and you’ve got palmrests at the front around a trackpad? That was Apple’s idea and there is now notebook you can buy that does not do exactly this.)

So a new design of keyboard is likely to appear in other machines, from Apple and others, now that it’s out there. And Apple made such a fuss of it at the launch that I was suspicious: the company doth protest too much and all that. Then people started getting the new MacBook that has this keyboard and they hated it.

Well, some hated, most people thought they would put up with it. The travel is shallow, the distance you have to press the keys before they register is tiny. The keys are also wider but it’s chiefly the travel and how that feels that is making people unhappy.

Except me.

I went in to an Apple Store specifically to try out the keyboard and I actually liked it.

But that was a few minutes. Now here’s a fella who’s spent eight weeks typing on it:

Apple’s new MacBook uses a new keyboard mechanism. The keys are larger and the throw [aka travel] is less, and so when people try it out for just a minute ot two in the Apple store, it may feel strange, different and even undesirable.

I’ve spent eight weeks with my new MacBook now, and one of things I like about it the most is the keyboard. Just like the single USB-C port, past experience doesn’t prepare or guide one for using this keyboard because it’s so different from what Apple has delivered in the past.

Eight Weeks With the MacBook Keyboard: Total Love – The Mac Observer

Read the full piece for a more informed view than I can give you. But then take away that if this keyboard does come to all computers, it’s fine.