Self Distraction

Self Distraction

How to cope with summer

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It’s hot, you’re supposed to be on holiday and enjoying yourself, but did I mention it’s hot? You’re working but shouldn’t be. You’re not working but should be. Summer is hell and sometimes it’s as hot as there.

The Positivity Blog has a lot of advice on how to chill out in every sense. I’m not keen on all of it but I like this one about what to do when you’re not working, when you are on holiday:

Go slow. You’ll be less stressed. And you’ll enjoy all the people, sights and experiences so much more because you’ll naturally take the time to appreciate them.

10 Small Ways to Make this the Least Stressful Summer of Your Life – Henrik Edberg, Positivity Blog (10 June 2015)

You could also bring some work with you. That’s my contribution here.

Read the full piece.

People have to change their own minds

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“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others” – Balise Pascal, French scientist and philosopher. Brain Pickings uses this as the centre of a piece about how you can’t change some bastard’s mind but you can get them to look at things differently without wanting to throttle you.

Nearly half a millennium before modern psychologists identified the three elements of persuasion — attunement, buoyancy, and clarity — French physicist, philosopher, inventor, and mathematician Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623–August 19, 1662) intuited this mechanism as he arrived at a great truth about the secret of persuasion: Pascal came to see that the surest way of defeating the erroneous views of others is not by bombarding the bastion of their self-righteousness but by slipping in through the backdoor of their beliefs.

How to Change Minds: Blaise Pascal on the Art of Persuasion – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings (20 May 2015)

Read the full piece.

A Month of Networking

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Special torture. Writer Rachel Gillett did it so you don’t have to. She documents an entire month and it’s perhaps not the most surprising read in the world but you’ll feel for her and you’ll also definitely take her advice.

WEEK 1: GET TO KNOW YOUR COWORKERS
During the first week of the challenge, I eased into networking by inviting coworkers to lunch. This low-pressure situation promised to help us practice our conversation skills. I asked my coworker Rose to invite another colleague, David, to join us for lunch—and on the walk to our lunch spot I felt very deeply the true awkwardness of this scenario.

I think we were all aware of the social connotation when someone asks you to lunch. One can’t help but wonder, what’s the motivation here, what’s the angle? So as we sat down to eat, I wanted to dispel any fears of a hidden agenda. Our networking lunch was simply an occasion to get out of the office, get to know each other better. After brushing the initial awkwardness aside, we enjoyed a delicious family-style meal of samosas, saag paneer, chicken tikka masala, lamb korma, and naan. We ate like kings, kvetched like yentas, and it was great.

My Painful (And Sometimes Fun) Month Of Networking – Rachel Gillett, Fast Company (16 March 2015)

Read the full piece.

The Successful Failure

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That’s me, that is. Official. I’ve been interviewed for the US podcast series The Successful Failure: it’s about how one’s biggest, most calamitous bad times are what teach you the skills to get great days.

I’ve known the series producer and presenter, Gigi Peterkin, for years so she knew to steer me away from my haircut errors but she also got more out of me than I expected. Possibly more than I intended, but let’s not go there.

Instead, let’s go here: this is my episode on The Successful Failure website. Do take a listen to the other episodes and subscribe to it on iTunes.

You could also take a read of Self Distract, my personal blog when I mused about how much detail one can unintentionally give up in interviews.

The Onion: Scientists Posit Theoretical ‘Productive Weekend’

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Perhaps within our lifetime we will even see to-do lists whittled down or even eradicated by Sunday nights, reversing the current trend of growth over the 48-hour weekend period. It’s truly a transformative prospect.

Scientists Posit Theoretical ‘Productive Weekend’ – no author listed, The Onion (18 August 2014)

Read the full piece.

Before you raid the fridge…

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The other weekend I was working so much that Angela would occasionally drop food parcels off at my desk for me. More often I’m working so much and so is she that one or either of us will raid the fridge. Now, this won’t strictly be a piece of productivity advice except that if you get it wrong, you get food poisoning and your productivity is going to be focused very firmly on toilet bowls for a time.

Lifehacker has a good guide to what it actually means when food says it’s best before a certain date, or must be used by another, or sold by a third. It comes down to how most of the time you’re fine for a while after those dates but give it a nose and if the thing whiffs, don’t eat it.

Read the full piece.

Clickhole: “We Asked 8 Famous Authors For The Most Important Advice They’d Give To Young Writers”

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Donna Tartt: “When you first start writing, it’s tempting to make every character Tom Hanks. I know I wrote at least a hundred stories where all the characters were Tom Hanks, because I thought that was ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ or something. But it wasn’t. In real life, most people aren’t Tom Hanks. They’re other people, except for the one guy who is Tom Hanks. Be honest in your writing, and limit yourself to one Tom Hanks character.”

We Asked 8 Famous Authors For The Most Important Advice They’d Give to Young Writers – no author listed, ClickHole (3 June 2015)

If you don’t already know or can’t already guess, Clickhole is a parody of sites like Buzzfeed.Read the full piece.

Where is all of your time going?

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In a study of 1,000 U.S. professionals, 94% said they work 50 or more hours a week, with nearly half that group putting in more than 65 hours a week. And that doesn’t include the 20-25 hours/week most of them spend monitoring their phones while outside the office. If aren’t auditing how we spend our most valuable resource, our time, who else will? Nobody ever dies saying “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”

Where Is All of Your Time Going? – Hamza Khan, 99U (11 May 2015)

Well, true, but a lot of us have wished we’d spent more time at our keyboards writing. This article is about understanding what you spend your hours on so that you can be more in control of your time. There’s that great Douglas Adams line he gives to a security guard on low pay: “The hours are good. The actual minutes are pretty lousy”. I’m paraphrasing because I’ve decided to spend this time talking to you instead of looking up the accurate quote.

I think the 99U piece is a bit academic at times and it really is canted toward getting you out of the office – so it even recommends exercise, shudder – but there’s a lot of good advice in it. Do read the full piece.