newsletter

Put – the – phone – down

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UNICEF – seriously, UNICEF? – has released an app called PlayTimer which is specifically built to make you put that bloody iPhone down and go play with your kid:

Together with your child you can set how long you are going to play for and then take your child’s photo to set the playtimer. This will then lock your phone and show a black screen. If the phone is touched in locked mode – say, by a parent checking their work email – an alarm will go off. You can only turn the alarm off by taking another picture of your child – proof that you’re still playing with them. (In case of emergency, you will still see incoming calls and can make emergency calls, as no app has the power to over-ride your phone lock settings.)

UNICEF’s new app lets your children confiscate your smartphone Katherine Crisp (15 May 2014)

Read more on the UNICEF blog here or go straight to downloading the free app from the App Store

There’s more to negotiation than money

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If you’ve got a meeting with someone, they want to work with you. Or at least they want to want to work with you. Make the most of that meeting, get what you can and remember that the ideal is that you will be working with these people so let’s leave everyone happy. And at some point money is going to come into it but money is not all.

It’s a lot. Let’s not be daft.

But:

Have more items than they have. Let’s say you are negotiating a book advance. They offer a $10,000 advance and they can’t budge higher.

That’s fine. Now make your list of other things: how much social media marketing will they do, what bookstores will they get you into, who has control over book design, what percentage of foreign rights, of digital rights, you can get. Do royalties go up after a certain number of copies are sold, will they pay for better book placement in key stores, will they hire a publicist? And so on.

Before every negotiation. Make a list. Make the list as long as possible. If your list is bigger than theirs (size matters) then you can give up “the nickels for the dimes”.

This is not just about negotiation. This is to make sure that later you are not disappointed because there is something you forgot. Always prepare. Then you can have faith that because you prepared well, the outcome will also go well.

The Ultimate Cheat Sheet to Become a Great Negotiator – The Altucher Confidential

 

 

Being conscientious. If you can fake that, you’ve made it

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I automatically resist claims that there is, for instance, one single thing that makes people successful/rich/attractive* (*delete as applicable) because there isn’t. But the Inc website makes such a claim (via Lifehacker) and it is persuasive. I’m sure there is more to it but I could be convinced that this one thing is an essential part of being successful:

The only major personality trait that consistently leads to success is conscientiousness.

This is the Personality Trait That Most Often Predicts Success – Inc

Besides, I like it. I like that this is successful trait. Read on for some statistical research and more detail.

Get a raise

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Here’s some smart advice from Time magazine about how to negotiate getting more money at work. But first, its opening lines made me laugh:

A new survey finds that what makes us satisfied at work isn’t what’s in our hearts; it’s what’s in our wallets. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 60% of American workers surveyed last year said pay/compensation was “very important” to them, making it the top-ranked priority.

Some things do not need surveys.

But the rest of the article is very good about whether you actually deserve a raise and only then how you ask for one. Plus it covers exactly what you’ve just thought about: what happens when you then don’t get it. Have a read of the full piece while I go talk to my boss about paying me more.

UPDATE: I am my own boss and he says no.

In this week’s newsletter

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The iPhone case that tells you when your friends are happy or sad. The Louis CK solution to choosing between two similar things. Plus why Google doesn’t like hiring experts and, separately, what it’s like being an expert dealing with eejits. That last one is a video and as funny as it is, it’s nails-on-chalkboard uncomfortably true.

Read more in this week’s The Blank Screen email newsletter.

And sign up to get it emailed right to you every Friday.

Make writing a habit by tying it to something else

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You have lunch most days, right? You go to bed pretty much every night? Write for half an hour before you eat lunch. Write for ten minutes before you go to bed.

That’s it. That’s all. That is actually my productivity tip of the week – I do one of those in each of the weekly The Blank Screen email newsletters – and it’s so new to me that it isn’t in The Blank Screen book. I shouldn’t tell you that. But it’s you, I can’t lie to you.

And I can’t try to make this one sound more than it is. Just find a thing you have to do or a thing you like doing and then do some writing before it. Before it every time. Make the two things go together like a double bill. It means you won’t forget to do it, you will make it a habit.

Just be careful of one thing. Whatever you tie this writing to, make sure you do the writing before it. Not after. Telling yourself you’ll write for an hour after you come back from the gym won’t work. Telling yourself you’ll write for ten minutes before you go to the gym, that works.

 

In this week’s newsletter…

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There’s a new productivity tip that isn’t in my book and hasn’t yet appeared on this site (though, full disclosure, I can’t keep it secret, I may have to say it later today). But you can read it right now in the new weekly email newsletter which also features a productivity buy of the week, more technology news and a daft video. I wasn’t intending to make the daft video a regular feature but so far it’s proved irresistible.

Take a look at the latest issue right here – and if you fancy getting it delivered right to your doorstop each Friday, just let me know by signing up here.

Today’s newsletter comes with chocolate

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You only think I’m kidding. Today saw the release of the second email newsletter from The Blank Screen and if you read this site, you’ve already learnt a lot of it. But not everything. Not about the chocolate.

Specifically, absolute and irrefutable proof that chocolate is good for your productivity. I am continuing to search for evidence about tea and will report back.

But also this week:

  • The buy of the week – which you must run to get now because it’s on sale for the shortest possible time
  • New: productivity tip of the week
  • Real news of new hardware for your phone
  • Fake news about apps from The Onion

Plus:

  • Did I mention chocolate? Sorry, I’m a bit excited about that

Take a look at today’s edition here – and if you fancy getting it shipped straight to your inbox every week, just sign up here and let the good times roll about a bit.

It’d be nice to have you along.