From TED talks:
Close the doors
Right now I have ten major projects on and all need tending to. Now, I don’t expect you to be interested in this but I do want you to help me come to a realisation.
Ten is too many.
I know I should shed some. I can think of one that will go away in a month; another that will be done in three months. That’s down to eight already, come on.
A third needs about five more days work and it’s gone completely. Seven.
Still too many, especially as I can casually say that about the project that needs five more days, that doesn’t change that fact that it has needed five more days for about four months now.
But if I’m not ready to shed anything yet and actually I am very ready to add things if you’ve got an interesting idea, I am trying something new tomorrow. Or rather today, by the time this first appears on The Blank Screen website.
I’m closing the doors for one day.
For Wednesday 14 January 2015 I am working on only one project. Nothing else allowed, not even emails, not even phone calls. We’ll see how I get on but even now, writing to you late the night before, I’m feeling a bit liberated. I was looking at a project plan just now, the very barest skeleton project management jobs and realised I was sighing as I went to add in some detail. As I went to colour it all in. And that realisation, plus the clear fact that I can’t finish it tonight, led me to this relief. I will not look at it tomorrow. I cannot.
If this works out, I may do what US writer David E Kelley used to do: he’d spend half the week writing crime series The Practice and half writing Ally McBeal. Ask him a Practice question on a McBeal day and he could not answer you. That was just not in his head.
I like the idea of nine projects being out of my head.
I just hope I do spend the day on the tenth and don’t just eat toast and watch TV.
Don’t rob banks
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.”
Read the full piece.
Contact has been made
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.
Learn structure from Obama’s script writer
By far, the best way to learn how to write speeches is to read the great ones, from Pericles’ Funeral Oration, to Dr. King’s Mountaintop speech, to Faulkner’s Nobel acceptance address. But if you’re looking for some quick tips, here are a few things to bear in mind next time you’re asked to give a speech:
1. Write like you talk. There is no First Law of Speechwriting, but if there were, it would probably be something like this: a speech is meant to be spoken, not read. That simple (and obvious) fact has a few important (and less obvious) implications. Use short words. Write short sentences. Avoid awkward constructions that might cause a speaker to stumble. Tip: Read the speech aloud as you’re writing. If you do it enough, you’ll start hearing the words when you type them.
6 Tips for Writing a Persuasive Speech (On Any Topic) ≠ Adam Frankel, TIME (12 January 2015)
Read the full piece.
Ten Tips on Being a Productive Writer
Lucy Hay usually blogs about the techniques of writing and the industry that we writers work in but she did once do this very concise and smart round up of productivity tips for us.
There’s plenty in here that I do and that I recommend endlessly in The Blank Screen but also much that I hadn’t considered. Some of that comes from how Hay covers juggling the kinds of demands you have on you when you’re a parent.
But she also recommends relaxation. That’s where I turn my face against her.
Clickhole: Six Incredible Stress-Reducing Life Hacks That Work Best If You Have Access To Some Sort Of Natural Geyser
Well.
Are you feeling a little frazzled? It’s easy to relax if you have access to some type of geyser!
Sorry I’m late…
We’re all unavoidably late for many things – but if you find that you are always late for everything, maybe you need to be looking into it. If other people tend to delay events for you or they just start turning up late too, then maybe you need to seriously look into it.
Time magazine says that your problem could be “rooted in something psychological, like a fear of downtime”. It has nine descriptions of how punctual people manage to be punctual and thereby live happy, fulfilling lives as paragons of virtue, spit.
But the descriptions aren’t of good ideas, such as my favourite one that says punctual folk are “immune to ‘just one more’ thing syndrome”:
You’ll rarely hear a time-conscious person say they need to squeeze in “one more thing” before they leave. That impulse can lead you off track, and suddenly it’s not just one more email—it’s an entire 15 minutes worth of emails.
“Train yourself to recognize that impulse when it happens,” Morgenstern says. “Resist the impulse to do one more thing and just leave.”
9 Habits of People Who Are Always on Time – Samantha Zabell, Time (12 January 2015)
Read the full feature for the rest.
Use Evernote to achieve your 2015 goals
That’s not my claim nor my suggestion and it is the claim and it is the suggestion of the Evernote company. So, you know, pinch that salt. But there are some good ideas in this and I think the killer persuasive point is the first one: you’ve already got Evernote so why not?
Like millions of other people, I use Evernote as my “digital brain” to store ideas, notes, web clips, receipts, recipes, important documents, event details, and more. I couldn’t get along without it.
But, did you know you can also use it to help you achieve your most important goals for 2015? There are three advantages of doing so:
1. It’s a tool you’re probably already using. You likely don’t have to learn or purchase something new.
2. It’s a tool that is available on every device. This makes it easier to keep your goals visible—a key to following through on them. You can review your goals on your desktop while at the office or on your mobile device while on the go.
3. It’s a tool that is simple and flexible. So many goal-setting apps force you into their system and structure. They are often overkill with too many features. Evernote, on the other hand, is fairly free-form, so you can create whatever structure works best for you.
Read the full feature for four steps to doing this. It includes how to get tick boxes into Evernote and – surely this isn’t just me? – I never remember that you can do this and then I never remember how to.
MarsEdit – the early review
This feels so wrong. So very wrong. Also a bit meta. I’m reviewing MarsEdit, a blogging editor for OS X, but I’m reviewing it for MacNN.com. I’ll tell you now that I already like this software enough that I’ll be recommending it on The Blank Screen too.
But the way of these things is that of course I review it first on MacNN and then when that’s live, I’ll point you at it from here.
Except.
Not only do I need to test out MarsEdit, I also need some screenshots. So unless all my testing so far has somehow been mistaken and this post vanishes into the ether, you’re looking at a test post. Goes on a bit, doesn’t it? What’s wrong with “testing 1, 2, 3”? Standards. It’s about standards.
But while I’ve got you, let me say that MarsEdit is for writing and editing your blog posts and what I think is best about it is that it is somehow just an enjoyable thing to type into. Officially, sensibly, the best thing about it is how readily you can add text, images, video and audio into your posts – and how those posts can be across any number of different blogs that you run.