Future You

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I got this idea from a woman I’m mentoring in all this creative productivity. That’s a thing now: I do The Blank Screen sessions one to one and it is the most hair-raising fun I’ve had since writing the original book. There are so many great things about getting in so deep with an individual and their work and one of them is that I learn things back.

Such as Future You.

It’s just this:

Do it now so that Future You doesn’t have to.

And maybe:

Do it now so that Future You loves you – or at least thinks you’re okay

My mentoree (is that a word?) says she uses it for simple things like making the beds in the morning rather than leaving it until she gets back from work. She uses it in her work, getting things done while they’re fresh so that her Future You isn’t stressed out with a deadline.

She also says she falls down a bit on that last one.

But the idea is simple and sound and I’m using it right now. I haven’t got a lot on today but they are important to me. And they’re occupying more time than they should: they are events of a certain quite short duration yet the time I’m spending planning and churning and rehearsing means I will lose the whole day to them. Which is fine and even very good, but I wanted to write to you. So right now, rather than holding my head and clutching a hot mug of tea, hello. Future Me will be pleased I did this now because Future Me would be very narked if I missed a chance to chat.

In a mo, I’m off to a school for the last of four sessions about scriptwriting. I was up for hours last night worrying about this, about what we have left to do, what they can get done, what we can make together. And then around 5am – no, wait, I get up at 5am, it was exactly 5am – I went from my bed to my Mac to write down all I needed for the morning.

I wrote that naked at 5am and have you seen how cold it is out there? I was shaking by the time I’d finished. But Future Me then got to stand in a hot shower and let the worries and the plans soak away.

To be replaced by nerves about tonight. For tonight I’m performing at the launch of an anthology of short stories. It was my first commissioned prose fiction and so far it has gone down stormwards. Tonight’s the big presentation, though. It will be the 120th time I’ve presented or spoken or done something with an audience since I moved back to Birmingham two years ago. But it’s a worry.

Future Me is currently discussing with Present Me why in the world Past Me invited my family.

There are two types of scanners in this world

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Those that work and those that don’t. Wait. No, I’m thinking of printers. Let me try again. There are two types of scanners in this world: Fujitsu ScanSnap and Doxie.

Apparently others are available and that’s nice but you want one of these. If you can afford it, go the Fujitsu route. I won’t say those are more expensive because I believe the price is only part of that calculation: an item that cost a lot of money but you use is not expensive. Not compared to an item that’s cheap but you never use it.

But Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners cost more than many and enough so that I don’t have one. It is on my budget list for a particular project, though.

Instead, I have a Doxie. Cheaper, lighter, slower, but so handy. And now the Doxie company has brought out something new:

We’re extremely excited to announce two brand-new Doxie Go models this week – Doxie Go Plus and Doxie Go Wi-Fi.

First, about the new Doxie: building on our best-selling flagship portable scanner, Doxie Go, both new models deliver 3x the battery life, higher quality images, one minute setup, the ability to charge and scan at the same time via wall power, and the latest apps.

What we’re most excited about is Doxie Go Wi-Fi. On top of the aforementioned features Doxie Go Wi-Fi also has built-in Wi-Fi for syncing to Mac, PC, iPhone, & iPad (no third-party SD cards or helper apps needed), a native Doxie iOS app for iPhone and iPad, an open developer API (available next quarter), and 4x the memory capacity with Smart Memory™ (store up to 1,800 documents before needing to sync).

Hi: Your Doxie Go Wi-Fi upgrade voucher – email from Paul Scandairato, Doxie (25 November 2014)

Nicely, this came in an email because so did a voucher to let me upgrade to the new Doxie for a pretty considerable discount. Whether you have a Doxie already and so qualify for this or you don’t and you’re just looking for a good speaker, take a gander at the Doxie site.

The thirty-minute quick win

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When I say go, I’m going to set a timer for thirty minutes and make a pitch. I don’t know what yet. But a friend has sent me a bundle of things that are so interesting, I want to do them all. And I’ve felt a bit blinded by which to pitch to first. Plus I’ve been a wee bit busy. So the result is that I’ve had the list for few days now and nothing is happening.

Let’s make something happen. Especially as today was a rubbish day. Got barely anything done and if I can whack out a pitch now, in front of you, I’ll feel better. I like feeling better.

So, here goes:

ME: Set a timer, thirty minutes
SIRI: Okay, your timer is set for thirty minutes. Remember, a watched iPhone never boils.

(It really said that.)

Go.

And… stop.

With 15 minutes and 28 seconds to go, I’m done. Read the pitch list, found one I fancied – it didn’t have to be the best, it just had to be there and be one I liked. No selection, or at least as little selection as I could manage. (There was one about poetry, for instance. Nice opportunity, lovely idea, completely outside my capabilities. So I moved on. But only a bit.)

Read the detail, did a swift email to them, gone.

And it worked, I feel better.

Be told when anything happens online

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If you visit a lot of websites all the time, stop and ask me about RSS instead. You’ll have plenty of chances as I rarely shut up about it. But as well as this tool for making websites send you their new articles, there are ways to get all sorts of information without schlepping off to site after site. One new way involves IFTTT and a tool called TrackIf:

TrackIf helps you track the web and alerts you if anything you want changes online, helping you be the first to know when anything happens online. Track price drops on any product at nearly any shopping site. Something you want out of stock? No problem, TrackIf can alert you if it’s available again.

Connect TrackIf to anything – IFTTT

Read the full piece. It’ll either bore you or awaken a brilliant interest in automating te web for you. A brilliant interest that becomes all consuming, but there you go.

I didn’t see your message, sorry

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It is handy when you know that someone has seen your email or your text or your update or your anything, but actually it is never handy. You’re a writer, you know they’ve seen it, why aren’t they saying anything?

Worse, you’re wrong. They haven’t seen it. They really haven’t seen it. I’ve had this come up with people who tell me they know so-and-so read their email DAYS AGO and so is being rude not replying. Or they NEVER OPENED IT ONCE, same thing. In each case, you don’t know. Maybe they saw the three-line preview on their iPhone and didn’t bother to open the message. Maybe they got eleventy-billion emails that morning and simply didn’t see yours in there.

But none of that matters when the person in question is you. And when the question in question is whether you have read something or you haven’t. You could just let the online world go on its little way, sending out read receipt acknowledgements wherever it may, or you could fight back. Stop it happening.

Lifehacker’s got your back. Read its full feature on how to switch off bleedin’ read receipts in the most popular software around.

Well.

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If you’re sitting at your computer as often as the rest of America, you’ve probably got your share of keyboard shortcuts that make your life easier. Well, here’s a few lesser-known keyboard shortcuts that will blow your mind!

Command + H + 5: Preheats your laptop to 350 degrees.

Shift + H + H + H + H + H + H + H + H + H+ H + H + H + H + H + H: Gives you a fuck-ton of uppercase H’s. Nice!

8 Game-Changing Keyboard Shortcuts You Need To Be… | ClickHole

Read the full piece.

E-cigarettes can be bad for the health – of your computer

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It’s fair to say that the first person to stick leaves in their mouth and set fire to it wasn’t really thinking ahead. But who could’ve foreseen this? It is reportedly possible that your e-cigarette is just waiting for you to plug it into your PC or Mac so that it can do some damage. Deliberate, malicious, profitable damage:

Many e-cigarettes can be charged over USB, either with a special cable, or by plugging the cigarette itself directly into a USB port. That might be a USB port plugged into a wall socket or the port on a computer – but, if so, that means that a cheap e-cigarette from an untrustworthy supplier gains physical access to a device.

A report on social news site Reddit suggests that at least one “vaper” has suffered the downside of trusting their cigarette manufacturer. “One particular executive had a malware infection on his computer from which the source could not be determined,” the user writes. “After all traditional means of infection were covered, IT started looking into other possibilities.

“The made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system.”

Health warning: Now e-cigarettes can give you malware | Technology | The Guardian

If this were chocolate, I’d be talking about having some perspective and how this is surely a tiny proportion of all e-chocolate systems. But since it’s just smoking, what the hell? Go crazy, panic, stop smoking, it’s fine. Read the full piece.

Metaphors are like, um, er

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Metaphors can help by tapping what learning theorists call prior knowledge to make a connection between what people already understand through experience and what they have yet to discover. We do this naturally in conversation — for instance, “The news hit her like a freight train.” By comparing the situation to something people already know or can at least imagine, we convey its intensity and urgency. But when explaining our ideas in presentations, we’re sometimes reluctant to use verbal or visual metaphors to relate to audiences. I’ve heard people say that metaphors are “off topic,” or worse, “cheap.” Though using a cheesy one can elicit groans, more often than not, metaphors offer a shortcut to understanding.

Finding the Right Metaphor for Your Presentation

Read the full piece. Its specifically about searching for the right metaphor in a presentation but so long as you don’t lurch into cliché, it’s surely going to be valid until the cows come home.

Avoiding seasonal depression when you work alone

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There’s no doubt that life as a freelancer has its perks. We get to structure our days as we wish, work with clients we like, and don’t have to sell eight-hour blocks of our day to an employer. But when working from home or at the local coffee shop, we face social isolation, which puts us at risk for anxiety and depression. And as winter approaches, it comes with a heightened risk of seasonal depression.

3 Ways Freelancers Can Avoid Isolation—and the Seasonal Depression That Comes With It – Michael Tunney, Contently (19 November 2014)

Read the full piece for advice.

Ten Rules for the Creative Sandbox

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10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox
1. There is no “wrong.”
Which also means there is no “right.” This is play, remember. The point is simply that you’re having fun. 2. Think process, not product.
In other words, It doesn’t matter if you like or hate the product; all that matters is that you’re having fun.
There’s time enough later for editing and crafting. Creative Sandbox time is all about letting your 4-year-old out, and 4-year-olds are much more interested in the experience of creating than in what they make.

How to Bust a Creative Block: Rules for the Creative Sandbox – Melissa Dinwiddie (undated)

Read the full piece for the other eight and rather a lot more.