Archive for January, 2006
One of the few traits I seem to have inherited from my late and much-lamented father is a decided lack of patience when it comes to shopping. Now, send me into a store to rummage through books, office supplies, electronics or tools, and I could be content, if not outright gleeful, for hours on end; indeed, I could easily get lost for days in large bookstores, sifting through the titles while I forget to eat or drink. But send me forth into the teeming hordes of a department store or mall, especially on a quest for some ill-labelled and confusing feminine product, and I’ll soon be quivering in paroxysms of frustration, anger, loathing for fellow humans, and even the fear of God.
And so it was with no lack of trepidation that I sallied forth recently into the seething swarms of bargain-hungry shoppers all brought to the brink of outright violence in their efforts to exchange well-meaning Christmas presents for the last dregs upon the shelves, and I in search of a seemingly rare skin lotion for my pregnant wife.
The dementia had been spreading since Boxing Day. Housewives were now bickering violently over cheese graters, burly men were play tug-of-war with cans of paint, and children were whirling around yanking each others’ hair while the super-soaker gun in their hands crashed into nearby shelves. Shoppers left their carts in strategic positions in the aisles to prevent passers-by, and passers-by were crashing into them, sending them flying. Newfoundlanders, normally one of the kindest races on Earth, were suddenly transformed into primitive and tempermental participants in actions that paled The Lord of the Flies. The staff, normally standing with smiles at each doorway and junction, had long since disappeared into their secret little crawl-spaces in fright, and there were forty impatient people for every distraught clerk at the check-outs.
I went from aisle to aisle, shelf to shelf, looking for the lotion. Being a typical male, I figured that skin lotions would somehow be adjacent to hair products, tampons and sundry other feminine products that would make a grown man blush. That, however, was not the case, and I scoured that entire section of the store looking for the bottle that my wife had shown me that morning.
To make a long and horrible story short, it was over a half-hour later when I finally had the lotion (which, of course, now had a different name and packaging) grasped tightly in my hand lest I be ambushed and assaulted. My blood was boiling, my body was covered in sweat, and my head was throbbing. Quickly, I wended my way through the crowds to the baby section to locate some tiny nail clippers. I was rummaging through all the disorganised racks when I became aware of a young lady standing next to me.
She was staring hard at the baby bottles on the shelves next to me. A young mother, probably, and evidentally as distraught as I was. She fidgeted with the sets, uttering frustrations, picking packages up, reading them, slamming them down. Each one set my nerves a little tighter, and I tried to ignore her, sifting hurredly through the mess in my vain search for the clippers.
I then heard her weak voice: “Excuse me…?”
I turned to face her, and I felt the tension inside me, a brittle twig bent just to the breaking point. Her eyes were welling with tears, her bottom lip trembling as she bit it. “Can you tell me…?” she started to ask, then stopped suddenly, looking at me expectantly. Keep in mind that I’m rather a large man, and somewhat intimidating.
“Yes…?” I said, probably growling a little. I wasn’t in the mood for stupid questions. I just wanted to escape.
“Can you tell me…,” she started again, “which nipple do you think is the most real?”
I stared blankly at her for a moment. She stared back, a small animal caught in headlights, then glanced meekly at the shelves of baby bottles again.
Then I laughed. Loudly. She laughed, nervously at first. The people down the aisle began to laugh.
And shopping didn’t seem like such a horrible thing any more. At least that day.
January 27th, 2006
Well, I’m hard at work on the release candidate of the D*I*Y Planner, version 3.0, and I decided to ask for volunteers to help proof the templates, edit the handbook, and write new sections for the (already fairly copious) documentation. Seeing that DIYPlanner.com was set up essentially as a community-driven project to focus on paper-based productivity and creativity, centred somewhat on the ‘Planner, I thought it only right to invite those interested to participate in its development.
So, was that a smart thing? After all, the ‘Planner has been my little baby since its inception, and I’ve guided every line, checkbox and uneven margin via my “benevolent dictatorship.”
The response has been amazing, with about three dozen talented people coming forward out of the woodwork in just a day or two to volunteer their valuable time and skills. We’re just getting started, but already I have a great feeling about the contributions that these people will be making. We’ll not only be able to overhaul my rush-job handbook, but add helpful sections on planning in general, the uses of each of the forms, how to handle printing issues, getting started with your own custom-built D*I*Y Planner system, and so on. That’s not to mention all those eagle eyes proofing the templates and offering ideas and feedback, which will make this a far more professional release than version 2.0.
My friend asked me, “So, why are all these people working for you for free?” He’s a business guy, so it just doesn’t make sense to him. I spend a lot of time in the Open Source world, and I’ve worked for community-based non-profits, so I think that I inherently understand the intrinsic motivations of most volunteers a little better than that. I don’t figure they actually see it as working, no more so than I see my own project time as working. Many of the people putting forth their efforts are users of the non-profit D*I*Y Planner system and site, and from them, they’ve gleaned some advantage, such as enhanced productivity or ways to be more creative. But it’s not only a form of payback, it’s also a chance to pay it forward, to let the next generation of users derive some benefit, and just maybe earn a little good karma in the process.
The D*I*Y Planner has become a community affair, and the community has offered to help. I’m certainly proud of my part in the project’s creation, but these people –and all the creative and dedicated folks that post on the site, especially the volunteer writers– should be just as proud of the fact that they’re helping so many others. The daily letters and posts of thanks stand as strong testament to that. I don’t like to get too sentimental, but despite the hard times I’ve faced in the past few years, these continual acts of sharing and support are the sort of things which consistently renew my faith in the human species.
January 19th, 2006
About six years ago during the height of the dot-com madness, I was flown across the continent on very little notice for an e-learning consultation, and promptly placed in a high-end hotel (the type that feels no need to include “quality” in its title). Each morning the hotel would sponsor a special e-networking breakfast room for select guests, and it was here one morning that I stood, overlooking San Diego while indulging in aromatic coffees, decadent pastries and exotic fruits. There I made the acquaintance of the CEO of a newly-public company (e-something- or-other, of course), a man in his mid-twenties, just a few years younger than I, but far better-groomed and clad in clothes costing more than a luxury sedan.
The first ten minutes of the conversation was decidedly one-sided, and he went on at length about how he outsmarted his stock advisors and “stuck it to the vulture capitalists” to attain the nearly $40 million he needed to pursue his super-secret business idea (which, true be told, once he explained it to me, sounded like a flaky advertising project to create and sell ads to run within a company’s own intranet). R&D money, for him, meant wining and dining celebrities and high-powered executives in epicurean and orgiastic parties held in rented designer mansions. To determine what people actually wanted, of course.
He asked what I did, and I told him why I was there, and a little bit about my jack-of-all-trades background. He didn’t seem interesting in anything besides himself, so I kept it short. The conversation then went something like this….
“Listen, guy,” he said, mouth half-full with baklava no doubt flown in from Greece –he called everyone guy, even the women in the room– “there are two types of people in the world: the generalists and the specialists.”
I nodded, trying to hold up an tiny expresso cup in my large hands without jutting out a pinkie, because my father told me it wasn’t a manly thing to do.
“The specialists back themselves into a corner, you see. They only have one set of skills, and when those aren’t needed any more, where are they?” He awaited my response, a Socrates probing his Plato, while he picked his teeth with his forefinder and flicked the flakes ramdomly.
“Where?” I asked, cleaning off my tie in as subtle a fashion as possible.
“I’ll tell you where, guy… no where!” he exclaimed, slamming down his empty cup upon the table by way of punctuation. “But people like you and me, we’re too smart for that.”
“Are we?”
“You betcha, guy. You see, we’re the people who evolved, while others got left behind. You don’t see us running around with apes, do you?”
My mind returned to university, when a female friend of mine started dating a large and uncouth individual with an excess of body hair, but I simply shook my head.
“We’re the ones who adapt, who know enough about how everything works that we can be leaders. And leaders are leaders.”
A brilliant observation, I observed.
This went on for another ten minutes, wherein he expounded upon the virtues of those people who knew little about anything in particular, but about many things in general.
It almost made me feel good, however briefly. I had always been a generalist –I prefer the term “well-rounded”– with a hand in everything from project management to art and design, from high-tech multimedia production to marketing, from programming to teaching high school literature. I’d always adapted, often quickly, to whatever role was necessary at the moment, learning whatever skills were needed. It wasn’t a waste of time after all, I reflected.
In 2003, after the dot-com collapse had bankrupted the technology-based private college I was working for, I started going through all the business cards I had collected a few years previous, partly out of curiosity but mostly in the vain efforts to catch a few leads. The CEO’s company, like all the others, was redirected to a squatter’s perch with the pitch “This domain name is available and can be yours!”
Meanwhile, I’m still in pursuit of permanent employment with a good future, while all my specialist friends have been gainfully employed for years with decent, stable incomes. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be a generalist, I’ve decided.
January 14th, 2006
There’s a well-known maxim in advertising circles that you have approximately three seconds to hook your viewing audience with an ad. Within that time, a lot has to happen. Your viewer has to see the ad, assess the overall image, be influenced by the colours, drift to the area of main importance (the “heat”), zero in on the central visual or text message, absorb that, identify the significance of that with one’s own experience in some way, and then make a decision to carry on investigating the message or text. Now, no one tells you how to do this. The human mind is an astonishing contraption, capable of incredibly complex procedures and analysis within milliseconds, and it does all this automatically. The patience so advocated just a half-century ago is a rare commodity, and our little grey cells have been trained, as by a crack military drill, to disregard those advertisements that require more than three seconds’ investment.
Harken back to novels written in Victorian times and compare them to those today, and you’ll get a similar appreciation of how our minds are beginning to change when faced with a rapid-fire deluge of information. Way back when snuff was fashionable and the glimpse of a woman’s ankles was grounds for marriage, novels and stories often began with long and arduous descriptions of setting, delving into the intricacies of weather, tree branches, rock formations, the collapsing of a farmer’s wall down the road, and the progressive deterioration of several generations of day lilies. Today, we tend to favour in media res, beginning in the middle of things. The first paragraph of the first chapter, and we are already on the roller-coaster, holding tight. (Yes, literary pundits will think of a million exceptions here — I’m speaking in generalities.)
And then there’s incoming information, such as news. When you look at century-old newspapers (well, all but the most lurid ones — the Illustrated Police News‘ graphic and gruesome depictions of crimes such as those of Jack the Ripper are a notable exception), you’ll find many long-winded though inconsequential paragraphs that are polite to the point of verbosity, and verbose to the point of inducing sleep. Nowadays, we have approximately two seconds per headline, and –if we’re still interested– approximately three seconds’ reading to decide if we want to carry on with the rest. Hence the snappy, terse and oft-sensational writing of many modern papers and tabloids.
And then there’s that darn source of endless interaction, distraction and inaction, the Internet. How is that affecting the way we take in and process information? A few months ago, I posted an entry here called Who Would You Phone?, wherein I gave the example of a quiz show contestant with a choice to phone either someone with a good general knowledge-base, or someone well-versed with Google; I suspect that most people would choose the latter. This post was just picked up by my favourite educational blog, Weblogg-ed: go there and read Will’s lucid commentary, along with some very interesting ideas from his readers. Meanwhile, I’m just going to follow up with a few more thoughts here on my own little venue.
I’ve always maintained that folks today (and especially children) living in a technological society are being forced to adapt to a new way of learning and understanding, one that puts into place a number of “filters” to sift through vast quantities of information, gather the pertinent items, allocate a certain importance to each nugget found, and then bring these often-disparate items into some sort of tighter and holistic focus (which is quite close to the “vetting, synthesizing and recognizing patterns” that Will mentions on Weblogg-ed). Faced with over a thousand pieces of significant information per hour, how would we not? Bloglines, del.icio.us, DEVONthink/ DEVONagent, Tinderbox, Zoot, Copernic, and other web-based and client-side applications are there to help us, of course, as is the ability of Google to present results by way of both popularity and pertinence (well, depending on your search skills, of course).
And while we can teach people about acquiring and fine-tuning certain of these filters, most of them will come naturally over time as we learn to deal more effectively with the deluge of data. It’s similar to how we’ve learned to implement a “three second timer.”
Now, while it was never my intention in the original article to propose a return to yesterday (I definitely prefer the instant access of online library catalogues over their card brethern, and I use Wikipedia far more often than its two-hundred pound cousin atop the bookshelves), my main concern was how we were displacing knowledge with information retrieval. That contraption inside our skulls is a far more powerful computer than any search engine, and its primary strength relies upon its ability to analyse. Chief, then, is the comprehension of an undercurrent beneath the facts, upon which the facts can be seen and understood in their proper perspective. For example, while we don’t need to remember all the gods atop Mount Olympus, we should be familiar with the notion of myth and how it applies to our understanding of culture, history, religion and science. The dates pertaining to the rise and fall of the Third Reich mean little without realising the how and why. It’s the age-old and interdependent cycle of analysis and facts: facts, by themselves, are quite useless. Information retrieval, in itself, means nothing without the ability to process that data.
So, yes, filters are important in this age. But I lament the situation of many students I know who believe that finding information quickly is an excellent substitute for knowing or understanding it.
To be sure, we gather and we filter more effectively each day. And our power of analysis is just as robust today as ever. So where does the problem lie?
The missing link today, I maintain, is the ability to focus. This is the private time, the breathing space, that the mind needs to assimilate and digest the information. Think about cramming for an exam — spending a day or two of intense study– as opposed to paying attention to the material all throughout a semester and learning it slowly, incrementally. One results in a quick but lacklustre pass, while the other leads to long-term understanding of the subject. Each day we cram more into our skulls, and understand less, because we are devaluing the notion of focus.
How to focus, though, is quite another matter, and one that differs so much per individual, circumstance and subject matter that it becomes impossible to produce a one-size-fits-all answer. For example, I find I can focus better on productivity issues –on gathering facts, analysing them, and making decisions– with a paper-based planner system. I learn facts better by sitting down in a nice cozy chair, in a room free of distractions, with a real book. I focus upon digital data by gathering all the important stuff into DEVONthink, letting it come up with correlations, and musing upon how it all fits together. And I’m far more creative when I can focus on a piece of paper or a whiteboard for extended periods in a room with creative individuals, instead of a solitary computer screen. That works for me — other people will find better tools for the job.
Really, it’s all about learning to think through the noise. Gathering, filtering and analysing are skills learned by exposure and experience, but focus is the only thing we must try hard to achieve. Lack of it is the single greatest obstacle to productivity and education today, one that can’t be solved simply by throwing more technology and data at it. Indeed, those three seconds may become two.
January 8th, 2006
You knew people like me in high school. We sat at the sides of the classroom, snug against the wall, rarely daring to be heard. Our marks were above-average, our fashion sense decidedly dated or dictated by what we received as birthday presents. We tended to be poor as jocks, soft of voice, timid in manners. We liked showing up on the last day before Christmas or Easter vacation, because we got to chat one-on-one with the teacher and other folks like us (of course, if you weren’t like us, you probably didn’t know this, but pipped off and headed to the mall or went driving around town). We saw all our crushes fall for the popular kids, and we cursed our looks and inability to fit in, and then we felt sorry for ourselves. And strangely enough, for all our supposed brains, we trembled, sweated and stuttered as we were forced to read speeches in front of the class. We were the watchers of the world, ill-fitting and uninvolved.
A recent post by Henry Sharam over at DIYPlanner concerning introversion and extroversion has me thinking about how things might have been.
If you’re an introvert with a bit of life experience under your belt, you know that thought that hits you when you drive pass a high school: “If I could deal with people then like I deal with people now, how much better could it have it been?” You’d be able to deal with the loud people. You wouldn’t be afraid to share your mind. You wouldn’t have frozen in your tracks when face-to-face with the secret object of your affections. You would have seized the brass rings.
That life experience generally comes bundled with confidence as you grow older, as you achieve a string of successes that reinforce your identity, self-discipline, and knowledge that you have something important to say. Yes, that’s all very nice, but still you wonder, what if you could have escaped the little mental and social traps of being one of the quiet ones — when you were young enough to really enjoy it?
January 6th, 2006
I’ve lately been coming to grips about why so many people (myself included) spend so much time constantly tweaking their productivity systems. This is an evolving thought, so bear with me while I let my brain leak for a bit.
While the most apparent reason, of course, is procrastination –tweaking our systems makes us feel like we’re somehow accomplishing something while simultaneously avoiding any real work– I’ve noticed that there are four chief archetypes of people that obsess about their systems (although I doubt that anyone of us is wholly one or the other). I’m calling them Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and Spy.
- Tinker
- The Tinker is the consumate tweaker for tweaking’s sake. This type of person likes to pry things apart, bolt or glue things together (often enshewing instructions), modify existing setups (even if they already work fine), and apply his or her mind to figuring out exactly how to squeeze out one final ounce of power, usability or adaptability from the item or task at hand. Often considering intelligence to be their strongest virtue, Tinkers are far less concerned about using the system than the idea of creating it, since this is where the real intellectual challenge lies; actually using something for pragmatic purposes is usually quite boring. Fascinated by planners, bags and utensils with multiple uses, hidden compartments, and a overall sense of utility rather than style, the Tinker might also carry a Swiss Army Knife, Leatherman, or other multi-tool “just in case.”
- Tailor
- Tailors have more refined tastes than the others. They find that the image of their system not only reflects upon their personality, but helps to motivate them, like an Armani suit might suddenly help a business person gain much-needed confidence. These people may snub their noses at $1 notebooks and hold out for Moleskines or artisan-made Italian journals, or walk away from functional G2 pens or Faber pencils in order to find an exquisite fountain pen or French grapevine charcoal. After all, these are things of beauty, and one can never experience too much beauty. However, when it comes time to actually use these tools, they’d prefer not to sully their cherished possessions with something so banal as to-do items or grocery lists. So then the complicated affair of fine-grain leather card-holders, bronze book-darts, and removable inserts begins….
- Soldier
- Unlike the Tinker or Tailor, the Soldier is a very down-to-earth person tightly focussed on the task at hand. The problem is that it’s difficult to know how to proceed. This is why he or she spends so much time listening to the directives of others, trying each new technique in an effort to find what works. Soldiers carefully review a dozen productivity blogs, slog through several mailing lists, and faithfully work through the links on 43 Folders, LifeHack.org and Lifehacker. Loyalty is a prime virtue, and this is manifest in how they follow certain bloggers, authors, applications or setups. Their heart truly yearns for a system that works, and once they find it, everything will be well. Till then, however, the Soldiers march on their weary way.
- Spy
- Agile, flexible and thrill-seeking, the Spy is unlike any of the others. Speeding onward by sheer force of their curiosity, they leap from site to site with a keen eye towards getting and implementing the latest and greatest. Like James Bond securing the latest high-tech creations of Q, the Spy quickly puts together kits for deployment involving all the fashionable equipment and methods. These oddball mixtures might include digital PDAs, various types of software, web applications, Hipster PDA cards, Fisher Space Pens, printable templates, Moleskines, and anything else that strikes that moment’s fancy. Then, once mundane practicality (like making a to-do list or appointment) intrudes upon their otherwise thrilling lifestyle, it’s time to move on, mission seemingly completed. And so the cycle begins anew.
Hello, everybody. [Lowers head and clasps hands.] My name is Douglas Johnston, and I’m a compulsive Tinker.
Update: In case you’re interested, there’s a poll going on over at DIYPlanner.com. What type are you, or are you something completely different?
January 4th, 2006
Big Things:
- As-yet-unnamed Baby #2, seemingly hot on the heels of his or her older brother Conor
- Spending more time with family, and especially happy little Conor and my significantly better half
- A full-time, as-permanent-as-possible job that makes full use of my skills and allows me to grow, as opposed to short-term contract work (and if you have any leads for me… ;-) )
- Restoring relationships with good friends who are too often lost in the endless shuffling of time and place
- D*I*Y Planner v3, due out in about a month (whew)
- A return to my more creative endeavours, including writing, art, photography and videography
- Becoming more involved in local community groups where I can interface with real humans face-to-face
Small Things:
- Finishing an online gallery for my wife
- Finally teaching my mother how to use a computer (she wants to use it to find a man… *sigh*)
- Dabbling once more in woodworking, or leatherworking, or bookbinding, or something else that makes use of my hands (and that preferably doesn’t involve a computer)
- Hopping in the Jeep, exploring remote places, and hiking through rough terrain with my faithful hound and a camera
- Making (and savouring) real sushi again
- Delving more into information management software like Tinderbox and DEVONthink/DEVONagent
- More video shooting and editing, and perhaps producing a reel or two
- The new season of Battlestar Galactica — the only hour per week I actually want to spend in front of a TV
January 2nd, 2006
You might have noticed a few fresh changes to a million monkeys typing. It all comes as a result of upgrading to WordPress 2.0. For a while now, I’ve been hesitant to install the latest patches and upgrades to WP 1.5.x (yes, I know, I’ve been a naughty boy), since my theme was so heavily customised — it was an all-in-one file I originally made for WP 1.0, and quite a mess after being hauled reluctantly through several versions. This weekend, I decided to strap on the bungee cord, close my eyes, and jump. The actual database work and installation was seamless and smooth, but I didn’t see much point in pushing an antiquated theme that couldn’t take advantage of all the latest generation of WP goodness. Thus, with great trepidation, I grabbed a pre-existing theme with a superficial resemblance to the layout of AMMT –Blix by Sebastian Schmieg– and started creating my style sheets again from scratch.
Might I reveal here that my CSS2 is a tad rusty? Or at least it was, until yesterday morning when I started diving into the plumbing of the styles. Slowly, it all started coming back to me, even all the “standard” codes that break Internet Explorer (which are, as any CSS guru knows, quite numerous). Not everything here is perfect yet, and you’ll no doubt see quite a few things break intermittently in the next couple of days.
Seeing it’s a new year, and a new start in so many ways, I’m going to clear out some of the clutter here, streamline some of the formatting, create a few new features, and generally get back to blogging regularly. Although we’re still not unpacked from our big move, I think it’s a good idea to get back to regular online life again, and despite the success of my other site DIYPlanner.com, I still consider AMMT to be my homestead of sorts. (DIYPlanner was designed to be more of a community than a place for one individual’s voice.)
As for WP2, I am enjoying it quite a bit, but am still undecided about the WYSIWYG editor for posts. Although it’s mostly well done, I find it a little slow on this G3 PowerBook, and keep tripping across paragraph breaking issues. Besides, I speak HTML like a native language, so using the non-WYSIWYG editor is not an impediment of any kind. That being said, all the other changes –such as the streamlined posting interface, the “inline” images and files, the end of .htaccess hassles, and the easier management of content– are priceless, and worth the upgrade. Plus, the whole thing feels much speedier, which is no doubt a result of the interface changes and the new caching mechanism. It’s normally a good idea to wait for the first bug fix release of software, but thus far I have no regrets in jumping headfirst into this upgrade.
I’ll follow this post up in a few days with some more thoughts about using the new WP2, as well as some of the plugins I’ve decided to set up.
January 1st, 2006