Monday 1 December 2014

Publishing My First Kindle Book On Amazon



I should really be elated, but I feel a bit down.  I have just published my first Kindle book and it is now in theory available for anyone, anywhere to buy.  What could be more exciting than that?  Well the knowledge that given the size of Amazon it might as well be in a hermetically sealed container unless and until I put some effort into promoting it.

The process of getting it on in the first place was hours of frustration.  It is a technical book with lots of references and tables, and several important images.  Every page presented a formatting issue.  The end result is basically acceptable, but it isn't particularly beautiful.  I also discovered that the Amazon platform is nowhere near as flexible as I had expected.

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Go Home On Time



Today is national Go Home On Time day here in the UK.

Looking back on my 30 year career as a scientist/manager/entrepreneur I can say without any doubt that going home on time is an extremely good idea.  In fact it is not just a good idea to do it, it is a good idea to start the day with the intention of going home on time.  That is your goal for the day.  When the hours you are paid for are used up, stop working.

Monday 22 September 2014

How To Read More Stuff


I have tried to teach myself speed reading a couple of times.  I have never really got the hang of it as a whole.  I can't look at a whole page of text and take it in in the way you are supposed to.  But I think I picked up a few things from it.  It does help to keep your distance from the paper and you can increase your speed by running your finger down the page to draw your eye more quickly than it would go at its own speed.

Saturday 30 August 2014

How Angry Do News Stories Really Make Us?



The news in Britain at the moment is full of a big scandal about white girls in northern towns being abused by gangs of Pakistani men.  The details are extremely unpleasant.  This comes hot on the heels of similar scandals about a politician and a rather large group of light entertainers.  I don't think any one has any statistics,  but at first glance given the relative sizes of those groups the numbers of culprits might well be in roughly the same proportion.  So it looks like there are a small but significant number of abusive men in any large enough grouping.  Politicians, performers and Pakistanis are sufficiently different to each other in culture that it looks like this is a feature of men in general rather than any particular type of man.

Sunday 27 July 2014

Why I Am Avoiding The News


A habit I keep slipping into is spending way too much time following the news.  It is easy to lose track of just how much of the day vanishes into reading newspaper articles and catching the next news bulletin.  But there is also a hidden cost of wasting brain time trying to solve the world's problems.   The reasons for not doing this are obvious - but let's list them.

1.  You can almost never take any action  to solve problems raised by the news.

2. The news concentrates on the negative and talks up problems and conflict.

3. The news deliberately distorts the agenda in favour of the rich and powerful.

4. They get a lot of facts wrong anyway.

So basically the whole thing is more or less guaranteed to give you a false picture and one that is not going to do you any good.  

The big story at the moment is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.  The bones of this story are straight forward.  A group of people from Europe turned up in Palestine in the forties and started seizing control by force.  They have succeeded in creating a state there, but have infuriated the original inhabitants.  It is a blindingly simple problem, and the solution is equally simple.  The Israelis have to either return what they have taken or adequately compensate their victims.  Otherwise the conflict will continue.

But the news story never portrays it in this light.  While there is undoubtedly some pro-Israeli bias in the reporting, the bigger problem is pro-sensationalism bias.  The big horror stories dominate the narrative.  The attack on the athletes in Munich by the Palestinians; the massacres of Palestinian Refugees in Sabra and Shatila and the current attack on Gaza are all big and spectacular examples of man's inhumanity.  They get huge coverage.   They wind up your emotions.  But they don't help understand the problem.

I have wasted numerous hours over the last couple of weeks postulating imaginary scenarios whereby the two sides could be persuaded to stop killing one another.    Nobody is going to listen to my ideas, still less implement them.

This isn't to say that current affairs are unimportant or that actions we take are meaningless.  It is just that the news is a distorting lens through which to view the world.  So I have stopped watching and reading.


Photo credit: Lee Jordan via photopin cc

Thursday 24 July 2014

Time Management Good, Project Management Better


It is well said that life is a project and you are the manager.  We don't use such blunt language in these enlightened times, but the fact is you are not going to have a great life if you are lazy and disorganised.  Laziness is just short hand for poor time management skills and being disorganised is just another way of describing poor project management.

Sunday 20 July 2014

Steve Pavlina - You Got Dumped



Well not entirely dumped.

I have been writing this blog under the name the Steve Pavlina Reader for some time now.  Almost from the day I coined the name Steve Pavlina started to drift out of my consciousness.   I still read and recommend his stuff.  In fact at time of writing his most recent blog post is about giving up social media entitled  'Social Media You Got Dumped'.  It is as always a very well written and thought provoking piece.  Well worth a look.  This isn't about him, it's about me.  I have been looking at more and more different sources of inspiration, including my own experiences recently.  I realised that the name of the blog was making me give Steve Pavlina more attention than he deserved.  So from now on I'll work under the name "Personal Development For Sensible People".  This is still a respectful homage to Steve's "Personal Development For Smart People" so I haven't entirely rejected him.

Friday 11 July 2014

How To Write More



I have four blogs. I have a couple of training courses I need to write.  On top of that I want to start some newsletters.  I have also got a book idea I am working on that I think might be quite lucrative, and a novel I am working on that hasn’t a prayer of being read by anyone but which I would hate to not write.  And I want to fit all this in with my job as a consultant which is what actually pays the bills.

So I have a lot on, and I need to find ways of getting more writing done.  

Interestingly, the rate limiting step with writing is not simply typing speed.  Getting it into your head in a form that can be turned into a written document is the most time consuming part of the process.  It takes a special form of creative energy which cannot easily be summoned and which can be dissipated with great speed in the face of distractions or difficulties.  So what to do?

Here are the techniques I have applied to crank out more text.

Concentrate on one piece of writing at a time.

I have a list called writing.  I have all the things I want to write on that list.  I re-order the priorities regularly, but once a piece has hit the top of the list it stays there until it is done.  I make the commitment that whatever else I do I am going to finish that piece of writing and nothing is going to stop me. 

Wherever possible I break down large tasks into small bite sized chunks.  There is a natural, indeed a rational resistance, to starting big tasks so the smaller the blocks you set yourself the better.

Think through what I should write while doing other things.

There are plenty of things I have to do that leave plenty of space for thought.  I use these times to think through what I am working on and to mentally compose sentences.  It s quite a good way to make washing the dishes productive.  Unfortunately the actual written piece never quite matches the brilliance and eloquence that it seems to possess in my head - but that is the way of things.

Avoid Social Media.

I am addicted to Twitter.  I thoroughly enjoy the brilliant tweets that some people come up with, and I can get absorbed in the the uneven struggle to come up with stuff that might be considered to be passably insightful or humorous.  

Avoid alcohol

Nothing kills my ability to concentrate like alcohol.  I am maybe a lightweight, but I find that even the day after drinking enough alcohol to become intoxicated I am still incapable of writing anything.

Avoid all distractions

I can’t write while watching the television.  Music is okay, but it is certainly not the case that music speeds up my writing or enables me to concentrate more.  The only thing it is positively useful for is keeping me at my computer for longer periods of time than I might otherwise have stayed.  

Analyse the quickest way to complete particular types of article.

I write in quite a few different styles and formats, and they all have subtle differences in the best way to approach them.  I have looked carefully at how I can squeeze a bit more productivity out of them all.  For example, with blog posts you have to not only write but do some SEO work, tag and categorise and find a suitable illustration and schedule a good time for it to appear.  I have found that doing all these ancillary activities before starting to write is a lot more productive than writing first and tidying up later.  I am not sure why this is, but I think it is because it gives you time to think through what you are writing even if you aren’t consciously trying.  I also write straight into the blog software.  I don’t want to introduce yet another step into the process of creating the post.

Other things I have found is that is best to write a draft of factual articles before you do any research on them.  This means that you can do all the research in one single session once you have highlighted all the stuff you need to find out.  It also cuts down on the kinds of meandering I am prone to when I research.  In fact meanders is an understatement - I am well on the way to creating oxbow lakes.

Increase typing Speed.

Although typing is not the rate limiting step to producing text, it is nonetheless the thing that will slow down the actual drafting process.  It is best to get your typing speed as fast as you possibly can.  I spent many years under the impression that the speed I typed was some kind of predestined personal quality like my eye colour.  Recently I have learned that it is possible to overcome years of bad habits on the keyboard and to increase your typing speed.  The trick is a surprisingly easy one.  All it requires is that you take the time to study carefully how you are using your fingers and to find ways to use them better.  One thing I noticed was a big time sink for me was that whenever I used quotes I would pause and decide which ones I would use - single or double.  Now I just use single.  ‘Sorted’.  

Use a timer

Setting a timer and choosing to write for a set period of time can be a very useful technique.  I often use it to squeeze out a few hundred words between other tasks. I used to use 15 minute bursts.  The pomorodo technique advocates 25 minutes, and I think I find these to be better.  I am not sure whether this is because there is anything inherently good about 25 minutes, but it suits my current concentration span.  I have a feeling this varies over time and with how much you practice it.

Lower standards.

It is easy to get carried away with the search for perfection in writing.  A single paragraph can take hours to get just right.  While this aiming for literary perfection is in some ways admirable not everything that you write needs to be worthy of the Nobel prize for literature.  Settle for good enough and get on with finishing the job.


Raise standards.

This is not a contradiction of the previous one.  Keeping an eye on grammar, spelling and word order as you go along saves a lot of time in later editing.

Blitz.

I try and get as much as possible written to fit around my everyday life, but sometimes you just need to blitz it.  If I have a piece that just has to be written, stop everything and just write for hours on end if need be.  I call this a blitz and the object is much like the historical blitz.  Use speed to break down the barriers and reach the final draft before reality has time to realise what you are doing and put a stop to it.

I once got a request to write a piece for a trade journal.  I didn’t have any spare time and I realised that if I put it on my todo list it would simply sit there until the deadline had passed.  Instead I decided to just write it there and then.  I actually wrote it as a reply to the e-mail requesting it rather than switch to a word processor.  It wasn’t the best bit of writing I have ever done.  In fact I wince when I read it.  But it did the job.  It was published and led to a number of opportunities arising as a direct result, not least of which is an expenses paid trip to Sweden later this year to give a talk on the subject matter of the article.

Get Finished.


Nothing is a bigger waste of time than an unfinished article.  If I start one, I aim to finish it.  And finishing it for me doesn’t mean just getting to the full stop at the end of the sentence.  Everything I write has some kind of end use, and it isn’t finished until it is scheduled to appear on a blog, on its way to a paying customer or ready to be marketed.  
Photo credit: Lívia Cristina via photopin cc

Thursday 10 July 2014

Self Help Is A Form Of Entertainment



I had more or less stopped reading Steve Pavlina's stuff from just about the time I started this blog.  Whatever else you think about his writing, it is a little repetitive.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Repeating the familiar with a new twist is the stock in trade of large parts of the entertainment business.  Sometimes even the new twist is dispensed with.  But I realised that I had forgotten some of the stuff that I had found valuable, and missed the bits that infuriated me.   So I had a look at what he had posted recently and went through and bookmarked some stuff to read in spare moments.

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Lessons from the Germany Brazil Game



So I sat down hoping for an exciting game.  Germany usually plays according to its national stereotype of being well planned and well organised.  Brazil has a reputation for being more mercurial and creative, able to produce goals apparently out of nowhere.  Which approach would prevail.  I had an inkling that it would be the Brazilians who would come out on top.  My reasoning was that at the end of the day anybody can train hard and plan, but what Brazil does is somehow magical and would transcend the workaday.

Tuesday 8 July 2014

Getting The Most Out Of Twitter

I recently wrote about how I have discovered that Twitter is not a good promotional tool for my blogging.  I enjoy using it and want to keep on using it, but I can't justify the amount of time I spend on it.  In fact I think I would probably enjoy it more if I spent less time on it.  It is so easy to simply log on and see what is going on that I do so every couple of hours.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Short Term Productivity Tactics



My current situation is that I want to create a company that I can sell in about 10 years for a largish lump sum to fund my retirement.  That is the real priority, but I have a fairly urgent need to pay the bills in the short term.  The plan had been for my job to do that but when I lost it I decided it made more sense to earn short term cash as a consultant.

Saturday 5 July 2014

Pomodoro Technique

I have been vaguely aware of the pomodoro technique for a while.  I didn't look into it because I thought it was something I already did.  I have for many years now used something rather similar to it that I devised myself so I didn't really pay it any attention.

But I was on the new Lifehacker UK site a couple of weeks ago and it offered up a 2 minute video on the subject.  I could risk that amount of time so I gave it a try.

Thursday 26 June 2014

How To Be A Straight A Student - Steve Pavlina



Steve Pavlina is a human like the rest of us and only has a limited number of good ideas.  One of those is the simple, obvious but often overlooked one that life is easier if you are disciplined and organised about how you go about it.  This is something we all know at some level.  Paying off your credit card on time is cheaper than forgetting it.  Doing a shopping list before you go to the shop minimises the time you spend in it and maximises the usefulness of what you end up leaving with.  Steve is particularly creative at coming up with great examples of this general principle and producing highly readable blog posts from them.   A good one is his description of how he became a straight A student.

Monday 23 June 2014

Is Twitter Any Use?


I love Twitter and can happily spend hours on it.  I visit the site every day for at least a few minutes and I am rather worried that it might be the single biggest thing I do with my time after actually working.  I enjoy reading the amazing range of stuff people put up on it and often laugh out loud.  It is certainly a better source of news and comment than the mainstream media.  I regard it as generally a good thing and I am very happy that it exists.  I follow a couple of thousand people - I know some people regard this is as problem but I find that getting loads of tweets from all over the place is the best way to enjoy it.

Saturday 14 June 2014

Maybe I should be a Trainer Rather Than A Consultant



I have been doing my consultancy business for just over a year now.  It is going okay, in the sense that I have very nearly as much money now as I did this time last year, and there is every prospect that I will be earning more than when I had a job in the fairly near future.  So neither a catastrophic failure nor a runaway success.  I hasn't turned out quite how I expected though, so I have to confess that the modest results are down to luck rather than judgement.  In other words, when I took the plunge there was a real possibility that I would now be looking back on a year of failure and disappointment.

Getting The Most Done With Your Time Part 5 - Affirmations


One of the factors my experiment into working practices is looking at is affirmations.   This is the idea that continually repeating a mantra throughout the day leads you on to greater achievement.  This is the factor I have the least confidence in.  It smacks a bit of woo and nonsense like the Law of Attraction.  Surely our brains are too complex to be manipulated so easily by such a low effort trick?

Friday 13 June 2014

Getting The Most Done With Your Time Part 4 - Metrics



This blog used to get no readers at all.  Since I started promoting it on Twitter a bit, it has started to get a few viewers and is now getting the odd referral from Google.  Hi guys.  You are still a small, select group.  But I hope you are enjoying it and finding it useful.  I don't plan on optimising this blog to get as many readers as possible or seeking out compelling content to build traffic or anything like that.  However, I think it only fair to keep the handful of running stories going so that I don't leave things hanging.  To which end, the working methods experiment I am working on has developed a bit since I last wrote about it, so here is an update.

Thursday 12 June 2014

What To Do When Your Company Makes People Redundant


I can't really complain about how my career as an employee worked out, but I did manage to work for several companies who went through cycles of redundancies.  In every case the redundancies were done in a piecemeal fashion, at least at first.  In no case did they turn the company around and save the remaining jobs.  I was never senior enough to be privy to the whole story, but in every case it seemed to me at the time that they contributed to rather than ameliorated any problems.  In one case I am reasonably sure that they were a major factor in destabilising the company and making recovery impossible.

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Get In The Mood For Maximum Productivity


One of the most popular works that the composer Handel came up with in his own lifetime was Alexander's Feast.  In those days getting a piece of music into print was a rare feat, and only two of Handel's masterpieces were published in that format while he was still alive: Messiah naturally enough and Alexander's Feast.

Monday 9 June 2014

Planning - Upping the Ante



My planning process is working pretty okay now.  I am keeping track of where I am spending time.  It isn't perfect but it is working.  I have lists of projects and activities and I am keeping on top of them.  And I am reducing the amount of time I waste.  So it is all good.  But I have to be realistic.  I have a pretty poor track record of keeping up with planning and every other planning system I have used has eventually, and always within six months, collapsed when it became too big an overhead.  Even when they work well they are hard to keep going on.

Sunday 8 June 2014

Don't Trust A Company's Better Nature



One of the first customers I got was a start up, but a very well funded one.  They had sold out their previous very successful business some years before and were now starting again.  I assume they have a reasonable pile of cash behind them.  I was contacted to do some work by a young employee and helpfully steered her in the right direction and gave her a quote.  Once she had to get approval she had to come back to me and ask for a discount.   I was just starting and keen to sign up solvent customers so happily conceded one to be sure of getting the business.

Saturday 7 June 2014

Fruit For Breakfast



When you wake up in the morning your blood sugar level is low and if you want to get started you need to get that glucose flowing in your blood.  What's the best solution to this?  The most widespread option is breakfast cereals.  These have the advantage of speed and convenience.  They certainly give you the sugar.  Many are very rich in the stuff indeed, particularly the ones that children seem to find most appealing.  But for shear pleasure you can't beat something hot and fried.  Bacon, egg and sausages are all a glorious start to the day.  But if you want to get things done, I don't think you can beat fruit.

Friday 6 June 2014

Leadership. Is it really that great?

 


Humans are always impressed by leaders.  We used to write epic poems about them.  More recently we have devoted numerous biographies to their lives.  It goes without saying that top leaders deserve the limelight.  They are treated as celebrities and earn stonking great piles of cash.  After all, these are the people that make all the decisions and drive the rest of us on to make progress.  It is little wonder that we accord them such a high level of status.

Thursday 5 June 2014

What Reality TV Shows Tell Us About Reality

There is one myth that I, and I suspect a lot of people, have found hard to shake off.  It is the idea that leaders are somehow special and have unique insight and skills.  I suppose it goes back to childhood when your parents were your expert guides to life and whose opinions you weren't in a position to question.  This mindset gets transferred onto teachers and then managers as you grow up.  You are hardly aware of it.

Tuesday 3 June 2014

The Seventies - Three Things About Them You Won't Know If You Weren't There



For no other reason than it popped into my head, here are my recollections about a decade that doesn't get much attention.  History usually concentrates on the big picture and ignores what life was like on a day to day basis, and certainly has no way of telling what it was like for the people at the time.

Monday 2 June 2014

Zen Approach To Annoying People

Annoying People Often Reflect Ourselves
In a recent political story here in the UK a member of a political party was caught investing a considerable amount of  his time and resources to plotting against the party leader.  He ended up having to resign and left with the parting shot that the leadership had become too middle of the road and had abandoned its principles.

Sunday 1 June 2014

Seek Richness Not Riches



When the Titanic sunk it took about 15 minutes to hit the bottom after sinking beneath the waves.  We can make this estimate even though nobody was there to observe it thanks to the Navier-Stokes equation.

Saturday 31 May 2014

How To Make More Money By Talking


So I had an enquiry from a client.  They were working with another consultant who wasn't really doing what they wanted and had lost a lot of time on a project.  They outlined what they were looking for and I made a few guesses about their requirements and sent them a quote.  They were modestly interested but wanted to both lower the price and speed things up.  Sometimes it is best to just pull the plug on an unpromising opportunity and spend the time looking for a better one.  I tried to do this by turning down their request for a meeting at their premises.  That I thought would be the end of it.

Friday 30 May 2014

Instant Action


Planning and organising is important.  But it shouldn't become an end in itself.   Over the last six months or so I have been working a system whereby I use my Google calendar as my To Do list as well as a calendar.  The theory was that I would allocate time on my calendar and colour code it so I would know where my time was going and adjust it to make sure I was using my time in the most productive way.   It actually worked pretty well for a while.  But eventually the amount of stuff I was trying to keep track of became so large that it became a job in itself to keep on top of it.

Thursday 29 May 2014

Nudge Yourself for Better Results


I was up with the lark this morning.  Did some exercise.  Ate fruit for breakfast.  Sat at my computer ready to start working before seven.  Then spent over an hour goofing around on the internet failing to achieve anything very much.   What went wrong?  I knew what I was going to work on, but I wasn't all set up ready to go.  Consequently I somehow sunk into torpor rather than activity.

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Repetition Can Be A Good Thing



I have just read a blog post by Steve Pavlina.  In it he goes over some stuff that he has done before adding no new information, just putting it into a new set of words.  In a sense this post is superfluous because you can get the same information in his previous work.  We tend to put a premium on originality and creativity so seeing someone trotting out the same old is not supposedly a good thing at all.

Monday 26 May 2014

Meetings - Five Tips On How To Handle Them


Having worked at a company where there was a culture of having no meetings at all I can confirm that there are some advantages to having meetings.  A regular time where you can bring up and hear things that matter is valuable, and you need some kind of official news source to counteract the rumour mill that operates really well.  But nonetheless nearly everybody agrees that meetings are not productive.  Here are my tips for getting the most out of them culled from over twenty years of boredom, frustration and general confusion.

Sunday 25 May 2014

What Impact Are You Having?



One Sunday I bought a stereo.  This was back in the nineties when I was living in a flat above a hardware shop.  I set it up fiddled with the dials and then got distracted.  I was consequently unaware that I had turned the volume switch up to full and set a timer.   For the rest of that week I was totally unaware that every day at 2.00pm my new possession was blasting out the Byrds' Greatest Hits.

Saturday 24 May 2014

Getting the Most Done With Your Time Part 2


This first day of my experiment is easing myself into it gently by looking at one of the easiest factors.  Do regular breaks help?   I haven't worked out the details of my experimental design yet so the idea is that this should work as a stand alone experiment in its own right and will also form part of my larger experiment later.

Friday 23 May 2014

Getting The Most Done With Your Time Part 1


Okay you've overcome procrastination, you've got a clear working environment avoiding distractions and you have your list of what you need to do prioritised so you know what is important.  What is the best way to work now?  I looked into the various gurus and advice available, and it turns out that there is nobody with any credibility in this field.  There are plenty of people who will give you all sorts of tips, quite likely good ones.  But I want hard data on actual productivity.  Well, I'm a scientist.  If there is no data out there I'll generate it myself. I will devise an experimental design to test the various factors that might be important and run tests on myself to see which ones work the best.

Thursday 22 May 2014

Virtue of the Day - Patience

Some Projects Just Need Patience

I have just finished a rather pleasant breakfast of fried up leftovers from last night's dinner.  It is 8.15am.  Ideally I should have booked in a solid hour's writing/blogging and a further hour on solid billable work.  In fact I have done 15 minutes and 30 minutes respectively despite having got out of bed at 6.00am as planned.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Why There Is No God


Scientists have done an amazing job of working out how the world works.  This knowledge has enabled us to do both good things and bad things.  Eliminating smallpox has to be a high point.  Nuclear weapons would be about the lowest.  These achievements are all the more remarkable when you consider that there is still so much we don't know.  Most of the universe is unobservable in principle and we still don't know where most of the dark matter is.

Tuesday 20 May 2014

Blogging Against The Clock

Andy Warhol Said Everyone Would Be Famous for 15 minutes - And You Can Write A Blog Post in that time
I have blogged before about doing a blog post in 15 minutes.  This has developed into quite an interesting habit.  I now regularly write 15 minute blog posts for several of my blogs.  (Needless to say this is one such post).  While there are obviously lots of topics that simply can't be dealt with so quickly,  I have been surprised at just how much you can cram into writing and get online in a quarter of an hour.  This is how I do it -

Monday 19 May 2014

Tidy Desk


When I was a lab manager one of my big struggles was keeping the lab tidy, or more particularly making sure other people kept the lab tidy.  There is a law of entropy that uniquely applies to ensure that no laboratory will ever stay tidy without eternal vigilance.  I was less concerned about my desk, but the habit seeped across by osmosis and I became an advocate of tidy desks as well.  Experience has convinced me that you can do your most productive work if where you are working is uncluttered.  This even applies to desktops on computers.  I always appreciate a programme with a full screen view.

My rules for keeping my desk tidy are -

Sunday 18 May 2014

Write A Blog Post In 15 Minutes

How Quickly Can You Write A Blog Post?
If there is anyone it is possible to fool, it is yourself.  I have just set out to write a blog post in 15 minutes.  In the event it took 40 minutes.  The interesting thing is that if I hadn't timed it I may well have continued to believe that it had only taken 15 minutes.  That is a planning error of 260% of which I would have been totally unaware.  No wonder time is such tricky stuff to manage and why none of us do it as well as we would like.

Saturday 17 May 2014

Useful Bollocks

Lucky Mammal Looking For Purpose

The reality is we are rats that got lucky.  Our ancestors spotted the potential of tool using early on and we have been reaping the benefits ever since.  We have created a materially very comfortable if a bit confusing world to live in and are doing rather nicely thank you.  Especially compared to being chased across the savanna by hyenas.  If flint were just a bit less available, we might still be doing that.

Friday 16 May 2014

Twitter Humour - 5 Ways To Get A Laugh

Fight rough. Play rough.  Wear a ruff.


I spend rather more time than I probably should on Twitter.  The main draw for me is that lots of people post very funny tweets.  I can't resist trying to do the same myself.  I don't think I can claim to be a master of Twitter humour just yet, but I am getting some retweets and favourites so I am sort of making progress.  Twitter is a relatively new medium for humour and what works elsewhere often doesn't work on Twitter, while there are things that are only funny because they are on Twitter and wouldn't work elsewhere.  Here are five joke formats that work well.

Thursday 15 May 2014

Don't Be Right, Be Interesting

Karl Marx was influential - but was he right or just interesting?
"Dear Lord, please make all the bad people good, and all the good people interesting." - Dave Bartram, lead singer of Showaddywaddy

In a recent article in the Guardian Oliver Burkeman points out that it is more important to be interesting than to be right.  It is an intriguing thought.  It is one that certainly makes sense to me.  In fact I am a perfect example in that I find a lot of what Steve Pavlina writes to be not just wrong, but completely contradictory to my world view.  But because he writes in an interesting way I still read him rather than people who are more accurate.

Wednesday 14 May 2014

Media Diet Update - Easy Win!



I have been on my media diet for three days now.  I feel much better.   I have a residual nagging worry that the world's problems are not going to get solved as quickly if I don't have an opinion about them, but I have noticed a distinct uptick in the amount of writing I am doing.  Most habits are hard to build and take a long time to pay off.  This one is both easy and is paying off almost straight away.

If you are still a news junkie, the good news is that I estimate I have freed up about thirty minutes a day.  If you are happy with that cost for your addiction then you are getting a good deal.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Build Habits One Step At A Time



I am feeling a bit frustrated this morning.  Despite getting up on target and despite starting the day with a decent exercise routine, I am still procrastinating at getting started doing actual productive stuff.  My ideal is to be clearing important items off my todo list before 7.00 am and here I am only just getting going on my personal development blog - at just before.   These posts take me about 20 minutes so that is another target missed.

Monday 12 May 2014

A Media Diet


I am and have always been a bit of a news junkie.  One of the first things I do in the morning is check the newspaper online.  I typically wake up to news on the radio, so by the time I am doing that I already have an idea of the main events and I am looking for comment and analysis.  I have well thought out opinions on most of the major issues of the day.  This is all something that is so deeply ingrained in me that to do any different seems not only unthinkable, but almost a betrayal of my being.

Sunday 11 May 2014

Early Rising Update II



The Bank Holiday and a trip damaged the development of my early rising habit development programme rather more than I had hoped, intended or expected.  But I am climbing back on the wagon now.  It is rather a glorious feeling to tapping away at a blog post this early in the morning - it is just gone half past six -knowing that this is the second bit of writing of the day and that I have already had a run.

Saturday 10 May 2014

Batching Jobs

No, not that kind of batch


One tip from time management experts is batching similar jobs together.  The advantage is obvious.  You focus on one type of activity at a suitable time when you have all the resources you need together.  That way you work most efficiently and get the most done.   It all sounds good.  It has the further less obvious advantage that you need to be well organised and on top of your tasks in order to be able to batch tasks.

Friday 9 May 2014

Today's Strategic Plan



I'll be doing a strategic plan every day in May.  I think it makes most sense to do them in a hardback notebook, using pencil.  But I will do this first one as a blog post.  The exact format is one of the things I will be working on during this month of experimentation.  So here is the first iteration.