Life Hackers and Shaving a Yak
Courtesy of a 43 Folders post I learned some interesting facts regarding some of the reasons that it seems to becoming more and more difficult to GED*, Get Enough Done which is a step down from Getting Things Done on the personal productivity hierarchy. The source of this information was a really interesting NYT article, Meet the Life Hackers by Clive Thompson which I probably would not have read since one of my newest GTD inspired strategies is to delete the daily NYT email without reading. I might have found it, however on Thompson’s own blog, Collision Detection. So, here are the facts, stats, and accompanying jargon that I learned from Clive Thompson via Merlin Mann:
- There are actually scientists of "human-computer interactions" who study how high-tech devices affect our behavior.
- A study of "cubical dwellers" revealed that they spent 11 minutes on a given project before being interrupted to move onto something else…the 11 minutes included answering emails and viewing web sites….then the REAL kicker: after the distraction, it takes 25 minutes to return to the original task. ouch!
- The "science of interruptions" began with telegraph operators 100 years ago…the original high stress high tech information worker job. The discovery was that if someone spoke to a telegraph operator while they were keying a message, the distraction caused errors…"switching channels". For workers monitoring data, it was found that the presentation of the information aided focus. Hence, pilot’s cockpit were configured so that the instruments could be read at a quick glance.
- Continuous partial interruption, so dubbed by Linda Stone is the overload of too much information and too many interruptions that sabatouge our productivity and sometimes our sanity. Brad Feld who also noted "Meet the Life Hackers" on his blog writes that research into pci, personal computing infrastructure ,will help us manage the enormous amount of trivial things that keep us from taking our pci to the next level.
- Yes, I do remember the days when the phone and the mail were our only two communication interruptions and they were both very manageable….hold my calls? Now, we may have to decide between opening the email that our notifier just interrupted us about and the phone call that we are on…well we can always do both. Hmmm? I didn’t catch what you said..or wrote, or both…
- Now back to that 25 minutes to return to the task….well, we can’t remember what we were working on! Yes, 40% never make it back to the original task. What short term memory? I have no idea what I was doing!
- Well, the researchers found that the bigger the computer screen, the easier it was to complete multi-tasks; in fact 10-40% were able to complete multitasks faster, the bigger the screen. Presentation once again helps attention.
- People who sit next to each other in cubicles are "co-located"…they are referred to as "distributed" when they are connected online but working from different locations.
Marketing Person Not a Geek
Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing conveyed a discussion she had regarding Blog Tags with Stowe Boyd from Corante. Toby’s point was that as a marketing person not a geek, tagging was a challenge. Boyd’s point was that she should get over it and that not knowing how to do something was not "a badge of honor".
Well tagging is way up there on my list of things I know I need to understand but in spite of an ongoing search for a simple enough explanation, still don’t understand. Also on list, HTML. I too would say that I am a marketing person, not a geek. But, in my defense (and Toby’s also, should she chose to accept the defense) I don’t believe that my non-understanding of modern Geek is worn as a badge of honor. I wish I could just look at some of the this and just get it and get over it….I just don’t. It’s a brain thing.
Conversely, over at Creating Passionate Users a recent post with the title, You are a marketer, Deal with it directed engineers and product designers to "get over it"….no more it’s Geek to us badges regarding marketing. In another post, they direct the spotlight on all of us and ask, Who’s in charge you- or your brain? They then go on to say, "Everyone should know how their brain really works, because it–not you–is running the show!" Much of what they write about is about dealing with that. Ok, maybe my "it’s a brain thing" sounds a little lame when viewed in this light. Can I just whine a little and say there are just certain things that are really hard for me to understand?
OK then…so back to tagging and wouldn’t you know it but Rashmi Sinha wrote a cognitive analysis of tagging and explains it as a 2 stage process: The first stage is the "computation of similarity" between the concept and the"candidates" for related semantic concepts. The second stage is the decision regarding which category is the right one which involves various cognitive processes and much angst. However, Sinha’s theory of tagging is that the really great thing about tagging is that it eliminates step 2. You simply take your concept, subject, or object…and then do a kind of Freudian free association list of concepts, subjects or objects that come to mind, write them down and call them tags.
I get it…but I still don’t get de-licio-us.
Improving Personal Productivity
I was sitting at my computer multi-tasking….with part of my brain I was going through my Blogline feeds and with the other part of my brain I was pondering once again the issue of, what is best summarized as organizing for improving personal productivity. My list of business ideas (or ideas for business), both the ones that actually make it onto a list and the ones that remain inside my head or are formulated in a conversation and then go straight up to forgotten idea heaven….the part of heaven which is adjacent to balloon heaven where I used to tell my kids their cherished but let go of balloons went so they wouldn’t cry….is far longer than my actual businesses, products, or services. As I scanned my feeds I was thinking about everything from ways to tweak/track my project organization structure to the questions of maybe I should hire a virtual assistant or hire a coach. And then, I got to Matt Homan’s blog post called "Printable Partner" referrencing David Seah’s blog post with the "Printable CEO" template….Matt is correct, it is simply brilliant. So thanks Matt and Dave… I’m going to give it a try!
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