Mind and Spirit

Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?"

Merlin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:52:05 -0400

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time & Attention (slideshare.net)

Thanks to my pals, Dara and Shawn, I’ve been preparing for a return visit with the folks at GoDaddy to deliver a couple talks on Inbox Zero and Time and Attention.

As I’ve been going over my slides for the Time & Attention talk, I realized I hadn’t shared how the material has evolved since it premiered at Macworld in January. Which is to say, “Kind of a lot.” So, I’ve posted the updated deck.

Of course, the irony of making cool, unbulleted slides is that the decks you create won’t make a lick of sense without the accompanying audio and – you know – human presence. So, I’ve made a special version of this for you to view online, adding slide notes at the bottom that can help give you the ﬂavor for what’s happening as I wave my hands around on-stage like a huge dork.

I’m proud of this work, and I really hope you ﬁnd it useful. The 5th to the last slide makes me teary. Partly because I really do believe this stuff is important. It’s about more than email and “productivity.” It comes down to how you decide to spend your life and, on some level, what kind of human being you want to be.

Many thanks to Mike Monteiro, Joel on Software, iStockPhoto, and Futura (the unofﬁcial type family of Mssrs. Anderson and Kubrick.)

And, yes, here’s the minor pimp (I mean, it is what I do for a living). You can hire me to deliver this talk to the time- and attention-addled people you work with. Drop a note if you have an upcoming event where you think this might be a good ﬁt. And, yeah, unless I know you really well or your company is giant, awesome, and MUNI-accessible: it costs money. Yep. So. You know. Serious inquiries only, and what have you.

See you soon, GoDaddy! I crave your hell-like climate right now.

”Time & Attention Presentation: "Who Moved My Brain?"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 14, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Task Times, The Planning Fallacy, and a Magical 20%

Merlin — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:00:21 -0400

Overcoming Bias: Planning Fallacy

Via The Guardian, via Chairman Gruber, comes this post from the new-to-me blog, Overcoming Bias. It discusses the research behind a common cognitive bias known as The Planning Fallacy, which is a repeatable, documented error in thinking that apparently explains why we all tend to “underestimate task-completion times.”

It’s summed up nicely by Gödel, Escher, Bach author Douglas Hofstadter’s Law regarding the time it takes to do anything:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

Sounds familiar. From the Overcoming Bias post:

People tend to generate their predictions by thinking about the particular, unique features of the task at hand, and constructing a scenario for how they intend to complete the task - which is just what we usually think of as planning.

[…]

But experiment has shown that the more detailed subjects’ visualization, the more optimistic (and less accurate) they become.

Cf: The Optimism Bias.

In my days as a project manager (and in another life as a freelance designer), I got into a habit that has served me well to this day: get the best estimate of both job requirements and time-to-completion that you can ﬁnd. Then add 20%. Then, when nobody is looking, add another 20%. Then pray.

Although it’s no inoculation against the (apparently immutable nature of) Hofstadter’s Law – and you’ll still end up short most of the time – it can help you do one thing much better: manage expectations. Because you’re a project manager, not a magician. Magicians get cooler hats.

I think planning a project is ultimately a little like throwing a donut at the moon. You can never actually hit the target, plus you’ll be lucky if you aren’t hit in the face on the way down.

”Task Times, The Planning Fallacy, and a Magical 20%” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on August 13, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Tracking Down the "Embarrassing Memory" Noise

Merlin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:44:18 -0400

Compelled to Blurt… | Ask Metaﬁlter

Like a lot of people in this Ask Metaﬁlter thread, I thought I was the only person in the universe who made an unconscious little noise when remembering something stupid I did or said.

It’s not especially loud, in fact it’s often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. If I remember an embarrassing conversation, I tend to blurt out a random word of the conversation (as in, I’m replaying the dialogue in my head but then all the sudden one of the words pops out of my mouth). If it happens while I’m reading, I tend to blurt out one or two of the words that happen to be under my eyes at the moment.

For context, my tic (which can also be heard when someone near me does something dumb) sounds a little like the noise Leo Bloom makes after he falls on his keys (00:34). “Ooooooom….”

The Question to You

Anyone else do this? Anybody out there qualiﬁed to talk about the psychology or neuroscience behind this apparent phenomenon? I’ll bet there’s a cool, scientiﬁc name for it.

”Tracking Down the "Embarrassing Memory" Noise” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 23, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Chronic Procrastination and the Cost of the "Ding!"

Merlin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:05:52 -0400

Guadian UK: Hi-tech is turning us all into time-wasters

(via Rich Siegel)

A few weeks ago, I pointed you to a startling stat in the New York Times stating that 28% of the average worker’s day gets blown on unnecessary interruptions – helping contribute to a crisis that a company like Intel now considers a $1 billion per year problem. From yesterday’s Guardian comes more numbers on the growing cost of distraction:

Ferrari says that chronic procrastination is now so serious a condition it needs to be recognised by clinicians. In a study to be published later this year, he estimates that 15 to 20 per cent of people are chronic procrastinators. ‘We now have data on 4,000 people, and it doesn’t seem to matter what age you are, or your sex or background.’

Of course, as the Inbox Zero guy, I think a real eye-opener sneaks in with this passing note about the cost of all those noisy email notiﬁcations you created:

Even the beeps notifying the arrival of email are said to be causing a 0.5 per cent drop in gross domestic product in the United States, costing the economy $70bn a year.

Although the headline wants to point the blame squarely at “hi-tech,” the last graf talks about your brain’s own role in how that nasty new technology is allowed to be abused:

It appears that the brain is divided into two parts. One triggers ‘automatic responses’ which take precedence over everything else - such as ﬂeeing sabre-toothed tigers. The other governs ‘deliberate responses’ - writing that report due next week or booking a visit to the optician.

Do yourself (and your company) a favor this morning: try just brieﬂy shutting off the “Ding!” and give yourself authority to schedule your next email dash.

Just for one morning, see if you can’t get a bit more actual work done if you’re not mentally scanning for sabre-tooths.

”Chronic Procrastination and the Cost of the "Ding!"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 21, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

"Zerstreutheit" and the Attention Management Cure

Merlin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:34:14 -0400

Linda Stone: Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List?

Linda Stone – who coined the phrase “continuous partial attention” – makes a thoughtful distinction between managing time and attention, deﬂating the misconception that making long lists and then overscheduling your day can be a bulwark against distractions, interruptions, and the crippling feeling of being overwhelmed.

In this recent blog entry from the Hufﬁngton Post, Stone talks about a pattern she’s noticed from talking with people about how they think about and plan their day.

What did surgeons, artists, and CEO’s have in common? Most of them reported that they managed both their time and their attention. In surgery, in the studio, and in the time carved out to think through strategies and issues, these professionals reported shutting down the devices and endless inputs (email, phone, interruptions), at scheduled times, and claiming those moments to focus. In almost every case, these professionals reported experiencing “ﬂow” (a la Csikszentmihalyi) in their work.

[HuffPo link via Boing Boing]

She also goes on to include some tips about managing attention and focusing on outcomes rather than just obsessing over building a long and un-doable list. Good post – and a great reminder that time management has no prayer of working if it’s not accompanied by even tighter attention management.

I also have to share this William James quote, which Stone’s post mentions in passing (my emphasis).

Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.

“Zerstreutheit.” I love it when there’s a German word for my problem.

”"Zerstreutheit" and the Attention Management Cure” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 13, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ask MetaFilter on Worrying

wood.tang — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:48:23 -0500

How to Change my Worrywort Perspective | Ask MetaFilter

The thing I love about Ask MetaFilter is that it makes you feel like you’re not alone. Just when you start thinking you’re crazy for feeling a certain way, someone pops up with a question about the exact same thing. Over the weekend, a poor soul calling himself a “world class worrier” asked the hive mind how he could just let it go and ﬁnd his inner Bobby McFerrin.

As always, the thread has a raft of helpful comments, but the best ones were along the lines of “when you realize you’re worrying, tell yourself to knock it off.” For all my character ﬂaws, I pride myself in at least realizing when I’m being a jerk or obsessing over something I can’t control, and whacking myself around the noggin until I knock it off.

I learned to get over this hump when I started keeping the books full-time for our small business. At ﬁrst I always worried that I was doing something wrong, that I was going to forget to ﬁle some form or miss a bill. I ﬁnally threw up my hands and decided that I would do the best I could, and if it was wrong, someone would tell me and I’d ﬁx it. That’s all I could expect, and two years later (knock on wood), we haven’t been audited yet. What that tells me is that as long as I give it the ol’ college try, I can’t possibly be the worst accountant on the block, and that’s probably good enough.

Self-awareness always opens an escape route away from trouble, either via recognizing unproductive, faulty thinking (see above), or not painting yourself into a corner by overestimating your abilities. Understanding and accepting your limitations, whether it’s a time constraint, dearth of resources, or a simple lack of experience, is as much an antidote to worry as the more conventional ones like meditation or positive thinking offered up in that thread.

”Ask MetaFilter on Worrying” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 14, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ain't Nothin' Wrong With a Little Free Time

wood.tang — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:06:25 -0500

Since my days are set to the sleeping patterns of a toddler and the biorhythms of a dog, I have to squeeze my “work,” i.e. writing, interviews, blogging, etc, into naptime and the few hours after the boy goes to bed and before I collapse. I’m pretty good about getting the important, bill-paying stuff done, but unfortunately that means what suffers is Me Time, things like reading books or watching a ballgame on TV without a computer in my lap. When I just spent most of my day stressing out about what I wasn’t getting done because I was at the playground or reading Richard Scarry books 49 consecutive times, I can’t very well justify not doing my stuff when I’m back home and books are put away.

One day this week, the boy was at Grandma’s for the day, so I lined up a ton of things to knock out. Most of my afternoon was going to be spent dealing with some carpenters installing a cabinet in our house, so I also knew I had to get busy in the morning. As any time-constrained person knows, feeling squeezed is the best way to make yourself efﬁcient, and I ﬁnished everything I needed to by lunch. Then, lo and behold, the furniture guys called and said they couldn’t make it, so I was faced with a free afternoon.

Now, I could have looked at the remaining items on my to-do list and just kept on truckin’. But, nothing else on my list was all that urgent, and I really wanted to dig into that book sitting on my nightstand, the one taunting me every night when I conked out without turning page. So that’s what I did. I took advantage of four quiet, uninterrupted hours in my house, and read a book. And when my son came home that evening, I enjoyed my time with him that much more because I wasn’t feeling ragged and worn out from working nonstop all day.

“Caring for our stressed out lumps of grey matter by indulging in personal pleasures every once in a while isn’t a bad thing.”

This is a trick I learned from Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play. That bit of the subtitle about “guilt-free” play means that we have to recognize how important our Me Time is, that caring for our stressed out lumps of grey matter by indulging in personal pleasures every once in a while isn’t a bad thing, and that we should actually plan for it.

I had been feeling stressed out this week, which is why I felt like I needed to accomplish so much that day. But when I was faced with that unexpected block of free time, I looked at what I had left on my plate and realized I was on top of it. What was really bothering me was how that book was going unread. Even though I routinely list reading as one of my top priorities, I wasn’t doing it, and after I ﬁnally put a good-sized dent in it, I felt 100% better.

Of course, the next day, 892 screaming, blinking, high-priority things hit my inbox, and for a half-second I felt like I could use that four hours back. But I knew I couldn’t. More importantly, I reminded myself that I wouldn’t have wanted to spend that time differently anyway.

”Ain't Nothin' Wrong With a Little Free Time” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 08, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The downside of the outboard brain

Merlin — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:19:33 -0400

The fate of human memory

Clive Thompson writes on a phenomenon I think about constantly: if you really do start entrusting all your ephemeral memory work to external systems, might your wetware start to atrophy?

Apparently, yes:

This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.

Haha, big joke, right? Not for me. Between me and TextExpander, only one of us knows my new VoIP number by heart. Without TE to paste it anywhere on command? Yep, I’d have to look up my own phone number. Sad.

But, Clive goes on:

My point is that the cyborg future is here. Almost without noticing it, we’ve outsourced important peripheral brain functions to the silicon around us.

And frankly, I kind of like it. I feel much smarter when I’m using the Internet as a mental plug-in during my daily chitchat…

And, in closing…

At the very least, I’d like to be able to remember my own phone number.

Now thinking that’s something I might want to work on too.

”The downside of the outboard brain” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 11, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Stefan Sagmeister on design and happiness

Merlin — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:31:48 -0400

TED | Talks | Stefan Sagmeister: Yes, design can make you happy (video)

I really enjoyed this 15-minute TED presentation by Stefan Sagmeister (watch out: ﬂashy page with grabby browser javascript) on how speciﬁc instances of design have made him happy.

The replacement subway signs he mentions (recreation below via Chris Glass) really are pretty terriﬁc. (Anyone have more info or links on the artist and the guerilla campaign?)

Like, Chris, I also really like what Sagmeister has to share about the patterns in his own life that have made him more happy than not. It’s easy to see how striving to live these sixteen bullets could help a person enjoy a more creative, open world.

Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.

Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.

Being not truthful works against me.

Helping other people helps me.

Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.

Everything I do always comes back to me.

Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.

Over time I get used to everything and start taking if for granted.

Money does not make me happy.

Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.

Assuming is stiﬂing.

Keeping a diary supports my personal development.

Trying to look good limits my life.

Worrying solves nothing.

Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.

Having guts always works out for me.

Like Chris said, “Good stuff.”

Link and recreated graphic via: Chris Glass: “Making Happy”

”Stefan Sagmeister on design and happiness” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 14, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The War of Art, and JoCo on becoming a "true person"

Merlin — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:51:36 -0500

007: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 2 | The Merlin Show

Click To Play

I ﬁrst heard about The War of Art from David Allen during our GTD podcast series last year. I ﬁnally picked up a copy a couple months back and read it in an evening. Like a lot of self-help books, it’s longer than it needs to be (and it’s not actually very long to begin with), but it does make some great points about what its author calls “resistance.”

Resistance can be thought of as anything that pulls us away from doing the work we know is most important to us. It takes many forms (including procrastination, fear, distraction, and negative self-talk), but the effect is often similar: we ﬁnd or permit all kinds of barriers to keep us from becoming the person we want to be, or from completing the thing we really want to make. Whether that’s being a published author, a composer, a playwright, or a painter, our impulse to create constantly battles an impulse to do something else, or to do nothing – to not upset our weirdly comfy stasis.

This book came up twice in my recent interview with Jonathan Coulton; both in part one and today’s recently released part two. Jonathan strikes me as someone who has, so far, succeeded at talking down the resistance he’d faced, and now he’s doing what he’s great at, and, in his words, he’s working hard to become the kind of “true person” that he wants to be for his daughter.

I think it’s really important to underscore that beating resistance does not have to mean quitting your job or doing something equally dramatic; it just means that you identify and then choose to beat the crap out of whatever perceived obstacle keeps you from doing your work. You “go Pro” as Pressﬁeld (not “Pressman”) says, making it all about the work, and not allowing yourself to trail off when it gets hard or when you have to ﬁght in order to get your stuff done. Pretty inspiring stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

I really liked this second part of the interview with JoCo; particularly when Jonathan confessed that his lack of an email system has him “screwed.”

007: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 2 | The Merlin Show

”The War of Art, and JoCo on becoming a "true person"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 08, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"