43 Folders

My quote of the week comes from a comment by Eideteker in this Metafilter thread on multitasking:

Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.

And, for what it’s worth, here’s what I had to say about the myth of multitasking a few years back:

powered by ODEO

Apple - Batteries - iPhone

Apple has 11 tips for increasing battery life on your iPhone.

• Turn off 3G
• Minimize use of location services
• Fetch new data less frequently
• Turn off push mail
• Auto-check fewer email accounts
• Minimize use of third-party applications
• Turn off Wi-Fi
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas
• Adjust brightness
• Turn off EQ

In a nutshell? Use it as an iPod. But not too often.

NB: there’s appears to still be an instance of “Push” in there. Was the decision to pull that term just for the non-email stuff?

I was recently skimming through my beloved old 1934 edition of Progressive Indexing and Filing, which I inherited at a young age from my grandmother—probably my first piece of productivity porn (the book, not my grandmother.) On page 85, I stumbled across a delightful little gem. Apparently, not only did the David not invent the tickler file (news to me), but it’s been around since at least 1934.

Very fun video by Matt McInerney — what it would be like if Quicksilver came to life outside your Mac. I sure like it better than living in a YouTube thread.

Quicksilver in Real Life from Matt McInerney on Vimeo.

[via: tumbl.us]

Ok, it’s Friday, and the team and me are pooped from several weeks of site-making. No profound tips today. I’ll just leave you to your weekend with a wonderfully timely video.

Etsy :: show me your action list and i will show you my inbox

Awesome.

[via: Kelly Sue]

Corporate Ipsum - Dashboard - Developer

As we all learned from Equus, we don’t get to choose the things in life that fascinate and repel us, and, in retrospect, if I could have chosen to avoid the avalanche of empty businessspeak I’ve been exposed to over the past dozen or so years, I certainly would have. Alas, I could not. And, so here I am, alternately repulsed and amused by the twisted patois of nonsense that passes for communication in offices and boardrooms today.

If you share this sad affliction, you may enjoy the pleasures afforded by the Corporate Ipsum Dashboard widget, cleverly (and pointlessly) designed to generate paragraphs and paragraphs of empty insight for your next pitch, presentation, or VC meeting.

In one instance, this paradigm-shifting functionality was a solution-provider for the following bit of kimono-opening stone soup:

Synergistically engage cross-media human capital for out-of-the-box convergence. Objectively generate fully tested meta-services via market-driven sources. Interactively underwhelm long-term high-impact convergence rather than future-proof convergence.

At the end of the day: awesome. Sand Hill Road, here I come!

Many thanks to jwines’ bookmarks on del.icio.us

Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith — New York Magazine

This enjoyable article on burnout includes a bit that I love (and sympathize with):

Woo hoo. Re: An appendix to the principles of Jewish Buddhism. Saying hi. Re: Hey pal. Burnout. WHEN are we eating? Open Enrollment Info. Quick q. Arrrrrrrrrrgh.

You are looking at nine e-mail subject lines I received in a one-hour period last week. It was then that I realized I answer an e-mail once every 6.66 minutes. The very thought of committing this fact to paper has kept me crippled for several seconds. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing my boss should know.

One has to wonder whether the developments of a high-speed world haven’t made burnout worse. First, the obvious: With the advent of e-mail, cell phones, laptops, BlackBerrys (or “CrackBerrys”—the argot here seems extremely apt), and other bits of high-speed doodadry, it has become virtually impossible, in senses both literal and metaphorical, to unplug from our jobs. As Schaufeli, the Dutch researcher, notes, one of the strongest predictors of burnout isn’t just work overload but “work-home interference”—a sociologist’s way of saying we’re receiving phone calls from Tokyo during dinner and replying to clients on our BlackBerrys while making our children brush their teeth.

I suspect that children will eventually support some kind of thin-client email-to-affection gateway. From an evolutionary standpoint, it may be the only solution that scales.

MWSF Drinking Game 2007
Originally uploaded by World Leader Pretend1.

We’ll all be so drunk by 11am tomorrow.

[via Digg]

I always miss the 3rd
Originally uploaded by cherrycan.

[ via: mathowie ]