planet

Smarterware: Work Smart Video: How to Stay Productive on the Road

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 14:40:26 -0400

I've travelled to 9 different cities already this year and I've got 4 different major work projects going on, so keeping on top of everything on the go is something I've had to get good at out of necessity. This week's Work Smart video is a question from Daniel Beck, a work-at-homer like I am, about how to not let your whole organization system fall to pieces once you leave your (home) office.

I was lucky enough to get none other than David Allen to agree to be my expert in this segment. I was pretty nervous talking to David, as his material has been an inspiration for me for years now. Hopefully I didn't come off as too much of a dork on Skype with him.

Here's the final, 2-minute video clip.

In short, the key to staying productive while travelling is to create a to-go system that's as effective as your home system. A big part of that for me, which got cut from the final segment, is having a good portable inbox. I use a $2 plastic envelope with a Velcro closure, which I slip in next to my laptop in my bag. Expense receipts, business cards, and random pieces of paper that you tend to collect as you travel all go in that plastic envelope, which I dump out as soon as I get home.

We've just wrapped the first four video segments, and starting in on the next batch of four, so I need questions! If you want to appear in a future episode, email me your question to worksmart@fastcompany.com.

Sacha Chua: Stuff is just stuff, and experiences are just experiences

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

I was browsing the featured presentations on Slideshare for design and content inspiration, and I noticed that one of the presentations from ?IgniteToronto made it to the front page. The key message was: Spend on experiences, not on stuff. (Warning: language.)

Technomads / Ignite Toronto 4 / Sept 2010

View more presentations from Sean Bonner.

This is a message I mostly agree with, and it’s good to remind people that stuff is just stuff. But I’m starting to be a little wary of how people are using this idea of spending on experiences to pack their lives, make themselves unhappy, and one-up each other.

Experiences have their dangers, too. You can get just as attached to experiences as you can to material things. You can get addicted to adrenaline rushes and bragging rights. You can plunge yourself into debt for a week or a year of bliss and still be paying for it when your tan has faded and your souvenirs are gone. You can chase after happiness in different countries and lose the ability to be who you are wherever you are. You can use your experiences to make other people feel worse about their own lives instead of inspiring them to find their own path.

I’ve played with the thought of making a “bucket list” – a list of things I want to do before I kick the bucket, a list of things I want to do before I die. I always find myself asking these questions: Is this really what I want, or am I listing this because I think I want it? Can my life still be rich and happy without this experience? I realized that experiences are just stuff, too. They may not take up space in your house, but they take up time and energy.

Take weddings, for example – one of the most emotionally-charged and heavily-marketed experiences one could have. W- and I are getting married in less than a month. If I let myself be swayed by advertising, I might ask myself: Why not splurge on a grand hall, a limousine, the best restaurant for the reception, a luxurious honeymoon, a top-rated photographer? After all, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. (Or twice-, in the case of W-.) Live it up. Go big or go home.

But an experience is just an experience. At the end of the day, we will be just as married in City Hall as in a cathedral, and simple wedding memories would be more in line with our values than lavish celebrations would be.

He who dies with the most experiences still dies. It’s not about quantity, or variety, or even quality—for who’s to say one experience is objectively better than another? Everything depends on what you take away from that experience, how that experience becomes part of you, how you use that experience to make people’s lives better.

It’s good to explore new experiences. You might discover lots of interesting things along the way. But be wary of the new materialism: the one that shuns stuff but adorns itself in anecdotes, always looking for happiness instead of recognizing it.

There is beauty and depth in everyday life as well. Savour the water you drink. Enjoy the work that you do. Live the life that you live.

Sacha Chua: Labour Day painting

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

From Monday:

We spent the Labour Day weekend finishing our Adirondack chairs, patching holes and dings in our hallway, and priming the surface for the another colour. I’m speckled with paint, but most of it has ended up on the wall and on my chair, so things are good.

I got frustrated, was encouraged, took a break, returned to my work, and made things happen. I had fun.

DIY makes me feel just a little more grown-up, a little more ready to take on life. I’m not afraid of hanging things on the wall, because I know we can patch it up. I’m not constrained by the furniture available in stores. I can make simple pieces. I’m not limited by the produce in the neighborhood supermarket. I can grow bitter melon and different varieties of basil.

It would’ve been much harder to explore these things on my own. I’m so lucky that W- has a lot of experience in these things, and he makes it easy for me to learn too. A lot of it has to do with having a house, and investing time into shared practical interests.

What else could I have been doing with my time? Writing. Coding. Drawing. Every moment is a decision to do one thing instead of another. Even if DIY leads to a less optimal life than, say, focusing on development and outsourcing time-consuming tasks not related to that, I like the balance and the freedom and the diversity of experience. I like building more stories into the everyday backdrop of our lives.

Here’s to working with your hands.

alex payne: Staying Healthy and Sane At a Startup

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:20:05 -0400

Staying Healthy and Sane At a Startup

I did a lot of things wrong while at Twitter. First and foremost, I took pretty terrible care of myself during our crazy early days (2007 – 2008). I’d had intermittently demanding jobs before, but nothing like the unrelenting stress and chaos of a fast-growing startup. I was a wreck for most of those two years, and I wasn’t even working the insane hours of, amongst others, our head operations guy at the time.

During that time period, I was constantly getting sick. I had nothing resembling a consistent sleep schedule. I’d pile on weight from stress-eating, then burn it off from stress-not-eating. Relationships fell apart. My code was adequate, but I was scatterbrained, and I produced little that was up to the quality I expect from myself. Generally, it sucked. I sucked. And I promised never to let work get the best of me again.

Most sensible people take a vacation between jobs. That wasn’t really an option for me when I left Twitter to join BankSimple earlier this summer. The company needed to raise its Series A (which we just closed), and I was too excited about getting started to sit around for half a month. But while I opted not to take a break, I knew that I’d have to change my habits in a big way in order to survive this time around.

Here’s what I’ve been doing–or at least trying to do–to stay healthy and sane while working on a startup. It’s not rocket science. It may work for you, and it may not. But these strategies have been helpful for me, so I thought I’d share, in hopes that others have an easier time of it.

Exercise

This is a no-brainer: get as much exercise as you possibly can. I try to exercise daily. I work out for three reasons: stress relief, energy, and long-term health. The last reason is self-explanatory, but the first two are worth explaining.

Startups are stressful. Exercise combats stress. Punchy meeting? Code that just won’t do your bidding? Sweat it out. I’m not a naturally athletic person, and going to the gym is usually utterly unappealing after a long day. At the end of a good workout, though, I always feel calmer than when I started. Exercise boosts my mood and makes me more able to see negative or combative situations from a more positive perspective.

Startup life will sap your energy. At first, it’s easy to operate on sheer enthusiasm. Over time, though, even the most exciting job becomes work. Working out can tire out the muscles, but I find that it energizes my mind. If I exercise regularly, I don’t get antsy during the day. This lets me focus for longer periods on tasks that may not be thrilling but have to get done, like piles of paperwork or project planning.

Personally, I belong to a gym, and I do a mix of cardio (elliptical, stationary bike) and weight lifting, with some basic stretching on either end. I listen to podcasts while I work out to make the time go faster, and to sometimes learn something. Ninety minutes in the gym can feel like wasted time. Of course, maintaining one’s health is far from a waste, but for geeks, time not spent working or learning usually feels squandered. Taking in a brainy podcast at the gym combats that feeling.

Later this month I’m moving away from my current neighborhood and, by extension, my current gym. I’m considering ditching a traditional gym for frequent CrossFit classes, and perhaps a return to Krav Maga, which I studied briefly years ago and enjoyed. The more I’ve gotten into an exercise routine, the more it starts to feel, well, routine. Both ?CrossFit and a martial art have the promise of adding appealing variety, and of avoiding the dreaded “fitness plateau” (which I’m currently in no danger of reaching).

Point is: exercise. It works. It’s the most straightforward of the recommendations I’m making here.

Diet

My metabolism sucks. My ancestry is primarily a mix of English and German, and as a result I’m genetically optimized for storing fat through a chilly European winter (also for arch looks and laconic humor). If I don’t eat carefully, I gain weight, and if I gain weight, I look and feel like crap. Without strict rules about what I can and can’t eat, I’ll find myself eating whatever’s around, particularly when I’m stressed from work. To combat this, I set very clear guidelines about what I eat and drink, and when.

Programmers notoriously live on caffeine and sugar. I refuse to cut the caffeine out of my diet, but the biggest change I’ve made for myself is cutting out refined sugar. Basically, the only “sweet” in my diet comes from fruit, or small quantities of chocolate. The only exception I make for sugar is in the occasional cocktail, but I’ve limited those, too (see below).

I’ve also removed most “bad” carbohydrates and starches from my diet. I avoid bread, pasta, white rice, potatoes, etc. So yes, that means no sandwiches, no noodles, no fries; none of a lot of things that I enjoy. These restrictions seem like more of an ordeal when I’m hungry, but by the time I’m done eating something that fits the guidelines I’ve set for myself, I’m no longer feeling deprived.

In essence, the diet I’ve ended up with is something akin to the South Beach Diet, but not taken to an extreme. I don’t count calories, monitor the glycemic index of the foods I’m eating, or try to aggressively induce “phases” of weight loss. I just try to eat fresh vegetables, lean protein, low-fat dairy, nuts, and fresh fruit. This regime removes a huge number of readily available and hideously unhealthy foods as meal options. Being able to say, “nope, that’s just not in the category of things that I eat” is helpful when confronted with a menu or grocery store full of choices.

I’ve gone a step further and restricted my alcohol intake to only days that don’t precede work days. So, in a typical week, that means I only get to drink on Friday and Saturday. This has been the hardest dietary change for me to make. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I love booze; not to get drunk, but just for the wonderful range of flavors and creativity exhibited in good beer, wine, spirits, and cocktails.

Though I miss my evening drink, this change has been worth it. Cutting out alcohol for most of the week means a huge savings in calories. Avoiding drinking before work days means that I’m fresh and ready to go in the morning. I’ve found that it’s harder to get to the gym when I’ve had alcohol the previous night, so avoiding booze helps maintain my commitment to exercise.

The point of all these dietary changes is primarily about achieving constancy. Yes, it’s nice to lose some weight, but by sticking to the above rules, my energy level throughout the day remains the same. Removing the sugar and carbs means that I don’t peak and trough. I generally feel less ruled by food, and it’s easier to make dietary decisions now that I have a framework.

Meditation

This is probably the most important of the changes I’ve made. Regular meditation is absolutely essential to maintaining quality of life for me. It keeps me calm and focused, and helps me sort out personal and professional conundrums.

The meditation technique I use is called Natural Stress Relief, or NSR. Yes, their site looks goofy and dated, and maybe even a bit sketchy, but have a Google around and you’ll find out that NSR is reasonably well-known and accepted. It’s dead simple to do: sit normally in a chair, clear your mind, silently repeat a monosyllabic mantra for about fifteen minutes, clear you mind again, and you’re done. Repeat twice daily. I found it worthwhile to get the official PDF + MP3 guide on the technique, as in practice it’s slightly more nuanced than my quick description, but thankfully not by much.

I chose NSR after doing some research on different techniques. There are many ways to meditate, and also many different goals to meditation. Being a devout agnostic, I’m not looking to commune with the spirits, become one with a deity, or reach enlightenment; I just want to feel like I’ve got my head screwed on straight. Most of the techniques out there are either derived from or actively grounded in religious practice, but not so with NSR. It’s completely secular, and has no goal other than improving the mental state of the practitioner. I like the method’s simplicity and its pragmatism.

The hardest part of meditation is making the time to do it. Realistically, you need about 20 minutes per NSR session. While that doesn’t sound like much, adding 20 minutes to your morning and evening routines is harder than you think. It’s entirely worth it, though. Meditation cuts right through feelings of being stressed-out and overwhelmed, and neatly organizes thoughts and emotions. More than once, I’ve been meditating and have had the solution to a problem I’ve been struggling with pop to the forefront of my mind. That’s time well spent.

In a way, meditation is an investment in the quality of time spent not meditating. Even if you don’t have any magic moments of clarity while sitting there with your eyes closed, you’ll probably find that the rest of your day just feels better when you meditate regularly. At the very least, meditation makes my work time more productive, and that alone makes it worthwhile for me.

Time Management

I’ve always been reasonably well organized, but time management is distinct from organization. I’ve found that time management has little to do with “lifehacks” and how you manage your email inbox and more to do with prioritization, saying “no” to people, and clearly communicating the expectations you have for yourself and others. I’m less crazed this time around the startup block because I feel that I have a better grasp on how to manage my time, both during the workday and when I’m off the clock.

A big part of this shift was realizing that time spent in front of a desk isn’t necessarily useful work time. If you’re burned out for the day, stop working; go relax, exercise, or meditate, and come back to work with renewed energy and focus. That’s an easy policy to get behind, but harder to put into practice, particularly in traditional office environments. American culture at large is no stranger to a Puritan work ethic, and that labor fanaticism is magnified all the more so in the startup “community” through legends of all-nighters and weeks spent sleeping under desks. Get over the guilt and bullshit, and realize that you’ll be happier, healthier, and more productive if you manage work time on your terms.

This is probably the section where my advice is the least clear. From my perspective, time management is less a set of techniques than a mindset, albeit one assisted by social skills that allow you to defend your time and sanity. If you’re totally new to the idea of time management, this talk by “last lecture” professor Randy Pausch will get you started. Once you’re set with keeping a calendar, working through a task list, and batching your phone and email sessions, the broader mindset of time management is acquired through experience. You’ll figure out what works for you, and where you need to draw boundaries.

Finally

Of course, everything in moderation, and all within reason and good taste. Though I’m trying to cut out sugar, I didn’t turn down a slice of wedding cake at my friend’s nuptials over the weekend. If I’m catching a 6AM flight, I’m probably going to miss my morning meditation session, and maybe miss that day’s workout, too. I just try to keep the good habits going, and recover from lapses as quickly as possible.

I hope at least some of the above is helpful to someone. It goes without saying that everyone is different, and what works for me may be disastrous for you. But, if you’re working on a startup or about to embark on one, I’d encourage taking the opportunity to examine your habits and see if you can’t improve yourself as much as you’re trying to improve the world around you.

The Byte Baker: Is HTML finally getting there?

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:36:06 -0400

I just finished my first presentation done completely in HTML5. Ever since I made the move to plain text for most of my writing a few years ago I’ve been looking for a way to make presentations without resorting to ?PowerPoint or Keynote. I knew that I could use PDFs but somehow just throwing up static PDFs onto a screen didn’t really seem the best for a presentation.

Recently a very well done HTML5 presentation demo made the rounds on the intertubes. On the HTML5 Rocks website they had a template for the presentation and so I downloaded and used it to roll my own. It’s not the flashiest thing in web, but it certainly holds its own against most ?PowerPoint presentations and is definitely better than any PDF presentation I’ve seen.

Making that presentation brought me around to the view that maybe, just maybe, HTML is getting close to becoming a usable and fairly universal documentation format. The combination of HTML5, CSS3 and faster ?JavaScript engines becoming commonplace has made things like HTML slideshows not only possible, but actually attractive. I think we’re at the point where we can seriously consider completely ditching proprietary binary formats (I’m looking at you, Word) and go for full-on hyperlinked documents as our main format for sharing information.

That being said, I’m not saying that writing in HTML is the best thing to do. After HTML is a flavor of XML and writing bare XML by hand is just painful. The only case where writing HTML by hand makes sense is when you want really good control of the layout (like on my static webpage). Creating the presentation in pure HTML was a good learning experience, but I definitely want to wrap it in some sort of templating system. What I really want to see is powerful tools that write to HTML and CSS for the styling and content and maybe even auto-generate custom ?JavaScript for animation and the like.

One of the best systems that generate HTML is the Emacs org-mode. The documentation for my last project was written entirely in lightly marked up plain text and automatically converted to HTML. The only code I really had to write was the CSS for it, which is pretty simple. It might be possible to use org-mode for generating my slides too, but it’s not something that I’ve explored in any detail. It’s certainly possible to create PDF slides (using export to ?LaTeX) and perhaps some variation of that will work for me.

Even though Google Docs is pretty decent tool, I feel they’re woefully under-utilizing HTML5′s true potential. In particular the slideshow app is very bare bones when it could easily be much better. Strangely enough, Google has made some really strong inroads in other areas. For example, their font API lets you use a number of really good fonts by just including a few links of code in the header of your HTML. Google Docs should really be able to plug into their font API and let us use those fonts in docs and presentations.

I really think that we can live in a world where HTML provides all our text documentation needs (and efficiently includes audio and video as needed). I’m going to be starting a little experiment where all my documentation for my honors is done in plain text and automatically exported to clean HTML. I’m also hoping that for my final written thesis I’ll be able to write in some plain-text source format (probably org-mode) and do painless exports to both good-looking HTML and ?LaTeX for making print PDFs. I’ll also be using HTML5 for all my presentations from now. Stay tuned over the next few months on how these experiments turn out.

Sacha Chua: Redoing things

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

SCHEDULED: 2010-09-07 Tue 08:00

It took me an extra weekend, but I repainted the chair I’ve been working on. This chair was my very first paint job. When we were working on this last weekend, W- was painting his chair too, and I made the mistake of not asking him for help. It turns out I’d loaded the brush too heavily, and the resulting runs marred the finish. So we sanded and scraped some of the excess paint down, and I repainted the pieces.

I thanked W- for helping me learn. He thanked me for caring. =)

There are a lot of things I’m doing for the first time. Whether it’s figuring out painting or my career, I try things out, make the occasional mistake, and get better.

Lessons learned from painting: Don’t rush. Go light – paint with an almost-dry brush. Ask questions. Watch other people. And don’t be afraid to do it again, even if doing again might make things worse. (I sometimes gouged wood out while trying to scrape paint off.) It’s just a chair, so don’t worry too much about it, but it’s a good story too.

In other news: W- has finished painting his chair Bibbidi Bobbidi Blue, and J- is painting hers with One Enchanted Evening. Mine is Pooh Bear Yellow. Attack of the Disney pastels! =) When we finish the chairs, I’ll post a picture of the three of us.

Oak Hazelnut Tech: O’Reilly Webcast on Cyborg Anthropology

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:39:49 -0400

On August 5, 2010 I gave an hour-long webcast called Cyborg Anthropology: A Short Introduction. The event was free and had roughly 500 signups. It was a really fun way to quickly share a lot of the concepts I’ve been thinking about for the past few years. A lot of it was condensing down a lot of what I’ve begun to explore on CyborgAnthropology.com. I’ll be giving a 20 minute version of this speech at a TED conference in December. You can also watch the webcast at O’Reilly.com. The webcast is 60 minutes long. Start 5 minutes in for best results (the first part is an audio check).

Webcast Summary

Cyborg Anthropology is a way of understanding how we live as technosocially connected citizens in the modern era. Our cell phones, cars and laptops have turned us into cyborgs. What does it mean to extend the body into hyperspace? What are the implications to privacy, information and the formation of identity? Now that we have a second self, how do we protect it? This presentation will cover aspects of time and space compression, communication in the mobile era, evaporating interfaces and how to approach a rapidly changing information spaces.

A Short History of Cyborg Anthropology

Haraway proposed what she termed a “cyborg anthropology” to study the relation between the machine and the human, and she adds that it should proceed by “provocatively” reconceiving “the border relations among specific humans, other organisms, and machines”

Based on this essay, and many other instances of needing a methodology to understand and describe rapidly changing sociocultural systems affected by technology, the idea of a “Cyborg Anthropology” was proposed at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 1993.

What is a Cyborg Anthropologist?

A cyborg anthropologist looks at how humans and non human objects interact with each other, and how that changes culture. So, for instance, we have these objects in our pockets that cry, and we have to pick them up and soothe them back to sleep, and then we have to feed them every night by plugging them into the wall. At no other time in history have we had these really strange non human devices that we take care of as if they are real, and we’re very dependent upon them. That’s one of the aspects that I’m studying; the idea of mobile technology and its effect on one’s relationships. Another aspect of cyborg anthropology is the idea of individuals extending themselves into a second self in the online space, through a Facebook page, avatar or profile. Studying how people interact with each other through these little technosocial interactions, versus just the analog interactions, is another aspect of cyborg anthropology.

Cyborg Anthropology vs. Traditional Anthropology

What happens in traditional, analog anthropology is this: You go to another culture, and you look at all the people. You see how they interact with each other, how knowledge is created and so on. You see kinship, you see rituals, you see all these different pastimes and hobbies. You see what people eat. And often the anthropologist goes over to another country and says, “Oh, look how fascinating these people are. They’re so strange. Look at all their weird customs. Look at how different they are from us!” There is this definite aspect of the other, of going out and studying something else. But the problem is that many people are not studying world that they live in right now, their own culture. There are a few anthropologists who have begun to really study the effects of technology on everyday life. It is the study of this everyday life that offers the most insight.

Call phones have become so ubiquitous that they no cause one to think about them. One does not think about having a cell phone or not having one – one’s time is spent choosing which external prosthetic device they are going to be using next. Facebook has become very normal. Twitter has become quite normal. Cell phones have become very normal. So my job as an anthropologist is of someone that comes in and says, “Oh my God, how fascinating. Look at all these strange things people do. They’re posting on each other’s Walls. They’re editing each other’s external online selves. Their identity is increasingly made up of text and points and technosocial interactions.” What I do as a Cyborg Anthropologist is take the traditional anthropological toolset and apply those tools and methodologies to the digital space. I’m always trying to take both the embodied and thousand foot view, because it allows me to ask questions such as “What is really going on?”, “What’s next in technological development?”, and “Has anything actually changed with the onset of technology, or are people just bringing offline behaviors to the online space?

More on Cyborgs and Anthropology

If you liked this webcast and want to learn more about cyborgs and Cyborg Anthropology, you might want to look at CyborgAnthropology.com, a site still very much in development as I stitch my research together from the past 7 years of study.

CyborgCamp Portland

If you happen to live in Portland (or need an excuse to visit) and like cyborgs, you should come to CyborgCamp Portland on Oct. 2nd, 2010. It’s a hybrid unconference on the future of humans and machines. We’ll be talking about cyborgs, interface design, government, transportation, science, anthropology and humanity from 9Am-6Pm. Tickets are exceedingly cheap ($10) and ?CyborgCamp Portland!" href="http://caseorganic.com/cyborgtickets">you can get one now if you’d like.

50th Anniversary of the term “Cyborg”

Also, September 2010 is the 50th Anniversary of the coining of the term ‘cyborg’. Over the next month, the site 50 Cyborgs, Curated by Tim Maly of Quiet Babylon (another site on Cyborgs that’s worth a good long look), will update 50 times with links to material celebrating 50 years of one of the 20th Century’s more enduring concepts. Then it’ll go dark. I highly suggest reading it before it disappears. But if you miss it, you can always check it out on Archive.org.

—-

About

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and UX Designer from Portland, Oregon. You can read more about her here, and you can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.

The Byte Baker: Sunday Selection 2010-09-05

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:30:06 -0400

Reading

How do I write so much? I’m glad you asked is something I think all bloggers and academics should read. I think writing is a very good way to practice thinking and spread your ideas and this article describes both why and how you should increase your writing throughput.

Media

Google Priority Inbox video While priority inbox by itself is a very useful feature for people dealing with lots of email, the video itself is a work of art. It’s really well made and I found it both entertaining and informative

Software

Google Priority Inbox is probably best thought of as a spam filter in reverse. Instead of removing spam from your inbox, it places important email in a “priority inbox” that shows up as a section on top of your main inbox. If you get lots of email a day this is for you. I suggest changing the settings so that important emails are shown in the priority inbox even after they’re read. That way it’s easier for you to find important mail after you’ve read it.

Sacha Chua: Fit for You: Thinking about my priorities

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

In a lively mentoring session on Wednesday, Annie English suggested that I fill in the Fit for You assessment, something my new manager had also mentioned. So here’s my quick list of the top five things that satisfy me about work, which I’ll continue to reflect on as I learn more. =)

Satisfaction with work-life balance: I care about free weekends, minimal required evening work, and limited or no travel. I find that placing constraints on work gives me incentives to work quickly and efficiently, and to be realistic with my time estimates. The space also allows me to cultivate rich relationships with family, friends, and my fiance, and numerous personal interests that occasionally turn out to be useful or inspiring. My current role lets me do this quite well, and the occasional workshop trips become more of a treat as I get to meet lots of interesting people. (Very satisfied.)
Development of new skills: I like learning new tools and solving new problems. If I already know how to do something, I’d rather teach it or automate it instead of do it again and again. My current role lets me improve my communication skills, and the Lotus Connections toolkit I’m building for fun lets me play around with new challenges too. (Very satisfied.)
Meaning and significance: I love making a difference in people’s lives, whether it’s saving them time, helping them work together better, or helping them imagine new possibilities. My current work lets me make this kind of difference from my kitchen table – yay! (Very satisfied.)
Connection with clients and colleagues: I like the fact that I’ve gotten to know many IBMers as people, and I’ve gotten to know a few clients as well. I don’t think I’d enjoy working on a technically awesome but isolating and unbloggable project. I love how my current role lets me connect throughout IBM, and how I get to learn from all sorts of interesting clients along the way. (Very satisfied.)
Value creation and compensation: This is somewhat related to #3. I love creating a lot of value. I also like hearing from people about what we’re doing well and how that creates value for them, because that helps us build on strengths. Being compensated for the created value is nice, too. It’s not the money (I save a lot of what I earn, and I like being frugal), but growth is good, and money is one way of measuring growth. I’d be happy to take extra time (as that’s harder to buy), although I know extra time tends to get encroached on. (Satisfied)

Overall: Very satisfied.

These priorities will probably change over time, but at least you folks know the right buttons to press… =)

Sacha Chua: Week ending September 5, 2010

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

SCHEDULED: 2010-09-06 Mon 8:00

From last week’s plans

Work
- [X] Plan Idea Labs: Follow up on other Idea Labs
- [X] Classroom to Client: Finish formatting Idea Lab presentation for ?ThinkLabs
- [-] Classroom to Client: Create community and structure online resoruces
- [X] Connections Toolkit: Build Activities reporter – postponed
- [C] Build mailto form processor
- [X] Track down Client Business Value report
Also:
- Virtual Forum: Connected organizers with Jam providers
- Expertise location: Sent follow-up message
- Classroom to Client: Created "Did you know" presentation for the changing nature of work
Relationships
- [X] Wedding: Plan transportation – cabs will work fine
- [-] Chair: Reassemble chair
- Wedding: Met with photographer
Life
- [X] Set up laptop: Experiment with workflow
- [-] Sleep by 10

Plans for next week

Work
- [-] Classroom to Client: Create community and structure online resoruces
- [X] Connections Toolkit: Build Activities reporter – postponed
- [X] Classroom to Client: Format Idea Lab reference presentation
- [X] Idea Labs: Assist with planning, send RSVPs
- [X] Career: Set up Ruby on Rails
Relationships
- [X] Wedding: Plan NYC trip
Life
- [X] Sew dress: Transfer dots and mark stitching lines
- [X] Chair: Paint and assemble chair
- [X] Productivity: Tweak GTD process
- [X] Productivity: Organize files

Elsewhere on the Internet:

An Ode to My Son’s Piggy Bank (Sun, Sep 5, 2010)
Simple Strategies, Simply Explained (Sat, Sep 4, 2010)
Auto Copy Selected Text to Clipboard (Fri, Sep 3, 2010)
sachac: RT @eric_andersen: Whoa! #IBM makes the business case for enterprise social bookmarking: $4.6M in savings! http://j.mp/dxGqmB #e20 /by @ … (Fri, Sep 3, 2010)
sachac: Got tired of struggling with our Botero collapsible background. Folded and unfolded it five times to get the hang of it. (Wed, Sep 1, 2010)
The Business Case for Enterprise Social Bookmarking: $4.6 Million a Year in Cost Savings! (Wed, Sep 1, 2010)
sachac: Presented six steps to sharing: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/7316 . Tablet’s fun! Got questions about multiple tools, being indispensable. =) (Wed, Sep 1, 2010)
The Minimalist’s Guide to Cultivating Passion (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
sachac: Dealing with textboxes in MS Office: just copy-and-paste them instead of clicking to create. (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
sachac: Hmm. Ribbon UI in newer MS Office driving me slightly crazy. Now takes lots of clicks to place text boxes on slides. (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
Dixon. (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
XPages – the "other" skills (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
What a fabled marching band can teach you about innovation (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
Using AT&T Network Client VPN with Ubuntu 64bit at Andrew Ferrier (Tue, Aug 31, 2010)
Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women – Harvard Business Review (Mon, Aug 30, 2010)
Your Projects, Diminishing Returns, and Phantom To-Dos [Productivity] (Mon, Aug 30, 2010)
written by a good old friend (Mon, Aug 30, 2010)
Creating Excel Spreadsheets In Notes (Mon, Aug 30, 2010)
Making Ideas Happen (Mon, Aug 30, 2010)

Sacha Chua: Thinking of autumn

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

A former teacher of mine asked me, “If you were a season, what would you be, and why?” I thought about it because I wanted to dig beyond the trite answers that tempted me: summer for sun, spring for new beginnings.

If I were to pick a season, it would be autumn – and not because of the breeze or the brilliant colours. (Isn’t it funny that the colours are always there in the leaves, but the green must die to let the other colours show?)

I’d choose it for harvest, celebration, preparation, and the ever-present awareness of winter.

If life is a year of seasons, it might be strange that I often think of winter, and of other years I’ll never see. That’s why it’s good to do the work now: to save the seeds from what’s working well, to plan and prepare the soil so that next year’s beds can bear more fruit.

The harvest is abundant, although it might not much resemble the plans from spring. Save some for the long winter – stored sunshine and water and nutrients in a variety of forms.

There may even be just enough time to sneak in one more cool-weather crop of lettuce, which frost makes sweeter. Who knows? Start it anyway.

And then, when winter embraces the garden, let go. You have done your work. Underneath the blanket of stillness is a future you can influence but not predict.

mindreap: Lamentation – an open letter to my departed cat

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:38:20 -0400

Dear Truffle, I hope you know how much I miss you. I’m writing to you tonight to let you know how I feel about losing you, and to set some things straight. First of all, I want to apologise to you for not recognising your illness earlier. To be honest, Snuffle was sick and I [...] No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Smarterware: How to Use Your Tech Power for Good

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:20:04 -0400

Last week Leo Laporte did a Gov 2.0 special show on TWiT with Tim O'Reilly and Jennifer Pahlka, a must-listen for programmers who want to use their skills to make the world a better place. It opened with this Code for America spot, which features Tim, Mark Zuckerberg, Caterina Fake, and Biz Stone. The Code for America fellowship application deadline has passed, but if you want to use your coding skills to help our government make better policy decisions, you can do so by contributing to ?ThinkUp.

Smarterware: Long Weekend Hacking: How to Help Out with ThinkUp

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:20:12 -0400

Lots of geeks like to spend some time on a three-day weekend doing fun, spare-time coding. If you've been curious about ThinkUp and have a little extra time this Labor Day weekend, come on down! ?ThinkUp's come a long way so it's easier than ever to dive in, try it out, and experiment.

Here are four ways you can help make ?ThinkUp better, whether you've got a free 30 minutes or 3 hours this weekend:

Test ?ThinkUp's new easy installer. Running git, wrangling MySQL scripts, and creating symlinks is no longer required to install ?ThinkUp. If you've got a web server with PHP and MySQL, we've got a dead-simple web-based installer file that should have you up and running in just a few minutes. Download the latest .zip distribution of ?ThinkUp, extract it to a web-accessible folder on your web server, load its URL, and go. We need as many people to try out the installer on as many different web hosts and setups as possible, so let us know on the mailing list how your installation went.
Document ?ThinkUp's new installer. The ThinkUp wiki still has the old, long, scary list of steps required to install the app in it. Dive into the wiki and update the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Dreamhost installation instructions. If you've got screenshots, add those too!
Create new data visualizations. Now that you're running ?ThinkUp and have a database of all your posts, replies, links, and friends, how do you want to visualize that data? Suggest or build a cool new way to visualize social data inside ?ThinkUp, like our new Google Map of post replies.
Dive into plugin development. Those of you with more time and experience can help us extend ?ThinkUp. We made this application an extensible platform, so almost all of its functionality is in the form of plugins, and we need help there. The Twitter plugin could be ported to use the new Site Streams beta. Our Facebook plugin uses the old Facebook Connect instead of the new ?OpenGraph. We need a Bit.ly and a Google Buzz plugin. If you've got experience with APIs, we need you. Check out ?ThinkUp's example "Hello ?ThinkUp" example plugin to get started.

Have a great Labor Day weekend, and we hope to hear from you on the ThinkUp mailing list.

Smarterware: Wave in a Box

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:00:12 -0400

So very excited that Google has announced an installable release of Google Wave, "Wave in a box." Of course I'd like to sell a few more books, but post-Wave I'm also ruined to classic, linear group chat. Can't wait to try to get an installation up and running.

Sacha Chua: The value of constraints

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because I’ve been surprised by how useful they are. One of the challenges of being an agreeable, optimistic person is that I’m often tempted to say yes to many opportunities and try all sorts of things. Explicit constraints help me keep things manageable, and they help me remember why I chose them.

For example, this year, I’m experimenting with limiting my presentations to one talk a month, and little or no conference travel. Except for March (always conference/event season), I’ve been pretty good at sticking to that. It’s easy to explain the constraint to people, and they’re happy with either referrals to other speakers or postponement to one of my free months. It means I have more time to think, experiment, write, and draw.

I’ve also been trying a limit of one blog post per day, instead of bursts of two or three posts. One of these days, I’ll crunch numbers to see if I have a significant difference in terms of volume or comments. I like the rhythm, though. It makes me think more about what I want to publish, which posts I want to prioritize. I still write a lot, but that’s more so that I have a buffer for those busy days.

Now that I’ve gotten over the initial disruption of having a Playstation 3 in the house, I’ve been getting back on track with my sleep schedule. Limiting the hours I spend on work and other things forces me to be clear about my priorities and work more efficiently.

I’m getting better at knowing when I need to use constraints. When I pack my life too full, I find myself reshuffling my task list too often. My mind feels like it buzzes. Choices threaten to overwhelm. It’s a good time to step back and ask myself: How can I simplify this? What can I limit?

Smarterware: No Facebook in Ping After All

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:40:09 -0400

Yesterday on TWiG, Leo and Jeff and I discussed Facebook integration in Ping--Leo didn't know it was there, but looking at the screenshots on Apple's site, before I got the iTunes 10 download, I said it was there. But even though the Ping web page reads "Find even more music fans...by connecting to your Facebook account" right now, Kara Swisher reports that Steve Jobs told her there's no Facebook in Ping because they wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to." So, I stand corrected. Ping is a completely walled garden.

Smarterware: Work Smart Video: How to Take Effective Meeting Notes

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:40:09 -0400

The second season of my Work Smart video series at ?FastCompany.com premiered yesterday, with a question from Suhasini Kotcherlakota about how to take better meeting notes, and some answers from me and Brad Isaac, who wrote a great piece on mind-mapping meetings at Lifehacker a few years back.

Despite the fact that I still can't watch and listen to myself on film without cringing, I am so pleased with the results. Adam Barenblat at ?FastCompany did an amazing job on the art and design, which is based on a fun new webapp: Popplet.

Check out the finished clip.

Some production notes: I outlined the script using Popplet, which Adam used to design the video, and that Popplet is available at ?FastCompany.com for you to click and zoom around yourself. We got all the interview footage using Skype and eCamm's ?CallRecorder software, which is cheap and fantastically easy to use. We wanted an informal webcam look, but we wanted "the hostess" to have a plain background and professional lighting, which I set up in my home office relatively inexpensively, thanks to the TWiG headset I already have. It was really fun getting to "meet" and talk with people who sent in their questions from all over the country. Unlike the first season of Work Smart, which was just me talking to the camera, these episodes involve 3 separate shoots--one with the person asking the question, one with the expert, and one with me. Breaking it up that way adds a nice variety, and it also means I don't have to fly to New York to shoot with a director and a production crew. I get to stay home and simply use Skype with my iSight. Fun stuff, plus time and money savings.

If you want to be featured in an upcoming episode, email your question about tech and/or productivity to worksmart@fastcompany.com.

Smarterware: What Looks Different in iTunes 10

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:00:10 -0400

Garrett Murray diffs iTunes 9 versus iTunes 10 user interfaces in rollover screenshots. I like how the volume slider is so much more iPhone 4ish.

Sacha Chua: Book: Leading Outside the Lines

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

I want to get really good at being a fast zebra. The metaphor comes from Leading Outside the Lines, Jon R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan’s book on working with the informal organizational structure. According to Mark Wallace (former US ambassador to the United Nations), fast zebras are people who can absorb information and adapt to challenges quickly. The authors explain, “On the African savannah, it is the fast zebra that survives a visit to the watering hole, drinking quickly and moving on, while the slower herd members fall prey to predators lurking in the shadows. The fast zebra is, in essence, a person who knows how to draw on both the formal and informal organizations with equal facility.”

It seems like a business cliche – who wouldn’t want to absorb information and adapt to challenges quickly? – but Katzenbach and Khan go into more detail. “They help the formal organization get unstuck when surprises come its way, or when it’s time to head in a new direction. They have the ability to understand how the organization works, and the street smarts to figure out how to get around stubborn obstacles. They draw on values and personal relationships to help people make choices that align with overall strategy and get around misguided policy. They draw on networks to form teams that collaborate on problems not owned by any formal structure. They tap into different sources of pride to motivate the behaviors ignored by formal reward systems.”

Like the loneliness facing early adopters, fast zebras can feel isolated. Identifying and connecting fast zebras can help them move faster and make more of a difference.

I can think of many fast zebras in IBM. People like Robi Brunner, John Handy Bosma, and Jean-Francois Chenier work across organizational lines to make things happen. Lotus Connections and other collaboration tools make a big difference in our ability to connect and self-organize around things that need to be done. They also provide informal channels for motivation, which is important because this kind of boundary-spanning work often doesn’t result in formal recognition (at least in the beginning).

The book describes characteristics of organizations that successfully integrate formal and informal structures, and it has practical advice for people at all levels. It also has plenty of stories from organizational role models. My takeaway? Harnessing the informal organization and helping people discover intrinsic motivation for their work can make significant differences in an organization’s ability to react, so it’s worth learning more about that. Recommended reading.

Leading Outside the Lines
Jon R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan
Published by John Wiley and Sons, 2010

Smarterware: “We’re sorry. You have reached a number that is disconnected or that is no longer in service.”

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:40:09 -0400

Been getting harassed via telephone by some vacation telemarketing place in Las Vegas. At first I set my phone to send calls from that one number directly to voicemail. Then, tonight, I re-discovered you can block callers in Google Voce and automatically give them the official "this number is no longer in service message." Yes. Here's what my blocked call log looks like now.

Smarterware: Google Code University

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:40 -0400

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is, "How can I learn how to code?" Today fluorescentinca showed me Google Code University, a collection of tutorials on Googly languages (like Python, Java and Go) for relative beginners. Some good stuff there. (I also wrote a more general Lifehacker piece last year that can help you decide what language to start in.)

Sacha Chua: It’s okay if you can’t remember or spell my name; being human

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:00:00 -0400

Lifehacker had a recent post with tips on how to remember people’s names – generally useful tips, ground well-covered in networking books. There is one tip I disagree with, though. I realized I don’t often hear disagreement about it, so I thought I’d share. Here’s the tip:

DON’T ever call people by the wrong name

Hearing your name mispronounced can be annoying but forgivable, especially if lots of people find your name hard to pronounce, but hearing someone call you by the wrong name is always infuriating! Out of all facts that someone can possibly misremember about you (e.g., your job, college major, or ethnicity), getting your name wrong is the ultimate insult. It simply leaves a yucky visceral impression that the other person doesn’t give a damn about you.

I disagree with this tip because I think it creates unnecessary fear, anxiety, and expectation. I think there’s a better way to do this.

Let’s look at it from both sides.

If someone has forgotten your name, you could get mad about it… or you could just shrug it off and give the person the benefit of the doubt. If they consistently get your name wrong, you could bear a grudge, or you could laugh about the possible crossed wires (maybe you really remind them of their great-aunt!). If they sneer while mangling your name so much it sounds like an epithet, something might be up. But in general, people are good people, and they’re not trying to insult you or say that you’re worthless.

When I talk to people, I don’t assume that I’m important to them, or that they should devote precious brainspace to remembering me. If people make an effort and get my name wrong anyway, I’ll still appreciate that. They’re human.

Let’s look at the other side. If you’ve forgotten someone’s name despite your best efforts, go ahead and ‘fess up, or try to see if you can pick it up from the conversation (or from a networking buddy). I prefer the direct confession route over the awkward-standing-around route. It gets the pain over faster, and it makes more of a human connection. I try to make up for any name shortcomings by remembering other little details about people, focusing on creating value, and connecting people with other people.

And if I thought I knew someone’s name but it turns out I was mistaken, well, it happens. I’ll try to remember. Some people’s faces get mixed up in my memory. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, and I hope other people don’t feel permanently offended. (Besides, if they did hold a grudge, that says more about them than about me…)

My only pet peeve when it comes to this, actually, are people who punish you for not knowing their name, those who make you guess or otherwise embarrass you when they detect the faintest whiff of uncertainty from you about who they are. Not cool. People who do that might “score points” in that conversation, but they lose the long-term game. (I remember writing a post about this before this other one, but I can’t find it. Ah well, probably not good to rant too much anyway… =) )

So.

Make it easier for other people to remember your name. (I usually bring my own nametag to events.) Make an effort to remember and use other people’s names, and to remember other details about them. Above all, be human, and let other people be human.

tychoish.com essays: Covered In LaTeX

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:40:08 -0400

Although I haven’t used ?LaTeX much in the past few years, it was one of the primary tools that hastened my shift to using GNU/Linux full time. Why? I’d grown sick of fighting with document preparation and publishing systems (e.g. Microsoft Word/Open Office), and had started using ?LaTeX on my Mac to produce all of my papers and documents that needed to be output to paper-formats. Why switch? Because after a certain point of having every tool you use be Free software (because it’s better!), it becomes easier and more cost effective to just jump the gun and by commodity hardware and use a system that’s designed to support this kind of software (managing a large selection lots of free software packages on OS X can become cumbersome).

So why ?LaTeX? What’s the big deal? Why do I care now? Well…

LaTeX is a very usable front-end/set of macros for the TeX typesetting engine. Basically, you write text files in a particular way, and then run ?LaTeX (or pdflatex) and it generates the best looking PDF in the world of your document. You get full control over things that matter (layout, look and feel) and you don’t have to worry about things that ought to be standard (titles, headlines, citations with ?BibTeX, page numbering, hyphenation). The best part, however, is that once you figure out how to generate a document correctly once, you never have to figure it out again. Once you realize that most of the things you need to output to paper are in the same format, you can use the same template and be able to generate consistently formated documents automatically. There’s a “compile” step in the document production process, which means changes aren’t often immediately recognizable, but I don’t think this is a major obstacle.

Word processing and document preparation is a critical component of most common computer users. At least, I’d assume so, though I don’t have good numbers on the subject. In any case, I think it might be an interesting project to see how teaching people how to use ?LaTeX might both improve the quality of their work, and also the way that they’re able to work. It’s advanced, and a bit confusing at first, but I’d suspect that once you got over the initial hump ?LaTeX presents a more simple and consistent interface: you only get what you tell it to give you and you only see the functionality that you know about. This might make the discovery of new features more difficult, but it doesn’t limit functionality.

I’m not sure that this post is the right space to begin a lesson or series on getting started with ?LaTeX, but I think as a possible teaser (if there’s interest) that the proper stack for getting started with ?LaTeX would consist of:

A ?TeXlive distribution. You need the basic tool kit including pdflatex, TeX, Metafont, ?LaTeX, and ?BibTeX.
A Text Editor with ?LaTeX support: emacs, ?TextMate, etc. Plain text can be difficult and cumbersome to edit unless you have the right tools for the job, which include a real text editor.
Some sort of macro or snippet expansion system. TeX is great. But it’s also somewhat verbose, and having an easy way to insert text into your editing environment, both for templates but also for general operations (emphasis, notes, etc.) is incredibly useful, and reduces pain greatly.
A template management system. This probably needn’t be a formal software system, but just something to organize and store the basic templates that you will use.

And the rest is just learning curve and practice. Onward and Upward!

Smarterware: Gmail Priority Inbox Puts Important Messages First

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:20:43 -0400

Just completed my first email sweep with Gmail's new "Priority Inbox" feature enabled, and it's a keeper. Over time, if this mechanism proves to be as good as Gmail's top-notch spam filtering, it could be the reason why you only check Gmail in the browser. (Well-played, GOOG.)

Priority Inbox adds an "important messages" section above your inbox. Initially, Priority Inbox decides what messages are important based on your email and chat patterns--a message from someone you often email with will get marked as important automatically. Like the spam filter, you can train it by manually marking messages as important and unimportant as well.

You can also add up to 3 other sections to your inbox. By default it's Priority Inbox, Starred items, and then "everything else." But you can define what's in each section using rules based on read/unread status, stars, and labels. For example, I keep all my unread stuff in the second section. Trusted Trio users could add a section of just items labeled "Followup." I don't love the idea of using my inbox as a to-do list, so I'm still experimenting with what works best for me.

Here's what the Priority Inbox settings look like in my Google Apps account.

As someone who empties my inbox regularly, I was dubious about my need for Priority Inbox. My email pattern is this: I respond and archive/delete messages as I can each day, and then once or twice a week, before the list of conversations exceeds 50 items and goes to the next page in Gmail, do a clean sweep. With a well-trained Priority Inbox, aspirational inbox zero folks have the option to redefine an empty inbox as an empty priority inbox, and just let the rest flow down into the regular inbox. After only a day, already I can feel my eye focusing on the Priority Inbox over anything else on the page, and I'm responding to messages there much more quickly than if they'd fallen down the list with the rest of the bacon and mailing list messages.

The only worry I have about Priority Inbox is the additional complexity it adds to Gmail. As I said this past week on TWiG, Gmail is just getting stuffed with new and more advanced features: phone calling, Buzz, Tasks, and now this, not to mention the (awesome, but huge) buffet of optional features in Labs.

I believe most vanilla Gmail accounts are in the process of getting Priority Inbox now. If you're a Google Apps user, opt your domain into pre-release features to get it sooner rather than later. (Simply opting in won't make Priority Inbox just show up today; just sooner than it would have if you weren't opted in.)

Email overload? Try Priority Inbox [The Official Gmail Blog]

Sacha Chua: Limiting my options so that I can focus

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

We’re fascinated by choice, almost slaves to keeping our options open. Sometimes it’s better to close doors, impose constraints, ignore possibilities. Focus.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I plan the next step in my career. There are so many paths to choose from: consulting? development? management, perhaps even executive?

Constraints make choosing easier.

I want to build a wonderful relationship with W-. This is easier to do with little or no travel, manageable hours, and low stress at work. That probably rules out the kind of consulting IBM tends to do, and the executive career path as well.

I want to experiment and create new opportunities. I’d like to try product development / consulting / coaching / webinars / e-books. People have made that business model work. But I’ve got a great opportunity to help change the way IBM works, and through IBM, help change the way the world works, so I’m focusing on that. I should make sure that familiarity and comfort don’t take me too far away from what I want to do, though: help people connect, collaborate, and learn.

Between following a formal career path and going where no job title has gone before, I think I’d like to explore the latter. I can take risks. I learn quickly, and I’m good at making things work.

This will be interesting.

Sacha Chua: Week ending August 29, 2010

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

SCHEDULED: 2010-08-30 Mon 8:00

From last week’s plans

Work
- [X] Have several mentoring conversations
- [X] Run Energy & Utilities Idea Lab
- [X] Work on bookmark tool for Boz and Yael
- [X] Prepare presentation on sharing
- [X] Move feed magic tool
- Reflected on career, figured out what I want my next step to be
Relationships
- [-] Confirm accommodations and photographer: Accommodations booked, confirming with photographer
- [X] Apply for marriage licence
- [C] Plan tea party
Life
- [X] Set up twine support for peas
- [X] Organize my notes
- [X] Tweak schedule so that weekly reviews go out on Sunday or Monday
- Painted my chair Pooh Bear Yellow (works reasonably well with W-’s Bibbidi Bobbidi Blue chair
- Bought tablet PC: Lenovo X61T

Plans for next week

Work
- [X] Plan Idea Labs: Follow up on other Idea Labs
- [X] Classroom to Client: Finish formatting Idea Lab presentation for ?ThinkLabs
- [X] Classroom to Client: Create community and structure online resoruces
- [X] Connections Toolkit: Build Activities reporter
- [X] Build mailto form processor
- [X] Track down Client Business Value report
Relationships
- [X] Wedding: Plan transportation
- [X] Hobbies: Reassemble chair
Life
- [X] Set up laptop: Experiment with workflow
- [X] Sleep by 10

Sacha Chua: Setting up my new tablet PC – apps, config, etc.

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

?AdAware: check the computer for any malware from previous owner’s use – checked out clean
Dropbox: synchronize my files
Emacs: note-taking, personal information management, awesomeness
- Set HOME directory in Control Panel – System – Environment Variables
- Use mklink to create symbolic links under Windows
- Write a simple .emacs that loads the dotemacs.el in My Dropbox/elisp
?AutoHotkey: map Caps to Control and create all sorts of other useful shortcuts
- Add My Dropbox/personal/shortcuts.ahk to my startup
Launchy: quick access to programs
Inkscape and ?MyPaint: Favourite free drawing programs
- Set drawing tools to use last selected style
- Set preferences for transforms: don’t scale strokes, etc.
- Tinker with smoothing to get something that feels right
Google Chrome: set up synchronization for bookmarks and extensions
?FeedDemon: Feed reader, easier than using Google Reader interface
?StrokeIt: Gestures make pen computing even easier
- Set up custom gestures for Inkscape, ?FeedDemon, and general operation
Windows Live Writer
Windows setup: Use a plain black background, turn off unnecessary visual effects, go back to old form of Alt-Tab. (When alt-tabbing, press the other alt key to switch to classic view.)

And that should be enough to get me working smoothly for now. I might dual-boot Ubuntu or run it in a virtual machine, depending on how well this 32-bit version of Windows 7 performs. If I find myself spending more time in Microsoft Windows because of all the tablet-y goodness, I’ll go the VM route, or I’ll give Cygwin another try.

SCHEDULED: 2010-08-29 Sun 08:00

Sacha Chua: Drawing with my tablet

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

Drawing with my new tablet PC is lots of fun. Instead of being stuck in the basement or near a table large enough to hold a laptop and a regular tablet, I can draw pretty much anywhere – like the couch where Neko loves to nap.

There are plenty of drawing programs for tablets. Some mimic traditional drawing media: pencils, charcoal, even oil paint. Some let you use all sorts of effects. Others take a different approach to drawing, with lines and shapes that you can draw and edit. I like the latter more, because I can tweak my drawings until they look more like what I had in mind.

My favourite drawing program is Inkscape. Using it in full tablet mode isn’t as convenient as working on the Cintiq because I don’t have all the buttons I’m used to, but I’ve been working on my configuration to make it easier to draw. I use mouse gestures to switch between different tools so that I don’t have to click on the toolbox, and I’ve mapped one of the buttons on the tablet frame to “Delete”.

Growing up, I hadn’t really thought of myself as artistic. We’d fallen into the habit of labelling ourselves, I guess. My eldest sister and I were academically and technologically inclined. My middle sister was the one who was good at photography and drama and all that stuff. In high school, the split became even bigger as I compared myself with classmates who created beautiful landscapes and still-life drawings in art and drafting. Gadgets and presentations lured me back into drawing. I got a Nintendo DS to play games and draw on it, discovering along the way that drawing was a lot of fun. I sketched a presentation on it, and the overwhelming response to that told me I’d stumbled across something more fun than illustrating my presentations with impersonal stock photographs. I’m beginning to think of myself as someone who can draw–perhaps not amazingly well, but enough to make me and other people smile.

I have a feeling this will definitely be worth the money I set aside for it. =)

Sacha Chua: On a Lenovo X61

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

I’ve been saving up for a Lenovo X61 for a while. Drawing had turned out to be tons of fun, and l wanted something more portable than my much-enjoyed Cintiq 12WX. So when l came across a Craigslist ad offering the X61 at a decent price, I went for it.

It’s the computer I thought it would be. And it understands my handwriting! So now l get to experiment with my workflow to figure out what works for me…

By golly, the future is actually here.

Sacha Chua: Temporary Post Used For Theme Detection (40552067-e534-4532-967e-11ddcd9a6edf – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7)

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:24:59 -0400

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cgk reality: Ubuntu 10.04 on Acer One Aspire

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:30:24 -0400

On a whim I decided to get Ubuntu 10.04 running on my old Acer One Aspire A110 and while the initial install has been ok I’ve run into a few bugs since then.

1.) Wireless randomly stopped working and would not come up even with a reboot. Apparently, this is a common issue. Even after a year plus the ath5k driver still…well…sucks. Bug 15382 on the ath5k bugzilla is a similar problem to what I had and had the solution. Cold shutdown and boom wireless works again. A possible perm fix is covered here (Unsupported jumbo bug).
EDIT: Ok, it did sorta work after a failed suspend/reboot. Still had to manually “enable” networking under network manager but it fired up without issue at that point

2.) The CPU fan runs non-stop. The fix is actually listed in the /var/log/dmesg entries so not sure why it does run all the time. Basically, you need to get into a root shell and run the following:

chris@twinky:~$ sudo su
root@twinky:/home/chris# echo -n “enabled” > /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/mode
root@twinky:/home/chris#

That should then calm down the whiney noisy fan and spin it up only when actually needed.
EDIT: This apparently doesn’t survive reboot either. Probably will if done in /etc/init/rc.local but haven’t tried that yet

I’ll update this as I run into more issues and fixes down the road

Useful Links: ArchLinux ?AcerOne Wiki | Debian ?AcerOne wiki

Sacha Chua: Proactive communication: Five tips for following up

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

SCHEDULED: 2010-08-26 Thu 08:00

Isabelle’s manager wanted her to get better at proactive communication. She’s comfortable e-mailing people, but she has a hard time following up when people don’t respond. Timezone differences between team members in Singapore and in the US compound delays. She reached out to me for advice, and I suggested a few things that might help:

1. Clear, dated requests. When asking for help or a response through e-mail, specify a target date instead of leaving it open-ended, and give a reason for that date if possible. This makes it easier for people to prioritize working on your task. (Don’t always ask people to get back to you TODAY, though. It looks like you don’t plan well.)

2. Clear, dated responses and priorities. If you’re working with other people on some lower-priority tasks, those tasks might never be finished. Clarify the relative priority of a task with your manager: it might turn out to be higher-priority than you thought. If it really is a low-priority project, contact the people you need to collaborate with and get an estimate of when they might be able to work on their part of the project. Find out what other important projects they’re working on, too. This will allow you to:

give clearer reasons for delays (“We can only work on the report next week because we have to finish the keynote presentation this week”)
negotiate better solutions (“I can do that part of the presentation if you can do this part of the report”)
re-negotiate priorities with your manager (“Actually, this report is more important than adding animation to the presentation”), and
give you dates for following up (“John is working on the presentation now, but he promised to work on the report on Monday, and I’ll follow up with him then”).

3. Status reports. They’re good for your manager and for you. Keep track of where you are on projects: what your next actions are, what you’re waiting for, and what you’ve accomplished. Share this with your manager frequently, so there are no surprises.

4. Concrete follow-ups. When you’re waiting for a response, schedule a follow-up so that it doesn’t slip through the cracks. Follow up by e-mail, and then move up to following up by phone or instant message if needed. I don’t do this for all of my tasks, but I do this for tasks I “own,” and it helps.

Concrete follow-up dates also help you write better status reports. Instead of reporting “Waiting for response”, you can report “Waiting for response; will follow up on ____ by e-mail and _____ by phone.” Clear follow-up plans make people feel more confident that the task won’t be forgotten.

5. Tactful escalation. When people don’t respond, sometimes you need to find other ways to get things going. Isabelle had learned how to cc:ing her manager so that her manager could stay updated, but she wasn’t comfortable with cc:ing the other person’s manager because it felt like escalation. If done tactfully, though, escalation can be a good tool.

How to escalate: Give people the benefit of the doubt, and acknowledge that they might be busy working on priority projects. Send them a gentle reminder, cc:ing their manager. In the note, explain to the manager that you understand that the original contact may be busy or your request might be a better fit for someone on the team, and ask who might be the best person to talk to.

Hope that helps!

2010-08-24 Tue 10:20

Sacha Chua: Keeping in touch with diffuse networks

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

SCHEDULED: 2010-08-25 Wed 08:00

Soha wrote:

I’m a long time reader of your blog and I must say it’s pretty amazing and inspiring. I always look forward to your next post and read it over and over for tips and ideas

But there was one thing that I’m not sure if you’ve covered in the past .. It’s about keeping in touch with your networks and freinds

I’m really having a hard time with this issue.. Particularly how to stay in touch.. What do to and what to say and how often… Etc.. Is there a system that u tried that works for u? Or a schedule that You follow to keep yourself on track?

And what about freinds ?? Do u apply the same approach as with your networks or do u so something else ??

Hope I didn’t ask too many questions but any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated

I rarely e-mail or call people just to catch up. I occasionally look for experiences I can share with friends, and I host get-togethers from time to time. I like checking out people’s social networking updates from time to time, and I comment when I’ve got something to share.

I mostly reach out to people when:

I’ve come across something that they might find useful
I can answer one of their questions or help them out with something
I can connect them with someone who has a question they can answer

More about the tools I use to connect

This mostly-passive networking style doesn’t fit the advice of most networking books, which focus on techniques for active networking: making lists of contacts you want to make, cultivating relationships through coffees and lunches, working those network events.

But this works for me.

Part of this might be because I let go of the need to be in close touch with specific people, and I open things up to serendipity instead. I don’t have to stress out about not being in close touch with my friends. I still feel warm and fuzzy about people even if I haven’t seen them in a year, and I hope they feel the same too.

Besides, it’s easy for people to keep in touch with me. I write about life on my blog, and I occasionally post social network updates on Twitter, which is synchronized with Facebook and ?LinkedIn.

Back to diffuse networks. Clouds, if you will.

There’s an oft-quoted limit to social relationships: Dunbar’s number, some 150 people in your “village”, the maximum number of people most people can keep track of, with their interrelationships and quirks. I don’t try.

I want to touch the lives of many more people than I can know, just as I learn from many more people than I can meet. People drift in and out whenever they want. I try to remember as much as I can about people, but it’s okay to re-learn and re-discover.

How do you keep in touch with people? Or perhaps, a different question: How do you cultivate serendipity?

2010-08-23 Mon 20:09

The Byte Baker: Everything is public

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:12:37 -0400

Steve Yegge started blogging again recently and his second post back (which is almost a month old by now) is essentially a parody of Java’s access specifier system and the prevalence of the “private” attribute. The debate over public vs private comes up every now now and then in object-oriented programming and has its fair share of people on either side of the line. So when Steve suggested that private just go away (or seemed to suggest that anyway) he of course got attacked with counter-examples and all sorts of cases where private is helpful.

Saying that everything should be public is certainly an idea that takes getting used to. It’s like saying that you should publish the details of your drunken escapades on your blog. It’s unsettling, but then again, the pictures are probably already on Facebook anyway. I think there are two issues here — one is for fields, and the other is for methods.

Though Steve seems to say that fields should be public (or have getters and setters on them), I personally tend to go the other way: fields should be private by default and only accessible through getters and setters. I like the way Ruby does it — everything is private by default but the accessors are generated by metaprogramming, so you don’t have the junk lines of getWhatever and setWhatever that you do with Java. Direct field accesses like Java and C++ allow are just bad ideas.

For methods things are the other way around. Firstly, I don’t like the idea of invoking methods on an object. I far prefer the Smalltalk notion of sending messages to objects and having them respond. I think it’s a far better conceptual model than methods and the private/public debate goes away in that model. If your object responds to methods, then being able to use private and public means that the object knows of and cares about where about the message is coming from. However, this breaks encapsulation. Ideally an object should respond to a particular message the same way irrespective of where the message comes from.

But, you say, what of the real world where ideals don’t necessarily hold? Hmm… let’s see what happens to software development under the assumption that all your methods and functions are callable from outside. To start off, you have to be careful about what parameters your methods take. You can’t assume that they’ve been pre-sanitized which means that either you’ll have to check them yourself or fail cleanly (and maybe send a stern warning up the chain). This may be a bit annoying, but I’d say it’s on the same level as dynamic typing — you’re never 100% sure of what type the arguments are so you take appropriate measures.

Now let’s talk about safety. One of the arguments in favor of private is that you don’t want methods to be abused and put the object in an unusable state. Again, I don’t think this is as big of a problem as it’s made up to be. It just involves rearranging where checking occurs. Presumably, if you have a private method that makes delicate changes to your object, you have a public method somewhere else that approves the changes and then calls said private method. Why not put the approval inside the private method and dispense with the public method entirely? If you want to make a change to an object, call a method to do it. If it works, fine. If not you get an error back.

I should make it clear at this point, that I don’t have any real world example to back up my claim (at least no examples that aren’t hopelessly contrived). What I’m talking is refactoring to meet a design constraint — that of total publicness. People will kick and scream and say that it breaks their careful separation of functionality into methods, but I think it’s just a design pattern, like dependency injection for example. And the trade-off to that is probably more flexible, more powerful software systems.

If everything is public (and designed from the ground up to be public) you start writing code that’s meant to be used by other code. Which in turn makes it easier to use and extend your code. I think you’ll eventually end up with something like Emacs — lots of public functions that do useful things to an object (the text in the editor) and an awesome array of functionality made possible by using these public functions. There is a fundamental change in programming and building ideology that needs to take place. With full publicness you can’t have a nicely bureaucratic language like Java. You’re going to end up with something that’s far more open and flexible like Ruby, Python or *shudder* Lisp.

I think that a lot of the heightened discussion surrounding Steve’s suggestion stems from the nature of the Java language. It’s certainly meant to be used by large corporate teams and is designed to stop programmers from hurting themselves (or stepping onto someone else’s turf). “Bureaucratic” is perhaps the best way to describe the language. If you take out private from a language like that, you lose most of its raison d’etre. So is private a good thing? Probably not. Does it need to stay in Java? Probably.

I’d like to reiterate that I think that message-passing is a superior way to think about object-orientation and it makes the public/private debate unnecessary. That’s why the language I’m building for my thesis will have message-passing. I’m also stealing Ruby’s private-by-default and metaprogramming for accessors.

Sacha Chua: Learning storytelling from my parents

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:52:00 -0400

My parents are both storytellers.

My dad makes everyday life seem epic, with sound effects and humour. He embellishes tales to make them more dramatic. He tells stories in conversation, and is often the center of attention in a large crowd.

My mom keeps the stories of generations, revealing unexpected connections with grandparents or great-grandparents. She tries to stick as close to the truth as she can remember. She tells stories in intimate conversation and through her writing. I look forward to our weekly Skype conversations because of the mix of stories she shares: some about the past, some about recent adventures.

I’m really lucky that my parents both love telling stories. Growing up, I saw how the stories they told inspired and energized and connected people. Good stories don’t have to have morals, points, or storybook villains threatening to destroy the universe. Sometimes a slice of life can make an unexpected connection.

I want to learn how to tell stories like that. My sister Kathy tells stories like my dad does, and I tell stories like my mom. I want to get better at saving and telling stories, particularly the difficult ones, and writing is my way of remembering.

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending August 22, 2010

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:00:00 -0400

Plans from last week:

Work

[X] Share notes and follow up on action items from training
[-] Prepare presentation on sharing and workflow – written up, but not yet illustrated
[X] Organize and run Idea Labs – one down, another to go
[X] Follow up on expertise pilot – shared with team member, whew!
[-] Draft follow-up presentations / articles on eminence?
Started working on bookmark summarization tool
Reflected on career options
Prepared ?ThinkLabs information
Learned about Pickover format for evaluating invention disclosures
Talked about my community tool and social analytics
Helped organize non-Innovation-Discovery Idea Labs
Attended meeting for potential Drupal project

Relationships

[X] Have dinner with W’s parents – keeping my name, clashing with traditions
[X] Go to W’s family get-together
[ ] Plan tea party for end of August or beginning of September
[-] Sort out accommodations / travel plans for my family – checked out some places
Helped rescue Maira from temporary housing crisis

Life

[X] Catch up after busy weekend
[-] Organize notes
Finished Scott Pilgrim game on Average Joe setting

Plans for next week:

Work

[ ] Have several mentoring conversations
[ ] Run Energy & Utilities Idea Lab
[ ] Work on bookmark tool for Boz and Yael
[ ] Prepare presentation on sharing

Relationships

[ ] Confirm accommodations and photographer
[ ] Apply for marriage licence
[ ] Plan tea party

Life

[ ] Set up twine support for peas
[ ] Organize my notes
[ ] Tweak schedule so that weekly reviews go out on Sunday or Monday

Sacha Chua: Six steps to make sharing part of how you work

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:54:00 -0400

Six Steps to Sharing

View more presentations from Sacha Chua.

People often ask me how I find the time to write, blog, or give presentations, so I’ve put together these tips on how to turn sharing from something that takes up extra time to something that saves you time as you work.

Sharing is intimidating. You might think that you need to master blogs or wikis before you can make the most of Web 2.0 tools to help you share your knowledge and build your network. But even if you never post in public, you’ve got plenty of opportunities to make a bigger difference through sharing.

I’m not going to tell you to start a blog today. Here’s a six-step program to help you save time by making sharing part of the way you work, even if most of what you work with is confidential or lives in e-mail. Give it a try!

Step 1. Review your e-mail for information that you repeatedly send people. Do different people ask you the same questions? Are there links or files you find yourself always looking up and sending? Are there common problems you often solve? Save time by filing those messages in a "Reference" folder so that you can easily find them the next time someone asks that question or needs that file. Save even more time by rewriting your notes so that you can easily cut and paste them into new messages.

You can use your e-mail program to manage this information by saving the e-mails in a "Reference" folder that might be subdivided into more folders, or you can save the information in directories on your hard drive, encrypting it if necessary. The key change is to create a virtual filing cabinet and put useful information in it.

This virtual filing cabinet can save you a lot of time on your own work, too. I often find myself searching for my notes on how I solved a problem six months ago because I have to solve it again, and my notes save me a lot of time.

Step 2. When talking to people, listen for opportunities to take advantage of your reference information. Now that you’ve got an virtual filing cabinet of useful information, keep an ear open for ways you can use that information to help people more efficiently. When people ask you a question you’ve answered before, give them a quick answer and promise to e-mail them the rest of the details.

When you look for ways to reuse the information you already have, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to get a lot more benefit from the effort that you’ve already invested.

Step 3. Reach out. Now that you’ve saved time and helped more people by sharing the information in your virtual filing cabinet when they ask, you’ve got a better sense of which notes are very useful. Take a moment to review your files and think about who might benefit from learning from that information. Reach out to them, sending them a note about what you’ve learned and why it can save them time. It might lead to interesting conversations and good opportunities.

For example, let’s say you e-mailed one of your coworkers an answer to his problem. Think of other team members who might have run into the same problem, and send them a short note about it too. If you do this judiciously, people will feel grateful without feeling overwhelmed by e-mail.

Step 4. Prepare and take notes. Now you’re getting lots of return on the time you invested into organizing your existing information, and you’ve got an idea of what kinds of information help you and other people a lot. Proactively write down information that might be useful instead of waiting until someone asks you about it, because you might not remember all the relevant details by that time. In fact, take notes while you’re working instead of leaving it for the end. File those notes in your virtual filing cabinet as well, and share them with other people who might find this useful.

In addition to helping you save time in the future, writing about what you’re learning or doing can help you think more clearly, catch mistakes, and make better decisions.

Step 5. Look for ways to share your notes with more people. By now, you’ve probably developed a habit of looking for ways to take advantage of what you’re learning or doing: writing and filing your notes, retrieving your notes when people need them, and proactively reaching out. You can stop there and already save a lot of time–or you can learn about sharing your notes more widely, helping you build your network and increase your impact.

Proactively reaching out to people who might find your notes useful has probably helped you develop stronger working relationships with a small investment of time. However, this is limited by who you know, how much you know about what they’re working on, and the timing of the information. On the other hand, if you share some of your notes in public areas where people can search for or browse them, then you can help people you might not think of reaching out to, and they can find your information whenever they need it.

You don’t have to share all your information publicly. Review your virtual filing cabinet for information that can be shared with everyone or with a small group, and look for ways to share it with the appropriate access permissions. You can share different versions of documents, too.

For example, I share public information on my blog because blogs make it easy to publish quick notes, and search engines make it easy for people to find what they need even if I posted those notes several years ago. On the other hand, there are many notes that I post to internal access-controlled repositories. Sometimes, I’ll post a sanitized version publicly, and a more detailed version internally.

This is where you can get exponential return on your time investment. If people can find and benefit from your notes on their own, then you can reach many more people and create much more impact.

People may not find and use your information right away. Keep building that archive, though. You’ll be surprised by how useful people can find your work, and by the number of opportunities and relationships you build along the way.

Step 6. Review your organizational system and look for opportunities for relentless improvement.

You’ve collected useful information from your e-mails and conversations, organized that in your virtual filing cabinet, reached out to people, and shared some of your notes publicly. Congratulations! You’re probably getting your work done faster because you don’t waste time solving problems again. Your coworkers probably look to you for answers because you not only help them solve problems, you do so in a timely and detailed manner. And you might already have discovered how helpful your notes can be for others you wouldn’t have thought of contacting. What’s next?

Review your virtual filing cabinet. Can you organize it for faster access? Can you fill in missing topics? Can you identify and update obsolete information? Look for opportunities to improve your process, and you’ll save even more time and make a bigger impact.

Want to share your experiences? Need help? Please feel free to leave a comment!

The Byte Baker: Sunday Selection 2010-08-22

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:55:26 -0400

Reading

The James Franco Project This has nothing to do with computers, technology or programming. James Franco is an actor who is leading a very full life — he’s acting full time (on multiple projects) while working on multiple graduate degrees at different places around the country. Certainly not something that’s recommended for everyone, but it goes to show just how much one man can do if he puts his mind to it.

Media

Dieter Rams – More is Less The design of technological objects has always fascinated me and Jonathan Ives might be the design man of the current times, but this video shows off Dieter Rams’ work and some of his key insights and you can see them reflected in the modern gadgets that we consider to be attractive.

Software

Foursquare I’ve just recently started using Foursquare (yes, I know after Facebook announced places) which is an iPhone, Android and Blackberry app that lets you “check-in” to places you visit and gather points for traveling and visiting. It’s a fun little utility and makes for interesting games with friends (and probably helps generated revenue for local businesses). I’m hesitant to say if it’s actually useful, but it’s definitely worth trying out.

Note: I find that I’m starting to explore less and less and am considering retiring the software section in upcoming weeks. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Sacha Chua: Backyard trades

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:13:00 -0400

We live in a semi-detached house and often chat with our immediate neighbors, Dan and Jen. Their kids sometimes come over to play with Jessie. When we make jams or jelly, we share it with them, and they share other interesting things with us.

Dan recently bought a smoker because he was pining for the briskets of his Texan youth. He made pulled pork recently, and he brought over some for us. We sprinkled it on pizzas, sandwiches, and other yummy treats. When we finished it, I washed the container and filled it with freshly-picked jalapeno peppers from our garden. (We have too many to eat, and not enough to make jelly.)

It’s nice getting along with your neighbors, particularly when there’s food involved. =)

2010-08-21 Sat 10:13

Sacha Chua: Hypercubes, happiness, and serenity

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:19:24 -0400

I remember reading an excerpt from Flatland in Childcraft when I was growing up, and wondering: how would a flat square understand this three-dimensional world we live in? In high school, I read a book about mathematical curiosities. Challenged by the idea of visualizing hypercubes and other higher-dimension objects, I turned to a trick I’d come across while reading: take what you see, use time as the fourth dimension, and imagine all the moments superimposed. Non-existence, birth, life, motion, death, and oblivion collapsed into a single space, further complicated by the rotation and revolution of the earth, the other motions of our galaxy and universe…

I had an existential moment: life is so short and insignificant!

And then I thought, “Hey, this is pretty cool.” I dipped into this imagined world occasionally, thinking about the past and future of places, objects, and people. It proved to be a useful test for relationships: what would life be like with the grief of losing this person – will it have been worth it? It also helped me let go of stuff. I could see myself before I got whatever it was, and I could see myself after.

You might say it’s an odd sort of happiness that maintains an awareness of death and insignificance, but it’s the sort of calm happiness that’s confident that everything will work out. Why get upset over something that will pass?

So when I came across the ideas of unconditional serenity and emptiness in Joseph Sestito’s Write for Your Lives (an approach that draws on Buddhism), I thought, “Hmm. That’s what they call it.”

It’s still a little strange to look at someone, stretch my imagination, and see them as child and senior. It’s good practice, though, and it reminds me that we’re all in the middle of our own journeys.

Sacha Chua: Speed-reading

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:06:45 -0400

Text: Speed-reading

People ask me how I can read so quickly. Here are some things that might help you read and learn faster.

1. Don’t slow yourself down. Do you read aloud? Do you imagine yourself reading aloud? Speech is so much slower than sight. See. In fact, don’t trace the words with your eyes. Jump around. Look at the important words. Skim. Take advantage of peripheral vision.

2. Take advantage of structure. Read tables of content, conclusions. A book is a nonlinear device. How to Read a Book (Adler and van Doren): this book is awesome.

3. Read. A lot. You’ll get lots of practice. You’ll be surprised by how much books repeat themselves or other books. And you’ll find yourself reading for those rare gems, the aha! moments that make reading all the rest worth it. Then people will ask you: How can you read so quickly?