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“Be the change you want to see in the world.” -Mahatma Ghandi
I (heart) Pulse!
I am a creature of habit. I have my morning routine. I get up at about 4:30am, I get up, and before I go run in the mornings, I read the news. Most of my recent blog posts and twitter updates are done during this magic hour before exercise.
I also love news aggregators, they allow me to customize the news the way I want to read it. I’m not forced to listen or watch content as specifically provided by a single news source.
If you use the iPhone or iPad my favorite among these is a little app called Pulse. It’s now offered for free on the app store but it was really worth the few bucks I initially paid for the thing. I use Reeder for the IPhone and Outlook on my desktop, and plenty of other news aggregators, but Pulse is my favorite.
Pulse, developed but 22 and 23 year old Stanford students, Ahkay Kothari and Anit Gupta is simply a joy to use. Unlike other news readers Pulse provides a flowing headline experience with thumbnails from the news source.
It’s what I would call a quality over quantity approach. Many news readers allow for almost unlimited news feeds in a list or headline approach to display, that’s ok, but for me specifically I monitor about a dozen important news sources on a daily basis (I’ll post on my choices for news in another post but in short they include local, national, technology, security, and productivity categories). There are others I touch but I have the critical few that I keep an eye on.
Pulse is what I was hoping Blancspot would be. I purchased Blancspot from the app store and have used it maybe twice, while it has a similar experience Pulse has, the sources in Blancspot are fixed and there’s no real means of modifying the stream, many of the articles in Blanspot are stale and not refreshed. Blancspot is very much a get what thy give you. I just can’t recommend it.
Pulse makes monitoring these sources both natural and easy to browse. Pulses strength can, for some, also be it’s weakness. Pulse limits the number of sources to 20, so if you are a quantity type person, pulse may not be for you. Also, Pulse, because of it’s layout, with thumbnails, displays headlines 9 (in portrait) or 10 (in landscape) at a time. But if keep an eye on a few critical sources, Pulse might just be the news aggregator for you.
Pulse is free with in app ads, and is available for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.
Avoid Some of the Decision Making Traps Based on Appearance
I read the following article in Psychology Today this morning and it struck a cord with me. A friend of mine once made mention of the concept of ‘Big Hat, No Cattle’, i.e. form over substance.
We are all prejudiced in some ways to appearances. It is a fundamental Darwinian survival instinct. We have the advantage over our other animal counterpart in that we have the ability to see it if we give the predisposition to prejudice our attention. Would qualify as prejudice to prejudice?
Anyway the article basically states four thing to watch out for:
1. Keep in mind that the image of professional doesn’t imply professionalism. It simply means that the business or person is good at presenting an image.
2. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. I learned this the hard way a couple of years ago when I engaged a project with a large well known telecom supplier, thinking that since they were the large 800 lb. gorilla in the market that they knew what they were doing. NOTICE: Big organizations are as dysfunctional, often more so, than small organizations.
3. When in doubt, check references. ‘Nuff said.
4. Trust your own critical thinking skills. Don’t give in to conventional peer pressure either by you superiors or peers. More often than not your ‘smell test’ of your skills. Keeping in mind than often decisions by others are often motivated by political or emotional reasons than facts.
We are all influenced by the cover of the book, but we should clearly look beyond it to really make informed decisions.
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“How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.” — Buckminster Fuller
More Study Data Show That Multitasking Doe Not Lead to Higher Productivity.
I’m beginning this post with a deep sigh (*SIGH*). I’ve long envied the ability of some people to do more than one thing at a time. Multitasking is something I’m just not any good at.
There is plenty of recent study data to support the idea that multitasking not only inhibits productivity but increases lead times to project completion.
This study, of several judges in the Italian court system, shows that in addition to extending cycle times of project completion, multitasking contributes to an increase in the size of work backlog.
We work in an age where knowledge, not industrial work, is the preeminent means of gainful social progress for our civilization. Yet we work in such highly competitive industries, myself included, that the drive to get more done in less time has driven us to the need of being always ‘on.’
I’m not throughout stones here, in the worst offender, just ask my wife.
But it is that much more critical that strive to block out sections of true downtime, where we are completely present in the moment, without distraction, to take a time-out from life, even if forced; where we can take stock of our lives, identify the patterns of habit that are or aren’t working, and just be.
Maybe we can then ratchet down the squelch level and truly identify our dreams and at least get a taste of how are lives can look like something different than living on a harried treadmill…
Here’s my new campaign ‘Stop the Multitasking Madness!’
Fit it on a Post-It or Don’t Fit It in Your Day
As I read this article this morning, I felt an overwhelming desire to delete my entire to do list and start over. My list is currently around 120 items, and like managing my weight has been a constant struggle for me. So this somehow seems relevant.
The premise set forth by Mark McGuiness at the99percent.com is that your day has a finite amount of time in it and so does a Post It note. Attempting to fit mode to dos in to your day is tantamount to writing smaller on the post it note, you can do it, but does dong so make you more effective.
Take a look at this article and let me know what you think.