Category: Personal

New ideas for productivity

Staying on task is a subject that I am constantly working on. At the moment, I’m working full time, trying to finish a dissertation, and am active in a number of extracurricular activities. This means, when I have the time to work on writing/research, I really want it to be productive. It also means that I’m constantly searching for ways to be more productive (see also: Lifehacker).

One thing I’ve always wished for is some way to turn off networking and multitasking for a period of time. Actually, “wish” is an understatement… I’ve dug around looking for terminal commands and even briefly thought of hiring a developer! As one of the “3.5” readers over at Shouting Loudly, I learned of an application and a technique that might help.

Freedom is an application for the Mac that I can’t believe I missed, given all the coverage it has received. The program basically turns off internet access for an amount of time you specify. For me, this takes care of a good share of frequent distractions. As if that wasn’t enough (and believe me, it would be), another SL blogger pointed out a good technique in a comment which helps with the non-computer distractions.

The Pomodoro Technique is a good way to set goals and manage attention for short periods of time. It reminds me a bit of the 40 minute cycle I have tried in the past, but is much more specific in terms of setting goals and shorter in terms of time. By focusing on a small number of “rules,” it is remarkably easy to follow. The technique also suggests to keep track of distractions, and to combine them into later work–which can help focus all of that Internet time that was lost while using the Freedom application.

I obviously haven’t tried these long enough to see how well they really work, but given how much I’ve thought about and worked on these issues, I’m really hopeful. Thanks again, Shouting Loudly! I’d like to respond to the substance of the post linked above, but need to get back to writing 🙂

Back to blogging, but why?

After a brief hiatus from blogging, I think a good way to get back into the swing of things might be again asking “why I blog,” with the help of a piece from The Atlantic that resonated with me and even challenged me.

On the subject of tone, Andrew Sullivan (the author) remarks:

For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

I agree with this completely–and think it’s one of the most misunderstood aspects of blogging (hence my blog’s name). An understanding that there will be mistakes and times when you’ll change your mind are an important part of the medium.

The blog remained a superficial medium, of course. By superficial, I mean simply that blogging rewards brevity and immediacy.  … the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.

D’oh! Tough words for the occasional blogger. The funny thing is, during the break I accumulated a list of things I want to blog about, but never did. To me, it’s less important to consistently update–I’d rather sacrifice a few readers than miss the opportunity to respond in a way that’s at least somewhat thought out.

Sullivan goes on to describe bloggers of history, including one I’m not familar with: Montaigne.

Montaigne was living his skepticism, daring to show how a writer evolves, changes his mind, learns new things, shifts perspectives, grows older—and that this, far from being something that needs to be hidden behind a veneer of unchanging authority, can become a virtue, a new way of looking at the pretensions of authorship and text and truth.  …  To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, as Montaigne did, pivot you toward relative truth.

Again, Sullivan captures the spirit of a blog so well with this historical analogue. The personality of a bloggers thought and, well, personality are what gives the medium this facinating balance between intimacy and publicity, or between the surface and depth of our thoughts and feelings.  Finally:

If all this sounds postmodern, that’s because it is. And blogging suffers from the same flaws as postmodernism: a failure to provide stable truth or a permanent perspective. A traditional writer is valued by readers precisely because they trust him to have thought long and hard about a subject, given it time to evolve in his head, and composed a piece of writing that is worth their time to read at length and to ponder. Bloggers don’t do this and cannot do this—and that limits them far more than it does traditional long-form writing.

I’ll admit to being a postmoderist, and if it takes one to know one, I think I can say that Sullivan is right to call blogging a largely postmodern exercise. Where I think he’s completely wrong is that blogging can’t be well thought out. Academic bloggers must walk a fine line between shooting from the hip and providing reasoned analysis. Some think on their feet quite well, and these become the more prolific academic bloggers.  Personally, I need at least a little time to digest.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a blogging style that consciously tries to balance these issues of timeliness, reason, and personality. If Sullivan were to really take a postmodern approach to blogging, there would be nothing a blogger ‘could not do,’ because it’s such a personal exercise.

iTunes 8 Review: Smarter, but still old school

I’m a musician and a music lover, and thanks to buying Fair Play music over the last few years, I’m locked into iPods and iTunes. Being the kind of person that likes to have all their metadata in order -clear genres, ratings, and playlists -there were a number of features I was looking forward to that I thought would make it easier to manage my growing music library. Things like tagging of music, sub-genres, and truly boolean playlists were at the top of my list. The thing is, I know I’m in the minority–most people’s music libraries are a mess.

I think that’s why Apple spent their time on the “Genius” instead of the features I was looking for. Rather than create lists by tagging artists by country or by a Janice Joplin and Shiina Ringo with a rating greater than 3 stars, Apple is looking into our libraries and making connections based on (I assume) qualities of the song like tempo and similar artists. I’ll bet the majority will be happy, even if freaks like me aren’t.

Why am I talking about iTunes on a blog about law and technology? For one thing, this feature doesn’t work with artists that aren’t on iTunes like your friends’ old high school band or your favorite Sony Jpop artists. More importantly, this move shows Apple’s real vision of iTunes–an online portal to sell, sell, sell. Who cares if the application feels outdated if it’s still bringing in revenue.

What makes good blog?

Merlin Mann breaks a personal rule and lists some elements he sees as indicitive of a good blog. I’ll admit, I don’t put enough energy into Thinking Out Loud to make it a good blog, but hopefully it at least has some kind of voice and communicates some of my obsessions.

I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more. … Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s.

That’s a mash of two of his point, but I see them pointing to one important (and really hard to do) thing: be creative. This is especially hard when you put on your public face and try to be semi-professional, but it’s a good reminder. It’s too easy to be lazy or casual with a blog, but when you consider how lucky we are to be able to publish so easily (compared to, say, a colonial newspaper), we owe it to ourselves to blog with at least a little panache.

The one thing I’ve always wondered is: do we have to do it each day?