Whalespeak

I love Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done, and my life is governed by to do lists. In fact, managing my system can be a pleasant distraction from actually doing work.

One thing I notice from time to time is that some tasks sit around on my list forever, never going anywhere, always being demoted in favour of other tasks. And these build up and up, until a list is a big, unwieldy mess and I don’t know where to begin.

Short to do lists are great.

If something has been hanging around for a while or a list has grown too large, I ask these questions:

1. Do I really want to do this?

Is it on your list because it’s something you think you should be doing?

2. Do I need to do this urgently?

If it’s not urgent but you still want to do it someday, move it to another pile. Put it in your calendar or your “one day I’ll get round to it” list.

3. Is there a step I need to complete before I can do this?

You could be delaying something because it’s actually the second step in a process. Sometimes these first steps are so small or obvious that we don’t articulate them. Like phoning a friend to recommend a restaurant before you phone to reserve a table.

4. What stops me from completing this?

Are there psychological barriers holding you back? Maybe you don’t want to clear out your office because you’re afraid of throwing out something important. Think about your hang-ups and maybe work on those first. Acknowledge them and move on, or do what you need to do to heal them.

CG Textures is a great site that gives away pretty good texture images for use as you see fit. I needed some for a project I’m working on, and these are better than a lot of the dross I’ve found.

Is it the way websites are used, or is it all the frilly bits? Where does the confusion come from?

Design is literally the opposite of an accident. It is when things are done for a purpose, or when a choice is made from many competing options.

So graphic design and usability as they relate to the web are really two different skills. How important they are depends heavily on the project, but as a web designer it’s good to have an appreciation of both. In fact, web design could be defined as where these two considerations overlap.

The best way to learn is to do. When you learn from someone else, you can get a good overview, but the details are missing. Learning on the job provides a better sense of the “feel” of something. That intuitive touch that experts have.

When I first learned to cook, I measured out everything to the gram, but now I shun measurements and timing for almost everything. (I still can’t get the knack of baking.) What I’ve got now is not arrogance, but a set of internal guides or heuristics that have come into place without me really codifying them. I know how much is too much and how much is not enough.

It’s like that joke about the difference between theory and practice. In theory there’s no difference, in practice there is.

Twice recently I’ve seen two high-profile blogs write about weight loss techniques which I have seen refuted by professionals. Number one: targeted weight loss, the idea that certain exercises will remove fat from only certain parts of your body, which is just false. Number two: low-carb diets, which I thought had been shown to create long term health risks.

I hate seeing the same bad ideas being brought out again and again after they have been debunked. It reminds me of crop circles, which were revealed to be hoaxes years ago and yet continue to be talked about with awe.

At times, I’m sure these things are caused by a disagreement between experts, in this case health professionals, but also they can be caused by not being rigorous enough in our research. The idea of 8 glasses of water a day is another one. I’ve heard doctors give this advice, with no idea of where it originates.

The internet makes these problems worse. A good meme travels fast irrespective of how true it is. That’s what makes Wikipedia’s [citation needed] tag so important. But this is also a matter of personal responsibility. I hear friends criticise Wikipedia almost daily as unreliable, but the facts we find there should be easy to verify. We’re putting our intellectual eggs into one basket.

There are two sides to this and one fairly easy rule of thumb to remember: if you’re repeating someone’s idea, or if you come across a new idea, ask yourself “where does this come from?” and stop taking things on face value.

I’m a sucker for this kind of relentless Japanese-style anthropomorphisation.

via Drawn!

Starting something new can feel daunting, but most problems of learning are knowledge problems. We feel unconfident because of the unfamiliar, because of what we do not know.

If you’re worried about something you don’t know anything about, learn about it.

If you can’t learn about it, it’s probably not worth worrying about.

Here’s a great post from Jon Tan about how to style paragraphs.

You can always beat the big guy. If you’re starting out in a business, there are always some people, some companies that are big names, and it looks like they’ve got all the bases covered. But you have two big advantages.

First of all, when you’re small, you’re agile. You can change quicker than the big company. When an organisation grows it has a lot invested in its existence, and risks start to look less enticing. So it starts to play safe, it relies on what has worked in the past, it gets choked up in its own bureaucracy.

Secondly, you’ve got creativity. There will always be the new. Creativity is about difference, newness or even just rearranging. Maybe Google dominates search, but what if search changes? Auction sites might find it hard to supplant eBay, but how about changing the nature of online auctions?

I’m not giving you solutions, because the answers are far from easy. But a solution is always possible.

Money is boring. When you ask people what they dream about, what they really want, they might tell you that they’d love to win the lottery. That’s no kind of answer. If that’s your answer, you haven’t really thought about want you want.

In fact, this might not be about possession at all. Why are we thinking about things we can get? What about things we can do? Things we can be? These are more important questions. And it’s easier to become someone. Most of the time, all it takes is a decision.