Archive for the 'Ideas' Category

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Perspective

Published on March 10, 2008 in Ideas and Ricky. 1 Comment Tags: .

I had an opportunity the other night to sit down with my sister, some friends I’m currently in school with, some friends who have gone off to college, and a few acquittances. We sat around a living room and talked about the past – relationships, jokes, fiascos, whatever.

The night was miraculously uplifting. We all laughed about things that really bothered us at the time at the time they happened, but now seem insignificant. As we joked, I picked up the perspectives of people who through circumstance or by choice, I did not know while the events were happening. The re-realization of my limited knowledge in those emotional times gave me a silent epiphany of sorts:

Plenty of the people we write off as “not good” are in fact only opposed to us by circumstance, not by their own choice or character.

In other words, some people actually are “good”, you just didn’t know it yet. Sit down with people you’ve never gotten a chance to understand. Reach across the aisle, retire a stereotype, and connect with others… or at least try.

Reconsidering Commitments

Published on February 19, 2008 in Apple, Ideas, Productivity, Ricky and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

One of my heroes, Merlin Mann, did a talk at Macworld called “Living with Data“. Although I was disappointed that it didn’t deal with my favorite second officer of the USS Enterprise, I enjoyed it. It’s long, but very entertaining. As I watched it last night, I found myself inspired.

I thought my personal productivity system was air-tight. I’ve been getting my tasks done – or so I’ve thought. But as I listened to Merlin’s talk, one point in particular resinated with me.

At 25:12 in, Merlin asks, “Who gets access now?” That is, who will I let interrupt me as I’m working? I looked around my desktop. Gmail notifier, Twitterrific, and Adium are constantly demanding my attention. I’m changing my use of these applications. I’ve decided to only use Adium when I’m actually open for conversation or have to post where I am, I’m axing Twitterrific in favor of the canonical twitter website, and I’ll check my email twice a day or so.

And then I got to thinking about Quicksilver. I love Quicksilver; it’s an application launcher on steroids. One of the plugins I use for Quicksilver is the Camino Bookmarks plugin. I can evoke Quicksilver using my keyboard shortcut (command + enter), type the first few letters of any website I’ve bookmarked, and press return to load that page. For example:

f – facebook
g – gmail
r – google reader
d – digg
p – pownce

Because those time-suck websites are so easily accessed, I go to them far too often. My new productivity experiment is to disable the Camino bookmarks feature of Quicksilver and see how much of my life I get back. Instead, I’ll check those sites in the morning, at night, and maybe when I have a free moment at school.

It’s amazing to realize that the tool you appreciate the most to save time is what’s actually causing you to habitually waste it.

David Allen on GTD

Published on January 13, 2008 in Ideas and Productivity. 0 Comments Tags: , , .


If anyone wants a basic intro to GTD, take a look.

The Apology Podcast?

Published on December 16, 2007 in Ideas and Social Media. 4 Comments Tags: .

On This American Life episode #48, Ira investigates The Apology Line, a phone line that anyone could call up and anonymously apologize for just about anything.

Quoting from Jason Kottke:

“The way it worked was that you could call and confess to anything that you wanted, and you’d be recorded, or you could call and listen to other people’s confessions.” Sounds sort of like a phone-based message board.

Now quoting the apology project:

Over the course of the project, the Apology line received more than ten thousand confessions, for misdeeds ranging from pulling pigtails in grade school to a series of sadistic ritual murders. Click here to read a small selection of some of the messages recorded on the Apology Line. In a period prior to the emergence of the Web and online communities, Allan pioneered the use of telephone technology to permit confessions to be recorded, played back and commented on by an ever-expanding virtual community.

I think we need The Apology Podcast. If it doesn’t exist already (I’ve looked, didn’t find it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t out there), I’d love to see someone create it, or create it myself.