Rhoneisms

I recently had the extreme pleasure of being interviewed by Ian Hines for is wonderful new project, Intrvws. Ian is an extremely skilled interviewer especially via email. He takes his time developing smart questions and is very comfortable letting people take a while to think about and compose an answer. As evidence, our interview was conducted via email between August 1 and October 4, 2010 (Two months!). I’m incredibly proud of having been a part of it.
I really urge you to read the whole thing, but I wanted to post a particular section here. It is the writing advice I wish I had given my younger self. I encounter young and just starting writers all the time and have given them all manner of hodgepodge advice.Henceforth, I will point them to this:
Ian:
I wonder, if you had the opportunity to send some advice to your younger self to read as you were first beginning to write on the web, what would it be?
Patrick:
Focus on writing well. Read as many posts and books on writing as you need to learn the craft without letting it distract you from, well, writing. Because, after a certain point, no book or post or advice will ever help you as much as putting those words down.
Also learn how to edit your writing to turn it into something other than a collection of words ordered according to some universally agreed to rules. Because some of those rules should be broken. In fact, many should have never been agreed to in the first place. Because those rules can stifle you from finding your own voice if followed too rigidly. More often than not, what you will be editing out of your writing is the rules.
Spend at least twice as much time editing as you do writing. Slave over every detail, sweat every word and punctuation mark. Read what you write over and over again. In fact, never stop yourself from revisiting something you wrote and improving or expanding on it if you feel it would make it better. Even something as simple as adding a comma where there should have been one can change the feel of an entire essay.
Be curious about everything but find one or two things that your are insatiably curious about and interested in. A subject or two that you can never know too much, or think too deeply, about. Write about these things.
Also, ignore the numbers. Ignore the audience. Ignore the fact that, for a very long time, no one may be reading. Just make sure that you are. Be your own biggest fan (when warranted) and harshest critic (when warranted).
Finally, do what I say, not what I do.

Not too long ago, I was asked by a client of mine how long it would take to complete a certain large project. After thinking about it for a while, I gave what I thought was a fair estimate given all of the parameters, possible hurdles and building in time for contingencies. The client then asked me if I could do it faster than that. They asked if I could do it in about a third of what I had estimated…
The time a project takes does not somehow magically change because the actual time one has to complete it has. Could I have done that job in the timeframe the client wanted? Sure. Would I have had to spend just as much time as I originally quoted after the fact correcting mistakes and problems because I rushed through it? Probably. Would it be harder, and thus take more time, to make such corrections after the fact than to get them done right the first time? Definitely. Yet I can’t even tell you for how long, by how many clients and managers and in how many different ways I have been asked to do this very thing. I know I am not alone. As a matter of fact, a common joke in the computer industry is “You can have it cheap, you can have it fast or you can have it done well. Pick two.”
What you trade in time you most often exchange for quality or quantity. Sometimes you have to change the project or task that you set out to do. Sometimes you just don’t have the time you need for the project at hand. Maybe you cut a corner here and there. Maybe you drop less important aspects. In this case, the time itself does not change. The quality or quantity of the project changes accordingly with the time saved. It is now a different project, with possibly less than satisfactory results.
I try to use this approach with even the simplest items on my daily task list. For instance, I try to take an honest look at what I want to accomplish in the 15 minutes of time I may have to make a phone call. I am not going to make a call that I know has an hour worth of discussion in that time frame. If I do, I know that I will be trading a true discussion of the topics for bullet points at best. I may have to make another call to the same person later that will make up for, or even equal the time I chose not to spend in the first place. Is that the most effective use of the time? I think not.
Therefore, when you have a block of time to fill be careful to choose the right sized task to fill it. Like most things in this world, when it comes to time, nothing is free.

Yesterday, I lamented that tools like Twitter and Facebook are not designed to promote real face-to-face connections and that I wished there were an app or service that did. Then, I had some real world conversations that helped me to realize a couple of things…
The first is, be careful what you wish for. For my app to really work, it would have to know far more information about your interactions and private details than such current services likely track today. Interpersonal relationships are incredibly complex, nuanced, and ever changing. There is already some discomfort with a service that asks about my relationship status with one person. In order for my idea to really work effectively, I would have to regularly provide information about my relationship status with everybody I was connected to.
Second, and perhaps more immediately important thing is this – I have all the tools I need to be able to do this myself. Right now. No app or service required.
The fact is, I know who the people are that I have conversations with on Twitter. I know which ones are local and which ones are not. I can own enough self-direction to think about having a face-to-face with these folks. I then could put a reminder down to shoot them a message and schedule a lunch or coffee (I like Backpack for this because it will send me an email and SMS and allow me to set times like “In a couple of days”).
For the ones that are out of town, well, that is a bit trickier but not much. Many travel services offer “fare/price alerts” where they will send you a message if travel to a particular destination drops below a certain price. I could easily set up one of these for each of my out of town contacts. Then at least I’ll have the information in hand to decide if I can swing it.
The point is, far too often I am guilty of wishing for a tool instead of wishing for a solution. You have now witnessed a twenty-four hour live demo of this. In doing so, I have wasted time that could have been spent actually doing, planning, and scheduling. Certainly something I need to work on.
Let’s do lunch soon.

Here is an idea for a social networking app. I’m sure it is not new. It is based upon my own personal needs and desires so it may not appeal to anyone else. I’m not a developer and have the programming skills of a slightly evolved banana so I will never be able to make this myself. I don’t care if it’s a dedicated desktop or mobile app. It could be cloud based. The point here is that if anyone wants to take this idea and run with it you are more than welcome to and please consider me with my hand fully raised with credit card in it to purchase a copy. Plus, I’m an introvert so what do I know about “Being social”? With this in mind, here we go…
The problem with current social networking and communication apps for me is that these tools may help one meet new people and form new relationships but they hardly can replace real face to face communication. I believe this is by design. Facebook can only make money and thrive by keeping you on Facebook. Same with Twitter. They do this by fostering the feeling that you are “keeping up” with others while not truly encouraging interaction beyond the service.
Words mean things. I believe emotionally charged words like “Friend” and “Follower” are designed to make you form a tighter bond within, and by extension with, the service. Furthermore, things like Foursquare and Facebook’s Places seem to me just another way to keep you interacting with the service even when you are supposed to be interacting with the real world.
Even tools like Skype and Facetime can help to give one the illusion of this sort of connection but it is still just as virtual in nature. It is not the same as sharing a meal, a conversation over coffee, or a hug (I like hugs) with nary a computer or smartphone seen.
The app I want would help you take these relationships that you have started to form on the service, or have neglected because of same, and suggest ways to take them to the next level.
It would do things like look at your social networking contacts and suggest ways fro you to meet based on location:
“Hey. I see you and this person you follow both live in Saint Paul and trade replies all the time. Would you like to send them a message proposing lunch?”
It would suggest people you have not had a “conversation” with in a while:
“Hey. I see you and this person have not traded replies or direct messages in a while. Want to send one now just to say hi?”
It would even suggest ways for you to meet those folks whom you follow that are not local:
“Hey. I bet you and this person who you converse with have never met. Flights from MSP to BOS are fairly cheap right now . Want to investigate further?”
Basically, it would help you use these services to make real, lasting, face-to-face connections and gently remind you when you are letting the tool supplant them and suggest ways to help.
I don’t need another Twitter app. I don’t need more suggestions of who to “follow” or “friend”. I don’t need an app that ties all of these services together to make it even harder for me to find the signals within the noise. What I need is a way, and the occasional nudge, to reach out and make real connections.

After years of this searching for the holy grail of productivity, I have found that what works best for me is simplicity. As long as I have a basic system that is easy to maintain I stick with it. My current system is a testament to that. It is completely paper based and designed to take as much of the “thinking” out of the way of the “doing” as possible.
Here it is:
* I always have pen and paper with me for capturing all the random bits of stuff that pops into my flighty little head. I generally use my Levenger Pocket Briefcase loaded with their 3×5 cards. That being said, it is not unusual for me to use Simplenote on my iPhone or (tisk, tisk) send myself an email from same. The point is not the tool. The point is to get that thought captured somewhere before it leaves my brain forever.
* I have a master list of all of my tasks and next actions for projects in my Levenger Junior Circa notebook. This is just one big dump of stuff culled from all of the input sources I capture to. I have a “trigger list” with all of these sources listed so I remember to look there. I create one big list, no contexts, no projects, no order. Just a big pile of stuff. I use my dash/plus system to track the status of items on the list. Also, the Cornell Ruled style of the Levenger pages allow me to keep notes in the margin (especially for “waiting for” and “delegated to”) if needed.
* Now, at this point I know you GTD purist types are shaking your head in disbelief. “What about contexts?” – I don’t need them really. I am a tech consultant by trade so I am either in my home office, where I can work on my master list, or at a client’s, where I am working on their list. The closest I get to ever using a context based list is writing down errands I have to take care of on an index card and sticking it in my pocket briefcase. “What about projects?” – If I have a project that requires breaking down into actions, I will do that on a separate page. Then, I put the next action on the big list.
* Every day I take out a 3×5 card and write the date at the top of it. I then pick three things off of the big list I would like to get done that day. I then place this card next to my computer and focus in on getting these things done. That does not mean I might not do anything else on the master list. It also does not mean that I wont get distracted by other “firefighting” that comes up during the day. That being said, I have found that having just three items on there makes it possible to clear that card every day. This makes me feel like I am moving the master list forward little by little despite the fact that for every one thing done, two may be added.
I admit that this system may not scale well if you have a lot of stuff coming your way. With that said, perhaps the larger lesson to take away is to always look for ways to simplify your system to the basics of what it really needs to be. Far too many people feel the need to build in complication that is unnecessary. This system is simple and, more importantly, it works for me.

Just like their creators, computers are notorious for being pretty socially inept. Yet, with sociable media, computers take on a social role or become a mediators between people engaged in social interaction. Their position in social life does not inherently make technology any more sociable; their functions are intimately entwined with what people enable them to do. Thus, the onus is on the programmers to empower technology to operate in social life.

From “Autistic Social Software” :: Supernova 2004

This is a link to a crib from a talk given in 2004 by Danah Boyd. In it, she frames a relationship between the social networks of that time – Friendster, Orkut, Tribe – and the social stuntedness, perhaps even disorders, of the people who create them. Basically, it proposes that these networks are built the way that they are because ordering social interaction is the only way the creators of such can have it.

This is one of the things that struck me about the film The Social Network. Even if one assumes it was largely fictionalized, it was clear in many instances that the filmmakers went out of their way to point out Mark Zuckerburg’s likely Asperger’s Syndrome. For instance, his cringing and look of sheer terror when Sean Parker goes to give him a celebratory hug. Also, his extremely singleminded, programatic, and ordered approach to acceptance in social clubs. His motivation not for friendship but as a means to a specific end.

I think there is something to this for sure. I think the general approach towards most social networks not understanding the very case by case specific and nuanced approach most of us have towards privacy in our daily life is a key indicator. It’s an idea that has been resonating with me for days since it was presented to me by my friend Garrick. It’s also something that will be at the forefront of my having online interactions going forward.