Graham Chastney

It’s not often that I write blog posts while I’m mobile. If I’m going to write anything I’ll normally twitter. But there are times when a thought comes to me that is more than a tweet and is worth writing there and then rather than waiting until I am home.
It’s not always a good thing to be too immediate about things, but there is a time and place for it. It’s at those times that I turn to Wordpress for Blackberry, and to prove the point I’m using it right now.
If I got more comments I’d probably also use it for keeping up to speed with the stream.
We have only just started the mobile revolution even. We’ve been working at it for some time now. In years to come we will do things while we are mobile that we can only imagine today. The devices that we have today are going to change radically as the computing power, storage and connectivity capabilities accelerate.
Writing a few words into a simple app might not be that radical, but it’s a signpost of the things that are to come.

Whatever we are looking at, whether we are near to it, or a long way away from it, we have a perspective on it. We can’t see the back of it, we might not even be able to see the side of it. We are limited to our perspective.

The same issue of perspective can also apply to our attitudes and ideas.

I know of people who write off an application or web site after only a few minutes of looking at it. I know other people who regard everything from a particular company as being the best at whatever it is that the product is doing. I myself would prefer never to see a product from certain companies ever again.

Each one of these opinions is formed from a perspective built up from an experience.

Whether this perspective is a good one, or not, is difficult to assess, particularly by ourselves. We can’t see what we can’t see.

Some of these perspectives are formed from our irrationality. Even when we know something that would change our perspective we don’t.

Standing at the bottom of a cliff our perspective towards the cliff could be completely different. We could see it as an adventure to overcome, we could also see it as a dangerous place to move quickly away from.

In many work situations we try to gain the perspective of others, but often we choose people who will reinforce our perspective to review our understanding. We need to do a better job of valuing diverse views and opinions.

Sometimes perspectives are called “experience” because they’ve been held for some time. But often this type of perspective isn’t built from experience at all, it’s built from an experience.

We use statistics to support our perspectives and reinforce the words of Einstein: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Spend any time at all looking at the statistics that surround the issue of global warming and you will find people who people who’s perspective, no matter what it is, is supported by one statistic or another.

When I am reversing my car into a tight parking spot my perspective is very limited. Sometimes someone will off to show me the way in. These people don’t sit next to me an use the same perspective that I have, they stand outside the car to give the situation another perspective.

Many of the words innovations have happened by someone taking what already existed and seeing it in a different perspective. One example is this video from Ikea:

I quite like this quote, it seems to sum up what I’m trying to say:

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

There’s lots of power in connecting with the field of vision of someone else.

Some of you who read this blog know my quite well, others of you who only read about me here are starting to know me.

So I thought I’d ask the question.

What would you like me to write about?

Not sure why I’ve never though to ask before.

I’m writing this post sitting on a full train using a Blackberry while reading an article that states "within the next few years as many as 20 million people will be choosing to work one or more days a week in third-place facilities – that is, public or private spaces built specifically for the temporary or semi-temporary business purposes of companies and individuals".

And I’ve spent most of today in a meeting in a hotel lobby…it’s a changing world of work.

Having written about the things that I could waste my time doing I really liked this visualisation of Digital Distraction.

The other day I was listening to a radio programme about book binding (no, I’m not sure why I was listening, if that’s what you are thinking). This programme talked about the elaborate process that the ancient book-binders used to go through to create what would become a work of art. One particular book that was mentioned took 2 years to bind – not to create, to bind.

On returning from holidays we wanted an physical album of photographs to show people; it’s still a much better way of interacting with the images in many situations.

What did I do?

• Downloaded the photographs from my camera.
• Sorted through them for the ones I wanted to put in the album.
• Downloaded some code from a web site where I was going to get the photos printed.
• Started the code and imported the photos.
• Looked a the book that it created automatically and made a few changes.
• Sent the book for printing.
• 3 days later (because of the weekend) my photo album had arrived.

The album looks wonderfully professional and cost me less than the price of a new shirt and only about twice the price of a paperback at the local book store.

I’m not suggesting that my photograph album compares with ancient book binding – but the change in the process of creating a book is incredible. What’s more I undertook this transaction using commodity technology and a service from a budget supermarket. It’s not specialised, it’s not “out there”, it’s normal life.

Sometimes it’s good to remember how far we have come.

Discipline is such a key issue for productive work especially when there are so many distractions around. Let me give you my ultimate time wasting recipe:

1. Check your corporate email for unread items.
2. Read the first two emails by which time you should be bored
3. Wonder what is happening on Twitter.
4. Browse through the fresh set of updated. It is essential that you are following enough people to guarantee a fresh crop of tweets every time you look. This is easily done by following a number of news accounts.
5. Once bored of tweets skip over to your RSS reader to see if there are any updates. Like twitter it is vital to be following a whole stack of feeds. The syndicated and group blogs are the best for guaranteeing updates on every visit, LifeHacker and BetaNews are good examples.
6. Read posts until bored. The key is to never get to the end of your unread list ensuring that return visits result in further reading.
7. Continuing the blog theme jump over to your Wordpress Dashboard. This is the first of many information sources that you are convinced give you important information each time you visit.
8. From your Wordpress dashboard take particular interest in one or maybe two vital statistics justifying your next stop – Google Analytics.
9. Google Analytics will highlight some interesting searches that have reached your site – it always does. Justify to yourself a quick trip to Google Webmaster Tools for further information.
10. If there is any danger of you getting to the end of the statistics before you have successfully wasted enough of your valuable time you can also skip through the Bing Webmaster Tools and the Yahoo Webmaster tools. Three search tools are normally enough, but if you want to waste even more time other search engines are available.
11. Your next stop is your personal email – again, read a few posts but never get to the end of the unread items available.
12. Hopefully your personal email will highlight some justification for going to Facebook, but if it doesn’t just go there anyway. Don’t waste your time on applications or silly games – that would be a real waste of time. Spend time reading status updates and looking at photos of people you have never met.
13. It’s time now to graze through some of the corporate tools that you have available. Portals and dashboards provide more information than you could possible consume. This can soon be justified as work even when you are only mooching around. Justifiable time wasting is the best form.
14. The next activity that is vital to your time wasting credibility is your ability to browse around new sites. The BBC is particularly good for this there are endless possibilities in news and Sport.

If you are in danger of having to do some real work, by getting to the end of the list, you can, at any point, return to the top of the list.

If you have followed the guidelines correctly there should always be something to do.

Also, remember that you can carry on these same distractions when away from the office by use of a SmartPhone or other such device. Location should not be an inhibitor.

Following this recipe should ensure that you always look busy and avoid unnecessary activities that may result in something being produced. Alternatively, you could just redefine these activities as work and then you will have completed everything there is to complete.

Working through this kind of distraction reaction process is what I’m sure many people do and will do, but it isn’t good for you, or for your brain. Being able to cope with the lure of these attention giving sirens will be a defining feature of the future workforce.

I hear a lot of people complaining about the amount of time it takes them to start their device and get working. I hear this complaint a lot more often than complaints about slow applications. I’m sure that people have both problems – but they complain about one, massively, above the other.

Slow logon is an issue that is certainly very visible to people, but I wonder how much impact on someone’s days to day productivity it really has. So I’ve done some analysis comparing the impact of slow logon with the potential impact of slow applications.

It can be seen from these numbers that a 15 minute interruption for logon would be roughly equivalent to me of my applications going 4% slower.

Given the choice of slow logon or slow applications which would I choose?

I would choose slow logon over slow applications every time. Why? Because it has a lesser impact on my productivity but also I’d rather have a single 20 minute interruption at the beginning of the day.

Also, I’m not necessarily comparing apples with apples here. The numbers for application usage are times when I am really working on a computer. The numbers for slow logon are times when I might have been working, but equally, I might have been getting myself a coffee, or talking to a colleague.

Obviously, I’d rather not have either!

So how did I get to these numbers?

The logon numbers are based on the amount of non-productive time I’d have, assuming that I logon 6 times in the working week and I’m not doing any work for the duration of the logon time.

The application numbers are based on the amount of time that I have used my applications since the beginning of the year according to Wakoopa.

For all of this I’ve assumed that I work an 8 hour day, which isn’t true, but it’s near enough and doesn’t change the ratios only the absolute numbers. hence there is quite a close alignment of the application impact on overall productivity.

(Update: I noticed a mistake in my numbers so I’ve changed it a little)

Sometimes I read a story and wonder whether there is really any hope for us.

A spoof website offering computer users a tan through their screens has received nearly two million visits in just a few months.

Computertan.com was launched by charity Skcin in a bid to raise awareness of the danger of ultraviolet rays.

Its new infomercial, designed by advertising agency McCann Erikson, promises viewers a tan from the safety of their desk and offers a free trial of the "tantastic experience".

The slick production even runs a fake calibration tool to set up the gadget. But images of UV bars on the screen soon fade to reveal the message: "Don’t be fooled. UV exposure can kill".

Viewers are then met with graphic pictures of damage done by ultraviolet rays.

From MSN

That’s right 2 MILLION people believed that their computer screen could give them a tan, and what’s more, they thought that it was a good idea?

The whole thing is wrong on so many levels that I don’t quite know where to begin – so I’m not going to bother even trying.

I’ve just sat down for tea (dinner if you are in the south of England or some other countries) with the family.

The topic of discussion this even was a story about a friend of my daughter who had been told off in school by here teacher.

What for I heard you asking?

For putting on here Facebook status: “I hate [the teacher]"

I’m sure that this little story is being played out with different characters and different technology all over the world but the essence is the same.

It’s a changing society in which we are all going to have to learn new skills and take different precautions.

It never would have happened in my day.

Over recent years I’ve noticed a significant shift in my attention span. I’d like it to be getting longer but unfortunately it’s getting shorter.

There may be a reason for this; we recently discovered that the central heating boiler in our house had been incorrectly fitted and was doing its best to poison us all.

But I’m not sure it’s that simple.

I wonder whether it’s also a problem with the number of distractions that I now have available to me.

This week I decided to do something about the distractions.

One of the main distractions is my phone, it always seems to ring at the most inopportune times. This week I made a decision (please don’t tell anyone), I put my phone onto silent and waited to see what would happen.

I’ve written and read more in the last few days that I have for weeks.

I haven’t missed a single really important phone call – and there have been some.