Category: Personal

David Allen: "It's really cools stuff, but there's as much frustration with it now…"

In this short video from Bloomberg Dave Allen talks about technology and productivity.

Bamburgh SunsetI know a number of people who blame technology for all sorts of problems, but Dave Allen has a different take:

The medium itself is neither good nor bad – it’s neutral.

It’s a message that many of us need to hear, to a certain extent, it’s not email that’s the problem, it’s how we use it. I say ‘to a certain extent’ because my own view is that email, as an example, is only neutral in the same way that alcohol is neutral. That might sound like quite a strong comparison to make, but the parallels that I am trying to draw out are these. Alcohol might be neutral until used, but it’s effect on people, once used, differs dramatically, and people aren’t always in control of their response.  The same is true with email, and other technology media. Also, like alcohol, the effects aren’t always immediately evident and for the technology media we are a long way from understanding all of the impacts.

We need to do a much better job of helping people to understand what the impacts of their actions are when they use email, for instance, and to use it far more responsibly.

Things are changing and Dave Allen highlights this in the interview:

It’s all really cools stuff but there’s as much frustrations with it now as there is "wow this is neat".

The GTD methods that Dave Allen teaches, and other similar methodologies, are becoming very important.

The other day I read an interesting article when someone was paralleling the emerging Productivity Industry with the Diet Industry. It’s a similar parallel. (Annoyingly, for some reason, I didn’t bookmark it and now can’t find it.)

http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?height=360&embedCode=91dmJqMzoH5fkdyt241J-lK2Kn_amZaL&deepLinkEmbedCode=91dmJqMzoH5fkdyt241J-lK2Kn_amZaL&width=560

Blessings #179 – Following a trusted guide

This last weekend Sue and I decided to make the most of some spare time and to go away for a night. We decided upon York which is a city that we love, but it also gave us the opportunity to visit my parents for dinner and to look at some work they’ve been doing at their house.

IMG_9132While we were in York it started to snow, but nothing too dramatic.

By the time we had finished dinner it was dark and the snow had continued to fall.

It’s not far from my parents to the M62 motorway and we decided that while it may take us a while to get home that we’d be fine to travel.

So we set off.

It was slow going, but we never felt that we were doing anything too dangerous. Eventually we joined the motorway and the road, while impacted by the snow, still felt like a safe place to be.

Steadily we moved down the road, the snow continued to fall and we were becoming more remote.

As time passed we found ourselves in deeper snow, so deep that we could no longer tell where the edges of the motorway were – on either side. We had travelled beyond the street lights and were in utter darkness. The tracks that we were following became fainter and the snow became thicker. The snow continued to fall and the windscreen wipers became frozen. There was no one visible in front and no one visible behind. We were on our own.

It no longer felt like a safe place to be.

We wondered how long we would be travelling like this. We already knew that there wasn’t any snow back at home, but there was more than 120 miles between us and home. Having phoned a friend to see what information was available we concluded that things were confused.

It now felt like a very uncomfortable place to be.

Although neither of us said it but we could both tell that we weren’t happy.

IMG_9142After a while we concluded that it was time to turn around, go the other way and spend the night at my parents.

Having made the decision we spent anxious minutes waiting for the next junction to come into view, limited as the view was.

It felt like a long time before the next junction and it wasn’t easy making our way up the slip road and back onto the other side of the motorway. We still couldn’t see the edge of the road so had no idea where the slip road started. We made a short stop to clear as much of the snow from the windscreen as possible.

We were still on our own in the darkness. The road was a bit clearer on this side but we were still travelling on and through a lot of snow.

After what seemed like a very long time we saw some lights in the distance which turned out to be a queue of cars. As we caught up with them it felt good to be with others in the journey. We’d found some other people in the same predicament as ourselves, but that wasn’t the end of our worries we still had a long way to go.

Cars passed us trying to get to the front of the queue, covering the car with snow as they did. It was then that we saw something that made us even more relieved. As these cars went dangerously zipping down the queue some blue lights came on at the head of the convoy. We were being lead by a police car. If anyone knew there way down this road then a police car would.

Knowing that there was a police car at the front of the queue changed our outlook on the situation we were in.

We had a guide we could trust.

IMG_9141He quoted a proverb: "’Can a blind man guide a blind man?’ Wouldn’t they both end up in the ditch? An apprentice doesn’t lecture the master. The point is to be careful who you follow as your teacher."

Matthew 6:39-40

Even with a good guide it took us a long time to get back to the streetlights and eventually to my parents.

We followed the queue all the way to the end of the motorway and made our way back to my parents house. We spent the night there and made our way back the next day.

Blessings #178 – Getting one of ‘those’ jobs done

As I walk into the kitchen something looks different. Something is unfamiliar.

It takes me a second to realise what it is.

There is now a white fridge door where a cupboard door used to be.

Another PlaceWe are the first and only people to live in our house. It wasn’t built when we bought it and it came with a built in kitchen. Along with the kitchen came a built-in fridge.

Apart from it’s ability to keep things cool this built-in fridge has always been something of a disappointment. It has a freezer box at the top of it that kept freezing up so we didn’t use it. That left a couple of shelves that you couldn’t see to the back of and a box bit at the bottom which was supposed to have a salad box in it, but that proved useless so we didn’t use it.

For years now it has been my intention to take out the built-in fridge and replace it with one of more practical use, but for some reason I never got around to it.

Part of the reason was a fear of what I might find. Other jobs I’ve undertaken in the kitchen have consistently turned into something bigger than planned.

And I never got around to doing something about it.

It hung there as a job that needed doing, but never got done.

Every time I couldn’t find something in the fridge I would wonder why I hadn’t got rid.

We even went to look at new fridges. You’d think it was an easy job to find a fridge to go in the standard sized 600mm wide gap that a kitchen cupboard leaves, but it’s not that easy at all. We did find one we liked, but it was expensive.

And the job remained as something that needed doing.

Every time I found something way out of date at the back of the fridge, that we’d forgotten about because we couldn’t see it, I would wonder why I hadn’t replaced.

We’ve lived in this house for 11 years now.

Then about 10 days ago I decided that enough was enough, it was time for a transformation. I searched around the internet for a deal on the fridge that we really wanted and I bought it.

(I was still worried about what I might find when I took the old fridge out so made sure that I could return the new one for free)

The new fridge arrived last Friday. Before doing anything I searched around to find the installation instructions for the old fridge and found them.

On Saturday I started to remove the old fridge.

Within an hour the old fridge was out and the new fridge was installed. AFTER 11 YEARS -AN HOUR!!!

The new fridge is fabulous. We can store things sensibly in it. It hasn’t got a redundant freezer box so has more room at the top. It’s got a new style of design so has shelves all the way to the bottom. The shelves are more like drawers and pull out all the way so there is no back for things to get lost in.

If I’m honest I’m quite excited about this fridge. When I go to get the milk out of it in the morning it’s a pleasure to be able to pull out the drawer at the bottom and pick up the milk.

A job well done.

Why did I put this off for so long I ask myself?

Why?

I have some reasons, but none of them very good ones.

As I look around my life there a number of jobs like this one, some of them practical, some of them a bit more personal. They’re sitting, waiting for me to do something with them.

I suspect that you are the same?

Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!

Proverbs 14:23

(For those of you that care about these things it’s a Bosch Logixx fridge)

My Tools: CrashPlan

Like many families the Chastney’s are producing data at a formidable rate. I have a son who edits music and a daughter who is into photography, add to that a reasonably sized music collection, my photographs and a bucket load of other documents and there’s over 150GB of important stuff. (Did I tell you about the days when we used to argue about people wanting 20MB hard disks (yes I did mean Mega Bytes)).

RydalThat’s where CrashPlan comes in by creating a safe remote continuous backup.

Getting all of this data copied to a location away from the house has always been an aim for a number of reasons. The main reason being that there are so many situations where a backup solution in the house wouldn’t be sufficient to protect it – fire, flood, etc.. There’s also the added advantage of being able to access data that you haven’t taken with you if you need to. CrashPlan Central provides a remote backup location that is always there to write to and to read from.

Another great thing about CrashPlan is that it doesn’t matter where the devices are. My son is at university and living away from home during term time. Because he has internet access all of his work is still backed-up and protected whether he’s at home or at university.

The CrashPlan agent runs all of the time on all of the devices and is continuously backing up the data. This means that we don’t really think about it making a backup it just happens.

We’ve had need to recover some files too and that works a treat also.

There are a number of other features of CrashPlan that are really good, but I don’t really use them.

The pricing is pretty good to. I use the CrashPlan+ Unlimited Family which covers the household for a few pounds a month.

Turn off your smart-phone: Reduce stress

I’ve believed for some time that many of us are causing ourselves harm by the way we are constantly connected, and also constantly working.

RydalA new report by The British Psychological Society says that we need to be turning off our smart phones to reduce our stress:

The study established the existence of a helpful-stressful cycle; it found that a device is typically acquired to help an individual manage their work load. However, once the individual starts to use their smart phone the work load management benefits are displaced by the pressure to keep abreast with their new expanded virtual social life. The more an individual becomes stressed and worried the more compulsive behaviours such as checking will occur.

Richard Balding advises organisations to consider this problem seriously:

“Smart phone use is increasing at a rapid rate and we are likely to see an associated increase in stress from social networking. Organisations will not flourish if their employees are stressed, irrespective of the source of stress, so it is in their interest to encourage their employees to switch their phones off; cut the number of work emails sent out of hours, reduce people’s temptation to check their devices.”

Back in 2009 I wrote about My New Fear of Working from Home which highlighted a similar cycle.

My smartish-phone is set to turn itself off in the evening and I try my best to leave it that way.

Via Lifehacker

My Tools: Evernote

The simplest way to describe Evernote is to call it a note taking and organisation tool, but that’s selling it a bit short.

Brockholes SunsetNote taking and collecting is incredibly important to the job that I do, and if that was all it did it would still  be very important.

I used to carry around all sorts of piles of paper. These comprised things I was reading, things I should be reading, thoughts, scribbles, diagrams, etc.. I still carry around a moleskin notepad which I use for taking notes in meetings, but for all of the other notes there’s Evernote.

My job involves me working with all sorts of pieces of information. Sometimes I need to read it, at other times I just need to know where it is for future reference. All of it goes into Evernote where it’s classified and organised.

One of the great things about Evernote is that it has been built from the ground as an internet application. It has client applications for all sorts of platforms, but these all replicate information with the central service.

I’ve also introduced it to my son who is studying at University and it works well for him too, quite frankly I’m a bit surprised that it isn’t promoted more by educational establishments

I’m not going to say much more because I really need to write a post about the ways that I process information and the way in which I use a number of different tools to collect, filter and organise. Evernote is a big part of that, but it’s only part of the journey.

Blessings #177 – Rediscovering lost music

Tonight I’ve been doing some voluntary ‘design’ work for church and I was looking for some music to accompany it. Borrowdale Boxing DayI wanted some instrumental background music to help my concentration so started up Spotify and picked a radio station.

After a little while I heard some music that I haven’t heard for what must be nearly 20 years.

I used to have it on cassette tape, that’s how old it was. The tape got played over and over when I was ay Polytechnic and trying to study.

It was played so often that it just wore out.

Hearing those notes reminded me of a little red JVC portable cassette player that I used to play it on when I wanted to focus in on myself. imageIt was the red one in the picture:

The particular music is a stripped back instrumental piece with a guitar and very minimal strings accompaniment.

The melody brought back all sorts of memories of early married life when Sue and I lived in a rented bungalow. We had time to sit and to listen and to be together.

It revived memories of pray times when I felt the presence of God in a way that I can neither explain nor describe.

The rhythms of those days rang down the years straight back into my mind and my spirit.

It’s left me with a bit of a dilemma though. Now that I’ve remembered it and know what it’s called should I purchase it and return it to my music collection? Or should I leave it as a memory, a reminder that I may one day again rediscover?

We can’t live in the past and yet the past is so much of who we are.

A friend recently quoted someone else on twitter saying:

The Bible describes salvation in three tenses: past, present, future. To ignore anyone of these tenses will skew our view of salvation.

How true.

(The music was from an album by John Michael Talbot called The Quiet)

Dilbert on Abstraction

I think I’ve been involved in a few of these conversations:

Quite fancy the idea of being weightless, but unfortunately that part has never happened to me, I’ve felt like it a few times though Smile.

Blessings #176 – Hovis Digestives

One of the most popular posts on this blog is one about McVItie’s Chocolate Digestive. I want to be clear though, it’s not the only digestive in my life. McVitie’s Digestives, and McVitie’s Chocolate Digestives specifically, are only good as sweet biscuits. When it comes to a biscuit to accompany a piece of well matured cheese then the king of biscuits is the Hovis Digestive.

Assending GrassmoorI want to make this point clear because there seems to be a bit of confusion for the owners of supermarkets when it comes to the placing of the Hovis Digestive biscuit. There is only one place to put the Hovis Digestive and that is with the cheese biscuits, that is its rightful home. And not on some lowly shelf hidden away but on the middle shelf at eye level where it can be seen and found by all.

What I would like to know though, is what is going on with the supply of this most delightful of cheese biscuits. They are really hard to get hold of. I’ve asked in a few places and they always give the same answer – "we can’t get hold of them either".

imageThere’s something about the combination of the more angular Hovis Digestive with a good mature English Cheddar or French Camembert that is just perfection. You might have your own choice of favourite cheese but I’m yet to find someone who would disagree that the perfect accompaniment is a Hovis Digestive. I’m also yet to find someone who eats them plain.

There’s something about the Hovis Digestive that means that is needs the company of another to make it truly sing. Perhaps that’s why I like them so much, because that’s precisely what I am like. I’m not much good on my own, I need others to bounce off, to inspire me, to draw me out of myself. The Hovis Digestive needs to be in community with others and so do we.

Time to use the off button

The most powerful feature on you device of choice is the one that turns it off.

We need to use it more often than we do.

Anyway, I’ll see you later, I’m off now for dinner with the family.

Blessings #175 – Reading the Christmas Cards

Before Christmas we are normally quite busy so we don’t all get a chance to read all of the Christmas cards before they get put on the doors as decoration for the period. It’s become a bit of a tradition to sit down and read through the cards after we have taken them down.

Tarn HowesIt was lovely to read through the kind comments from friends near and friends far.

It was a special thing to take note of who had taken the time to send cards.

I really enjoyed reflecting on them all and it reminded me of an early blessing when I talked about a study done with people over the age of 95. They we asked what they would do differently if they had their life to live over again. Their answers were:

  • They would risk more.
  • They would reflect more.
  • They would do more things that would live on after they were dead.

I keep reminding myself in the busy days to reflect more.

Looking for life's ctrl+z: Dealing with regret

One of the most popular blogs of last year was one entitled Email is broken (and my embarrassment). The embarrassment that I outlined was a (in my eyes) a monumentally stupid use of reply-to-all.

It was a regret that lived with me for days, and still makes me feel embarrassment when someone reminds me of it. I wished, at that point, that I had an undo or ctrl+z for time.

Kathryn Schulz talks about regret in her TED talk from last year. She doesn’t tell us to simply get over it, she has a much more interesting take on why regret is a good thing.

Kathryn Schulz: Don’t regret regret