Sunday night, Cescalouise's iPhone mysteriously went dark. She had a lot going on Monday, so I gave her my phone to use, then I headed down to NYC for the day and following night. So I’ve been away from home for the last day and a half with no phone. Not a huge deal, obviously, but also a pretty big departure from normal. What’s interesting is what I’ve missed and what I haven’t missed. Of course, I miss being able to communicate with people from wherever I am — but to be honest I don’t think that’s the thing I miss most. The biggest thing I miss is the ability to jot down a thought on the fly. I use Wunderlist and Fetchnotes on a pretty regular basis to capture the passing thought or to-do. It’s an important part of how I keep my slow hunch going. What I don’t miss is constantly surfing the top of my inbox. I use android desktop widgets and keep both of my main inboxes on one of my home screens. Having them there is convenient, and helps me be responsive to email, but it’s bad for focus. I will probably delete those when I get my phone back. Walking around NYC and riding the subway, my head has been up and I’ve noticed more things (but of course haven’t been able to capture / share them :-) And of course I notice how many people have their faces in their phones all the time (probably 75% of those of us waiting for the Amtrak in Boston). All in all, I’m glad to have taken two days off with no phone. Feels a bit like a cleanse. I’ll probably do it again.
I love Google Reader. I’ve used it for a long long time now to keep tabs on things. I suppose it’s an old school method at this point, but I think it’s just great. The screengrab above is one of my home screens on my galaxy s3. I have moved to a widgets-only mobile desktop, which has become one of my favorite things about the switch from iPhone to Android. Perhaps my favorite part is the way you can “set it and forget it”. When I come across an interesting blog, I save it to one of my reader folder, and then at some point later I get the happy surprise of finding a post from that blog in my feed. Just the other day I figured out how to make reader feeds public. So here are the ones that I use the most:
Geek Crush - I’ve been adding to this list for years, and it now has ~100 smart tech folk in it: hackers, thinkers, founders, VCs, etc.
Net Policy - started earlier this year and now following ~50 people and orgs in the tech policy space. Pretty great source of news and commentary if you’re into that sort of thing.
I always spend a lot of time around the turn of the new year thinking about self-improvement. This year is no different. Last summer, at a charity fundraiser for a friend, I bought several sessions of personal coaching. Throughout the fall, I’ve been working with my coach, Lisa Lahey, using her methodology called “immunity to change.” The basic idea is that, given an articulated personal goal you are trying to meet, you may also have a series of “hidden goals” that you don’t realize you’re working towards — and these hidden goals may be in conflict with your positive goals. The resistance inherent in this conflict is our immunity to change. So, the trick is to identify these hidden goals, then further identify what big assumptions (about yourself or your life) are behind those hidden goals, and then do a series of experiments to test those assumptions. Ideally to ultimately prove yourself wrong about the assumptions and vanquish the hidden, constraining goals. For me, the big goal is to close more loops. One of my worst tendencies is to leave things 80% done (just ask
Sunday night, Cescalouise's iPhone mysteriously went dark. She had a lot going on Monday, so I gave her my phone to use, then I headed down to NYC for the day and following night. So I’ve been away from home for the last day and a half with no phone. Not a huge deal, obviously, but also a pretty big departure from normal. What’s interesting is what I’ve missed and what I haven’t missed. Of course, I miss being able to communicate with people from wherever I am — but to be honest I don’t think that’s the thing I miss most. The biggest thing I miss is the ability to jot down a thought on the fly. I use Wunderlist and Fetchnotes on a pretty regular basis to capture the passing thought or to-do. It’s an important part of how I keep my slow hunch going. What I don’t miss is constantly surfing the top of my inbox. I use android desktop widgets and keep both of my main inboxes on one of my home screens. Having them there is convenient, and helps me be responsive to email, but it’s bad for focus. I will probably delete those when I get my phone back. Walking around NYC and riding the subway, my head has been up and I’ve noticed more things (but of course haven’t been able to capture / share them :-) And of course I notice how many people have their faces in their phones all the time (probably 75% of those of us waiting for the Amtrak in Boston). All in all, I’m glad to have taken two days off with no phone. Feels a bit like a cleanse. I’ll probably do it again.
I love Google Reader. I’ve used it for a long long time now to keep tabs on things. I suppose it’s an old school method at this point, but I think it’s just great. The screengrab above is one of my home screens on my galaxy s3. I have moved to a widgets-only mobile desktop, which has become one of my favorite things about the switch from iPhone to Android. Perhaps my favorite part is the way you can “set it and forget it”. When I come across an interesting blog, I save it to one of my reader folder, and then at some point later I get the happy surprise of finding a post from that blog in my feed. Just the other day I figured out how to make reader feeds public. So here are the ones that I use the most:
Geek Crush - I’ve been adding to this list for years, and it now has ~100 smart tech folk in it: hackers, thinkers, founders, VCs, etc.
Net Policy - started earlier this year and now following ~50 people and orgs in the tech policy space. Pretty great source of news and commentary if you’re into that sort of thing.
I always spend a lot of time around the turn of the new year thinking about self-improvement. This year is no different. Last summer, at a charity fundraiser for a friend, I bought several sessions of personal coaching. Throughout the fall, I’ve been working with my coach, Lisa Lahey, using her methodology called “immunity to change.” The basic idea is that, given an articulated personal goal you are trying to meet, you may also have a series of “hidden goals” that you don’t realize you’re working towards — and these hidden goals may be in conflict with your positive goals. The resistance inherent in this conflict is our immunity to change. So, the trick is to identify these hidden goals, then further identify what big assumptions (about yourself or your life) are behind those hidden goals, and then do a series of experiments to test those assumptions. Ideally to ultimately prove yourself wrong about the assumptions and vanquish the hidden, constraining goals. For me, the big goal is to close more loops. One of my worst tendencies is to leave things 80% done (just ask
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
Peer Economy
- this one is brand new and far from complete, but I’m working on it. 15 or so blogs following the peer economy space. What’s that, you ask? Here’s a hackpad
about my home improvement projects). A big part of my job is to keep momentum going — to close loops and keep energy moving through whatever projects I’m working on. I can’t become a bottleneck or a place where ideas stagnate and lose energy. One of my hidden, competing goals is that I’m an
. I tend to procrastinate — ruminating on the size and severity of whatever I’m procrastinating from — until pressures build to such an extent that I am forced to power through in a burst of goal-line adrenaline. I “get high” from powering through work on a deadline — and I feel the need to get high by a (presumably false) assumption that my stack of work is overwhelming and super human effort is required to get through it. Unfortunately for me (according to the immunity to change framework), this pattern has been working for me — so the bad behavior is reinforced by a track record of getting things done despite myself.
This is bad for several reasons. Most importantly: it burns energy needlessly (worrying about things rather than actually doing them), and it reduces collaborative leverage (the more out in front you are on something, the better chance to get external engagement).
So here’s what I’ve been doing to combat my immunity to change: I am consciously shifting my thinking from “big to dos” (i.e., large items on my to do list which are scary and incite procrastination) to “moving the ball forward”. Given any project on my plate, the new approach is “Ok, I’ll spend an hour and get as much done on {project X} as I can”, rather than “oh man, I really need to {item x}”. Seems like a simple thing, but it actually has been surprisingly powerful. Yesterday I cut my whole day into hour-long blocks, where I moved the ball forward on each of my big projects for an hour. It worked. Items that might have otherwise triggered stress and procrastination dissolve into “getting things done for an hour”. Moving the ball forward for an hour is progress, no matter how you cut it. In addition to (and perhaps more importantly than) reducing the “looming burden” of a large number of big independent tasks, taking this approach creates focus. And focus is perhaps the most powerful tool we have (and often the most elusive). This is just a start. We will see if it sticks. But I think it is useful and perhaps it can work for others as well.
Peer Economy
- this one is brand new and far from complete, but I’m working on it. 15 or so blogs following the peer economy space. What’s that, you ask? Here’s a hackpad
about my home improvement projects). A big part of my job is to keep momentum going — to close loops and keep energy moving through whatever projects I’m working on. I can’t become a bottleneck or a place where ideas stagnate and lose energy. One of my hidden, competing goals is that I’m an
. I tend to procrastinate — ruminating on the size and severity of whatever I’m procrastinating from — until pressures build to such an extent that I am forced to power through in a burst of goal-line adrenaline. I “get high” from powering through work on a deadline — and I feel the need to get high by a (presumably false) assumption that my stack of work is overwhelming and super human effort is required to get through it. Unfortunately for me (according to the immunity to change framework), this pattern has been working for me — so the bad behavior is reinforced by a track record of getting things done despite myself.
This is bad for several reasons. Most importantly: it burns energy needlessly (worrying about things rather than actually doing them), and it reduces collaborative leverage (the more out in front you are on something, the better chance to get external engagement).
So here’s what I’ve been doing to combat my immunity to change: I am consciously shifting my thinking from “big to dos” (i.e., large items on my to do list which are scary and incite procrastination) to “moving the ball forward”. Given any project on my plate, the new approach is “Ok, I’ll spend an hour and get as much done on {project X} as I can”, rather than “oh man, I really need to {item x}”. Seems like a simple thing, but it actually has been surprisingly powerful. Yesterday I cut my whole day into hour-long blocks, where I moved the ball forward on each of my big projects for an hour. It worked. Items that might have otherwise triggered stress and procrastination dissolve into “getting things done for an hour”. Moving the ball forward for an hour is progress, no matter how you cut it. In addition to (and perhaps more importantly than) reducing the “looming burden” of a large number of big independent tasks, taking this approach creates focus. And focus is perhaps the most powerful tool we have (and often the most elusive). This is just a start. We will see if it sticks. But I think it is useful and perhaps it can work for others as well.
