I’m writing this from the DC metro, which I love. Getting from the airport to downtown dc is one of the great joys of traveling. I can’t think of a single airport that is as conveniently connected to a major city by mass transit.
But the point of this post is not to talk about subways — but rather to mention something I heard the other day.
Cescalouise and I were watching a documentary called Life After Porn, which was great. It followed porn stars from the 70s 80s and 90s to see where they ended up and how.
One of the patterns was the social shunning that happens once you enter the porn industry. Not surprising, but ironic, as one person said: you bring everyone pleasure and then they want to pretend that you don’t exist.
And one of the results of that was that people can become very isolated and/or trapped within the industry community.
A historian covering the topic put it this way: happiness is the result of meaningful social connections. (And when those are systematically cut off, and people further isolate themselves, negative situations compound themselves).
This is not necessarily a huge revelation, but still, it stood out to me.
As I wrote about last week, social connections are now earned as much as they’re inherited. They are a garden that you get to tend and grow. And a great joy comes from the result of that growth.
I personally get a ton of pleasure from getting to know the people around me (at my sandwich shop, my barber, the bank, etc). But I wasn’t always good at it (I was a really shy kid growing up in a big city), and its also so easy to get swept up in the business of your day to day to take your relationships for granted. Luckily I married someone for whom it comes super naturally, and who I’ve learned a lot from in this regard.
The article responds to the commonly-held idea that social media is removing human contact, and her point is that it’s actually just shifting it, and is likely net increasing it.
But the idea here that really stood out to me is that social connections are moving from “something to inherit” to “something to earn”:
In sum, social media is propelling transitions and disruptions in the composition of social networks. Increasingly, what used to be a given (social ties you inherited by the virtue of where you lived or your familial ties) is now a task (social ties based on shared interests and mutual interest). Surely, there will be new winners and losers.
I have, however, done a lot to smooth out my moment-to-moment work process, to help me do things more quickly & easily, and to help me avoid distractions where I can. I can only hope that I win more time using this stuff than I spent setting it up.
So if you’ll indulge this lifehacking moment, here’s my top 5 list of personal productivity tools / hacks:
1) Quicksilver — Quicksilver is a launcher for mac, which gives you a quick keyboard shortcut for jumping to any app. For example, if I press control-space (to open quicksilver), and then press “p”, it prompts me to open photoshop. It’s also awesome at remembering your choices and learning from them, so it always presents the thing you want as the first option. It can do way more than I use it for, but even for what I do (just opening apps), I use it hundreds of times a day and feel lost on a mac without it.
I’m writing this from the DC metro, which I love. Getting from the airport to downtown dc is one of the great joys of traveling. I can’t think of a single airport that is as conveniently connected to a major city by mass transit.
But the point of this post is not to talk about subways — but rather to mention something I heard the other day.
Cescalouise and I were watching a documentary called Life After Porn, which was great. It followed porn stars from the 70s 80s and 90s to see where they ended up and how.
One of the patterns was the social shunning that happens once you enter the porn industry. Not surprising, but ironic, as one person said: you bring everyone pleasure and then they want to pretend that you don’t exist.
And one of the results of that was that people can become very isolated and/or trapped within the industry community.
A historian covering the topic put it this way: happiness is the result of meaningful social connections. (And when those are systematically cut off, and people further isolate themselves, negative situations compound themselves).
This is not necessarily a huge revelation, but still, it stood out to me.
As I wrote about last week, social connections are now earned as much as they’re inherited. They are a garden that you get to tend and grow. And a great joy comes from the result of that growth.
I personally get a ton of pleasure from getting to know the people around me (at my sandwich shop, my barber, the bank, etc). But I wasn’t always good at it (I was a really shy kid growing up in a big city), and its also so easy to get swept up in the business of your day to day to take your relationships for granted. Luckily I married someone for whom it comes super naturally, and who I’ve learned a lot from in this regard.
The article responds to the commonly-held idea that social media is removing human contact, and her point is that it’s actually just shifting it, and is likely net increasing it.
But the idea here that really stood out to me is that social connections are moving from “something to inherit” to “something to earn”:
In sum, social media is propelling transitions and disruptions in the composition of social networks. Increasingly, what used to be a given (social ties you inherited by the virtue of where you lived or your familial ties) is now a task (social ties based on shared interests and mutual interest). Surely, there will be new winners and losers.
I have, however, done a lot to smooth out my moment-to-moment work process, to help me do things more quickly & easily, and to help me avoid distractions where I can. I can only hope that I win more time using this stuff than I spent setting it up.
So if you’ll indulge this lifehacking moment, here’s my top 5 list of personal productivity tools / hacks:
1) Quicksilver — Quicksilver is a launcher for mac, which gives you a quick keyboard shortcut for jumping to any app. For example, if I press control-space (to open quicksilver), and then press “p”, it prompts me to open photoshop. It’s also awesome at remembering your choices and learning from them, so it always presents the thing you want as the first option. It can do way more than I use it for, but even for what I do (just opening apps), I use it hundreds of times a day and feel lost on a mac without it.
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.
That is a pretty profound and inspiring statement.
Of course, the social connections you inherit will always be powerful (for better or worse). But the fact that we now have a vastly enhanced ability to earn and build our own social connections is a big deal, and a nice way of thinking about things.
— Jumpcut is a clipboard buffer for mac. In other words, a history for things you’ve copied. In practice that means I can copy multiple things in a row, without without about which one I need to paste first. Copy as much as you want, then press command-shift-option-V to cycle through the things you’ve copied and choose what to paste:
3) Quick Compose — this is something I’ve written about before — what I found was that often when I wanted to write an email, I would get distracted as I passed through my inbox on the way. What I wanted was a way to skip straight to the compose window. Luckily, this is possible using Quicksilver — I have a “Custom Trigger” set up, so that wherever I am, Command-Shift-M will pop open a new browser window with the gmail compose screen on it. I use this all day long.
4) Chrome search shortcuts — One of the lesser known features of Chrome (and I believe firefox, and maybe safari too) is the ability to customize your search engines. Of course, this means setting a default for regular web searches (I use DuckDuckGo), but you can also set up more specialized keyword-based searches. For example, if I go to the chrome bar, and type in “t nickgrossman”, it will take me to http://twitter.com/nickgrossman — because I’ve set up a custom twitter shortcut with the letter t. I also have one for Crunchbase, which I use all the time — so I type “c tumblr” to get a quick link to the Tumblr Crunchbase page. And the one I use the most is the Gmail Search extension, which lets me go directly to searching my email by entering “gs ” in my address bar. Similar to Quick-Compose, this keeps me out of my inbox when I don’t need to be there. To customize your search queries in chrome, control-click (or right-click on PC) the address bar, and choose “Edit Search Engines…” 5) Jing — I use Jing all day long to take and share screenshots. I hit command-shift-J and the Jing screenshot grabber pops up. You can then draw on the screenshots if you want, and also post them to share — either to Flickr, email, or FTP (which is what I use, posting them to my own web server) Bonus!) Bookmarklets and Chrome extensions. Everyone who works with me knows I love these. So much. I use them for everything, and have even recently learned how to make my own. My favorites are: post to tumblr, post to delicious, add to pocket, add to feedly, send with gmail (maybe my all-time favorite), and many many more (even a few top-secret ones). As I look through these, the obvious theme is “shortcuts”. Keyboard, chrome button, etc. I guess really like things that let me go straight to the thing I want to do. And maybe it drives me nuts when I can’t. I like the fact that the computers I use are hackable / open enough to make this stuff possible, though of course, that is changing.
That is a pretty profound and inspiring statement.
Of course, the social connections you inherit will always be powerful (for better or worse). But the fact that we now have a vastly enhanced ability to earn and build our own social connections is a big deal, and a nice way of thinking about things.
— Jumpcut is a clipboard buffer for mac. In other words, a history for things you’ve copied. In practice that means I can copy multiple things in a row, without without about which one I need to paste first. Copy as much as you want, then press command-shift-option-V to cycle through the things you’ve copied and choose what to paste:
3) Quick Compose — this is something I’ve written about before — what I found was that often when I wanted to write an email, I would get distracted as I passed through my inbox on the way. What I wanted was a way to skip straight to the compose window. Luckily, this is possible using Quicksilver — I have a “Custom Trigger” set up, so that wherever I am, Command-Shift-M will pop open a new browser window with the gmail compose screen on it. I use this all day long.
4) Chrome search shortcuts — One of the lesser known features of Chrome (and I believe firefox, and maybe safari too) is the ability to customize your search engines. Of course, this means setting a default for regular web searches (I use DuckDuckGo), but you can also set up more specialized keyword-based searches. For example, if I go to the chrome bar, and type in “t nickgrossman”, it will take me to http://twitter.com/nickgrossman — because I’ve set up a custom twitter shortcut with the letter t. I also have one for Crunchbase, which I use all the time — so I type “c tumblr” to get a quick link to the Tumblr Crunchbase page. And the one I use the most is the Gmail Search extension, which lets me go directly to searching my email by entering “gs ” in my address bar. Similar to Quick-Compose, this keeps me out of my inbox when I don’t need to be there. To customize your search queries in chrome, control-click (or right-click on PC) the address bar, and choose “Edit Search Engines…” 5) Jing — I use Jing all day long to take and share screenshots. I hit command-shift-J and the Jing screenshot grabber pops up. You can then draw on the screenshots if you want, and also post them to share — either to Flickr, email, or FTP (which is what I use, posting them to my own web server) Bonus!) Bookmarklets and Chrome extensions. Everyone who works with me knows I love these. So much. I use them for everything, and have even recently learned how to make my own. My favorites are: post to tumblr, post to delicious, add to pocket, add to feedly, send with gmail (maybe my all-time favorite), and many many more (even a few top-secret ones). As I look through these, the obvious theme is “shortcuts”. Keyboard, chrome button, etc. I guess really like things that let me go straight to the thing I want to do. And maybe it drives me nuts when I can’t. I like the fact that the computers I use are hackable / open enough to make this stuff possible, though of course, that is changing.
