dougbelshaw.com/blog

Welcome back!
Feel free to suggest topics for me to write about using the Suggestions? tab to the right or use Formspring to ask me random stuff. Check Doug's FAQ first!

I’m not Stephen Fry. Nor Ashton Kutcher.

What I mean is that I don’t have enough followers on Twitter for each of them to realise that I can’t keep up with them all. At the time of writing this post, I’ve 3,615 Twitter followers – 3,465 more than Dunbar’s number. In other words, people expect me to be able to remember my conversations with them when I can’t even remember who they are.

This is potentially embarrassing within the increasingly business-focused world I’m operating. I need a quick way to find out if I’ve spoken/tweeted/emailed/shared a doc with someone very quickly.

Enter Greplin. When I read about it on TechCrunch yesterday, it was a bit of a eureka moment:

It’s a personal search engine for all that data you keep locked away in the cloud. If you’ve used desktop search like spotlight, you’ll get Greplin right away. It’s like spotlight for your cloud data.

After you use it for the first time you’ll understand that you’ll never not use it again. And there are nice touches like showing real time results as you type. And Greplin only uses OAuth and other APIs for authorization, so they never see your third party site credentials.

I’ve signed up and added the services (GMail, Twitter, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Google Docs) that I want Greplin to index. If it’s as good as it look in the video below, I may just drop the $45/year required to ‘go Pro’ and unlock indexing of Evernote and email attachments…

In terms of user outcomes, this is awesome. It provides ‘just-in-time’ data to allow you to make decisions, have meaningful conversations, and (perhaps most importantly) prevent social awkwardness.

Posted: September 2nd, 2010
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Tags: data, Greplin, organization, Productivity, search, social networking, user outcomes
Comments: View Comments.

Last week I wrote a post entitled What’s this? which included the following diagram:

Answers from the comments:

• DEPTh
• A planned presentation
• Apple
• Nirvana
• A 21st century educator
• The future
• dougbelshaw.com/blog
• Trust
• Innovation

Good answers all.

My answer? The user experience. User outcomes*

Think about it.

It’s what designers, teachers, productivity gurus and technology enthusiasts all strive to improve. And it’s what Kathy Sierra used to blog about. I think it’s time to take up that mantle.

*Thanks to Neil Adam for the pointer!

Posted: August 27th, 2010
Categories: Education, Productivity, Technology, design
Tags: design, Education, Kathy Sierra, Productivity, Technology
Comments: View Comments.

A lot of people get stuck in the trap of trying to create something that is really innovative, something that doesn’t exist in the world today. But the truth is that an innovation that is really supercreative, that has resonance and power plus the ability to do extremely well in the marketplace, is already part of a clear set of products that already exists. In other words, they have a clear context, but there’s something novel about the way that an innovation is being thought about that really shifts the paradigm.

(DeVito, A. (2006) ‘Constantly Experiment’ in Winsor, J. (ed.) Spark: be more innovative through co-creation, p.162-3)

I’m reading the Spark at the moment, a book sent to me by Online MBA after ‘winning’ a competition (I commented on their blog). Spark is a great read with contributions from people who work at extremely innovative organisations such as Oakley, Nike and Herman Miller.

My belief that innovation thrives upon a bedrock of standardisation has been reinforced through the stories and experiences shared in the book. In other words, people have to have time freed up so they can kick ass. That comes through increased productivity, through streamlining – and to a great extent, automating – the mundane, the procedural and the administrative.

As a tangent, I’ve decided that the final version of #uppingyourgame is going to be subtitled ‘a personal guide to productivity’. Positive feedback from non-educators has convinced me that the ideas it contains are more widely applicable!

Posted: August 23rd, 2010
Categories: Productivity
Tags: book, innovation, Productivity, Spark
Comments: View Comments.

Tom Barrett and I have set up a collaborative Spotify playlist for ‘music to run to’. It’s called #runningtunes and is accessible here:

Please do contribute, no matter what music you’re into and feel free to use the image above on your own blog post/sidebar!

I’ve been using the playlist with Spotify Premium on my iPhone and putting it on random for my last few runs. Great stuff!

Posted: August 20th, 2010
Categories: Productivity
Tags: motivation, music, playlist, running, runningtunes, Spotify, That-thing-they-call-exercise, Tom Barrett
Comments: View Comments.

I’m currently sorting out Google Apps Education Edition for internal communication and collaboration at work. Things have changed a bit since I set it up at the Academy last year: there’s a new admin interface and (most importantly) Google Apps Marketplace, amongst other things.

Google Apps Marketplace allows third-parties to integrate their products and services – usually by single sign-on – with Google Apps. Some are paid-for, some free and all have separate terms and conditions to the core Google Apps offering.

I’ve been through all of the third-party products and services currently available (August 2010) and created a Google Doc of those that meet the following criteria:

1. Free (not just free trial)
2. Education or productivity-focused

The document (embedded below) is editable by anyone with the link. Please do have a look and make any additions/alterations if you can!

Posted: August 10th, 2010
Categories: Education, Productivity, Technology
Tags: collaboration, Education, Google Apps, marketplace, Productivity
Comments: View Comments.

Whilst looking for something entirely different, I came across this post on Lifehacker about advice given by Jerry Seinfeld to an aspiring comic:

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

I’ve realised that this is, in effect, what I’ve been doing with Joe’s Goals:

But now I’ve got a new ally. Lifehacker recommends the Don’t Break The Chain Google Chrome extension – complete with relevant judgements:

Priceless.

Posted: August 9th, 2010
Categories: Productivity
Tags: Extension, Google Chrome, Joe's Goals, Productivity, Seinfeld, system
Comments: View Comments.

I don’t like paying for software.

I don’t like using other people’s methods for doing stuff.

I don’t like storing files offline.

But I’ve made an exception. I’ve just bought Scrivener after using it for less than 24 hours. And that’s despite it having a 30 (non-consecutive) day trial. It’s going to revolutionise my writing of longer texts – like that Ed.D. thesis I’m almost half-way through…

So give it a try. But make sure you watch the introductory video first so you can do it some justice.

Posted: August 7th, 2010
Categories: Productivity, Technology
Tags: Ed.D., Productivity, Scrivener, Thesis, writing
Comments: View Comments.

This series, published on the first Monday each month, is aimed at personal improvement through the public sharing of goals and targets. In this post I look back at whether I achieved the last month’s goals and come up with some targets for the coming month.

Looking back…

There’s three core things I’m doing terribly with at the moment:

• Biting my nails – well I have done it for about 25 years…
• Losing weight – being away from home so much makes it difficult
• Writing my thesis – I’ve had so many other priorities on this month (although I have chapterized it now!)

My targets for last month were:

1. Go camping with my 3 year-old son, Ben, in our smaller tent.
2. Compose an e-book on Google Earth in preparation for Google Teacher Academy.
3. Comment on at least one blog per day (other than this one!)
4. Play golf with my Dad (who’s back from the UAE for the summer as of Friday)
5. Sort out benbelshaw.com, the domain I bought for my son, with some useful content.

How did I do?

1. Done! It rained more than I thought possible in one night, but we went (Beadnell Bay) and we enjoyed ourselves.
2. I decided against an e-book, but created a Google Earth for #GTAUK wiki and wrote an e-book called #onfire: ignite your productivity. I’m happy with that!
3. I’m certainly commenting on more blogs than I was. Perhaps not one per day, but the idea was to kickstart the habit again.
4. I played golf with my Dad and my father-in-law yesterday (technically the 1st of August…)
5. I’ve only added one thing to Ben’s website as it hasn’t been a high enough priority in the scheme of things!

Looking forward…

July was a busy month work-wise for me. I had several conferences to attend and a number of presentations to make. August, on the other hand, looks like it’s going to be a quiet month. Therefore I’m going to set myself one main target:

• Write 10,000 words of my Ed.D. thesis

If I don’t there’s no way I’m going to get it finished for my self-imposed deadline of 21 December 2010!

Posted: August 2nd, 2010
Categories: Productivity
Tags: dilbert, motivation, Productivity, Targets
Comments: View Comments.

I can think of three main ways that people influence other people into being more productive. Here’s two:

1. Emotions – appeal to fear, pride, happiness, etc.
2. Admiration – person B thinks person A rocks, therefore listening to and acting upon what they say

The third way is, however, the most important. It’s making other people think the idea you gave them was their own. This lends ownership and increases self-confidence.

Doing so can raise other people’s productivity levels significantly. Some methods:

• Email a link to a third party’s blog post/tweet/Facebook update.
• Lend a book.
• Suggest to a someone’s friend that they could do with hearing some advice.

In the film Inception, they have to travel to a third level of the subconscious to plant an idea to make it seem like the person’s own. In a similar way, to change behaviours and influence others, you often have to deflect attention away from yourself towards other things to give an idea some traction!

Posted: July 31st, 2010
Categories: Productivity
Tags: influence, Productivity
Comments: View Comments.

Feeling unproductive today? Why’s that?

About ten years ago I started getting migraines. I didn’t know why so I looked online. An excellent resource (now sadly offline) by the Migraine Trust suggested keeping a food diary to identify any triggers. Sure enough, the food colouring Annatto was to blame. I know to avoid it now (which is why you won’t see me touch anything orange at buffets).

Similarly, it takes reflection to identify what makes you unproductive. Once you’ve done so you need to counteract them somehow. So here’s my biggest productivity-boosters. Conveniently, they all begin with ‘S’.

Sleep

Whilst it’s true that people need different amounts of sleep depending upon various things including age, it’s still a good idea to aim for 8 hours per night. You’ll usually find me in bed by 22:00 or soon after every night, reading before I go to sleep. I also use a Lumie Sunrise Bodyclock to wake me up gradually in autumn/winter and the Sleep Cycle iPhone app when I’m sleeping alone.

Sound

I’m sure in a perfect world I would love silence. Unfortunately it’s only very occasionally that I’m in a place that’s perfectly silent. The rest of the time that I’m in a ‘quiet space’ it’s a faux-silence, a world of hushed tones, shuffling papers and apologies-for-the-noise. That’s why I listen to music so much. I’m currently in the process of reorganising my Spotify playlists from a (probably rather anachronistic) alaphabetical-by-artist listing to a situation-based system. My currently most-played track? Sounds of the Amazon Rainforest. It doesn’t always have to be ‘music’ – I also like the Buddha Machine Wall and Brian Eno’s Bloom app for the iPhone.

Space

People who know me know that I’m fairly outgoing. They’d probably describe me as an extrovert. People who know me well know that I’m an introverted extrovert. Or an extroverted invert. Whichever, I need my alone time and my wife understands that. Those who don’t quite understand this would do well to read Caring For Your Introvert from Atlantic Magazine, March 2003.

What are YOUR biggest productivity-boosters?

Posted: July 22nd, 2010
Categories: Productivity
Tags: Productivity, sleep, sound, space
Comments: View Comments.