In the past year, I have tried out a lot of new, slick looking web technologies for collaboration and communication. Mostly, I've found that they don't satisfy my needs. The biggest problem is finding a platform that everyone currently uses.
Besides email, I still use:
Facebook - Great for staying in touch with old friends, arguing philosophy, or sharing photos.
Google Reader - Great for aggregating blog and news feeds for reading at my leisure. Since all blogs and most news sites have RSS feeds, I rarely have any issues.
Windows Live Mesh - Great for sharing files between my computers (works as a backup system). Although in theory I could.use this for collaboration, I do not use it for that purpose.
Technologies I have tried but no longer use:
Google Wave - Could be a great collaboration platform, but not much value to me at this point. If I could get all of my students on it, running online classes could be interesting.
Google Buzz - Generally duplicates services from google reader and facebook, so I rarely make comments directly into buzz.
Windows Office Live Workspace - experimented uploading docs and collaborating with some faculty in Alabama. The experiment might have went better if they were interested in pushing the collaboration online too.
Google docs - Same as Windows Live sync experience. I've used it for some collaboration, but not much. The interface is okay, but doesn't get me really excited to use it.
Twitter - signed up, but found the noise from Twitter too much. So I've stopped accessing my account.
My take - in spite of all the features, collaboration software is only as useful as the number of people who currently use it, ultimately confirming Metcalf's and Reed's law of network effects.
2.17.2010
Translating 5 year goals into action
Sitting here, watching the Winter Olympics, I am amazed at the skills these men and women possess. To achieve such phenomenal skills requires more than just setting big long-term goals - like winning a gold in the Olympics. It requires many, many years of hard work coupled with intelligent training to achieve many sub-goals, building and culminating in world class abilities. Before they can do a triple loop, they must master a single loop. Before they can master the super G, they must master skiing on the bunny slopes. In previous posts, I wrote about setting 5 year goals here and here. As important as 5 year goals are, they are useless unless they can be translated into yearly, monthly, and weekly goals and ultimately - action.
How does one go about translating long term goals into short term goals? And how do daily practices help to achieve long term goals? While it seems intuitive to just say, take your long-term goal, split it up into small parts and achieve those small parts in sequence until you achieve the long-term goals, this is a huge over-simplification. If there is one thing I've learned from large goals, its that its easy to fall behind on sub-goals. Once you fall behind, its nearly impossible to catch up.
In software development, there is a well-known book called the The Mythical Man-Month
, written by a former IT manager at IBM, Fred Brooks. In this book, he explains why throwing more people at a project that's behind schedule frequently back-fires and causing a project to get further behind schedule. While the reason for this failure is in part due increasingly difficult communication, the failure occurs at an individual level as well. This is not due to a lack of effort, will-power, or desire. But a simple limitation of human endurance. Beyond a certain point, more work fails to improve skills and may actually promote sloppy habits that hurt continued progress. Besides physical limitations (which varies by person), there are psychological limitations. Missed goals can lead to dejection. Overwhelming projects may lead to procrastination. Simplistic goals fail to gain interest and are neglected. It is a wonder we achieve anything!
Luckily, these issues can be overcome. As Dr. Edwin Locke has shown, the mere fact of setting a specific challenging goals improves performance. Personal productive writers David Allen
and Stephen Covey
note that projects should and can direct specific day-to-day tasks. They each lay out aspects of improving your personal productivity (although I would love to see an integration of their two approaches). In general long-term goals get turned into short-term goals by laying out a plan to action, detailing specific requirements to achieve at each sub-goal, and ensuring you push your self at each step. Time-lines are important, but not the final arbitrator of success. Success is achievement of the goal.
Tips I've learned from translating long term goals into actionable items:
How does one go about translating long term goals into short term goals? And how do daily practices help to achieve long term goals? While it seems intuitive to just say, take your long-term goal, split it up into small parts and achieve those small parts in sequence until you achieve the long-term goals, this is a huge over-simplification. If there is one thing I've learned from large goals, its that its easy to fall behind on sub-goals. Once you fall behind, its nearly impossible to catch up.
In software development, there is a well-known book called the The Mythical Man-Month
, written by a former IT manager at IBM, Fred Brooks. In this book, he explains why throwing more people at a project that's behind schedule frequently back-fires and causing a project to get further behind schedule. While the reason for this failure is in part due increasingly difficult communication, the failure occurs at an individual level as well. This is not due to a lack of effort, will-power, or desire. But a simple limitation of human endurance. Beyond a certain point, more work fails to improve skills and may actually promote sloppy habits that hurt continued progress. Besides physical limitations (which varies by person), there are psychological limitations. Missed goals can lead to dejection. Overwhelming projects may lead to procrastination. Simplistic goals fail to gain interest and are neglected. It is a wonder we achieve anything!Luckily, these issues can be overcome. As Dr. Edwin Locke has shown, the mere fact of setting a specific challenging goals improves performance. Personal productive writers David Allen
and Stephen Covey note that projects should and can direct specific day-to-day tasks. They each lay out aspects of improving your personal productivity (although I would love to see an integration of their two approaches). In general long-term goals get turned into short-term goals by laying out a plan to action, detailing specific requirements to achieve at each sub-goal, and ensuring you push your self at each step. Time-lines are important, but not the final arbitrator of success. Success is achievement of the goal.Tips I've learned from translating long term goals into actionable items:
- Over-shoot the short-term goals. If you plan out the next 5 years into a series of short-term goals, do not just settle for staying on track. Set the short-term goal so that you'll be ahead of schedule. There will inevitably be emergencies that crop up and take time away from your goals. The best way to mitigate those emergencies is to be ahead before they hit, so you'll still be on track when the emergency is over.
- Review your long-term goals on a regular basis. This helps ensure integration between short-term goals and long-term goals. Its easy to get caught up in the moment with a cool idea or new project. But if that project does not help the long-term goal, it necessarily takes time away from it, thereby hurting your chances at achieving it. Once a week or month, review your current projects in terms of your 5 year goals.
- Know your limits, but stretch them. Its easy to over-plan and to under-plan. Its not so easy to plan just the right level of work that pushes you to do your best. In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
, Csikszentmihalyi describes how professionals at the top of their professional often discover a period of intense focus when all of their awareness melts into just the activity they are doing. This state of "flow" erupts when the professional is fully challenged with a specific task or goal that stretches their abilities. A surgeon, a tennis player, a concert pianist, a computer programmer - they all experience this same phenomena. Finding this sweet spot requires a bit of introspection, but once found, it can greatly enhance your productivity.
- Use external milestones to push you. While in school, these external milestones are rather obvious. They are much harder to find in the business world, but if you look carefully there are many projects outside yourself or your business that have completion dates. Aligning your goals with these external projects can help you to stay focused and on tract.
- Dedicate large blocks of uninterrupted time each week to focus on the big projects. In some jobs this is easier than others. But in order to hit the "flow" state mentioned above, working without interruption is critical. Don't check your email. Let the phone go to voice mail. Stay off of Facebook. Do whatever it takes to get some work done.
- Be prepared for change, and its corollary, don't plan too far ahead . While I have very clear 5 year goals, I have little idea what specific work I'll be doing in 4 years. There are simply too many things that can change in the world for me to waste time now planning for what may become obsolete. Besides the typical innovative changes in your environment, your specific interests may change, you may get laid off from your current job unexpectedly, you may get married and start a family, you may have to start taking care of your parents, or you discover the opportunity of a lifetime. There is always something, so accept it and adjust.
- As funny as this may sound, stay healthy! Eating right, getting enough sleep, and working out are prerequisites to long term health. When you get sick, its pretty difficult to accomplish your goals. So don't do it ;-)
2.08.2010
My Cyborg Mother-in-Law
A new movie? No, a fact of reality. My mother-in-law is a cyborg. And I think it is the coolest thing in the world.
There are a variety of definitions of cyborg (cybernetic organism), but usually they refer to a human being whose body has been taken over in whole or in part by electromechanical devices (wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). Any type of artificial part that directly connects with our nervous system would qualify. Several such devices are already on the market - the pace maker, the cochlear implant, BrainGate, etc. My mother-in-law recently had surgery to enhance her deteriorating hearing with a Cochlear implant, an implanted device that amplifies sound, by passing the ear drum, and directly stimulating the auditory nerve with the appropriate electronic signals. Her hearing has increased dramatically, to the point where she can now hear conversations on her cell phone where she never could before.
Being a cyborg is not bad. Far from it. It implies a recognition of the facts of reality and our own limitations there-in. That we as humans can overcome these limitations through reason, science, technology, and engineering. It really is a shame that the term cyborg was hijacked by sci-fi writers and given such a negative connotation..
There are a variety of definitions of cyborg (cybernetic organism), but usually they refer to a human being whose body has been taken over in whole or in part by electromechanical devices (wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). Any type of artificial part that directly connects with our nervous system would qualify. Several such devices are already on the market - the pace maker, the cochlear implant, BrainGate, etc. My mother-in-law recently had surgery to enhance her deteriorating hearing with a Cochlear implant, an implanted device that amplifies sound, by passing the ear drum, and directly stimulating the auditory nerve with the appropriate electronic signals. Her hearing has increased dramatically, to the point where she can now hear conversations on her cell phone where she never could before.
Being a cyborg is not bad. Far from it. It implies a recognition of the facts of reality and our own limitations there-in. That we as humans can overcome these limitations through reason, science, technology, and engineering. It really is a shame that the term cyborg was hijacked by sci-fi writers and given such a negative connotation..
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