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Friday, January 17, 2003 |
Time Management...or Mis-Management
Time matters. Those words were spoken in a recent television show and got me thinking. What exactly is it referring to? The phrase is actually said a lot, but I’ve never really thought about it. Does it refer to a person’s timeliness? I think most of us can be highly annoyed by the perpetually late, except of course for those who fall into the perpetually late category. Myself I’m obsessively early because I hate to be late so much. My ex never really cared much about his timeliness. He’d leave when he was ready to leave or felt like it. To him it only really mattered when he wanted to get there, not when he was expected. Could it be talking about our use of time? I read a quote recently about wasted time not being such a waste after all. I guess that can be true to a degree. There are people that I know who are going twenty hours out of the day and miss out on what life has to offer. Companies expect people to be in the office ten hours a day these days. Add in travel time, personal hygiene time, and eating time, you could add on another three to five hours. So before you get to any self time, family time, fun time, thirteen to fifteen hours have already gone by. For me that almost bedtime. What time is left to waste? Maybe it goes to the old quality versus quantity argument. I’ve had parents tell me, “I may not spend much time with my children, but its quality time.” I can guarantee you my five year old doesn’t care about the quality of our chutes and ladders game, he just wants me to play with him! Sure I could spend just thirty minutes a night with my fiancé, but no matter what the “quality” I still want more. The whole quality argument is for people who want to ease their guilt of not spending the time their loved ones want or need. Easing the guilt of knowing priorities are jumbled and turned upside down, but not having the conviction to change it. I worked for a large corporation. I left because I had many disagreements with my manager. One of which he felt my time was more important to him than to my children. Fact is, if I were to get hit by a truck that corporation would have had me replaced within weeks, but my children would spend their lives missing their mother. Who deserves my time more? Time matters. The trick is, finding out to whom it matters the most. [Michelle McBride's Radio Weblog] 1:44:26 PM ![]() |
Nicholas Negroponte: Creating a Culture of Ideas. You all know that Nicholas Negroponte helped found the MIT Media Lab. In this column, he says expertise is overrated. To build a nation of innovators, we should focus on youth, diversity, and collaboration. Here is the introduction. Innovation is inefficient. More often than not, it is undisciplined, contrarian, and iconoclastic; and it nourishes itself with confusion and contradiction. In short, being innovative flies in the face of what almost all parents want for their children, most CEOs want for their companies, and heads of states want for their countries. And innovative people are a pain in the ass. Yet without innovation we are doomed -- by boredom and monotony -- to decline. So what makes innovation happen, and just where do new ideas come from? The basic answers -- providing a good educational system, encouraging different viewpoints, and fostering collaboration -- may not be surprising. Moreover, the ability to fulfill these criteria has served the United States well. But some things -- the nature of higher education among them -- will have to change in order to ensure a perpetual source of new ideas. He asserts that we need a very heterogeneous culture to foster innovation and that we should listen to young people instead of giving good jobs to experienced people -- just because they're experienced. He also thinks that "two additional ingredients are needed to cultivate new ideas. Both have to do with maximizing serendipity. First, we need to encourage risk. [..] The second ingredient is encouragement for openness and idea sharing -- another banality nearly impossible to achieve." He concludes with the following paragraph. The ability to make big leaps of thought is a common denominator among the originators of breakthrough ideas. Usually this ability resides in people with very wide backgrounds, multidisciplinary minds, and a broad spectrum of experiences. Family influences, role models, travel, and living in diverse settings are obvious contributors, as are educational systems and the way cultures value youth and perspective. As a society, we can shape some of these. Some we can’t. A key to ensuring a stream of big ideas is accepting these messy truths about the origin of ideas and continuing to reward innovation and celebrate emerging technologies. A last note: I totally agree with him. Source: Nicholas Negroponte, Technology Review, February 2003 [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]1:16:11 PM ![]() |
Inspire Teamwork. I don't know what her name is, but she's got good stuff to say. I read her post this morning about self importance and thoroughly enjoyed it. So much, in fact, that I sent it to a co-worker. Next time, I won't belittle my collegue behind his back because he didn't use a stringbuffer instead of a string when he was concatenating, I will just send an email to the whole team, copying the section from "effective programming", articulating innocently but clearly how the strings work compared to stringbuffers, believe me, I know, i will feel whole a lot better. And when someone comes up to me with an idea, I will listen like my life depends on it, I will show my fear of not getting it, ask a stupid question or two and I will applaud them for their courage in sharing their ideas despite the fear of being ridiculed, I will work with them through their idea/hypothesis, no matter how much i might think it is stupid or impossible to achieve. We will arrive to that point together, but in the process, each one of us will connect, in a way where mutual trust is established, where we feel safe and be as stupid or as brilliant as we can be. And I guarantee you that we will be brilliant, because I have never seen an environment more fun to work or productive than that of a team of peers who understand, trust, respect, and and are humbled by one another. I actually took her message to heart this afternoon and involved my co-workers with my ConvertUtils problems I was having. Simply discussing it with them helped me solve my problem. Communicate. Openly. It will make your job more fun - it did mine. We are already collaborating more from a little inspiration. [Raible Designs :: We Build Web Apps] 12:55:52 PM ![]() |
Hi. I'm Scott and I'll Be Your Internet Agent for Right Now. Hi. I'm Scott and I'll Be Your Internet Agent for Right NowI've never seen anyone make this analogy for blogging yet so I'll give it a go: Are Blogs Nothing More than Agents for the Internet? A few years back, circa 1995 or so, the term "agent" or "intelligent agent" was all the wave. We were all going to have different agents that knew our tastes and collected content on our behalf, alerting us to interesting things. Needless to say that despite tens of millions of dollars in venture funding and even manufacturing dollars (anyone remember General Magic and Sony's Magic Cap) that failed utterly. Now we have blogs and it actually feels strikingly similar. Think about my blog for example. Right now if you read it then you are getting an agent that covers:
If you read Mark Pilgrim's blog then you are getting coverage of:
And if you read Inluminent you are getting:
So if you read 10 or 20 different blogs regularly then you are actually getting the results of 10 or 20 different agents that are busily scouring the net for you. And, even better, those agents are sometimes even creating content for you. Now that makes them intelligent agents indeed. Thoughts? [The FuzzyBlog!]12:18:26 PM ![]() |
Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to You! Ok. Now I'll Blog. Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to You! Ok. Now I'll BlogThis is a very 21st century birthday present. Dewayne's fiance has started blogging as one of the presents to him (well 1/2 of it is a present). Happy Birthday Dewayne! And welcome aboard Michelle! [The FuzzyBlog!]12:15:11 PM ![]() |
Q & A from 4Aunties.net Living arrangement? Living with my fiancé her children and our dog. 10:51:18 AM ![]() |