One of the reasons I bike to work is so I don’t have to use as much gas as the rest of the country.
Sitting in traffic is an expensive activity.
The Pixar Theory Timeline
Jon Negroni’s Pixar Theory has some holes, to be sure, but this timeline, gives a good summary of what the unified Pixar universe is all about.
Asana · Apps & Integrations
Asana is an incredibly useful task manager. It’s my main to-list app on both my phone and computer. They have recently added a number of integrations to make the app even more useful.
I have not done much with this beyond the Google Calendar integration, but I’ll be keeping an eye on this page to see what developers end up doing with this API. I hope IFTTT adds an Asana channel. Connecting my to-do list to the rest of the web could introduce some interesting possibilities.
School project
One of the fun things about having a school aged kid is getting to help him with special projects. This is my favorite so far. I’m not saying I’ve never been prouder of anything else I’ve made. I’m not saying that at all. But this comes close.
The Rise of Twitter Bots
The New Yorker has an interesting look at the robotic side of Twitter and the challenges the service will face as it becomes a bigger business.
As a service, Twitter’s greatest strength is that its users have total control over whom they follow and what they see. As a business, Twitter’s greatest opportunity is in violating that control with advertisements.
Delete guilt tasks
A few items on my personal to-do list had lingered, untouched, for more than a month.
I just deleted them.
Those tasks did nothing but make me feel bad about what I had yet to start doing. They were guilt tasks. Maybe, now that they’re gone, I’ll be able to work on them again.
You don’t need guilt from your to-do list. You need encouragement. That encouragement often comes from the checked off items. That’s why I typically write things I’ve already finished on my list, just so I can check them off. I recently discovered doing that isn’t odd.
So what are some of the signs of a guilt task? A guilt task is any task that:
- has stayed on your to-do list for more than a week with no action
- you’ve kept updating the due date without any progress toward completion
- obviously doesn’t need to be completed (if it did it would be done)
- is not a priority (although it’s taking up mental priority)
- you have a mental block towards that task that’s kept you from starting
Rewarding tasks get done, because you see the payoff, feel the positive feedback that accompanies checking the item off the list. Guilt tasks offer very little in terms of reward, even when completed. Finishing a guilt task is seldom a relief. If anything, checking it off the list will just make you feel guilty about how long it took you to get started. They only succeed in making you feel bad about the things you’re not doing.
But guess what…there’s tons of stuff you’re not doing now, you won’t do soon, and you may never do. Feeling bad about all the things you’re not doing doesn’t help you get any closer to finishing the tasks that actually matter to you. Feeling bad about guilt tasks doesn’t help you do the real tasks.
So pull up your to-do list, and delete (or, if you’re not ready for that, archive) everything from your list that is bringing you down or that you will not start in the next week.
Systems > Goals
Striving after goals means failing every day until you succeeds. Living a system means succeeding every day, building on the momentum of earlier successes, and living with a more positive sense of self. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, recently wrote:
My problem with goals is that they are limiting. Granted, if you focus on one particular goal, your odds of achieving it are better than if you have no goal. But you also miss out on opportunities that might have been far better than your goal. Systems, however, simply move you from a game with low odds to a game with better odds. With a system you are less likely to miss one opportunity because you were too focused on another. With a system, you are always scanning for any opportunity.
Consistency and reliability are so much more valuable than accomplishing one-off goals, even big ones. That’s why I intend to start focusing on creating positive systems instead of chasing goals. I’m less interested in being the person who finished a marathon that one time than I am in being the person that runs every day, no matter the weather or circumstances—not that I’m a runner. Religiously followed systems will lead to successes with a firmer foundation than periodically accomplishing a goal.
Rather than expecting an overnight success by reaching a goal, focus on consistently doing the small, atomic actions that the person you want to become does every day. Soon enough, the rewards of that kind of effort will become clear.
Pencil by FiftyThree
Mobile first used to mean designing for mobile and then stretching the interface and underlying app to fit a bigger screen. FiftyThree’s Pencil stylus made mobile first about adding specialized hardware to compliment a mobile app.
The @GSElevator gift guide
This clever holiday gift guide is filled with all the stuff I’d buy myself if I had the money to afford more expensive taste. There are no gift suggestions in this guide for my wife. However, the writer has a good reason for his omission, which he expressed like this:
My apologies, there are no gift ideas for women in here. If you don’t know what to buy a woman for Christmas, you’re an idiot.
@GSElevator, who authored this post, is behind what is very possibly my favorite non-personal Twitter account, mostly because of his quips like this and seasonal jokes like this.