The Future of Science

The Institute for the Future has an exploration of ideas for what they see as the future of science.

Invisibility cloaks. Space hacking. Quantum consciousness. Opensource biology. Empowered with new tools, processes, and skills, scientists will gain new insight into the mysteries surrounding our brains, biology, and the strange matter that makes up our reality. We will develop powerful new instruments for gazing at the farthest reaches of space and descending into the deepest oceans, further illuminating our place in the universe.

You can download the 7 page PDF from the institute’s website.

via BoingBoing.

by Jonathan Frei

GTD Advice Made Easy

David Allen, author of the often cited book Getting Things Done, broke down his system into very simple sections to make it easier to adopt.

He said the key points to GTD are to:

  • Keep meaningful stuff out of your head
  • Make action and outcome decisions about the stuff sooner than later
  • Organize reminders of those items in easy to view places
  • Review it all and keep it current

I have not read Getting Things Done yet, but I come across so many of its quotes, maxims, and applications on the web that I expect reading it would feel more like a review session than getting something for the first time.

With tools like Evernote, Google Tasks, Outlook, and others, getting things out of my head and organizing them are the easy parts. The fourth bullet is the hard one. Regularly reviewing the things on the lists to keep the important things at the top is challenging when everything feels important.

However, the real power of the GTD method is in getting things out of your head so it is free for use.

via GTD Times

by Jonathan Frei

Threats—like hurricanes and rectal exams—are only scary until they arrive. Once they’re over, they’re just the basis for funny stories. But, you do nearly always survive them. And, if you didn’t survive? It wasn’t because of a lack of fear. Like I say, the universe doesn’t particularly care whether you’re scared.

Merlin Mann, Cranking | 43 Folders
by Jonathan Frei

These three areas — the domain, the eye/brain, and the implementation — intertwine with each other. A single element may have conflicts in one area or all three at the same time. Much of the work designing interfaces involves teasing apart these conflicts in order to solve the right problem. Is the action correct, but it’s too hard to find? That’s a conflict with the eye/brain. Is the screen clear and simple but it doesn’t show the right information? That’s a conflict with the domain. Does it take too long to get feedback from a common action? That might be an implementation problem.

Identifying conflicts in a UI design – (Ryan Singer)
by Jonathan Frei