Buy This Now

I headed to Barnes & Noble this morning to pick up a copy of Sarah Brown’s new book, Cringe, which just went on sale today.

Cringe is “a compilation of real teenage diary and journal entries, letters,
songs, stories, and lists–along with biting commentary, background, and self-examination from the now so-called grown-ups who wrote them.”

Which includes me. And also a great lineup of people far, far funnier than I am.

And, lest you think I’m biased, when I was checking out with the book, the B&N sales girl started paging through, laughed out loud several times, and made a note on a sticky to head upstairs and pick up a copy for herself.

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Overheard, 50th and Broadway

Early 20’s babysitter, to the two little kids with whom she was holding hands:

“You know what this is? This is Time Square. It’s a place that people who don’t live in New York like to visit.”

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Well Thought Out

I enjoy immensely the large number of TV commercials explaining that television is going all-digital at the end of the year, which refer anyone with an analog-only TV and no converter box to various web sites for more information.

Because, really, the vast majority of people with antique bunny-eared black-and-white TVs also have computers with fast broadband connections right nearby.

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One by One

Coming shortly, a long, long (and possibly multi-part) screed I’m writing up about the good, the bad, and the ugly of productivity classic Getting Things Done, and how some of the ideas in the considerably more obscure British Do It Tomorrow deal with the shortcomings of the GTD approach.

In authoring that, however, I stumbled across this great quote worth sharing:

“Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.”

Which is dead on.

Or, at least dead on at a philosophical level. At the cognitive level, however, research has made increasingly clear that people can’t really multitask – do two tasks a the same time. Instead, they either background task – say, listen to music while working out – if one of the tasks has a very low cognitive load, or they switchtask – alternate back and forth between two different activities.

And, in short, research has also increasingly shown that each time someone alternates, they incur a bit of cognitive ‘switching cost’ – extra time spent catching back up to their place in a IM conversation, or re-reading the last few lines of an email draft after each switch.

So per the zen saying, “when you are chopping wood, chop wood; when you are carrying water, carry water.” You won’t just be more present and do both tasks better, but you’ll take considerably less time doing them than you would trying to do both at the same time.

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Getting Topical

When you’re starting a company, the hardest part is often deciding what the company won’t do. The possibilities are initially endless, yet a small company (and, really, a large company, too) can only do so many things well.

It’s a bit like going to a restaurant – you can eat anything on the menu, but you can’t eat everything on the menu, at least without getting sick.

Blogging follows suit. Good blogs tend to focus in on one topic, or just a handful. Yet this one, over the past eight years, has wandered haphazardly from one topic to the next.

So, finally, and long, long overdue, I’ve been giving some thought to what this blog should be about. Based on the emails that roll in, it seems there are four areas about which people are particularly happy to read:
– Personal adventures and misadventures
– Productivity and entrepreneurship
– Food, dining and nutrition
– Technology for non-technologists

Those four, I think, cover about 90% of the best read entries in self-aggrandizement’s past.

So, as an experiment, rather than simply randomly blogging up whatever strikes my fancy, I’ll be trying to cycle through those four topics. That way, whichever one you’re coming to find, you’ll regularly get a dose of new, relevant content.

And, hopefully, with a snarkily egotistic perspective as the thematic link across all four, you’ll want to give each and every post a careful read, no matter which of the categories you like most.

After all, self-aggrandizement is already ‘doubtless one of the best sites on the internet’. If I do say so myself.

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Home Stretch

I realized this morning that I’m now t-minus 20 days to getting married.

Which, on the one hand, is totally thrilling.

And, on the other, is absolutely terrifying.

Fortunately, I’m still exceedingly excited about the marriage part. It’s the wedding that has me worried. While all the major details are figured out, all the main moving parts in place, there are still more odds and ends to deal with than I can count. Seating arrangements, gift baskets for out-of-town guests, writing and printing programs, following up with every vendor we’ve previously locked down to make sure they’re still happily locked.

And, of course, things are crazier than ever (though, finally and fortunately, in a very good way) with Cyan and with Jess’ consulting company.

This weekend, as we were picking up our wedding bands, the jeweler (who’s long since become a friend of ours) offered some good advice: just do what you can until you make it to the top of the aisle, and then wash your hands of the details and pretend you’re a guest.

And, also, drink a lot of vodka.

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Panhellenic

I remember once hearing a talk by the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, about how the decline of instrumental music instruction in schools inevitably led, years later, to a decrease in symphony audiences. Simply put, the people who most appreciated classical performance were usually those who had done some of it themselves.

Which seems to me particularly true in the parallel world of watching the Olympics. Prior to CrossFit, I had never tried to clean, jerk or snatch a weight, had never played on rings, parallel bars, or a pommel horse.

So, while I watched and enjoyed both the Olympic lifting and men’s gymnastics events at Athens, Sydney, and Atlanta, I didn’t until this year appreciate how really, really, holy shit I can’t believe what I’m seeing, good these guys are.

I mean seriously. It’s almost like all of these guys are Olympic-caliber athletes.

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Pop Quiz

“IF U LOVE ME AS I LOVE U
THEN I & U WILL MAKE 1 OF 2”

This quotes is:

1. A text message.

2. A Prince lyric.

3. A verse by Vermont’s Ebenezer White, written in 1782, as a marriage proposal to Lucy Packard, his future bride.

Yes, number three it is.

Which seems to me a reasonable counterpoint to all of this ‘IM and text shorthand is killing the English language’ alarmism.

Turns out, we’re not nearly as original or influential as we’d like to think.

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