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A clean, well-lighted place to fail

A clean, well-lighted place. Source: Matt Sepping.

(With apologies to Ernest Hemingway.)

Failure is an important in any creative endeavor. One of the main reason I love using computers—something that leaped out at me the first time I ever touched one—is that with the right setup there is very little cost for experimentation and the occasional failure.

Want to see what happens when you push that shiny button? Just try it. If it didn’t work, command-z and you’re back where you were. Thanks to the magic of command-z (control-z for the Windows folks out there), experimentation is very low cost.

No matter how jaded I get when it comes to technology, the fact that I can go back in time never ceases to amaze me.

This is true at least for single-step experimentation. Things get a bit harder when you branch out into a whole series of steps of experimentation—you’ve changed your images in Photoshop, rewritten a bunch of text in Word, rejiggered your layout in InDesign, or changed a bunch of files in your brand-new WordPress theme, and it all turns out to be a colossal mistake.

How do you recover?

This is why programmers have created whole systems to allow them to experiment and keep the cost of failure low. For most “regular” creative people, though, setting up software like Git or Subversion—and learning how to use it—simply costs too much time and effort, despite the software being free. The revision control systems out there are getting easier and easier to use, so hopefully in time they (or their descendants) will become part of the toolkit all creatives use.

For right now, though, there is still the brute-force way of simply taking manual copies of your files at stages where you know you’re going to go off into uncharted waters. Sure, it’s a bit of a hassle, but the ease of mind makes it well worth it.

The first step is to learn to manage your files. I completely agree with John Gruber that the whole notion of file management in and of itself incurs a mental cost and there are a lot of cases where we simply should not have to deal with files. This is—and I’m phrasing this very carefully—especially true of creatives who use computers. I keep running into people who despite the years and years they’ve been creating on the computer still view things like file locations with abstract wonderment and dismay.

If you’re one of them and you make your living using your computer, please please please seek the assistance of your local friendly nerd to teach you how to manage your files and ensure you have proper backups. The piece of mind will be more than worth it.

The beauty of having gone through the simple yet slightly annoying task of making copies of your files before you take a radical leap is that you can do so without reservations.

The creative freedom is exhilarating. And that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

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By niclindh
March 20, 2009

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Your own personal GTD

(Cross-posted to The Core Dump)

David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology has been burning up the nerdosphere for years now, and for good reason. It’s a system of self-defense for dealing not with thugs in an alley but with the endless demands and distractions modern life throws our way.

As with any other positive change in life, it’s easy to understand, but hard to implement. Not hard as in complicated, but hard as in losing weight. Want to lose weight? Eat less and exercise more. Can’t be easier to understand; can’t be harder to accomplish.

As fair as I’m concerned, Allen’s most important realization, the underpinning for his whole system, is the fact that our brains simply weren’t built to handle modern life. The way your brain operates is pretty darn optimal if you live in a small group on the savannah and get up in the morning for another day of hunting and gathering. But it fails miserably if you live in the modern world. This is why your brain wakes you up at three in the morning to remind you about the project that’s due in a week. And why it reminds you to take your kid to ballet class on Friday when it’s Wednesday and you’re waiting in line at the grocery store.

So Allen’s solution is the Trusted System. A place where you write down the things you know you need to remember and know you’re going to check.

So it’s a bit of a bog: You have to remember to write down the things you have to remember, and you have to remember to actually look at the place where you wrote them down. Wax on, wax off.

Once you get into the habit of doing that, though, a miracle happens: Your brain stops telling you things at inopportune times. And that’s how you know you’re doing it right: Your brain starts to shut up.

You might be saying, “So, this guy is a genius because he built a better to-do list?”

Yes, essentially. He makes a very, very nice living showing people how to make lists. (There are a lot more nuts and bolts to Allen’s system, but that’s the heart of it.) Not just lists, mind you, but lists you actually check.

DING! It’s not enough to make a list, you have to actually check the list.

The other brilliant thing about Allen’s lists is what you put on them: Next Actions. You don’t put down amorphous blobs like, “Buy new house.” Instead, you put actions you can perform. Like, “Call Bob about his realtor.”

Like most wonderful things, it’s deceptively simple. This one little change means that when you’re ready to crank through your lists, you don’t have to think about what things mean. You’ve already done the thinking. Just perform the actions.

A warning about GTD, though: As alluded to earlier, many nerds are into it. Obsessive-compulsive nerds. That Guy who moved a wall in his house half an inch so he could get a perfect standing wave from his speakers.¹ He’s into it. Which means that a few simple ideas Shall Not Be Left Alone.

Nay, I say! Nay! We can surely overcomplicate this! We can come up with The One True Way™! We can endlessly debate the finer points! How does Getting Things Done translate to Klingon?

Which is completely antithetical to the spirit of GTD: You are a unique being. You need to figure out what works best for you. And above all, you need to Get Things Done.

So, at the risk of sounding like a cult member, I can’t recommend GTD highly enough. It’s skills for the 21st century. Looking into it is a good use of your time, even if you find it doesn’t work for you.

  1. That Guy actually exists. He was an engineer at Volvo in Sweden. True story.

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By niclindh
January 19, 2009

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Thugs would like you to back up your data

Please back up your data

Please back up your data.

The gentleman pictured here would like to remind you to back up your data. According to KTAR.com, he broke into Arizona State University law student Alex Botsios’s apartment armed with a baseball bat and demanded Mr. Botsios hand over his laptop. At which point Mr. Botsios, freaked out at the prospect of losing months of work, overpowered and pummeled him.

Hug Your Machine does not recommend wrestling baseball bats from intruders, but in this case Mr. Botsios won the struggle.

The point, though, is that the hard drive in Mr. Botsios’s laptop could fail at any point, taking all his hard-fought case notes with it.

Murphy’s Law is powerful indeed when it comes to computers, so if you have files on your computer that matters as much to you as Mr. Botsios’s do to him, do yourself a favor and help yourself to a better night’s sleep by getting the backup religion.

Arguably the best and most succinct how-to on backing up your files in a safe a manner is Jamie Zawinski’s tongue-in-cheek PSA on the matter. When it comes to computers, there are far worse people to listen to than JWZ.

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By niclindh
November 22, 2008

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Death by PowerPoint

One of the biggest wastes of time in Corporate America is arguably the crushing boredom of endless PowerPoint presentations that make no point.

How it ever became acceptable for a person to get up in a dim room and bore twenty other people to death while wasting their time by stretching out what would have taken 10 minutes without slides to a full hour parade of slides crammed with needless details is something future sociologists will no doubt spend much time debating. But for right now, Death by PowerPoint is very real.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. One of the best books written on the subject is Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.

Creating better presentations with more impact doesn’t depend on delving deep into the nooks and crannies of PowerPoint or Keynote, but rather on rethinking the way you conceive of the presentation.

It wouldn’t be fair to either Reynolds or you to attempt to rip out his ideas from the context of the book—and his ideas do need a whole gorgeous book with plenty of examples to really come through—so I’m not going to do that here. Suffice it to say that if you create presentations, you must read this book. Yes, must.

Your future audiences will thank you.

If you need more convincing, Reynolds also operates a blog with the same name as the book which I also highly recommend.

Happy presenting.

Presentation Zen Cover

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By niclindh
November 1, 2008

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A problem and a solution

Every day I see people using their computers in backwards ways. People who are frustrated by their machines and digital life in general. So much email coming in, so hard to get Word to stop “helping” you write, so many upgrades that change the things you’ve already figured out.

This makes me sad.

As a huge nerd, I spend a lot of time on computers, and in general they have immeasurably improved the quality of my life. Not that there aren’t moments when I’m burning with the fury of a thousand suns as technology bites me in the nether regions. But I’ve been to this rodeo before, and over the years I’ve learned ways to make my computers work for me and help me get things done.

The impetus for creating Hug Your Machine is to share some of the things I’ve learned over the years, and get new ideas from other people. Believe me, I know how little I know.

Hug Your Machine will not be about “click here to make this happen,” but ways to approach the computer, ways to think more digitally. I promise to do my darnedest to stay away from productivity pr0n and gadget worship.

Usually, you don’t need new software—you need to learn to use what you have. Above all, you need to learn how to approach things in a digital way. Taking analog habits and transferring them on to computers is at best an awkward fit, and at worst a sure way slowly to drive yourself insane.

The idea behind Hug Your Machine is to hopefully give you a reason to want to hug your computer at the end of the day, to feel that it has helped you.

Engage!

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By niclindh
October 27, 2008

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Why are my IT people such douchebags?

Enjoying and using your computer at work to its fullest potential is often hampered by your IT department and the policies it sets. Want to use GMail instead of the icky Lotus Notes installation the company set up for you? No luck: It’s blocked. Want to install an application that will shave hours of tedium from your work week? No luck. The IT department decides what goes on your computer, and Day Master 3000 is most definitely not on their list. Oh, you can ask them to “bless” the application, but that will take a long time and ultimately depend on how the stars align.

So why, oh why, do IT departments do the things they do? Aren’t they supposed to help you use your computer better and thus add shareholder value?

To understand, you have to understand the IT department’s main mission: Keep the computers and the network running. That’s what the company is paying them for. If the computers or the network stop working, unpleasant things happen to IT workers. Escorted-off-the-premises type unpleasant.

Notice what the IT department’s mission does not include: Make company employees more efficient and happy.

Which doesn’t mean that IT workers don’t want the people they support to be more efficient and happy, it’s just that it’s not part of their job description, so if they want to keep their jobs, they will always err on the side of caution. The copy of Day Master 3000 that would make your life so much easier might make Word start crashing, flood the network with packets, send corporate secrets to the Russian mafia, or a bunch of other untoward things that will make IT workers’ lives unpleasant. Sure, it most likely won’t, but what if it does?

Solution: Keep it off the company computers.

In other words, there are reasons why your IT peoples’ eyes start to glaze over when you talk about how great Day Master 3000 is—for the IT worker, there’s only downside.

This is not to say there aren’t power-mad sadists working in IT departments. Trust me, I’ve had to work for and with some of them. It sucks. They’re the kind of people who decide that no, you can’t change your desktop wallpaper. Why? Because you might use an inappropriate wallpaper. Muhahahaha! Dance, peon, dance! They are the minority, though, praise your deity of choice.

Unless your particular IT staff happen to be of the sadistic, power-mad variety, there are ways to make them more receptive to your ideas. The first thing you can do is incredibly simple: Make their lives easier. If you’re the kind of person who makes them reset your password once a week, they will be deaf to your ideas. Once you get the bozo label, you and Day Master 3000 will never meet at work. Ask any IT person, and they will tell you that the people whose offices they don’t know the locations of are their friends. So, stay off the bozo radar.

The second thing you can do is to find the upside for the IT department. If Day Master 3000 will save them work, you can bet it will find itself fast-tracked onto the approved list.

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By niclindh
October 27, 2008

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A font for all seasons

When you create and edit text on your computer, one of the easiest things you can do to save yourself eye strain is to write in a screen font and then switch your document to a font optimized for looking good on paper as the last step in the process.

My hat is off to Microsoft for realizing that most people never change the default font in their word processor, and thus end up squinting at Times New Roman as they’re typing their TPS reports. This is why Vista and Office 2007 started using a new font called Calibri as default. It’s a nice font, looks decent in printed form and above all else is easy to read on-screen. A win for everybody.

Of course, we all have different tastes, which is why there are about one kazillion fonts out there. What works for one person doesn’t work for another. Not a problem. Just take a few minutes to go through your font menu to find something that looks good to you and is easy to read while you’re writing and editing, and then change your default font to that.

Then, when you’re ready to go to print, simply change over to a font made to look good on paper—or your company’s standard font, if you’re working for an organization like that—and your readers will be happy as well.

Some favorites for reading on the screen are the aforementioned Calibri, Verdana, Lucida Sans, or if you really want to go old-school, go with Courier. That’s right, the font used on IBM Selectric typewriters.

Say what? Why would I ever want to use a typewriter font on my quite expensive and sleek thank-you-very-much computer? Apart from being easy to read, Courier is a monospaced font, which means that all character are exactly the same width, including spaces. If you use Courier you can not only revel in being retro, you will also have ninja powers to find and destroy any inadvertent extra spaces that creep in during editing.

But do please save yourself the agony that is text editing with Times New Roman. You deserve better.

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By niclindh
October 27, 2008

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Mad typing skillz

These days more people than ever spend their days reading and writing. The reason, of course, is email. You get email, you send email—wax on, wax off.

So as a productivity booster, two of the smartest investments you can make are to learn to read faster and write faster.

Learning to read faster is easy: read more. The more you read, the faster you get. Grab something you enjoy reading and thank your brain for the way its wired.

Writing faster, on the other hand, requires two separate skills: Putting your thoughts in order to be put down on the page, and the physical task of transferring your thoughts from your brain to the page. The first part, putting your thoughts in order, is the reason we have schools. If you find yourself lacking there, taking a writing class would be a good idea.

The second part requires more drudgery. It even requires something as completely unsexy as to learn to type. No, no, don’t go away. Really, think about it: How long does it take you to write an email—or a blog post, or a TPS report? If you learned to type you could cut that time way down.

I know, I know. Learning to type. The thought itself brings memories of typing classes in high school, of utter boredom at the sheer mindlessness of it all, of having bad skin, and not having a date for the prom.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can learn to type without buying any software, reading any books, or having to be under the pig-eyed stare of the school football coach.

You only need to know one thing: The home row. Really.

Look at your keyboard. ASDF and JKL; are the home row. Put your fingers on the home row and your thumbs on the space bar. Great. Now you’re in position. Feel the nubs on two of the keys with your fingers. They let you know when your fingers are in the right place. Now keep your fingers on the home row and only move the finger that is closest to the key you want to type, then return that finger to the home row. Got it?

At first it’ll be frustrating to bend your fingers this way, but trust me, it becomes second nature very quickly. And once each key is in your muscle memory, you can focus on the thoughts you’re conveying instead of the mechanics of hitting keys—a massive win.

After a couple of days you’ll be touch typing and your speed will drastically improve. It really is that simple. Just a little determination and fast typing is yours for the asking.

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By niclindh
October 27, 2008

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