Struggles with the "Attention Economy"

As the number of available inputs continues to increase, it has become more and more difficult for me to get everything done that I want done and to decide what to do with the limited amount of time left to me each day.

I'm talking about all tasks across my life, including work items as well as personal tasks. For now, I'll focus on the personal things.

I have a lot of content waiting to be consumed. I am currently subscribed to 29 podcasts. Across these podcasts, I have 80 items to either listen to or watch. In addition to that, I have a DVR with about 10 different series stored. These series total roughly 19 hours of video to watch. I am also subscribed to Netflix.com, with 381 items in my queue. I have an Audible.com account with about 7 hours of audio I haven't yet listened to. And, this list doesn't include about a dozen books that are on my list of "things to read once there's a bit more time."

I believe the problem I'm faced with isn't something unique to me. It is the problem of the attention economy. There simply isn't enough time to do all of the things we need to do. How do you find the balance? I'm still working on it.

According to the Wikipedia article linked to above, the answer lies in becoming good at "filtering out unimportant or irrelevant information."

And, to that end, I have been reading (and listening to) Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. The central premise of the book is to prioritize all things to be done into a list, and then prioritize that list by importance and impact. Finally, attack the most important and biggest items on the list first.

The author, Brian Tracy, basically says to give up on the idea of completing everything; there simply isn't enough time to do it all. I'm not sure whether I can commit to doing something like that. The least important items, according to Mr. Tracy, should either get delegated to others or simply cut from the list entirely.

Of course, I'm not getting everything done now, as it is. So, it just might be a good idea to explicitly choose the items that don't get done, rather than to try and do everything and be surprised and what gets left unfinished.

For now, I can commit to finish reading the book. Onces that's complete, we can take it from there.

I'm a victim of the Twitter Effect

It seems that I am among the latest to succumb to the Twitter effect. I tried to avoid it, but it has claimed me at last.

On the face of it, the concept of Twittering didn't really make too much sense to me. I mean, only 140 characters per post didn't seem like anything worthwhile. However, after hearing about how awesome Twitter was from all of the various podcasts I follow, I decided to sign up and take a look to see what all the hype was about.

We can sum it up by saying that constraint drives creativity or some such. But the coolest thing, at least for me, is that Twitter offers fairly simple integration with so many other web-based services that it makes it super simple to keep all of the places where you web up-to-date.

Of course, maybe it's just popular because it allows people who crave attention to mingle with other people who crave attention. A perfect platform for mutual ego stroking. But, upon second thought, I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

If you don't know what Twitter is, check out this great video created over at Common Craft.

How does my Music Player recognize my CD?

When you insert a CD, your music player goes out to the internet and uses a free service "CDDB" (now called GraceNote) to try and identify your CD. It looks at a combination of your CDs total play time, number of tracks, and the play time for each track and takes this, hopefully unique, information and matches it against a list of commercially available album information.

If it finds a match, then all the appropriate album information and cover art is returned. If you create your own "mix," then most likely your custom CD won't match anything in the CDDB database and your player will be unable to identify the tracks on your custom album.

There is a detailed description of how CDDB works on Wikipedia.org.

Of course, if you aren't online when you insert your CD, it won't be recognized.

Itunes U

This post is in honor of a new service I stumbled upon in iTunes. I was browing the iTunes collection of audio book offerings, trying to get a handle on whether I should create an Audible account or just make individual purchases from the iTunes music store when, suddenly, I noticed a new link (labeled "new"). iTunes U.

Out of curiosity, I clicked the link to see what I could find. What I found was a bit surprising. Apparently universities can, and are, making some of their lectures, public events, and videos available to their own student body through iTunes. The interesting side effect is that since these offerings are currently free, both you and I can take advantage of this valuable college-grade information. Did I mention it's free?

If you are interested in learning more about this new area in iTunes, check out what Apple has to say about iTunes U. If you don't have a copy of iTunes installed on your computer, you can get it free from Apple.

iPhone ... outside of the US

While Apple's iPhone will work in other countries, if you use it on non-ATT network for two months in a row your account can get cancelled. It's in the AT&T terms of service document.

I know of at least one pair of iPhones destined for use in other countries. In about 60 days a few people are going to be very disappointed.

Microsoft Surface: Multi-touch technology for only $10,000

With all the hype surrounding Apple's new iPhone and it's multi-touch technology, it's easy to forget that multi-touch is not a technology strictly owned by Apple. According to Wikipedia.org, multi-touch has at least a 25-year history beginning back at the University of Toronto.

I was recently sent a link to a video that talks about Microsoft's Surface technology. (Microsoft Surface website)

The video was really impressive and I wondered if it has made it to YouTube yet. What I found at YouTube was a really, really good parody.

Microsoft's Surface Technology video

Parody of Microsoft Surface Video

What's really interesting to me is that this technology is definitely on the way to being common place in the near future ... well, I guess on the 29th, right?

First the iPhone, then the coffee table.

Create new passwords, as a rule

If you're anything like I am, you have dozens and dozens of user names and passwords. Right now, I have over 80 different accounts. I've got Hotmail, Yahoo! mail, Google Mail, AOL mail, Time Warner mail and various other web services, as well as traditional services, like online banking or credit card company accounts.

With so many different accounts, there is a big temptation to use the same password for every time you set up a new one. When you use the same user name and password everywhere you sign in online, if someone figures out your password they instantly have access to everywhere else you go online.

I recommend you use a different password on every site for which you have an account. Of course, you may be saying, "There's no way I can remember over 80 different passwords." I totally understand how you feel, but it can be done.

Would you believe me if I told you that I have a different password for practically every account I have online? I do.

Instead of making an arbitrary decision about what my password is going to be, I use a "password rule" that I made up myself to help me generate unique passwords for every place I have an account. In my case (now I'm not going to share my exact rule, because if I did, then you'd be able to generate all my passwords), I use a multi-part rule.

1. Something unique about the site I'm visiting (maybe reverse the letters of the site name, "Yahoo" might be "oohaY")
   
   
2. Something unique about me, like "browneyes" (this might stay the same across many sites)
   
   
3. Some other unique factor (maybe a color that starts with the first letter of the URL, in this case that would be "yellow.")
   

When you add up Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, you'll get a password that is fairly long, in this case we would get, "oohaYbrowneyesyellow," a 19-character password. Many of my passwords are more than 22 characters, but because I know my rule, I can quickly recreate my password without having to carry around a piece of paper.

Note: There's also a temptation to use the same user name for each account, though it's less dangerous if your passwords are different. You could use a similar strategy to create unique user names for each site.