On The Bus – Hello and Thanks!

It’s been some time since I’ve had to commute on the bus.  As a student, the bus was my main mode of getting around town (and the occasional trip home), but in my post-student days, I’ve been privledged to have a vehicle of my own to commute in.

A few weeks back, I carpooled to Hamilton with my wife so that I could attend an ethics workshop at McMaster University.  After my business was done on campus, I took the bus from campus to her place of work.

I greeted the driver as I embarked the bus, paid my fare, and took a seat.  Instead of getting lost in whatever was on my phone, I took the opportunity to watch the streets as we drove by and listen to the sounds of the bus.

I was startled when I realized that I had forgotten that regular bus-riders always thank the driver when disembarking.    It was something I did back in my student days, and I was glad to see that not much had changed in the 5-7 years since I regularly rode the bus.

Given that I had forgotten this little gesture of appreciation and kindness, I wanted to take a moment in this otherwise dull blog to commit it to memory and share the sentiment.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

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Five* Digital Tools I Use

Last week I shouted from the rooftops about reaching zero unread messages in my inbox.  This feels like a good opportunity to geek out a bit on some cool digital tools I use for my process flow.  Below are a handful of applications and services I use to keep on top of things, which supplement any physical systems I use to stay organized (like my notebook, for example).  None of the referenced products below are sponsors and I have no business ties with them.

Boomerang (Paid)

I was introduced to Boomerang for Gmail a few years back and made use of their free tier for quite some time.  However, last year I made the jump to unlock some additional functionality and allow me to boomerang more messages per month.

Seamlessly integrated into Gmail, Boomerang allows me to kick messages out of my inbox and set to return at a predetermined time.  You may have noted in a caption that I mentioned “boomeranged messages;” this is what I was referencing.  If I have messages that I want to come back to, but I don’t want them to clutter my inbox, I use Boomerang to remove them temporarily without me forgetting about it.  Boomerang has other features, such as being able to append notes to myself or asking a message to return if no one responds within a certain time frame.  All in all, a great little service that doesn’t cost much for the year.

Evernote/OneNote

I use both Evernote (free) and OneNote (Enterprise).  I don’t really have a preference one way or the other at the moment, but I tend to use Evernote for personal items (saving notes, planning blog posts, etc.) where I use OneNote for Board work and my main job.  I was urged to go paperless by my boss, so I slowly adopted the services and moved away from extra notebooks and loose papers on my desk.  Especially within OneNote, I can use the attach document feature to put “print outs” of documents within a notebook page, then use my tablet’s stylus to annotate the document with handwritten notes.

Scanbot

Speaking of embedding print outs, I started using Scanbot for Android to capture paper documents and port them into my digital notes.  I like Scanbot over the regular camera because the AI recognizes the page and will use algorithms to digitally morph distortions of the page.  Instead of requiring perfect lighting and standing perfectly over the page, I can capture documents on camera and Scanbot flattens out and crops the image for me.  I’ve also found it handy for taking pictures of overhead presentation slides, and whiteboard writing.

Pushbullet

Pushbullet has a lot of features for pushing documents across devices, but I mostly use it as a way of preventing myself from always looking at my phone.  Instead, I can avoid temptation and quickly reply to text messages from my wife before jumping back into my task.  I know myself well enough that picking up my phone is inviting a trip down the rabbit hole of distraction, so Pushbullet really helps keep my monkey brain in check.  (Note: if you’re wondering about how I avoid distractions on my computer, I use the StayFocusd extension to block website during certain hours of the day)

Trello

Month over month, I will have lots of To Do items that are left incomplete.  I used to copy them over manually to the next notebook, but over time the list grew.  Out of laziness, I started porting those tasks over to Trello for longer term storage.  Yes, I should either discard those items I’m not doing or clearing my plate by completing the tasks.  However, there are items that are not urgent and not important enough to do at the time.  Instead, I’ve set up a kanban board that allows me to move tasks from a pool to an active list, then to a complete, abandon, or hold list, depending on the status of the task.  It’s a handy way of keeping on top of tasks that are not immediately pressing and allows me to use my notebook for day-to-day pressing concerns.

There are a few other tools I’m trying out, such as Toggl, RescueTime, Microsoft Teams, and Notion, but I’ll save those for a future post.

The five-ish tools above are a few things that makes it easy for me to keep on top of several process flows for work, my personal projects, and my volunteer work.  Without them, I would be drowning in trying to keep everything fresh in my mind.  Let me know what kind of tools you use (digital or analogue) in the comments below.  I’m always interested in learning what different people have set up for themselves.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

First “Inbox Zero” In A Long Time

For as much as I read about productivity and “tactics,” I’m not all that organized, in my opinion.  I am forced to keep track of a lot of threads in my projects by necessity of having too much on my plate, so I make use of notebooks and applications to sort, categorize, and remind myself of things.  This includes my email inboxes – if something is unread, it means I haven’t tended to it yet and need to circle back.

From time to time I hack away at my unread messages, but items will sit there for long stretches during peak deadline times.

Last week, however, I hit inbox zero for my main account for the first time in a loooooong time.

inbox zero
Let’s ignore any messages currently in Boomerang limbo…

I honestly don’t remember the last time I hit zero messages in my inbox.  It’s been a long slow process of setting up filters on messages to get rid of promotions cluttering my inbox (which I started setting up in January).  I was tired of having to constantly decide whether I wanted to open promotional messages or auto-delete.  I didn’t want to block or unsubscribe from them all since I still used the promotions on occasion, but the constant, daily deluge of 30+ messages was draining.

I don’t really subscribe to the inbox zero system per se, but when I finally cleared the last message kicking around, I stared at my empty inbox in confusion.  It was weird to see.  And I feel a slight motivation to keep on top of clearing emails.  When a number pops up in the tab, an itching anxiety kicks in to get rid of it as soon as possible.

1 message

0 message
Demon be gone!

I feel odd celebrating something like this.  I know rationally that clearing emails isn’t really a marker of productivity.  Nevertheless, I think it’s important to celebrate those times when you feel a modicum of control over your life and work (even if it’s an illusion set up by my capitalist overlords… /s).

Knowledge workers, unite!

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

 

Podcasts and Book Marketing

I’ve noticed an annoying trend in the podcast marketing of new books.  The marketing itself works quite well – I’ve purchased a number of books based on authors who appear on podcasts I listen to and discuss the main ideas of the book with the host.

The problem I have is when it seems like a significant amount of the content discussed in the podcast accounts for large chunks of the book’s main ideas.  For instance, I picked up a book recently and all of the key ideas (the theoretical framework and main argument for why the topic is important) laid out in the first 70 pages were discussed on a podcast.  I’m curious whether the rest of the book will be similarly spoiled, but I’m holding out to be surprised.  From what I’ve seen so far, though, the next 150 pages are presented as tactics and strategies to apply the main ideas, so I’m not overly optimistic.

I understand that this is part and parcel of the marketing format for these books.  An author is invited onto a show with a certain audience reach, the two discuss the book as a common framing device for the conversation, and everyone is happy – the author gets promoted, the publisher gets advertising, and the podcast generates revenues on sales kickbacks and sponsored content.   The only person that loses is the reader who pays for a book that was effectively summarized an hour-long conversation for free.  This is doubly bad when the book is an animated bibliography, and you’ve read enough books in the genre to get the punchline from the stories cited.

I can’t put all the blame on the author.  After all, they are just trying to sell their book and there is going to be a lot of repetition of the talking points if you do a lot of interviews.  A lot of the blame, instead, falls on the quality of the podcasts.  I find that podcast hosts tend to stick to a common format of teeing up questions based on key points from the chapters.  Sometimes this is handled smoothly, as in cases where the host poses an interesting question that the author uses to circle back to something discussed in the book.  But I have listened to podcast episodes where the host states a thesis from the book without a question, and the author then just elaborates on that point.

In an ideal world, I would want an interview the way it used to be when I watched Jon Stewart’s run of the Daily Show, where the author would be invited as a guest to the show on the pretense of discussing the book, however the conversation would be about whatever Stewart wanted.  Often the conversation was an excuse to catch up, swap stories, and bore little direct connection with what the book was about; the book was usually mentioned as an afterthought as the interview wrapped up.   Maybe this wouldn’t sell as many books, but at least I wouldn’t feel cheated reading through a book I already had the conclusions for.

Or maybe I have too high of expectations of free content, which runs counter to the content farming that needs to occur to regularly post stuff for consumers.

Rant over (for now).

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

The Value of Probing Assumptions

I was on a consultation call a few weeks ago about an ethics application.  The project was seeking feedback from participants about access to specific mental health information, and in my feedback to their application, I noted that their demographic question concerning the gender of the participant was probably too narrow.  The applicant asked for some advice how to address the comment.

On the one hand, they considered dropping the question as it a.) didn’t obviously connect to their research question, and b.) the literature supporting this branch of mental health was pretty well-studied in terms of incidence rates for the condition along the sex dimension, so they might not learn anything new by asking for the participant’s gender or sex.  On the other hand, if they left it in, they had to contend with whether they should use sex or gender as the focus of the question.  Since the mental health topic they were researching was a medical condition, it seemed like (biological) sex was the more salient feature, whereas my feedback suggested that if they chose gender, they would need to ensure it was inclusive.

While discussing the implications on the phone, I tried to tease out what the purpose of the study was.  Their study was collecting qualitative information about how people access information.  In the context of the demographic information, they weren’t seeking to know how a person’s sex/gender relates to the condition itself.  But, I wonder aloud, it seemed the purpose of the study was to understand how people seek information, which could arguably be influenced by one’s culture, behaviour, socialization, and experience of how the world treats them.  In that way, you would want to focus less on a person’s physiology and instead you might discover interesting differences in how a person seeks information based on their life-experiences.

The applicant noted that they started the phone call intending to drop the question from the survey, and through my line of questions and probes, was convinced to keep the question and modify it to be more inclusive.

I am not telling this story as a normative push on how we should conduct inquiry (though by reading through the lines, you should get a sense of how I feel about the topic).  Instead, I share this story as an example of why posing good questions is important to remove ambiguity and clarify thought.  One of the goals of our ethics board when we review applications is to make implied premises explicit so that we can be sure of what we take as a given when we set out to study a research question.  We often default to accepted practice and proceed with common tools, but sometimes we don’t think carefully through the implications of what using those tools means.  By leveraging my outsider status, I have an opportunity to get the applicants to explain concepts and lines of reason without assuming I share the same understanding of the material that they do.  This helps to spot those areas where the project is weakened by unsupported claims and assumptions.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Beware the Salesman

Podcast ads.

Hacks and routines.

Blogs that promote and sponsored content.

Look to the incentives and see if they align with your own.

What’s in their interest might not be in mine.

This might change over time.  Sources that don’t sell might eventually sell.  There is a future where I might try to sell you something or join my mailing list.

Beware the one who sells you solutions for problems they don’t have.

Beware the sponsored content coming from authorities you like.

Beware the salesman who makes universal the particular.  The one who puts everyone into a clearly defined box.  The one who makes money on your problems.  The one who charges to join their community.

I’m not saying these are all inherently bad things; merely that they merit many second thoughts.

Secret shortcuts don’t exist.  If they were valuable, they wouldn’t be secret and they wouldn’t be a shortcut – they would be the norm.

Everyone has to make a living.  Everyone has something to sell.  But not everyone has your best interest in mind.

Caveat emptor.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Book Ideas – Types of Feedback

I’ve been reading Scott Young’s recently released book, Ultralearning, and I think it’s a pretty good summary of how one can take on an intense learning project for personal and professional development.  It functions like an autodidact’s road map with plenty of good tips, insights, and stories to round things out.  Elements of the animated bibliography are present, but I don’t find it contrived in its execution.  The stories help frame the chapter and serve as an introduction to the core material.

It’s funny how last week I was talking about mnemonic devices, because after drafting that post I ended up reading about the concept in Chapter 10 of the book as it dealt with ways of supporting retention of material you learn.

In chapter 9 of the book, Young talks about ways of providing feedback in the learning process, whether the feedback is provided from others or feedback you can use in your own learning process.  He parses out three kinds of feedback that I found interesting, not only for my own personal use in learning, but also as something I should keep in mind as a teacher.

The three kinds of feedback he outlines are outcome feedback, informational feedback, and corrective feedback.  Each type of feedback serves a specific purpose, and you should be mindful of the context the feedback is given, as the wrong type of feedback can set you back in your learning.

Outcome feedback – provides information on whether you are getting answers right or if you are meeting a pre-identified set of learning objectives.  It tells you that you are right but doesn’t give any indication of why (or why you are wrong).

Informational feedback – provides further information to explain the underlying reason why something is right or wrong.  It can be informative to re-affirm what you have learned, and can identify key areas of strength or weakness, however it does not create a concrete process forward.

Corrective feedback – provides, as the name indicates, a path forward for the learner in terms of how to overcome deficiencies.  It details not only how one is right/wrong, why they are right/wrong, but how to address or avoid being wrong.  This type of feedback not only requires a level of comprehension of the material, but requires sufficient understanding to teach the underlying processes to the learner through explanation, demonstration, suggestion, etc.

As a teacher, it’s important to know what kind of feedback is warranted and under what circumstances.  Most of us tend to focus just on outcomes, but students often don’t learn from pure outcome assessment.  Rather, you need to take the further steps to go beyond an evaluation and ensure you are addressing the underlying deficiency present in the student’s performance.  Outcome assessment is awesome because it’s quick and definitive, but it’s also lazy if your goal is to improve your students.  On the other hand, corrective feedback is desirable but it’s labour-intensive and must be done carefully so as not to remove critical thinking from your student – you don’t want them to merely follow your instructions but instead you want to promote their thinking and reasoning through problems without your guidance.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan