Mox Nox In Rem

Mox Nox in Rem

Four small (Latin) words that mean so much.

Literally: “Soon nightfall.  To the business”.

Or, more colloquially, “Let’s get the show on the road”.

Or, really, Let’s get on with it”.

The point is this.  There are a million things we could do today.  We could watch TV.  We could Twitter.  We could check our emails.  We could do any number of things that will probably not make any difference to anybody, ever.

Or we could do something that will make a material difference to us or others.  Before nightfall.

The Epidemic of the Un-Finished Thing

As a Productivity Ninja, I am able to see trends early. As I work with clients, I can see patterns as they first appear, and one of the most striking patterns of the last six months has been the emergence of the Epidemic of the Un-Finished Thing.

 These Things show up on clients' PCs, in two places. First, in a swarm of opened, started-but-unfinished documents, presentations and spreadsheets. When questioned, the client will say, "Yes, not sure about that, it will probably disappear when I close my PC."

 More pernicious is the second type of Thing. This appears in the "Drafts" folder in Outlook. A recent client had 452 items in Drafts. These are things that had been very important when they arrived, and when she started drafting a response, but as soon as her attention was snatched away by the next new thing, the Thing was left Un- Finished for ever.

 This is the problem. We are always so focused on what's "new in" that we tend to ignore what is actually, really, truly worth doing. So we hop, like kids on hot sand, from one immediate, trivial thing to the other, never actually doing anything worthwhile.

Gibsonian Affordances

I am not a Productivity Ninja at home. There, I've said it. For some reason, all the things that keep me focused and on track work-wise seem to evaporate as soon as I get through the door of Brown Towers.

 And it's that very same door that is going to be the starting point for a revolution. In "The Organized Mind", Daniel Levitkin talks about Gibsonian Affordances - objects whose design features tell you something about how to use it. A “push” door is signaled by a flat plate; a “pull” door by a handle, for example.

 The first implementation of Gibsonian Affordances is our new key system. We have a front door, a back door, but their near-identical bronze keys are all kept on the same hook. So there is a certain amount of effort and stress involved in getting to the right key.

 No longer.

 The front door is red and the back door is white. On Saturday I bought a small tin of red paint and a small tin of white paint. So, hello colour-coded back- and front-door keys, and goodbye confusion.

 This got me thinking about further Gibsonian opportunities. I shall report back

The Organized Mind #1 - know your limits

One of the challenges of the modern world of work is our brain’s ability to process stuff. What is the brain's real-time processing capacity, and how does that capacity match the processing requirements of the world around us?

 In "The Organized Mind", Daniel Levitin answers this question. The human brain can process at around 120 bits per second. One person talking to us is about 60 bits per second of information. So, we can easily absorb the output from a single person talking to us. If we work hard, we can probably take in what two people are saying (simultaneously). But what are our chances of absorbing the output of three people talking to us (simultaneously). Realistically? None.

 This matters because we live in a world of babble. At any time, as we sit at our desks, we have to contend with email traffic, the telephone, Instant Messenger, other humans in the office, our own thoughts, etc. Oh, and we also need to focus on the Single Most Important task at hand.

 That’s why work is difficult. And that's why, as Productivity Ninjas, we switch off all the distractions we can - all of the above, except for the Single Most Important task at hand.

Return to Vinyl, Part V - The Reality - Jazz

And, another surprise.  Is it my advancing years?  Is it, finally, growing up?  But, in a word, Jazz.  What never made sense when I was young, now makes sense.  I blame it on the turntable, and its ability to extract, forensically, the soul of the music.  I blame it on the gorgeous packaging - albums produced at the peak of the jazz boom - 1950s to 1960s - look at “Kind of Blue”

 

or Coltrane’s “Blue Train”

 

I suppose it was called “Cool Jazz” at that time for a reason.

And there’s something about the way that these albums were recorded.  An immediacy, an emotional commitment.  Perhaps it was tied in with the improvisatory nature of the music.  A Kylie Minogue performance will always sound the same, so there is no need to capture its fleetingness; it’s not fleeting.  But John  Coltrane never played a tune twice the same way.  Whoever captured it on the recording cared about that.

Return to Vinyl, Part IV - The Reality - Classical

Something I wasn’t expecting.  The shift to classical.  Whilst much of it felt inaccessible before, I can now chunk through the Ring Cycle (Solti, Vienna Philharmonic, 1958, Decca, 19 discs) at my leisure, with the detailed accompanying booklet, lyrics, etc.  The package feels more generous than Spotify, let’s say.  It feels like a gift to leaf through an artefact fifty-five years old.  Even older than I am, but more pristine.  The attention to detail is astonishing, both in the music and in the packaging.  The confection of something to endure and be savoured for a long time.  I like the fact that, despite the fact that it’s perishable, nothing about it feels disposable.

Oh, that cost £7.99.  For the whole thing.

Handel’s Messiah (Boult, London Symphony Orchestra, 1961, Decca, three discs).  £3.99.  Recorded at the Kingsway Hall in London, the sound is open and warm and thrilling.  Joan Sutherland sounds like she’s in the room.

These old recordings sound unlike anything else.  Full, fat, flawed, feisty.  A revelation.

 

Return to Vinyl, Part III - The Reality - Rock

So, it’s all plugged in.  The Rega RP6.  The Yamaha DSP-A1.  The creaky old AE109 speakers.

What does it sound like?  It sounds very complete (nothing missing), very uncompromised (no short cuts to fit everything into a given format).  It sounds like the timing is right on everything.  It sounds like there is nothing - a digital gauze? - between me and the music.

I have some albums to play, as well.  All the rock you would want - Zeppelin, U2, Van Halen, UFO.  Rolling Stones, and more.  It all sounds magnificent.  “Some Girls” on pink vinyl (of course).  The sleaze of the title track very real in the room, its crunching bass drum, its swagger and swing and soul.

And Van Halen, even more insane than I remember.  Eddie Van Halen’s finger-work revealed in all its frenzied detail, Dave Lee Roth’s breathy yelps echoing through a cavernous-sounding studio.  Ted Templeman’s production sounds and smells like new paint.

In fact, it’s all fresh and new and worth repeated listening.

 

Return to Vinyl, Part II - The What?

So, what to buy?  A turntable, obviously.  But which one?  When I was in my twenties, I had a lovely Rega Planar 3, bought from Graham’s HiFi in North London.  Having just been reading about the Lindy Effect, I thought I would see if Grahams - and the lovely Rega were still around.  Yes, it turns out, and Yes, respectively.  Jude at Grahams set up a demo.  Deep joy.  He would set up a system, and suggested that I try the Rega RP3 against the Rega RP6 (the latter rather more expensive).  Comfy room.  Cup of tea.  I can choose the albums.  So, “Led Zeppelin II” and Miles Davis “Kind of Blue,” starting with the former.

The first note was a shock.  Then the first bar.  This is the sound of a skinny man in a room with an electric guitar and amp.  You can hear all three things.  You can hear the walls.  And when the drums come in, Bonhamsequely, every snare rattle, every ghost note.  All the music is there, in all its human failing, fault and frailty.

Then on to Miles.  Arguably the greatest jazz album of all time.  And again, from the first, it’s all there.  The room, the men, the finger and string noise.  The jazz heat in the room, the interplay.  And - arguably the finest moment in jazz on arguably the finest album in jazz - when Jimmy Cobb hits the ride cymbal and it sustains for one, two, three bars, fizzing alive in the air in the demo room.

There, then, was all the music.

And the RP3 vs. the RP6?  The RP3 for sentimental reasons (the designed almost unchanged over thirty years) but for clarity, musical definition and pizzazz, the RP6.

Which now sits in my sitting room.

 

Email-free Christmas (Part III)

In my last couple of posts, I have talked about my “de-mailing” over Christmas, and it was hard, then easy, but ultimately rewarding.

What was the process that enabled this to happen?  There were three things:

1. Path of Least Resistance.  In “The Happiness Advantage”, Shawn Achor talks about “the path of least resistance.”  He says that he pondered why he never practised guitar.  It was just too much effort to get it out of the cupboard.  Not a lot of effort, but too much.  So, he changed things, and kept it in his living room, right by the sofa.  This small change made a massive difference to the frequency of his practice.  It almost became difficult not to pick the guitar up.  So, if we want to develop a good habit, put it on our daily path, in our field of vision.  And the reverse is true.  If we want to stop doing something, make it hard to start.  So I moved the Mail icon from the toolbar on my iPad and buried it in a folder in a folder on page 3.  It wasn’t impossibly difficult to get in there and look at email, but it was certainly inconvenient.  After a while, I forgot about it, because I didn’t see it every day.
2. Clear “Out of Office” message.  My email OoO reply said “I will be away until 6 January 2014 and unavailable by phone and email until that date.”  Pretty clear, I thought.  No-one complained about its directness.
3. Clear voicemail message.  My voicemail message said “I am out of the office until 6th January.  If your call relates to a work matter, please don’t leave a voicemail, but call back on 6th January.  If it is a personal matter, please leave a voicemail and I will get back to you.”  Again, direct.  But no-one complained, and a few people called back on the 6th January.

The point of all this is that you have to create the fire-break.  If you fail to clear a good gap between you and the flames of distraction, those flames will jump over and spoil your holiday.  I managed to clear the firebreak, and it worked.

 

Return to Vinyl, Part I - The Why?

So the CDs are in Oxfam in Shaftesbury, if you want them.  Actually, the first four hundred went to Oxfam in Earl’s Court in 2011.  They won’t be missed, or not much.  But the last, loved, hundred? Perhaps.  The copy of Led Zeppelin IV owned, I guess, since 1986?  It has a heft and solidity that most of the others lack.  Not musically, I mean.  Although that too, or course.  But the thing itself.  Physically.  Later, CDs seemed to just get flimsier and flimsier, until they became MP3s.  And then they didn’t weigh anything at all.  Anyway, it’s gone.

The catalyst for all this?  As I have mentioned before, on MP3 or CD most of the music is not there.  Digitally, 95% of the musical information disappears between the original sound recording and the MP3.  And 75% disappears on the transition to a normal CD track.  I wouldn’t mind, but (a) I have paid for all the music, and (b) the missing bit may be the most interesting bit.

So, back to the future.  Back to vinyl.  Why?

First, as noted above, in the move from analogue to digital to CD, too much of the musical context has been lost.  Second, too much of the sensory immersive experience has been lost too.  Irrespective of the actual quality of the sound, I see too large a gulf between (a) hitting a button on the iPad and (b) pulling an album from the rack; sliding the inner sleeve from the cover (oh, look, here are the lyrics on the inner sleeve, and some cool art and words on the sleeve), feeling the weight of the disc in my hands; but be careful not to touch the surface; then slotting it onto the turntable spindle.  Hit the start button.  Unhook the tone-arm, place the stylus in position.  Lower the tone-arm.  The hiss (run-in groove) and the click on to the sound track.  Then, always, the first note.

So, you see, I miss all of that.

So, back to vinyl.

 

Email-free Christmas (Part II)

In my last post, I talked about the results of dodging email for 2.5 weeks from 18th December to 6th January, and how I concluded that most email was pretty pointless.  That may be obvious, but what was not obvious, in advance of the exercise, were the psychological benefits of what I am now calling “de-mailing”.

The first phase was hard.  Like a smoker separated from his tobacco by statute or family intervention, I felt like a stimulant had been withdrawn.  I suppose it had.

But after a couple of days, I forgot all about it.  I had put in places arrangements (see next post), so that anyone could get hold of me in the event that anything important happened.  But no-one called.  Nothing important happened.  It rarely does.

The more distanced I became from the world of email faffery, the more I enjoyed my holiday.  I did things that I didn’t think I would do, and I thought things that I wouldn’t have thought if I had been caught up in the hamster/wheel interface of normal short-cycle electronic thought processes.

The next post will outline the three key steps for de-mailing over the holidays.