elsewhere elections in Scotland

There has been quite a lot going on in the past week.

My boss for the past couple of years has left on early retirement, so I am now running the branch. The branch is just me, so I don’t anticipate a lot of disagreements with my staff. I am keen to recruit staff both above and below myself, but I’m not sure how long that will take.

In the past, I could simply work to my strengths, as could my boss. However now that I need to pick up more of her work, I will need to think more strategically, and have a better understanding of how the various blocks of work fit together. I am used to doing or batting off small discrete chunks of work, but I will need to shift my focus onto managing larger less tangible and finite pieces of work. [Thinking strategically?]

At a higher level you deal with issues that never go away, so the emphasis is less on batting away things, more on marshalling and understanding them.

This really is not a case of doing more of what I used to do, it is a case of doing stuff differently. I don’t imagine that it is impossible, but I’ll just need to find a way of working, that works for me. I’ve started out with some mind-mapping software, and I’m arranging and attending a lot more meetings. Early days yet, but interesting so far.



After my blog comments last week, there have been a couple of useful and appreciated comments on the OmniOutliner forum, and a couple of different pieces of software have been suggested for my idea of a self sorting blog. Increasingly it sounds like OmniOutliner is not what I am after, MacJournal, and Voodoopad have been suggested, and elsewhere I have come across Mori.

I have downloaded a version of Voodoopad, and I’ll have a play around with it, I’ll also do a little more research on the other options. There is a learning curve to all of these, and I’ll need to consider carefully what features I really need before I create some compendium of everything I ever thought about anything. Something that will stay good indefinitely would be good, rather than something that gets stranded next time there is a change of Mac Operating System.



Having adopted a partial GTD methodology, I have finally ordered a new external hard drive. It has not yet arrived, but should do on Monday. I know, I know, I really must have a hard drive, or some method of backing up my material. Particularly now that my daughters are buying songs from iTunes and they are only on the iMac hard-drive. Hot cross daughters, are something to be avoided.

Of course this meant that I needed to do a lot of research.

First - do I need an external hard drive, wouldn’t it be more secure to simply back up to something over my broadband connection.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/firefox-os-why-my-hard-drive-software-are-obsolete.html

I investigated this option,
.mac - looked expensive for what it offered
Amazon S3 - a possible
G-Space - saving to various G-mail accounts, just looked too fiddly to really work for me. I don’t have the time to master and run anything complicated.
British Telecom - similar service, not sure how well it supported a Mac.

In the end I still decided that I still needed an external hard drive, so that if my iMac is corrupted, I can boot up from the external hard drive and reinstall from there. Yes I know that I could reboot from system disks, and then reinstall the software and strings to get my broadband working, and then upgrade the software over the internet, and then reinstall my data from the last back up, and then resubscribe to all my podcasts, and then put in my bookmarks again, and then reinstall my contacts, ....

However the idea of simply formatting the corrupted hard-drive, and then migrating over a recent system just seemed so much easier. I am currently working on the one computer, so if it goes down, I am effectively cut off from the internet. If I had a batch of computers, then another strategy would doubtless suggest itself.

I have had three Macintosh 1993 - powerbook 165c, 1998 - original bondi blue imac, and my new 2006 intel imac.

The first two eventually succumbed to a corrupted hard drive, which is what finally prompted me to buy a new computer. Accordingly I do expect my new computer to eventually succumb to creeping corruption of its hard drive and fall over. I would like to minimise the catastrophe.


Elsewhere, elections in Scotland.

the smell of condensation on glass, electric cables running through woods

This blog will be a bit ragged.

On the one hand, I think it is useful to be fairly straightforward, but equally no point in being too candid, when a quick search on technorati and anyone can find all the unkind words you posted about them in nineteen oatcake.

Overall the blog entries that I enjoy reading are about what people think, and are reasonably candid, so I will try and stick to that style.

Having posted my idea of a self-sorting blog on the forum for Omni-Outliner, a Macintosh outliner application, no interest. I see the idea as vastly powerful and useful, though not necessarily easy to implement. Imagine all your entries, sortable and browsable in the way that iTunes or Amazon is, you liked this post, other readers also liked this one, similar posts include, ...

One thing I have found with software, it is hugely difficult to sell a concept, people like to see something tangible.

I will probably use Omni-Outliner myself, for when it comes to capturing the random stuff in my small notebook. The process of capturing seemingly random stuff is useful, as very often two not so good ideas can combine, or some opportunity simply arises to do something off your wish list.

I now have a few business ideas, that I would like to hawk round, and if someone offers me a couple of hundred pounds for a few minutes work, then that is good money.

I have also got some ideas for 2000AD scripts, that I can write up and submit when I have a bit more time. I did have a script published years ago, and although it never seems to impress anyone else, it remains something that I am hugely proud of. I could probably work on conveying a more professional image, but at my age, I am ill inclined to jump through hoops for someone else.

I am still trying to work out which hard drive to buy for backing up. Having done a fair bit of research, and then some more, I think I am narrowing down the issues. It is amazing just how long it takes to research and work up ideas. The temptation is always to be doing stuff, and think that thinking time is wasted time, but I am increasingly realising the thinking time is well worth the time spent. A proper way of backing up my computer is essential, especially now that I am starting to buy music from iTunes. Even more crucially, my daughters are buying music from iTunes and saving it to their accounts. If this music gets lost, then I will have some hot cross bunnies for sure!

For sake of being trivial, my iTunes purchases to date are
Laurie Anderson Oh superman
The Phenomenauts Re-entry - album
Holly Gollightly and the Brokeoffs
you can’t buy a gun when you are crying - album
The Mooney Suzuki
people get ready - album
Four Fifty One socks and shoes
the Fratellis flathead
the Red Guitars good technology

I would also suggest, If your breasts, by Ivor Cutler, which is only eight seconds long, so you can hear it in its entirety simply by previewing it. This makes me laugh soo much, but people might find it puerile.

Finally things are all a bit up in the air at work. My old boss is leaving on early retirement in the coming week. We have worked together for the past couple of years, and although some other people have come and gone, for a lot of the time it has been the pair of us getting through an awful lot of stuff between us. I have constantly been told that our branch was too small, and we had far too much work to do, but by and large we have done it, and done it very well too. Working well together does mean that you have to compliment each others skills, and specialities, and we have. By nature I am methodical and organised, more delivery focussed, whereas my boss is probably more thoughtful and considered, as well as vastly more knowledgeable. So it has worked well, I worry about delivery, she figures out what we will deliver. You get very used to simply leaving the other person to cover their area, and concentrating on your own area.

But all good things come to an end, she is off on early retirement, and I am still at my desk.

Obviously this presents quite a few issues, I’ll need to start working to a new boss, I’ll need to cover all the work of the branch until we can fill vacancies, and it can take months to fill a vacancy, although there are always temporary staff.

Factor in that I simply worked through Christmas, and seriously feel like I would just like to take off and veg out for a month.

Also I am not sure whether I want to stay in my current post, I would hate to leave the branch with no-one there, equally I don’t want to commit to another three years there. I don’t want to simply mark time, if it is just spinning plates, then I would prefer to do something new.

In usual fashion, I’ve been fairly vocal on all this, and had a very useful meeting with my new boss on Friday. I suppose I could really make an effort to seem a bit less flaky, and a bit more professional, but I really do feel pretty maxed out, so no point in pretending that I am Mr SuperWonderful, when I feel like, Little Mr OnTheVergeOfANervousBreakdown.

At the end of the day, my health comes before the job, you cannot simply grab at every opportunity, some you just need to let go by.

Anyway back to my “very useful meeting” with my new boss. We set out our respective positions, and agreed a way forward. I am now pretty confident that the situation is not quite as bad as I had anticipated, the workload should be less unrealistic than I had anticipated for the next few months, and we should get some new staff in post quicker than I had thought might be the case. Also I am to take on the lead for the branch, not just because I am the only one here, but so that we can get moving on some important pieces of work. Clearly we cannot really get motoring until the branch is fully staffed, which would be three staff. However, equally, we need to get some things moving now, or we are losing valuable ground.

I’ve agreed a plan of attack, and I’ll have weekly meetings with my new boss, so we should be able to figure out pretty quickly whether we are actually making any progress, and figure out a new plan of attack as necessary.

On the basis that I am spinning a few plates, but concentrating on putting the major work in motion, it sounds like interesting work for a few months. I did apply for a couple of other posts, for fear of just being swamped where I was, but I’m now considering cancelling those applications, and seeing how things pan out where I am.

Decisions, decisions.

There is a vast difference between the approaches required at the different job bands. At a more junior level, you have clear and finite objectives, and are expected to deliver them to the best possible standard. That was certainly the approach in my original department. However at a more senior level, you have a more general work area, and you are expected to make meaningful progress across it. However it is far more difficult to agree specific and meaningful objectives at the outset. Even if you can, these are easily set aside if something else comes up.

I suppose that this could simply be a rationale for not planning, but equally I suppose, if you have a bunch of staff working to you, it will soon become apparent what meaningful progress does look like, and what running about like a headless chicken all the time looks like. The higher up you get, the more of a judgement you have to make on how good to actually do something. Are you spending too much time on something that is simply not that important in the scheme of things.

I do feel a bit conflicted trying to be a whole branch of three people in myself. However if I am working to the clear remit of delivering stuff, rather than spinning plates, then I can be more proactive in my decision making, rather than being reactive, and worrying too much about what I am not doing. To be honest I am now quite excited about getting things moving, the feedback from my outgoing boss, was that often it is important to make decisions, even if they are wrong, rather than simply failing to make decisions. Whereas at a junior grade the work is more finite and quantitative, and a wrong decision is pretty obvious, at a more senior level, the work is infinite, and qualitative.

I always take the view that good people can make bad systems work, and bad people can make good systems fail. I suppose that what this is saying is that there is a vital interpersonal side, the getting the folk right element, that you cannot neglect. But it is all a bit voodoo, and subjective, so it is easy to neglect.

Edward de Bono has a theory of different hats, for different ways of thinking. What I am talking about is something similar.

One skill set is methodical and organised against well defined and finite objectives. At this level there are relatively few other resources to call on, because basically this is grunt work that takes hours to do. You co-operate so that you can offer mutual assistance and advice, but there can be equally productive ways of working without a lot of networking or mutual assistance.

The other skills set is creative and proactive working with an imperfect understanding and higher level objectives. At this level there are plenty of resources to call upon because this is where the right contacts, experience or ideas, can ensure progress very quickly and with little real effort. How effective your networks are is crucial at this work level.

If you are moving from one type of job to another, it is not simply a case of getting better and doing more, you really do need to do things differently, or it is not going to work.

Equally if you are working in one way, looking at someone working in the other style, they seem impossibly flaky, or unduly mechanistic. It is very difficult to perceive someone’s effectiveness if you are on the other side of this particular divide. Also it is very difficult to perform, unless you know what style is expected of you. Many posts are actually transitional, they require substantial elements of each approach. Very few posts are so senior that there are no mechanistic elements to them.

[I have worked to the principle that this blog is about me, so readers can form whatever opinions they like about me, but it is not about anyone else, so it is inappropriate to write about anyone else. This is not because I am not interested, or don’t think anyone else is, but simply because it seems inherently unfair. This means I don’t really say anything bad about anyone, but also, don’t say positive things about people when I could/should. At this point it would be wrong not to say how much I have enjoyed working for my old boss, she has been a tremendously easy and supportive person to work for. Not only that, she is one of the nicest people I have ever met, vastly nicer than I am. Also vastly cleverer than I am. It is inspiring to work with someone who is that nice, but who has managed to rise to a very senior position. Clearly you do not have to be a ruthless so and so to do well.

I have also been lucky enough to work with some other tremendous people over the past year, we had a secondee from a stakeholder organisation, and she was incredible, like a kid in a sweetshop, all excited at the possibilities, and undettered by how incredibly difficult everything seems to be. I also had a new member of staff, and really enjoyed training them up, and getting them to realise that they already had a lot of the key skills for the work, and encouraging them to think about the real point of what we are actually doing. There have also been countless other folk drafted in, or loosely attached to the project, and without exception they have all been positive and unstinting in their efforts, and a huge pleasure to work with. Had a single person been difficult, our seemingly impossible task really would have been impossible. My main regret is that I did not get a chance to work more with all these people. Heartfelt best wishes to anyone that recognises themselves in the above.]

self sorting, self organising blog

I have been missing my blog. I am developing a hierarchy of recording stuff. I keep a number of notebooks. I say, a number, because I would have to count them.

Firstly - I carry around a small pocket notebook to record stuff.

I keep a jotter for work and one for home, that I use for the run of the mill notetaking, for example minutes of meetings, and working notes. I glue a business card to the front of each, and write the dates covered on the cover with a marker pen.

I keep a notebook for creative ideas for woodwork and the garden, it also includes clippings that I find inspiring, and might want to pick up on to some extent.

I keep a notebook of what I have done and planted in the garden. Initially this was organised into helpful categories, and also included a running diary, but I never used the helpful categories, and now I just use the running diary, but this means that I cannot find things without a lot of effort.

Following on from reading A Year with Swollen Appendices, by Brian Eno, I kept a diary for a year.

I also keep various other virtual notes, I have been trying to get familiar with omni-outliner, and I use it for the odd list, but they seem to get compiled, then sit unloved on my desktop.

And finally there is my blog.

I suppose there is a sort of evolution going on here, the stuff that works will keep on getting used, while the stuff that is just that bit too much faff, for the use, is abandoned. I supposed that I could move towards making more of these records electronic, but I quite like the ease of simply recording stuff without a computer. There is usually a queue forming round our computer anyway, so the more that I can do without it, the easier my life is.

A lot of the subsequent usability of a record is in how easy it is to search, which is determined by how organised it is, or how searchable it is. I did toy with the idea of writing an entire novel on file cards, which I would write, and then sort and resort. Obviously this is not an entirely new idea. William Burroughs worked with cut-ups, Italo Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno, is organised in a rather idiosyncratic way. There is also post-modernism, or even Tristram Shandy if you want to look at experimentation in ordering.

The idea of order is actually dependent on there being a reader.

* The material can be written in any order you like,

* organised in another,

* and finally read in yet another.

[another example of input - process - output]

The organisation in the middle serves some purpose, does it facilitate or inspire the reader. A phone directory in a purely random order would be a very different beast from one in alphabetical order. Similarly although a phone directory is in alphabetical order, that is not how you read it. You use the order, so that you can search it, you read it in an interest defined order. If technology can do the sorting on the fly, for you, then the actual order of material is irrelevant.

For example I often spend an evening browsing across the internet, following up on interests. Checking out wikipedia, then maybe a forum or two, check blogs via technorati, put a book on my wishlist at Amazon. The order is responsive to what interests me, I hyperlink, or jump up to my to bookmark bar, to do a fresh search.

Returning to the three categories above, the web is written in a certain order, it is organised in another, but I choose to read it in yet another.

This works because of the power of hyperlinks and searching.

I have a number of problems with novels, I don’t really think that the novel is a valid art form anymore. It has lost its purpose and role. Like when contemporary music hits a stale patch, everything seems like a pastiche of something else.

Part of my problem with the novel, is that the author imposes their order on the reader. There might only be one strand that interests you, only one character you are curious about, but these are twined into the whole, and you cannot opt out of the rest. There are many fine things about narrative, it keeps you reading. But I am not sure that the lasting value of writing lies in how strong the narrative is.

My other problem with novels, is that they impose a single viewpoint. I am increasingly coming to the view, that I always believe two contradictory things, and constantly have to decide between them. Generally an author will have decided, how do we view this person, what happened next, is this action a mistake. A novel creates a pattern and narrative. That is why they are so appealing. However novels do not really tell you anything about the present tense, but we live in the present tense, we are constantly in a decision making mode.

Do I make another cup of tea, I would like another cup, or do I keep typing, for fear of losing the thread of what I am writing. Factor in that I drink far too much tea, and decide to carry on typing. The debate is parked for a short while, but will resurface when I run dry of ideas along this thread, and the balance of the argument tips, and I decide that there is no longer a thread to lose, I’ll start drinking less tea tomorrow, and I will make myself another cup of tea.

We would all love to be that person in a novel, Gully Foyle in The Stars my Destination, Matt Damon striding up the hill with a shot gun to kill the assassin that is chasing him. These are people devoid of ambiguity, pure of purpose. But we live with a constant critic, worrying about the opportunity cost of what we have done, what if we had done something else, when does the balance of the argument tilt, when do we give up on this bad investment, when do we give up on a bad marriage, when do we decide to change career.

Having successfully gone off on a tangent for three paragraphs, I must return to my thoughts on ordering.

I do find this blog useful as a way of capturing material. I have consciously made it a diary of my ideas, rather than something of any physicality, it is not a diary of what I have done, but of what I have been thinking about. That then is the input.

However a blog has a very specific order, and like the American date format, a rather illogical one at that. It starts with the most recent, entry, but that is ordered from oldest to newest, because that is the way that we write. We simply start at the top of the page. The assumption is that people are most interested in what you wrote most recently, so that is where they start, they can then drill down.

I have been thinking about a self-sorting or self-organising blog. Clearly as my blog is about ideas, I would like to see it organised, so that all the stuff on the same topic sits together. That way I can see what I have already written on something. Maybe I will contradict what I have already written. Maybe I will now have enough material to work up into an article. Maybe I am looking for some creative ideas for an article. Over the past few weeks I have developed three product ideas, and about half a dozen ideas for 2000AD comic strips. At a certain point I will want to pursue these.

I have been doing some searching on the web for software that would give you a self sorting and organising blog. I don’t think it exists, because the order that a blog appears in, is a crucial aspect of it actually being a blog. In a sense I am not really writing a blog. The date order of entries is less relevant than the topics covered. So maybe I am looking for something else altogether. A blog peppered with hyperlinks gets close to what I am thinking of, but I think the crucial thing is that the reader can search, manipulate and order the material themselves. I do not want to impose my order onto the reader.

I would love to find a way of doing this as a blog. However in the meantime, I may well experiment with Omni-Outliner, and if it does not allow web publishing, try and pitch this idea to them. Like a lot of my ideas, it falls short of being something that you could patent and make money from, but some sort of recognition would be welcome.

Getting down to the detail, Omni Outliner basically produces an outline, but allows you to sort it, include check boxes etc. I could just enter stuff, with appropriate details in columns, put a timestamp against each row, and then type away. Obvious problems, what if an entry covers more than one topic. How does it get sorted. Does the entry appear more than once, that is once per topic, or only once. Also what about a piece like this, that is finely crafted, and covers a variety of different sub-topics but is actually best read as a single entry. Is this blog entry a single entry, read from top to bottom, or do I split it up and lose the development of a single argument.

These are not new problems. They are probably just an artefact of how we look at things. When you browse the internet, or Amazon, or iTunes, you do not worry about passing the same point twice. In fact the more often you pass a point, the more it will pique your interest. That is part of intelligence. The recognition of patterns, gosh that is the third time that someone I respect has mentioned this author that I have never heard of, maybe I should check them out.

Just to park the thought, there are tags, and digg, etc, none of which I really understand.

Are we creating something like a phone directory, which you are not expected to read from cover to cover, but use all the time, or a novel, where you have to complete it.

Is it software, or dead tree?

Maybe, what we are looking for is a constantly evolving and updated, repository of ideas, images, and material, that people think is worth recording, easy sorted, organised, and searched, which allows you to flag some as private, some as friends only, some for public consumption. A compendium of your blog, your flickr, your myspace. A freeform version of what is unique and important about you. The problem with most of these things, is that they are too constrained, you start your diary on 1 January, but give up before February, because you did not fill in every box, or you did not have enough space, or you decided you did not want to record the day you spent in bed hungover, or...

A free form, easily searched and organised, braindump of what it is to be you. Now that is something that would catch your soul.

As a coda, reading through this, I have been writing about three different things. As per my point in an earlier blog, what is the difference between a leaflet, and and exhibition? We impose a way of looking at things, because that is what we expect. We expect a leaflet to conform to a certain format, and a exhibition to conform to another. Both convey information in a style to which we are accustomed.

There is a narrative book, some less narrative than others, such as Tristram Shandy, but clearly the order is consciously chosen and important, you would not think to reorder a confusing book into chronological order to improve it, or the chapters into popularity order so you did not miss the best bits.

There is a reference title, such as the Yellow Pages, telephone directory, dictionary, and even some reference books such as you DIY manual. These are tools that you use to find out more.

Then there is software, or amalgamations of software, that allow for a reader defined pathway through material. Technology has enhanced the ability for us to follow pathways, that is part of the success of Amazon and iTunes, they tempt and distract you with things that they think you might be interested in.

I suppose what I am saying, is that I would like to create something more like the last category, than the first.

iMix

I have created an iMix on iTunes, but I can't seem to cut and paste the code in here, and get it to work, embarrassing after yesterday's triumph in coding the font, which will only work for those with the font on their computer, so a small triumph.

The iMix is entitled
Sam - that's what I call Music - 1

and here is Sam,

it is all about sharing

Back at work -

I have been back at work for a week, which now gives me the chance to reflect on various new things!

The previous high volume of ideas that I was noting down, seems to have dropped quite a bit, probably as I now have more structure to my time, I have less scope to pursue whatever particular intellectual windmill I might happen to be tilting at. However the volume of ideas that I am generating still comfortably exceeds the time that I have available to pursue them.

I have found the continued application of Getting Things Done useful at work. Even although my first day back did not seem like a good application of the theory, as the week unfolded, the ranking of tasks into do immediately, do today, schedule for this week, put onto wishlist, was very successful in keeping an unmanageable workload organised and less worrisome. I feel that I have changed the way that I work for the better. Truth be told this was a week where I came in with a week’s work sitting on my desk, but got little interruptions during the week, and by the end of the week, I still had most of the work I started with still sitting on my desk. Accordingly the major difference was in that I felt more in control, rather than that I magically managed to do everything.

I am also trying to be more realistic about what I can and cannot do, so that I am putting my energies into things that are achievable, rather than disipating them worrying about things.


On Friday I was out of the office, making a presentation. I always like to take up any invitations to do presentations, it is a key skill. I am not a natural presenter, and initially I hated it, but I am gradually building up confidence, so that now I only hate it some of the time. Because I don’t do it that often, and I am keen to find and develop my own style, I put a lot of effort into preparation and like to consider what went well and what did not, so that I can do better.

The presentation on Friday was not too bad, though certainly some lessons learnt. The bit that I was unhappy about was the question and answer session afterwards. If you are speaking to someone on a one to one basis there is a different way of responding, you make more responses, but shorter responses. In a question and answer session you need to make one considered response, which is a very different approach. The nature of these sessions is that people will often have personal stories or strong views that they want to get across. I am not in a position where I can fix these problems, or implement these suggestions, I can certainly listen, and whether I happen to agree or disagree personally is imaterial, I am simply there to explain our organisational policy.

Having taken up the invitation, you should always behave with courtesy and respect, something which the audience may or may not choose to do themselves, but equally you should not simply roll over and agree with everything, or run away without speaking to anyone.

I tend to have quite a light informal approach, jokey and self deprecating, but this runs the risk of appearing disrespectful.

One possible result of the question and answer session would be for me to fully convince them all that our organisational view was correct, or was fully consistent with what they were saying. However in most cases this would be impractical, and the size of the gap in views, would make any attempt insensitive. Another technique is to say that “I hear what you say” which I always take to mean “I hear what you say, but don’t agree with a word of it” so it is an option that I tend to find insulting. There is no point in promising to do stuff if you clearly have no intention of doing it either.

The whole point of the exercise in going out of the office to speak to people, is that they will listen to what I have to say, and that I will listen to what they have to say. Often these people have very little contact with people that they deem to be in authority, but they would like more contact, but are unsure about how to do it. Often the formats where they do have such contact, are organised in a very confrontational format, and they then want to maximise the opportunities they have by “winning the argument” and getting their point across. This means that these sessions become pretty bruising, with a series of people aggresively getting their points across, harrowing personal stories, attacks on the effectiveness and integrity of pretty much anyone, including yourself. Because of the artificiality of the situation, people feel empowered to behave in a way that they never would to someone’s face in a one to one conversation.

I have to find a way of responding that is both respectful of their views, that is supportive of the views of my organisation, and that I personally feel comfortable with. Also to be sustainable it has to be possible to feel reasonably comfortable with these sessions, if they are too bruising, you simply stop accepting the invitations.

One possible approach would be to set out ground rules at the start of the question and answer session, a rough list off the top of my head

It is probably helpful for me to say a few words before this session, I’ve been in the audience far more often than I’ve been standing here, but wherever you are sitting these sessions can be frustrating.

I do not have the power to change the entire policy of my organisation

I do not have the power to give anyone substantial funds on the spot

I am delighted that you gave me the opportunity to speak to you, but that is only half my reason for being here, I also want to hear what you have to say

I realise that not everyone feels comfortable speaking at these events, so I am not rushing away after this event is finished, I am delighted to speak to people afterwards, or you can get my contact details from myself or the organisers

Although this session is called a question and answer session, in my experience there are various types of questions

factual questions that I can answer immediately
factual questions or requests for action that I can take away with me
experiences or views that you want to share

you have done me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say, I am happy to do the same, for ease I would simply propose,

answering what questions I can,

I’ll promise to take away anything I think that I can do for you,

but while it is valuable to listen to our each others views and share our experiences, I did not come here to get into a shouting match with any of you, but I will offer what factual information I can.

Therefore, I’ll probably not respond to every question, but be assured I will listen to them all, lodge away what you say, try and influence others, or act where I can to deal with any issues that you might raise.

I certainly don’t think that everything is perfect, and unfortunately I cannot go back to the office and sort out everything you raise,

but I firmly believe that by talking, listening, trying to understand, trying to think about issues, we will make things better.

mopping up a little more

My week off is nearly over. I have a bank holiday today, and then back to reality tomorrow. I think that using the GTD methodology, albeit, one that I have amended to suit myself, has been a success. In terms of actually getting stuff done, I don’t really think that I have achieved appreciably more than I would have done using my traditional daily lists. However the system has scored in letting me use my time more flexibly, finding tasks that can be completed whenever I have some spare time, rather than finding myself with dead time between work.

It has also been useful in clarifying what is important to me, who I am, and prioritising tasks to reflect this better. By having tasks listed that are not important enough to do, when a couple of them overlap and can be combined, it makes a lot of sense to just do them both. I suppose the greatest benefit is simply one of reducing the amount of feeling guilty and worried about everything that I have not done. I certainly feel like I have straightened out my thinking a lot in this week.

As I am going to be much busier in future, I’ll once again use this blog entry to mop up random thoughts, which I might work up further in due course.

you could use lollipop sticks for plant labels, though probably difficult to actually write on them

I find that carrying any number of items in my head, greater than three, feels infinite. Therefore for my own sanity I need to resort to a written list when I have more than three things to consider.

you should consider managing your own morale and motivation as a explicit task. What would happen if you wrote it down as a project, what would you do to achieve it. Too important a task to be left to chance surely.

If you work with other people, or in a family. Consider for each individual what options do they have if they want you to do something. For instance, if your daughter wakes up and decides she wants to go to the beach, how would she convince you to take her there. If the only options available to her, are ones that are not acceptable to you, for example, moaning and throwing a huff, then the reason she does that behaviour, is because that is the only options you have given her.

The same applies in politics, if a government ignores people until they strike, or until they starting rioting, ... then the blame lies with the government for not giving people easier ways of actually making their views known. Surely people would take the easier options if they were available to them. So before you condemn people, consider what other options they actually had if they wanted to get their way.

as a practical application we are giving our daughters more delegated decision making. For example we offered them the chance to ask for a treat that they were both agreed on, and if practical they could get it. They jointly decided and we delivered. Similarly a mobile with a pre paid card, or an itunes card, you can phone who you like, but within this financial limit, spend it too quickly and you will have to wait before you get another.

when buying shares it is important to limit your exposure to shares whose value is based on sentiment rather than business realities. I have invested in four shares, only one is such a speculative share, and it has certainly given me a roller coster ride lately, the others have been more predictable. Fortunately the easiest way to determine whether sentiment is at play is to look at the price to earnings ratio.

In theory you could address risk by assuming that your speculative share could lose half its value, say, and then ensure that it is a small enough part of your portfolio to allow overall growth as long at your low risk shares manage to match the footsie index. Depending on the circumstances you could increase or decrease your exposure to risk. The logic is easier to follow when your risky shares are losing money, when they are making money it is probably more important to retain the logic that you could lose much of their value, and ensure your share portfolio is allocated accordingly.

Personally I suspect that if any of my risky shares were to double in value I would be inclined to sell half my holding. That way I would retain the same value in the share, and the same exposure.

We should recognise that everyone makes their decisions for a rational logical reason. Thinking that other people are stupid, lazy or evil, does not help you to understand them. Try and influence the environment so that the right decision for them becomes more acceptable to you.

You can always catch more bees with honey than viniger.

I am currently having vastly more ideas than I have time to pursue. It is worrying and inspiring at the same time. I suppose that it is part of who I am.

Often people do not know who they are, or what they want. Because they don’t know these things, they tend to make non decisions, like watching the television, or aimless shopping. In effect these activities are just using up time and money, they seldom contribute much to anything you want to do, unless you put the effort into thinking of what you really want. We all deserve to relax now and again, but we should ask ourselves how we want to do it, rather than drift into habits, like the zombies in the shopping mall.

If you assume that there is no such thing as morality, and that criminal sentencing should be entirely rational, based purely on the cost to society of an action, then what would it look like? You could calculate the cost to society of a murder, or vandalism, even by extension domestic violence. You would need to ignore the cost of the police investigation, trial and prison sentence, otherwise you would create perverse incentives for government to criminalise people and then charge them for the privilege.

The sentence should then repay the full cost to society in some way. It would be illogical to insist on less than full repayment. Many crimes would therefore be beyond the lifetime of someone to pay.

It seems unfair to offer the ability to pay with money, rather than time, as it favours the rich.

You could hypothecate and treat the opportunity cost to the individual as the money you are notionally recouping. This would mean that the more likely you were to be in employment the more quickly you could repay, this would incentivise people to ensure that they maximised their earning capacity, it would also increase the pressures on the poor. You could make it fairer by applying rules, so that you incentivise behaviour that reduces recidivism, such as improving your literacy level and employability, without simply further penalising those already at a disadavantage.

As an side thought, are we creating perverse incentives for the NHS to make people ill? Sick people pay their salaries, there are no incentives to keep people out of hospitals or doctor’s surgeries.

To be fair, you could extend the argument to most public services, the incentives exist to promote certain behaviours and priorities, but these seldom match the actual needs of the society that they are serving.

it would be useful to make an exercise of comparing what the professional and salary incentives actually encourage and reward, and what the service should ideally be doing to meet the needs of society. That is the difference between business and the public sector, business knows when it gets it right, because it makes a profit. How does the public sector know when it gets it right?

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Mopping up random thoughts -

Ideas Machine - despite the best of intentions, I simply cannot keep up with all the various thoughts and ideas that I have, and struggle to jot down the roughest of notes for them all. Accordingly I am now accepting, that there is an element of natural selection, and the best of my ideas will fight their way onto paper, or blog, and the weaker will perish. Fortunately there does seem to be a near infinite supply of them., and the weakest are doubtless pretty feeble.

Anyway, in an attempt to simply record some of the, a rather random entry today, which will at least mop up some ideas.

Doors can be made of anything - you tend to simply buy a wooden door, but logically, as long as the material complies with certain physical characteristics, you could use virtually anything, what about bright plastic, doors with lights in them, rubber doors, metal doors, doors made out of clothes, doors made out of chicken wire stuffed with crushed aluminium cans, etc etc.

Wall ornament, attach a wire between two points on your wall, either a firm wire that you bend to shape, so that it catches interesting shadows, and projects them on the wall, particularly powerful when you have candle light, or a taut wire, with a little buggy device that moves alone it, the crawler device is battery powered and includes flashing lights, maybe not something for your house, but worth a shot for a nightclub or coffee bar.

Getting Things Done - book and stationery package, sell the book and supporting stationery, ie filing cabinet, and dymo tape labeller together, you certainly buy more stationery after you have read the book, so worthwhile for stationers to consider selling it, or booksellers selling some stationery to support it.

Washing machine tubs - these are made of stainless steel and can be obtained from scrap yards, ideal plant containers, I like the ideal of planting up fennel or florence fennel in them. Ditto dill.

Gabions - I am keen to put some gabions in my garden, basically wire structures filled with rubble, they would however probably be the mother of all slug traps!

Save documents - why do we have to consciously save, surely the reasoning for this goes back to the computing dark ages. A computer nowadays is perfectly capable of saving every key stroke as you make it. Simply amend the programmes to work that way. Whoever is the first to do it, never lose a document again, would be hugely popular. Bill, Steve, can you sort this out please.

Explicitly examine decision making - it is useful to consciously examine how you arrive at decisions. Look at pretty much every decision, why did I decide to do this now, why not that, why this way, why not do so and so too. It quickly becomes apparent that you are superb at juggling vast numbers of variables, incomplete information and uncertainty in a very intuitive way that you simply could not programme for. In real life you do not have perfect answers, simply good enough answers, and there is always an opportunity cost, if you do this, you are not doing that, if you phone your mum, you are not washing the dishes, if you walk the dog, you are not mowing the lawn.

Start from where you are - there is no point getting guilty about where you are starting from. You have done well to get here, simply figure out the most productive way forward. A better career would probably have meant a worse social life, so where you are now is probably the best place for you to be, focus on where you want to go, and how to get there.

I joined the Civil Service to indulge my love of stationery.

People say that share investment is complicated, it is not. You only have three decisions to make
what to buy
when to buy it
when to sell it

Think about those, and think of sensible reasons, and you should do okay.

People say that prioritisation is complicated, it is not. You only have three decisions to make
what to do
when to start
when to stop

the worrying and feeling guilty about what you are not doing won’t help.

Adopting a “Getting Things Done” methodology will not increase your productivity by more than a few percentage points, but it will reduce your worry and guilt levels hugely.

We really do not need extra ways of feeling guilty about what we are not doing.

Don’t waste your money on bad tools, scratchy annoying biro, just chuck it. Get a nice pen that you enjoy using. I never even bother looking at cheap woodwork tools. If they don’t work properly, I don’t have enough time, that I can waste it using stuff that I do not enjoy using. Get a decent computer you enjoy using. Why skimp on stuff that will just depress you.

It is perfectly legitimate to do something, simply because not having it done is depressing you. Do the stuff under your nose that depresses you most.

People are phenomenal about making decisions, they do it all the time, any explicit system is pretty feeble in comparison. Trust your own judgement more, it is far better than you give it credit for.

Finally, I am writing this in Market Felt format, which just feels wonderful for jotting down rough ideas. Change your font, change your outlook on what you are writing. However just ensure that you use one that kerns properly, so you are not driving yourself mad trying to figure out whether you put in one space, no space, or two spaces.