Author: Senia

Write faster, Read faster, Know more

Posted on by Senia

WRITE FASTER
Here’s a post by Angela Booth on FAST WRITING (via Anne). Angela recommends creating a checklist for yourself, a process. She suggests a process in which she brainstorms, writes an outline, gets data, writes more of a draft. A key component of her list that I want to point out is “leave it for a day or longer.” Then she returns and completes other editing. Using her system, you would probably re-read the intro paragraph, say oh, five-twenty times. That would mean that you’d have five-twenty opportunities to rewrite something! Maybe writing faster is not about speed, but about easy editing. Like putting on layers of clothing before going outside in the winter, maybe writing faster is about putting on layers of betterment to your writing. And the more layers, the more opportunity to improve.

READ FASTER
Here’s a post by Idea Matt on FAST READING (these specific ideas are from Jason Womack). Jason says “he reads a book four times:

  1. Table of contents, glossary, index.
  2. Anything in bold, titles, and subtitles.
  3. First line of every paragraph.
  4. Entire book

Here’s the twist: Steps 1-3 should only take about 10 minutes.”

Ok, see the similarity to the faster writing? You may be starting to suspect that the above two tips are not only about faster writing and reading, but also about more thorough writing and reading. Why are the above two methods more thorough? Because you review the material again, and again, and again. In the outline, in the TOC, in re-reading the same sections when you edit.

So…. there’s a fun little conclusion we can make from the above two faster tips.

KNOW MORE
You know more when you review material fairly frequently. Here’s an example: I put together a workshop on “Why Optimism Is Good for your Health” last week. I put the workshop together in a week and presented it. Then I think back to it today to review it in my head in preparation for giving the workshop again to a new audience, and – guess what?! – it’s a little hazy. Not a lot hazy. I could probably recreate the slides without looking at them again, but a bit hazy – it would take me time. Why is this? Because I did my presentation writing and rewriting and creating all in one fell swoop. I didn’t really break it up into segments or smaller chunks. I didn’t do the “let it sit for a day or two.”

Here’s a question for you:

If you have a choice of repeating something MORE OFTEN or FOR A LONGER PERIOD OF TIME, which do you think will help you know the information better?

Bing bing bing! You got it. MORE OFTEN. You can see what I wrote here about the immense, powerful benefits of daily action. Remember, musicians often recommend that you practice in two sessions of 15 minutes rather than in one of 30 minutes.

Do whatever is important to you – do that repeatedly, regularly – do it so it’s second nature. :) ENJOY!

What do you do when someone doesn’t respect what’s yours?

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Hi, welcome to Question Friday. I get this question sometimes so I thought I would put it to you. Whether in working with a person who doesn’t “get” what value you’ve added, or whether passing off something you own to another person to hold on to, or whether you share an idea that you believe is just about sacred and you get it stamped out… What do you do when something you are very much attached to is treated without respect? Please add your suggestions in the comments.

Q: What do you do when someone doesn’t respect what’s yours?

More detail: What do you do when you think something has a lot of value, a lot of potential, but then someone else doesn’t treat it that way? What do you do when you pass a project on, and it is not treated well by the new owner? And what do you do if it makes you sad to have been part of the project before? What do you do when you’ve worked really hard on something, and your effort is absolutely unrewarded?

Watts and Faults explained by Google’s Luiz Barroso

Posted on by Senia

I was in NY today and went to a Google speaker series talk by Luiz Barroso, Google Distinguished Engineer. The talk was “Watts, Faults, and Other Fascinating Dirty Words Computer Architects Can No Longer Afford to Ignore”.

The best part of the talk was that Luiz did what the Heath brothers so recommend in Made-to-Stick: he told a story. He told a story about the little guy overcoming the big guy. He told us at the beginning that this would be just like David and Goliath, like Seabiscuit. :) So who are these little guys who came over and said,

“Hey! Hey! Look at us! We’re important. Not only for computer design, but because we hear that these days you’re concerned about cost and reliability!!!! Look! Look! Look at us!!”

Two Little Guys The two little guys are the two newer research areas in computer design, and the two that are leaving the picture are two that were popular in the 90’s. In short, out with the MHz race (the race for more transistors) and out with the DSM race (the race for improved shared-memory machines). In with Mr. WATTS and Mr. FAULTS.

Meet Watts and Faults

Luiz gave us the big picture first, and showed how computers are becoming significantly energy-inefficient. Specifically, he said, suppose that you’re getting a server and the cost to power the computer over its life are much higher than the cost of the server hardware itself. Isn’t that a little strange? Shouldn’t you be a little worried? (Luiz mentioned that in an unlibertarian move the U.S. government is starting to be worried for you! On Dec 20, 2006, there was an act – in Congress or the House? who knows? – to research energy inefficiency in servers!!! Hallo! Since when is that the government’s business?)

Watts In any case, suppose actually YOU are worried instead of big brother being worried for you. If you’re worried about energy inefficiency, you should know a couple of things that may make you even more worried! A computer not processing any information uses HALF the power that it uses at full capacity. Luiz Barroso suggested that a good problem to resolve may be how to get a server to use less energy when it’s idling. This is the WATTS problem. A computer goes from 80W to 160W when going from idling to full capacity. On the other hand, a person goes from about 60W of energy at regular idling not doing anything and to about 1200W if that person is a serious athlete. Luiz says, “We are the energy equivalent of a three-year-old-PC… or of a light bulb.” There’s a lot more variability in energy burned. Can we get computers to do the same? Can we get computers to use 1/10 of the energy at idling compared to that at full jolt?

Disk Drives And then come in FAULTS. Luiz described the big, big problems if hard drives just fail out on you. So Google has a lot of monitoring now of the System Health infrastructure. But even though “system health” for, say, all the hard drives and all the servers is being measured, is it possible to predict which disk drive may fail? Luiz and two colleagues researched this and presented the results as two papers in 2007.

Their conclusion? Faults are not individually predictable – not predictable well for individual disk drives. But faults are somewhat predictable for a population of disk drives because as the number of machines increases, it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll all fail at the same time. And – interestingly – temperature doesn’t much have to do with failure of the drives… the assumption had always been that the cooler the temperature, the better – well, that’s not necessarily so important find Luiz and his colleagues.

So, in summary, WATTS are useful to think about because you can significantly decrease the costs of your company if you can decrease how much energy you use, and FAULTS are important to think about because even though you can’t predict them right now, maybe there will be new methods in the future to predict disk drive faults.

Happiness “…like a sealing process”

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“I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

~ Liz Gilbert, on “Diligent Joy,” p. 260 of Eat, Pray, Love

The Ctrl-Z Button

Posted on by Senia
Ctrl-Z The Ctrl-Z Button changed the face of humanity.
It created a trial-and-error mentality.
It encourages try-and-see.

“I’ll format this text like so in my business cards… Oh no! Too far to the left!!!
Ctrl-Z!!!!!!!!! :) Yay!”

These all work similarly: the Ctrl-Z button, having many lives for your character in a video game, going back to a prior saved Word document. Trial and error, multiple-trial and success.

Can there be any harm in the Ctrl-Z button? Research shows that there’s not much, if any, harm. There’s some evidence that teenagers are taking more risks these days (e.g., this pdf), which some attribute to the second-chance mentality, “Sure, I might get in trouble, but I’ll get a do-over.” Restart the game. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t get a second chance. But so far, there’s no direct evidence that a trial-and-error mentality is connected to crime or harm. In fact, sociologists recently reported that video games do not cause more aggression in teens.

On the other hand, there are a ton of great things about restarting. See what Dave Seah highlights about rebooting your day. Restarting is freshness. It’s counteracting what the Made-to-Stick Heath brothers call “The Curse of Knowledge,” knowing so much about your subject that you can’t step away and be objective. If you can trigger yourself to restart your day, then maybe you can cultivate that “beginner’s mind” that Jordan Silberman writes about here and Miriam Ufberg writes about here.

I love Ctrl-Z. I love trying, going back, retrying.
The most memorable way to learn is by making mistakes. :)

First thing in the warm weather?

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We’re all a little like the Tin Man once the winter is ending … uncreaking, derusting, getting moving.

What’s the first thing you’ll do in the warm weather?!

Here are some of mine:

  • Walk around!
  • Breathe
  • Enjoy the morning sun
  • Plan some weekend outdoors things – biking, walking by the water
  • Drive with the sun roof open!

It’s Question Friday. Come on in and chat in the comments!

Games and Positive Psychology

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I read over at Phil Windley’s Technometria about these great fun games that Jane McGonigal is creating using Positive Psychology principles. Some of the Positive Psychology ideas that Phil says Jane mentioned in her talk are (from Phil’s site):

* Quality of life is the primary metric for evaluating everyday technology
* Positive psychology is a principle influence for design
* The public expects tech companies to have a clear vision of a life worth living

* To succeed, a brand or product must increase real happiness, the new capital.

I’m especially interested in this because playing games increases your positive emotion, and we know from Fredrickson and Losada’s work that a positive emotion to negative emotion ratio of 3:1 contributes to increased world view, a broadening of intellectual resources, and a building of intellectual, social, and physical capital (meaning that you have more reserves to do what you want to do in life). Here is Jane’s site and some interactive games she’s created.

Do you guys have suggestions for how games can influence your day-to-day life or your weekends or your interactions with friends?