Last week I started a new blog, Un-F*** My Life. Today I've decided that it is a dead project.
The idea of the project was to reply to FML posts, taking each one at face value, in a sort of Dear Abby style. It was fun and it allowed me to address the annoying repetition of the FML posts. I think I was also able to make the point that many of those posts were easy to deal with so long as you had a modicum of maturity.
Everything died when I realized that since Friday I hadn't even had time to read FML, let alone comment on it. Of course, my little blog probably had no value to anyone but me anyway. So the effort required was far too much and the reward far too little. I even took FML out of my RSS reader. The project is dead on arrival.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
New Rules for Netflix Ratings
I am a big fan of Netflix. I put some thought into how I use the service in order to get the most for my money. I'm fairly happy with the results I get, but sometimes I have to tweak my usage to serve myself better. How I rate movies helps me remember how I felt about a movie and it helps the system suggest more movies, or predict how much I'll like a movie. After a few years of rating movies one way I have decided to change.
The Old Way
My old system for rating a movie was to try to rate it as objectively as possible. I focussed heavily on the merit of the movie, acting, script, and direction. I would then combine that with my preferences and come up with a rating. This introduced some personal bias, but I think most of the ratings were pretty fair. The exceptions were a few movies that I either loved greatly or hated completely, at which point I would typically let my emotions get the better of my objectivity and rate generally loved movies poorly or generally disliked movies highly.
The problem with this is that I was trying to be objective and not allow my bias to influence the ratings too greatly. This would be great if I were the only one reviewing these movies, or if the rating data wasn't being used for other purposes. Neither of those conditions are true, though. In short, I was being unfair to myself out of some sort of misguided attempt at journalistic integrity, even though I'm no journalist.
Other oddities happened because of this as well. I stopped trusting my own ratings. When someone asks me what I thought of a movie I will look that movie up on Netflix and use that rating to stir up the long term memories associated with that movie. It works great because I have the movie box, description, and my rating all there on one screen. I found that, increasingly as of late, I was having to mentally adjust my ratings based on whether I thought they were skewed for objectivity when I made them.
The New Rules
With my new system I will not change my baseline ratings. Instead, I will allow my bias to more significantly influence my ratings. After I have my final number doing this I will review it to make sure it accurately reflects how I interpret and feel about a movie. Then I'll click the little star that matches.
Basically, everything starts out the same as above. I get a rating number by thinking about how well made the movie was and whether it's worth watching. Then I allow myself to modify that rating by zero or more stars depending on how I felt about the movie and how strongly I felt it. If I have no strong emotions either way then a three star movie will remain at that rating. If I enjoyed that movie a good bit, I will probably add a star. I may add two stars in some circumstances. I doubt I would ever feel the need to add three. The opposite is true if I genuinely disliked a movie.
A few examples:
I recently rented The Prestige. It was a decent movie that mixes science, fake magic, and real magic. I thought it was beautifully shot and decently acted. It was an okay script. Objectively, I think I would give it four out of five stars. Once I added more of my personal bias into it I reduced it to three stars because I didn't like some of the treatment it gives to science, it was a little over-the-top, and it has an fairly obvious plot twist that seems to be there only for plot-twist addicts.
I also recently saw the import So Close. This is something like a Charlie's Angels flick set in Hong Kong starring the locals. It wreaks of bad acting, it's completely over the top, and it's cheesy as anything. The action scenes are top notch, though. If you enjoyed the Charlie's Angels series and like Jackie Chan movies then you may enjoy this. I objectively gave it two stars out of five. I think in the grand scheme of things that movies like this are largely trash. They are, however, trash I tend to enjoy. I liked the car chases and the Asian culture infused in this. So I bumped the rating up to three stars.
As you can see, two movies on the opposite ends of the quality spectrum now have the same rating. I'm able to be both intellectually and emotionally honest.
Other Rules
I did pluralize the word 'rule' for a reason. I have changed the way I think of a few things related to rating movies. I will no longer rate movies 'Not Interested' unless I have a very good reason. I have re-assessed my category ratings using the new Taste Preferences with a particular focus on emotional honesty.
For 'Not Interested', right now I'm reserving it for series items where I've seen parts of the series, but not all, and I am completely uninterested in watching any more. This means there are only 3 items with this rating so far: Dragon Ball Z, Home Movies, and Survivor Season 1. The first two are cartoons that I don't like, yet they are suggested because I apparently differ from the normal person who watches anime and adult oriented cartoons. The last is just weird. I don't know if the system suggested this for me or not, but I'll leave it there so that it won't suggest any "reality" shows.
I didn't like the effect that too many 'Not Interested' selections had on my suggestions and other ratings. I also don't like that it inflated some of my ratings counts. I've seen enough movies without the ones I haven't seen being counted.
My category ratings were a mixed bag of intellectual ratings, emotional ratings, and shame. Some categories I rated higher not because I like watching those movies, but because the movies themselves tend to be well made. That's great, until you realize that you aren't interested 15 minutes in but watch the whole thing anyway. The emotional ratings are probably the right ones, at least that's my take. Some of the ratings were born of shame, though. I was ashamed that I like anime, seeing that as the last step into hopeless geekdom. Finally, I realized that these ratings were entirely for me to help Netflix know what kind of movies I might enjoy. I'll eventually betray the same information by what I rent and how I rate it, so I should be honest to myself and rate categories as I think I would actually want to watch the movies in them. The good thing about Taste Preferences is that it presents the data in a way that makes this easier to swallow by asking you how often you want to watch such movies instead of forcing you to rate them on a five star scale. My only gripe is that I wish the ratings were more granular instead of never, sometimes, often.
That's a lot of thought put into rating movies. The good news is that I mull over these decisions for so long each time I rent. Rating a movie takes a second or two. I'm just trying to maximize my results.
The Old Way
My old system for rating a movie was to try to rate it as objectively as possible. I focussed heavily on the merit of the movie, acting, script, and direction. I would then combine that with my preferences and come up with a rating. This introduced some personal bias, but I think most of the ratings were pretty fair. The exceptions were a few movies that I either loved greatly or hated completely, at which point I would typically let my emotions get the better of my objectivity and rate generally loved movies poorly or generally disliked movies highly.
The problem with this is that I was trying to be objective and not allow my bias to influence the ratings too greatly. This would be great if I were the only one reviewing these movies, or if the rating data wasn't being used for other purposes. Neither of those conditions are true, though. In short, I was being unfair to myself out of some sort of misguided attempt at journalistic integrity, even though I'm no journalist.
Other oddities happened because of this as well. I stopped trusting my own ratings. When someone asks me what I thought of a movie I will look that movie up on Netflix and use that rating to stir up the long term memories associated with that movie. It works great because I have the movie box, description, and my rating all there on one screen. I found that, increasingly as of late, I was having to mentally adjust my ratings based on whether I thought they were skewed for objectivity when I made them.
The New Rules
With my new system I will not change my baseline ratings. Instead, I will allow my bias to more significantly influence my ratings. After I have my final number doing this I will review it to make sure it accurately reflects how I interpret and feel about a movie. Then I'll click the little star that matches.
Basically, everything starts out the same as above. I get a rating number by thinking about how well made the movie was and whether it's worth watching. Then I allow myself to modify that rating by zero or more stars depending on how I felt about the movie and how strongly I felt it. If I have no strong emotions either way then a three star movie will remain at that rating. If I enjoyed that movie a good bit, I will probably add a star. I may add two stars in some circumstances. I doubt I would ever feel the need to add three. The opposite is true if I genuinely disliked a movie.
A few examples:
I recently rented The Prestige. It was a decent movie that mixes science, fake magic, and real magic. I thought it was beautifully shot and decently acted. It was an okay script. Objectively, I think I would give it four out of five stars. Once I added more of my personal bias into it I reduced it to three stars because I didn't like some of the treatment it gives to science, it was a little over-the-top, and it has an fairly obvious plot twist that seems to be there only for plot-twist addicts.
I also recently saw the import So Close. This is something like a Charlie's Angels flick set in Hong Kong starring the locals. It wreaks of bad acting, it's completely over the top, and it's cheesy as anything. The action scenes are top notch, though. If you enjoyed the Charlie's Angels series and like Jackie Chan movies then you may enjoy this. I objectively gave it two stars out of five. I think in the grand scheme of things that movies like this are largely trash. They are, however, trash I tend to enjoy. I liked the car chases and the Asian culture infused in this. So I bumped the rating up to three stars.
As you can see, two movies on the opposite ends of the quality spectrum now have the same rating. I'm able to be both intellectually and emotionally honest.
Other Rules
I did pluralize the word 'rule' for a reason. I have changed the way I think of a few things related to rating movies. I will no longer rate movies 'Not Interested' unless I have a very good reason. I have re-assessed my category ratings using the new Taste Preferences with a particular focus on emotional honesty.
For 'Not Interested', right now I'm reserving it for series items where I've seen parts of the series, but not all, and I am completely uninterested in watching any more. This means there are only 3 items with this rating so far: Dragon Ball Z, Home Movies, and Survivor Season 1. The first two are cartoons that I don't like, yet they are suggested because I apparently differ from the normal person who watches anime and adult oriented cartoons. The last is just weird. I don't know if the system suggested this for me or not, but I'll leave it there so that it won't suggest any "reality" shows.
I didn't like the effect that too many 'Not Interested' selections had on my suggestions and other ratings. I also don't like that it inflated some of my ratings counts. I've seen enough movies without the ones I haven't seen being counted.
My category ratings were a mixed bag of intellectual ratings, emotional ratings, and shame. Some categories I rated higher not because I like watching those movies, but because the movies themselves tend to be well made. That's great, until you realize that you aren't interested 15 minutes in but watch the whole thing anyway. The emotional ratings are probably the right ones, at least that's my take. Some of the ratings were born of shame, though. I was ashamed that I like anime, seeing that as the last step into hopeless geekdom. Finally, I realized that these ratings were entirely for me to help Netflix know what kind of movies I might enjoy. I'll eventually betray the same information by what I rent and how I rate it, so I should be honest to myself and rate categories as I think I would actually want to watch the movies in them. The good thing about Taste Preferences is that it presents the data in a way that makes this easier to swallow by asking you how often you want to watch such movies instead of forcing you to rate them on a five star scale. My only gripe is that I wish the ratings were more granular instead of never, sometimes, often.
That's a lot of thought put into rating movies. The good news is that I mull over these decisions for so long each time I rent. Rating a movie takes a second or two. I'm just trying to maximize my results.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Back From Hiatus
I've been quite busy the last month or so. I neglected my blog as a result.
Even though I don't rely on readers to validate my content, I believe that I should put effort into what I write. If I can't dedicate myself to some sort of well-formed thought then I simply won't try. That's what happened here.
The good news is that I've been thinking a bit. I have some customer service experiences to share. I took a road trip that left me contemplating the psychology of motorists. I haven't stopped my quest to eke out a few more pennies worth of efficiency without negatively affecting my lifestyle, which seems to equate to watching a lot of shows online. So on and so forth...
I hope to post more frequently again. My goal is to have the best blog that no one reads.
Even though I don't rely on readers to validate my content, I believe that I should put effort into what I write. If I can't dedicate myself to some sort of well-formed thought then I simply won't try. That's what happened here.
The good news is that I've been thinking a bit. I have some customer service experiences to share. I took a road trip that left me contemplating the psychology of motorists. I haven't stopped my quest to eke out a few more pennies worth of efficiency without negatively affecting my lifestyle, which seems to equate to watching a lot of shows online. So on and so forth...
I hope to post more frequently again. My goal is to have the best blog that no one reads.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The Benefit of Consistent Naming
In late 2007 I started a project that required a pass-through database to allow for auditing and change approval to occur between our CRM product and Outlook. I was, and am, acting as the database administrator (DBA) on this project. I was fortunate enough to be able to create the database almost single-handedly.
Doing everything yourself is tedious work. It can also go very wrong if you assume that you're not just doing it alone, but doing it for yourself. I stuck to some best practices to create cleanly formatted, self-documenting, and commented SQL code. This has allowed me to have exchanges like this:
Coworker: "What is the procedure to get a contact's information?"
Me: "getContact"
Coworker: "Oh."
Coworker: "What if I want to add this user as a subscriber?"
Me: "Use the addSubscriber procedure, pass it the contact ID and the user name."
Coworker: "Oh."
Eventually they stop asking because almost everything is so predictable. These exchanges may make them feel ridiculous but that's the point. If you stick to a well defined naming scheme then your code should do a lot of self-documentation. If the code is documented then it will normally be equally convenient to simply reference the code. This is a benefit to everyone. There is less need to bother me. The code is more readily available to the other developers than I am anyway.
Another benefit became apparent to me a few times recently: It helps you find when you are about to do the same thing twice. This is a big database that my team has been working on for the last year. There are almost 200 stored procedures and functions. Unfortunately, I was not able to create them all. I did create the vast majority, though, sticking to my same naming conventions each time. Now we are actively developing parts of this project again, so I need to put new functionality in the database. At least twice in recent weeks, a procedure I was prepared to create already existed, was named exactly what I intended to name it and did exactly what I wanted.
The lesson here is the power of doing things the right way for the sake of it truly being the right way. I could have probably done things faster if I didn't take the time to properly indent my SQL queries or if I used the query designer every now and then. Yet, I would cost myself and the company time in the long run because it would be far more difficult to decipher those queries to troubleshoot or change them. I could have used procedure names that were less descriptive to save some typing time or avoid names such as "getAcceptedCompanyMinorityStatusValues" but then I couldn't tell you exactly what the procedure does without looking at the code, and if I needed that later I might use a different naming scheme and do the same work twice. It is usually quicker to do it right once than it is to do it half right twice, especially when twice is likely to grow exponentially.
Doing everything yourself is tedious work. It can also go very wrong if you assume that you're not just doing it alone, but doing it for yourself. I stuck to some best practices to create cleanly formatted, self-documenting, and commented SQL code. This has allowed me to have exchanges like this:
Coworker: "What is the procedure to get a contact's information?"
Me: "getContact"
Coworker: "Oh."
Coworker: "What if I want to add this user as a subscriber?"
Me: "Use the addSubscriber procedure, pass it the contact ID and the user name."
Coworker: "Oh."
Eventually they stop asking because almost everything is so predictable. These exchanges may make them feel ridiculous but that's the point. If you stick to a well defined naming scheme then your code should do a lot of self-documentation. If the code is documented then it will normally be equally convenient to simply reference the code. This is a benefit to everyone. There is less need to bother me. The code is more readily available to the other developers than I am anyway.
Another benefit became apparent to me a few times recently: It helps you find when you are about to do the same thing twice. This is a big database that my team has been working on for the last year. There are almost 200 stored procedures and functions. Unfortunately, I was not able to create them all. I did create the vast majority, though, sticking to my same naming conventions each time. Now we are actively developing parts of this project again, so I need to put new functionality in the database. At least twice in recent weeks, a procedure I was prepared to create already existed, was named exactly what I intended to name it and did exactly what I wanted.
The lesson here is the power of doing things the right way for the sake of it truly being the right way. I could have probably done things faster if I didn't take the time to properly indent my SQL queries or if I used the query designer every now and then. Yet, I would cost myself and the company time in the long run because it would be far more difficult to decipher those queries to troubleshoot or change them. I could have used procedure names that were less descriptive to save some typing time or avoid names such as "getAcceptedCompanyMinorityStatusValues" but then I couldn't tell you exactly what the procedure does without looking at the code, and if I needed that later I might use a different naming scheme and do the same work twice. It is usually quicker to do it right once than it is to do it half right twice, especially when twice is likely to grow exponentially.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Solution for My Time Sheet Problem
I have to fill out a time sheet at the end of every week. It's due by Monday at noon. Each week I find myself filling in 40 hours to the main project that I worked on, then wondering to myself, "Okay, what did I do this week that took away that time, kept me late, and made me miss lunch?"
It's a perplexing question. Even with my attention draining habits, I still feel that I am putting in over 40 hours of real work per week. Yet I rarely feel that all 40 of those hours were spent working on my current primary objective.
I've found that the times I keep detailed logs of how I use my time that I have dozens of interruptions during the day. These are interruptions for various business reasons, not my own attention wandering off to the realms of the Internet, I tend to simply discount those times from my time sheet. I feel that it is a disservice to myself not to somehow indicate that these interruptions occur.
The problem is that it is another attention draining task to stop and note each interruption. It also magnifies the impact of small interruptions, which I can sometimes regain my focus immediately after. So I resort to keeping clues around by way of emails, notes, and phone logs. Then my time sheet exercise is to find all of these notes, combine them with other events that I remember but did not note, and rebuild my week in an honest fashion.
Doing this on a weekly basis is hard. It also doesn't mix very well with the whole Inbox Zero thing. It's too much work to get this information all into a single store, and if I immediately process and file it then it is that much harder to reference it by date.
With Outlook 2007, I think I've finally found a workable solution, at least for my email. I created a category "For Time Sheet" and assigned that to the category quick click event. This allows me to quickly mark the items that are interesting for my time sheet. Next, I file these items in my personal archive. On my personal archive I have created a For Time Sheet search folder that lists all of these items. I added this folder to my favorite folders list.
Now with a single click I have access to all of the items that are interesting for my time sheet, regardless of what folder they reside in. I can remove the category as I record the time I spent working on these items, allowing me to limit the list to only the current time sheet. Since I try to use email as much as possible for correspondence this unobtrusive process does most of the work for me.
It's a perplexing question. Even with my attention draining habits, I still feel that I am putting in over 40 hours of real work per week. Yet I rarely feel that all 40 of those hours were spent working on my current primary objective.
I've found that the times I keep detailed logs of how I use my time that I have dozens of interruptions during the day. These are interruptions for various business reasons, not my own attention wandering off to the realms of the Internet, I tend to simply discount those times from my time sheet. I feel that it is a disservice to myself not to somehow indicate that these interruptions occur.
The problem is that it is another attention draining task to stop and note each interruption. It also magnifies the impact of small interruptions, which I can sometimes regain my focus immediately after. So I resort to keeping clues around by way of emails, notes, and phone logs. Then my time sheet exercise is to find all of these notes, combine them with other events that I remember but did not note, and rebuild my week in an honest fashion.
Doing this on a weekly basis is hard. It also doesn't mix very well with the whole Inbox Zero thing. It's too much work to get this information all into a single store, and if I immediately process and file it then it is that much harder to reference it by date.
With Outlook 2007, I think I've finally found a workable solution, at least for my email. I created a category "For Time Sheet" and assigned that to the category quick click event. This allows me to quickly mark the items that are interesting for my time sheet. Next, I file these items in my personal archive. On my personal archive I have created a For Time Sheet search folder that lists all of these items. I added this folder to my favorite folders list.
Now with a single click I have access to all of the items that are interesting for my time sheet, regardless of what folder they reside in. I can remove the category as I record the time I spent working on these items, allowing me to limit the list to only the current time sheet. Since I try to use email as much as possible for correspondence this unobtrusive process does most of the work for me.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Social Networking Boundaries
Where the heck are the boundary lines, anyway?
The modern social networking site seems to be half popularity contest, half status update. Sprinkle in some idle chatter and time wasting and you have electricity. It seems that everyone has a different idea of how to use these sites and where they draw the line. At a bare minimum you're exposing parts of your life to the world, and greater parts to some loosely defined circle of friends and acquaintances.
What does friend mean to you?
I'm completely lost here. It seems as though I could consider anyone I've ever had any sort of contact with a friend. I've seen people do that on these sites. Even more abstracted are when your friends are really someone you don't know, you're just a fan.
I normally view friends as people that I have a legitimate connection to. That may mean that I only have conversations with them on a message board or that I've known them all my life. To qualify it has to be a situation where I actually communicate directly with the person at some point. Otherwise how could I ever consider that person a friend?
That's limiting, though. It omits those loose acquaintances whom I may want to become friends with. If I'm stingy with that label I will forever have a small circle of friends. Maybe they'll be closer to me but they will be far fewer. Perhaps I might miss out on a great friendship because of this. Could it be that I'm unwilling to open up?
On the other hand, I think it's odd to apply that label too loosely. If everyone is your friend, do your real friends know who they are? Do you know who they are? I may be missing something, but I don't think that even the best social networking software can enable someone to truly maintain hundreds of friendships.
Who do you want to truly connect with?
If you look at your friends list, how many people there would you talk to every day? How much of what you put in your profile is really for their consumption alone? What are the other people doing there and do you ever think of their presence?
I wonder about all of this because of the odd mix of events that occur on social networking sites. Many of them act as a sort of microblog with status updates serving as quick publications. They're used in odd ways, though. Often the microblog includes a chat spin off, or it's actually directed at a certain person or people. After all these years have we come back around to in-browser public chat with a slightly modified format?
Beyond that, I feel like a voyeur watching these status updates. Even though I've limited my friends list in ways, I still find myself questioning whether I would see these things in any other medium. I'm not sure if I want to know them, and I wonder if the person on the other end truly wanted me to know it or if they've just desensitized themselves to the lack of privacy.
My problem here is that I don't know whether these things were intended for me. I sometimes feel compelled to comment or act on information but don't because I wonder if I'm crossing some fuzzy border.
Social networking has a permissive dimension that is above one, but far shy of two. That is to say that it is like a fractal dimension. It is clearly not one dimensional, or else we could see the line and we would know when we cross it. It is not two dimensional either, because there is no clear line for where others stand and the other axis is not well defined. Instead, like the fractal, as you examine each line you will see never ending complexity comprised of the same questions. I suppose it boils down to this: Social networking boundaries are irrational.
The modern social networking site seems to be half popularity contest, half status update. Sprinkle in some idle chatter and time wasting and you have electricity. It seems that everyone has a different idea of how to use these sites and where they draw the line. At a bare minimum you're exposing parts of your life to the world, and greater parts to some loosely defined circle of friends and acquaintances.
What does friend mean to you?
I'm completely lost here. It seems as though I could consider anyone I've ever had any sort of contact with a friend. I've seen people do that on these sites. Even more abstracted are when your friends are really someone you don't know, you're just a fan.
I normally view friends as people that I have a legitimate connection to. That may mean that I only have conversations with them on a message board or that I've known them all my life. To qualify it has to be a situation where I actually communicate directly with the person at some point. Otherwise how could I ever consider that person a friend?
That's limiting, though. It omits those loose acquaintances whom I may want to become friends with. If I'm stingy with that label I will forever have a small circle of friends. Maybe they'll be closer to me but they will be far fewer. Perhaps I might miss out on a great friendship because of this. Could it be that I'm unwilling to open up?
On the other hand, I think it's odd to apply that label too loosely. If everyone is your friend, do your real friends know who they are? Do you know who they are? I may be missing something, but I don't think that even the best social networking software can enable someone to truly maintain hundreds of friendships.
Who do you want to truly connect with?
If you look at your friends list, how many people there would you talk to every day? How much of what you put in your profile is really for their consumption alone? What are the other people doing there and do you ever think of their presence?
I wonder about all of this because of the odd mix of events that occur on social networking sites. Many of them act as a sort of microblog with status updates serving as quick publications. They're used in odd ways, though. Often the microblog includes a chat spin off, or it's actually directed at a certain person or people. After all these years have we come back around to in-browser public chat with a slightly modified format?
Beyond that, I feel like a voyeur watching these status updates. Even though I've limited my friends list in ways, I still find myself questioning whether I would see these things in any other medium. I'm not sure if I want to know them, and I wonder if the person on the other end truly wanted me to know it or if they've just desensitized themselves to the lack of privacy.
My problem here is that I don't know whether these things were intended for me. I sometimes feel compelled to comment or act on information but don't because I wonder if I'm crossing some fuzzy border.
Social networking has a permissive dimension that is above one, but far shy of two. That is to say that it is like a fractal dimension. It is clearly not one dimensional, or else we could see the line and we would know when we cross it. It is not two dimensional either, because there is no clear line for where others stand and the other axis is not well defined. Instead, like the fractal, as you examine each line you will see never ending complexity comprised of the same questions. I suppose it boils down to this: Social networking boundaries are irrational.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
My RSS Reader has a "Productivity" Category
I put it there. Nevertheless, it's there. This post is about the irony of that.
Recently, one of the feeds that I have categorized under the Productivity folder, Lifehacker, posted about ManicTime. ManicTime is an application that somewhat unobtrusively monitors your application usage and provides a report. You can tag time spans and use it to help figure out how you're using your time. It's great for someone like me that has to fill out a detaile time sheet at the end of the week.
Here's where the irony comes in. I installed this app on Tuesday. Since then, only one day (the first day) was Firefox not the top application by sheer volume of usage. I used Firefox for almost 30% of the time I was on my computer. The most time consuming thing I do in Firefox? Read articles fed to me via my RSS reader.
Fortunately I don't live in a fantasy land where average people are 100% attentive. If I did then I would think that something was seriously wrong with me. However, I do live in the real world and I think that 30% might be a little high. Sure, I do read trade-specific articles part of the time. I do have a business reason to have Firefox. Still, the primary reasons I go there are personal.
Now I have to figure out what to do, or if I should do anything. I'm not too worried about my productivity. I even amaze myself with my ability to meet or beat deadlines occasionally. I do wonder if lowering the noise might boost my productivity, at least in a way that would result in less overtime and more family time. Then again, if I take away my distractions during the day I may realize how boring and tedious my job is. I may stagnate and stifle my creativity. What to do? What to do?
I'm going to try to cut back. I think I need to push myself to improve this ratio. I at least owe it to myself to experiment and see if an extra 10% of my attention is worth the price.
Recently, one of the feeds that I have categorized under the Productivity folder, Lifehacker, posted about ManicTime. ManicTime is an application that somewhat unobtrusively monitors your application usage and provides a report. You can tag time spans and use it to help figure out how you're using your time. It's great for someone like me that has to fill out a detaile time sheet at the end of the week.
Here's where the irony comes in. I installed this app on Tuesday. Since then, only one day (the first day) was Firefox not the top application by sheer volume of usage. I used Firefox for almost 30% of the time I was on my computer. The most time consuming thing I do in Firefox? Read articles fed to me via my RSS reader.
Fortunately I don't live in a fantasy land where average people are 100% attentive. If I did then I would think that something was seriously wrong with me. However, I do live in the real world and I think that 30% might be a little high. Sure, I do read trade-specific articles part of the time. I do have a business reason to have Firefox. Still, the primary reasons I go there are personal.
Now I have to figure out what to do, or if I should do anything. I'm not too worried about my productivity. I even amaze myself with my ability to meet or beat deadlines occasionally. I do wonder if lowering the noise might boost my productivity, at least in a way that would result in less overtime and more family time. Then again, if I take away my distractions during the day I may realize how boring and tedious my job is. I may stagnate and stifle my creativity. What to do? What to do?
I'm going to try to cut back. I think I need to push myself to improve this ratio. I at least owe it to myself to experiment and see if an extra 10% of my attention is worth the price.
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