Author: Steven Garrity

Time Claustrophobia

by Steven Garrity

My friend and last-blogger-standing, Peter Rukavina, emailed me this week to ask about a concept he remembered from my blog, but couldn’t find.

He called the concept Time Claustrophobia. I immediately knew what he meant. We must have discussed it in person, because there doesn’t seem to be anything about it here on my blog. Let’s correct that.

Time Claustrophobia is the feeling of anxiety cast by an impending appointment over the free time that precedes it.

For example, when I was younger I sometimes had shift-work that started at 4pm. The entire day, thought free and open until 4pm, felt constrained by the looming commitment near the end of the day.

 

Today, I:

by Steven Garrity

I’ve gazed enviously at many a productivity scheme. Getting Things Done™, do one thing at a time, use a swimming desk, only use hand-hewn pencils on organic hemp paper, and so on.

I assume most of these techniques and schemes are like diets or exercise routines. There are no silver bullets, but there may be an occasional nugget of truth among the gimmicks and marketing.

Inspired by a post about daily work journals, I have found one tiny little trick that has actually worked for me. It hasn’t transformed my life or quadrupled my productivity. It has made me a touch more aware of how I spend my time.

Every weekday at 4:45pm, get a gentle reminder from Slack, the chat system we use at work. It looks like this:

The #retrospectives text is a link to a channel in Slack that is available to others to read, but where they won’t be bothered by my updates (unless they opt-in). I click the link and write a quick bullet-list summary of what I have done that day, starting with “Today, I:”. It usually looks something like this:

Screenshot of a daily work log

My first such post was on August 16, 2016. To my surprise, I have stuck with it. As of mid-February, about seven months later, I have posted 134 entries – one for every day I have worked.

What’s the point of writing about what you’ve already done each day? It serves several purposes for me. Most importantly, the ritual reminds me to pause and reflect (very briefly) on what I accomplished that day. This simple act makes me a bit more mindful of how I spend my time and energy. The log also proves useful for any kind of retroactive reporting (When did I start working on project X? How many days in October did I spend on client Y?).

It may also be helpful in 10,000 years, when aliens are trying to reconstruct what daily life was like for 2000-era web designer.

 

Introducing Neon – a way to Quickly review stuff and share with your friends

by Steven Garrity

Over at silverorange, we’ve been working on a new product called Neon.The goal is to see if we can create compelling reviews with limited input (often from a phone). Our current take on this boils a review down to a few basic elements of a review:

  1. Title (what are you reviewing)
  2. Photo
  3. Pros & Cons
  4. A rating from 0 to 10
  5. An emoji to represent how you feel about it

You can also optionally add a longer description, a link to where you can buy it, and the price you paid.

For example, here’s a cutting and insightful review I wrote about a mouse pad.

Neon is in a closed alpha right now, which means that anyone can read the reviews, but to create reviews, you need to be invited to try it out. If you’re interested in trying out the alpha, or being notified when it is opened up to a larger audience, you an leave your email at neon.io.