He just did a blog post that addresses one of the banes of my existence: e-mail overload. I hate e-mail for the purpose of sharing links, collaboration, coordination, or keeping up with tasks and project. But I can’t seem to wean from e-mail the people I need to connect with on that stuff. Everyone uses different tools and services to manage their own processes, and too often the lowest common denominator is e-mail.

In Inbox Zero and the Critical Mistake That Saps Productivity, Stever writes:

“I believe that an empty inbox just means you’ve ceded control of your thinking and priorities to everyone who emails you. They control the volume, order, and substance of your attention for the time you’re processing your email. It *feels good* to have an empty inbox, but it also feels good to gorge on Oreo ice cream cake. That doesn’t mean that Oreo ice cream cake is good for you, only that it feels good. Inbox Zero has the extra sugary bonus that since *some* email is an essential part of our job, it’s easy to believe (with no evidence at all) that therefore it’s useful to spend some time on *all* email.

“Rather than striving for inbox zero, I advocate learning to identify the truly relevant emails very, very quickly, with an absolute minimum of cognitive load or context switching.

Whew! I don’t feel so bad now about the nearly 1000 items in my Gmail inbox…

I actually do a pretty good job of using gmail labels, filters, and other tools to identify my high-priority e-mails as they come in and handle them. I also do a good job of killing the messages that I just don’t need to deal with.

That leaves a vast pile of messages that either don’t need to be dealt with quickly, or that couldn’t be quickly parsed into tasks or other actionable items of useful buckets.

Some of these are lower-priority messages that I might need or want to review, and some may be higher priority but the sender just forwarded me stuff with little/no thought of how to make the content easy for me to parse.

And frankly, if it lands in my inbox, MY needs and priorities are what matters.

With very few exceptions, I take the approach of just letting hard-to-parse e-mails fall through the cracks. And if people get annoyed that I didn’t respond or do what they wanted, tough. They need to learn to communicate more effectively through e-mail. I can’t keep taking up the slack.

What works:

1. Craft a clear, intuitive, action/purpose-oriented subject line. Don’t just forward something to me without changing the subject line. If I’m not expecting it and I don’t know why I should care, I probably won’t open it.
2. Get to the point. Explain in a sentence or two up front why you’re sending it *to me*, what you expect me to do with it, and whether it relates to an existing project or topic we’ve been discussing or something new.
3. Set the time frame. If you want me to do something in response, indicate by when you want me to take action.
4. Send ONE e-mail per topic/project, ideally only once per day. If we’re talking about several different projects, topics, etc., don’t make huge switches of topic midway through an e-mail and expect me to read the whole thing. Break it up into one e-mail per project or topic. Similarly, if you have several things to tell me about a project or topic, don’t pelt me with 50 separate e-mails about it – especially if they’re forwarded. Gather all those loose ends together into one e-mail and send me that. If we need to be talking about this project or topic more than once/day, e-mail is probably not the best way to handle that communication. Chat, social media, or phone might work better.

I get anywhere from 100-500 e-mails daily, not counting spam. I have to be a hardass about this. I know it pisses off some people. I’m sorry. It’s the only way I can keep my head above water with e-mail. If I can’t wean you off e-mal,

It makes my brain hurt.

This video from EpipheoStudios.com nails exactly why I hate e-mail, and how Google Wave is trying to solve the problems of e-mail.

YouTube – What is Google Wave?.

I don’t know whether Google Wave will actually solve these problems. But dammit, at least they’re trying to tackle the problem. And they have the development power and user base to stand a chance of pulling it off.

A friend has sent me an invite. I haven’t received it yet. But when I do, I’ll give it a try. UPDATE: I just got my Google Wave invitation today! I’ll get a chance to play with it over the weekend. I expect it to be rough. (OK, everyone who’s whining about it: rough is what “alpha testing” is all about!) And hopefully I’ll start to glimpse an end to the e-mail madness.

distraction hierarchy

Hierarchy of Digital Distractions: Top of a brilliant, too-accurate pyramid infographic by InformationIsBeautiful.net

Productivity and task management seem like strictly practical issues, but in fact they’re deeply emotional. That’s what David Allen describes at in the first chapter of Getting Things Done, when he talks about the sense of calmness instilled by having a mind like water.

It seems to me that tuning into and recognizing your own feelings (especially hope, shame, relief, and fear) is THE crucial first step for figuring out what to do, getting stuff done, and letting stuff go. That’s what I’ve been working on today. Here is a little background, and some thoughts and lessons on this theme…

In the last eight months I made several major changes in my life: I ended my marriage (on the best of terms), sold my house, moved to a new state, eliminated my debt, stopped working on some projects I’d outgrown, began some intriguing new projects, had a brief painful relationship with a thoroughly incompatible partner, began a rewarding intimate relationship with a wonderful friend, and downsized my possessions to fit in a room plus small storage area. Plus, I got knee surgery to fix a torn ACL. Plus, a fair amount of business travel thrown in.

Yeah, it’s been a lot to manage — with a lot of mixed, deep feelings involved in every step. And a lot of stuff that needed to get done: projects, tasks, and priorities. Everything from figuring out where stuff goes in the kitchen to selling a house.

Through this process of major life-surgery I’ve had to face something I’ve avoided: I’ve spent most of my life in a near-constant sense of dread. I was scared that my life and work were spinning out of control, and that all sorts of disasters were waiting to pounce due to my inattention or ineptitude. I coped with it by keeping busy. If I just kept doing enough, surely I’d get ahead. Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a flat-out panic. And I’d work all day and feel like I’d accomplished nothing by evening, and feel terribly guilty and ashamed. I felt like I was failing at nearly everything.

In fact, I wasn’t failing — at least, not most of the time. Not any more than most people do. In fact, in a lot of ways I’m doing pretty damn well with my life. But because I was certain I was failing, and constantly braced for the next crash, I avoided looking too closely at what was happening, at what I needed to be doing.

It’s kind of like how you shut your eyes and cover your face before a car crash. It’s a reflex. You don’t really want to watch.

But when that kind of mental flinching becomes a permanent way of life, bad stuff happens. Namely, disorganization and procrastination — with all the bad stuff (tax penalties, pissed-off partners, missed opportunities, poor health) that go along with it.

It’s important to recognize that for all the pain that disorganization and procrastination cause, they do offer immediate, addictive emotional relief.

When you deliberately blur your mental vision and don’t look very far around you or ahead, and when you don’t habitually keep close track of information you need, then for short stretches of time you create the illusion that nothing needs to be done or figured out right now. It’s a false sense of security, but it does provide a sense of rest and it’s easy to do. Also, it works about as well as drinking salt water when you’re thirsty.

Since I’ve downsized and simplified my life and commitments, I’ve realized that I don’t want to keep living with that daily dread. I could keep it up — because I’ve done it my whole life. But at this point I’m making a conscious choice to change. Dread eats up too much of my energy. I’m 43 years old, and I’d like to use my remaining time and energy in ways that please me.

So I’ve been focusing on organizing my life, especially projects, tasks and priorities. Here’s what I’ve done so far, and what I’ve learned:

1. I CAN’T THINK AMIDST CLUTTER. Clutter distracts me, and provides a ceaseless nagging of all the things I might have forgotten. I cannot focus on a task when I’m around clutter — unless that task is decluttering.

So I’ve put a lot of effort into organizing my new room so that everything I need has an intuitive place, and that things I don’t need on a daily basis get stored or filed, and things I don’t ever need get tossed. This includes eliminating as much paper as possible from my life: I scan every paper I’ll need, shred most of them, file only a few original copies. I have redundant electronic backups (external hard drives AND offsite backup) for all my data.

The downside: Organizing feels so rewarding to me that sometimes I dive into that for emotional relief as a form of procrastination. I’m working on that.

2. MULTITASKING IS A MYTH. This was truly a devastating thing to admit to myself, since I always thought I was a consummate multitasker. But in fact, tons of scientific research and an honest look at my own experience indicates that human brains really can only do one conscious thing at a time. I cannot listen to two simultaneous voices and understand well what both are saying. I cannot run a quick Google search and track what a client is saying on a conference call. I cannot Twitter or instant message while trying to do another kind of writing. I cannot read an incoming text message while paying enough attention to driving.

Of course, I can TRY to do any combination of these things, or more. And I usually succeed to some level with all of them. But usually not as well as if I’d consciously taken a moment to set a priority and then waited to do tasks in priority order.

Focus is important to getting stuff done. But for me, focus can be another kind of trap. I can get so into doing something that I get obsessive or perfectionist about it, and and up spending way too much time on it. It becomes another type of procrastination.

I’m finding that for me, the skills I need to improve are time management and setting priorities. Not just “what are the things I need to do” but “what are the goals I wish to achieve?” Once I have in mind all my goals, I can set priorities among them, and then decide how much is really enough in terms of moving toward a particular goal for that day.

I’m realizing that my tendency to attempt multitasking often stems from a wish to distract myself (and thus procrastinate), or a wish to please (assuming that people expect me to do everything at once), or boredom.

3. ORGANIZE AT AN APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF DETAIL. I was discussing productivity systems today with a friend. She prefers to list out her to-dos in minute detail, including items such as “find Mr. X’s phone number” and “call Mr. X” in the overall task of “Ask Mr. X. to write me a letter of reference.” That works very well for her because it relieves her of the necessity to figure out the next step to take.

I’ve tried that approach, and I’ve found it does not work for me. The labor involved in listing and checking off so many minute steps feels overwhelming to me, and takes considerable time. In my task-management software OmniFocus I tend to list action items like “Ask Mr. X. to write me a letter of reference” unless I’m noticing that I’m procrastinating on a task. In that case, I may list sub-tasks in more minute detail.

I’m still working with this to try to figure out the best balance for me. But anyone else attempting to use a task management system should tune in to how they feel about using the system. If the system ends up feeling like a chore or a burden, if it scares you, you won’t use it and you’ll feel frustrated or ashamed. Recognize all your emotions involved, and name them. They’re important indicators of what you really need.

4. MOST LIFE-MONSTERS CAN WAIT (AT LEAST A BIT) TO BE SLAIN. For the parts of my life that had become dangerously disorganized, I’ve found I couldn’t just sit down and said “I’m going to face Monster Z right now, and parse out how to vanquish it, and get started.” I tried. I really did. Every time, this effort turned into an emotional wreck, unable to sort out which part of the monster to strike first. I’d make lists of tasks and goals, but be unable to sort them into a doable sequence. I’d feel ashamed, frustrated, and like an even bigger failure than before.

I realized that, with most of these life-monsters, I needed to first build up my strength and skills prior to the attack. I needed to attain more of a sense of my life generally gaining order and purpose on a daily basis. After all, I’d put off wrestling the life-monsters so long that I could put it off a while longer.  In the meantime, I set up doable systems to capture enough incoming monster-related  information to spot flags that would require me to speed up my timeline.

So even though organizing my space or developing a new exercise routine may not objectively be a higher priority than, say, developing a retirement plan — giving myself faster, easier “wins” that directly support my ability to tackle longer-term, bigger goals is what allows me to move forward. Right now, if I try too hard to stare down monsters that loom ever-larger due to neglect, I freeze.

Right now I’m only tackling one life-monster at a time. I’ve learned from the last eight months that trying to do them all at once, or in too close sequence, leaves me overwhelmed, exhausted, depressed, and unproductive on other fronts. Getting through knee surgery and recovery (and dealing with insurance bureaucracy and medical bills) is my current life-monster battle. That’s enough.

Down the road, I’m considering working with a financial planner and maybe a life/career coach to figure out some longer-term monster-slaying strategy. I think getting that kind of support might help, when I’m ready for it. But I’m not ready for that now, so please don’t bombard me with pitches for these professionals just yet. When I’m ready, I’ll ask for it.

5. RECOGNIZE & APPRECIATE WHAT YOU CAN DO OR HAVE DONE. Many people love crossing items off their to-do lists. That gives them a sense of accomplishment. That visual symbol has never worked for me, however. It just feels negative, the act of crossing-off. Not creative, not productive.

I’ve realized that when I’ve been getting depressed because I think I’ve been unproductive, it helps to reality-check myself by taking a day to make a list of all the stuff I actually do in a given day. For this list, anything that takes my time/effort counts. It includes things like:

• Making my bed
• Doing my leg exercises (5X/day, to stick with my physical therapy program)
• Taking my vitamins
• Making breakfast
• Corresponding with clients
• Doing actual billable work
• Arranging to get a transit pass
• Hanging a few pictures
• Vacuuming
• Scanning, shredding, and filing
• Sorting out which jewelry needs repairs
• Reading a chapter of a book

…Most of this stuff would never make my to-do list or get crossed off. I don’t need to track that level of detail day to day. But each of these tasks, and many others, need to get done and take my time and effort. I should at least recognize them. They are not wasted time. So if once in a while I make a “done” list of all this stuff, that reassures me emotionally. In turn, that reduces my tendency to beat up on myself, and gives me more energy to get stuff done.

Those are my thoughts on emotions and productivity for now. I’ll be writing more about this, I’m sure. But what are your thoughts on this topic? How do your feelings — and your awareness of them — affect how you get accomplished in life and work? Please comment below.

In my experience, blogging can be an easy way to get more mileage out of things you’re already doing. It’s a matter of shifting your process, not just adding new tasks. If something you think, encounter, or learn is interesting or entertaining and there’s nothing to lose by sharing it, then blog it.

For instance…

Whenever you:

• Jot a note that seems like an important, interesting, prescient, or intriguing point
• Think of an interesting question
• Snap an interesting photo, or one that’s useful for explaining something
• Have an interesting conversation (face-to-face, phone, e-mail)
• Read an article you’re interested in or skeptical about, etc…

Rather than keep those insights and information entirely to yourself, or share it only in private e-mail or conversation (where, face it, you’ll probably forget about it and its value will vanish into the ether), take a moment to jot it into a quick short post. Just a sentence or two, even. Make blogging your new capture process. Or even microblogging, like Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, Soup.io, Delicious, Flickr, or Posterous — all of which can integrate with most blogging platforms, making it easy to keep your blog fresh.

There’s no need to flesh it out fully or get every fact or angle nailed down. You’re not writing an article. You can always follow up more later. And the best part is, when you make this a habit it actually becomes much easier to find all that cool stuff that passes through your head and your life!

Just don’t be boring, and focus on getting to the “so what” to immediately establish relevance.

Also, show some personality and a sense of humor. Conversation is this core of this medium, and people are more likely to engage with you when you act human and approachable.

There’s other easy stuff too that’s actually fun. But the first step is to experiment with changing your habits for how you capture and share info — to not make privacy your default, but an option to be applied only when necessary.

…Oh, and BTW: This blog post is a case in point. I was making this point in a post to an e-mail discussion list this morning. I realized that I’ve made exactly this same point in many, many similar conversations over the past few years. Then I thought: Have I blogged this yet? I don’t think so? Copy & paste from e-mail into WordPress. Done.

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

To compensate for our government’s human-unfriendly info systems, some people have developed civic info-filtering backup systems: news organizations, activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, etc.

In my opinion, ordinary Americans have come to rely too heavily on these third parties to function as our “democracy radar.” We’ve largely shifted to their shoulders most responsibility to clue us in when something is brewing in government, tell us how we can exercise influence (if at all), and gauge the results of civic and government action.

Taken together, these backup systems generally have worked well enough — but they also have significant (and occasional dangerous) flaws. They’ve got too many blind spots, too many hidden agendas, insufficient transparency, and too little support for timely, effective citizen participation…

In other words, the patchwork network of backup systems often fail to supply enough civic information to precisely those people who are most likely to be involved or affected by civic issues, in ways that engage them and support participation. Also, often the civic info they offer generally reflects the providers’ own agendas, assumptions, habits, and preferences — about which they may or may not be conscious or transparent.

Yes, having these backup civic info systems is certainly better than relying solely on the government’s own information systems — but too often, not by much. And sometimes they can even be much worse.

JUST GIVE ME THE DATA

The Knight Foundation has been supporting some efforts to make civic and public info more user-friendly and direct, like Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project. This is another third-party civic info “backup system” that aims to provide a more direct experience of civic info. They try (and mostly succeed) to improve upon government communications by enhancing relevance and usability. Everyblock empowers users to search and filter civic info as they choose (at least within a geographic context).

…But there’s a big catch to offering this valuable service: Everyblock must cope with the fact that usually getting raw civic info from government and public sources is a huge pain. It requiring considerable tweaking and maintenance to constantly adapt their “screen scraping” processes.

Screen scraping is a painstaking, cumbersome programming technique. A screen scraper program extracts data from the final display output of another program (what gets shown in, say, your web browser). According to Wikipedia: “The key element that distinguishes screen scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for final display to a human user, rather than as input to another program, and is therefore usually neither documented nor structured for convenient parsing.” That means the whole process is inherently pitfall-prone and inefficient.

Blogger and author Jon Udell nailed the underlying problem of data friction inherent in situations where civic media are forced to resort to screen scraping to obtain public information:

“Data friction can be intentional or not. When it’s intentional, you might have to file a FOIA request to get it. But in a lot of cases, it’s unintentional. The data is public, and intended to be widely seen and used, but isn’t readily reusable.

“…Now it’s time to grease the wheels. Here’s one way that can happen. An enlightened city government can decide to publish [its] data in a reusable way. I’ve written extensively about Washington DC’s groundbreaking DCStat program which does exactly that. I can’t wait to see what happens when EveryBlock goes to Washington.

“But city governments shouldn’t have to go out of their way to provide web-facing data services and feeds. Databases should natively support them. That’s the idea behind Astoria (ADO.NET Services), which is discussed in this interview with Pablo Castro. If the NYC Department of Health had that kind of access layer sitting on top of its [restaurant inspection] database, it wouldn’t put EveryBlock’s screen-scraper out of a job — it would just make that [person's] job a whole lot more interesting and effective.”

This all leads back to why I like what the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is doing: They’re flipping the focus around, to put people’s needs first.

They’re doing this by starting from the question “What kind of information do communities need?” — rather than simply settling for “How can we tweak the badly designed, human-unfriendly entrenched patchwork system of civic information so that it becomes at least slightly less painful or more useful?”

…Well, they’re doing that to a point, anyway. The crucial limitation I see in their approach lies in how the Knight Commission has chosen to define “community.”

(COMING THURSDAY: Part 3, Beyond Geography…)

That said, many sites make it surprisingly hard to post. Not excruciatingly difficult — but just laborious enough to be a barrier to some would-be contributors.

This week I’m experimenting with using different tools to post to Contentious.com. Here’s the first one:

My Tumblr Experiment

I’m doing this because some of my clients use fairly complex content management systems, where each post requires a surprising number of steps.

Most commonly, here’s what site contributors must do…

1. Visit a web page.
2. Log in to the site CMS.
3. Navigate to the appropriate place to write a post.
4. Enter the post title and content in the appropriate fields (Including manually specifying links).
5. Fill in other fields (categories, tags, byline, subheads, siderail copy, etc.) needed to integrate the post with the site’s format.
6. Go through a separate process to upload and caption images or other media.
7. Preview the result.
8. Publish the post (or save it as a draft to be reviewed).

That many steps may be warranted if you have something substantial to say. But what if you just want to post a quick brief pointing out something interesting, a la Jim Romenesko?

Like Romenesko, I work with Poynter Online’s content management system on a daily basis. It does the job, but it’s very complex and labor-intensive. Each brief Romenesko post requires  more steps than what I listed above. And for the posts on the E-Media Tidbits blog? All told, not including editing the copy, I must take about 30 steps to get a post onto that blog and integrated with the site. (Add another 5-10 steps if I’m including an image, which I usually do.)

…Which is probably why most of those “Tidbits” aren’t very short. Personally, I think ethat’s way too much work to do for brief items. But even given the length of Tidbits, on average, I spend much more time producing those items on the Poynter site than I spend writing or editing them.

I’m not complaining about the Poynter site or CMS. It does a lot of things remarkably well. But it’s no secret that it is labor intensive.

The same is true for other sites I work with based on customized versions of Movable Type and Expression Engine, among other tools. Posting there is probably more work than it needs to be.

Fortunately, there are interesting microblogging tools such as Tumblr, Posterous, Delicious, and even Friendfeed that might offer solutions, if they can be integrated with the sites effectively.

Here’s what I think is needed to make it work:

• Bookmarklet for posting, so you don’t have to go to a separate page. When you’re browsing a page you want to post about, just hit the bookmarklet and a little posting window pops up, pre-populated with basic information about the page or other content item you’re viewing.
• Simple interface. This tools is meant for posting quick hits — so don’t try to cram in tons of options.
• Mobile-friendly posting. That’s simply crucial to any online publishing tool these days. Too many CMSs don’t make that easy — but most microblogging tools are pretty good at it.
• Posts (or cross-posts) directly to the main site. That is, the content being posted becomes part of the main site’s archives, can be linked to directly, and can be found through the site’s search engine.
• 3rd-party interface posts are integrated with posts from the CMS. That is, I could post two briefs via a microblogging service, then one meatier piece via the site’s CMS then two more briefs via the microblogging service — and they would all appear in the blog in sequence, as if they all came from the same place.

So far, Tumblr is lacking on those last two point, as far as I can tell. I don’t think (thought I’ll check again) that the Tumblr posts syndicated to Contentious.com are getting archived here. And I dont’ think I could get them to post as regular Contentious posts, mixed in with the posts I do via WordPress.

The latest version of WordPress (2.6) did bring back the “press it” microblogging bookmarklet-based tool, which is excellent. But what about cumbersome CMSs that don’t offer that kind of option? Could a thrid-party posting tool fill in the gap?

I’m sure my readers collectively know far more about this area than I do. Please comment below to help me learn how to address this issue. Thanks!

Hi, all. Sorry I haven’t been blogging here much lately, but I’ve been slammed trying to keep my head above water with my client projects. I’m working on a strategy to lighten my stress level (and reduce the near-constant sensation of being pecked to death by ducks) by considering hiring an assistant.

OK, assistants (virtual and otherwise), PLEASE don’t consider this an opening to pitch yourself in my comments! I need to think through some issues first, and here’s a biggie:

Posting to blogs takes an inordinate amount of my time — not writing the post, generally, but simply making the post — logging into a client blog’s back-end system and dealing with its formatting and other idiosyncrasies to make the post go live. This is especially time-consuming for one client’s blog, which relies on an entirely custom-made, clunky, and bug-ridden content management system.

One thing I’d like an assistant to do for me would be to take the post that I’ve completed and edited, along with illustration (if any), log in to the client’s back-end, and actually post the entry — and preview it to check it before it goes live.

I’m about the ethical and logistical issues. Here are the questions I’m pondering:

• Should I get the client’s permission beforehand before giving my assistant access to the blog back-end?
• Should I ask the client to set up a separate login for my assistant, or just give my assistant access to my login for the blog?
• What questions or concerns are the blog owners likely to have about this, and how might I address them constructively?

I’d love to hear thoughts on this — especially from anyone who has outsourced blog posting (rather than writing). I’d especially love tips for training, oversight, expectations, etc. Please comment below!

As you might have guessed, I’m a pretty busy person. If I didn’t have a good electronic calendar program, with alerts and reliable backup, I’d be totally lost. That’s why I’ve been a devoted user of Apple’s iCal program for about 10 years.

A few months ago, when I upgraded to a Macbook Pro with the Leopard OS (original install, not a Leopard upgrade), iCal started getting weird on me. I’ve been to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store twice about it, and have yet to find a problem. But I’m getting concerned, because I depend so heavily on this program. If it totally flames out on me, moving to a new solution will be a big hassle.

So I’m hoping some of my readers, or someone in the iCal support forums, is smarter or luckier than me and the folks at my local Apple Genius Bar.

Here are the iCal problems I’m experiencing, and what I’ve tried (unsuccessfully, so far) to diagnose and fix it. Your ideas and suggestions for further measures are most welcome…

MY ICAL PROBLEMS

I upgraded to a Macbook (Tiger OS) to a Macbook Pro (Leopard OS) about three months ago. Apple’s migration assistant had a problem copying my iCal data over automatically, so we (Tom Vilot was helping out) transfered that data manually into iCal.

Initially I had a problem with my calendar alerts not working. The first visit to the Genius bar fixed that.

Remaining iCal problems:

• Export not working. This problem is new, just started about a month ago — but it’s the one that concerns me most. Periodically, I had been exporting data from my main iCal calendar and uploading it to Google Calendar as a backup. Now, when I try to export that calendar, iCal just freezes on me and I have to force quit the program. (Yes, I am using Time Machine to back up all my data, but still…)
• Long delay to switch views. When I try to switch from, say, month view to week view, or from one month to the next, it takes iCal about 15 seconds to complete the switch. I also see a long switch when I try to turn my main calendar off and on in the left sidebar. That’s more annoying than worrisome, but I’d like to fix it.

• Can’t delete old events. I’ve tried several time in the iCal advanced preferences to have iCal delete all events older than 30 days. It looks like it accepts that choice, but then never actually deletes the old events.

I’m pretty sure my problem has something to do with some corruption or problem with my main calendar file. I say this because these attempted solutions had no result (the problems remained):

• Creating a new user account with a clean iCal, then sharing my main calendar file over to that user account.
• Reinstalling the entire Leopard OS from the discs supplied with my Macbook. (There’s no separate iCal installer, you have to reinstall Leopard to reinstall iCal.)

So: What can I try next to diagnose or fix this problem? Is anyone else having similar problems? Your suggestions are welcome, please comment below. I’m also posting this to the iCal support forum.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m currently using Twitter to provide live coverage of many of the sessions at a seminar from the Knight Digital Media Center called Total Community Coverage in Cyberspace. You can check in anytime today or tomorrow for my three most recent posts on the top of the TCC blog, or follow me directly via Twitter.

(Heads up: Obviously I won’t be Twittering during the 2-hour workshop I’m giving this afternoon: Connecting with “Communities of Difference.” Here are my online handouts for that, though.)

I’m doing this largely as an experiment to explore how journalists (professional or amateur) can use microblogging tools like Twitter.

One important thing I’ve learned from this so far is that, at least for me, post frequency dictates process and mindset…

During sessions yesterday I posted VERY frequently — about once every 2-3 minutes on average. I found that when doing so many “tweets” (Twitter posts), I gave up on also trying to take notes conventionally. Twitter became my session notes — live and in public. Personally, I found that useful: I found I had to mentally tune in far more sharply to the “so what” of the presentations and discussions, since I knew that people anywhere might be reading my notes immediately. I even was more careful about typos than usual. It was an odd state of heightened awareness; I hadn’t realized how often I go on “mental autopilot” when I take notes.

Frankly, I like this approach. Too often when I take notes I focus on details and exact quotes, taken in my own personal idiosyncratic shorthand that’s utterly inscrutable to almost anyone else. This means that later on I’ll have to spend time cleaning up my notes and synthesizing the content so they’ll make sense to other people. Or, more likely, my notes with remain in raw form — of less use to me as well as little or no use to anyone else.

Because I’m focusing on synthesizing the “so what” immediately, my Twitter coverage includes few direct quotes — unless the speaker says something especially pithy or otherwise important enough to quote verbatim.

I’ve developed my own conventions to provide context about these tweets. For instance, I do a couple of tweets before the session starts giving the session title, presenter, and affiliation. Once the talk starts, I pick the presenter’s first or last name (whichever is shorter) and preface my synthesis of whatever they just said with that, followed by a colon.

For instance, yesterday I attended an excellent session on mobile TV. Here’s my pre-session setup post for that: “OK, break time. Next up: The Mobile World: The potential of the Ubiquitous Platform. Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, Univ. FL.”

Then, during the session, I prefaced everything Olmsted said with Sylvia: (here’s an example). I did not use quote marks in those tweets because I was paraphrasing the speaker, not quoting her.

During discussion in that session, I also kept the attendee list (speakers and fellows) handy and tried as best I could to identify speakers in a similar fashion. While all this probably wouldn’t mean much to someone randomly accessing a particular tweet in this stream, my hope is that it helped people following the action.

Most interestingly, through this experiment I find I’m actually starting to think in terms of 140-character bursts when I’m in reporter mode at these sessions. That is, I don’t find myself spending much time or effort to edit the text of each tweet to make it fit. I’m getting good at boiling down the “so what” of what just happened within Twitter’s posting character limit the first time around.

What do you think of this experiment? How could I improve the process? Have you tried something similar? How could this work in your coverage? Please comment below.

I’ve just returned from a 2-week trip that mixed business, vacation, and family. It was quite a whirlwind, but it was also fun, exciting, and important in many ways. While I was gone I was able to keep E-Media Tidbits going, but not much on Contentious. Due to laptop problems (now fixed, all I needed was a new power converter), I was mostly on other people’s machines and didn’t want to hog them.

Now I’m back home, in regular life again. Fortunately I feel rested — I managed to get adequate rest while on the road, and when I got home yesterday I went straight to a fabulous massage and then took it easy all evening. Today I’ll go for a bike ride to get some exercise.

However, I really need to hit the ground running to prepare for a workshop I have to give in L.A. next week. Of course, I have backlog — bills and billing, touching base with clients, responding to correspondence, cleaning house (it’s a bit chaotic, which makes it hard for me to concentrate), and finding a way to do an adequate brain dump so I don’t lose the insights gained on this trip.

How do you manage your post-trip catch-up? Any tips I might benefit from? Please comment below!