Observed

Personal calendars have roots in common with the secular timekeeping that flourished in the 15th Century in places like Piazza San Marco. Watches eventually joined these highly visible and audible clocks in helping us be where we needed to be, when we needed to be there. Do tangible, analog calendars respond to the same urge to be mindful?

There’s an interesting piece in this morning’s New York Times about our current calendar-keeping preferences.  Well, I’ve used both digital and analog — at different times — and know the advantages and disadvantages of both first-hand.

I’ve migrated back to an analog week-at-a-glance, and here’s something I’ve noticed that the Times barely touches on:

A hard-copy calendar helps me stay much more mindful of the what, who, when and where of my life.

When I have a tactile connection with my calendar, I have a level and type of awareness that I lack when my stuff is in the clouds — literally and figuratively.

It’s a feeling that reminds me of the difference we experience when we read a book or article on-line as opposed to spread out in front of us.  I’ve heard that the average reader reads 25 percent slower on-line, perhaps because it takes more time, energy and focus to be mindful on-line.

Next time you're stumped in a crossword, put your pencil (or pen) down and walk away. Forget about it. Come back in a few hours or days and you'll be amazed to see solutions where before you were stuck. Same with writing or, perhaps, just about anything else creative.

I rarely do my best writing when I’m trying to do too many things at once.  Or, when I’m too tired.  Plus, I know that the first thing I write is seldom the best I write.  Know what I mean?

Turns out that these observations follow a common thread…and have some science connecting them.

I re-discovered a great story that illustrates this.  Last summer, The New York Times reported about five neuroscientists who spent a week in late May 2010 in a remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons.

It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects.

The five reached a rough consensus, agreeing more or less that heavy exposure to technology and other stimulation leaves less room in our brains for storing and integrating ideas.

So, do what I do.  When I get stuck in a crosswords puzzle, for example, I’m amazed how I can solve clues after I put the paper aside and come back to it way later.  Or, when I look at a draft of whatever I’m writing a day or two later…and often discover all sorts ways to make improvements.

Seth, BTW, may have tapped into something similar when he suggested that you get a fresh set of eyes to challenge whatever you’re writing, building or designing.

But before you click on one more thing, turn off, tune out and take a break.  Your brain (and clients) will thank you.

George H.W. Bush understood the importance of superficial impressions. In 1988, he used this picture of a hapless Michael Dukakis to win the presidential election. Bush's fabled campaign ads featuring escaped felon and murderer "Willie Horton" drove the final nail in his opponent's coffin.

We’re hard-wired to judge others.  And situations.  Some of us (e.g., parents of young children) seem to acquire this urge under the right circumstances.

Judging others factors into how much we trust and feel safe.  This is one reason why chemistry and even small, tangible details seem to figure into the hiring choices clients make and whether they remain satisfied with a vendor’s performance.

So, too, it seems when picking presidential candidates.  A recent story in The New York Times vetted several Republican favorites with an eye toward how they present the qualities it takes to win as opposed to govern. (more…)

"O envy! envy! thou gnawing worm of virtue, and spring of infinite mischiefs! there is no other vice, my Sancho, but pleads some pleasure in its excuse; but envy is always attended by disgust, rancour, and distracting rage." -- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter 8.

In the last couple of days, both Seth and The New York Times have taken a look at the connection between on-line technology and envy.  It’s not clear who coined it, but the Times uses an acronym to describe the way Facebook, Twitter and the like have tormented those of us stalking a better offer — FOMO…or, Fear of Missing Out.

Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun.  It’s been ages since Envy was added to the Seven Deadly Sins list.  The ancient Greeks invented Zelos (god of envy and the root for the word zeal), and Cervantes wrote Don Quixote around the end of the 16th Century.

So, I’m reluctant to further demonize our gadgets and apps and how they abet our addiction to connectivity and the inevitable quest for something other than what we have.  Technology is, after all, partly a solution in search of a problem.

In a way, we set ourselves up.  When we open a Twitter account or create a Facebook page, aren’t we giving some part of ourselves permission to act on whatever innate urge might reside in us to compare our lives to the lives of others…and, perhaps, to despair?

A buddy of mine said it really well when he called out Facebook years ago.  He called it invited voyeurism.

So, really.  Who are we kidding?

"Another virtue is simplicity. Typewriters are good at only one thing: putting words on paper. 'If I’m on a computer, there’s no way I can concentrate on just writing,' said Jon Roth, 23, a journalist who is writing a book on typewriters. 'I’ll be checking my e-mail, my Twitter.' When he uses a typewriter, Mr. Roth said: 'I can sit down and I know I’m writing. It sounds like I’m writing.'” -- The New York Times, March 31, 2011

“It’s about permanence, not being able to hit delete,” he explained. “You have to have some conviction in your thoughts. And that’s my whole philosophy of typewriters.”

That’s what Louis Smith, a 28-year-old hipster from Brooklyn had to say about laying out 150 bucks for a refurbished typewriter that was nearly twice his age.

He and others are [re-]discovering the beauties of keys, ink and paper, according to an article in this morning’s New York Times.  About how having something to touch affects humans in ways that the abstract or digital cannot. (more…)

When you work for popes, you have more than your share of client satisfaction ups and downs. So, naturally, Leonardo liked the calming rationalism offered by Vitruvius, the great first-century Roman architect and polemicist. In his "10 Books on Architecture," for example, Vitruvius advised that owners hold their architects accountable for any cost overruns. Reward your architect when the projects comes in on budget or better. "But when more than one-fourth of the estimate was exceeded, he was required to pay the excess out of his own pocket."

The New York Times told a fascinating story this morning.  It’s a quintessential New York City story, combining sex, political power and (of course) real estate.

What really caught my eye was the piece of the report that dealt with the design and construction of the subjects’ over-wrought bay-side mansion in Brooklyn.  In referring to Luchese mob boss Anthony Casso, the prior owner, the Times explains…

It was Mr. Casso who originally conceived of the giant complex, only to order the execution-style murder in 1991 of the architect who designed it, for fear that the man, Anthony Fava, could become a witness against him. F.B.I. agents stormed the house looking for evidence, punching holes in the walls as they searched for hidden bodies.

I doubt that either da Vinci or Vitruvius could ever codify what to do when your client pays your invoices in stacks of small bills. (more…)

"At Foxcroft she was not only a top student but a basketball star and a member of the school’s elite riding club; during her years at Bennington, she became a top New England ski racer. Her father served as chairman of Union Pacific Corporation and built the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho in 1936. Here she honed her racing skills and trained with the women’s Olympic ski team." -- From the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute biography for Kathleen Harriman Mortimer

This morning’s New York Times obituary for Kathleen Harriman Mortimer reminded me of the benefits of having a leisure class.  Of course, there was little about her that might be called leisurely.

One of the benefits is having engagingly written obituaries to read.  Obituaries worthy of The Times of London.  ["Noted RAF ace and antiquarian of Etruscan culture dies during Sudanese relief mission," ad arguendo.]

Then there’s Theodore C. Sorensen.  Mr. Sorensen’s Oct. 31, 2010, obituary tells the story of life in sharp contrast to Mrs. Mortimer’s.  He was not born of privilege.  He did not have the advantages or good fortune of rich, powerful, smart and highly capable parents.

Yet, he must have had something going for him.  Because his life became every bit as interesting and full of contrasts and accomplishments as any member of the “leisure class.”

Ted Sorensen reminds me that great content is all around me.  It reminds me that, as a writer, I share in the rewards and burdens of story telling.

Great stories (and engaging content) are all around me.  Provided I look.

I’m not sufficiently naive to believe that the genie’s going back in the bottle.  But a story in today’s New York Times about Gov.-Elect Andrew Cuomo’s fondness for the phone gives me hope.

Mr. Cuomo also relishes the visceral feedback of a phone call, he said: the sound of the other person’s voice and the sense of his or her mood.

“I am not an e-mail person,” he said. “You don’t get context, you don’t get emotion and you don’t get a connection.”

He’s no LBJ.  But Cuomo gets something that Lyndon and others have known for a long time.

Namely, that the more tangible, the more personal.  And, the more personal, the more persuasive.

Every politician has gotten this.  Even our Blackberry-wielding President Obama.

If I knew about a problem that causes problems for my clients AND DID NOTHING ABOUT IT FOR YEARS, I'd deserve to have someone bite off my head!

If no one hears a college administrator fall in the forest, does the dude really fall?

The excuses given for a long-standing, vexing and high-stakes programming error in the widely used and vaunted Common Application tells me that someone is hard of hearing.  The responsible party was quoted this morning as follows:

Mr. Killion said the issue of “truncation,” as it is known within the Common Application offices, is not new, and had been a reality of the process for more than a decade, causing barely a ripple.

Read the rest of the article and tell me what you think.

Are we sacrificing our ability to communicate with one another in thoughtful, measured, memorable ways...in favor of the speed driven by our appetite for greater social intensity?

I sometimes see IM’s that include an apology.  The author seems to realize they’re about to send out something that’s pretty unfiltered and unedited.

Or, as they put it, it’s *raw*.

What a sweet, old school gesture!  I see enough tweets and the like to know that politeness isn’t much valued in the IM world.  It slows things down.

Courtesy may be just one of the things we’re losing as we deepen our attachment to the digital end of the spectrum in the ways we communicate. (more…)