Family guy and web developer
I've been a long-time fan of Mozilla and Firefox but the move to include Pocket in the open-source web browser isn't my idea of what open source software is supposed to be.
Julien Voisin highlighted the sections from Pocket's privacy policy and terms of services to indicate exactly why Pocket shouldn't be included in Firefox.
I've become something of a Instagram fan over the last few months, so this was right up my street.
Had a mini test ride on a Specialized Fatboy today. I’m pretty sure my next bike will be a fat tyre bike. So comfortable!
For the last two weeks I've been writing my morning pages. The fact that I have managed to keep this going for two weeks is a good sign and I'm glad to be doing it again. The content of the writing itself isn't important, well not at the beginning anyway.
What eventually happens though is that I do find something to write about after those first few paragraphs. The writing then becomes more focused and I start to see where my morning pages are going. It doesn't always become something of value, most of the time it's just a stream of thoughts on the page but every now again there's an idea or thought there than can be the basis for a blog post or an article.
In doing this I've started to realise something
When we make something easy, we reduce its value.
Writing a word is easy. Anyone can do it, but the value of the word is almost worthless. Without context or surrounding words to form a sentence, the word is nothing but a word. It's worthless.
Writing a sentence is just as easy for most of us. Even writing a paragraph should be easy for most of us. And that's when we start to see a glimmer of value. That's when your writing can become something of value. Beyond this where do we go?
Writing a letter, a blog post, a long form article or even a book. As the number of words needed to fulfil each form of writing is passed, the next form of writing becomes harder and harder to do. At the same time though, the value of that piece of writing increases.
Writing enough words to make a book. That's real value. Assuming your writing is coherent and is of a high enough quality for someone to take the time out to read it. That's real value, but it's also difficult to do and that's the trick with writing.
If you want your writing to be valuable then it needs to be more than a word, a sentence or even a paragraph. Shorter forms of writing should be difficult to do but not out with your grasp. Anything longer than this will definitely be difficult to do but still possible.
Writing is difficult to do, but that's what is going to make your writing stand out from the writing of everyone else (or even their lack of writing). You've taken the difficult road to writing something of value.
Special hat tip to Buffer for their transparency dashboard. This is the kind of business I would love to work for.
One study found that taking notes on a computer leads us to transcribe lectures or talks verbatim, which doesn't help us understand the material as well. This happened even when study participants were asked to avoid verbatim note taking—they couldn't help it. Even worse, the participants who took verbatim notes on their computers worsened their test scores by studying their notes later.
— How to Take Effective Notes by Zapier
Having ridden the 650b wheel size for the last three months, I've been impressed with the larger wheel size. I can only imagine how much fun riding the bigger 29 inch wheels will be. Especially on this beautifully built Victoire Cycles hardtail.
via CycleEXIF
If I unfollowed you on Twitter then don't panic. I've got a bunch of you on lists.
When we talk about tools that make us productive, we often refer to products and services that automate things for us. They do the leg work for a specific task while we move on with something else. While this is a nice idea in theory, too often than not, we find ourselves swept up by emails, messages, phone calls, social networks and other digital interruptions rather than moving on with that other task.
The best tools aren't just tools that automate work for us (although they do help), they also let us do with the work without interruptions. These tools don't rely on network connections, the Internet or any other digital highway to work. They just work, with or without an Internet connection. A few examples of tools spring to mind. For me tools like, Byword, Marked 2, Vim and Sublime Text are great tools for working offline, but being able to work offline aren't the biggest selling feature.
As a software engineer I do a lot of reading of manuals, technical and programmming books. I also read a lot of programming language and framework documentation through the day. My memory isn't as sharp as it used to be, so I might refer to the docs for a programming language or framework when I'm writing code. Most of these docs are available online. I'm not always online though. Which is why I love using Dash. It's a document browser that allows to the documentation of various programming languages and frameworks offline. So whether I'm online or not, I can always be sure to get access to the documentation I need when I'm working.
There's a huge number of apps now that try to keep us in a state of being permanently connected to the Internet, but it comes at a cost. Being online means being connected, being connected means being distracted and being distracted is how we fail do the work we intended to do. When it comes to being productive, look for tools that work offline. Turn off your wi-fi and get working. It's surprising how much work you get done.
