Grasping the Stream

Recently a friend and I were discussing how our culture reinforces passive observation, ever increasing the barriers for real participation. Not only do we have every form of mindless entertainment dulling our senses, but we are distracted with an overwhelming stream of information that is ravenously devouring our most precious comodity -- time.

Some have attempted escape, hiding in their Luddite enclaves. Others are swept away by the mindless rush, occasionally surfacing to realize they've lost precious years. Hope still remains. A growing number of people are resisting and even leveraging the phenomenon that we live in.

Here's an example of the discipline I've begun to exercise. It's a simple plan to engage the information that floods my mind each day. It looks like this: take a few minutes to to capture your thoughts for each book, significant article, movie or media experience you engage in. To support this activity, I use a flexible and powerful information manager, TiddlyWiki, to rapidly add and find information on books and articles I've read and visual media I've watched. It allows me to readily catagorize information on topics, authors, and related on-line material.

Over the past several months this slight exertion has helped me:
  • Build a pattern of related concepts and ideas
  • Focus my media interaction choices
  • Easily and quickly share idea insights with others
A plan to write more about personal information management, particularly TiddlyWiki in the future. In the meantime my challenge to you is: go beyond being an observer; participate!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Generative Relationships

Image
There's been much hullabaloo about social networking, virtual collaboration and the magic that is generated by creative, informal teams. Many organizations and individuals see networking as a means to an end. How do I find a job or advance my career? How do we manage this complex project? How do we continue to innovate for sustained success? Although these are all worthy goals that have experienced some remarkable dynamics from social networking, what about the network itself? What about the relationships themselves? I believe an effective relational network has value on its own merit. As humans, we derive great joy developing mutual friendships that are both meaningful and interesting. Try viewing the relational network as an end in itself, and the things done together as means to reinforce and solidify healthy, enjoyable relationships with interesting people. In their article on Generative Relationships , the authors highlight the dynamics that turn relationships into magic. It&
Read more

Taking Teamwork beyond the Boundaries

Agile development experience has demonstrated how practical conditions and simple processes foster highly-performant teams that produce sustainable results. A Small-World View Here are some of the "rules-of-thumb" that contribute to success: A small number of people, no more than can be fed by two pizzas Everyone in the same room with no walls and barriers Lots of collaborative tools, include shared computers, full wall visuals, and whiteboards Optimal mutual availability and accountability Full awareness of roles and capabilities Easily communicate with all members Maximum opportunity for serendipity and knowledge sharing Everyone focused on a single well understood project No personnel turnover Beyond the Ideal Of course, we all would love to have the conditions that accelerate effective teamwork as described above. The reality is that people are constantly moving, often collaborating across corporate and geographic boundaries, and working on a variety of projects in very
Read more

Superstar Productivity in the Cloud

Image
I've been a Getting Things Done © disciple for a few years. Over that time I learned a couple of secrets to leverage David Allen's principles in my day to day work environment: Work context is everything - physical context is becoming less important Keep it simple - use the parts that make sense for you Work Context I spend 80% of my day online.  Either on my computer, or my Android phone.  A large portion of that time is spent communicating with people ... and Gmail does most of the heavy lifting.  Since this is where I work from, this is where my GTD experiments were honed.  If you have a similar work profile, perhaps you'll find something useful in my experience. Getting Organized 1. Collection The Gmail Inbox is a natural collector.  Don't fight it ... feed it! Stuff all ideas, tasks and loose ends into your inbox.  How?  Simply email yourself. I've added a little twist to boost this process.  First, I added a contact with the email address of my_email+ac
Read more