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Twitter the new drug

These are excerpts from this O'Reilly Radar post by (Jim Stogdill | @jstogdill). He's talking about how the real time internet is addicting, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

I swear I'm not a Luddite. I'm not moving to Florida to bitch about the government full time and I'm not in some remote shack banging this out on an ancient Underwood. However, I guess I count myself among the skeptics when it comes to the unmitigated goodness of progress. Or at least its distant cousin, trendiness.

The article rambles a little (intentionally, I think) but has lots of beautifully crafted paragraphs. Like this one:

This all began with these lingering questions: "Why are we conference attendees paying good money, traveling long distances, and sitting for hours in chairs narrower than our shoulders only to stare at our laptops? Why do we go to all that trouble and then spend the time Twittering and wall posting on the overwhelmed conference wifi? Or, more specifically, why are we so fascinated with our own 140 character banalities pouring down the stage curtain that we ignore, or worse, mob up on, the speakers that drew us there in the first place?"

Touché. Even I'm guilty of this one.

Then he talks about what real time addition really is:

Email was the first electronic medium to raise my clock speed, and also my first digital distraction problem. After some "ding, you have mail," I turned off the blackberry notification buzz, added rationing to my kit bag of coping strategies, and kept on concentrating. Then RSS came along and it was like memetic crystal meth. The pursuit of novelty in super-concentrated form delivered like the office coffee service. Plus, no one had to worry about all that behind-the-counter pseudoephedrine run around. "Hey, read as much as you want, no houses were blown up in Indiana to make your brain buzz."

It was a RUSH to know all this stuff, and know it soonest; but it came like a flood. That un-read counter was HARD to keep to zero and there was always one more blog to add. Read one interesting post and be stuck with them forever. In time keeping up with my RSS reader came to be like Lucy in the chocolate factory with the conveyor belt streaming by. From my vantage point today, RSS seems quaint. The good old days. I gave it up for good last year when I finally bought an iPhone and tapped Twitter straight into the vein. Yeah, I went real time.

Now I can get a hit at every stop light. Between previews at the movies. Waiting for the next course at a restaurant. While you are talking to me on a conference call (it's your fault, be interesting). When you look down at dinner to check yours. Last thing before I go to sleep. The moment I wake up. Sitting at a bar. Walking home. While opening presents on Christmas morning (don't judge me, you did it too). In between the sentences of this paragraph.

Don't  tell me you don't see yourself in those paragraphs! And did you think about why you do all this? Here's why:

I tweet into the void and listen for echoes. There it is now, that sweet sweet tweet of instant 140 char affirmation. Feels good. RT means validation. I think I'm developing a Pavlovian response to the @ symbol that borders on the sexual.

Read the whole article for a very interesting second half where he discusses real-time and the singularity.

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

The “He will listen if you tell him” syndrome

This post was triggered by this exchange between @netshrink and @sarikaphatak on twitter.

@netshrink said: "Why does every woman want me (the doctor) to tell her husband to do things she wants him to do eg. exercise, not drink, come home on time"

and @sarikaphatak replied: "@netshrink that's called 'Sonarane kaan tochane' you have much more cred than the so called 'nagging'. effectiveness needs to be studied"

I have also been in a similar situation (i.e. situation similar to @netshrink's) often, except that instead of woman and husband, in my case it is typically mom and child. It's either a school kid who's probably not studying as much as the mom wants him to, or a college student who is partying too much, or in some cases son/daughter of marriageable age who is rejecting the parents' matrimonial suggestions.

The mom ends up telling me: "He will listen if you tell him."

You know what? Most probably, I'm not going to tell him.

The reason your kid listens to me is because I don't nag him about every damn, trivial thing that you feel compelled to improve in your kid.

The reason your kid listens to me is because of the 100 things that I feel like telling him, I only tell him 3, and keep the remaining 97 to myself. Because, frankly, (and this is true of everything in life), of the 100 things that you worry about, only 3 are really worth worrying about.

No, I am not going to tell your kid to read "educational" books instead of the "trash" he reads. I think the "trash" he reads is fine. No, I'm not going to tell your kid to not play the obscene 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.' There's nothing we can really do about it, and might as well focus on ensuring that he grows up with the correct values, inspite of playing GTA: Vice City. No, I'm not going to convince your daughter that she should agree to marry that nice Software Engineer in New York, who makes a lot of money, but is not interested in movies, or books, or sports, or travel. The reason your daughter listens to me is because I don't give her stupid advice like this.

Indian mythology has this interesting concept. Sadhus and rishis acquired great powers through penance, but their powers reduced every time the were used. Hence they had to be a little careful before using their powers and randomly cursing people. That, I find is a very useful piece of insight – your power increases when you don't use it, and decreases when you use it. ("No, I am not going to use my blog to promote your event, because if promoted every silly event, then people will stop reading my blog. I can only promote events that are really worthwhile.")

Now, if I could only follow the above advice when parenting my own kids…. but damnit, it's too difficult to do on a 24×7 basis!

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

Why your talks/documents/presentations/blogs must contain concrete examples

Communicating effectively is one of the most important skills today. And most people are not particularly good at it.

In this post, I am going to give one very simple and effective technique that will significantly improve your talks or documents or presentations or blog posts.

Whenever possible, give specific examples.

That's it. That is the technique. It is very easy, and yet most people ignore it. You were probably going to ignore it too, except that I am now going to convince you with an example.

What I am said above was a little theoretical and abstract. It sounds interesting, but it hasn't really had a significant or lasting impact on your brain.

So here's an example. Consider the following paragraph from a random blog post:

We would like to profile women who we consider an inspiration to others. These are women who are on the way to living their best life. What they have to say is of great value to the forum. We will be featuring these write-ups from time-to-time. It is also a great opportunity for them to highlight what they do/ what works for them.

Compare that with this:

Did you know that Asha Joglekar, owner of 'Bhakri' restaurant spends two hours a day in just dropping and picking up her kids from school? How does she do that and manage a restaurant? Reema Shourie is an accomplished painter and has held three exhibitions of her work inspite of having a full-time job in a software company, and having two kids. We would like to profile such women who are an inspiration to us. These are women who are on the way to living their best life. What they have to say is of great value to the forum.

The second one definitely has more impact, because when the reader is reading the second part of the paragraph ('women who are an inspiration' etc) she has specific examples in mind that makes the rest of the paragraph easy to relate to, remember, and understand at a deeper level.

Don't take my word for it; there's scientific research backing up this claim

This is not just my gut feeling. There is psychological research showing that people understand "thematic" and "concrete" stuff better and faster than abstract things. This was first proved in a famous experiment called 'Wason's Selection Task'. Instead of describing the experiment, I'm going to run it on you.

Here is a puzzle for you. I'm going to show you 4 cards. Each card has a number on one side, and a color on the other side. The rule for the cards is this, "If one side of the card has an even number, then the opposite side of the card MUST be RED." Your job is to figure out whether any of these cards violate the rule or not. I keep the 4 cards on the table in front of you. You can see one side of each card, and what you see is: '3', '8', 'BROWN' and 'RED'. Your job is to determine whether there is any violation of the rule or not by turning over the minimum number of cards. So, to be sure, how many cards do you need to turn over, and which?

Time yourself. How long did it take you to solve this?

And you probably got it wrong. 73% of the people do. The correct answer is: you need to turn over 2 cards. The one with '8' on it, and the one with 'BROWN' on it. If you got anything else, you're mistaken. 8 has to be turned over to check that it's back is RED. BROWN has to be turned over to ensure that it's back is not an even number. '3' and 'RED' do NOT need to be checked.

Now here's a different puzzle:

You are a policeman in a bar. You have to ensure that all the drinking happening there is legal. The rule is, "If a person is drinking beer, then he must be above 21 years of age." You can see 4 people at a table drinking. The first person is drinking a coke, but you can't guess his age. The second person is drinking a beer, and you can't guess his age. The third person is obviously a teenager (i.e. he's definitely under 21), but you're not sure what he's drinking. The fourth person is an old man, easily above 50, and you can't tell his age. Now, to be sure that the rule is not being violated, whom all do you need to check. (Here check is defined as asking for an age proof, and checking what drink he's drinking.)

Again, time yourself.

Within a few seconds you must have gotten the right answer: you need to check the age of person #2, who's drinking the beer, and you need to check whether person #3, the teenager,  is drinking beer or not.

Here is the amazing part: both puzzles are identical! Yet most people get the first one wrong and the second one correct. And, it takes them much less time to do the second one.

Now do you understand why your talks need examples?

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous