Modern Nerd

"Each day I live in mortal fear that I’ve used up the last idea that will ever come to me."

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:05:00 +0000

“Each day I live in mortal fear that I’ve used up the last idea that will ever come to me.”

- zefrank, in a delightful clip from yesteryear on the subject of brain crack

That Syncing Feeling

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:53:00 +0000

That syncing feeling will be familiar to many of you; it is both the bane of the technorati and the cyclic five-step rite of passage for the mobile computing age:

Step 1. Set up your phone’s calendar and address book to sync over-the-air with your desktop computer, laptop, web service, or all three.

Step 2. Watch in dismay as this year’s upcoming appointments disappear, along with the contact information for everyone you’ve ever met.

Step 3. Add the single calendar and address book entries your tech-dependent excuse for a mind can recall, and apologise for missing meetings for the next few weeks.

Step 4. Spend three months replying to text messages from lifelong friends with the words, “Who is this?”

Step 5. Go to step 1.

For me, syncing data across devices ranks on the ball ache scale alongside falling the wrong way off a tightrope and watching a Shaolin Monk being kicked repeatedly in the groin. Is it any wonder, then, that it feels like a small miracle when it works flawlessly? I think it’s worth exploring that feeling to see how we can bottle it.

Earlier in the week I set out the Five Laws of Syncing as I see them. Here’s how they break down:

1. Thou should not have to press a button labelled ‘sync, damn it!’

For end users, syncing should be automatic. I know first-hand that it’s one of the most difficult features to get right as a developer, but that doesn’t mean your users need to bleed for it too.

2. Thou should not have to plug a thing into another thing.

USB syncing is both a chore and a trip hazard. I suspect that Apple insist upon cable-based syncing because they haven’t yet found a way to sell the air between your Mac and your iPhone.

3. Thou should not have to be connected to your mother’s wifi network.

Wifi syncing (when your phone and computer must be on the same wifi network and running the same app) is the perfect solution only for those who never leave the cave.

No-one who’s done it for more than a week actively enjoys syncing over their wifi network, so it probably shouldn’t be part of your app. New world computing’s supposed to be fun.

4. Thou should whisper softly when things are syncing and again when they have sunk.

Mercifully, evidence of disco syncing — where apps block access to the interface while displaying a disco ball and neon ‘SYNCING!’ sign — is now scarce.

Giving a subtle indication that syncing is in progress is a great thing. Blocking the user’s access to the app while it’s happening isn’t.

5. Thou shalt make it feel just a little bit like magic.

This is the golden one. If you can merrily switch between desktop, webtop, and iPhone applications all day without realising that a thousand tiny gremlins are secretly ferrying data back and forth, you’ve achieved the improbable.

Make it feel too much like magic, though — as Apple has done with Mobile Me — and users won’t know whether their stuff has sunk, is syncing, or is en route to join Gandalf on a three-month bender in the Maldives.

It’s a delicate balance.

The Five Laws of Syncing

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:45:16 +0000

Thou should not have to press a button labelled ‘sync, damn it!’
Thou should not have to plug a thing into another thing.
Thou should not have to be connected to your mother’s wifi network.
Thou should whisper softly when things are syncing and again when they have sunk.
Thou shalt make it feel just a little bit like magic.

The Curse of the iPhone Developer

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:07:16 +0000

As an iPhone developer, few mistakes are more costly than telling people what you do. Gone are the days when hopeless romantics thought they had a book in them; today they’re full of app ideas:

“I’d like to think I’ve got an app in me,” said one guy I met at a New Year’s Eve party.

What can you do but smile and brace yourself? A game with ninja badgers, an app for detecting cheating spouses, and a tool for measuring the size of your penis and uploading the results to Facebook. I’ve heard them all and wish I’d picked a profession with fewer talking points. Like taxidermy.

Worse is when you’re introduced by your line of work: “Here’s the iPhone developer I was telling you about,” they’ll say. “His name’s Nick,” almost in afterthought. You’ll soon be the sounding board for a thousand drunken app concepts. They should have just hired a clown.

“How about one that finds the nearest [bar/strip club/hooker]?” some idiot will offer. “I’d buy it,” he’ll add, as if to seal its position in the top 100.

When I’m feeling antisocial I tell people I’m a web developer. Nobody bothers a web developer. The longest conversation you can hold with one lasts three minutes. The title exists to blend boredom with confusion — suggesting, perhaps, that you build housing estates for spiders.

If nothing else, it’s taught me that people value great software over great websites; as a web developer, I’m rarely offered exciting website ideas or encouraged to talk at length about upcoming launches. As an iPhone developer, I can’t escape it: within three minutes the theme has turned from the crisis in Haiti to samurai raccoons and dick-measuring apps.

The real Curse of the iPhone developer is not the App Store approval process, having to talk to people at parties, or worrying that you’ll never be invited back; it’s wrestling with a million ideas and deciding which not to build next.

"Do it now. If you bankrupt a company before you’re 25, that’s like a badge of honor! Get out there."

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:13:05 +0000

“Do it now. If you bankrupt a company before you’re 25, that’s like a badge of honor! Get out there.”

- Jim Coudal in an interview with Coudal Partners

Put Things Off is now Modern Nerd

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:53:00 +0000

Following a laid-back stay at Put Things Off, I’ve rebranded, donned a black suit, sold the cat on eBay, and moved to a new home at Modern Nerd, where you’ll find my essays, updates, and meandering prose from now on.

Your subscription should redirect automatically if you followed the old RSS feed, but you might like to visit Modern Nerd and resubscribe anyway, especially if you’re the type who worries needlessly about things.

Q: Why Modern Nerd?

I felt it was time for a change, largely because the work I do has shifted from telling people to shut up and make things to shutting up and making them myself. It’s harder than it looks. Also, nerds are cool now.

Q: What about Put Things Off dot com?

The site will house the Web version of Put Things Off 2, the laid-back to-do list that I’m relaunching this year. Progress is good, thanks, and you should follow @spiffingapps on twitter for sneak peaks and updates.

Q: I really liked your old Put Things Off site design. Are you going to sell it as a WordPress theme, move to an Alpine ski chalet, descend into madness, and spend your nights quoting Sartre at passing mountain goats?

Yes. You’ll soon be able to buy the Put Things Off design as a WordPress theme from Wordprezzie. To find out when it’s available, follow @nickcernis on twitter or subscribe to the Wordprezzie feed.

Q: Did you really sell the cat on eBay?

Of course not! eBay is dead to me. I used Craigslist.

Q: What do you think of tumblr?

I’m pretty excited about it. It took me a day to learn their template system, design, code, and launch this site. Imagine what you could do if you were clever.

The writing workflow is great — you can queue posts and drip feed them to your audience automatically, without having to wrestle with publish dates or keep anything as laughable as a ‘blogging diary’.

Overall, I’ve fallen in love. Tumblr is a laid-back, low-pressure approach to publishing: there’s no software to maintain or update, no plugins to fiddle with, no hosting bills to pay, no security issues to worry about, and no guilty feeling when you post 10 words instead of 1,000. Plus, their logo has a full stop in it. That could catch on.

Talk nerdy to me

In Michael Okuda’s text commentary on the DVD edition of Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan, he claims the computer on Kirk’s apartment desk is a Commodore 64. It’s actually a Commodore PET.

Easy mistake to make.

The Importance of Abandoning Crap

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:06:00 +0000

There’s a flimsy line between wimping out and moving on. I should know; in the last three years I’ve left a comfy full time job, launched six websites, abandoned two, floated between four martial arts, ditched archery, and turned my back on origami. I remember the sad words of my Cello teacher when I announced I was quitting that:

“Don’t tell me you’re starting a bloody rock band.”

I told her I’d defected to the guitar because it doesn’t have a nine-inch steel spike in one end, a missing fret board, or a sad role in a Bond movie where Timothy Dalton uses a £1.4m Stradivarius to steer a makeshift toboggan. The truth is this: the Cello got tough at around grade six, so I switched to an instrument that any talentless shitbag can play.

I have always been fickle: flitting between phases for more than 20 years; purchasing the most expensive thingamijig to pursue each new craft; being careful not to startle those close to me by using it more than once. Imagine my delight, then, to hear Ira Glass attest to the importance of giving things up:

“Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.”

In a must-see clip [YouTube] produced by current.tv, Glass sheds light on the process of creating remarkable things. Turns out it’s a tip of the iceberg equation: his greatest work — the stuff that airs — only exists because he abandons over half of everything he starts. How refreshing it is to hear a long-time hero admit that their successes are little more than lucky ducks bobbing in a sea of abandoned crap. How I wish that part-time action hero Seth Godin had written The Book about quitting 20 years ago.

In the Dip — a short book about ‘the extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick)’ — Godin puts it this way:

“Quitting is difficult. Quitting requires you to acknowledge that you’re never going to be #1 in the world. At least not at this. So it’s easier just to put it off, not admit it, settle for mediocre. What a waste.”

Abandoning your dwindling hobby, business, relationship, blog, or other pursuit is tricky. Sometimes, though, giving up can be exactly the right thing to do. The thing to take-away from Glass and Godin is this: killing a failing project isn’t an act of destruction — it’s a powerful creative force:

“It’s time to kill and it’s time to enjoy the killing because, by killing, you will make something else even better live.” –Ira Glass

And that, for me, is the key. Anyone can make something. But to make something great, you have to find the courage to ditch the things dribbling along at half-past average. I’ve spent the last few years juggling projects and hobbies, abandoning a few to let others shine. It hurts to give up, but I know that my small successes wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to move on and not hang on.

Abandon your crap. You’ll be amazed at what thrives in its place.

"It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you..."

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:51:00 +0000

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”

- Oscar Wilde

About Modern Nerd

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:03:00 +0000

Modern Nerd is a refreshingly sideways exploration of uniquely first-world problems written by Nick Cernis, a British iPhone and Web developer with a phobia of clowns.

Artlessly spanning topics from email overload and the lure of the iPhone to the need for luxury loo roll, the site aims to examine, poke fun at, and occasionally solve everyday nerdish dilemmas.

About Nick Cernis

Nick Cernis (pronounced Churnis) has been a waiter, a television salesman, a graphic designer, and a failed rock guitarist. He has danced inappropriately on live TV, moved house 26 times across three countries, and broken at least three of his fingers. Today he is an iPhone and Web developer from West Yorkshire in the UK.

Nick is a founding partner at Goburo Ltd — a friendly web design agency — and the founder of Spiffing Apps, the cheerful software company behind Put Things Off, the laid-back to-do list for iPhone that he describes as ‘like having a nagging girlfriend, without the girlfriend’.

You can follow Nick on Twitter or email him directly. For free Web design or development estimates, please get in touch via Goburo.

Rise of the Tablog

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

The blog format has devolved. Once a simple gateway to self-publishing, today the blog format is responsible for a thousand tawdry tablogs: hideous half-breeds of tabloid and blog built around odeous content, cluttered site designs, and optimised for pageviews alone. To understand how it happened, it helps to see what changed when blogging moved from a pastime to a cottage industry — the same point, for me, when writing and reading blogs stopped being fun.

It’s frightfully hard to write a blog without feeling that it must do something: even the most humble blogger is encouraged to create a unique selling point, target a ‘laser-focussed niche’, embrace social media, spawn viral content, track stats, and have a dedicated marketing drive; they must teach and inspire, build ‘authority’, start a ‘conversation’, and foster a ‘community’; they should seek out a purpose, a gameplan, a revenue stream, and an exit strategy.

This socially enforced framework creates problems, not least of which in changing Web writing from an expressive, emotive celebration of free speech to an electronic stocking filler: tabloggers aren’t writing; they’re creating content — content that hopes to satisfy self-inflicted quotas, boost traffic, and burn another post on the digital altar to appease the blods. Tabloggers write from a sense of obligation; a feeling that their content must be regular and — worst of all — useful. And I’m not alone in thinking that it’s a shame:

“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Yet tablogs publish the ugliest kind of useful information: vacuous lists, tutorials, and recycled how-tos that try so hard to be handy as to become meaningless, soulless, voiceless and occasionally dangerous. I believe that tablogging is inevitable if you adopt the blog format, a platform that does little more for its authors than cast their writing into oblivion thanks to its hallmark, reverse chronological sorting. Indeed, sorting articles by date may be the worst possible setup for all content types except news.

In an attempt to combat this death by archive effect, the blog format offers its own curious blend of useless navigational clutter: fluffy tag clouds, monstrous category lists, ‘possibly related’ entries, and ‘most commented’ posts. Sadly, the result is the emergence of the blog aesthetic: a distinctive look that is neither beautiful nor usable. Indeed, you know that you’ve landed on a tablog if you spend the first twenty seconds wondering what the hell its author intended you to do next.

Add to this the machine gun calls to action in the form of me-too social networks, overpriced affiliate promotions, and chocolate box ad matrices, and what you have is a shit tip of information design. It’s gotten so bad that a wealth of plugins and scripts have sprung up to strip pages back to useful content and make them legible again.

The result of all this is that it’s even harder to find blogs that you can read for pleasure. Whereas reading offline is for downtime, reading online has been demoted to killing time, and tablogging is to blame. I think it’s time that well-meaning publishers abandoned the blog format in favour of something more suitable for their content, their audience, and their long-term prosperity.

I ditched the format when I saw what it was becoming. It’s saved my time, my sanity, my love of writing, and my desire to waffle on like a Belgian baker without wondering what extra crap I can add to my sidebar. As such, there’s no comment field at the foot of this essay, a fact that will sadden some — no doubt the same few who have long scrolled past this paragraph having never read it, pinkies primed to peck out a tired counter argument: ‘but it’s about creating a two-way dialogue,’ they’d say. ‘Read-write instead of read only’ or some fluffy computing analogy.

When people tell me they want to start a website, my first response is not the knee-jerk shout of ‘start a blog!’ or ‘use WordPress!’ that echoes elsewhere, but a simple question: what are you trying to do?

If you are trying to foster a community, build a dedicated site that caters to your users’ needs and rewards their participation, like Stack Overflow has.
If you are trying to meet people with similar interests, co-ordinate meetings using Meetup or Eventbrite, or host great events like Carsonified does.
If you are trying to make money online, start a business with an obvious group of products, benefits, and prices, like 37signals.
If you are trying to promote an existing business, invest your money in improving your current site and your time in guest posting on established platforms.
If you are trying to write tutorials or spread expert knowledge, start a dedicated tutorial business like PeepCode or Lynda.
If you are trying to become an expert in your field, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about, like Lance Armstrong.
If you are trying to share links, keep a diary, or simply write more often, use a simple service that you’ll update, like Posterous, Tumblr, Soup, or Twitter.
If you are trying to waste what’s left of your childhood or recapture your youth, use social networking sites like Facebook or Virb.
If you are trying to set up a shop, head for a secure platform like Big Cartel, or Shopify, or communities like Etsy.
If you are trying to showcase your work, use a dedicated portfolio site that headhunters are already browsing, like Krop.

For everything that the blog format has been adapted for, there’s a healthier alternative that won’t steer you ever closer towards running a tablog. Indeed, even if you hope to start — heavens help you — a blog about blogging, there are better formats than the blog format. Which begs the question, why use it at all?

Give Up and Buy an iPhone

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

I deeply distrust all forms of technology, none more so than the microwave oven. In the terrible event that I must use one – to dry wet socks or reheat my dampened enthusiasm for British tennis players – I do so only after glancing away, grimacing awkwardly, and shielding my testicles with a bread board.

Such healthy disrespect for all things buzzing is what keeps me alive, despite a niggling urge to try cleaning our blender in the bath; I have a long-standing theory that electricity and water would mix just fine if you did it fast enough. It may surprise you, then, that I’ve liquidised my scruples by doing what everyone in my position fears will one day come to pass: I’ve bought an iPhone.

Even as a part-reformed nerd who’s wary of getting suckered by hard tech once more, it’s impossible to watch one of those Apple ads without stopping to consider whether, this time, the New Thing, this Holy Grail amongst handheld thingamibobs, this Golden Apple in an otherwise rotten bunch, could finally be The One: The One that proves that tech can be fun instead of faulted. The One that makes you thank your sock drawer full of discarded shiteboxes for leading you to this moment. The One that changes everything. The One that doesn’t disappoint quite as eagerly as a Hugh Grant film.

Advertising works

Perhaps you have noticed an iPhone billboard and paused to admire the object in its svelte, come-hither casing, designed in California, land of sun and sand, but made in China, land of pandas, pork ribs, and exciting retail opportunities.

Or, worse still, maybe you’ve visited an Apple store and been wooed by the sheer theatre of it all: the almost irritatingly helpful yet never knowingly attractive sales people; the array of over-polished products on small marble pedestals; the hallowed Genius Bar; the gathering hordes updating their FaceSpace accounts. Perhaps, in the same moment you noticed that the staircase is fashioned entirely from glass and floating on the sighs of angels, you uttered the same question I did:

“Will this bingling box of crap you’re trying to flog me solve any of my troubles?”

Well, after many months with mine, I’m delighted to tell you that it’s solved so many of my problems that I’ve started trawling the App Store in search of new ones.

The verdict

The iPhone is the first unnecessary overpriced pocketbox I’ve owned that lives up to more than 14% of the lies I was sold. Not only is it far easier to use than the crap I’ve been tricked into buying before, but it’s one of the few gadgets that answers everyday questions. Questions like “What’s the capital of Narnia?”, or “Where did we park the golf buggy?”, or “What’s that terrible music?”, or “What can I throw at a civic leader that isn’t a shoe?”

And that’s before you start downloading apps. You’ll soon find one for everything. There’s an app that lets you take photos of a book jacket, then check to see if it’s cheaper on Amazon to aid in the demise of your local bookstore. Another tells you where your nearest payphone is, in case you need to seek shelter during a hailstorm.

Others can be quite useful — take the National Rail one, for instance, which tells those of us in the UK where our nearest station is via GPS, what time the next train home is supposed to arrive, and how many minutes after that it will be at the platform.

The mobile revolution

So, I’ve started to realise that there’s little point in resisting. The mobile revolution is here, and it’s time to make a half-arsed effort and pretend we’re on board. Paper, while I shall always cling to it lovingly, is being left behind. What’s more, so is conventional desktop computing.

The mobile phone is gradually overlapping the realm of the desktop and laptop. Not enough to replace them entirely just yet – maybe not ever – but enough that there is now a growing generation who access the internet exclusively by cell phone; a generation who may never experience the Web on a big screen.

The next big thing

More exciting still is iPhone OS 3.0, which promises to connect willing goons with even more costly gadgets in ways they’ve never experienced and probably don’t feel entirely comfortable with. On the plus side it means, for example, that you could control your bluetooth-enabled microwave using your iPhone from a separate room where it’s safer. Better still, it means that the phone can do genuinely useful things, like monitor a diabetic’s blood sugar level and alert her parents by text message should the fruit of their loins consume 16 Snickers bars to spite them.

It also has some more sinister implications in the realms of national security. Starting today, various inebriated world leaders will be launching nuclear missiles via iPhone with a dedicated interface that looks every bit as menacing as the closing scene from Wargames.

Crawl out from your caves

And so, my hope in writing this is to persuade the many waverers and outwardly tech averse to join me by crawling from your caves and giving this exciting new wave of gizmos a go. It’s safe to come out now, I promise. The iPhone’s slowly changing the way I feel about gadgets for the better, and I think it could do the same for you.

And, even if you don’t fancy one, I hope you’ll agree to join in by feigning excitement at the possibilities up ahead — even if, like me, you will always carry a pencil.

Why You Need Luxury Loo Roll

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

You can tell if a company values its customers by the quality of its toilet paper. That rough stuff you have to fold 16 times before grating across your rump like twisted metal on a block of 30-year old parmesan speaks as much about the company’s disregard for your custom as it does for their undeclared war on your bottom.

Good customer service trickles from the shiny sales people and free coffee right down to the bathroom floor, suspicious puddles and all. And, while many will be tempted to cut costs by downgrading or neglecting to replenish such minutiae as toilet paper in these troubled times, my hope is that the following exposé on loo roll horrors will deter you, lest we all have to carry a monstrous arse rash in addition to our other varied troubles.

Oh, and yes – there is some advice at the end of all this nonsense, in case you thought I’d misplaced the brighter half of my antique spoon collection.

The Builder’s Friend

So called because it doubles as an emergency kit should a tradesperson misplace a tool of their craft; a belt sander or electric buzz saw, for example.

Pubs normally use this to encourage you to hold it in until you get home. Sadly, the tactic’s becoming more popular at other venues too.

The Carpenter

Closely related to The Builder’s Friend, The Carpenter is a slightly refined version that’s perfect for smoothing paint between coats. You’ll find it in public libraries to discourage people from reading on the loo.

The False Economy

The king of false economies, economy paper is based on the idiotic notion that dispensing sheets in ultra-thin single ply units will use less material overall. Instead, the companies who use this thrice-cursed roll have outsourced the labour of toilet paper manufacture to their customers by providing you with the raw materials to make your own.

Faced with the sad notion of having to assemble your own bog roll, you’ll happily take three more sheets than you need just to spite the cheap bastards, which only serves to augment their exercise in futility.

The Ghost Roll

There isn’t even a holder there, let alone any loo roll. As you frantically wave your arms around hoping for a solution to appear by the same witchcraft that powers those new fangled flushers, you’ll realize that this company couldn’t give two shits about you. Which is lucky, because you’re in enough of a quandry as it is.

The Last Chance

The previous occupant was the type who leaves the final biscuit in the packet because they think it makes scoffing the previous 19 perfectly acceptable. As such, there’s just enough paper on the roll for you to carry out your business, but not enough to make any mistakes.

This reeks of bad washroom management. If the company can’t cope with basic hygiene, I dread to think what else was in that burger you just ate.

The Quilted

Ah, The Quilted! Possibly the only thing on Earth that makes it worthwhile eating bran flakes. Pure bliss on a roll. This belongs in a separate list away from the horrors, but I include it here for balance. And because I don’t intend to write about toilet paper ever again.

The Big One

You can see a huge roll of blue paper in a fat perspex box, but you’ll be a llama farmer before you can get at it. You’ve tried everything you can think of but it’s practically caged in. Just when you were about to give up and use your left hand, the infernal contraption snaps open and drops the entire 50 metre roll into a puddle on the floor.

To business owners worldwide: if you must buy oversized rolls in bulk to cut costs and reduce maintenance, at least make sure the giant dispensers they require were designed to serve loo roll, and not to prevent lizards from escaping at high security zoos.

The Eton

It may surprise you to learn that the toilet paper in British private schools is atrocious. This, of course, is by design: nothing quite prepares young minds for the harsh realities of adult life like attempting to mop your bott with tree bark nailed to paper. I’ve only ever seen this stuff in one other establishment, which went out of business last year. Enough said.

The message in this madness

The moral is simple: think twice before you cut the small stuff.

Think you can drop your advertising budget to save some cash? Think again. You might not notice it after the first month’s sales, but it will hit you around month three. I know this first hand.

Think you can stop innovating and just coast along with your existing products and services? Maybe. But don’t expect to be able to hold your position in the next downturn. Apple increased their spending on research and development in the previous recession. The outcome? The iPod.

Think you can swap your luxury loo roll for a strip of Builder’s Friend? For the love of bottoms everywhere, think again. A friend confessed to me that she never goes back to a local restaurant because “the loo roll they use is naaaasty”. I asked her what the food was like: “oh, it was great — I’d go every week if they did takeaway”. Lesson learned: when it comes to repeat business, bums trump tums every time. Insert your own joke about bottom lines here.

So what do you cut out?

Cut stuff that your customers won’t notice first. Then - and only then - cut the rest. Every business will be different, but there’s no doubt about it: if it matters to you, you’ll find ways to save money without your customers noticing. But, whatever you cut, guard the posh loo roll with your life.

The Job Title Blacklist for the Self-Employed

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Want to know the fastest way to jump to the top? Start your own business. You can call yourself anything you like, wear what you want, and drink during office hours. Sadly, though, this new-found freedom comes with responsibilities, not least of which is picking a job title that won’t make you sound like a colossal berk.

Here, then, is a list of monikers I suggest you avoid when starting out as a one-person band in any creative industry. I flitted between several of these before I managed to lock my ego away once more.

Creative Director
This sounds great, doesn’t it? You’re Creative – with a capital C! And you’re a Director! Directors are important, right? Just know that Creative Directors usually direct other people. More often than not, they also shout a lot, work terrible hours for no extra pay, and chain-drink espresso. If that’s you, then go for it. Otherwise, give this one a miss.
‘A Creative’
You might be creative but you are not ‘a Creative’. I know you’re multi-talented, but try harder. Calling yourself ‘a creative’ doesn’t say anything about what you do. My accountant is a creative; he charges me a crippling monthly fee to rise at 4pm, play golf, and get wasted.
Anything with the word “Executive” in
I know it sounds important, but that doesn’t make it right. Unless you wear a tie to work, of course, in which case it’s fine. You probably already have a plaque with your title on anyway.
Art Director
The dressed-down version of Creative Director. Shouts less but worries more.
Studio Manager
This one is fine if you actually manage at least one person besides yourself. If not, resist the urge to adopt it.
Graphic Artist
The title is often associated with comic book artists and, let’s face it, they’re probably much more talented than you. Oh – and if you are a comic book artist who currently uses “Graphic Artist”, I recommend you change it to “Comic Book Artist”. It’s a wonderful craft and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Commercial Artist
This one’s easy. If you sell paintings or sculptures, you’re a Commercial Artist. Even then, you might sell more if you drop the “Commercial” part. Art should be a creative exploration of the human condition. Explore it first – you can trick people into buying your crap later. Commercial Artist was also used before the term Graphic Designer was widely known. It’s OK to modernise by using the new term now – it’s called progress.
“Director” or “CEO”
Anyone can be a director – just file the paperwork – but it takes talent and hard work to be a specialist. Don’t sell yourself short.
“Entrepreneur” or “Solopreneur”
You might be an entrepreneur, but it isn’t your job title. It’s fun to take on the title for a while to pretend that you spend every weekend in Aspen worrying squirrels and causing avalanches, but the façade won’t last long.
Just “Freelancer”
For goodness sake, at least tell people what type of freelancer you are. Are you a Freelance Interior Designer or a Freelance Hit Man? You might like the sense of mystery it adds, but you’re not doing yourself any favours.
“Senior” something or other
If you’re prefixing your regular position with the word “Senior”, such as Senior Designer, and you don’t have anyone in your company or office who’s your Junior, stop it straight away. Even if you’re ancient.
“Princess of Power” or “Master of The Universe”
Now we’re getting on to the silly ones. If you’ve made up a title derived from fantasy or sci-fi, what were you thinking? Those titles were fine when you worked for someone else, and if you could get away with it back then, great! But this time it’s your image you have to build and protect. It’s OK to have a laugh – really it is. But don’t take the piss out of yourself.
“Chief Coffee Monkey” or similar
I met a really talented illustrator who used this. He showed me his portfolio and I was blown away. I asked for his card. When I saw his title I suggested he change it. He now uses “Illustrator”, has a six-figure annual income and a D&AD award. His work might have had something to do with it, of course.

What you can learn from my plumber

My plumber has an excellent business card. It says “Phil Jones” on the top line. Underneath that is his job title: “Plumber”. It’s great because it tells me everything I need to know about what he does. He doesn’t try to dress up his line of work by calling himself a “Strategic Pipeline Analyst” or an “Aqueous Substance Manager”. He does what it says on the tin. Your job title should do the same.

Read One Book a Week

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

It started in Belgium. One sizzling summer in a third-floor flat, my parents came strutting through the lounge to find their fat little fellow merrily leafing through a copy of War and Peace. I was two years old. Impressed? You shouldn’t be. To say that I had read and digested Tolstoy’s loathsome work at such an early age would be a half-truth, because the reality is this: I wasn’t reading it. I was eating it.

A taste for reading

Why my folks never stopped me munching away is obvious: they were too busy laughing their tits off and taking photographs, the copies of which I have sadly misplaced alongside similar artefacts from a strip poker evening I never attended 18 years later.

Evidence aside, it’s likely that Count Lev Nikolayevich’s words still course through my veins. Some say that I speak Russian in my sleep and have long demonstrated a thirst for ‘fine Vodka’, a challenging contradiction in terms bettered by few others.

The challenge

In case you weren’t fed on a diet of poorly-translated illiterature from an early age, I want to swipe two ticks of your time and inject a deep passion for reading into your lovely behind. Relax and bend over. This won’t hurt a bit.

More specifically, I’d like to delicately convince you in a suitably charming manner that reading one book a week is not just perfectly comfortable, but life-changing and jolly good fun too.

So here’s the challenge: starting next Monday, I’d like you to read one book a week for one month. Choose your first book and follow-up text right now. Go on. I’ll pop the kettle on while you do it. Don’t do it for me, though. Do it for you.

One book a week?

That’s right. One every 7 days; about four-to-five a month. Perhaps you’re already doing it? Regardless, read on!

If the thought of developing a book fix in addition to your other dark habits is terrifying, you’ve probably been approaching it wrong. With some simple changes that will help you to see reading as a hobby and not a chore, you’ll find it dead easy. It’s all in the mind.

Here are 5 tips to help flick the mental switch.

Wait a minute! Why one a week?

The goal is to flip-start a healthy reading habit together.

Forming a habit requires a change in your life and, since no-one likes change, we’ll transition from your current reading rate to the new pace so rapidly that we’re simply swapping-out one brand of normal for another – a trick, by the way, that I found in a book.

In case you need more convincing, here are some great reasons to become a regular reader overnight:

Solve any problem. Think you’ve got problems? So did billions of unlucky buffoons before you. The cheerful consequence is that some of them took the time to write their answers down for the rest of us. Today, there are very few issues that haven’t been solved already (only new ways of solving them).
Escape your mother-in-law. It’s a little-known fact: Gutenberg created the printing press purely to escape his mother-in-law. What a gift! Don’t let it pass you by! If you want to get away from it all, books trump shotguns every time.
Build your vocabulary. How was the last book you read? Was it really nice? You’ll find, if you haven’t already, that reading becomes something far more expressive over time. And yes, there is a balance between claiming your crown as Chief Phraseologist and rendering yourself utterly incoherent.
Expose yourself. I have a dreadful confession: in my 8-hour-a-day computer gaming era, I used to think that a Mongoose was a type of small wading bird, and that gaiters were those horrible green creatures that climb out of toilets in parts of Florida.

As well as correcting some hazy definitions, becoming a regular reader forced me to wake up to a new hemisphere of fact and fantasy that I’d now be lost without. Exposing yourself to new thinking and ideas is a wonderful experience – read outside of your usual circle of authors and try it today.
Spend time offline. How many hours a week do you currently spend online? Scary, isn’t it? Are you actively working and playing in that time, or just screwing around? My guess is that we could all swap a little online time for some hours offline with a good book. It’s time to phase-out idle mouse clicking, and passive TV watching for something that’s genuinely worth doing: getting more paper cuts than you can shake a box of Band Aids at.
Support authors and publishers. Getting a book to market is hard. Those who’ve self-published an ebook or printed a novella will be nodding now. The other brave souls amongst you who work in the word-pimping industry won’t be able to nod, because your vertebrae will have fused from trawling through proposals.
Do it for George. In a sense, we should be rushing to adopt the altitude of George Leigh Mallory, the great British Mountaineer who lost his life on Everest, and all read a good book simply because it’s there. As I sometimes remark when praised by a kind soul for my own short stories and guides. “Thanks. It wouldn’t be the same if no-one read them.”

Now that you’ve read about why you should be reading, let’s make it work for you.

5 tips to become a regular reader

Learn to chain-read. I recommend that you choose and purchase your next book before you even start your current one. That way you’ll always have something waiting in the wings. When you’ve turned the final titillating page of your current tome, the first thing to do is thump the cover shut, exhale in deep satisfaction, and rush off to get the next one. It’s a great habit to get into and, unlike chain-smoking, it won’t screw up your lungs.
Read for pleasure. Learn how to identify and buy books that you’ll love. It’s a skill in itself. Over time, reading as little as one book a week will train your ability to choose more wisely.
Forget speed-reading. Want to ruin your love of reading? Skim through a book as fast as you can. In the great pillared halls of academia there is some benefit in reading quickly. But reading for pleasure is a very different monkey. It’s OK to skim through the dull bits once in a while, but it’s not a race.

If you’d like a light-hearted tidbit to suggest that speed-reading, retention, and enjoyment don’t make a good threesome, just look to Woody Allen, who quipped: “I just speed-read War and Peace. It’s about some Russians”.
Use the 50 page rule. It’s simple. It goes like this:

Whenever you pick up your book, read 50 pages or more.

Using this neat idea, you can comfortably read a 350 page book in a week by simply picking it up once a day. The concept encourages you to start reading only if you intend to relax and immerse yourself into a good chunk of your latest literary tipple. Forget about chapters as natural breaks; read through the chapter endings and you’ll find you complete books faster. Of course, it’s not always possible, but make the effort anyway.
Learn to bail out. When travelling to London by rail long ago on a wet November day, I once watched a well-dressed gentleman physically tear the pages from a novel with his own teeth, then dispose of the remains into the rushing air through an open window. A fellow bookivore, I thought, delighted to find a member of my own species. Then I legged it as fast as I could to the quiet coach. The episode taught me that a) by the glorious blessing of diversity, people react very differently to Margaret Atwood and b) we should never be afraid to give up on what we consider to be a bad read.

If you’ve gotten 50 pages into a book and it just doesn’t feel right, don’t force yourself to continue. There is no shame in swapping books if you’re not enjoying the first one. (There is, of course, a deep well of shame in half-eating one and throwing it from a speeding train.)

Quick bonus tips

Read more non-fiction. Some of my favourite books never mentioned drunken underage broomstick flights, teleporting interplanetary teapots, or dodgy encounters in Bangkok bars. Many of my most treasured reads simply fixed one or more of my varied problems, or changed my view of the world forever. Non-fiction is awesome. Read more.
Try ebooks. Ebooks, much like Ewoks, are cute little fellows that are easy to handle with very little fuss. Whilst some shun screen reading as a nasty pastime, you’ll find increasingly that ebooks are being designed with more white space and less words per page, which makes the experience much more pleasurable.
Try audiobooks. It’s not cheating; it’s smart. I’ve met a lot of avid readers who’ve never listened to an audiobook, and they’re all missing out. In particular, if you struggle to find time to read, audiobooks are a great solution. Try one in the car or while you torture yourself on the treadmill.
Read aloud. Quite unlike Girls Aloud, reading aloud is a pleasant auditory experience and a lost art form in its own right. When’s the last time you enjoyed a book with someone else? Try it out. Bed time works best.
Write reviews. It’s fun to summarise a great read on your favourite bookseller’s website. Try writing a quick review; you’ll find in time that you start to appreciate good books even more.
Join a book club. Other people like books too. Consider joining a book club. I’ve created the One Book a Week Club over at Goodreads for us to keep track, get extra tips, and share our titbits and recommendations with each other. Feel free to pop by, register for an account, and start sharing and reviewing your reads today.

Get reading!

Pick up your first book and get going. Besides, if it’s crap, you can always eat it.

Inbox Heaven

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I had a dream. A dream that email could be fun again. A dream that, instead of wrestling with my inbox every day, we could share the same bus and get along just fine. Today that dream is realised and I’m going to share it with you. It won’t change the face of the planet or answer the Eternal Question (“have you seen my car keys?”), but it might save you a few hours a week.

The quest for inbox heaven

About two years ago I was up to my nostrils in email. I made a blueprint for Inbox Heaven, the perfect email setup that would let me:

Check and send email from one place.
Easily archive and retrieve email.
Flag actionable mail but keep it out of my inbox.
Access email from my mobile without loss of functionality.
Not worry about how much it’s costing.
Feel good about email again.

The experiments began

I spent years experimenting. I’ve used .Mac mail (now MobileMe), Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Squirrel Mail, and some exotic stuff that would sound more at home on a Russian Space Orbiter (Laszlo Mail anyone?).

I’ve tweaked desktop mail apps like Thunderbird and Mail.app with all manner of widgets. I’ve tried 3 different versions of Outlook together with one version of Entourage, which made me break down and cry like a baby.

Shortly after what I now refer to as the Great Entourage Blackout of 2006, I sat down and had a chocolate HobNob. Then it clicked.

Inbox Heaven: one inbox for life

By the second year of messing around with email, I had already tried the right software. I just hadn’t used it the right way. Inbox Heaven is a combination of two things: really smart use of a Gmail account and the 3 Inbox Heaven rules.

Setting things up

Let’s get stuck in. This isn’t going to mess anything up, so if you don’t like Inbox Heaven after a couple of weeks, you can safely go back to whatever crappy system you were using before.

Get a Gmail account: You can sign up here. For Inbox Heaven, you need to be using Gmail in your browser only and not with a desktop mail client. Trust me. This will all make sense soon.
Point all your email accounts at Gmail: If you skip this step, the system won’t work for you. We’re going to get Gmail to check all of your email accounts: work, play, secret love notes; it’s all going to come to Gmail. A key idea behind Inbox Heaven is to start checking and sending mail in one place instead of seven. There are two options for getting mail into Gmail:
1. Forward mail from your other accounts to your new gmail.com address. This is the best option for most because you’ll receive mail a lot faster. Go ahead and set your other email accounts to forward to Gmail right now. If you don’t see a setting for this, use option 2 below.
2. Alternatively, Gmail’s free Mail Fetcher service will periodically retrieve mail from each account you specify. Carefully follow the instructions to set up Mail Fetcher here. Do this for all of your email accounts.
Set up sending from all your accounts: Now that you have all your mail coming to Gmail, we’re going to set things up so you can send email from multiple addresses and not just your Gmail one. To do this, simply follow the ‘custom from’ setup instructions. Repeat for all of your accounts.
Install Google Notifier: This makes the Gmail experience complete. Get Google Notifier here. It will act as your mail alert service and give you a handy shortcut for composing new mail.
Banish your old mail application: Remove it from from your Mac’s dock or PC’s shortcut bar. If you use webmail from some other provider, stop using it. It’s really important that you go to only one source (Gmail) from now on to send and receive mail. Just try it; you can always go back to your old ways if you decide it’s not for you after a few weeks.
Have a clean up: That’s it! You’re set up. If you’ve told Gmail to check your other accounts like I’ve insisted, or if you’re an existing Gmail user, you’ll probably have an inbox full of email right now. Once you’ve read this article, the first thing to do is have a good clean up to get your inbox empty. If that means spending four hours clearing 1,043 emails, then just do it. Find that time somewhere so you’ll be able to continue winning the battle against your inbox for good.

The three rules

These rules (once five, now just three) have been shamelessly borrowed and adapted from much smarter folk than me, notably Merlin Mann, whose Inbox Zero presentation is a must-see. The rules I use and recommend are as follows:

Star and archive all messages that need action.
Archive or delete everything else as soon as you’ve read it.
Take action on your starred items twice daily. I recommend 11am and 3pm.

Important notes

Email that needs starring must also be archived. This is really important. Actioning email is a two-step process. You should first star it. Then you should click the archive button. This removes it from your inbox and places it in your starred “to-do list”.
Starred email is your to-do list. The starred list you check twice a day is a to-do list for your inbox. It should only contain items that are actionable – they need a reply or a follow-up call or some other input from you.
Your inbox should stay empty. Forever. If you find your inbox is backing up with email, you’re doing something wrong. Once you’ve scanned an email, you should be doing something with it. Don’t leave it in your inbox to sort out later.
Unstar email when you’ve dealt with it. There’s a big button at the top of starred email that says “Remove Star”. Use it. Your starred email should only contain email that requires further action from you. If you’ve replied to someone, unstar that email. Only star it again if their follow-up needs action from you.
Stick with browser-based email only. It will feel odd if you’re not used to it, but keep trying. Detaching your inbox from your desktop is a key step towards making you more productive. It also makes you far more mobile; you’ll be able to comfortably check and send from all of your email addresses anywhere in the world with Web access, without changing your habits or learning new software.
To compose an email quickly, use the Google Notifier shortcut. Just click on the notifier icon, then “Compose Mail”. A new window or tab will open in your default browser.

Heaven is an empty inbox

I hope you find Inbox Heaven useful; do persevere with it, spread the word, and feel free to get in touch with your questions and comments. Oh, and if you find yourself faced with a tricky problem, it seems that chocolate HobNobs are the key.