Attention Span

I started using Twitter as an experiment, and it was the first and only social network I really participated in. It was great because I actually made new friends that I went on trips with, got the opportunity to follow the thoughts of interesting people, and whenever I was in a quandary, I just had to holler a question and would get plenty of answers and advice in return.

But I was uneasy because I was feeling jaded. I thought it was because of the typical “overdoing it” reason, but there was more to it. It was affecting my ability to think critically/deeply about a subject.

Why am I thinking so much about a social network? As David Allen once said, “Pay attention to what has your attention.” And clearly, Twitter had more of my attention than it should have.

Since my attention span was reducing from books to blogs and then blogs to tweets, I was being converted from “from a thinker to a clicker”.

So I’ve gone back and started reading books and paying more attention to offline friends. And I’m not alone on this, many people have expressed similar opinions.

Getting your Fix

I think of this situation as getting your fix. Think smoking vs. coffee. Both are stimulants. Both are legal. But since smoking actually affects others, people have to go outside to indulge in it. Hence, it is less convenient. Probably that’s why there are more people addicted to coffee. Because it is more convenient. There is a sufficient barrier to smoking. Even though this analogy may not be true, consider reading blog posts vs. reading books. There is a sufficient barrier of attention to the latter, that is why more people prefer reading blog posts. It is more convenient. The same for reading blogs vs. tweets. The latter is more convenient. Then, going down this path, your ability to think becomes restricted to 140 characters. Twitter gives you that instant high that you published or read something, which means you lose persistence which is required for longer reading, hence tend to think a lot less and quick wins prevent you from going after bigger wins.

The problem with the shorter fix is that you will indulge in it more often and it will have lesser stimulation in the long run. Consider the difference between, say, having a 5-day 9-hour work week with 2-day weekends vs. having 6-hour work everyday with no weekend and no holidays. Which one would you prefer? This is how I argue that a book once in a while will give you more stimulation than a hundred tweets. For example, consider the signal-to-noise ratio – only tools like filtrr.com can filter out #ipl talk, etc. whereas a book would give a broad understanding about a particular subject. In the long run, it is more enriching to go deeper into subjects, not to be “restricted” to a buffet of subjects.

As a sort-of substitute for Twitter, I’ve shifted to a del.icio.us network. After all, most of Twitter is sharing links and delicious doesn’t have the downside of frivolous tweets. Also, delicious shows how many people have bookmarked a link giving another indicator whether something is worth reading or not, and even better, they are tagged appropriately so I immediately know the topic to expect for an article, instead of “This is cool <insert link>.”

The Attention Psychology

Let’s think about attention in terms of psychology, which I am trying to understand a little about from The Mouse Trap blog:

Maximizing utility

U = E x V (where U is utility of act; E is expectancy as to whether one would be able to carry the act and if so whether the act would result in desired outcome; and V is the Value (both subjective and objective) that one has assigned to the outcome.

Maximizing Predictability

While selecting an action we maximize reward and minimize punishment, basically we choose the maximal utility function; while choosing which stimuli to attend to we maximize our foreknowledge of the world and minimize surprises, basically we choose the maximal predictability function; we can even write an equivalent mathematical formula: Predictability P = E x R where P is the increase in predictability due to attending to stimulus 1 ; E is probability that stimulus 1 correctly leads to prediction of stimulus 2; and R is the Relevance of stimulus 2(information) to us. Thus the stimulus one would attend, is the one that leads to maximum gain in predictability. Also, similar to the general energy level of organism that would bias as to whether, and how much, the organism acts or not; there is a general arousal level of the organism that biases whether and how much it would attend to stimuli.

As per my understanding, the first part means that because we expect much utility about something, it’s perceived utility is higher, making it’s value higher. And because Twitter gives that dash of randomness that we desire, it’s utility is much higher than it really is.

The second part means that we want to know more about the world in order to have lesser surprises, and hence we tend to read more and more, especially if it is information that we perceive as relevant to us.

Bottom line: I question whether more and more information and more and more immediacy is really necessary/required for us?

Think of all the great things that have been achieved whether it is a motor engine or a music stereo, would it have been created if the to-be-creator was constantly distracted and with low attention span? Where is the time to get inspired if we’re always mentally tired?

Why Can’t We Concentrate?

I will finish up with excerpts from this excellent article on Salon called “Why Can’t We Concentrate?”:

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Question: Will the future consist of people carrying a single device or multiple gadgets?

Arguments for one device

1. Students use it for everything. After reading this New York Times article on how mobile phones are used in South Korea, I’m astounded about the possibilities. Students are using their mobile phones for buying food tickets in the cafeteria, for paying the subway fare, sending virtual coupons for physical gifts, as the university ID card for swiping into the library, and so on. And all this is beyond the existing functionality of camera, internet, sms, location, etc.

2. Centre of innovation. Companies are extending mobile phones in innumerable ways in an effort to add more features and make new models. For example, Samsung has launched “Solar Guru E1107″, a mobile phone that will get recharged via the solar panels on its back when you’re outside. And it costs just Rs. 2799.

3. Alpha geeks extending Android. Brad Fitzpatrick got his Android-based phone to open his garage door automatically when he starts coming close to his house, Sony is making future walkmans based on Android, Canonical is making Android apps work on Ubuntu, and Android can even be inside your future washing machine. Alpha geeks are extending Android to do cool stuff (of course with hardware providing relevant functionality), and Android is becoming all-pervasive, which means the code could be reused across devices, which means there is a greater chance that all that functionality can be on one device.

4. TWIT says so. In TWIT Episode 193, Harry of Technologizer.com conjectured that “In 10 years, the devices of the day will be descendants of the iPhone and not descendents of the Mac.”

Arguments for multiple devices

The problem with a single device is that they become a jack-of-all-master-of-none and quickly become difficult to use for non-teenagers.

There are many one-functionality devices that have come up in the past few years and people seem to love it:

• iPod for music
• Kindle for reading ebooks
• CrunchPad for internet browsing
• Peek for email
• MingleStick for business cards
• Leyio for sharing files in-person
• Pogoplug for sharing files from your external hard disk over the internet
• Fitbit for monitoring your health and exercise

Bottom-line

This seems to be a tussle of hardware vs. software, for example, one-functionality devices vs. app stores.

In the end, I think whoever wins the usability battle will win the customers.

I’ve had a Skribit suggestion for my blog, with seven votes on it, that asks:

Can you write a Byte Of Emacs?

First of all, I’m flattered that 7 people out there like A Byte of Vim so much that they are asking about a similar book for Emacs.

Second, it just won’t happen. Almost never.

Why? Because:

• Writing a book is hard. It just sucks the life out of you. Really. Don’t believe me? Try writing one. Really.
• Writing a book means I have to be at least reasonably proficient on that topic or at least have good experience with it.
• I have used Emacs quite often in the past, especially for its SGML mode. But once I became proficient at Vim, I never went back.
• There’s no incentive for me to learn about Emacs in depth and then write a book on it. There’s no point in trying to master two different but great editors!

That being said, does anyone have a good resource list for Emacs for these 7 people?

Every now and then, I try to build a group of people to talk about specific topics but it quickly dies because of inactivity. Although I really saw the value in having such a community, I just didn’t know how to build one. Even if one person keeps pumping in content, how do you actually get the community to interact with each other?

It is the same kind of problem being faced by, say StartupBuzz.org which, I am guessing, wants to be the Hacker News of India. There are indeed topics that apply only to startups in India, from “Startup Morning”, to India’s first in-taxi magazine. Such interesting events and ideas are worthy of discussion.

There is value in such a community, but again, how to build it? StartupDunia has already put its thoughts on the subject but the question still remains.

Here are some of my thoughts.

Does it require credibility?

• Hacker News has Paul Graham and YCombinator behind it.
• ProBlogger Forums have ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse behind it.
• And the most recent example of StackOverflow.com that has Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood behind it.

So the question is whether there each community should be backed by up by a credible person who has a reasonable authority on the subject?

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I was recently interviewed by CocoaCast (mp3) to talk about Python for their Mac developer community, as part of their “Unbound Developers” podcast series.

I was apprehensive about doing this because I’ve never been live-interviewed before, but in the spirit of doing new things, I went ahead and it turned out to be fun.

We talked about Python, my background and my startup, Macs, Python vs. Ruby and Django vs. Rails, Apple and Google, cloud computing, databases, Scala/JVM, performance, collection classes, and so on.

Surprisingly, Vlad and myself had talked for nearly 25 min. It’s a fun interview, although, there’s probably nothing new to know from this podcast for those who have already read the book.

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009.

Today is the second birthday of our ION USB Charger and we are happy to announce that it is now available in a new and improved packaging!

We needed some improvements to our packaging because:

1. Our previous packaging did not have the product visible.
2. The packaging needs to have a hook so it can be hung – that is how all accessories are placed in a retail store these days.
3. We had room for improvement on the look of the box.

The new packages arrived in a box:

And we soon formed an assembly line. I removed the ions from the previous packaging:

Vikram filtered out the new packages, including rejecting any damaged ones:

Varun folded the boxes and put the new ions in them:

It doesn’t sound glamorous, isn’t prestigious to talk about, but it sure was a lot fun and exciting. That’s what startups are about!

Here are the newly-packaged ions stacked back in the box:

Just to put things in perspective, here is our packaging and its size compared to the competition:

And here is our previous and new packaging:

Here is the sleek “product photography” version:

You can grab an ION with the new improved packaging at www.ion.co.in

Note: Cross-posted from our company blog

I hate tabs, and I like windows.

Why?

Switching between windows is Alt+Tab. Simple.

Switching between tabs is irritating because it is a contrasting situation:

1. The keyboard shortcut is not a standard, every application does it in its own way. It could be Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn or it could be Ctrl+Tab.
2. Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn requires both hands since Ctrl and PgUp/PgDn are on the opposite ends of the keyboard.
3. Ctrl+Tab is awkward to use (depending on your keyboard).
4. Many applications don’t loop back to the first/last tab (I’m looking at you, gnome-terminal) which means I have to learn a new paradigm such as Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2 which totally breaks the flow.

Amazing how a keyboard shortcut can ruin the usefulness of the feature.

Ever since I read about how Arif Vakil uses a “My World Mindmap” to organize his life, I started using mind maps. It is such an utterly simple concept but yet I still find it fascinating.

If you don’t know what a mind map is, think of it as writing a single topic idea on a piece of paper, then drawing out a tree with new ideas as branches. You can draw as many branches and sub-branches as you like. That’s it.

There are two purposes for which I use mind maps:

1. Brainstorming

Nothing gets my brain thinking and crazily jotting down thoughts like a mind map can. This happens because it is not a linear format and encourages branching out in different directions. At the same time, you can group related ideas together which means you don’t have to detail each idea, the phrases should have quite obvious meanings from the branching hierarchy.

2. Attention Economy

“Pay attention to what has your attention” is another gem that I learned from Arif.

I have forced myself to spend an hour every week and update a mind map that lists my actions in the past week. If my intentions on how I would like to spend my ideal week does not match my actual actions, then, the problem becomes quite obvious. Otherwise, it will be yet another case of “What? A week is already over. Time just flies…” and then months and years fly by (and it has) and you’ll wonder what you’ve been doing all along.

To break this chain, I started being conscious of what I’m doing. At first, I was shocked at the drastic gap between inspiration and execution. But by constant review of this attention mindmap, I’m getting better at todo lists.

XMind

The best mind mapping software that I’ve come across is XMind. It also happens to be open source and cross-platform.

It has a very nice simple and fluid interface, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, nice handy marker icons and most importantly, feels like a coherent software.

Install XMind and try this:

• Click on the “Central Topic” rectangle. Press F2. Type “Life” and press enter key.
• Press the Tab key. Press F2. Type “Career” and press enter key.
• Press the Enter key. Press F2. Type “Finances” and press enter key.
• Press Shift+Enter keys. Press F2. Type “Family” and press enter key.

That’s it, you’ve now created a mind map and got a feel of the keyboard shortcuts.

But there is more.

• Click on the ‘Finances’ rectangle.
• Right click → Markers → Smiley → Boring
• Click on the ‘Career’ rectangle.
• Press F3. Add tags like ‘monthly review, skill’.
• Press F4. Add your notes.
• Press the Tab key and add subtopics like ‘The Big Goal’.

Continue filling out this mind map and you would have created your “World mind map”.

P.S. I’ve been thinking about writing more about productivity and lifehacks, so if this post was useful for you and would like to read about more such topics, please let me know.

About six months ago, I had stopped reading all RSS feeds because I wasn’t managing my information input well. Over the past few months I was slowly creeping back into the same RSS habit and I didn’t like it.

The biggest problem for me was seeing that unread count number^*. It was intimidating and I quickly started procrastinating reading the articles, which was ironic, because we mostly read RSS feeds to procrastinate from doing real work

I thought to myself: “There must be a way to list all my favorite blogs and websites, I can add them and forget about it. Whenever I want to get updated, I just visit the page and read all the latest, and then go away again. There is no need to keep memory of how much I read and how much I did not read.”

I started looking at My Yahoo! to list the websites I follow. It allows to add RSS feeds and will show you the latest 5 posts from that RSS feed. But then, MyAlltop came along and solved it more elegantly for me:

• MyAllTop is easy to scan, i.e., read because of the newspaper-style 3 columns of blocks, compared to My Yahoo!’s big horizontal blocks (maybe there’s a way to get the layout of your liking, but I couldn’t find it).
• When you mouseover a link in Alltop/MyAlltop, it will show a few paragraphs from the article which makes it easy to discern whether the title is misleading or if the article is really interesting.
• The Alltop directory is very useful (which reminds me of the origins of Yahoo! – a directory of websites) in finding the best blogs on a particular topic, which is a harder problem than I imagined. I don’t know if Google Reader’s “bundles” had solved this problem, but I definitely find this a good resource.
• I used to regularly visit india.alltop.com to read the latest news but used to get annoyed by irrelevant-to-me blocks. Now I can just add the ones that I’m interested in to MyAlltop page.

In the end, I’ve switched from Google Reader to my.alltop.com/swaroopch and I’m finding it far more fun to read this way. This is also useful if you ever wondered what blogs I read, it’s all in one page.

If you have any other “How to control your information input” tips, please comment.

^* And if you wondered that I must be nuts to get bogged down by the unread count number, let me tell you that I’m not nuts, I’m actually a Inbox Zero freak. I tend to reach inbox zero on email every week regularly. If only I could say the same about my todo list…

Update on June 13, 2009: I wanted to try a new idea – to randomly see the list of feeds every time, so I ditched MyAllTop and wrote a small html file that uses Google AJAX Feeds API to display the feeds list. Let’s see how this experiment goes.