Carl also recommends a desktop search utility – which means you won’t even need to remember your personal folder hierarchy. I haven’t gotten that far yet on my own computer, mostly because the files I need to search most often are email, and I keep my email online. Still, my collection of miscellany in “My Documents” grows by the week, and sooner or later I’m going to get fed up with the whole “folder” thing. Long ago, even before I read Getting Things Done, before gmail made it fashionable, I was arranging my email in one folder (okay, one by year) and relying on search tools to get what I needed.

With that in mind, Merlin Mann over at 43Folders – which, if you are a productivity pr0n addict you need to be reading – has a brilliant suggestion for streamlining your life in 2006:

Cancel something.

The important thing is to find at least one thing that’s become a noise generator, time sink, or attention sieve, and be rid of it. The hack isn’t how big a change it brings in your life — remember these are modest changes — it just matters that you mindfully elect to turn something off for a little while.

I do this on a semi-frequent basis already.  I used to be a loyal subscriber to the Economist.  I still think it is an excellent magazine and miss having it around.  The truth was, however, I never read it (except for the obituary), and it’s an expensive subscription.  Recently, I’ve purchased two issues within a few weeks and thought about resubscribing.  Guess what?  I haven’t read those two issues either.

But what to get rid of now?  For one, I can go through my “Purgatory” folder in Bloglines and delete the feeds I don’t care about – probably all of them.  For another, it may be time to say goodbye to the Sacramento Bee’s print edition.  We had some good times, but I think it may be time for me to move on.  Of course, I can talk about it to you, dear reader, but every time I see the Bee curled up all cozy on my doorstep I think “okay, just one more day.”

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Welcome to the newest category here at Uneasy Rhetoric: Rhetorical_Questions. Sometimes called “questions for God,” these are those nagging questions that, if answered, seem like they might be the key to the meaning of life. In reality, the answers are meaningless.

UPDATE: Changed my mind. Won’t be a new category. 12/1/2005

Discardia is celebrated by getting rid of stuff and ideas you no longer need. It’s about letting go, abdicating from obligation and guilt, being true to the self you are now. Discardia is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load.

What an excellent idea.

(Thanks 43Folders)

Clever, absolutely, but not original. According to this article by Paul Saffo on the UC Berkeley Alumni Association website, the term “ghost dancing” originates from a native mystic who prophesied the fall of the white man and the re-ascendance of native peoples. The tribes, such as they were at the end of the 19th century, interpreted this in various ways and adopted “ghost dances” to hasten the fall of the interlopers. Apparently, the Sioux adoption of the ghost dance, and their violent interpretation of the mystic’s prophecy, led to the death of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Nowadays, the term refers to any movement to reject modern advances and return to more traditional ways:

The Ghost Dance is very much alive today. The global rise of religious fundamentalism is pure Ghost Dance, be it Islamic fundamentalists pining for a return to the Caliphate, Jewish fundamentalists battling moderate secularism, or Christian fundamentalists preaching an imminent Second Coming. The current opposition to evolutionary theory is an indelible example of the Ghost Dancing phenomenon. From this opposition has arisen “creation science,” a deeply contradictory belief system that attempts to use scientific method to discredit scientific theory to prove the literal truth of the Biblical version of creation.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the “ghost dance,” according to the article, is that those who engage in it simultaneously adopt portions of the society or culture that one tries to reject (e.g., fundamentalist Iran embracing a nuclear program). Even further, “ghost dancers” can be those who utterly reject the old in favor of the new, or even of the not-yet invented. They are the ultimate early adopters.

The article is worth reading.

(via BoingBoing)

1. Ask: what’s the problem?
2. Have regular meetings.
3. Toot your own horn.
4. Learn from it.
5. Know when to bail.

I want to expand on the first one:

Is [your boss] a micromanager? According to Katherine Spencer Lee, the executive director of staffing firm, Robert Half Technology, this type of boss is controlling, overly involved, and needs to develop more confidence in you. Your solution is to prove you’re capable. Start asking for complete control over small tasks to prove you’re able and keep asking for more.

To put it simply, this won’t work. There is no question that micromanaging is about a lack of trust. However, it doesn’t matter how much you demonstrate your trustworthiness, or how successful your ideas are. Micromanagers are the way they are because they have internalized their work to an unhealthy degree. Managers are ultimately responsible for the work of those they manage; micromanagers take that responsibility into the realm of paranoia.

The micromanager will always feel threatened unless he or she has control over a project, no matter how large or small. If your manager is willing to give you complete control over smaller projects, then you don’t really work for a micromanager. A micromanager can’t let go of projects.

Micromanagers are generally intolerant of error, even though that is how we learn (the phrase is “trial and error,” but working for micromanagers is just “trial”); their solutions to errors often involve adding more layers of oversight or taking on a greater workload themselves. Micromanagers are far more likely to believe that they should only speak if something is being done wrong. They tend to be criticizers and not praisers.

Working for micromanagers is demoralizing, so much so that “proving you’re capable” may seem like it is more trouble than it is worth. The reason? One false step, one error, even if corrected, can set you back to square one. So you develop coping strategies which often involve procrastination and suppression of creativity which, of course, leads to more error.

There is no easy way to handle a micromanager. Worse, if you’ve made it to step 5 and decided to bail, it can be very difficult to determine whether your next position will be working for someone who is exactly the same.

The best way to handle a micromanager? Become a manager yourself and swear upon pain of death that you will never become a micromanager. Be open with your staff and allow them to tell you when you aren’t giving them the space they need to do their jobs effectively. Make sure they see you praising someone for speaking up. And take criticism without becoming defensive. Save the defensiveness for times when it is truly warranted.

For example, Levitt ponders why the crime rate fell in the 1990s when most criminologists expected an increase. His answer? The children most likely to commit crimes had never been born. Fetuses aborted as a result of the Roe v. Wade decision would have been reaching their prime crime-committing years in the early 1990s. (Throughout, I refer to “Levitt,” because, as I understand it, the work was his. Dubner was just a journalist who helped him get it all down.)

In another chapter, Levitt plays with the numbers to prove (or at least to strongly suggest) that there is cheating going on in sumo wrestling. And, the authors demonstrate how real estate agents cheat their customers by hastening them into a selling position. The authors show that real estate agents tend to hold out longer for better prices when selling their own homes.

Often, academics think within their own disciplinary boxes. Levitt, with no particular political, sociological, anthropological, or cultural ax to grind, can look at the data without preconceived assumptions.

For this reason alone, Freakonomics is worth reading. Data analysts should chew it over carefully. Casual data observers should heed the authors’ warnings about correlation and causation.

If the book has a fault, it lies in its authors’ elevation of economics over other social sciences. Levitt concludes his book by restating something he said at the outset: “if morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world.” Despite his cleverness, despite his ability to use data to “think outside the box,” Levitt has fallen victim to a conceit shared by many economists and even by the public at large. Economics, with its basis in probability, statistics, and calculus, can only ever approximate the real world, ceteris paribus.

The kind of data analysis Levitt does – nothing overly mathematical or theoretical (except for a bit of regression) – and that much basic economic theory is based on, requires rationality, and the “actual” world just isn’t rational. Anyone who has ever done regression analysis knows its biggest weakness: there is always one more variable for which to control. Even if you’ve controlled for every variable in your dataset, there might be one more that simply wasn’t observed. Life is messy that way.

Levitt’s observations are compelling if not downright convincing. But shouldn’t we take his observations with the same grain of salt he insists we use on the observations of criminologists, policy analysts, and others who use data analysis to reach their own, possibly different, conclusions?

Bert Grant, a chemist and Canadian beer expert for many years, opened Grant’s Pub and Yakima Brewing and Malting in 1982 (I can’t seem to find a website). At the time, according to the book, the only other “micro” breweries were Sierra Nevada and Anchor. Grant’s helped to fill the burning need for better beer in the Pacific Northwest, and is widely regarded as the father of the craft beer movement.

Unfortunately, the book, published by regional publisher and corporate publisher Sasquatch Books, is more narcissistic corporate brochure than legitimate autobiography. Nevertheless, Grant has much to say about beer and the beer making process, lets us in on why he does not like American beers like Budweiser or Coors, and gives a few tips for home brewers – something he still does, even though he owns one of the most celebrated craft breweries.

Fans of craft brews might enjoy the book if they can get past the blatant mirror gazing. There were times during the book that Grant took most or all of the credit for developments I can’t help thinking were not entirely his. Reading the book, one may get the impression that the North American beer industry would be a nirvana of hoppy goodness, if they had just listened to Bert, for he can do no wrong. For example, he recounts in very little detail that he was fired from Strohs for revealing corporate secrets. He does not admit to doing so, but freely admits to doing a little moonlighting as a beer consultant. That still sounds like a conflict of interest to me.

On the other hand, the book contains a detailed but understandable explanation of the beer making process and of how the various elements – yeast, hops, barley – combine (or don’t combine) to create good beer. In one section, Grant writes about the difficulties making Grant’s Imperial Stout, an excellent, thick stout that takes some getting used to if all you drink is Guinness. He also suggests that the Guinness we drink today is a weak version of Guinness at its best. Many Guinness drinkers know that the beer is low in alcohol (around 4 percent); Grant suggests that it should not be, that stouts, in fact, should be closer to 7 or 8 percent.

There is no question the book is a corporate brochure, but hopefully it will spark some interest in the craft brewing movement and a real historian can tackle the subject from a less personally involved angle.

(review x-posted to Amazon)

Turns out I was romanticizing myself. Scotty was a specialist, I specialize in nothing. Unlike Scotty, I find work to be a chore. If it were me climbing in the Jeffries tube, I’d probably be sleeping.

Scotty was more of an ideal. Here was a man for whom work was the ultimate pleasure. He was so good at what he did because what he did was exactly who he was. Sure, he could drink a wee bit of scotch now and then, but mostly he was just an engineer. Get him out of his element and he gets accused of murder.

James Doohan, like most of the other members of the Star Trek cast, didn’t have much of a career outside of the show. That didn’t seem to matter much, given how much of a life the show had and continues to have:

When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: “Jimmy, you’re going to be Scotty long after you’re dead. If I were you, I’d go with the flow.”

“I took his advice,” said Doohan, “and since then everything’s been just lovely.”
(from CNN)

James Doohan’s passing today closes yet another door in the Star Trek hall.

Update: Startrek.com has a nice video tribute here.