I love how @patrickrhone explains a simple habit with a lot of depth behind it:

Basically, on the front of the card I write down the tasks I’d like to get done today (and really believe I can get done).  On the back of the card, I capture any incoming tasks that pop up or things I need to write down — like a scratch pad (i.e, things that won’t get done today but I’d like to keep for some other time). As I get stuff done, I mark it done. Things that don’t get done either get moved to the next day’s list or deferred for later.

I love this idea of physically separating the tasks I’d like to get done today from any incoming tasks.

Also, kudos for using the actual × symbol in the title instead of the letter X. (Small details matter)

Nothing to comment:

Perhaps like you, I naively started out thinking that Google Slides was just a poorly maintained product suffering from some questionable foundational decisions made ages ago that worshipped at the shrine of PowerPoint and which have never since been revisited, but now, after having had to use it so much in the past year, I believe that Google Slides is actually just trolling me.

This:

Seriously, I want to bookmark this, print it, share it far and wide, especially with people who are not on a twitter because, well, it’s an increasingly bad place for those who are mental illness survivors to be.

We’re almost two years in, and I still find a lot of people who do not have a headset for videoconferencing.

When you’re speaking to a muted room, it’s eerie and unnatural — you feel alone even if you can see other people’s faces. You lose all of those spontaneous reactions that keep a conversation flowing.

Once you have a headset, the next step is to clean up the space behind you, so you won’t have to use those horrible fake backgrounds.

A Zoom (or Teams) call is not a meeting.

There are no humans on this call. Yes, there are 14 participants with their video on, one with their video off, and someone dialing in. Yes, you can gather some interesting signal from a single frame of this meeting, but this is a crappy 2D representation of the team; both essential signal and purpose are missing from this situation.

+1 for using CGI Princess Leia from Rogue One to make his point…

There are some very interesting ideas in this proposal, but will Apple go that far?

With "Ask app not to track" Apple recently changed the game of privacy, at the dismay at the global advertisement industry.

We think they could go even further:

To lead the industry towards technology that is truly respectful of human attention. To align the incentives for developers with the users best interest. To change the course of technology once more.

Here's how...

Don’t forget to schedule your breaks!

A reminder to you all to make time for yourself and schedule your break moments in your calendar!

Productive procrastination tip by @PatrickRhone:

Task yourself with a huge must-do project that has a deadline far out enough that you can safely procrastinate on it for a day or two.

Watch your productivity on every other possible thing go way up to avoid that one.

This looks very promising:

As a result of the non-standardization of blocks, our end-users suffer. If someone is using my blog engine, they can only use those blocks that I had time to implement. Those blocks may be pretty basic or incomplete. Users might want to use a fancier block that they saw in WordPress or Medium or Notion, but my editor doesn’t have it. Blocks can’t be shared or moved around very easily, and our users are limited to the features and capabilities that we had time to re-implement.

To fix this, we’re going to create a protocol called the Block Protocol.

It’s open, free, non-proprietary, we want it to be everywhere on the web.

This tweet caught my eye this morning:

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Not wordle, just a zoom class.

The issue of turned off cameras in zoom classes is, as many other issues, nuanced.

I have been on both sides in online workshops and can sympathise with both the teacher and the students.

A student might not have the fancy videoconference gear I have, nor a nice background. Maybe they are in their bedroom, maybe there are other people around… They simply are trying to protect their privacy.

As a trainer, I have only once faced a completely blacked out camera grid while giving my workshop and it was hard.

Without any visual o audible feedback, you don’t know whether the participants understand you, whether you have the right rhythm and speed, whether the participants air high in energy or need a break…

However, a good training, whether online or in person, is interactive. The days of the teacher giving a masterclass have long gone. Nowadays we know that learning takes effort and time together is valuable. If a teacher uses this valuable time only to pass information, he or she could better have recorded a video or send the information in written form. Being together does add nothing if there is no interaction.

Rather than passing information, a teacher should use the online session to answer questions, to work in groups on assignments, to discuss…

When the session flows and is interactive, the lack of turned on cameras will be no issue anymore.

And as a last resort, you can also ask a colleague to connect to the session with the camera on, so you hace at least one face to talk to.