The first thing I thought about while reading the article was minimalist classical music, like Philip Glass.
I think Glass does the repetitive/unexpected thing exceptionally well, though it's often subtle.
If you're already familiar with Glass (or if you like Beck) you might want to check out Beck's song from Rework, an album of remixed Glass: https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78
It's repetitive, but has enough of the unexpected mixed in to make it a stimulating listen.
The second thing I thought about was Brian Eno and his attempt to 'learn' a sound recording of a city street by listening to the recording many times. He began to anticipate certain sounds and hear them as belonging to a structure.
I'm not finding a Web reference. It was described in a book by David Toop
The band Underworld has some old techno inspired by Glass. Dark, minimal. Very good if you like that kindof stuff. 'Second Toughest in the Infants' album-era.
I'd never heard of Rework_ before but I love Glass. Thanks for the link! In fact, I think this is now going to be a spur-of-the-moment extra christmas gift to my father.
In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less.
The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so I've put it on the back burner.
Same here. I set my main ringtone to silence and only a few contacts can actually ring my phone. I disable almost all notifications and my phone's on do-not-disturb from 10-7 every night.
Maybe my laptop needs a hosts file to block "infinite" sites. Of course, I'm on one right now...
The inability to selectively enable (rather than individually blacklist) contacts, and specify a do-not-disturb block, are two of the most significant disadvantages of going to a flip phone I've encountered.
My compromise is to simply leave it off much of the time.
Why turn the ringer completely off? Surely it's worth getting "distracted" by communication from friends and family. The only reason I can see this as a good idea is if you get a lot of bogus calls, or you know people who call/text you a ton.
I remember a time when people were reachable by location. You could call me at home and reach me early mornings (but that's rude), evenings, or weekends. Or at work at my desk.
This was a time when toll charges were high enough that unsolicited calls were something of a rarity. That's definitely changed (and lack of caller-ID on landlines is all but unbearable now).
There was even a time when answering machines didn't exist -- can't reach someone? Try later or send a letter. Not email, a letter.
Amazingly, we got by.
The conceit that I've got to be reachable by every unintelligibly accented stranger on a crap VOIP line anywhere on the planet at any time has gotten old.
And yes, if I don't aggressively guard my access, I do get a lot of crap phone calls.
Perhaps I've just gotten lucky with sales calls, and either have few friends or courteous friends. I get one sales call a month, from my university alumni association, which I ignore. I talk on the phone or FaceTime with family approximately weekly, but that's on the weekend, and planned casually through email or SMS before hand. The vast majority of my communication with friends is asynchronous through email/Facebook/Twitter or semi-asynchronous through instant messaging, neither of which provide real-time distraction.
If you've signed on to the Do Not Call registry and/or have a cell phone, it's not so bad.
An established residence over time (a few decades) and various other marketing-database-entry events, and it's a pretty constant annoyance, in my experience.
Problem I've got with chat over phones is that the keyboards stink.
Totally agree. The most egregious violators of such calls are recruiters. Put your phone number on a resume and submit it to a few sites, assuming you work in IT, and they will call non-stop. Sometimes, I refuse the call and they keep calling back a few more times. Nowadays, I only pick up calls from people I recognize. Google has started to provide "caller ID" for many businesses that don't have it now, which helps also.
Worst was the guy who called, I dismissed him with "not interested <click>". He called back. And chewed me out.
SRSLY?!!!
I patiently (?) explained that his first call was a waste of both our time. And the second far worse than that. But I'd be more than happy to spread his and his employer's name over teh Intarnets.
I used Do Not Disturb a lot during the peak hours of my dissertation writing. It was pretty helpful. That of course means I would miss new emails and phone calls but those could be responded to later
The article discusses how Germany's middle class manufacturing jobs are booming while the United States is seeing a major decline in that demographic.
There's a comment after the article by 'LaughingTarget' that touches on a lot of great points but I wanted to bring up this specifically:
> For example, if an accountant is hired at BMW is classified as a manufacturing employee while an accountant in an accounting firm supporting Tesla Motors is classified as a service employee.
Classification of jobs matters, and the article's analysis of manufacturing jobs between Germany and the US seems like an apples to oranges comparison.
Classification of products also matters. That bump in durable goods manufacturing? That was an order for 10 submarines. Our manufacturing is highly dependent on military spending. That's not enhancing the quality of life here.
The war spending, coming at the same time as the derivative crash, could be blamed for speeding the end of American global preeminence. That's likely to have a negative effect on quality of life, and those were avoidable errors.
Supposedly (according to Recode.net) Beats music only has around 200,000 subscribers and most of them are free trial users from a AT&T deal. Doesn't sound a like a service Apple would want.
I'm not surprised. I'm a Beats subscriber and the only thing going for it is the (actually good) human-curated playlists. However, Spotify seems to have a bigger music catalog and music discovery is good enough.
> Culture is not a good or bad thing. It’s a shared thing. I sometimes hear people say “they aren’t a culture fit” as if it’s a bad thing, or others feel bad pointing this out as if it’s an indictment on someone’s character. It’s not. I am not a culture fit at probably any other company, which is why I had to help start one!
This (which is one of Brian's notes in the article) is one of the best ways to think about culture that I've encountered. A company can't have "good" culture or "bad" culture. It just has a certain shared way of doing things that may or may not vibe with you.
On a related note, Tony Hsieh of Zappos believes what your culture is doesn't matter as much as having a strong identity. Just figure out who you, as a company, are and the rest will follow:
"...one of the really interesting things I found from the research is that it actually doesn’t matter what your values are, what matters is that you have them and that you align the organization around them. And the power actually comes from the alignment not from the actual values"[1]
My main issue with the "culture fit" thing is that it's a very new-school style of business that has been shoehorned into an antiquated process (hiring) that hasn't adapted nearly enough to changing attitudes about workplace priorities. I'd imagine it's difficult for someone to hear that their personality was what failed to get them the job after 30 mins - 1 hour of interaction where skills are still supposedly the number one priority.
I get stressed out when I don't know what I need to do. A combination of scheduling appointments and writing down everything I need to get done dramatically increases my productivity by removing the "oh shit, I know I have to do something but I can't remember what it is" moments.
I agree with Jeff about the fact you should know the top three things you need to do each day, but lower priority items can - and do - find a way to slip through the cracks without some kind of to do list.
I thought this was an insightful look at Elon Musk, the man. It looks like his eyes are actually tearing up when discussing the NASA contract.
Another area of the interview I found telling was when Musk described 2008 and how he essentially lost all his money, got divorced, and almost faced a nervous breakdown. Musk isn't some billionaire playboy, he's a brilliant man with the conviction to take bold risks that could change the world and he's experienced the highs and lows of that journey. I'll admit I was a Musk fan before watching this interview, but now I'm even more impressed with him.
How does that crisis compare to Jobs' crisis with NeXT? My understanding is that he had a reality check that took about a decade, during which he and the people who worked with him pushed extremely hard, nearly failed, and were saved by the Apple buyout.
Musk has also accumulated tales of his immaturity as a business leader -- trying to switch PayPal to Windows, for example -- but if 2008 was a turning point for him, then he went through it a lot faster than Jobs.
Of course plenty of other people who have gone through crises and come out the other side much more fit. The entrepreneur's hero's journey?
I think Glass does the repetitive/unexpected thing exceptionally well, though it's often subtle.
If you're already familiar with Glass (or if you like Beck) you might want to check out Beck's song from Rework, an album of remixed Glass: https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78
It's repetitive, but has enough of the unexpected mixed in to make it a stimulating listen.