Making Good Decisions

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bruce Keener

I recently read a few news items that relate, at least partially, to decision-making, and thought I’d share some key points.

In Danny Sullivan’s summary of Google Zeitgeist conference, he quotes Google cofounder Larry Page as saying

There are no companies that have good slow decisions. There are only good companies that have fast decisions.

Larry had apparently deduced this from analyzing data from lots and lots of corporations. He apparently also had in mind that Google had not acted fast enough regarding a recent Motorola decision.

But, does his quote make for sound advice? It seems to me, as an outsider looking in, that Apple makes slow and thoughtful decisions. Do they perhaps miss some opportunities? Sure. We are Always going to miss some opportunities. Every one of us, from individuals to the most successful companies.

And Ray Dalio, head of the world’s most successful hedge fund, also focuses on making slow, but correct, decisions, as noted in this highly interesting interview of him.

The key of course is to make the Right decisions … sometimes you can do that with due speed, but often it takes a thoughtful approach with a lot of weighing of pro’s and con’s.

Back to the point about missed opportunities, Jeff Bezos emphasized, in this Bloomberg discussion of the Kindle Fire, that Amazon focuses on opportunities:

Bezos says he doesn’t think defensively.

“Everything we do is driven by seeing opportunity rather than being worried about defending,” he says. Given Apple’s inroads into the media business, that’s hard to believe. Bezos is magnanimous toward Jobs.

“On a personal level we have a tremendous amount of respect for Apple and Steve. I think that’s returned,” he says. “Our cultures start in the same place. Both companies like to invent, both companies like to pioneer, both companies start with the customer and work backwards. There’s a like-mindedness.” Pause. “Are two companies like Amazon and Apple occasionally going to step on each other’s toes? Yes.”

In thinking back over my 62 years on this little planet, I’d say that I sure could have benefitted from being more focused on opportunity than on “defense.” I can think of way too many opportunities that I let go, thinking that they would come again, never to see them again. And, sometimes I let opportunities pass because I didn’t see them at the time. Sometimes you are not going to see an opportunity if you don’t have an opportunity-mindset.

That’s it for today. Lots for you to think about (for example, did Larry Page draw the wrong conclusions from the data he looked at, because of one recent experience? If so, how would you avoid doing it yourself? Are there opportunities in your life that you have just been overlooking? [You have to take some time to really think on this one.} And so on.)

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Creative Use of Tools (Software)

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bruce Keener

In looking through my Google+ Stream, I noticed that Chris Messina linked to this impressive article on using Apple’s KeyNote presentation tool for designing web sites.

It’s an impressive article, but to me the main takeaway is that you can often use a tool for purposes that it was not intended for, and do just fine with it. For example, I’ve seen people struggle with using the complex Microsoft Project for managing a large project, while someone else could manage the same project using Microsoft Word.

I believe in the concept of the right tool for the job. But sometimes what defines “right” is “simple and something I don’t need new training on.”

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Instapaper: My Favorite App

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bruce Keener

Because I have so many interests, I read a lot. A huge chunk of this reading is of web pages that have been formatted by Instapaper. Basically, whenever I come across an article that I want to read later, I click on the Instapaper “Read Later” bookmarklet in my browser and the article is formatted for easy reading and saved to my Instapaper account. Then, when I am ready to read, I use the Instapaper app on either my iPad or iPhone (an app is available for Android devices).

Here’s what the bookmarklet looks like in my Chrome browser (sandwiched in between the Gmail and another bookmarklet):

Basically, Instapaper takes a page that looks like the following

and turns into one that looks like this:

The latter is so readable on an iPad or iPhone that it makes reading a pleasure, instead of a challenge as it is with many web pages. The downside is that Instapaper gathers up only the content without any of the readers’ comments … so, when there are insightful comments, I miss out on those. Often, though, the comments add no value, so I only occasionally miss out on anything worth reading.

And, I can save a page to Instapaper from within the Safari browser on my iPad or iPhone, because the bookmarklets sync with those in my iMac’s Safari browser (I have basically the same bookmarks in Safari and Chrome).

Even better, a lot of apps have a “Save to Instapaper” feature built in. This includes two of my other favorite iPad apps: Reeder and Zite.

Reeder syncs with my Google Reader feeds, and is what I generally use to browse through my feeds. When I see an article that looks interesting, I just click a button and the link is saved to my Instapaper account. Zite, a relatively new but fantastic app, grabs headlines from several other sources, and has turned out being a marvelous supplement to my Reeder feeds. And, within Zite, when I see an article that looks interesting, I just click a button and the article is saved to Instapaper for me.

I typically save anywhere from 10 to 30 articles to Instapaper each day. When I sit down with my iPad to read those, I may delete a half-dozen of the articles without even bothering to read them … what I thought might be interesting to read no longer interests me in these cases. That’s actually a nice feature of a “Read Later” approach … you ultimately wind up reading only what really interests you, instead of things that seem appealing only for a short while.

My account with Instapaper is a premium one, for which I pay the very small of $3 per month. I can get almost all the same features for free, but I have chosen to support Instapaper because it is so valuable to me. It truly is the most useful app I have.

Instapaper has other nice features. I won’t go into all of them, as you can read about them at their site, but I like the ability to email a link to Instapaper, the ability to have the articles formatted for my Kindle, and the ability to send favorited articles to Evernote. I especially like the fact that the iPad app lets me choose a font and font-size, and to also select the width of the reading area. (Typography specialists will tell you that the optimum reading experience is one in which each line has between about 50 to 70 characters … I prefer a line width that gives me closer to 50 characters than to 70, as this makes it easier for me to speed read.)

Bottom line: if you haven’t tried this app out, I highly recommend you give it a try.

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Scarcity of Time and/or Dollars Negatively Impact Our Thinking

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bruce Keener

The study of behavioral economics is unveiling some very interesting characteristics about human behavior, such as those described in the popular books Predictably Irrational and Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

It seems like we are learning something new in this area almost every day. For example, yesterday’s New York Times recently carried an article on how scarcity of dollars (poverty) and scarcity of time (the average overworked person in the US) can negatively impact thinking, and even IQ. As if the poor weren’t stricken enough, they get a double-whammy:

A quick question: What is the starting taxi fare in your city? If you are like most upper-middle-class people, you don’t know. If you are like many struggling people, you do know. Poorer people have to think hard about a million things that affluent people don’t. They have to make complicated trade-offs when buying a carton of milk: If I buy milk, I can’t afford orange juice. They have to decide which utility not to pay.

These questions impose enormous cognitive demands. The brain has limited capacities. If you increase demands on one sort of question, it performs less well on other sorts of questions.

Shafir and Mullainathan gave batteries of tests to Indian sugar farmers. After they sell their harvest, they live in relative prosperity. During this season, the farmers do well on the I.Q. and other tests. But before the harvest, they live amid scarcity and have to think hard about a thousand daily decisions. During these seasons, these same farmers do much worse on the tests. They appear to have lower I.Q.’s. They have more trouble controlling their attention. They are more shortsighted. Scarcity creates its own psychology.

And, regarding scarcity of time:

Princeton students don’t usually face extreme financial scarcity, but they do face time scarcity. In one game, they had to answer questions in a series of timed rounds, but they could borrow time from future rounds. When they were scrambling amid time scarcity, they were quick to borrow time, and they were nearly oblivious to the usurious interest rates the game organizers were charging. These brilliant Princeton kids were rushing to the equivalent of payday lenders, to their own long-term detriment.

The world-wide impact of these findings is staggering, given that almost half the people on this planet live on less than $2 each/day, and given that scarcity of time impacts almost everyone in the Western world. While I don’t know that any of us, individually, can do much to help those who have the problem of scarcity of time, most of us can do more to help those who are poor. One way to do this is through donations to organizations in your area that help the poor. Another is to use a trusted international organization, such as World Vision.

As to the broad topic of behavioral economics, Edge.org has a master class on the topic. I have yet to go through all of the items (it is extensive), but have been fascinated by what I’ve learned from it so far. Of course, the books referenced above are also excellent resources.

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I’m Back

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Bruce Keener

After several months of trying out Google’s Blogger platform, I have decided to come back to Keener Living.

It’s interesting, ironic really, that one of the things that motivated me to go to Blogger was the effort Google put forth in developing Google+, while one of the things that brings me back to Keener Living (which runs on WordPress instead of Blogger) is that Google now requires new users of Gmail (or any other Google service) to also set up a Google+ account. There are plenty of other reasons, including the fact that I do like to support open software (such as WordPress), when its done properly, but we need not get into a laundry list.

Over the next few days I will be transporting some of the 67 posts I had on the Blogger platform over to here, so you will likely see a lot of new entries. I only plan to import the ones that I think are still timely, though, so it will not be all 67 articles.

I will also open this blog back up to comments. I hate to have to deal with the spam that accompanies that, but I do like hearing the thoughts of others on topics of common interest.

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A Major Change in My Blogging

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Bruce Keener

I started the Keener Living blog in March 2007, a few months after I retired. It now has over 800 posts, several of which remain popular.

But, blogging has become a pain in the butt. It seems like I spend more time with admin tasks than I do with putting thought into what posts to write. It should not have to be this way. I’m 62 years old, and no longer want to fool with tweaking my server and with updating to the latest WordPress software every time it is updated (too often to suit me). I just want to communicate what I believe is worth sharing.

Plus, I no longer like the name “Keener Living.” It’s a stupid name. My intention was to have a blog that focused on living better, on using technology to make things easier for you (so you could spend more time on what matters), and on helping you stay an active learner, no matter how old you are. I chose a name that I thought reflected this, but, in hindsight, it was a stupid name.

So, because I do want to keep sharing my thoughts and experience, I am changing my approach to blogging to one that doesn’t require me to focus on server performance and software upgrades. I am “moving” my blog to a new blogging home: http://www.brucekeener.com/  To subscribe to the new blog, you can use this RSS Feed link or the Email Subscription link available on the site.

All of my future posts will be there. A couple of new posts are there already, including one that gives a bit more detail on why I “moved.”

Note that I used the word “moved” in quotes … that’s because I’m moving my mind over to the new blog, but this blog will continue to physically exist, at least for the foreseeable future. The reason I’m not moving totally is that there is not a good way, yet, to import all of the posts in this blog into my new blog. (There is a tool that is supposed to do it, but it does not do it, perhaps because my exported xml file is too big, at about 8MB, or perhaps because WordPress uses threaded comments and Blogger does not, or … who knows …)

Many of you have made very useful and insightful comments on my posts, and I hope you will continue to do so at my new “blogging home.” Here’s hoping that I’m doing the right thing in making this “move” and that it will allow me more time (and energy) to develop more useful posts than the previous platform did.

Update: As an example of what I mean, last week I updated this blog to the newly released WordPress 3.2 … today, WordPress 3.2.1 is available.

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Stephen Covey Quotes from The 7 Habits

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Bruce Keener

I am re-reading Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, since my first reading of it was almost 25 years ago. It is re-inspiring me with so many of its insights, and I thought it might be useful to you for me to share a few of those insights here:

It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.

BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.

In the words of Thoreau, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.

THE WAY WE SEE THE PROBLEM IS THE PROBLEM

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ARISTOTLE

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase. Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.

There are dozens more great quotes, but these should be enough to stimulate you to dig back into the 7 Habits again (or for the first time). I know you’ll find it worth your time.

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In a book that I consider a must-read (for showing you that you are more in control of your destiny and well-being than most realize), Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, Dr. Langer notes the following:

“The hefty price for accepting information uncritically is that we go through life unaware that what we’ve accepted as impossible may in fact be quite possible. Most people, including scientists, engage in hypothesis-confirming behavior. Once we think we know something, we search for information consistent with that belief. Seek and ye shall find.”

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Bruce Keener | Leave a comment

Three diseases alone — malaria, TB, and AIDS — result in more than five million deaths per year and half a billion new infections, virtually all in the world’s poorest countries. (Via Richard Stearns in The Hole in Our Gospel)

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Bruce Keener | Leave a comment

Is Amazon Losing Track of the Basics?

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Bruce Keener

I love Amazon. Over the years, I’ve bought thousands of dollars of books from them, and no telling how much on other goodies. Their book prices have been always been fantastic, and shipping has been fast and reliable.

I also love how they are driven by the question “how can we make things better for the customer,” which has led to a number of innovations, including my favorite: http://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights — when you use this web address, it will give you access to all of the highlights you have made in your Kindle ebooks. I use this a lot. For example, I just visited there and grabbed this highlight from a book I’ve been reading (What the Buddha Taught):

According to the Buddha’s teaching, it is as wrong to hold the opinion ‘I have no self (which is the annihilationist theory) as to hold the opinion ‘I have self’ (which is the eternalist theory), because both are fetters, both arising out of the false idea ‘I AM’. The correct position with regard to the question of Anatta is not to take hold of any opinions or views, but to try to see things objectively as they are without mental projections, to see that what we call ‘I, or ‘being’, is only a combination of physical and mental aggregates, which are working together interdependently in a flux of momentary change within the law of cause and effect, and that there is nothing permanent, everlasting, unchanging and eternal in the whole of existence.

Cool, huh? I can’t do that with highlights I make in books purchased for Apple’s iBooks, and I doubt that Apple will ever make it possible to do so.

But I am beginning to have some doubts about Amazon, and whether their focus on innovating is maybe keeping them from paying enough attention to the basics. For example, lots of tech blogs, and some major online magazines, have noted that Amazon’s policy of allowing free publishing of Kindle ebooks is resulting in the Kindle store having a lot of spam.

I’m not sure what Amazon was thinking when they started this. I know that, if I were a publishing firm, I’d worry that some of my great books would not become bestsellers because users went for the cheap stuff instead.

Another area where it looks like they are not paying adequate attention is in the categorization of books. For example, if you look in the Science category for Kindle ebooks, within the first few pages you are going to come across titles such as The God Delusion, The Paleo Diet, Sweet Farts, Young Men and Fire, iSteve, and so on. I got so frustrated trying to find new science ebooks that I just gave up on it.

Whether such “little things” will wind up having an impact on Amazon’s bottom line is not for me to say. But I know from 62 years of living on this planet that you do best when you don’t lose sight of the basics.

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