Am I the only one who is as tired of the 'kids can't use computers' meme as the 'digital natives' meme?
The vast majority of people have never been able to 'use' a computer like the author describes because the vast majority of people don't understand computing. And that's ok - I would consider it a triumph that we've been able to create such effective illusions in the form of UI that people who have no interest in computing can share in the incredible power that it enables.
But at the same time, it is a mistake to assume that mastery of the illusion equals mastery of the thing is abstracts. This is why the digital native meme is so misguided - kids don't know any more about computers than their parents did, they just know the walled gardens that sprang up around them.
Aren't we just masters of different illusions? Our illusions are lower-level, consisting of "file systems" and "kernels", "processes" and "TCP/IP", and "drawing calls". (And indeed, being able to upgrade a hard-drive and reinstall an OS hardly denotes mastery of anything, and never did. It denotes being able to follow directions.)
Not just students - I experience this in the workplace too, and it just boggles my mind. We hired a recent grad, and after about 10 days of watching him type a password into a terminal ~20 times a day I casually mention how he can use ssh keys. His response? No, I'm not interested in that.
I've found journaling on paper to be one of the best morning rituals for calming anxiety. It really is amazing how just writing a few sentences creates a sense of awareness of what's going on in your head.
I also tried bullet journaling as my 'system', but quickly abandoned it. It is great if you're not a compulsive to-do list maker, but if you follow a GTD-like system where you frequently capture, it becomes onerous to answer the question 'what do I do next?' You either have to constantly flip through pages to review your full list, or regularly copy your to-dos to a master list, which becomes quite tedious, especially if you have a long list.
What works for me is using org mode as my to-do system, with paper for the brainstorming and planning. I always start with paper, then once I have clarity on what to do, I move it to org.
I find this can calm my anxiety about forgetting something important. Back in the 90's I used a Franklin Day Planner which was pretty awesome but also a bit too prescriptive for me so it was equal parts useful and repulsive :-). But I found I could capture the things I felt were important on paper and worried less about them being lost.
That turned into writing into my notebook at night what questions had come up during the day, and what needed doing. And in the morning, reviewing that and picking the top three things on that list to be addressed that day.
This is not on paper but I do the same thing on paper when I'm away from the computer. On my computer a cron job just pops this into a Dropbox folder as YYYY-MM-DD.md and I edit it from there.
There are some neat journaling cues available if you read e.g. "The New Diary" by Tristine Rainer. Like writing in the third person, or just viewing a diary/journal as a place to scribble down work notes and improving on it from there.
I probably change my own template every 1-2 months. You'll see on the "schedule" portion that the least productive part of my day is 1-3 p.m., so I encourage a lot of fun and relaxation during that time as a way of releasing anxiety and picking up task momentum.
Most of my work in the journal is under the "other" heading, and I don't fill out every heading every day. Most entries just have a score for the day, some notes on why I chose that score, and ideas to improve it, and then a lot of ideas under "Other".
Every Friday I do a sort of "information archaeology" thing where I go back over my paper & digital journal entries and round up reusable tips or things I've learned into a "frameworks" folder where I have separate files for things like building websites, coding, preparing for meetings, working with various types of people, possible new hobbies, etc. The recapture of these ideas has been worth quite a lot to me, as it feels like I have a better foothold next time I encounter the problem.
Your template is much more complex than I was thinking. I can see though if reflection is the goal, then a format that encourages that makes a great deal of sense.
Interesting. I wonder how useful journaling would be to help combat insomnia. I will give it a go next time I am lying in bed at 2am with my head buzzing..
I've been successfully using journaling to fight insomnia for a few months now. What I do is try to simply capture every thought that comes into my head as fast as I can write.
At first, my hand can barely keep up with the torrent of thoughts being produced by my mind, but after maybe 5-10 min it slows right down. At some point I feel like I'm actually waiting for thoughts to come up so I can write.
Eventually, my mind goes quiet. It's much easier to fall asleep then.
You may be interested in http://www.themostdangerouswritingapp.com After 5 seconds of inactivity your text goes away. This encourages you to continue typing. It's helped a lot with my fledging journaling habit.
This helped me, too, when I was suffering from insomnia. 700 to 1,000 words was the "sleep like a baby" target range for me. Also, the sooner I could bring myself to write about the really difficult topics, the better.
I too find writing a helpful way to stop thoughts tumbling round in my head so I can sleep. I think it has something to do with silencing the rehearsal loop.
Do you work on the computer until late? You should consider trying this app that removes the blue hues from your monitor after 9pm: https://justgetflux.com/ (Apparently, blue coloured light is a cue our brain uses to know when to wake up—morning light has more blue than evening light)
If you are a linux user gtk-redshift does the same thing, I've also found it be very reliable with ATI's binary drivers (though these days I use the open source drivers anyway).
It may not work for all of course but my insomnia (undiagnosed, so whatever the sleeplessness actually was if not insomnia) has almost completely gone after I started meditating.
Now I don't mean sitting cross legged while chanting "ahhhh" or anything like that, just give your brain an hour or so daily to start but you can probably drop to less after a while (I do it every 2-3 days now).
My best guess it's like freeing up some CPU time for garbage collection. With having podcasts, videos, films, computering, etc going almost every waking hour the brain never really gets a chance to filter through all of this stuff so attempts to do so the only quiet moment it gets - right when you're trying to fall asleep.
Most people with a lot on their minds do find it easier to have pen and paper bed side. This why they can quickly jot down what's on their mind and leave the burden of remembering and figuring stuff out to tomorrow. I can't find the article about it, but it has helped me in the past.
Now I just throw on a nature documentary and a timer to shut the tv off after 30 min. I'm usually fast asleep in 10 minutes. :)
I have used this successfully this very week, with my worst insomnia yet.
A trick i learned is that writing mainly helps me to clarify my thoughts, so i realized i can do that without turning on the light and getting a pen: i can use a voice recorder (on my phone) and whisper into it, like journaling out loud.
I use sleep cycle as an alarm clock. A few years of sleep data says that (for me) going to bed after working late leads to bad sleep, and going to bed after reading leads to better sleep.
Based on this single data point, perhaps try picking up a book when you call it a night?
Nothing beats curling up in a warm (well, now that it's winter in the Northern hemisphere anyway) bed with a book when you're calling it a day. It's relaxing. This habit also helps you actually get around to reading for leisure.
So I moved to paper note taking a month and a half ago, and it's helped with work-anxiety. It's not a cure-all either, the hardest part is changing your habits so that you still open the book to look at what you wrote down.
hugely :) you don't even have to use the structure of a journal. i've found it helpful, when my head is too full, to simply write down single words reverberating in my head impairing sleep. I did it just last night!
I know someone who found journaling cured severe RSI, when nothing else worked. I learned about this on HN and was skeptical, but lots of people had testified that it helped them, so I passed the recommendation on - amazingly it did work. See The Mindbody Prescription by Sarno.
I think it will depend on the type of RSI. Both me and a coworker once had horrible RSI. One of the problems (amongst many) that we complained about was that writing with a pen became quite painful.
I mean, RSI can be really bad. It affects your quality of life outside of the computer world. Pressing the button on my remote was painful. Pressing the button to change the frequency on my car radio was painful. Essentially, any delicate work was painful.
Appalled is probably a better word. I'm not sure how the process is now (I got Global Entry, which pretty much short cuts the entire horrible experience), but I remember coming back into the country as an American citizen and being appalled at not only how difficult the process was as a citizen, but how unfriendly it was to non-citizens.
Not only was a lot of the signage and printed instructions only in English, the customs officers were down right berating people in English (many of whom obviously didn't speak English) for things they had no way of knowing, like standing in the proper line, because they couldn't read or speak English. In many cases the customs officer would simply lead people (who had no idea where they were going) into a line, then leave. The wait for translators was hours in some cases. And if you were lucky enough to get through customs, you were rushed through another security line and required to put your bags on one of five conveyer belts to the bowels of the airport to be screened AGAIN (even if you weren't taking a connecting flight). Only you had no idea which belt you were supposed to choose because there was no signage, only a scant few attendants yelling out which belt you were supposed to put your bags on (in English, of course) while streams of people rushed by.
We obviously won't know until all the data is in, but looking at the county by county results seems to suggest that rural voters (who are predominantly working class whites) in swing states turned out for Trump in much greater numbers than anyone anticipated. Combine that with the fact that Clinton often underperformed or outright lost some number of counties in these states that Obama carried in 2012, and a picture starts to emerge. This was especially prevalent in Michigan and Wisconsin where she won in the cities and democratic strongholds but lost spectacularly outside of them.
Personal reason: in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless concepts of software usability. It is becoming much more difficult now to separate platform convention from actual user tested, researched UX. In the old Apple machines they used to be one in the same, so I find it very useful to often compare old design to new (where applicable) in order to suss out any differences and investigate them. Many times we've simply gotten used to less usable interfaces because we upgraded and didn't think twice, and the old machines can be a useful sanity check.
Edit: when I mean separating platform convention from user-tested UX, I mean that there are some pretty obvious times when platform UX conventions haven't been user tested (or were implemented despite negative user testing results). The most obvious one to me is iOS's flat buttons. I write iOS apps and try to do as much user testing on them as possible, and I've found this to be by far the most frequent struggle for users - discerning which things are pressable and which aren't.
> in many ways, the old versions are much purer expressions of the timeless concepts of software usability.
Maybe you are right on this.
Maybe this is why I feel nostalgic of pixelartish BeOS, QNX Neutrino, maybe MacOS9 / *Step and even plan9 rio/acme or IRIX.
My UX in terms of usability and style seem to cycle: 0. get inspiration, 1. comfort, 2. fatigue, 3. back to 0 and realize the previously inspiring thing is now obsolete.
Sad thing, in 30 years, I have cycled a lot more with "computer interface" domain than I have with congas and cameras, some of my favourites having been produced in the late 80s / early 90s.
Software do not age well, yet, and there isn't much chance to keep them running, even if their features, concepts and styles are still relevant to a significant user base. That being said, I use OS, terminals and text editors whose concepts take roots in the 60s :)
As the discussion above focused on macos Finder, I miss the now unmaintained Rox Filer the same way.
As someone who's lived in the southeast US my entire life, this is spot on. The Bible Belt gets a lot of flack, most of it deserved, but it is hard to overstate the importance of the church community here. I suspect this, not the religious part, is why churches have continued to thrive here.
The problem for me (as well as many others I know), is that the tradeoff isn't worth it. There is an entire generation of people who are receptive to religion and the church community, but who are completely at odds with the traditional interpretations of religion that preach intolerance and other backward moral positions. The so-called 'contemporary' churches that have been sprouting like weeds have addressed this somewhat, but scant few are actually progressive thinkers, rather than just traditional churches that play religious rock music. I would love to be a part of a church community, but not if it means I'm constantly inundated with a message that runs counter to everything I believe in.
The question is whether the decline of the church in America is a symptom of other things besides the issues mentioned in the article and elsewhere (eg: churches being too connected to money and power, too focused on rules, too intolerant, too judgemental). Most unchurched still believe, so if it's just those things, then America is merely ripe for a disruptive church that would correct the current modern America church sins.
However, from what I've seen with more liberal churches that exist, the crowd is elderly and small. So I think that there's been a bit of a greater societal shift. "Make an atheist church" is not a solution, because that style just does not work for a more connected, global, diverse world where individualism is more valued. Look at this thread; many people in this thread are rejecting church because the pressure to "conform to the norm" is not worth the community gain.
Is it possible to gain the benefits of community, without sacrificing the benefits individualism? (I personally think the sins of the collective tend to be worse than the sins of the individualism, so I personally would not want to see that balance shifted to the sort of conformity many churches seem to demand.)
I faced this same question on a recent small project. For anyone dipping their toes into React, it's a huge leap of complexity. I thought I could jump into Flux just like React: get familiar with the concepts, do a tutorial or two, and start building. Nope.
I looked into Redux, but quickly realized it was overkill for my simple project. I eventually settled on Reflux, and I would highly recommend it for those who are just getting started with Flux.
Yes! It needn't be a lot of detail either. Example: I interviewed with a leading UX consulting firm, and they were very up front about the process. It was essentially 1 short take home assignment (30 mins), 1 phone screen (30 mins), 1 longer take home assignment (4-8 hours), and 1 full day of on site interviews where you have to give an hour long presentation. I didn't get the job, but it was by far the best and most transparent interview process I've been through.
Edit: on a side note, I really wish more companies would provide honest feedback to the candidate during the interview process. Especially when you've invested significant time into an interview process and are ultimately rejected, it is beyond frustrating to ask for feedback and just hear crickets, or a generic "other candidates are a better fit", etc...
Man, if this would've been around a year or so ago! The whole 1099 process was by far the biggest pain point for me of being a contractor/sole proprietor.
What led you to address this problem from the banking, rather than accounting, side? For me, the banking part wasn't a big source of friction. It was keeping up with income and expenses, trying to determine what I could safely deduct, and coming up with a reasonable estimated quarterly tax bill (especially for my state taxes, which I could only send in yearly). After that was done, moving the money around was relatively trivial. Even if your product removes all that friction, I would still think that requiring users to open up another bank account and essentially give you control over all their revenue would be a huge hurdle to overcome.
Also, were I still a contractor, not being able to track expenses as well would be a deal breaker for me, especially in months where cash flow was tight. Yes, doing my taxes is a hassle, but compared with the hundreds or thousands I might save on a quarterly tax bill with expenses accounted for, it is a minor annoyance.
I think it depends on the primary use case (for accounting vs banking) - I know a lot of people who are earning barely livable wages as 1099 employees and they are often tempted to spend everything they earn (need to make rent and feed themselves) but then come April they haven't saved enough for their taxes and get screwed. Having a separate bank account that withholds the taxes for them first and then deposits 100% spendable money (just like a W-2 employee) would be really helpful for people in this position.
If you're coming at the problem with this use case in mind primarily, the approach they took makes sense. I think those people can benefit from this service the most too.
Have you looked at FreshBooks? You can sync expenses with your credit card(s) and bank account(s), categorize them, then view a Profit & Loss report to see your net income (income minus expenses).
The vast majority of people have never been able to 'use' a computer like the author describes because the vast majority of people don't understand computing. And that's ok - I would consider it a triumph that we've been able to create such effective illusions in the form of UI that people who have no interest in computing can share in the incredible power that it enables.
But at the same time, it is a mistake to assume that mastery of the illusion equals mastery of the thing is abstracts. This is why the digital native meme is so misguided - kids don't know any more about computers than their parents did, they just know the walled gardens that sprang up around them.