8/19/2010
8/18/2010
WHY YOU CAN´T WORK AT WORK
Jason Fried
Co-founder, 37signals
With its constant commotion, unnecessary meetings, and infuriating wastes of time, the modern workplace makes us all work longer, less focused hours. Jason Fried explains how we can change all of this.
Source: www.bigthink.com
Question: What is your take on the typical workplace?
Jason Fried: Yeah, my feeling is that the modern workplace is structured completely wrong. It’s really optimized for interruptions. And interruptions are the enemy of work. They are the enemy of productivity, they are the enemy of creativity, they are the enemy of everything. But that’s what the modern workplace is all about, it’s interruptions. Everyone’s calling meetings all the time, everyone’s screaming people’s names across the thing, there’s phones ringing all the time. People are walking around. It’s all about interruptions. And people go to work today, and then they end up doing most of their real work after work, or on the weekends. So, people are working longer hours, people are tired – I’m working 50-60 hours this week. It’s not that there’s 50 or 60 hours worth of work to do, it’s because you don’t work at work anymore. You go to work to get interrupted.
What happens is, is that you show up at work and you sit down and you don’t just immediately begin working, like you have to roll into work. You have to sort of get into a zone, just like you don’t just go to sleep, like you lay down and you go to sleep. You go to work too. But then you know, 45 minutes in, there’s a meeting. And so, now you don’t have a work day anymore, you have like this work moment that was only 45 minutes. And it’s not really 45 minutes, it’s more like 20 minutes, because it takes some time to get into it and then you’ve got to get out of it and you’ve got to go to a meeting.
Then when the meeting’s over, you’re probably pissed off anyway because it was a waste of time and then the meeting’s over and you don’t just go right back to work again, you got to kind of slowly get back into work. And then there’s a conference call, and then someone calls your name, “Hey, come a check this out. Come over here.” And like before you know it, it’s 4:00 and you’ve got nothing done today. And this is what’s happening all over corporate America right now. Everybody I know, I don’t care what business they’re in. Like when I talk to them about this, it’s like “Yeah, that’s my life.” Like, that is my life, and it’s wrong.
And so I think that has to change. If people want to get things done, they’ve got to get rid of interruptions. And so I think that’s something we’re focused on, is trying to remove every possible interruption from people’s day. So they have longer and longer periods of uninterrupted time to actually get work done. And so, our whole workplace, whatever the word you want to use, the office, workplace, although we’re kind of virtual anyways; it’s structured around removing interruptions. And one of the best ways you can do this is to shift your collaboration between people to more passive things. Using our products or someone else’s products. Things that you can put aside when I’m busy. So, if I’m busy, I don’t have to look at Base Camp, I don’t have to check email, I don’t have to check IM. I can put those things aside and do my work. And then when I’m done with my work and I need a break, I can go check these things out.
But if someone’s calling my name, or tapping on my shoulder, or knocking on my door, I can’t ignore those things. I can quit a program, but I can’t quit someone knocking on my door. I can’t quit someone calling my name, or someone ringing me on the phone. So, we try and, even though we might be sitting right across from each other, we don’t talk to each other, hardly at all during the day. Even though we’re right there, we’ll use instant messaging, or email, and if someone doesn’t respond, it means they’re busy. And they probably put that window away. Instead of calling, “Hey Jason, Jason, Jason” until they respond, that’s interrupting somebody; that doesn’t work and that’s how most workplaces are.
And managers are the biggest problem because their whole world is built around interruption. That’s what they do. Management means interrupting. Hey, what’s going on? How’s this going? Let me call a meeting because that’s what I do all day, I call meetings. And so, managers are the real problems here and that’s got to change too. So, as managers of our company, we don’t really manage people, but we prefer people to be managers of one. Let them just figure things out on their own, and if they need our help, they can ask us for it instead of us always constantly asking them if they need help and getting in their way. So, we’re all about getting rid of interruptions. And I think that if companies were more focused on getting rid of interruptions, they would get a whole lot more work done.
Question: How does your company avoid these distractions?
Jason Fried: So, this isn’t really a plug, but we use our product called Campfire, which is a real time chat tool. That is our office. Campfire is our office, and that’s a web based chat tool where there’s a persistent chat room open all the time. Anyone who has a question for anyone else in the company posts it there and in real time, everyone else can see it if they’re looking at it. But if they’re busy, they just don’t pay attention. And then if non one responds, then that means someone is busy. Not like, I’m going to keep calling their name until they turn around. That’s what it’s like in most offices. Or you ring someone and they’re not there and so you call their name, and they’re not there, so you go to their office and you bang on their door. If someone doesn’t respond in Campfire, it means they’re busy. And unless it’s a true emergency, where you really need an answer right now, then you just let them be and they’ll get back to you in three hours. And the truth of the matter is, there are almost no true emergencies in business. Everything can wait a few hours. Everything can wait a day. It’s not a big deal if you get back to me later in the day for me to know right now.
And the other thing about interruptions and calling people’s names, and ringing them on the phone and stuff, it’s actually really an arrogant sort of move because you’re saying that whatever I have to ask you is more important than what you’re doing. Because I’m going to stop you from doing what you are doing for me to ask you this questions that probably doesn’t matter anyway. So, we’re very cognizant of this, and we make sure that we only ping people, that’s what we call it, digitally and in ways that will not really get in their way if they’re really busy.
And that’s not always the case, but that’s really what we try to do. And use Campfire and use Base Camp and use High Rise and all our products. Other people’s products this well as well, but we just use our own because we built them for ourselves and we use them and they’re free for us.
Question: Does your office have a hierarchy?
Jason Fried: Yeah. So, we don’t really have hierarchy, technically. I mean, ultimately the buck stops with me, but like it doesn’t get to that. We really let people make their own decisions and we give them feedback on those decisions and help them learn and make better decisions. And we have some small teams. People work in teams of three, but there are really no true leader in those teams necessarily. It’s like, the leader is the product. Like the product is what leads you. It’s got to be good. Quality is the leader and everyone has to understand that that’s what this is all about. We’re making good products here. We’re not making your idea, or my idea, we’re making a product that useful for our customers. So, that’s kind of what guides everything. And it’s surprisingly works pretty well.
We have like, big visions for things, and we all share common points of view on like what’s important, but ultimately it’s quality, it’s the product, it’s usefulness, it’s clarity. Those are the things that lead us on the right direction.
Co-founder, 37signals
With its constant commotion, unnecessary meetings, and infuriating wastes of time, the modern workplace makes us all work longer, less focused hours. Jason Fried explains how we can change all of this.
Source: www.bigthink.com
Question: What is your take on the typical workplace?
Jason Fried: Yeah, my feeling is that the modern workplace is structured completely wrong. It’s really optimized for interruptions. And interruptions are the enemy of work. They are the enemy of productivity, they are the enemy of creativity, they are the enemy of everything. But that’s what the modern workplace is all about, it’s interruptions. Everyone’s calling meetings all the time, everyone’s screaming people’s names across the thing, there’s phones ringing all the time. People are walking around. It’s all about interruptions. And people go to work today, and then they end up doing most of their real work after work, or on the weekends. So, people are working longer hours, people are tired – I’m working 50-60 hours this week. It’s not that there’s 50 or 60 hours worth of work to do, it’s because you don’t work at work anymore. You go to work to get interrupted.
What happens is, is that you show up at work and you sit down and you don’t just immediately begin working, like you have to roll into work. You have to sort of get into a zone, just like you don’t just go to sleep, like you lay down and you go to sleep. You go to work too. But then you know, 45 minutes in, there’s a meeting. And so, now you don’t have a work day anymore, you have like this work moment that was only 45 minutes. And it’s not really 45 minutes, it’s more like 20 minutes, because it takes some time to get into it and then you’ve got to get out of it and you’ve got to go to a meeting.
Then when the meeting’s over, you’re probably pissed off anyway because it was a waste of time and then the meeting’s over and you don’t just go right back to work again, you got to kind of slowly get back into work. And then there’s a conference call, and then someone calls your name, “Hey, come a check this out. Come over here.” And like before you know it, it’s 4:00 and you’ve got nothing done today. And this is what’s happening all over corporate America right now. Everybody I know, I don’t care what business they’re in. Like when I talk to them about this, it’s like “Yeah, that’s my life.” Like, that is my life, and it’s wrong.
And so I think that has to change. If people want to get things done, they’ve got to get rid of interruptions. And so I think that’s something we’re focused on, is trying to remove every possible interruption from people’s day. So they have longer and longer periods of uninterrupted time to actually get work done. And so, our whole workplace, whatever the word you want to use, the office, workplace, although we’re kind of virtual anyways; it’s structured around removing interruptions. And one of the best ways you can do this is to shift your collaboration between people to more passive things. Using our products or someone else’s products. Things that you can put aside when I’m busy. So, if I’m busy, I don’t have to look at Base Camp, I don’t have to check email, I don’t have to check IM. I can put those things aside and do my work. And then when I’m done with my work and I need a break, I can go check these things out.
But if someone’s calling my name, or tapping on my shoulder, or knocking on my door, I can’t ignore those things. I can quit a program, but I can’t quit someone knocking on my door. I can’t quit someone calling my name, or someone ringing me on the phone. So, we try and, even though we might be sitting right across from each other, we don’t talk to each other, hardly at all during the day. Even though we’re right there, we’ll use instant messaging, or email, and if someone doesn’t respond, it means they’re busy. And they probably put that window away. Instead of calling, “Hey Jason, Jason, Jason” until they respond, that’s interrupting somebody; that doesn’t work and that’s how most workplaces are.
And managers are the biggest problem because their whole world is built around interruption. That’s what they do. Management means interrupting. Hey, what’s going on? How’s this going? Let me call a meeting because that’s what I do all day, I call meetings. And so, managers are the real problems here and that’s got to change too. So, as managers of our company, we don’t really manage people, but we prefer people to be managers of one. Let them just figure things out on their own, and if they need our help, they can ask us for it instead of us always constantly asking them if they need help and getting in their way. So, we’re all about getting rid of interruptions. And I think that if companies were more focused on getting rid of interruptions, they would get a whole lot more work done.
Question: How does your company avoid these distractions?
Jason Fried: So, this isn’t really a plug, but we use our product called Campfire, which is a real time chat tool. That is our office. Campfire is our office, and that’s a web based chat tool where there’s a persistent chat room open all the time. Anyone who has a question for anyone else in the company posts it there and in real time, everyone else can see it if they’re looking at it. But if they’re busy, they just don’t pay attention. And then if non one responds, then that means someone is busy. Not like, I’m going to keep calling their name until they turn around. That’s what it’s like in most offices. Or you ring someone and they’re not there and so you call their name, and they’re not there, so you go to their office and you bang on their door. If someone doesn’t respond in Campfire, it means they’re busy. And unless it’s a true emergency, where you really need an answer right now, then you just let them be and they’ll get back to you in three hours. And the truth of the matter is, there are almost no true emergencies in business. Everything can wait a few hours. Everything can wait a day. It’s not a big deal if you get back to me later in the day for me to know right now.
And the other thing about interruptions and calling people’s names, and ringing them on the phone and stuff, it’s actually really an arrogant sort of move because you’re saying that whatever I have to ask you is more important than what you’re doing. Because I’m going to stop you from doing what you are doing for me to ask you this questions that probably doesn’t matter anyway. So, we’re very cognizant of this, and we make sure that we only ping people, that’s what we call it, digitally and in ways that will not really get in their way if they’re really busy.
And that’s not always the case, but that’s really what we try to do. And use Campfire and use Base Camp and use High Rise and all our products. Other people’s products this well as well, but we just use our own because we built them for ourselves and we use them and they’re free for us.
Question: Does your office have a hierarchy?
Jason Fried: Yeah. So, we don’t really have hierarchy, technically. I mean, ultimately the buck stops with me, but like it doesn’t get to that. We really let people make their own decisions and we give them feedback on those decisions and help them learn and make better decisions. And we have some small teams. People work in teams of three, but there are really no true leader in those teams necessarily. It’s like, the leader is the product. Like the product is what leads you. It’s got to be good. Quality is the leader and everyone has to understand that that’s what this is all about. We’re making good products here. We’re not making your idea, or my idea, we’re making a product that useful for our customers. So, that’s kind of what guides everything. And it’s surprisingly works pretty well.
We have like, big visions for things, and we all share common points of view on like what’s important, but ultimately it’s quality, it’s the product, it’s usefulness, it’s clarity. Those are the things that lead us on the right direction.
LIFE IN 2050
Everyone Could Be Planting Crops
Glenn Roberts
Farmer and Owner of Anson Mills
The ethical responsibility to grow and preserve and sustain land-raised systems will survive, and local, land-raised cuisines will return and thrive.
Source: www.bigthink.com
Glenn Roberts
Farmer and Owner of Anson Mills
The ethical responsibility to grow and preserve and sustain land-raised systems will survive, and local, land-raised cuisines will return and thrive.
Source: www.bigthink.com
8/17/2010
8/04/2010
SHORT FILM ONLINE COMPETITION CANNES 2008
Un ejemplo de que las cosas planteadas de la manera correcta pueden llegar a la gente.
Fourth annual Short Film Online Competition - Cannes 2008. The NFB, in association with the Cannes Short Film Corner and partner YouTube, is proud to announce that the winner of the NFB Online Competition Cannes 2008 is Alonso Alvarez Barreda for his short film Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign) produced in Mexico/U.S.A.
Director : Alonso Alvarez Barreda
Running Time : 04:50
Year : 2007
Country : Mexico/ U.S.A
Category : Short film
Fourth annual Short Film Online Competition - Cannes 2008. The NFB, in association with the Cannes Short Film Corner and partner YouTube, is proud to announce that the winner of the NFB Online Competition Cannes 2008 is Alonso Alvarez Barreda for his short film Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign) produced in Mexico/U.S.A.
Director : Alonso Alvarez Barreda
Running Time : 04:50
Year : 2007
Country : Mexico/ U.S.A
Category : Short film
HOW TO TAKE AN IDEA FROM CONCEPTION TO REALITY
Question: How do you take an idea from conception to reality?
Jason Fried: Our whole thing is actually just about keeping things as simple as possible. I know this is sort of a, it’s become a cliché... the word "simple" has become as cliché that I try not to use it anymore. But it ultimately, the point is that things are pretty easy and simple until you make them hard and complicated. So we’re always trying to keep them as simple and as easy as they naturally are. So if we have a big idea, let’s chop that idea in half. Let’s chop it in half again. Let’s figure out what the core thing is, what like the three things you need to do are and let’s do those things really, really well. So instead of focusing on everything and the bells and whistles, it’s more about the basics. And that’s really what our whole philosophy is all about. So people ask us, there’s a lot of competition in our business. A lot of people build software like ours. People say, "What’s different about our products?" And our answer is always, "Our products less than the competition." And I think that's really what people want, is just a few things done really, really well. And if you think about ever day of your life, the things you really appreciate aren’t the complicated things. They’re the simple things that work just the way you expect them to. So that’s sort of our way of building products, that’s our way of building this office, that’s our way of communicating, that’s the way of hiring, all that stuff comes down to what are the basics. What are the things that really matter and then just doing those really well?
Recorded on July 22, 2010
Interviewed by Peter Hopkins
8/02/2010
METODO MONTESSORI
THE MONTESSORI "METHOD"
of bringing up and educating children
After years of expression mainly in pre-schools, Montessori philosophy is finally being used as originally intended, as a method of seeing children as they really are and of creating environments which foster the fulfillment of their highest potential - spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual - as members of a family, the world community and the Cosmos.
Dr. Montessori gave the world a scientific method, practical and tested, for bringing forth the very best in young human beings. She taught adults how to respect individual differences, and to emphasize social interaction and the education of the whole personality rather than the teaching of a specific body of knowledge.
Montessori practice is always up-to-date and dynamic because observation and the meeting of needs is continual and specific for each child. When physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional needs are met children glow with excitement and a drive to play and work with enthusiasm, to learn, and to create. They exhibit a desire to teach, help, and care for others and for their environment.
The high level of academic achievement so common in Montessori schools is a natural outcome of experience in such a supportive environment. The Montessori method of education is a model which serves the needs of children of all levels of mental and physical ability as they live and learn in a natural, mixed-age group which is very much like the society they will live in as adults.
Today Montessori teacher training centers and schools exist on all continents. There are Montessori parenting classes, "Nidos" ("nests" for infants), infant communities, "children's houses" (for age 3-6), and classes for children up to age eighteen in public and private schools. Montessori works in gifted and talented programs, and for children with developmental disabilities of all kinds.
The discoveries of Maria Montessori are valuable for anyone living and working with children in any situation.
http://www.montessori.edu/method.html
THE REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH
There are different ways of teaching if society is truly worried and care about children. The reggio Emilia is an example of guiding children from a creative and distinctive method.
For the children
To ensure that all children in the project schools receive an education best suited to their needs, interests and abilities. We intend to do this by developing our understanding of the learning processes of all the children we teach which includes children of different genders and with various abilities and cultures. We strongly support inclusion of children with a range of abilities and for this reason will incorporate into our project the work of Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligence.
To enable the children to work in partnership with other children and adults in the decision making process of project planning and related curriculum work.
For the Parents
To make the children’s learning visible to parents through displays of the children’s work and documentation relating to the learning processes that have taken place.
To enable parents to understand the way children learn and become involved in the process through participation in preschool activities.
To involve parents in our ‘Reggio journey’ and inspire them to develop the approach to their children’s continued education within the home.
For the School
To enable each school to embrace and embed the Reggio Approach to a ‘Child led’ play based curriculum.
To enhance the learning environment of the participating schools.
For the wider community
To involve and collaborate with the local Education Boards and Teacher Training Establishments in order to develop and spread the Reggio Approach across all regions.
To embrace a ‘Child led’ play based curriculum by promoting the Reggio Approach.
To promote the importance of high quality pre-school education.
For the children
To ensure that all children in the project schools receive an education best suited to their needs, interests and abilities. We intend to do this by developing our understanding of the learning processes of all the children we teach which includes children of different genders and with various abilities and cultures. We strongly support inclusion of children with a range of abilities and for this reason will incorporate into our project the work of Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligence.
To enable the children to work in partnership with other children and adults in the decision making process of project planning and related curriculum work.
For the Parents
To make the children’s learning visible to parents through displays of the children’s work and documentation relating to the learning processes that have taken place.
To enable parents to understand the way children learn and become involved in the process through participation in preschool activities.
To involve parents in our ‘Reggio journey’ and inspire them to develop the approach to their children’s continued education within the home.
For the School
To enable each school to embrace and embed the Reggio Approach to a ‘Child led’ play based curriculum.
To enhance the learning environment of the participating schools.
For the wider community
To involve and collaborate with the local Education Boards and Teacher Training Establishments in order to develop and spread the Reggio Approach across all regions.
To embrace a ‘Child led’ play based curriculum by promoting the Reggio Approach.
To promote the importance of high quality pre-school education.
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