Adam Grant on challenge networks:
The first rule [of the Good Fight Club]: avoiding an argument is bad manners. Silence disrespects the value of your views and our ability to have a civil disagreement.
— Adam Grant, Think Again, p. 86
The Process
Zoom Links
Un tema frecuente durante la pandemia es que los chicos se conecten a sus clases virtuales por Zoom. Por algún motivo que desconozco, el colegio de mis hijos envia cada semana un PDF con el horario de clase, y los ID y contraseñas de las sesiones de Zoom de la semana. Pero no envían ni invitaciones para agregar a la agenda ni el link para conectarse a la reunión.
Enviar una invitación y links para conectarse a las reuniones es la práctica usual en cualquier parte. Zoom las genera automáticamente.
Una cosa práctica, aunque algo tediosa, es generar los links de Zoom manualmente. Sobre todo si, como en este caso, cada semana los ID de sesión son los mismos y solo cambian las contraseñas. Las clases se ingresan al calendario como reuniones que se recurrentes, y cada semana se modifican solo los links de las contraseñas.
url-schemes
El formato de los links es parecido a la dirección de una página web. Se llaman ‘url scheme’. Este link misterioso es simplemente un texto que se escribe en el teclado, y normalmente se guarda en la misma cita del calendario en la agenda de la computadora.
En la página de Zóom podemos encontrar la documentación sobre sus url schemes. A efectos de nuestro caso, solo vamos a considerar el link para unirnos a una sesión existente (ya creada con anterioridad).
La primera parte del link es distinta según nos vayamos a unir a la sesión en una tablet/smartphone o en una laptop. Es una limitación del Zoom, que nos obliga a decidir de antemano el dispositivo desde el que nos vamos a conectar:
- Para laptop/desktop, el link empieza con zoommtg://zoom.us/join
- Para table/celular, el link empieza con zoomus://zoom.us/join
Nótese que si creamos el link en una laptop o en un celuar es indiferente. Lo importante es dónde querremos abrir el link, en una laptop o en una tablet/smartphone.
Podemos especificar casi cualquier parámetro de Zoom en el link, como si lo configuráramos manualmente en la aplicación. Pero en este caso nos interesan solo 3:
- el id de la sesión, que en el link se llama confno (de conference number, probablemente). El número de sesión debe ir sin espacios.
- el password de la sesión, que en el link se indica con pwd
- (opcional) el nombre del usuario, muy útil cuando nuestros hijos usan nuestro usuario de Zoom pero deseamos que aparezca su nombre en la sesión. En el link se indica con uname. Cabe notar que este nombre puede ser cualquier nombre, no tiene que ser el registrado con el usuario de Zoom.
Un ejemplo
Supongamos que queremos crear un link para una sesión con ID 123 456 789, con password abcdefg. El formato de link sería así:
Para desktop:
zoommtg://zoom.us/join?confno=123456789&pwd=abcdefg
Para tablet/smartphone:
zoomus://zoom.us/join?confno=123456789&pwd=abcdefg
Si quisiéramos añadir el nombre de la persona que se unirá a la sesión para que aparezca debajo de su ventana de video en la sesión, basta añadir el parámentro uname al final del link. Si el nombre contiene espacios, debemos reemplazar el espacio por un ‘%20’. Así:
Para desktop:
zoommtg://zoom.us/join?confno=123456789&pwd=abcdefg&uname=Fulano%20%de%20tal
Para tablet/smartphone:
zoomus://zoom.us/join?confno=123456789&pwd=abcdefg&uname=Fulano%20%de%20tal
Finalmente, la cita en la agenda se vería algo así:
Escribí un programa que genera las citas de calendario automáticamente a partir del PDF, pero depende del formato particular en que el colegio envía el archivo. De todos modos puede servir por si alguien quiere modificarlo para su uso. https://github.com/robertozoia/actividades-zoom-to-ics
El camino a resultados extraordinarios
Cada tanto me vuelvo a encontrar con unos comentarios de Ira Glass sobre el trabajo creativo1. Traducido libremente, Glass viene a decir que cuando uno está empezando, tiene la visión de lo que quiere pero la realidad es que el resultado de lo que hace no es tan bueno. Hay potencial, pero falta ese algo especial que lo hace excepcionalmente bueno. Hay una brecha.
Lo que a veces olvidamos –sigue Glass–, es que esto le pasa a todos. Que hay que seguir empujando para lograr un volumen importante de trabajo, hasta que esa brecha se cierre. Mucha gente no pone ese esfuerzo, no pasa de esa etapa que puede durar unos años, y se da por vencida.
Pienso que la idea se aplica no solo al trabajo creativo, sino también a cualquier tema nuevo en el que nos metemos: una nueva posición, un nuevo proyecto o emprendimiento, un nuevo reto. No podemos esperar resultados inmediatos, no hay atajos. Hay que poner las horas todos los días. Esa consistencia es la que hace que se cierre la brecha y lleguemos a estar a la altura, o mejor, por encima de la visión que teníamos al empezar.
Abajo un video con las palabras originales de Ira Glass en inglés.
- Ira Glass es el host del conocido programa This American Life. ↩
Meaningful vs Expiring Information
As time remains constant and information becomes abundant and ubiquitous, the question of how to read things that lead to meaningful knowledge becomes ever more relevant.
Some people are worried about how Facebook or Twitter maybe “manipulating” their timelines by deciding which news or tweets they see and which don’t. I don’t think that’s a problem per se.
Newspapers, for example, provide us with a series of news curated by an editorial staff, which certainly has its own view about what’s happening in the world. More important, some newspapers have a long-term vision about that worldview. Also, consider that most people read the newspaper that is more akin to his or her tastes, politically and socially speaking. But isn’t this falling into some kind of confirmation bias1? Some people read two newspapers to have a more “independent” view of the news, but I bet that they are few.
The problem is not Facebook’s or Twitter’s algorithm, but our decision to rely on Facebook and Twitter as a source of relevant information. For some years now —and the trend probably will go on forever— we rely on algorithms to find information. The information available is far too much for us to see without filtering. For example, Google optimizes search results for us. Which is a great convenience in a wide range of situations. Facebook customizes what is shown in our timeline according to its own criteria. We don’t know that criteria for sure, but I would bet that maximizing the time we spend on Facebook is a factor that carries a lot of weight in the algorithm. What’s Twitter’s criteria? How about LinkedIn?
Farman Street’s Shane Parrish concept of expiring information can help us make better use of our time. “Information has a predictable half-life: the time taken for half of it to be replaced or disproved. Over time, one group of facts replaces another.2” Expiring information is information that has a short half-life, and we should avoid it:
Here are a few telltale signs you’re dealing with expiring information. First, it’s marketed to you. Second, lacking details and nuance, it’s easily digestible. This is why it’s commonly telling you what happened, not why it happened or under what conditions it might happen again. Third, it won’t be relevant in a month or a year. Expiring information is one reason I stopped reading most news. It’s a false map.
Attention is the valuable asset we need to take care of:
Avoid the noise because it messes with the signal. Your attention is valuable, so why spend so much time on stuff that will be irrelevant in a few days? Read what stands the test of time. Read from publications that respect and value your time, the ones that add more value than they consume. Read what prompts you to think for yourself. Read fewer articles and more books. Read books that have stood the test of time, those that are still in print after 20 years or so.
What did you read today? Will it still be meaningful next week? What about next year?
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash.
- Confirmation bias is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.” (cfr Wikipedia, Confirmation Bias.) ↩
- cfr Half Life: The Decay of Knowledge and What to Do About It. ↩
Three Ideas to Improve Your Reading
For several years, as part of my end-of-year review, I take a look at my reading1 and make plans for the year to come. I’ve written down some ideas from my process that you may find useful. Of course, most of the advice is not originally mine: I learned about these ideas by reading about how some giants –call them virtual mentors if you like– do their learning.
1. Have a list of the books you want to read this year
Compiling a list of the books you want to read during the year has several benefits. Taking the time to build a reading list is a signal to yourself of the importance you give to reading and more in general to gaining knowledge.
As soon as you start adding books to your list, you’ll soon realize that the number of books you can read in a year is finite. You will need to prune your list, which at least in my case is a painful process. But it’s absolutely necessary. Not only will it help you make the best use of your time. Sending books to a not-this-year list will also force you to think and gain clarity about what topics you really care about.
The list will also help you avoid falling to the song of the sirens and pick the latest and shiny book you learned about some days ago. When you finish reading a book, you just look at your curated list of books and decide what’s next. Of course this doesn’t mean that your list must be cast in iron. But it should be a clear guide of where are you investing your time (and money).
While in the process of deciding what to read, book recommendations can be of great help. There are a lot of sources for this, you’ll find some ideas at the end of this article.
2. Have a system in place so you read every day
One of the best tactics I’ve found is Shane Parrish’s advice of reading 25 pages every day. If you are reading just for the pleasure of reading, keeping track of the pages you read every day may seem anticlimatic to you. But if you read to gain knowledge, and like most humans are bound to time constraints, then reading 25 pages per day will help you achieve a reasonable pace and read on average three books every two months].
It also helps to block a specific time on for reading in your calendar2. Best if it’s at the same time of the day. This will help you build the habit of reading3, it will help you focus faster on what you are reading. If for whatever reason you break your reading chain and miss reading some days, try to restart your routine as soon as posible.
Few things are as rewarding as making friends with the eminent dead. Reading isn’t something to be done once a week to check a box; it’s something to do every day. —Shane Parrish
3. Connecting the dots
We live in an age where finding information is not a problem. Connecting ideas and coming up with new ones, however, does not happen just by collecting information. Although for 2019 I’ve set a reading goal that is challenging for me, if I have to sacrifice the number of books I read to gain deeper understanding of a topic, so be it. That’s one of the reasons of why I’m not into fast reading techniques, or use executive summaries of books.
Learning how to take better notes, and anything that helps you grow a “second brain” is something you should always be interested in.
In my case, in my reading process I make heavy use of highlights and notes. After finishing a book, I reread the notes and highlights and incorporate them into my knowledge system. This is process is time consuming, but is totally worth it.
4. (Bonus) Where to find books
There are lots of resouces that can help you find good titles to read. Depending on the topics you are interested in, you may find the following list useful.
- The book review section of The Gates Notes, Bill Gates’ personal page. Bill Gates is a long time avid reader, and writes reviews of the books he finds interesting.
- Brainpickings. Maria Popova started Brainpickings this living monument to intellectual hunger for cross-disciplinary curiosity and self-directed learning in 2006 as a weekly email that went out to seven friend.
- Taylor Pearson’s newsletter. Taylor is author of The End of Jobs, and writes about innovation, productivity, and the blockchain. Once a month he sends an email titled_Favorite Books, Articles, and Quotes_to his subscribers. You can also check his book notes.
- Farnam’s Street Blog, by Shane Parrish.
- Ryan Holliday’s Reading List and Favorite Read List for every year. Ryan is a writer and media strategist, author of several bestsellers about marketing, culture, and the human condition.
- Derek Sivers notes to more than 250 books.
You don’t have to agree with me about the importance of reading. People may have different priorities and motivation. However, we live in an age where self-learning becomes more relevant every day. As less people read books, reading becomes a real competitive advantage. It’s a very effective way of standing on the shoulders of giants.
Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash.
- The results for 2018 are mixed. On one hand, I read some very good books, three of which stand out: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval N. Harari; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson; and Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. On the other hand, because I didn’t stick to my reading routine, I read less books than the previous year. Non-fiction reading gets a space in my calendar. It’s a more conscious reading. Novels, I read them on my spare time, like before going to sleep. ↩
- In my case, if something is not in my calendar, it has a 99% percent probability it won’t get done. ↩
- Resolutions or goals without habits to support them are most likely to fail in short time. The exception may be situations where emotions about the resolution are strong enough to amass enough will to cross the dip and begin forming an habit. ↩