About two weeks ago I created a simple twitter bot: @timetostretch. Stretching every two hours or so when you work at a computer has clear benefits. I wanted a simple tool to remind me to do this. Playing around with the Twitter API was a really quick way to build such a tool. In addition - I was interested in testing the idea of twitted reminders - if effective perhaps I would build a more complex and ambitious system…
Thanks to Grackle and Ruby building the bot was dead simple. I wanted the reminders to tweet me a video link to different sets of stretching excerices… and finding good stretching videos on youtube is by far what took the longest.
The bot quickly proved completly ineffective in modifying my behaviour. The reasons for this were:
- A lack of clear conscious descision on my part to actually stretch at regular interval. Taking a break and stretching remains a thing I think it would be “nice” to do rather than something I am actually committed to doing.
- There was no sound to act as an alarm / audio cue to stretch.
- The reminder to stretch was drowned in the flow of tweets. It was too easy to ignore the call to stretch if a more interesting tweet drew your attention. In fact overall random web surfing was a more likely outcome than stretching
- Despite that the bot used Twitter, there was no social aspect to the activity of stretching. I failed to build a support group that would share and support my goal of stretching at regular intervals throughout the work day.
What I’ve learnt:
- The merits of a quick “sketch” of a simple idea. Building a rough unpolished prototype allows you to test the validity of an idea and allows you to: “Fail early. Fail fast.”
- I’d like to code more fun stuff that don’t neccerally have to result in an amazing finished product. Experiment, try new ideas…
Feb 12, 2010 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »
Sitting in front of a desk and computer all day isn’t very good for you. That’s why I’ve just created a simple twitter bot that reminds you to stretch every hour: http://twitter.com/timetostretch . Click on the links in the tweets and follow the exercises in the videos.
The TimeToStretch bot is a simple script that makes [...]
Jan 18, 2010 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »
Kaizen focuses on small continuous improvements. Learning keyboard shortcuts is a great way to make small but significant improvements in productivity for those who spend a lot of time working at a computer.
Save Time and Increase Productivity
Using a keyboard shortcut instead of the mouse is much faster. Repeated many times this represents a great boost [...]
Aug 13, 2009 | Categories: Applying the Japanese 5S Management System to IT, Uncategorized | Tags: 5S, kaizen, lifehack, productivity, zenhabits | Leave A Comment »
Archiving , labelling and deleting old emails is a straight forward process that if ruthlessly applied will get your email inbox close to zero. If you develop the positive habit of doing regular sweeps to process your new emails it’s fairly easy to maintain that near zero state. However getting from the 10 or 5 [...]
Jul 30, 2009 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: 5S, email, inbox zero, lifehack, productivity, zen | Leave A Comment »
Ever wish you could give a great presentation that captivates and inspires your audience?
Well let’s take a look at how Steve Jobs, one of the most charismatic public speakers in the world, does it. First we will look at some of the key techniques he uses. Then at how you can use them in an [...]
Jun 19, 2009 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: lifehack | Leave A Comment »
Adobe Bridge CS4 is a powerful media manager that lets you easily organize, browse, locate, and view creative assets. It provides centralized access to project files, as well as to XMP metadata tagging and searching capabilities. It has lots of neat features such as smart collections (a kind of virtual folders). If your serious [...]
Jun 03, 2009 | Categories: Applying the Japanese 5S Management System to IT | Tags: 5S zen productivity lifehack | Leave A Comment »
Soft on the eyes and not overly funky, this series of beautiful desktop wallpapers will help you stay concentrated and focused. If your desktop looks messy, try having a spring clean using this Japanese method. You’ll end up with a totally Zen computer…
Garden Buddha by ileen4justice
Mt_Fuji by bote_j
Blossom by alonenotalone
Miyajima Torii by jferbal
Berry Bokeh by [...]
May 30, 2009 | Categories: Applying the Japanese 5S Management System to IT, Uncategorized | Tags: 5S zen productivity lifehack | 1 Comment »
Based on five Japanese words beginning with ‘S’, the 5S Philosophy focuses on effective work place organisation and standardised work procedures. It’s part of the Toyota Production System and of Kaizen – a Japanese management philosophy of continuous improvement. Today we’ll look at how 5S can help us organise the files on our computer focusing [...]
May 28, 2009 | Categories: Applying the Japanese 5S Management System to IT | Tags: 5S, kaizen, lifehack, productivity | Leave A Comment »
Based on five Japanese words that begin with ‘S’, the 5S Philosophy focuses on effective work place organization and standardized work procedures. It’s part of the Toyota Production System and of Kaizen – a Japanese management philosophy of continuous improvement. Over the next few weeks, I’ll explore how the concepts of 5S can be applied [...]
May 21, 2009 | Categories: Applying the Japanese 5S Management System to IT | Tags: 5S Lifehack productivity | 1 Comment »
Quicken is the number one personal finance software. Mint is an “online Quicken” that’s seriously challenging it. It gained 160,000 users in its first six months after launching. It’s gaining 3000 new users a day and jumped from 600,000 to 850,000 users over the last few months. Mint’s got Quicken worried.
Comparing the approach taken to [...]
Mar 13, 2009 | Categories: Web Design | Tags: SEO | Leave A Comment »
