Year Three in Review

And so another year has passed since my last review. It’s been a busy year of learn­ing a new lan­guage in my equally new coun­try of res­i­dence, chang­ing jobs (and every­thing that entails) and, of course, writ­ing 200 posts here on Lone Gun­man (and thanks again to you: there’s been hun­dreds of com­ments… and 49,810 spam com­ments).

The pass­ing of another year can mean only one thing… Lone Gun­man is three, and this is Year Three in Review.

Visu­al­i­sa­tion of the 50 most fre­quently used key­words on Lone Gun­man in year three.

Items def­i­nitely not to miss are high­lighted (prob­a­bly not through an RSS feed reader). [LG] denotes my orig­i­nal post.

First, the three most read and shared posts from the past year: Scientifically-Proven Ways to Improve Cre­ativ­ity, Sta­tis­ti­cal Lit­er­acy Guides and (the infre­quently updated) Rules of a Gen­tle­man.

Cre­ativ­ity

• So what exactly is this “cre­ativ­ity” thing, any­way? I looked at the the­o­ries of Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi (author of Cre­ativ­ity), high­light­ing the five stages of cre­ativ­ity: prepa­ra­tion, incu­ba­tion, insight, eval­u­a­tion and elab­o­ra­tion.
• I dis­cov­ered the wikis that accom­pany O’Reilly’s ‘97 Things…’ series of books: there’s one for pro­gram­mers, soft­ware archi­tects and project man­agers.
• A favourite quote on cre­ativ­ity came from a wide-ranging inter­view with Ira Glass on cre­ativ­ity and being wrong. [LG]
• I make no secret of lov­ing sleep; it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing thing with many phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits. Another ben­e­fit: dream­ing is extremely impor­tant for cre­ativ­ity and insight. [LG]

Sleep

• Did some­one men­tion sleep? Here’s a sum­mary of the sur­pris­ing and dras­tic phys­i­o­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive effects of sleep depri­va­tion. [LG]
• If the ben­e­fits described in those last cou­ple of links aren’t enough to per­suade you to get back into bed, how about the cor­re­la­tion between a lack of qual­ity sleep and an increase in pre­ma­ture death?
• So off to bed, and don’t for­get the impor­tance of a sta­ble daily rou­tine in get­ting a good night’s sleep. [LG]

Hap­pi­ness

• If you’re new to hap­pi­ness stud­ies (sub­jec­tive well-being, as it’s often called in the lit­er­a­ture), a fan­tas­tic intro­duc­tion is David Brooks’ com­pre­hen­sive yet suc­cinct sum­mary of some of the most inter­est­ing research into what does and does not make us happy. [LG]
• In addi­tion to all that, another study look­ing at ‘tech­no­log­i­cal afflu­ence’ con­cludes that own­er­ship of almost all types of tech­no­log­i­cal goods increases our hap­pi­ness… except for tele­vi­sions. [LG]
• So with these (and many other) fac­tors influ­enc­ing our hap­pi­ness, I guess it’s time to ask the ques­tion, How much of our hap­pi­ness can be attrib­uted to our genes? [LG]
• And what about hap­pi­ness in our work life? I sum­marised the find­ings from three sep­a­rate sources show­ing that auton­omy, com­plex­ity, mas­tery, pur­pose and a con­nec­tion between effort and reward are the major fac­tors lead­ing to job sat­is­fac­tion.
• And after you’re sat­is­fied, how to keep moti­vated? Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink let in on the secrets of work­place moti­va­tion. [LG]

Gen­eral Per­sonal Development

• Look­ing for fur­ther moti­va­tion, life sat­is­fac­tion or use­ful advice? Clay­ton Christensen’s advice on how to apply man­age­ment the­ory prin­ci­ples to one’s per­sonal life is full of excel­lent lit­tle insights to help you along. [LG]
• Have goals you would like to achieve? Con­trary to some con­ven­tional wis­dom, research sug­gests that in some cir­cum­stances we should keep our goals secret [LG] and con­cen­trate on the ‘big pic­ture’ [LG].
• Then again, Leo Babauta tells us that goals are some­thing we should ‘let go of’. [LG]
• So what shall we do instead? Chad Fowler’s growth phi­los­o­phy is worth keep­ing in mind: are you bet­ter than yes­ter­day? [LG]
• If you ever feel uncom­fort­able turn­ing peo­ple down or request­ing any­thing, dis­cov­er­ing the dif­fer­ence between ‘Askers’ and ‘Guessers’ could very well change your social life. [LG]
• Michael Lopp’s advice for writ­ing that just hap­pens to be rel­e­vant in all walks of life: become com­fort­able with incom­plete­ness. [LG]
• When the author of Wrong edu­cated us on the mer­its and pit­falls of being wrong, we also dis­cov­ered how to spot bad advice: it’s sim­plis­tic, def­i­nite, uni­ver­sal and cer­tain. My accom­pa­ny­ing post high­lighted some depress­ing facts about being wrong.
• It’s also worth keep­ing in mind Dan Buettner’s TEDx talk on the myths of liv­ing and the nine com­mon lifestyle habits of those who live to be active at ages of 100+. [LG]

Phys­i­cal Health and Fitness

• On the topic of keep­ing sharp into old age: phys­i­cal exer­cise and var­i­ous other leisure activ­i­ties have a “very clear” correlation with men­tal acu­ity and the reduc­tion of men­tal decline. [LG]
• Another way to help reduce men­tal decline: lan­guage. Bilin­gual­ism has been found to cor­re­late nicely with a lower inci­dence of demen­tia. [LG]
• A great selec­tion of other body-based advice came from vet­eran trainer Mike O’Donnell’s exten­sive list of assorted health and fit­ness tips. [LG]
• My favourite post from the last year is an easy one to choose. It is also an extremely impor­tant one: Infor­ma­tion is Beau­ti­ful’s com­pre­hen­sive data visu­al­i­sa­tion map­ping the the effec­tive­ness (or not) of a wide range of health sup­ple­ments. If you read and share one thing; make it this. [LG]
• Do you want to know what else doesn’t work? Hand sani­tis­ers; ignore them and get a flu shot and wash your hands sen­si­bly instead. [LG]
• So exer­cise is good, right? We’ve agreed on that? So how to make our­selves do it? If we’re try­ing to per­suade our­selves (not just for exer­cise and likely not just our­selves, of course) inter­rog­a­tive self-talk is more moti­va­tional than declar­a­tive state­ments (“Will I…?” is supe­rior to “I will….”). [LG]

Per­sua­sion

• Made to Stick was one of the best books I read last year, and the authors have pro­vided an out­line of the six prin­ci­ples of cre­at­ing ‘sticky’ ideas: sim­plic­ity, unex­pect­ed­ness, con­crete­ness, cred­i­bil­ity, emo­tions, sto­ries. [LG]
• Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SEO­moz, cre­ated the Illus­trated Guide to the Sci­ence of Influ­ence and Per­sua­sion, based on six prin­ci­ples from Robert Cialdini’s much lauded Influ­ence (rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion, com­mit­ment and con­sis­tency, social proof, lik­ing, author­ity, scarcity). [LG]
• There’s also the ten time­less influ­encers of con­for­mity to help under­stand why peo­ple are influ­enced in the first place. [LG]
• Is some­one or some­thing wrong? Remem­ber that cor­rec­tions only ‘work’ if we already believe the cor­rected infor­ma­tion, oth­er­wise they rein­force our incor­rectly held beliefs.
• Exper­i­ment­ing with pric­ing or sales?
  • Giv­ing a por­tion of vol­un­tary pay­ments to char­ity could be worth­while. [LG]
  • And closely related to an old favourite, scarcity mar­ket­ing, is the influ­ence of sold-out prod­ucts on our pur­chas­ing behav­iour. [LG]
  • This year I first heard of the denom­i­na­tion effect: the phe­nom­e­non whereby we are more will­ing to spend the same sum of money in coins than in bills (because there are fewer psy­cho­log­i­cal bar­ri­ers).
  • And finally, when prices are reduced, the harder the men­tal com­pu­ta­tion required to deter­mine the mag­ni­tude of that reduc­tion, the smaller we beilieve the reduc­tion to actu­ally be. That’s cog­ni­tive flu­ency in action. [LG]
• So that’s one spe­cific way cog­ni­tive flu­ency influ­ences behav­iour. For more, Psy­Blog pro­vided a sum­mary of cog­ni­tive flu­ency research. [LG]
• And prac­tice your accent: cognitive flu­ency com­bined with accents sug­gests: as non-native speech is harder to process than native speech, we trust it less. [LG]
• And be wary of neuro-babble: irrel­e­vant neu­ro­science jar­gon added to an argu­ment per­suades us… even if we’re neu­ro­science stu­dents. [LG]
• Deal­ing with ‘sacred val­ues’? To per­suade describe trade­offs in terms of “costs and ben­e­fits” and “analy­sis” and def­i­nitely not in terms of finan­cial incen­tives. [LG]
• Won­der­ing whether to use num­bers or sto­ries to per­suade. One study sug­gests that numeric and nor­ma­tive feed­back (scores and com­par­a­tive infor­ma­tion) is more per­sua­sive and effec­tive than text feed­b­cak. [LG]
• This brings into per­spec­tive the idea of fur­ther­ing sci­en­tific causes by mov­ing away from the holier-than-thou mind­set of facts, data and the sci­en­tific method and toward per­sonal, per­sua­sive sto­ries. [LG]
• So how about per­sua­sion through design pat­terns?
  • Dan Lockton’s Design with Intent is a set of hon­est and open per­sua­sive design pat­terns. [LG]
  • Of course, be aware of the oppo­site: dark pat­terns are ‘evil’ design pat­terns. [LG]
• Behav­ioural game design is a hugely fas­ci­nat­ing topic that gained a lot of fol­low­ers through­out 2010. The the­o­ries apply to a lot more than gam­ing, but it’s one of the best ways to approach the topic. To that end, every link on my post intro­duc­ing behav­ioural game design is worth a read.

Busi­ness and Entrepreneurship

• After read­ing about the amount of infor­ma­tion large con­sumer seg­men­ta­tion busi­nesses track and use I researched it myself and found some fas­ci­nat­ing con­sumer seg­men­ta­tion resources.
• I also spent some time fol­low­ing Patrick McKenzie’s jour­ney as a one-man Micro ISV: the com­pi­la­tion of his best posts is a worth­while list of prac­ti­cal advice for small com­pa­nies. [LG]
• For shorter atten­tion spans and those with less time, all of Om Malik’s cho­sen ten essen­tial startup essays are worth­while reads. [LG]

Tech­nol­ogy

• After Joel Spol­sky retired his hugely pop­u­lar blog, Jan Willem Boer sum­marised each Joel on Soft­ware post into one or two sen­tences: that became an essen­tial sum­mary of busi­ness and tech­nol­ogy wis­dom. [LG]
• I dis­cov­ered the wikis that accom­pany O’Reilly’s ‘97 Things…’ book series: there’s 97 Things Every Pro­gram­mer Should Know, 97 Things Every Soft­ware Archi­tect Should Know and 97 Things Every Project Man­ager Should Know. [LG]
• And mov­ing away from the busi­ness side of tech­nol­ogy, Nicholas Carr argued for the ‘delinki­fi­ca­tion’ of web-based arti­cles as a way to decrease the cog­ni­tive load of online read­ing, thereby increas­ing our atten­tion span. An intrigu­ing idea. [LG]

Books

• For those with atten­tion spans con­ducive to read­ing books, you may well be inter­est­ing to hear of the fas­ci­nat­ing study (pdf) sug­gest­ing that the mere pres­ence of books in the house­hold can help a child’s intel­lec­tual devel­op­ment. [LG]
• So get buy­ing books! And for a quick list of excel­lent reads, it’ll be tough to beat Derek Sivers’ book list. [LG]

Edu­ca­tion

• Talk­ing of intel­li­gence devel­op­ment, this year I learnt that sim­ply know­ing that intel­li­gence can improve, improves intel­li­gence. [LG]
• A great resource for those look­ing to actively increase their own knowl­edge through study are these nine evidence-based study tips. [LG]
• How­ever, if you don’t have to time for delib­er­ate prac­tice, remem­ber that pas­sive expo­sure has been shown to be as effec­tive as prac­tice. [LG]
• One of my most vis­ited posts was the UK Government’s series of acces­si­ble yet com­pre­hen­sive ‘sta­tis­ti­cal lit­er­acy guides’.
• But why should you care about sta­tis­tics? Clive Thomp­son believes that sta­tis­ti­cal lit­er­acy (“the lan­guage of data”) is cru­cial to pub­lic life and func­tion­ing suc­cess­fully in our future soci­ety. [LG]
• And if you’re a designer? You absolutely must become sta­tis­ti­cally lit­er­ate in order to be an hon­est designer, says Smash­ing Mag­a­zine. [LG]
• And busi­ness edu­ca­tion? If you go to busi­ness school, you’ll likely hear seven or so influ­en­tial and game-changing speeches. Save some time and money with The Seven Keynote MBA. [LG]

Other (Typog­ra­phy, Psy­chol­ogy, Writ­ing, etc.)

• A fas­ci­nat­ing study came to my atten­tion look­ing at how the phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of objects we touch influ­ences our judge­ment and decision-making. [LG]
• And any talk even related to lan­guage can’t pass with­out point­ing out another fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle cour­tesy of researcher Lera Borodit­sky; this time on how lan­guage can influ­ence entire cul­tures. [LG]
• FontShop’s col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tional typog­ra­phy ebooks. [LG]
• With only twelve tips, Stephen King promises to teach us all we need to know about writ­ing in ten min­utes. [LG]
• For the future there’s Dou­glas Coupland’s enjoy­able proph­e­sis­ing on what the com­ing ten years hold for soci­ety and some new words to help us cope with the tran­si­tion.
• In terms of per­sonal rela­tion­ships, I enjoyed the insight­ful post look­ing at the dif­fer­ences between male and female friend­ships. Amus­ing, per­cep­tive and very accu­rate. [LG]

Thanks!

Now that my life is start­ing to resem­ble some­thing close to “nor­mal”, expect a much more reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule over the next twelve months.