Working On Me

My friend, Miles Henson, introduced me to this story. It concerns five frogs who sat together on a log. One of them decided to jump off. 'How many were left on the log?' Miles asked me.

My immediate thought was that four remained on the log, working on the basis of simple subtaction, but if that were the case Miles wouldn't have thought it worth telling me the story. Then I started thinking of what would happen if the frog unbalanced the log when leaping off, tipping one or more of his fellows from their own perches, but there was really no way to make a guess from the information I had.

Miles told me that there were still five frogs on the log. One of them decided to jump off, but he hadn't taken any action yet.

How much time do we all spend sitting on the log, having decided to do something but not actually doing it?

At http://www.grbps.com I maintain a website for the business I run with my friend, Graham. Over time, I've posted quite a few little mini articles there on popular software, featuring the kinds of little tricks that have really made a difference to me. They're all based on questions people have actually asked on web forums or face-to-face. Here is one of the best ones.

Q: In Excel I have a large table of data I print out regularly. I would like to have every other row shaded like on old printout paper to make it easier to read along lines. I've tried doing it manually but when I move data around it spoils the shading. Is there an easy way to do this which won't get messed up when I move data.

A: Yes, there is. I use it all the time. You need to select the whole worksheet, then from the 'Format' menu, select 'Conditional Formatting'.

Change the pulldown which reads 'Cell value is' so it reads 'Formula is' and then enter this formula in the empty field:

=MOD(ROW(A1),2)=0

Next, hit the 'Format' button and on the 'patterns' tab choose a colour. The lighter ones on the bottom row of the palette work best.

This is the computer age. With a PC on every desk and immense computing power available to all, we are more productive than ever before. We can accomplish in a few hours more than the last generation were able to in a month. Can't we?

Well, actually, no. Repeated research shows the uncomfortable fact that we are no more productive now than we were in the 1950s, when the average desk was graced not by a PC, but often by a blotter and inkwell. How can this be? We are so used to the boon of personal computing power, many of us would feel powerless without a PC; in a very real sense, many jobs are just not possible any more without use of a computer. This dependence is a price worth paying provided the payoff is more productivity, more profit, more leisure time or less stress, but it seems that none of these have typically arisen from computerisation over the last 50 years.

Why not? Here's my take on the issue: we're all spending more time and effort on presentation. Just think about how a 1950s manager would have written a report. He (because it would always have been a he) would have written it out longhand or dictated it, and his secretary would have quickly and efficiently typed it. She (because it would always have been a she) would have typed at an extremely fast rate, certainly 80 wpm or more, and would have had no choice over fonts, text size and the like. The options would have been confined almost solely to use of the shift key. Layout would be automatic, of course. Assuming there were no typing errors, the job would be finished once the last word was typed. There would be no repagination, no tweaking of styles, no endless changing of heading levels. Furthermore, the manager would have used all this typing time doing something else.

Compare that experience to today's manager's approach; equipped with Microsoft Word, but probably not with a secretary, he or she types himself or herself, probably at considerably less than 80 wpm and then spends the same time again, or possibly more, on tinkering with the formatting. A more enlightened outlook on sexual equality is widespread, but business efficiently certainly isn’t.

And here's another example. There was a time when budgets and accounts were only handled by specialists with paper ledgers and poor social skills. But now that every manager has Microsoft Excel, he or she takes on these tasks him or herself. Not only could a specialist accountant do the work in a fraction of the time, but Excel also has extensive formatting and layout tools, the great 21st century thief of time!

And we haven't even touched on programming yet. If it were a crime to spend 8 hours writing a program which over the course of a decade might save 30 minutes or so, then I would inevitably be labelled a serial offender, as would most of my social circle.

What will define our progress this century – if we’re lucky – is the definition of a new working relationship with the PC and a return to specialism in business. Maybe then we'll finally start enjoying the long-awaited computer productivity boom.

The latest craze in spiritual self-help is the phomenon they call 'The Secret'. It's a DVD, a book, a series of workshops and lots more besides. It's based around the so-called 'law of attaction' which is sometimes called the 'cosmic ordering system'.

The basic principle is this: concentrate on what you want, act as if you already have it, and the universe will rearrange itself so that you actually do. It's a nice idea, of course, and the producers of 'The Secret' even bring in some 'experts' to give a pseudo-scientific explanation of how it works (although not one a real scientist would recognise or give credence to.)

The thing is that it can work, in the same way that affirmations or visualisations work: internally. It's not the universe doing all this, but your own subconscious mind. If you persist in a belief that you own a thing and you actually don't, your subconscious will set about driving your actions so that eventually you do.

It seems to me a sad and cynical world view that robs the technique of any personal power and replaces it with new age loopiness.

I have learned a lot from reading some of the better blogs on the web, and have finally plucked up the willpower to begin my own. Here's what I want to include in my blog:

• Ideas on personal development which I have benefitted from personally
• Ideas I want to try out
• Tips for the software people use every day
• Perhaps some of my creative writing

It is fitting to make a start on this project now, just ahead of my fortieth birthday. There are some new goals I'm setting myself and some new skills I want to build. I'm hoping my blog can help me on the journey.