David Allen tells Google how to Get Things Done

Here's a neat video I found the other day, while I was avoiding doing all the things I feel I ought to be doing:

This is one of the books I've been using this year to prioritize and organize, and at some point I'd like to write a blog about all that stuff, but for now, here's the man himself.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

This weekend, I completed the Luton Marathon. It took me nearly five hours, because I may not have trained as well as I could have, or carb-loaded as well as I could have; but I finished it, and thereby crossed off one of my goals for the year.

I can definitely call it an interesting experience. Up until now I've generally participated in larger-scale (if distinctly shorter) runs - I believe there were about 2800 places or so, in comparison with the tens of thousands who run the Reading Half-Marathon or the London Marathon. On the positive side, this meant there weren't the gigantic throngs that characterize those other events; on the negative side, it also meant that the organizers weren't able to get the roads closed throughout the course, so as the day wore on I found myself increasingly in the company of motor vehicles.

And it was a day-long affair - as I said, I took nearly five hours, which means I started running at about 10am and finally dragged myself across the finish line at almost 3pm. It's difficult to express the time it took, although for the sake of comparison I'll note that when I took the train to Edinburgh earlier this year that trip took less time than my run. As the shadows lengthened, I found myself worrying that I might still be running after dark.

That wouldn't have happened, as it turned out, because there was a strict time limit of five hours, but I'll admit I wasn't at my most rational after around 4 hours of constant motion.

My fellow runners presented an interesting case study too. On shorter runs I've felt a nice vibe, of a bunch of people all working toward the same goal, with a refreshing lack of aggro (refreshing in the context of how much aggro you get on a daily basis in London, that is). But I sense that marathon runners are a breed apart; whereas my various half-marathons have featured the odd nod or encouraging shoulder-tap, I actually got chatting with people during the run.

One guy was doing it for the first time (like me), though he lived right on the course and had participated in the relay in previous years. Another gentleman, who'd hurt his knee somewhere in Lap 3, told me he'd participated the previous year; for the rest of the day we passed each other here and there, always with a word of encouragement, and we greeted each other like veterans after we finished.

My favorite, though, has to be the Slovakian guy I was running alongside for the last mile or so, whose stop-start tactic was even more dramatic than mine. Whereas I was reduced, by that time, to walking for one minute and running for five, he'd take off at top speed for about thirty seconds at a stretch, stop and stretch his hamstrings (giving me enough time to catch up), then dash off again. When I asked him what he was doing he explained that he couldn't run slowly. In any case, he eventually outpaced me and disappeared around a corner, not to be seen again until we were retrieving our backpacks after the race.

Most impressive were the folks bearing T-shirts with the insignia of the 100 Marathon Club, none of whom were younger than about 60. Somewhere in the first half of the race I overheard someone asking one of these 100-marathon guys how many he'd participated in, and the old fellow answered something on the order of 470 marathons.

On the train home another runner (who'd clocked up her 60th) said that she'd been chatting to them as well, and one of these folks had participated in 37 marathons this year alone. My interlocutor shrugged and pointed out that if you're running a marathon every week, you don't need to do anymore training. Fair point.

Incidentally, I also got passed by one of these grey panthers as I was struggling through the third lap. A little old lady trundled past me and blared something cheerful and encouraging at me, thereby fulfilling what appears to be a rule of marathon running - that you must get overtaken at least once by an old person.

So two days later, I'm still sore from my calves to my shoulders, I have a twinge in my right knee that leaves me alternately gasping and cursing, and I'm secretly afraid that the nails on both big toes are getting ready to fall off. But I certainly feel proud of myself, for having signed up, trained and kept going until the end - I was tempted at so many points to give up and ask to go home, but the only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that I'd have to do it again.

Of course, if I do sign up for another, it'll now be with the knowledge that I can complete a full marathon without dropping dead three hours in. But, unlike those old folks from the 100 Marathon Club, I won't be doing it next weekend.

The Future of the Left

I've had a week to digest the results of the election, so I thought it was time to look at some of the implications of the result, and think about where Barack Obama should go next. Obviously, this is influenced by my own political preferences, so the below may not play well in Alabama or Texas.

Divided by a common language

I think the first point is the rash of petitions to secede from the Union, which apparently are an inevitable consequence of presidential elections. Obviously none of these petitions is serious, but it kind of points up how certain people feel there's a gulf between themselves and their fellow Americans. More than reaching across the aisle to congressional Republicans, the Obama administration should be finding some way to show the electorate that it's a government representing the interests of all 50 states. I'd like to suggest breaking up the banks, to avoid another instance of "too big to fail", but I know that would be greeted by shrieks of socialism.

Sit down, shut up, and hold on

That said, it would be nice if the administration didn't worry unduly about the complaints of right-wing crackpots. I'm perhaps overly fond of quoting the West Wing, but a paraphrasing of what Leo McGarry said once is apposite here: They need to understand that they lost the election, so it's time to sit down and shut up for a couple of years.

I'm aware things aren't quite so simple. However, a great many Republican politicians are simply not serious (by contrast, the only non-serious Democrat I can name is Dennis Kucinich, and he's not that bad); this hasn't changed since President Obama's first term, when he perhaps attempted too hard to reach across the aisle. If only one thing marks the president's second term, it should be reform of the Senate filibuster, so that a lawmaker who wants to derail a piece of legislation actually has to stand up and talk for as long as he or she can. This will cut across party lines, so let's get it done.

Is this rash getting bigger?

A second term for President Obama means an extra four years or so for the healthcare reform to settle and for Americans to see the benefits. The most important thing the President can do in this regard is take to the road and explain to the electorate how exactly it benefits them. I've been saying for years that he should have presented it as a bailout for regular people by making sure that they won't go broke paying for medical care; this is his chance to do so.

On a more philosophical note, why are certain parts of the healthcare law so controversial? I understand conservative unease over provisions requiring people to have health insurance, but why are they in such a hurry to let insurance companies get away with dropping customers - who've been paying for their insurance - the minute these customers get sick? Frankly, that should have been illegal from the start.

Here be socialists

Speaking of things that right-wingers deem socialistic, it'd be nice for American foreign policy to improve, and maybe become a little more European. Not much, though - I think that NATO serves a valuable role, and that Europe needs to take a more active role in combat operations, where they're needed. I support the idea of America policing the world insofar as it's policing things that can lead to international instability; however, that means the rest of the world should be helping with the policing. Whoever heads up the State Department for the next few years should be sent out to ensure that allies in Europe and elsewhere are pulling their weight.

That said, we need to be pushing our own weight around a lot less, notably in Afghanistan. Some on the right claim that we'd lose face if we pulled out of Afghanistan now, but the way I see it, the longer we stay there the worse we look. Hamid Karzai is already making the Western powers look like fools, corruption is rampant and the Taliban always seem to be on the rise again. Pulling out now might scare Karzai straight; if not, we really shouldn't be trying to impose government on Afghanistan without knowing anything about the place. The British tried it, the Soviets tried it, and we really ought to be learning from their mistakes.

And the last point I want to make on foreign policy is this: we need to stop with the drone strikes in sovereign nations. It's nice to think that we can take out the "bad guys" with the push of a button, like in a videogame, but in reality I don't believe this can be squared with international law or ethical conduct. And not to be alarmist, but where does it end? With drone strikes on US soil? No thanks.

Will blog for food

I read a story a few months ago in which President Obama apparently asked Steve Jobs what it would take to build the iPhone in America. Jobs's response was that those jobs weren't coming back.

With all due respect, that's not good enough, and it's pretty short-sighted. If there are actually ways to build iPhones or other electronics at a reasonable cost in the US, we should be looking at them. The age of low-skill, high-wage jobs may be over, but there is still demand for machinists and other assembly-line jobs; and more to the point, we can't all be either investment bankers or retail clerks. And maybe entitlements like Medicare or Social Security wouldn't be in such trouble if more people were earning enough to pay into them. Just a thought.

Grizzly Bear: Neither Fish Nor Fowl

Because of the company I keep, I typically find myself going to see Grizzly Bear live whenever they're in London. So it was last week, when the band was in town promoting its latest album, Shields. Ahead of the concert I duly bought the album and listened to it, so that on the big day I was ready to hear them play the material live. I'd formed some impressions and opinions, and armed with these I trooped into the Brixton Academy to see if the band would live up to expectations. But to be charitable, I ended the evening kind of pissed off.

I'd seen the band twice before, and found them generally inoffensive, even enjoyable in parts. That said, they aren't one of those bands that works the crowd, gets people dancing and singing along, and all that jazz. It's just, on this occasion, I really couldn't build up even the connection I've had when listening to them on drives through places like Big Sur.

Listening on, I kept thinking about all the things I've heard or read about them - one music site suggests that their material is not so much written as "composed" - implying that they've got less in common with other rock bands and more with the likes of Mozart, Steve Reich or whoever.

For me, Grizzly Bear symbolizes this tendency that people have of separating passion from virtuosity. We're at a place, culturally, where what everyone seems to value in music is how passionately an artist plays, regardless of how good they are. In fact, it seems that for most music fans, at least in London, actually knowing how to play an instrument is a sign that you've left behind the ideals of punk or whatever. Naturally, there are fans who go in the other direction, preferring the chin-stroking kind of music to anything loud or brash or danceable.

Both groups are more similar than they'd like to admit, especially because they're both constantly in search of that one obscure band that one-ups whatever all their friends are listening. Finnish noise-rock? Check. A punk band composed entirely of twelve-year-olds who've never picked up an instrument before? Check.

So where does Grizzly Bear fit into this? I'd put them into the latter camp, if for no other reason than that don't seem to be interested in building any sort of rapport with the audience. Listening to them last week, I felt like they'd have been just as happy playing in an empty auditorium - their music doesn't invite any sort of participation. And, paradoxically, the audience seemed happy to leave them to it - apart from one cracked-out girl who was dancing up a storm in front of me, the most movement I saw in the crowd was a bit of head-bobbing here and there.

I guess what I'm getting at here is, can't we have good musicians who also make you want to sing along? The guys in Grizzly Bear are meant to have been music students once - I don't doubt that they're better musicians than I ever will be, but the comment above about their music being "composed" shows that the writer really doesn't know anything about contemporary (ie modern classical) music.

There's a place for both cerebral music and ballsy music. But by not engaging the listener, Grizzly Bear isn't either.

The New 30

Back to the Future is on TV this evening, which is appropriate because I've been thinking about it recently. Not so much the actual film (although I always have time for it and its sequel), but more the fact that 30 years doesn't seem such a long time anymore.

There's always a lot of talk about how 40 is the new 30, but it usually means that people are doing things at the age of 40 that previous generations did at the age of 30. I think, though, that 40 is also the new 30 in entertainment, specifically in time travel stories and in flashbacks.

I remember noticing this for the first time when I was watching Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which has flashbacks to the Cylon War four decades previous. At first that struck me as a gigantic span of time - how old was Bill Adama anyway? But then I did the math, and figured if he was flying against the Cylons in his 20s, and running away from them in his 60s, then it made sense.

What'd you say about running away, punk?

Contrast this with Back to the Future - if you wanted a time to contrast with 1985, then 1955 was a pretty good bet. For one thing it felt properly remote, but not so much so that Marty's parents would be too young - or, in the 1985 portions of the movie, too old. And frankly, 30 years was pretty much all the parents were rated for - back in the 80s a person in their 60s clearly had one foot in the grave. Whereas now, someone in their 60s can reasonably look forward to about 20 or 30 more years of rollerblading and managing their diabetes (which is what old folks get up to, if TV commercials are to be believed).

"Time to plan my retirement, then roller-blading 'til I drop!"

If you need another example, Men in Black 3 does go back in time less than 40 years (back to 1969, to be precise), but I think it still contributes to my thesis. Going back exactly 30 years would have taken Will Smith's character back to 1972, and the 1970s have a different feel to them, in the movies at least, than the 1960s.

I'm sure there are further examples and counter-examples, enough so that we could sit here and argue about it until Nike releases those self-tying shoes and our bosses can fire us by fax. But I think it's interesting how entertainment is adjusting to demographic shifts in longevity.

The Frad Lab World Tour 2012: Maxing Out the Credit Cards in Hong Kong

Ever since I went to Thailand two years ago, I’ve been obsessing over getting back to Asia. It seems a little trite to say it, but it’s a completely different world, one that exists in parallel to the English-speaking world. It’s very easy, living in the UK or the US or wherever, to assume that what’s important to us is just as important to the rest of the world. In the UK, you don’t need to go so far to find places where that isn’t strictly true, but at the same time, Germany, Italy and France get much of the same stuff as we do.

So my first experience of Asia was a revelation; given that Phuket is right next to Malaysia and Singapore, it was full of Malays, Chinese, Indians, all speaking English to one another but completely unaffected by the world I know. I knew I was going to have to find a way to get back, and see more of it.

My stop in Hong Kong was not part of my original plans, though. At about the start of 2012 I decided this would be the year I finally visited Australia. I made sure to broadcast this fact to as many people as possible – like when setting a fitness goal, I wanted to be accountable to as many people as possible, so I’d actually go through with it.

One of the people I broadcast this plan to was a friend who, as it happened, was about to move to Hong Kong for work. She duly suggested that I make a stop over on my way, and further shamed me into action by saying that my initial tone indicated I wasn’t going to. And to be honest, I’m glad she did.

The first thing to say about Hong Kong – which is to say, the first thing I noticed – was how familiar it looked. Walking around the city that first morning, it felt like I’d crossed the world only to land back in San Francisco; but a San Francisco that consists only of Chinatown. Sparkling new high-rises stand interspersed with slightly more run-down apartment buildings, and the corners are garnished with tropical plants or little street markets. It was alien but familiar at the same time.

The next thing I learned, once I actually started going into the buildings, was that there are malls everywhere in the city. On my first day in the city, because I had around 12 hours before I could meet my friend, I must have visited half a dozen of them, all in an attempt to stay awake or, alternately, to find someplace where I could take a discreet nap.

Hong Kong’s malls shouldn’t have been so surprising to me, but I guess I never really thought about it until then; I’d known since childhood that you could find all kinds of crazy stuff in Hong Kong, from toys to electronics, but somehow I’d never have expected it to look so much like Southern California.

Of course, all the malls make sense when you realize how swelteringly hot it is in Hong Kong; you find yourself sweating profusely the minute you step out of one of the buildings, and the air is about as thick as clam chowder. I was told that Hong Kong’s social life effectively revolves around the malls, and to be honest, I can see why.

That said, the malls are also there for the mainland Chinese, who occupy a strange, kind of derided place in Hong Kongers’ mental landscape. According to my friend, the stores don’t list prices on the sale items because the shoppers from mainland China just sweep everything up.

You sort of get the sense, talking to Hong Kongers, that they regard the rest of China as the great unwashed; when I suggested that this trip was technically my first taste of China, someone else snorted with derision and said, “This isn’t China.”

That may be true; but it’s certainly much more China than anywhere else I’ve been. And my friend pointed out, rebutting her friends’ claims that Hong Kong is incredibly diverse, that 95% of the population is Chinese, and 95% of them are Cantonese.

Official culture also regards Hong Kong as part of China, at least if museums are anything to go by. I was told the terracotta warriors were on display somewhere, though I didn’t manage to find them; but I did get to the Museum of Art, which featured an exhibition on the Qing Qianlong Emperor, in among the usual traditional Chinese art.

Whichever you agree with, in any case, it’s always clear that you’re in Asia. This is most apparent on the giant escalator that takes you from Central, by the harbor, up almost to the Peak. Trundling up or down with the commuters (it goes down in the morning and up for the rest of the day), you’re presented with a shifting panorama of traditional Chinese pharmacies, Korean photographers, Chinese curio shops, and the kinds of open-faced dive bars that look like something out of Patong, in Phuket.

So to sum up, I think I successfully got my Asia fix for the year from my three days in Hong Kong. Just have to figure out when I can get back. 

A Plea for Civility in Aircraft Design

Travelling abroad is naturally an occasion to learn new things, experience new cultures and breathe new air, but more prosaically it is also an opportunity to evaluate a new airline (even if this evaluation is based on the rather limited view from the economy seats). I generally clock enough long-haul miles at Christmas that I feel like I've figured out how best to ensconce myself in my little cocoon for about ten hours at a time; flying on new airlines forces me to modify my tactics.

Before I go any farther, I'll point out the obvious, if glossed-over, fact: every airline's economy section is pretty much the same. Tiny seats, no legroom, and the undying hatred of the airline staff if you go off-script in any way. The food is typically uninspiring and the cutlery is plastic, which is undoubtedly to reduce the plane's weight, but also reminds the passenger that he is no more than one of the Great Unwashed. The Communist Manifesto starts to make sense when you travel economy.

That said, there are a couple of differences between airlines. These generally relate to the overall design of a plane, and can be navigated with the use of sites like SeatGuru.com. Others relate to the kind of food you get on board - Thai Airways always has a delicious Thai dish on offer, while Cathay Pacific actually gives you a third option beyond "beef or chicken", namely some form of noodles. And if you're really unlucky, you might find yourself on a long-haul flight without a personal video screen, forced to die a little inside as everyone else in your row laughs at Marmaduke (this actually happened).

But, pace Slate's Witold Rybczynski, there really is more to say about seat design in economy than packing folks in as closely as possible. For example, given that the personal video screen is pretty much ubiquitous now (other than on Thai Airways), it leads to questions about where to put the controls for the damn thing. Does it go in the seat-back, under the screen? Or do you put it somewhere in the armrest?

Cathay, I learned in the last couple of weeks, goes for the former, while Virgin and British Airways prefer different versions of the latter. BA puts them on top of the armrest, where a clumsy elbow can change the channel or knock the volume to ear-splitting levels; Virgin, by contrast, goes for the inside of the armrest, which effectively limits your range of movement even further, if such a thing is possible. Over the last few Christmases I've innocently shifted in my seat only to drive the volume up way past tolerable.

There's also the seat pocket in front of you, where the in-flight magazine and air-sickness bags live. Cathay prefers plastic seat-backs (I guess because they really do think we're animals?), so this takes the form of a bulging piece of netting that fails in accommodating the book you've brought on board, while also, paradoxically, taking away leg space and making it even more awkward to try getting in or out of your seat for those leg-stretching breaks you really need to be taking.

I could go on, but these are the most egregious examples. The point, as every good architect knows, is that form follows function: Richard Branson or Willie Walsh or whoever runs Cathay doesn't give a flying shit (pun intended) about economy travellers' comfort, but it would be nice if whoever designed the interiors of the plane ever had to actually sit in the seats they've devised.

Or to put it another way, just look at Ryanair: the seats don't move, the legroom is negligible and the seat-backs are plastic; but paradoxically, it feels more comfortable, because you don't have the seat pocket or the screen controls cluttering up your personal space. It's no better or worse than a bus.

Which isn't to say that the long-haul carriers should emulate Ryanair; Michael O'Leary clearly has nothing but contempt for his customers. But Virgin, BA and the rest should remember that they aren't running a bus service. A thoughtfully designed economy section would win them more repeat business.