Matthew Cornell

• "Flight of six" ice cream: While walking with my daughter around town (it's summer here and I get to spend a lot of time parenting - very good stuff, but does cut back on work time [1]) we decided to enjoy some ice cream together [2]. Immediately two thoughts occurred to me. First, because here in the U.S. restaurant portions are ridiculously large [3], so a "regular" is two large scoops - must be 20 WeightWatchers points! This will make me fat and unhealthy. Second, I love trying many different flavors, rather than one huge helping of one flavor (variety, spice, life, etc.) So I hit on an idea: Why not have an option for a "flight of six" - instead of one large scoop, serve six small tastes of different flavors. So Katie and I headed out to try it - and our local ice cream cafe was happy to accommodate! Perfect. A nice presentation would be to serve it in a pretty glass scalloped dish with six separate scoops to keep the flavors from running together, something like six of these connected.
  After a bit of research, it turns out that this option is common with alcohol, including beer, scotch, and tequila. I found only one mention of an ice cream version: The Phantom Gourmet Guide to Boston's Best Restaurants 2008 mentions ice cream "shooters" at Smith & Wollensky (I've never been there). What do you think? What else would this apply to?
• 2x2: Dangerous vs. Exciting: In patented ASCII-Vision(TM):

                 Dangerous         Safe
              +-------------+----------------+
     Exciting | Sky Diving  | Roller Coaster |
              +-------------+----------------+
       Boring | Cell + Car  |   Dilbert      |
              +-------------+----------------+

  I'm not totally happy with the names. Thoughts?
• Attitude self-coaching: Here's something I like to do before important interactions or events (e.g., consulting, sales calls, or workshops): I write out the top two or three positive attitudes I want to bring to the occasion. For example, if I'm nervous about a call regarding a possible problem I might go in Curious, >GraciousTransitions: A Secret Ingredient To Getting Things Done?) and has helped me a lot.
• Productivity tips from my automated dishwasher: (With apologies to Jack Handey and the ever amazing Nicholas Bate):
  • Like filing, does one prioritize ease of storage (just putting the dishes, cup, and cutlery willy nilly) or ease of retrieval (sorting likes together)?
  • Clearing cleaned dishes (e.g., emptying the inbox) is a kind of a forced closed list: All the clean ones must be removed before putting new (dirty) items in. Implications for collection tools...?
  • Emptying should require minimal thinking, which means batching likes (see above). This relates to the power of structure: Once we're in "plate mode," doing plates as a batch requires far less thinking than handling individual items. Implications for working your tasks list?
• Less is more: A quote from one of my clients (they're always teaching me something):

  Having less stuff on your list is not necessary selling yourself short.

• Attracting life: While sitting in my kitchen I noticed something moving in the potted tree on our back deck. Surprise! It had attracted a Robin. So a nice test in life: Does what I'm doing attract life?
• Matter, energy, and information: Is life all about inputs and outputs [4]? If so, implications: we can control the inputs (what we invite into our lives: people, media diet, thoughts), the process (e.g., the efficient turning of inputs into outputs - my specialty), and the outputs (what is valuable for us to do). Stimulated by this passage from Nicholas Carr's [5] book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google:

  All living systems, from amoebas to nation-states, sustain themselves through the processing of matter, energy, and information. They take in materials from their surroundings, and they use energy to transform those materials into various useful substances, discarding the waste. This continuous turning of inputs into outputs is controlled through the collection, interpretation, and manipulation of information. The process of control itself has two thrusts. It involves measurement - the comparison of the current state of a system to its desired state. And it involves two-way communication - the transmission of instructions and the collection of feedback on results.

References

• [1] This figures into the estimate of time available in my daily planning regime (see A Daily Planning Experiment: Two Weeks Of Accountable Rigorous Action). Note: This approach really hit a nerve, and led to professional phone coaching and a new consulting service (site not updated yet).
• [2] A decision I make pretty carefully - eating well and keeping the weight off is a challenge in our current lifestyle (not everyone has this choice, I realize). See What GTD And Weight Watchers Have In Common.
• [3] Esp. compared to (sane) European standards. See Less is More and Survey: Restaurants dishing out extra-large portions.
• [4] A favorite topic of mine. See When Inputs Exceed Your Workflow System's Capacity and The Productivity I/O Sweet Spot, Or Why Balance Is A Bad Thing.
• [5] You might enjoy his article Is Google Making Us Stupid?