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I just went to ScreenR to try out this download-less screencasting site. It requires me to log in using my Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. account. Creating a separate account on ScreenR.com isn’t possible.

Am I the only one who is vaguely disturbed by this? This puts Google, Yahoo, etc. in the position of having an accumulated list of all the sites I use and the login credentials I use to access them. I simply don’t know if I want every site I use, every email I receive, and every person I contact conveniently located in a single database. While I’m not particularly worried about Google or Yahoo, history is full of cases of databases being hacked, stolen, or subpoena’d by people and groups that have political or social agendas.

For those who think such things just don’t happen in America, as recently as 2004 administration, congressional aides hacked into the opposing party’s computer files and leaked them to the press. Never mind the “outing” of CIA agent Valerie Plame as a political maneuver designed to put pressure on her husband.

So I’m cautious. We’re putting more and more of our personal, private information into the hands of fewer and fewer companies. Do I want to log in using my Google account? No. I want to log in using credentials that connect only to that web site. Sadly, that’s becoming a rarer option.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned?

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I’m attending a workshop that has about 10 Americans, and 140 people from about 20 other countries. It’s fascinating to experience such a variety of attitudes about life. I forget how much of what I take as “true” is simply an compilation of American cultural biases that others don’t share.

It’s also enlightening to hear their stereotypes of America, their impressions of being here for the first time, and their reactions when I perhaps present some data that would suggest their stereotypes aren’t accurate.

What’s most surprising that *you’ve* learned from people in other cultures? (Either about their culture or your own)?

“Challenge questions” on websites reduce security.

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I just got finished answering nine security questions for my payroll processing login. You know the kind, “What was the first name of the person you first kissed on the lips (pets don’t count)?”

Supposedly, these questions make us all more secure. I think they make us less secure.

They used to say, “Choose a really hard-to-guess password. Don’t use your mother’s maiden name, or anything that would be easy for someone to guess.” In those days, if a thief wanted to break into your account, they had to figure out two things: 1) what easy-to-remember password you chose—for example, your mother’s maiden name—and 2) what it actually was, for example, Judy Dench.

Now, banks and other “secure” institutions happily take half of the effort out of that equation. By virtue of the challenge question, they already tell a would-be hacker which piece of information they need. All the hacker needs to do is find that piece of information. It shouldn’t be hard, given that 99% of the sites that use these challenge questions ask for the same paltry, easily-obtained pieces of information.

I make up random answers to these “secure” questions, so they’re really pretty much impossible to guess. But since I had to do nine of them for my payroll service, I had to write all nine down. I’ll never remember them otherwise.

And now the universe collapses on itself: The ridiculously convoluted, insecure challenge question system is silly and insecure. To make it secure, I had to choose hard-to-guess answers. But I can’t commit nine to memory, so I had to write them down, making them insecure again.

It shouldn’t surprise me, though. My payroll company’s HTTPS security certificate had the wrong hostname on it, and their system only worked on Internet Explorer. With technical prowess like that, I can imagine that deep down inside, they haven’t the foggiest clue what constitutes security.

Sadly at this point, neither do I.

How to quit smoking without going nuts

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On my Facebook page, a member of the Get-it-Done Guy community asked: how do I quit smoking without losing my mind?

How to quit smoking is a huge topic. I’ll answer in a couple of seconds, in the hopes I can at least point you to some good resources. If I were going to quit smoking, based on everything I’ve been exposed to, here are the tools I’d use. I don’t know if this will work—I’ve never smoked—but this is what I do whenever I’m trying to change a physical habit.

I’ve used these techniques around eating, when I discovered that my diet as a 19-year-old somehow didn’t look or feel as good once I was past adolescence. I also use these techniques to overcome my resistance to exercise and pushing myself at the gym.

There are three areas I concentrated on: dealing with the physical sensations, dealing with my beliefs and mental habits, and dealing with the actual behavioral triggers to eating.

Physical sensations. I would eat until I felt stuffed, instead of eating until I stopped feeling hungry. I used self-hypnosis and gave myself a lot of suggestions like, “as soon as my body is no longer hungry, let me feel full.” And “with every bite I take once I’m no longer hungry, let me feel fuller and fuller.” For the gym, I used hypnosis so sore muscles now feel good to me and immediately make me think of how studly I’m becoming. *grunt*

For smoking, I would pay close attention to the physical sensations of wanting a cigarette and use hypnosis to make those same sensations triggers for feeling like taking a deep breath, or feeling good about how I was quitting smoking.

Beliefs that trigger me. When contemplating going to the gym, my first thought would be, “that’s so much work!! It will be so unpleasant!” I would also think, “I just don’t have the genetics to be able to get a really good-looking body.”

The most effective thing I’ve found to identify and deal with beliefs that trigger or get in the way of physical behaviors is The Work of Byron Katie. You can buy her book, Loving What Is, or download the entire important pieces of the book for free at http://www.thework.com.

Though Katie markets The Work as self-help, I even use it for very concrete things like physical preparation for singing. I used to have trouble hitting certain high notes and noticed that right before I sang the note, I thought, “This is a high note. I’ll have to reach for it,” and that thought triggered the tension in my throat. I did The Work on that thought and suddenly became calm and clear in my singing.

For smoking, I would write down every belief I could find about smoking and do The Work on them. For example, “I look cool when I smoke,” “I need to smoke to calm down,” “Smoking feels good,” “Smoking will help me feel better,” etc.

Behavioral triggers. When you start to do an unwanted behavior, you can change the very action of the behavior into a reminder to do something else. For example, if I give in to my desire for Oreo ice cream cake, I arrange for the sight of it approaching my mouth to trigger a reminder that looking like a stud-muffin is way more important to me than eating a second piece of Oreo ice cream cake.

For behavior triggers, I use the “swish pattern” from NLP (neurolinguistic-programming), as discussed in the book Using Your Brain—For a Change by Richard Bandler.

For smoking, I would use the swish pattern to shift from the image of my hand approaching my mouth with a cigarette or lighter to a reminder of how great I’ll look, feel, and smell(!) when I no longer want or need cigarettes.

I hope this helps.

Irony? Not really. Humor? Yes!

I posted this to my Facebook page: It isn’t ironic when I’m late to a meeting or put something off. It’s unexpected, not ironic (unless it was my efforts to prevent it that made it happen). There’s really nothing unexpected about me putting something off. That’s how I manage my workload. As for being late to meetings? I hate meetings. Being late is a compliment; it means I cared enough to show up at all. 🙂

The responses have blown me away. Let me explain the thinking behind this status update. Everywhere I go, if I’m 10 seconds late, or if I leave my pencil in my car, or if I don’t have a pad of people, the person I’m with happily smirks and proclaims, “Pretty ironic, you being the ‘Get-it-Done Guy’ and all.”

To begin with, that’s not actually irony. irony is when there’s a direct contradiction between the intent of an action and its effect. It’s when you try to make something happen and your very efforts prevent it from happening. If I am tying my shoes to make sure I don’t trip, and in the act of tying them, I trip over my hands, that’s ironic. A somewhat more common example is someone who so wants to preserve their relationship that they smother their partner so much the partner eventually leaves.

It is rarely my attempts to be on time that delay me. It is rarely my attempts to be organized that lead me to forget my pencil. Thus, while it may be unexpected for me to be without a pencil, it’s almost certainly not ironic.

My comment about the meeting was supposed to be humor. Lighten up! I was kidding!

Even if I wasn’t, though, keep in mind that I’m not necessarily maximizing on-time-ness. I always take it in the larger context of my life map (Chapter 1 of my book). When my goal is business efficiency, I’m pretty darned good at what Corporate America calls “productivity.” When my goal is having a balanced, happy life, I still optimize what I’m doing, but it won’t necessarily fit Corporate America’s definition of productivity; I’m using a different metric.

There’s also the emotional component, but I won’t go into detail. Instead, suffice to say: imagine yourself in my place, being teased by someone who’s consumed 165,000 words of my content for free, is asking for more free advice, and tells me they’ve been thinking of buying my $15 book (on which I’ll see $1 of royalties). And then they call me a hypocrite. Teasingly, perhaps, but that’s basically what they’re saying. Under those conditions, when my blood sugar is low, I might overreact.

Look out Comcast: Apple soon to disrupt cable industry!

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Today at the WWDC, Steve Jobs announced the latest innovation from Apple: the untethered video Pod (vPod). Even as the iPod turned the world of MP3 players on its head, and the iPhone reshaped the cellular landscape, the vPod is poised to be a disruptive force for the entire cable industry.

This revolutionary new idea takes streaming video to a whole new level. The video display device receives video real-time and displays it smoothly, entirely without wires or any kind of physical connection. Though Jobs did not confirm some of the sexier rumors surrounding the device, a knowledgable source from inside Apple suggests that the vPod will require no monthly subscription, and will be able to receive its videos directly, for free, from transmitting stations at key locations in major urban areas.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt enthusiastically showed Google’s commitment to the idea of untethered access, with the introduction of Multi-Access Portraits, a version of Google Maps that operates without the need for an internet connection. “We take not only the streets you’re interested in, but also all surrounding streets and display them on a single large sheet of pressed cellulose pulp,” Schmidt explained. “You can take the M.A.P. with you anywhere, even when internet connectivity is unavailable. By visually inspecting the M.A.P., you can determine the sequence of right and left turns needed to travel between two points without the aid of a trillion-dollar network and multi-million dollar physical infrastructure.” Showing their commitment to providing users with a comprehensive selection of choices, the M.A.P. can be folder up to 16,000 different ways to fit neatly into a rear pant pocket.

When asked for their opinion of the new technology, Microsoft commented, “We are listening to our customers. They say they want a product with fewer bugs that’s easier to use.” Their competing product is projected to be released within a mere sixteen months of Apple’s product. It is a cable-tethered television system, but, as they are quick to point out, with a cable that is .001% narrower than before. “This system is virtually cable-less. It represents a revolutionary new diameter, heralding the coming of a whole new age of technology,” proclaimed Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO, “People want the same thing as ever, only better.”

A new entrant into the PDA market, a U.K.-based company that processes trees, is entering the PDA market with their own liberating device. “Our PDA requires neither batteries nor an A/C adapter,” they explained. “It has perfect handwriting recognition, infinite resolution, millions of colors, can mix text and graphics trivially, and is easily carried in a pocket.” The product, code-named Moleskin, is due out in Q3 2011.

Do pirated info products increase overall sales?

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In the discussion of my pirated products, Steve Remingon posted some good points to my Facebook page.

…  you are assuming that the all 202 people who have downloaded the audio version of your book will not like what they hear, realise this information will be useful to have around and then go out and buy a paper copy. Alternatively they may like what they hear and then contact you to pay you for a services in another way.

Second, the people who do not subsequently buy an audio or paper copy of your book were never going to spend the money in the first place so you or the publishers in fact have not lost any money.

These are good points. Right now, I only have a couple of products, so increasing awareness by giving one of them away for free won’t lead to many additional sales because there’s not much else for them to buy. One of the favorable reviewers on the pirate board has already suggested they have someone sign up for my next paid program, record it, and post it on the board. I suppose I should be flattered?

While the meme of “lots of awareness will turn into increased sales” is a popular one, I suspect for every Cory Doctorow, there are 100 people like me who haven’t succeeded with that equation. The difference is that almost by definition, Cory’s grassroots popularity also spreads the story of grassroots success, while the absence of grassroots success doesn’t spread the story of “what a crappy strategy.”

I’ve been giving away free content for eleven years. The magical tidal wave of potential customers that is supposed to result never materialized.

“They wouldn’t have bought anyway” may be true. If that’s true, then unless they’re generating follow-on sales, I would rather they not have my material at all. If it’s not valuable enough to them to pay for it, and they don’t want it badly enough to buy, then they shouldn’t have it. That’s how an economy works.

“It’s OK to steal because I wouldn’t have bought the thing I stole” is not a defense that works in any legal, moral, or ethical system I’m aware of. And if a single one of those pirates would have purchased a program and now didn’t, then I’m out money.

Cost to Copy is Only One Piece of Cost

People confuse incremental production cost with total production cost. I attended MIT, Harvard Business School, and Deming’s “Total Quality” college. Then I applied big chunks of that to developing personal productivity products. The cost to me of that production is well into the six figures , not to mention several years of my life. Even the audio production of the MP3s takes time, effort, and cost. The fact that the final step in the chain—copying an audio file—has no cost attached to it doesn’t mean that it was somehow free to produce.

I don’t know. I’m just frustrated. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing for now, but if I have a wonderfully huge underground following that doesn’t translate into enough sales to pay my mortgage, at some point I’m going to pull the plug and go do something that makes money.

Please don’t steal my products.

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A friend just forwarded screen shots from a forum where the audiobook of my book has been posted by thieves. It’s been downloaded 202 times. I wish I could say I’m flattered, but I’m not. I’m just pissed. Two years of my life, tens of thousands of dollars of PR (not to mention lost income from time I spent writing Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More), and 161 Get-it-Done Guy episodes available for free, and people think buying one tiny little book (however magnificent and astonishingly useful) is just too expensive.

WTF??

If I save them 5 mins/day, it pays for itself 100 times over. I may sick Europa and Thomas on them… 🙂

Please remember that it takes incredible amounts of time and effort to produce a quality information product. If you steal and redistribute it, you’re just removing the incentive for me (and others like me) to produce more. I have to make a living, and I’ll find another way to do it if necessary.

If I’m really lucky, I may actually see royalty income in a couple of years. If I’m really, really, really lucky, I may even make enough to pay for the book launch.

“Information wants to be free” is stupid. Quality information is expensive to produce. Crappy information is free to produce. By paying nothing for information, you gradually select only for the crappy information produced by people and organizations who can do it for free. In other words, hacks and shysters.

You wouldn’t walk into a stereo store and take one home without paying. Don’t do it with an audiobook, or an online program or an electronic program. Ease of theft does not translate into the right to steal. And when people steal, ultimately they simply drive the quality producers out of the marketplace. (Or at least they will for me, since if I can’t make a decent living at this, I have no intention of producing more content. If there’s no income that comes from my podcast, it makes no sense for me to continue.)