How Howard does it: attention master at work
7 responses to “How Howard does it: attention master at work”
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Thanks Anthony for building on Howard’s piece with your own experience.
Sharing workflow seems to me very important when there are now so many different devices, apps, and situations. “How do I do that” is a very contextual question … but at the same time we need to lear from each other.
I’ve just pitched the idea of a space to share workflows in to the beta Simpl platform being developed by Futuregov. Do you think it is worth following up?
I’m currently struggling with joining up Twitter, Google Reader, Diigo, Evernote, Amplify, WordPress, Ning on iPad and Mac. -
Thanks for your comment, David – sharing workflows sounds like a great idea and I would be really interested in finding out more.
It would also be interesting to know what tasks you are struggling to create workflows for. The platforms and tools will only really fit together in a good workflow if it is designed with the end in mind…
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Hi Antony – here’s the Sharing workflows idea below.
Your nudge on “what for” is a good one. That purpose thing. It’s easy to say blogging … but then what’s the purpose of blogging these days? Howard has a book in mind, which sets me thinking about nested objectives: curating in order to blog, tweet etc leading to a book/wiki: or around a specific project.——-
Create a simple showcase where people can share the pathways they use on mobile and desktop devices – for example, to find and store information, and turn it into knowledge.
The problem
Mobile and web apps are making it easier to accomplish specific tasks – but it is still difficult to work across apps and create a sequence of actions that work for you. One example is scanning information from many sources, storing it, organising, and then creating content for blogs, articles, books. Recently Howard Rheingold produced a short video of how he does this, and Anthony Mayfield added his own comments here.Without the ability to create workflows appropriate to your situation, offers of more apps just become confusing. Standardised organisational workflows are difficult to create when people will increasingly use a mix of mobile and desktop devices, and social media apps that demand flexible approaches.
The idea
Ideally we might create a place where experienced users like Howard could share their workflows, and others could ask “how can I do that”.
The workflow stories could link to how-to resources … and of course to projects and offers the storytelling might wish to feature.
What we need
A demonstration from a group of workflow storytellers to test with others and see whether there is value in the approach. -
I love the idea, David – I’d really like to see something like this happen. Thanks for this comment, it helped me to write this post about workflows: Desgining your workflow: the ultimate New Year’s resolution
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Great read Anthony and like you, I’m keen to read Howard’s take on attention. I’m also glad it prompted the post of Workflows for 2011, which led me to this original post.
I’ve been ruminating on this area for a little while both from the writer’s perspective, especially as I’ve struggled with innumerable distractions every time I need to write anything longer than a 20-word email response.
Creating a workflow, then a work outline and establishing your preferred tools in advance provides a solid foundation for research without the distractions of tinkering with new ways of gathering and codifying this information.
I’ve also got a nagging feeling that hypertext might actually be a hindrance rather than a benefit for blogging. Sounds nuts, I know, but how many times have you started reading a post, clicked on a link, then followed another reference link whilst never finishing the original piece?
Since links in the early part of blog posts, or emails for that matter get most clicks, there’s an interesting challenge here.
And just to underline the ease of procrastination, I’d better get back to the blog post I’m supposed to be writing. And as if to double-underline, I’m also checking out Diigo, thanks to your recommendation ;-)
Happy New Year!
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Hi Sam – You’re right that hypertexts facilitate distraction, but they definitely help as much as hinder the reading experience. Ultimately it comes down to what Howard would call Attention Literacy – the ability to focus in different ways at different times, depending on what you are trying to achieve. Reading chunks of content in their entirety isn’t appropriate for every task, nor is skimming them and disappearing down link trails…
Another way of putting it is – there’s more than one way to read a blog post, and it isn’t necessarily the authors responsibility to choose which way someone will use their text.
Perhaps when we move beyond narrowing web disciplines like SEO and social media, we will start to think about optimising for attention. And that will mean optimising for different types of attention…
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[…] explains how digital literacy is evolving. Everything he talked about before – literacies of attention, participation, crap detection, collaboration and “network know-how” stands, says […]
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