LeWeb'09 is About to Start! [en]

[fr] Me voici à Paris pour la conférence LeWeb. Quelques liens pour suivre la conférence depuis chez vous!

Here I am, sitting in the 104 in Paris, surrounded by a big gaggle of geeky bloggers plugged into the ethernet cables kindly provided at the little tables near the stage.

It’s going to get crazy really soon, so here are a few pointers for those of you who want to follow things as they unfold:

And if you see a mad Scotsman in a kilt at the conference, ask him to show you his latest toy, the PsiXpda! (I just went “ooh” and “aah” and “ooooh” while he was showing it to me.)

(I will tell you later about my arrival in Paris, and escaping the metro to find myself in a huge cloud of smoke, in the middle of a crowd, with CRS cops cordoning off the streets all around…)

TEDx Geneva: Xavier Rosset — 300 days alone on an island [en]

Xavier Rosset — 300 days alone on an island

Alone on an island, with a swiss army knife and a machete. He’s from Verbier. Extreme snowboarding, finished 2nd in 2005. Quit pro snowboarding but wanted to keep traveling. What’s the opposite of me? He likes mountains and is very social => idea of spending 300 days alone on an island.

Back to nature, and survival, and a search for himself.

Took him 14 months of preparation to realize his dream. 2nd September 2008, on a plane to head to his island near Fiji.

Initially, day-to-day survival. First started collecting coco-nuts so that he would be able to drink. First coconut? 40 minutes to open it. In the end, 30 seconds.

Night? sleep, but not under a coconut tree. On the second day, he lost his camp. He didn’t have much initial information about the island before going there. Did take some information about food before leaving. Coconut is a great laxative, he learned very fast. Snails. Crabs. Mangoes. Oranges. Lemons. Was given some fishing line and 20 hooks, and a lighter. They saved his trip.

Built a shelter. Took him three weeks and two tries to get a waterproof shelter.

He also hid his watch, wanted to lose the perception of time.

10 days after his arrival, his motivation completely plummeted. Depressed, what am I doing here? Realized he wasn’t as strong as he thought. Visitors on the island! A few hours with people from Norway on a sailing boat. They were in a hurry, but Xavier didn’t know what that meant anymore. He was ready to give up.

After 75 days, he decided not to do the 300 days. It seemed so long. 150, instead. Missed his family and relatives. He felt much better with the idea of being half-way through. Found a new motivation: sleeping, because he’d dream about his family. Being alone gives you the best freedom of the world, only limits are imagination.

Christmas: called his family on the satellite phone. Very hard. They were all there. His first Christmas without his family.

30 days later, end of January, 150 days. But it wasn’t a real victory. He was used to his lifestyle, managing it better. Wanted to be able to say he had done what he set out to do. So he added 50 more days, 200.

Water: he used 3-5 litres of fresh water a day. In Switzerland, we use 160 litres a day. He washed himself three times with fresh water. Another definition of drinking water.

End March, he really wanted to quit… but two-thirds in… He started becoming more active. Built a bench, explored. Started feeling confident because he could see the end.

Initial end plan: his best friend would come and stay with him for two weeks. He didn’t really know when it would be. Sat on a rock waiting. Very emotional when he arrived. Jumped in his arms, end of his loneliness. Lost 18kg, but did it. Stayed with him a little to socialize him again 😉

First thing Gaël told him: “hey, you missed the world economic crisis!”

Departure: sad to leave the island. It was his home for 10 months. Another adventure was going to start. Going back… arrival in Geneva. Lots of people. They came for him.

All that can get in the way of your dream is the fear of failure.

TEDx Geneva: Claude Marshall — Sports: Giving refugee youth their lost childhood [en]

Claude Marshall — Sports: Giving refugee youth their lost childhood

Refugees. In a camp, almost all they need to stay alive. 80% of refugees are women and children.

First thing Claude did for UNHCR was see if corporations would support small projects. He was told to get money for sports for kids in camps. There is nothing for kids in camps when they get there.

First project was in Kenya, just south of Sudan, 1000 people in the camp. Context: 3 fighting groups in Sudan who all wanted the same ground.

Traumatized girls sitting around and not talking, whereas the boys get the sports programme and equipment. => sports programme for girls!

What does this programme do for them?

  • they laugh
  • they cooperate
  • it’s healthy
  • they pass the time

Also used team sport to make them go to school, by making school a requirement. Attendance raised by 80%. Importance of education for women.

Uganda has four fifths (?) of the world refugees. 10 camps. In one camp, established a football league. Throwing a ball into a camp is not a sports programme — so got an organisation to help set things up. Initially, very distrustful of themselves, and looking upon the other as an ennemy rather than an opponent. They learnt cooperation, rules, listening to the referee. Structure in their lives. School of life: winning is no big deal, and losing is not the end of the world.

Use sports to get the youth together and seize the occasion to teach them better behaviour (lots of violence etc in camps).

TEDx Geneva: François-Xavier Tanguy — A world full of Dreams: Phnom Penh-Paris on the Dream Road by motorbike [en]

François-Xavier Tanguy — A world full of Dreams: Phnom Penh-Paris on the Dream Road by motorbike

In 2005, goes to Lhasa. His life was good but something was missing. Found a small motorbike in a shop, 500$ — with his friends, they decided it would be cool to buy the motorbike and ride it back to France. But it was not possible: good job, good money, good life in Paris did not permit it.

One day, sends an e-mail to his friends: let’s do it! Four to start with, but finally two of them were ready to carry it out: François-Xavier and Arnaud Dubois. They didn’t know how, though. Had already backpacked, but Arnaud didn’t want to backpack again. Brainstorm + champagne => if this is their dream, why not take interest in dreams all over the world?

Problems: were neither bikers nor journalists, and didn’t have contacts. They just really wanted to do it.

First target: reach out to children about their dreams and projects. Do children all over the world have the same dreams?

Second target: try to understand the dreams and projects of adults. How did they make them come true, what were the keys to success.

In 2007, started their trip from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thaïland, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ouzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, Europe. 7 months with 300 interviews. 25’000 km.

Children

  1. what do you want to do when you grow up?
  2. what is your dream?
  3. what is your dream for your country?
  4. if I were a magician, what would you like?

20 countries, many different answers. In Cambodia, for example, many children want to become doctors and fight poverty. In Ouzbekistan, they want to find water. In Afghanistan or Nepal, they want to live in peace. Boy in Nepal (Saroj) “I want to become the Prime Minister of Nepal.”

Adults: many examples too. People who aren’t afraid to fail or be successful.

Fulfilled their dream (the bike journey) and learnt a lot about the dreams of others. Created a social network around people’s dreams. Entrepreneurs. Their dream now: help people achieve their dreams and projects using new technologies. Dreamshake.

TEDx Geneva: Guillaume Massard, Michael Doser, Bruno Giussani, Jill Bolte Taylor [en]

Guillaume Massard — Industrial Ecosystems – beta version

*(steph-note: not sure if Guillaume is the person giving the talk, or if he’s the guy being replaced because he went to Copenhagen)*

Industry and biosphere are separate. Let’s bring the inudstrial system down to earth. How could the biosphere inspire the economy?

Nature has created a system where there is no waste. It just doesn’t exist. How about applying that to industrial systems?

Strategy in four goals: circularize, minimize losses, dematerialize, decarbonize.

Re-use things more locally. Not a new idea. E.g. The Symbiosis Institute (1996). Get companies to collaborate in order to save resources. Eco-industrial networks and parks, all over the world!

The rebound effect: when you introduce a new technology, you’re sure it’s more efficient/better/etc. But 10 years later, maybe you realize that you’ve created a huge new impact on the environment. E.g. the computer, everybody thought we would go paperless, but actually computers generate more paper. Is efficient really efficient?

A classical example (UNIL research, Roman Näegeli): Toyota Prius, from 8 to 4.3 litres/100km, so you save fuel and money. But if you didn’t have a car before, you’re not being good for the environment by buying it, because then you travel more, it’s another car on the road, etc. So is this green technology more efficient, if it makes car-less people buy cars? What about the money he’s saving on fuel? Travel, restaurants, more consumption (if he did have a car), raw material consumption increase.

Heretic question: should we favor inefficiency, and prohibit low consumption vehicles? 😉 and therefore encourage other types of energy consumption?

Michael Doser — If apples fall down, do anti-apples fall up?

We don’t live in a symmetric universe. Matter and anti-matter are not created in equal quantities. *(steph-note: did I get that right? can’t hear him very well — mic fail)*

Question mark: is antimatter really just matter with opposite charge and identical properties? In 1996, experiment to try and produce anti-hydrogen atoms. But that’s only the first step, because once you have the atom, you want to study it. That first step took 5-8 years. Step “trap anti-hydrogen” started about 3 years ago. “cool anti-hydrogen” will likely take another 5-8 years. We’re not there yet! *(steph-note: and all this in Comic Sans…)* Measure light emitted by antihydrogen… in 10 years maybe?

A detour might be shorter and more scenic… let’s try again.

How about measuring the fall of antimatter? Bring gravity into the fold of particle physics. So, let’s use the limitations of the previous experiment (the atoms are moving) and form a beam of anti-atoms.

Bruno Giussani — Ideas About Spreading Ideas: Inside TED

With the internet, more and more people are having access to the best teachers in the world, to learn and be inspired. Important phenomenon when it comes to how ideas spread: before this, the reach of these inspiring teachers was much more limited.

TED is a very broad platform devoted to spreading ideas: videos, fellowship, events, all year around.

Some less-known aspects of what TED does.

1. TED Open Translation Project

Talks free to the world… not exactly true if they’re just in English. Now there are many languages in which subtitles are available for TED talks. 59 languages in 7 months. Community. Started out with professionals.

2. TEDPrize

Has to do with past achievements and future potential of people. Express a wish and ask the TED community to help them realize it. 100’000$. Example: XDR-TB awareness campaign (extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis).

Other example: Charter for Compassion.

3. TEDx

Delocalizing. Allow anybody to organize a conference “à la TED”. The license is free, there are just a dozen rules, e.g. not to charge for entry. There have been more than 250 TEDx events to this day, all over the world, from NASA to Kibera, a shanti-town in Africa.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight (video)

I hadn’t seen this video. Do watch it if you haven’t.

Right hemisphere: present moment, sensory collage, connexion to the world as a whole perfect human being (parallel processor)

Left hemisphere: thinks linear and methodically, about the past and the future, details, thinks in language which connects my internal world from my external world, and it says “I am”, separates me from the energy flow around me, and from the others.

When she had her stroke, she lost her left hemisphere, basically. Perceives her body as some weird external thing, walks across the living-room in a very rigid, mechanical way. Loss of distinction between self and outside. Then brain chatter stopped. Felt at one with all the energy around here, blissful Lala-land, no distinction between her and the world. Peacefulness, all stress gone, as well as 37 years of emotional bagage.

At one point she realises she’s having a stroke “OMG! so cool! how many brain scientists get a chance to study their own brain from the inside out?”

Couldn’t recognize if she was looking at her business card or not.

Stroke in waves, moments of clarity, on off, on off… Matches the shapes of the squiggles on the card to those on the phone to dial the number. She didn’t know that she couldn’t speak or understand language until she tried.

NDE.

Wakes up shocked to be still alive. Feels so huge she can’t imagine fitting back into her body. Nirvana, and still alive. Clot the size of a golf ball. Took her eight years to completely recover. We have two minds, and we have the power to choose who and how we want to be in the world. We can choose to step into the consciousness of our right hemispheres… or the left.

The we inside of me. Which do we chose, and when?

TEDx Geneva: François Bugnion, Robert Klapisch, Jan-Mathieu Donnier, Frederic Kaplan [en]

François Bugnion — Solferino: the birth of an idea

Bloodiest battle Europe had witnessed since Waterloo. 9000 wounded transported to the nearest city (population: 5000) after two days. Book published and translated in various languages.

This is the story of how the Red Cross came to be.

Important principles of the Geneva convention: neutrality of hospitals, and wounded will be cared for (regardless of nationality).

Less than 2 years between the publication of the book and the realisation of the convention.

Dunant was able to translate the shock of what he witnessed at Solferino into a book. Gave birth to an actual strategy.

Robert Klapisch — Broadband Internet for Africa: from Research & Education to Social Development

The driving force for the internet is still science. (steph-note: could be argued it’s commerce and porn, imho)

Research and education networks all over the place. The kind of connections the CERN required paved the way for “consumer” connections at 100Mb/s.

Researchers in African universities have less resources than in Europe. Travelling is costly, etc. They need the network.

Lisbon Summit. Africa Connect.

Obstacles: cost of connectivity, lack of infrastructure, enormous distances, legal and regulatory obstacles in some countries…

Until July 2009, there was only one cable connecting West Africa to the rest of the world. 80% of the traffic is by satellite, much more expensive. No competition => very high prices. Consequence? Most universities have less bandwidth than a typical western household, so students have to resort to internet cafés to have access.

In July, SEACOM raised the money to set up a cable from Marseille to Mumbai and South Africa. American CEO, French VP etc, but 80% capital is African. Capacity growth x50 over the next few years.

UbuntuNet groups 10 countries in South and East Africa (surface = China + Europe + India… Africa is huge!)

HDI Human Development Index: what happens when more people have access to the internet?

Cellphones++ in Africa (300 mio), very creative use. Money transfers to make up for the absence of banking infrastructure. E-government (paying taxes, filling forms). Commerce (farmers getting better deals selling crops and advice on best practices). E-medicine, E-learning.

Fighting the scientific divide.

Jan-Mathieu Donnier — 360° imagery systems and applications

(steph-note: couldn’t really take notes as was busy climbing back on the wifi)

Google Street View cars.

360° photos… and videos.

streetview.ch: interface of their dreams (streetview, map, and street list on the same screen). When you go through the streets, it’s video (whereas Google street view is just a collection of images). (globalvision.ch)

Next challenge: produce 2D images from the 3D data.

Frederic Kaplan — Are Gesture-based Interfaces The Future of Human Computer Interaction

Computers to live with, not computers to live inside. Frédéric gets trapped inside his iPhone. What kinds of interfaces could we have which allow us to interact with computers whilst still interacting with the people around us?

QB1: has microphones, fabric skin, camera, etc — interaction at 4-5 meters. Lives in the same space as we do. User-centred system. They mapped what kinds of gestures people made in front of the QB1 => various zones.

<!– slideshot –>

Blue zone: noisy. Red zone: much less noisy. => in the blue zone, you need to make sure the gestures are intentional, whereas in the red zone, you can be much more reactive.

Shows video: the screen follows the user, and there is a representation of yourself on the screen so you can see if you’re “touching” the controls. Pretty cool. You can call it and it will put its focus on you. You can also just show it a card rather than using gestures to give it an order.

Very important: representation of the user. More or less realistic, iconic, etc — they tried lots of things. (steph-note: I’m thinking of Second Life avatars right now…)

You do need feedback about your actions on the machine. Tennis game.

Gesture-based systems can know a lot about you because they share your physical space. They learn. The system can know who is in the room, how many people.

The mouse did not kill the command line. Gestures will not kill the mouse. They open a new kind of relationships with computers. It’s just the beginning.

Se voir à Paris, avec wifi [fr]

[en] I write a weekly column for Les Quotidiennes, which I republish here on CTTS for safekeeping.

Chroniques du monde connecté: cet article a été initialement publié dans Les Quotidiennes (voir l’original).

Mardi matin, je saute dans le TGV pour aller passer quelques jours à Paris afin de participer à la conférence LeWeb. Cet événement, qui s’appelait il y a six ans “Les Blogs“, rassemble en un même lieu plus de 2000 professionnels de tous bords, ayant un intérêt dans le web et les médias sociaux. Le thème de cette année? “The Real-Time Web“, le web en temps réel de Twitter, Facebook, la messagerie instantanée, le streaming vidéo live, l’iPhone, etc.

Si je vous mentionne cette conférence, ce n’est pas dans une optique bassement publicitaire (elle affiche complet — quoique… prenez-vous-y à l’avance l’an prochain!) mais parce que ce foisonnement d’événements s’adressant aux gens du monde connecté, ou à ceux qui gravitent autour avec intérêt, nous montre bien à quel point toutes les avancées technologiques en matière de communication n’ôtent rien à la richesse et à l’importance de la rencontre en chair et en os.

En effet, c’est là un souci récurrent que j’entends: la pléthore de moyens de communication à distance n’est-elle pas en train de nous déshumaniser, de nous transformer en petits robots emprisonnés dans des mondes virtuels? L’être humain est-il en chemin pour finir sa carrière sous forme de cerveau flottant dans un bocal, branché dans la matrice?

Que nenni, heureusement.

Il se trouve même que plus les gens chattent, bloguent, et de façon générale se connectent à leurs semblables via le monde en ligne, plus ils ont envie de se rencontrer. L’être humain est fondamentalement social et utilise toutes les ressources à sa disposition pour le devenir encore plus. L’expression “médias sociaux”, traduction française un peu maladroite de l’anglais “social media” (ça fait un peu “services sociaux”), vient bien de là.

C’est logique, quand on y pense. Prenons un peu de recul technologique: est-ce que l’avènement du courrier postal a découragé les gens de faire l’effort de se rencontrer? Et le téléphone? Et le téléphone mobile? Bien sûr, on remplace parfois avantageusement une rencontre en face-à-face par un coup de fil. Mais le coup de fil, souvent, mène à une rencontre. De même avec l’e-mail et le chat. Et que dire de la facilité de communication croissante, qui m’encourage à envoyer un SMS “à tout hasard” à une copine pour lui proposer de me rejoindre ici, maintenant, pour un brin de causette?

Au fond, la technologie crée autant d’occasions de se rencontrer qu’elle ne semble en supprimer. A Paris, dans quelques jours, c’est donc toute une partie du monde connecté qui se retrouvera dans la même ville, à la même conférence, pour se serrer la main, s’embrasser (si H1N1 le permet), discuter à bâtons rompus autour d’un bon buffet, rire ensemble, parler business, ou tout simplement être assis côte-à-côte pour écouter le même orateur.

On aura bien sûr nos ordinateurs portables et nos iPhones, il y aura du wifi jusque dans les moindres recoins, mais qu’est-ce qu’on sera contents de se voir… ou de se revoir.

TEDx Geneva: Louis Palmer — Solartaxi, around the world with solar power [en]

Louis Palmer — Solartaxi: Around the world with solar power

Went around the world in a solar car, in a year and a half, from Lucerne. Louis got this idea when he was 11: go around the world without fuel! At 14, he was certain everybody would be driving solar cars. In 2004 he still couldn’t buy a solar car!

So he decided to build his own car. He’s a schoolteacher, not an engineer. He didn’t have the money, but had the will to do it. Went to factories, got parts and pieces, approached Lucerne university to develop the car (1 year had students working on it). After two years the car was there.

solartaxi-in-nz

July 3rd 2007, the trip started. Louis didn’t really know which way to go. He published his tour on the internet, and invited people to welcome him and host him. Invited by the united nations, and asked to make a presentation. First time in history that a car entered the united nations!

Then invited to the global warming conference. 110 press conferences, he had the Swiss embassies with him, they helped with contacts.

He called it a taxi because many people travelled with him. You can even shift the steering wheel from left to right so the passenger to drive 🙂

Syria. He was told to beware, but nothing happened. Friendly people but his first accident. Somebody crashed into his car. He met the Syrian transport minister and told him about the accident, and the minister gave him a police escort so it would not happen again!

Everybody was waiting for the solar taxi! Prince Hassan of Jordan wanted a test drive. (Video sequence with armed military running after the car, hehe.)

He was escorted all around Saudi Arabia, the country you can’t get a visa for.

India, with Hell’s Angels escorting him through Bombay. Lots of traffic accidents in India. He had an accident there, which was filmed (pure coincidence). Great Indian video sequence. People are fascinated. Huge media coverage while driving through India.

Four months later, in Bali, for the opening of the UN climate change conference. Solartaxi on CNN! Then invited by Greenpeace, who took them down the Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, only one person at the press conference (the Swiss ambassador!) — stark contrast to the very positive and enthusiastic response from the press all over the world. Australia? Huge producer of coal, export to China. No investment in solar energy. Very disappointed.

What about China? Solar panels on every rooftop! Petrol bikes aren’t allowed in big cities anymore. Red carpet reception for the Solartaxi. Yay! 635 press articles in China, absolute record. They do the most. Hope!

Japan: they refused the Solartaxi because Swiss license plates aren’t allowed.

USA? Didn’t know what to expect. Great media coverage. Helicopters following him in Los Angeles. Very open-minded stars in Hollywood, very easy to meet them! Headshots of a bunch of celebs in the Solartaxi.

  • Corn: 36K km
  • Solar power: 25’000K km with the Solartaxi

Whee, had the secretary general of the UN in the Solartaxi for 15 minutes in New York (with escort and press reception of course).

Poland: exactly one year ago, last climate change conference, the journey ends. BBC and all over the news.

Louis isn’t stopping here! He wants to continue. He’s now setting up a race for existing cars in 80 days. Green energy cars, batteries charged with renewable energy. Has 13 teams so far. Siemens even wants to send the first ever electric-powered truck around the world.

Departure? 1st July 2010 in Shanghai, China (Wold Expo).

Louis has a lot on his hands, and welcomes any help that can be given. Volunteers, etc. Just contact him.

Quels sont vos souvenirs de l'informatique d'hier? [fr]

Ecole-club MigrosJ’avais huit ans, en 1982, quand mon père a ramené à la maison notre premier ordinateur. Lecteur cassettes, écran vert, 2K de mémoire vive… Deux ans plus tard, un C64 thrônait dans le bureau, et je faisais mes premiers pas de programmation avec Turtle Graphics, avant de passer à Logo et au Basic après quelques années.

Vous avez sans doute également des souvenirs de vos débuts avec l’informatique, plus récents ou moins récents que les miens.

25 ans d'informatique.25 ans d’informatique avec l’école-club Migros, c’est un nouveau projet sur lequel je travaille pour Blogwerk, la maison d’édition en ligne avec laquelle je collabore déjà depuis maintenant un an pour le blog de voyage ebookers.ch. Pour fêter les 25 ans de cours d’informatique donnés par l’école-club, celle-ci a mis sur pied un site où vous pouvez envoyer vos souvenirs touchant à l’informatique, son histoire et votre histoire.

Mon rôle et de trier, éditer et publier ces histoires racontées par nos lecteurs, qu’ils soient de Suisse ou d’ailleurs. Ça finira par faire une jolie collection de témoignages (certains cocasses) retraçant les développements de l’informatique durant le dernier quart de siècle.

Vous avez des souvenirs de l’informatique d’hier? Prenez quelques minutes pour les mettre par écrit et nous les envoyer. Je me réjouis de lire et de publier vos histoires!

Weekly Planning: Third Week (Learning Steps) [en]

Here we are — I’ve completed my third “planned” week since I started looking a bit further ahead than the current day (first week, second week, passing thoughts). Gosh, it was a busy week. I had only two office days, and I realize that it is not quite enough.

Around me, I’m faced either with people who are used to planning their weeks and find it normal, or people who could never dream of doing it, so busy are they putting out fires day after day.

I was like that for a long time. How did I get where I am now? I’ve been thinking a lot about which were the “first steps” on the road from chaos to “planning”.

Oh, before I forget: when I say I plan my week, I mean that I have a rough outline of what I am going to accomplish during the week, and on what day. It doesn’t go any further than that. Like when I “plan” my day, I don’t decide “I’m going to spend between 9 and 9.30 doing this, then do that for 20 minutes”. I know what I want to accomplish in the day, and go from there.

So, back to what brought me here, let me mention a few landmarks or “important steps” you might want to meditate upon if you are currently too busy putting out fires to even dream of planning your week. They’re in no particular order, because I think I haven’t quite finished figuring this out yet. If you spot one that seems doable, then start with that one.

  • Protect yourself. Set a very high priority on keeping “downtime” aside for yourself. Of course there are very busy periods where you won’t get much, but this shouldn’t be your “normal” week. Don’t answer the phone during lunch break, for example. Book an evening a week for yourself, and tell people who want to see you then that you “already have something planned”. Learn to become more comfortable about making people wait. If you always put others first you’ll just burn in the fire.
  • Set maker days and manager days. Yesterday evening, Claude pointed out to me that this was one of my first obvious steps towards weekly planning, back in April. It’s obvious: once you start having a clearer plan of how much actual time you’re going to have in the office to work on projects, it helps you not overcommit.
  • Under-promise, over-deliver. I can’t remember who recommended this, but it stuck with me. It helps me fight against my natural tendancy to underestimate the amount of time I need to deliver something. So I figure out a reasonable estimate, and then add a lot of security padding to give myself space for bad planning and other emergencies.
  • Everything takes more time than you think. I think David Allen says this somewhere in Getting Things Done, but I could be misquoting. It could be Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan, too. Or Merlin Mann. Anyway: the unexpected almost always adds time to things. And in the cases where it doesn’t and actually reduces the time you need for something, it’s no big disaster (OMG! I have too much time to do this! I’m going to die!). So, add a lot of padding to any estimation of how much time something is going to take you. It’s always more than you think. Try doubling your initial estimate, for starters, and see if that improves things.
  • End your day by looking at tomorrow. This is something I got from FlyLady when I realised it was important for me to have a “getting started” (=morning) and a “winding down” (=evening) routine. She recommends including 10 minutes in your evening routine to prepare the next day: check the train timetable, know what appointments you have, etc. It’s easy to do, and it means you’re not diving blind into tomorrow anymore.
  • Learn to say no. This is the really hard one for most people. I’ve become pretty good at saying no, but I’ve come a long way: initially, I was somebody who said yes to almost everything. I was both enthusiastic about all sorts of things and terrified of hurting people by refusing their requests. So I didn’t say no. I’ll probably blog about this more extensively at some point (I already did in French), but the important thing to remember is that as long as you have trouble saying no, you will not escape fire fighting. One thing that really helped me learn to say no was to start by never immediately accepting anything. Say you’ll answer in 24 hours. Then I used that time to have a long hard think about how I keep saying yes to stuff I want to do to help out, and then end up procrastinating, not doing it, feeling horrible because deadlines slip, etc. That usually gave me enough courage to say no.
  • Have a list. You can go all GTD or only part-way, like I have, but you need some kind of system or list to capture the things you need to take care of. Learn the difference between a project and a next action, and list only the latter. To start your list, just write/type down all the stuff that’s bubbling at the top of your brain and stressing you out. If you think of something you need to do while you’re working, add it to the list. Ask a friend to hold your hand (it can be through IM) if your list gets too scary. Trust me, it’ll be better when it’s written down — anything is better than being an ostrich.
  • Learn to prioritize. I have huge problems with this (in other areas of my life too). When it comes to work-related stuff, here are a few rules of thumb I use. Invoicing is high priority, because it’s what brings in the money and it’s not very long to do. Anything really time-sensitive is also high priority (if I don’t announce tomorrow’s meetup today, it won’t be any use, will it?) Responding to potential clients. Paid work for clients with deadlines, of course. Asking questions like “what is the worst thing that will happen if I don’t do this today?” or “on this list, is there any item which is going to cause somebody to die if I don’t do it?” (start with “to die” and then work down on the ladder of bad things — thanks Delphine for that tip) also helps. This doesn’t mean you need to order your lists. It’s just to help you figure out where to start.
  • Admit when you’re in over your head. If you over-promised, said yes when you really should have said no, and basically find yourself incapable of keeping up with your commitments, tell the people involved. And use that safety padding again. If you told the client it would be done by Wednesday, and on Monday you already have that sinking feeling that it won’t be possible, tell the client. Apologize. Say you messed up if you have. If you’re pretty certain you can get it done by Friday, tell them that it’ll be done Monday. See? Safety padding. Under-promising. Of course this doesn’t work in all situations, but you might simply not have a choice — and it’s better to be upfront about a deadline slipping than keeping it silent. Not just for the relationship with the client, but for your learning and growing process. Same with money: if you need invoices paid earlier than you initially asked because you have cashflow issues, ask. If you can’t pay the bill, ask for a payment plan. Somebody might say yes.
  • You can only do so much in a day. At some point, you reach the end of the day. Either it’s time, or you’re tired, but at some point, the day is done. Pack up and go home. Watch TV. Eat. (Maybe not in that order.) Do something nice. Take a bath. First of all, it’s no use working yourself silly until ungodly hours, you just won’t get up the next morning, or if you do, you won’t be productive. Second, doing this will help you “grow” a feel for what can be done in a day.
  • Plan your day. At the beginning of the day, look at your list, and think about the 2-3 important things that you want to accomplish today. Rocks and pebbles might help. Forget all the rest and get cracking on those. You’ll be interrupted, you’ll have emergencies, of course. That’s why it’s important not to plan to do too much — or you’re setting yourself up for failure. I started doing this regularly this spring, first with index cards, then with a list in Evernote. At the beginning you’ll be crap at it, but after months of practice, you get better. And this is one of the building stones you’ll need to be able to plan your weeks at some point.
  • Save time for the unexpected. When I was teaching, I did quite a bit of time planning — I knew when I was in class and when I had “downtime” to prepare courses and mark tests. Doing that, I realized that I could not perfectly plan my time. There was always “unexpected” stuff coming up. So I started making sure I had empty time slots of “surprises”. At some point during the last year, I calculated that roughly half my time was taken up by “unexpected” things and “emergencies”. Now, it’s less, because I’m better at planning. So, depending on how deep in chaos you are, you want to make sure you leave enough “free time” in whatever planning you’re doing to accomodate everything you didn’t know about or hadn’t thought about. As organisation increases and stress goes down, the “things to do” will get more under control and there will be less and less emergencies — but it’s still important to leave “breathing space”.

This is more or less all I can think of for the moment. Is it useful to anybody? I like to think it would have been useful to me, but one can never know… would I have listened?