That’s a photo I just took of the Moon – and beneath it, Jupiter.

Jupiter! I can see Jupiter with my eyes?! That’s incredible. Apparently our orbits are close at the moment. Even so, if we are at the closest it’s possible for the Earth and Jupiter to be to each other, it’s still 630 MILLION KILOMETERS AWAY!!

I think that’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jupiter before – but it’s so bright. I could even see it without my glasses. So much for shortsighted.

Stephen Helebert and Stanley Hems from Johnstans Butchers, Kings Heath

I popped into my local butcher shop this morning to pick up some lovely dry-cured bacon, and they were celebrating their big win: a Gold award for ‘Best Customer Service’ and Silver for ‘Best Window Display’ in the Kings Heath Business Association awards.

Stanley Hems (right) is also the Chairman of the Kings Heath Business Association (not to mention Life Honorary President of the Birmingham and District Butchers Association), but was of course not involved in the awarding committee.

He tells me he’s been in business here in Kings Heath for 54 years. I believe this is the first time these awards have taken place, and they were voted by customers who filled in forms and handed them into the participating shops.

I must admit, I picked them for Best Customer Service. They’re certainly the most enthusiastic retailers in the High Street, and Stanley’s a great salesman. Always in for the upsell. Choose a type of meat, and he’ll grab the largest cut for you. Ask for a pack of bacon, and he’ll say “two, was it?”

But you don’t mind because they like a bit of banter and they’re friendlier than most retailers. Friendlier than most people, actually. Exactly why I go there, rather than the ASDA across the road. Much better meat too. And he was very good at handing out that voting form and encouraging people to participate.

So… congratulations guys. I don’t know who the winners were in the other categories, but yours was well-deserved. It’s nice to be reminded that we live in a village, and that there’s more going on around here than the big supermarket chains.

As you may have worked out by now, I’ve been working on a book that’s available for purchase as it’s being written.

I’ve already had some lovely feedback about Music in the Digital Age (and some people have already pre-ordered the audiobook). So I started to think about whether there was anything else that would make it a distinctively “digital age” product.

And then it occurred to me. It’s not just the Digital Age – it’s also the Global Age.

I’ve approached some friends who work in a range of connected fields (independent music, education, media and so on) who have as their first language something other than English. Some of them have kindly agreed to translate the book so that I can release other versions in the same way that I’m releasing the English one:

1) as a work in progress;
2) with regular updates;
3) as a pay-what-you-want download.

And so then I got ambitious, and wondered how many languages it could simultaneously be written in?

I’m aiming for 25. Twenty-six if you also count English, which is the version I’m doing. I might even be tempted to go for thirty.

Writing in many languages at once

The deal I’ve struck with my translators is that they get 50% of all sales of the ebook in their language. That seems fair, I think.

Brilliantly, all of the people who have already agreed to translate did so before I told them I planned to give them half of what we sold by doing that. They’re doing it because they’re interested in the content and believe in the project, which is brilliant. The idea that I might be able to give them a little something for their trouble is fantastic.

So far, these are the languages that the book is definitely being translated into – and will start to be available in February:

Dutch
Estonian
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Japanese
Portuguese
French
Spanish
Finnish
Doric
Swedish

And these are the languages that I’m aiming to get or are still not 100% confirmed:

Arabic
Bengali
Chinese (Mandarin)
Danish
Hindi
Indonesian
Italian
Korean
Maori
Norwegian
Russian
Thai
Urdu
Welsh

…and I’d love to get as many others as I can.

Can you help?

I have some good leads and I’ve made some offers – but there are definitely some gaps in there – so if you think you might be ideal for this sort of project and would be willing to work on this basis, then I’d love to hear from you.

And if you think of some other languages that my book should be available in – and you can help make that happen – I’d love to hear about that as well.

I’m really excited about this project, and about the idea of managing a team of people all simultaneously writing the same book – my words, their language… all being released and updated as a work in progress via Leanpub.

Should be lots of fun.

And no, you’re right. I don’t know what I’m getting myself into.

People are often surprised that I have an empty email inbox most of the time. Actually, it’s really not difficult.

Of course, until I found out about the secret of having an empty inbox, I was completely overwhelmed all the time, and always had thousands of messages in various states of read, unread, filed or unfiled. There’s a bunch of systems you can use – but I’ve taken what I think are probably the simplest and most repeatable steps of all the versions I’ve read.

Once you realise that there are only three types of email, it all suddenly becomes very simple. You don’t need a book to tell you how to do it, a special email ‘diet’ or a seminar that costs hundreds.

For this to work, you will need a single archive folder (Gmail has this automatically) – not a series of folders for lots of projects. You will need some sort of To-Do list (for me it’s Things). You will need a calendar or diary (I use iCal on the Mac). And that’s it.

Of course, it can take a while to claw your way to zero the first time out, but once you’re there, it’s easy to stay there – as long as you remember that simple fact: there are only three types of email. Every piece of email is one of those types. Process it accordingly, and that part of your system will always be up to date.

1) Things I have to DO

A lot of the email I get requires some sort of action on my part. In fact, most of my work arrives by email. It might be a request to attend a meeting, reply to somebody about something, pick up something from somewhere, or write a book.

Here’s where I have to make a decision: Do I do it now? Or do I do it later?

David Allen (author of Getting Things Done) suggests a two-minute rule. That seems about right. If it will take you less than two minutes to do the thing, do it now. Then you can archive the email and it’s out of your inbox.

Otherwise, if it’s something to do that will take longer than two minutes, put it on your ‘to do’ list – and then archive the email. You’ll deal with it as appropriate, and the email will always be findable again if you want to refer to it. But it’s out of your inbox, and not cluttering up the space that should only ever be a temporary home for stuff you haven’t dealt with yet.

2) Things I have to KNOW

If it’s something you have to know, then read it, make a note of the important points if you have to – and then archive the email… or – in most cases, you can probably delete it. If the point of the email was just to make you aware of something, then it’s done its job, and you can get rid of it.

If it’s too long to read in two minutes, put ‘Read email about X’ into your to-do list, then archive it. You’ll get to it when you get to it. It doesn’t have to clutter up your inbox or be constantly in your face demanding your attention.

If it’s something you need to file away, like a password for a website or a confirmation of something, then it’s fine in the archive. You’ll be able to find it just by typing in a key word or phrase at a later date if you need it again – but it doesn’t need to go in a specific folder and it certainly doesn’t need to stay in your inbox. Just the big, searchable archive will be fine.

3) Trash

ALL other kinds of email are trash and you can delete them. This is true for most email. I go through my email inbox with my finger on the delete key and I press it a lot. If it’s stuff I never want to see again, it gets the big ‘thumbs down’ button, which marks it as spam.

If it’s not something you need (or want) to do, or something that you need (or want) to know, then it is, by definition, trash. Just delete it.

It takes me, on average, about 3 seconds per email to decide which of the three types it is. And then I deal with it accordingly.

Inboxes are, to me, temporary places that are only for stuff that I haven’t made decisions about yet. Nothing is in there from one day to the next. Any more than ten emails in there at any one time feels a bit excessive. I tend to go through it several times a day, but I quite often like to just reduce it to once a day.

Those steps in brief:

If it’s something you have to DO, then either do it or put it on your To-Do list, and archive the email.

If it’s something you have to KNOW, then read it, and archive the email.

If it’s TRASH, just delete it.

Simple as that.

A few more quick tips:

1) Sending email encourages others to send you email. If you want less email, send less email.

2) People appreciate short responses that are to the point. Three sentences is probably enough in almost every situation.

3) Set up filters. There are common phrases and common types of email that you could do without ever seeing again. Spam filtering is one thing, but auto-deleting any email that meets certain criteria that you notice popping up is a good idea too. For me, ‘Apologies for cross-posting’ will automatically get an email trashed. I won’t even see it. If it’s a really relevant call for academic papers, somebody will email me directly.

Practice makes perfect

I’ve been doing this for several years now, I have about 300 filters set up in Gmail – and my threshold for marking something as ‘spam’ is incredibly low. There is very seldom a false positive on my Spam – to the point where it’s not actually even worth checking.

But all this makes my email inbox incredibly useful and efficient, and every message that deserves a response always gets one straight away.

Stick with it. It’ll take a little while for it to become habit.

You need to trust (and use!) your To-Do list and your calendar – and trust that the search function will easily find that email in your Archive again if you ever need it. Getting it out of your inbox is the key to dealing with things appropriately, and giving them the attention they deserve when they deserve it.

It’s about turning a source of overwhelm and stress into a useful tool for communication. Hope you find that helpful.

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a week or two, you’ll know that I’m always on the lookout for ways of getting things done – specifically, software that helps me achieve more with less effort – or at least in a way that makes it feel like less effort.

I like doing lots of interesting things and I like being very organised, but at the same time I’m an extraordinarily lazy and disorganised person by nature – and I don’t like to be stressed or overwhelmed with too many tasks.

So the things that I do manage to accomplish come as a result of cheats and shortcuts, basically. Tricks that I play on myself and the outside world that make it feel like I’m getting ahead with less input on my part. That the tools are doing the work for me.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t – but I enjoy trying new things out. It’s a bit of a hobby. And I’ve started using a bunch of new ones recently… so I thought others who share my interest in such things (and I know of at least two) might be interested to check out the current toolkit.

What’s on the Mac?

1) Mendeley Desktop manages my PDF library of academic journal articles – making them easy to find and easy to reference. It also suggests and directs me to others that I might find useful – sort of like a Last.fm of knowledge. Very helpful. I use this in conjunction with EndNote. It hasn’t completely nailed the Cite-While-You-Write thing – but it’s vastly superior to EndNote in every other respect.

2) Scrivener is what I’m using to do most of my writing in. Particularly good for long pieces – it lets you break things down into manageable chunks, move them around and structure in pieces.

3) Dragon Dictate is really useful for getting lots of words down. I talk and the words appear on the screen. I don’t use it all the time, but I use it for certain projects. In particular, the Music in the Digital Age book, which is aimed at a general readership in a conversational tone. I find that it’s easier to talk than to type in that mode – and besides, I speak at around 4-5 times the speed I type.

4) Whitenoise makes a consistent sound that blocks out all distractions. Essentially, it’s a focus aid. It comes with a lot of different sounds that you can mix together and place in different parts of the stereo spectrum so that you’re both aurally blocked out from the outside world, and cocooned in comforting noises. I’m currently writing with a mix of ‘brown noise’ (white noise with harsh frequencies removed), a ticking grandfather clock, a cat’s purr, a heartbeat and a babbling brook. You’d be surprised how well your brain zeroes in on the task at hand when surrounded by consistent (rather than intermittent) sounds.

5) iReadFast does what it sounds like. You copy and paste text into it, tell it how many words per minute you’d like to read it at, and away it goes. It shows you just a few words at a time, but relentlessly and at speed. I’ve been working on reading faster for several years now, and depending on the type of text, the system works very well. Just push yourself a little bit faster each time, and you’ll be surprised how your brain keeps up. 300 words per minute is comfortable, but still quite a bit faster than off the printed page. 800 words per minute is a blur – but if you’re just skimming for clues, it can be very handy. Yes I also read more slowly sometimes, but no, it doesn’t help me retain more.

6) MarsEdit is what I use for writing blog posts. In fact, everything you see of mine on the web (including this) was created in MarsEdit. Much simpler (and more powerful) than using the editing window in WordPress.

7) Bloodrop is an easy way to share files with people in your public Dropbox folder. Drag and drop to the Bloodrop icon, and it copies the file to your public Dropbox folder, and puts the link in your clipboard so you can paste it into an email (or whatever). Only cuts out a couple of steps – but it just makes the general workflow seem more effortless.

8) Notational Velocity on the Mac (coupled with PlainText on the iPhone/iPad) is what I use to make and sync plain text notes (again, via Dropbox). Anything I write on one is automatically and instantly on the others – so I can just pick up where I left off at any point – and I always have a note-taking device to hand.

9) 1Password is an absolute godsend. Hyper-secure web passwords that I don’t have to remember. I have hundreds of logins and passwords on different sites all over the internet. They all look something like this: fM*q1HBh~cm`ye+]pk1N – and yet all I have to do is type a single shortcut key on my laptop, and it will put the appropriate username and password in the appropriate place on whatever site I happen to be visiting. Of course, the software on my laptop that keeps these passwords is triple secure as well. Much safer than using one password for my email, bank, Amazon, Paypal, web hosting and so on – and far better than writing them all in a notebook and sticking them in a drawer.

10) Things is how it all works together. This is the master-list. Every day, I’m ticking off to-do items, reviewing projects, making sure that there are no loose ends. I have this on my phone, on my iPad and on my laptop – and I’m convinced it’s the only reason I get anything done at all. Coupled with my daily list (a series of every day tasks that I keep on my phone that get ticked off each day), this project management system pretty much runs my life for me so I don’t have to think. All of this stuff happens on autopilot, every single task getting only as much attention as it deserves, I don’t think about it until it needs doing, and when it’s done, it’s ticked off and I don’t have to think about it again.

This – and the zero inbox strategy (a really simple approach that I’ll share soon) – is the key to me not being completely overwhelmed with the three books that I’m writing, the MA course that I’m teaching, the marking that I’m doing, the research projects and all the other fun bits and pieces that I like doing (including blogging about stuff like this that most people won’t really find of much interest).

Sometimes these systems makes me feel all very clever and in control – but if I’m honest, mostly I’m just the servo-mechanism that keeps them all ticking over and running. And actually, I’m okay with that. They’re far more successful at running my life than I ever was.

Out the window of my home office, across the road, there’s been a lot of squirrel activity lately. My eye is drawn to the comings and goings of the squirrels because of their rapid movement in the leafless trees – and because even though I’ve lived in the UK for over seven years, squirrels are still exotic animals to me.

I was watching a pair of them run backwards and forwards the other day, when I realised that the big tree straight ahead of me must be where they live. And then I saw the nest – or the ‘drey’ as Wikipedia tells me it’s called. It’s a clump of leaves and twigs halfway up the trunk of the tree – about the size of a football… and it has a little hole that the squirrels come in and out of.

At dusk, that’s where they disappear to. Not that I’d given it any thought, nor come up with an alternative hypothesis about where they go, but I was surprised to learn that they build these dreys and live in them. Makes sense though, I suppose.

If you look hard you’ll see the clump of leaves about halfway up the trunk. That’s it there.

Of course, now I’m seeing them everywhere. Hopefully, I’ll get to see baby squirrels in the Spring. I’ll wait and watch patiently – a bit like David Attenborough.

Nearly two weeks ago, I published a book I haven’t finished writing. In fact, I’m probably only about 15% of the way through it, if I’m honest. But I’ve been experimenting with a website called Leanpub that lets you do that, and people can get the book right up front, and then receive updates as you write them.

What’s interesting – apart from the feedback which has been broadly encouraging and positive – is that people actually seem to be paying for it, even though they don’t have to.

I’ve just posted the first major update to Music in the Digital Age and people should be getting emails about now that tells them how to get the new version. It’ll be interesting to see what people think of that bit of the process, and whether that was enough of an update.

I think I’ll push out an update every few weeks, or whenever there’s a substantial new section all ready to go – whichever comes first. I’ve been writing on average about 800-1,000 words a day on it since the year began. I hope to be able to keep that up for a while if I can.

It’s all planned out in skeleton form, of course – and it looks like it’s going to be quite a substantial bit of work when it’s done. Given that the section that updates the original 20 Things e-book I wrote 5 years ago promises to be longer and more in-depth than that whole book was – and it’s just a scene-setter for this one, the whole thing could be a bit of a doorstop.

Well, it would be if it had any mass at all. It’s an e-book.

Today I hit a bit of a milestone with it. 200 copies have been downloaded. Hardly bestseller list material – but pleasingly substantial nevertheless. What’s more, about a third of those copies have actually been paid for (you can pay whatever you like – from zero dollars to the entire contents of your bank account, though $5 is the suggested price).

Most who did pay money have paid $5, some $1, a few $10, and one has paid quite a bit more. I don’t get the email addresses or names of people who have it, so I have to just be generally appreciative, rather than specifically and personally – but it is very gratifying.

I’m doing a lot of writing these days, so I’ve added a ‘my books‘ page to this site. Go have a look. It’s all interesting stuff (well, I find it interesting anyway).

If Music in the Digital Age sounds like your sort of thing – feel free to download it and start reading. Don’t let the fact that I haven’t finished it yet stop you.

So far in 2012 my mantra has been “little, and often”.

I decided not to make any New Year’s resolutions, but instead to make changes to the way in which I might do the things I already do. Perhaps not surprisingly, this has had a far more radical impact upon the amount I’ve been able to get done just in the past week or so – and even if I completely fall off the wagon tomorrow, I’ve managed to give myself quite a head start this year.

I started by going back to a system I came up with a couple of years ago: The 30-Day Calendar. I printed a few off, put individual task names at the top of each page and started putting a big X in the appropriate square each time I did the day’s task. However, it occurred to me that there must by now be some way of managing such a system using something a bit more sophisticated than a piece of paper and a sharpie pen.

And of course, there is.

Using an iPhone app called Daily Tracker, I’ve set up a list of tasks that each day I can assign Yes or No to. Of course, since my iPhone is with me at all times, I can periodically check to see what small, daily task I could quickly get done where I am, whatever I’m doing.

Daily Tracker can do all sorts of other things as well – but currently, just “Did I do it, or didn’t I?” will suffice.

There are some big tasks on the list as well smaller ones. Because I’m working on a major research project, as well as writing a couple of books, I need to make sure that I stay on top of each of the individual projects that I’m involved in. The way that I’m doing this is to have each of those projects set up as a single task to be ticked off each day. As long as I spend about an hour (give or take) working on, thinking about, doing something towards or otherwise progressing that particular project, it can have a tick.

So I spend a bit of time each day working on my radio book, writing something for my Music in the Digital Age book, developing my Brazil research project and so on – as well as having a range of smaller tasks that I can just attend to in the gaps throughout the day.

There is something psychologically appealing and inherently productive about small chunks of activity. I find myself often quite reluctant to get started when I have to do a lot of work on a particular project, and this can really slow things down. However, if it’s just an hour then my attitude seems to be “let’s just get this done and out of the way so I can tick it off”.

It’s nice to have variety too.

Yes GTD fans, I’m still using ‘Things‘ as well (and I considered it for this) – but I use that slightly differently. Don’t worry – it’s all integrated…

In total, there are now 20 daily tasks on my list. Some of them take seconds to do, and others, like my writing work, take an hour at a time each. It took a little while (the first week of January, actually) to get into the swing of things and to make sure that all of these tasks – big and small – could fit around a substantial chunk of other work that might take place at my office (classes, meetings and tutorials, for instance) or that might come in via email – without meaning that I get completely overwhelmed and don’t have any time to myself.

In fact, I’ve written some time for myself into the regime. One of my tasks everyday is to sit down and read a book. I’m going to go and do that now.

I ended up having a lot of really interesting conversations about the ‘pay whatever you want (including free)’ pricing model for digital goods (usually abbreviated to PWYW) over the past 24 hours as a response to my blog post about why I had selected to make my book Music in the Digital Age available with a free option.

A friend of mine who works as an economist in the private sector sent me his 2005 analysis of the pricing model and has agreed to let me make it available to you here. If you don’t have an economics background (I don’t) then it might be a little heavy going – but the conclusion appears to be that “pay what you think it’s worth” is pretty good for businesses and consumers alike.

Here’s the précis:

There are many market structures where it is possible for a firm to produce a quantity consistent with the quantity that would be produced if the firm decided to produce where price is equal to marginal cost (P=MC). However, there are few market structures where it is reasonable to expect a firm to produce at this social optimal level. Firms are motivated by profit maximisation and therefore it is only reasonable to expect them to produce a P=MC quantity when profit maximisation is simultaneously achieved by it. This essay shall examine some market structures where it might be reasonable to expect a P=MC quantity and then consider the impact of each of these on consumer welfare, considering specifically perfect competition, some monopoly models and the Bertrand oligopoly model.

And here’s the PDF of his essay.

I published my ‘work in progress’ book Music in the Digital Age yesterday and had a bit of a play around with the recommended price. The minimum, however, was zero from the outset and I was quite keen that this be the case.

On average, about a third of the people checking the book out have paid money for it. Most of them have paid $5 as suggested, though a few have paid $10 and a couple only $1. Everyone else has downloaded it for free and they’re more than welcome to. The fact that people have paid me money to make this – any amount of money at all – and have devoted their attention to the words that I’ve written so far – is incredible motivation for me to complete it, and to do whatever I can to make it as good as it can be.

I ended up having conversations about price yesterday. One centred around psychological theories about why $5 seemed to be the right ‘suggested price’ point. Nobody paid anything when the suggested price was $7.99 – but many did when it was lowered to a round number – even though at both times, you could simply type in whatever number you thought was fair and appropriate. Other conversations varied between ‘why would you give something like this away for free?’ to ‘how can you justify charging money for something you haven’t finished?’.

It’s been an interesting process and it’s challenged my own thinking about online commerce and the pricing of digital creative works. But this morning I received an email from someone who more or less encapsulated for me exactly the reasons why I wanted my book to be available for nothing – and (with permission, and anonymised) I want to share some of that email with you.

Hi Andrew

Thanks for publishing your book.

I’m finding what you’ve written so far really useful for attempting to clear my thinking prior to getting enterprising with my music-making activities this year.

We’ve got a first baby coming in the next few days (hopefully) and I’ve a bathroom to finish whilst I’ve a few small professional commissions to rely upon for income over the next few months and all this will no doubt keep me very busy. So it’s great to have someone else put into words in an organised way some of the ideas and knowledge I think about a lot and believe to be important in my work , but don’t spend much effort on organising. So big thank you again.

I wish I could pay the full price you suggest for it because what you’ve written so far is likely be worth far more to me, but for the first time in my life I’m almost properly skint! (it’s sort of freeing and a source of motivation as well as irritating and a source of worry – although I try not to let it be).

Anyway I thought a brief email to say thanks was definitely in order so here it is.

I was so happy to get that email – because it means a couple of things: first, that the book is at least on its way to being helpful and interesting to the kind of person I’d most like to be helpful to; and secondly – it confirmed my belief that ‘value’ is neither universal, nor easily represented in fixed financial terms.

Whatever your situation, I don’t want price to be an obstacle to you getting hold of my book and being part of the journey towards its completion. By the same token, if it’s of value for you, if you’re in a position to give me money and you feel that’s appropriate, then far be it from me to stand in your way.

But I’m sure as hell not going to try and stop you from reading it if you don’t happen to have a spare few bucks lying around. We’ve all been there.

Here’s the link to where you can get Music in the Digital Age for yourself. Pay whatever you think it’s worth, can afford, or feel is of value.