Following news that long words make us look stupid (see Short words are best) comes a report that multitasking makes us stupid.

It comes from The Atlantic (who have now opened up their entire archive free of charge) in an article called The Autumn of the Multitaskers. (Hat tip: Slashdot.)

Here’s the gist:

Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires — the constant switching and pivoting — energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on… studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy."

The author suggests that difficulties with multitasking explain why the USA is simultaneously losing two wars, one in Iraq and one in Afganistan. "It also explains, perhaps, why sexual threesomes are often disappointing."

On a more mundane note, multitasking is why I get less done in a day than I’d like. I flit between answering emails, answering the phone, tinkering with my computers, writing blog posts, watching old episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs, looking at The Onion, making tea, reading a book and generally pottering around. 

I still wrote about 1,000 words but I can’t help feeling that if I concentrated harder on my work and got it done first, I’d enjoy guilt-free pottering more.

Anyhow, here are a couple of previous posts that may help with concentration: How to concentrate on writing and Distraction-free text editors.

There’s an old joke about consultants: they borrow your watch to tell you the time. And then they keep the watch.

A few months ago, I wrote about When copywriting is not the answer. I just read a very interesting article by Steve Tobak on C/net about When to hire a consultant. It addresses some of the same issues.

He says that you should hire a consultant for:

1) expertise, 2) objectivity, 3) credibility, 4) leadership, and 5) time

I agree and the same things are true of writers (like me). Very often I get hired to break the status quo when marketing managers are unhappy with the quality of the copy that they get from bigger agencies but, ultimately, my ability to help them communicate better comes down to these five points.

I completely agree with his final point:

The bottom line: Just like with lawyers and doctors, working with consultants may be distasteful or even painful, but there are times when you need them if you know how to recognize those times. While trying to go it alone sounds noble or courageous, it isn’t. It can cost your company big-time.

These pictures on Flickr - Understanding Art for Geeks - had me literally falling of my chair with laughter. (Hat tip Slashdot.) Here are a couple of samples but I urge you to check out the whole set.

I was two hours early for a meeting at The Cabinet Office today and so I wandered about the Dutch art section of the National Gallery. Priceless time to myself. (You may also want to read my review of the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague.)

If you were an experienced professional - say a lawyer or an accountant - and you received an email like the one below, you would probably find it somewhat insulting.

"Just draft a free contract and if we like it we might get you to sue someone." 

"Just do us a free audit and if it’s okay, we might ask for some tax advice."

What is it about the word "writer" that makes people think we’ll jump through hoops like performing seals to get our hands on a £50 gadget in order to get a gig that pays a fraction of our standard rate?

Company X emailed me out of the blue yesterday.  I sent them a carefully-worded pitch, sample prices and links to more information. This is the reply I just received:

We would like to thank you for your CV and portfolio.

After reviewing your CV/portfolio with our CEO we would like to propose the following, as we wish to work alongside an individual who we feel will be able to respond quickly and efficiently to our requests.

A sample of our product will be available for you to review and analyse.  We would then like you to provide us with a tantalising press release.  After each review these products would be yours to keep, the cost of each unit varies from £50.00 too £300.00.

In the first instance we would like to send you a [product name removed] for such a review.   After careful consideration of this review we will then make the decision as to whether we would wish to approach you with further work, which would also include proof reading of Deco Boxes, Specification Sheets and all other necessary marketing material.

We would need to work on a purchase order and invoice basis, each press release costing approximately £100.

We look forward to hearing your comments in regards to the above proposal.

In my experience, it takes a while to get to know a company and its products. This is a necessary first step to writing well for them. It also takes a day or two to write a good press release, get it approved and proofread. 

So, paying £100 per press release means, essentially, asking me to work for minimum wage. If I wanted to do that, I’d work for McDonald’s. At least I’d get a uniform and a free lunch.

I wrote a polite email saying that if they pay peanuts, they should expect monkeys. In my heart, I wanted to suggest that they do something painful and anatomically challenging to themselves. Writers are not monkeys.

Geek alert!  Yes, what I want for my birthday is a giant LEGO aircraft carrier. (Hat tip and more pictures: megabunny.)  If this isn’t available, I’ll settle for a 5,000 piece LEGO Millenium Falcon. (In fact, I nearly bought this for myself for Christmas but decided to buy an OQO Model 01+ that was on special offer instead.) 

If you are wondering why I write LEGO in all-caps, it’s because of their copy / trademark guidelines. It’s been ten years or so since I was designing LEGO games for them but I still can’t help myself. For more on this topic see: Trademark Guidelines make for unclear copy.

I love this video. I watched it when I was growing up and loved it. Now, it’s on YouTube. It’s a wide ranging profile of eloquent genius Richard Feynman. It’s also an example of the kind of intelligent science programming that the BBC used to do.  Now it’s all archeology and anti-science.  It’s in five parts all added below. (Hat tip: Just think.)

My favourite quote about Feynman:

"The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm: (1) write down the problem; (2) think very hard; (3) write down the answer." - Murray Gell-mann

(Previous rants on the BBC’s mission to dumb down science programming: BBC dumbs down science and Cultural relativism doesn’t work at 30,000 feet.)

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

I’ve been doing a lot of techie tinkering over the past month or so.

First, I tried to install Ubuntu Linux onto an old Toshiba Portege. It got about 80 percent through the installation process, crashed and now I can’t boot into Linux, Windows or anything. The wretched device won’t boot from an attached CD-ROM or from USB so I probably need to reinstall Windows 98 from floppy disks and have another go. Yuck!  Stibbe Zero. Linux One.

Second, I’ve been writing a lot about virtualisation recently. I’ve been doing a series of case studies for HP about blade servers and a lot of marketing material on Server-based computing, VMware and other good things connected with desktop virtualisation. (Most of it is pretty specialised but here’s a post on the HP blog I write about it that has some interesting info.) So, I decided I needed to find out more for myself.  I downloaded the VMware player and an Ubuntu Linux distribution packaged as a virtual appliance. It worked really well and I can tinker away with Linux running in a window on my PC.

One possible use might be to set up a sandboxed web browser for the various people who visit the house. I’m really nervous about them using one of the PCs that are connected to my main network or bringing in their own laptops and connecting them to the wireless LAN. The idea of resurrecting the old Toshiba as a Linux box was to provide a completely safe browsing environment for guests that was insulated from the rest of the network. Perhaps a virtual browser appliance could do it instead?

(Curiously, my first trial of virtualisation - Microsoft VirtualPC - is probably not much use any more. I have finally found out how to run Jeppesen Flightstar in Windows Vista.  All it needed was to run it as an administrator.  D’oh!  I spent hours building a Windows XP Professional environment on my shiny new PC to run it and now I don’t have to.  However, HP’s IT has taken over an old laptop of mine and rendered unusable for anything except remote access to their network. I think perhaps I could virtualise that and get my old laptop back for my wife to use.)

I haven’t even started with my new OQO ultra portable PC.  I bought it to be able to plan routes and file flight plans when I’m flying but I need to get it talking to my Samsung I600 phone. This means getting Bluetooth working on both machines and setting up the phone to act as a modem. In turn this means upgrading to Windows Mobile 6.  But to do this I need the USB cable that I lost.  For want of a nail…

So much tinkering. So little time. I need a young apprentice. 

At last, living up to the title, here is a video about swearing. This definitely not suitable for work or playing in front of your mother.

At last, some bad language on Bad Language.

(And the personal bit: this reminds me of when I was working on LEGO Loco. The game let players send little postcards over the internet by dropping them into a goods wagon on a train. LEGO were anxious to prevent this being used to spread profanity and wanted us to add a profanity filter. We asked them for a list of forbidden words and they gave us a couple of dozen. You know, the obvious ones. I didn’t think this was going to be good enough so I got my programmers to email their favourite rude words. We soon had a list of hundreds of words. I guess the points are 1) any word can be a swear word in the right context and 2) there are lots of them and 3) they are a natural part of language.)

(You probably have to live in West London to get this joke. But kudos to the BA pilot who dead-sticked a 777 into Heathrow after both engines failed.)

Viral videos are an interesting phenomenon. I think marcomms and ad agencies see something in the world of social media that they understand: a clever advert that people actually want to watch. You give your time and they provide something entertaining. (See my earlier post: To free or not to free.)

I’m seeing more of them. Even my wife’s theatre company has posted some of its plays online.

Now, my client HP is getting in on the act. They’ve made a fun little video to promote a competition and encourage people to visit their Happy People website. I wrote the copy on this site for them. [PS From comments it’s clear that some people may have misunderstood this last sentence - I wasn’t involved in the viral video itself, only in writing about 30,000 words of content for the Happy People website it links to. Sorry for any confusion.]