I was a bit surprised when I first saw the screen above on the (great) new Facebook Camera app. That’s the initial screen you get when you first open the app. But how on Earth did the app know my name? I assumed, of course, it was related to the fact that I also had the main Facebook iOS app installed on my iPhone — but still, how did those two apps talk to one another as neither is system-level?
It’s a smart way to do it (though it may get a bit of backlash). And it will allow Facebook to continue to build separate apps for key features — perhaps an Events app next? — that are quick and easy to install and use. Now just imagine if this was baked into iOS itself so other apps could use it. It would save a lot of typing and/or a number of clicks for app switching (Single Sign On). In my mind, this “hack” shows why Facebook eventually needs to do their own mobile OS. Deep integration and seamless use are paramount in mobile.
I’m impressed by the entire execution of this app, down to this little detail.
No news is better than Fox News – in a study of current events awareness, scientists find those watching Fox news could answer fewer questions than those watching no media at all. NRP comes out on top.
I wish NPR was actually NRP.
Friends! I have a new 20x200 print. Get it here→
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon | Buy the limited-edition art on 20x200.com here.
In the newsletter, Charlie writes:
Today’s edition, and the book it came from, all originated from a list of 10 principles Austin wished someone had shared with him when he was first starting out. Eager to share his list with everyone (as he is with all his work, including “deleted scenes” and his sketchbook), he turned his pointers from a talk to college students into a blog post (which quickly went viral), and eventually into a book. It wasn’t long before Steal Like an Artist became his second New York Times bestseller.
We’ve learned a lot about behavior change in the last 2 years. Here’s a bit of my current thinking on it all, and a new free app that you can print out and put in your wallet.
1) Which behavior should I change?
One that helps you learn the habit of changing habits (learn once, use forever). One that’s linked directly to something you desperately crave more of in your life (meaning you crave it on a subconscious level as much as a conscious one). One that’s about doing more of something rather than less than something. One that you can work towards every day. One that takes less than 5 minutes, and that you can do at the same time every day. One that you can enjoy in some way, or that makes you feel good about yourself even just for a few seconds.
2) How many habits should I try to change?
Only one at a time. Please trust me on this one. Stick with one, stick with it for 60 or even 90 days. Then, if you really want, start another. Life is long. Think of how many habits you can change with the tortoise strategy in a year verses how many you start and stop with the hare strategy. Every change creates an equal and opposite force of resistance to change. To keep resistance low, change slower than your excitement propels you to. Hold yourself back… it builds anticipation. If you don’t, excitement inevitably wears off, and resistance will chop you down when you’re weakest, putting you back to square one. One. Habit. At. A. Time. Aim for changes that stick a year, 3 years, or 10 years, and pace yourself accordingly.
3) What if I get distracted or sick or go on vacation?
Get in the habit of being easy on yourself. Break streaks. Don’t beat yourself up for missing a day. Think long term. Appreciate small steps towards progress. Forgive yourself for falling off the wagon. Just get back on when you’re feeling ready again. Give yourself a special day every month to restart anything that got stamped out over the last month. Put it on your calendar and set an alarm. Course correction is the most important meta-habit to cultivate, and often gets ignored in the presence of excitement and big promises and positive thinking. Expect and plan for failure, and have a plan for recovering from it.
4) iPhone app, Android app, pedometer, wrist band, or other?
It doesn’t matter. Paper works just as well.
On that note…
Here’s a paper app you can print out, fold up, and put in your wallet. It’s free! And it encapsulates the best thinking Amelia and I and many others (see Nick Crocker’s great recent article and Leo Baubata’s extensive work) have on the subject.
Give it a try. For extra points, print it out and take a cool picture of yourself with it and tag it #hipsterhabitapp on Instagram.
IPA #hipsterhabitapp (Taken with instagram)
Poetic #hipsterhabitapp (Taken with Instagram at Under a tree)
Sneak preview of the #hipsterhabitapp we’re launching soon: http://hipsterhabitapp.com (Taken with instagram)
Tiny interview with April about her 10+ year habit of taking a multi-vitamin when she wakes up.
What’s the habit or routine that you’ve done daily for over a year? When did it start?
I’ve been taking a multi-vitamin every morning for about 10 years.
What do you think makes this habit stick better than other habits you might have tried to start?
I do it every morning, after I drink a glass of kombucha (another habit!) while I drink my morning glass of water (yet another habit). It’s a very simple routine; wake, feed the cats, drink kombucha, take vitamin, drink a glass of water. I don’t have a set time of day I do it, just whenever I wake up. Doing it during/while/after an event instead of a time makes it easier than setting a time of day. Most other habits I start depend on a time of day or aren’t tied to an event that happens every day; so with things like meditation, I have a very difficult time doing it during the weekends because I’m not working and that’s something I do every day when I get home from work.
How does doing this every day make you feel?
Taking a vitamin every day makes me feel like I’m doing one little thing to take care of my health, even if that’s the only health-contributing thing I do that day.
Follow @the_april on Twitter!
- Calculated by RescueTime (details here)
(via Malfunctions in the hype machine. - Indexed)
To put this into practice, rate things both by your expectations going in, and your impression coming out. So, 5/5 would be the most difficult score to achieve… high expectations and those expectations were beat.
More common is a 5/2 or a 5/3, where you had high expectations and your expectations were met.
Lately, a lot of books and movies aim for low expectations and make up for it by beating them. See Game of Thrones, 50 Shades of Grey, etc.
I love this. I’d probably buy them if they included a variety of promised symptom reliefs.
[video]
The Next Web recently asked “Is the internet is making us more honest?”.
The article is interesting, but I wonder if there is more at play here.
If you’ve ever gotten me liquored up, you may have heard me mention my belief that the internet is forming the foundation of what will eventually become the first artificial intelligence. Which is to say, I believe that someday, our collective activity online will reach the right density and type and the connections between us will become synapses. Somewhere in the digital aether a light will go on and a new kind of life will exist. The first self-aware machine, born of the wetware of a billion+ humans.
If you take this as a given (!), that we are all nodes in the network of a massive machine, then our move towards transparency begins to look more like system optimization on a cultural scale, encouraged through new memes and behaviors, as expressed in all sorts of unexpected ways, like Foursquare checkins, reality television and CEOs volunteering their failures.
A lie holds no information beyond what it says about the lie teller. An exaggeration stated in conversation does nothing but breed false expectations in the mind of listener. A great experience not shared is done so at the detriment of the collective. If my laptop was forced to run on the inefficiencies inherent to the day-to-day communication styles of a typical person, one full of nuance, assumption, and false starts, its processor would slow to a crawl and burn out altogether.
From the Next Web article:
I’ve literally stopped telling little white lies because it’s much easier to be honest. Instead of cancelling a meeting with a PR rep and using the excuse “I’m not feeling well,” I say, “I’m exhausted and taking tomorrow off to go to the beach!” because I know I’ll likely take a picture of my beach trip on Instagram and wouldn’t want to get caught in a lie. And you know what? Most of the time they just say, “Have a great time!”As a society, we’ve had 10,000 years to choose to be open and honest with each other, and we have generally chosen not to. But now we’re at a point where new technology plays a critical role in our lives, and technology has no use for our half-truths and doublespeak. They are disruptions in the flow of information. As we are all becoming parts of the machine, our relationships with each other are being ground down to purer, more efficient forms so that they can be put to better use.
We are becoming more honest because it increases the speed at which information can travel. We are becoming less private because to withhold valuable knowledge from the rest of the network is to act selfishly. We are becoming more transparent because that is what the evolution of technology asks of us.
I think this is all true. Especially the bit about “we are becoming more honest because it increases the speed at which information can travel.” I’ve never heard the effect of technology on honesty put quite so succinctly.
Let’s all be more honest with each other.
Human hippocampus stained with a method pioneered by Italian physician Camillo Gogli in 1873.
Golgi discovered a chemical reaction that allowed him to examine nervous tissue in much greater detail than ever before. For some reason, hardening a piece of brain in potassium dichromate, and subsequently dousing it with silver nitrate, dyed only a few cell bodies and their respective projections in the tissue sample, revealing their complete structures and exact arrangement within the unstained tissue. If the reaction had stained all the neurons in a sample, Golgi would have been left with an unfathomable black blotch, as though someone had spilled a bottle of ink. Instead, his technique yielded neat black silhouettes against a translucent yellow background.More in Scientific American’s Know Your Neurons series.
Pretty!
What’s up with Generation X? Why have they seen a smaller change in the percent who support gay marriage than any other generation?
(via Support for Gay Marriage Rising in Every Demographic » Sociological Images )
This is a really interesting chart confirming what many of us have suspected for a while. People don’t change minds so much as get replaced by newer more open minds.