Here's the article announcing the official death of the HD-DVD format.
Hopefully now Blu-ray products will speed up and grow beyond early adopters. I'm guessing the prices should drop considerably over the next few years. I remember Professor Baird (at good 'ol A.U.) telling us that in the 90's DVD technology had the fastest, most saturated adoption rate of any consumer electronics in history. I wonder if Blu-ray would have competed with that record had it not been for this silly format war.
I guess this is a slow news week for me (sorry for the boring geek babble).
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Getting Stuck and Un-Stuck
2007 was a huge challenge for me in so many ways. The short story is I've been dealing with external and internal "sticking points" in just about every project i've worked with in the last 12 months or so. My relationships with my family and my freinds and even my clients have suffered from it. I'm working diligently to understand it and overcome it, and I have been recieving grace and help from a few key folks to help me through it all.
I may post more about that later, but for now i really just want to share something I found today that addresses this "stuck" thing... Maybe you've experienced it too, and maybe this will help.
EXCERPT FROM "WHAT'S YOUR STICKING POINT" by Dustin M. Wax
Read the full article at lifehack.org
Internal Sticking Points
The sticking points that rise up out of our own thoughts and feelings are in many ways even more insidious and dangerous than the external sticking points listed above. They are, after all, part of who you are, and getting around them takes a concerted effort to change something about yourself. Or, at times, to change something about the project — which is often just as hard!
* Lack of vision: It may be that you simply can’t imagine finishing, or you can’t imagine yourself having finished. As you get closer to the end of your project, you unconsciously start holding onto it, checking and re-checking everything, revising and re-planning, even going back to the drawing board to start over.
If you find yourself in this pattern, first of all pay attention. Realizing we’re sabotaging ourself is often a powerful enough experience to get us going again. Second, take a few minutes to remind yourself of your goals and of the positive changes you expect to occur when you’re done. Third, write down a paragraph or two, or even just a list, of how you see your life when you’re done. Write a vision statement if you haven’t ever before. If applicable, write down how the people closest to you will be affected, too — knowing others hold a stake in your success can often motivate us profoundly.
* Self-criticism: Unlike the negativity of others, there’s no door we can close to get away from the negativity in ourselves, the Inner Critic who tells us our work is not good enough or important enough to waste time on, that we lack the skills and talent to pull it off, and even that we don’t deserve to succeed.
In some extreme cases, therapy is called for, but everyone faces an Inner Critic, even the most prolific creators. It’s sounds glib to say “just ignore it”, and yet, ultimately that’s what you have to do. Just like the criticism of others, you have to ask your Inner Critic to either help you figure out how to succeed or tell it to go away.
One thing that helps is telling yourself that it’s fine to suck — that, in fact, lots of incredible creators, even geniuses, felt their own work sucked. Give yourself permission to suck, and the Inner Critic sort of runs out of steam — what’s it going to say, “You don’t suck good enough?”
* Lack of planning: A lot of time we’re stuck because we haven’t planned our way through all the steps and we don’t know what to do next, or the plan we originally wrote (or otherwise conceived) doesn’t seem to apply. At times, you need to re-plan — to reconceive your project according to what you know now, not what you knew when you started. I often tell students that the best time to start their big papers is write after they’ve finished — you learn so much doing a big project that you always know much more when its done than when you began.
* Priorities: If you suffer from several of these internal and external sticking points — you don’t have time, your family and friends aren’t supportive, you don’t know what to do next, etc. — it may well be that your project is not a very high priority for you. IF you find yourself spinning your wheels for more than a few days, you’d better start asking yourself if you really want this — not just “someday”, but right now. Because you’re spending not just time but energy worrying about why you aren’t getting done.
Now, something can be your very last priority and not be a waste of time. If you’d like to write a novel but you have a family to feed and care for, writing that novel probably shouldn’t be at the top of your list! But know and accept that it’s a low priority and that other things have to come first, so you don’t feel guilty about not working on it — and so that, when you do work on it, you know that you can devote yourself wholly to it because everything else important is taken care of.
These are just a few of the things that stop us in our tracks. Each of us faces a slightly different struggle depending on the nature of our tasks and the nature of ourselves. What’s your sticking point?
About Author: Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org.
I may post more about that later, but for now i really just want to share something I found today that addresses this "stuck" thing... Maybe you've experienced it too, and maybe this will help.
EXCERPT FROM "WHAT'S YOUR STICKING POINT" by Dustin M. Wax
Read the full article at lifehack.org
Internal Sticking Points
The sticking points that rise up out of our own thoughts and feelings are in many ways even more insidious and dangerous than the external sticking points listed above. They are, after all, part of who you are, and getting around them takes a concerted effort to change something about yourself. Or, at times, to change something about the project — which is often just as hard!
* Lack of vision: It may be that you simply can’t imagine finishing, or you can’t imagine yourself having finished. As you get closer to the end of your project, you unconsciously start holding onto it, checking and re-checking everything, revising and re-planning, even going back to the drawing board to start over.
If you find yourself in this pattern, first of all pay attention. Realizing we’re sabotaging ourself is often a powerful enough experience to get us going again. Second, take a few minutes to remind yourself of your goals and of the positive changes you expect to occur when you’re done. Third, write down a paragraph or two, or even just a list, of how you see your life when you’re done. Write a vision statement if you haven’t ever before. If applicable, write down how the people closest to you will be affected, too — knowing others hold a stake in your success can often motivate us profoundly.
* Self-criticism: Unlike the negativity of others, there’s no door we can close to get away from the negativity in ourselves, the Inner Critic who tells us our work is not good enough or important enough to waste time on, that we lack the skills and talent to pull it off, and even that we don’t deserve to succeed.
In some extreme cases, therapy is called for, but everyone faces an Inner Critic, even the most prolific creators. It’s sounds glib to say “just ignore it”, and yet, ultimately that’s what you have to do. Just like the criticism of others, you have to ask your Inner Critic to either help you figure out how to succeed or tell it to go away.
One thing that helps is telling yourself that it’s fine to suck — that, in fact, lots of incredible creators, even geniuses, felt their own work sucked. Give yourself permission to suck, and the Inner Critic sort of runs out of steam — what’s it going to say, “You don’t suck good enough?”
* Lack of planning: A lot of time we’re stuck because we haven’t planned our way through all the steps and we don’t know what to do next, or the plan we originally wrote (or otherwise conceived) doesn’t seem to apply. At times, you need to re-plan — to reconceive your project according to what you know now, not what you knew when you started. I often tell students that the best time to start their big papers is write after they’ve finished — you learn so much doing a big project that you always know much more when its done than when you began.
* Priorities: If you suffer from several of these internal and external sticking points — you don’t have time, your family and friends aren’t supportive, you don’t know what to do next, etc. — it may well be that your project is not a very high priority for you. IF you find yourself spinning your wheels for more than a few days, you’d better start asking yourself if you really want this — not just “someday”, but right now. Because you’re spending not just time but energy worrying about why you aren’t getting done.
Now, something can be your very last priority and not be a waste of time. If you’d like to write a novel but you have a family to feed and care for, writing that novel probably shouldn’t be at the top of your list! But know and accept that it’s a low priority and that other things have to come first, so you don’t feel guilty about not working on it — and so that, when you do work on it, you know that you can devote yourself wholly to it because everything else important is taken care of.
These are just a few of the things that stop us in our tracks. Each of us faces a slightly different struggle depending on the nature of our tasks and the nature of ourselves. What’s your sticking point?
About Author: Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org.
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