I hope you’ll join me in helping out the restaurants in your town by opting for the phone call. It’s really not that hard… (and you can always use OpenTable to find places and check for table availability!)

The [OpenTable] access fees can be substantial, particularly for restaurants operating on thin margins. One independent study estimates that OpenTable’s fees comprised of startup fees, fixed monthly fees, and per-person reservation fees translate to a cost of roughly $10.40 for each “incremental” 4-top booked through OpenTable.com. To put that in perspective, consider that the average profit margin, before taxes, for a U.S. restaurant is roughly 5%. This means that a table of 4 spending $200 on dinner would generate a $10 profit. In this example, all of that profit would then go to OpenTable fees for having delivered the reservation, leaving the restaurant with nothing other than the hope that that customer would come back and hopefully book by telephone the next time.

via Is OpenTable Worth it?.

From the moment I wake up and groggily grasp for my phone to check email and news I am hyper-connected. Generally, the only times that I’m not within 3 feet of some internet access device are when I’m sleeping, showering, driving (in motion), or having dinner with friends. And that last one is the only one where it’s actually my choice to leave the phone in my pocket, all the other situations have physical or legal limitations on usage.

The need to be connected is, in fact, very basic in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the psychological theory that explains the largest and most fundamental human desires. Our need for a sense of belonging comes right after physical safety. We thrive on friendship, family, and the constant affirmation of our existence and relevance. Our self-esteem is largely a product of our interactions with others.

It is now possible to always feel loved and cared for, thanks to the efficiency of our “comment walls” on Facebook and seamless connection with everyone we’ve ever known. Your confidence and self-esteem can quickly be reassured by checking your number of “followers” on Twitter or the number of “likes” garnered by your photographs and blog posts. The traction you are getting in your projects, or with your business, can now be measured and reported in real time.

Our insatiable need to tune into information – at the expense of savoring our downtime – is a form of “work” (something I call “insecurity work”) that we do to reassure ourselves.

via What Happened to Downtime? :: The 99 Percent.

I believe that the only option to reclaim our collective sanity is to go out of our way to unplug as often as possible. With few exceptions, nobody is going to die if you don’t check email for a few hours. Or if you ignore phone calls and text messages for an afternoon. And I highly recommend the occasional extreme disconnect of taking a multi-day trip somewhere without internet access or cell coverage.

Embrace downtime, liberate your creativity.

5) Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.

6) The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.

7) Once you’re done you can throw it away.

8) Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.

via Bre Pettis | I Make Things – Bre Pettis Blog – The Cult of Done Manifesto.

via Ninety-ninety rule – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

So, I have always believed that variety is the key to learning and retention.  And now there’s some research that backs that up.

[...] there are effective approaches to learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.

The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.

For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.

via Mind – Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been using the two techniques in bold above for a a long time in my work and personal life.  By having many diverse projects in the air at once I find it’s easier to both keep interested and see each project through to completion, but also to learn, invent and retain new information, techniques, or ideas.

Finding the right balance of focus vs. multi-tasking vs. relaxing is a science all its own.  But once you find your perfect ratio, your productivity and happiness will skyrocket.

“Life is a marathon, not a sprint,” he read, adding, “A great deal of mischief occurs when people are in a rush.”

To that end, he studied the psychology around changing lanes in traffic. In an article published in Nature in 1999, Dr. Redelmeier and Professor Tibshirani found that while cars in the other lane sometimes appear to be moving faster, they are not.

“Every driver on average thinks he’s in the wrong lane,” Dr. Redelmeier said. “You think more cars are passing you when you’re actually passing them just as quickly. Still, you make a lane change where the benefits are illusory and not real.” Meanwhile, changing lanes increases the chances of collision about threefold.

via Scientist at Work – Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier – Debunking Myths of the Medical World – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been involved in the minor capacity of building the actual player used on the website and for embedded players on partner websites. It’s been a nice refresher of using my javascript skills. And now, I’m expanding my role into building the first mobile Earbits app for the iPhone. Since I’ve been trying to learn Ruby on Rails over the past week or so, I decided that I might as well also try and learn Objective-C and that whole mess too.

Keeps life interesting. But here’s the teaser shot taken right after the first time I actually deployed the radio app to my iPhone.

Hope to have a beta version done in a week or so, depending on API availability, and get it into the App Store sometime in September.

Many people ask me, “How can I get started in web design?” or, “What skills do I need to start making web applications?” While it would be easy to recommend stacks of books, and dozens of articles with 55 tips for being 115% better than the next guy, the truth is that you don’t need learn anything new in order to begin. The most important thing is simply to start.

Start making something. If you want to learn web design, make a website. Want to be an entreprenuer and start a business selling web based products? Make an app. Maybe you don’t have the skills yet, but why worry about that? You probably don’t even know what skills you need.

via The first step is to start – (37signals).

Go read the whole blog post… This doesn’t apply just to building web pages or software. In anything you do, if you spend too much time planning or worrying that things might not work out unless you do it perfectly, you’re only preventing yourself from having a chance at success.

Programming is hard work. It’s an intense mental activity. Good programmers think about their work 24/7. They write their most important code in the shower and in their dreams. Because the most important work is done away from a keyboard, software projects cannot be accelerated by spending more time in the office or adding more people to a project.

via Some lesser-known truths about programming | Dot Mac.

I would also add that good programmers get bored very easily and need constant challenges and mental stimulation to stay interested and keep “in the zone” working.  This is why so many great programmers are working on multiple projects at once, including using their free time to write software, contribute to opensource projects, or the like.

Clipped from RescueTime which is a fantastic freemium app that tracks everything you do on all of your computers and then does analysis of how you spend your time.

Pretty cool, huh?