The meaning we bring to our words in a conversation is important. Each of us has grown up learning what words mean so well that we often fail to recognise others may be using the same words but with different meanings. The result? Confusion and often a lack of respect.

To illustrate, let’s imaging two sergeant’s of old discussing a new archery recruit in the army. The archer has been through some training and the sergeants are reviewing his performance to date. Does he stay as an archer or will he be relegated to the infantry.

Sergeant Fred and Sergeant Barney are initially in agreement. Private Jones is not as accurate as he needs to be. More often than not he doesn’t even hit the target rings. Archers however are in short supply and they agree to give him some more training over the next month and a review.

“How did Private Jones go after his training?” asks Sergeant Fred. “I think he’s doing ok. He’s improved”, responds Barney. “How can you say he’s improved! He can’t hit a bullseye!”. “Well”, said Sergeant Barney, “He’s getting closer”. The conversation continues like this for a couple of minutes. One person convinced he’s improved and the other convinced he hasn’t.

The problem is that both sergeants are using the same word — improved — with different meanings. Or more precisely in this case from different standards. According to Barney, who’s standard is “closer to the bullseye than before”, Private Jones has improved. He regularly hits the target rings even if he doesn’t hit the middle. This showed to Barney an ability to learn and improve. Sergeant Fred on the other hand was working to a more stringent standard. What use is an archer who can get close to the enemy. He needs someone who can reliably hit a target the size of a bullseye. According to Fred’s standard Private Jones has not improved. He cannot meet the standard required.

This conversation will continue forever unless one of the participants is listening closely enough to realise they are using the same  word but with different meanings. Barney might offer, “Sgt. Fred. It seems that you an I might be using the same word but with different meanings. When you say ‘improved’ what do you  mean?” He then listens very carefully.

This is the origin of the phrase ‘coming to terms’. The process of agreeing a meaning.

In this situation it is difficult to imagine that Sgt. Barney with his understanding of Fred’s meaning for improved doesn’t agree. In an army, hitting a target is important and the time to learn is short. With a new understanding he can choose his words differently next time and avoid upsetting himself and his colleague at arms.

It would be tempting for Sgt. Barney to push forward his interpretation of improved and make Sgt. Fred understand. This would be a mistake. It’s enough to know what Fred means to move forward. Pushing his point will do nothing more than reinforce any idea Fred has that Barney doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In all likelihood, Fred doesn’t even realise there was a confusion of meaning and is relieved Barney finally sees things his way.

The practicalities of this are everywhere. In the workplace we can waste massive amounts of time arguing a point and pushing our view forward instead of seeking to understand better what the other party is saying.

In Australia there can be confusion when ‘next’ is used. Does ‘next Friday’ mean the Friday four days from now, or does it mean the Friday next following the one four days from now. It depends on who you are and who you are talking to. It can mean either. The best bet is to get the date and not just the day.

I recently had occasion to check a medical term on wikipedia. My doctor rolled his eyes when I told him of my research yet it turned up that my understanding of a medical term was different from his. Once I had read the explanation that countered my layman’s understanding I was able to turn a “no” into a “yes” which totally changed the diagnosis. Should my doctor have known better and confirmed I understood this common term properly. Yes. Should I have confirmed I understood this common term properly. Yes as well.

The responsibility to work to understand another’s meaning is yours as it is mine.

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In July 2008 I began the daily habit of selecting something I was grateful for and noting it in my diary. Gratefulness is one of the most powerful emotions we can have and for me the daily habit of reflecting was a moment of quiet and stillness as the world rushed around me. My experience of being grateful is whole of body; like a large sigh without the angst, or the feeling of a warm bucket of water tipped down my back.

The notes of my Ontological Coaching course suggest the following way of thinking about the mood of being grateful.

• I assess that I have been and am the beneficiary of many possibilities in life
• I assess myself to be very fortunate to have experienced these possibilities and benefits
• I declare that I am grateful to the world in general, and also specific individuals for this enrichment
• I also declare that it is a privilege to be alive

Today I will reignite my habit and bring it to the new world. A tweet a day with the hashtag #gr8fl. There is nothing too great or small to be grateful for as I have previously acknowledged:

• Warm socks to put on my feet (mid-Winter item)
• The opportunity we had to swim together as a family
• The patience of my wife
• Microwave popcorn
• Learning that gratitude is a feeling and not just words.

If you would like to follow along please do so on my Twitter feed. I’ll subscribe to #gr8fl and if you post with the same tag I’ll see it.

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Jack Vinson asks,

The biggest question I have upon reading this book is, how I can apply these idea in my life — particularly in the life of my children. I believe that they will “do well” in school, given both of our academic interests. But how do we translate that innate talent into something that gives them what they need to succeed? Gladwell doesn’t offer an answer to that question. (Laying outside the norm)

I wonder if trying to answer this question ‘as is’ is an exercise in futility. It is a powerful and potentially life changing question and so a way forward must be found for as it stands, this question is unanswerable without knowing the answers to some other questions first.

Questions can be dangerous beasties. The answer to “Life, The Universe and Everything” is well known to be 42. The problem is we don’t really understand the question. Let me suggest the difficulty in nswering such a question always comes from our belief system — the way we believe the world is. I can demonstrate this best by asking Jack some follow up questions designed to help him understand where this question comes from and why it is important to him that he answer it.

• How do you think your life would change if these ideas were applied to your own life?
• Why do you believe your childrens’ innate talent is not enough for them to succeed?
• What are you defining as success for your children?
• What mood are you carrying towards the success of your children? (One interpretation could be that Jack is resigned to no possibility of his children being successful and that is why he needs to do something to help them become successful in life. Or, he may be in a mood of wonder and is asking in anticipation of knowing how it will all work out for them. Blogs don’t hold the necessary indicators to give a clue to his mood which, I stress, only he can personally confirm.)

Several questions which if asked would lead to many more. They are designed to help Jack achive lthe clarity he needs to answer his initial question.

If you can’t find an answer you may be served by trying to find out why you are asking.

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The Kennington Reservior, or Kenni Res as the locals call it, has suffered greatly under Australia’s persistent drought conditions. Evaporation lowers the lake level each day and at it’s worst much of the lake bed could be walked across.

Recent Spring rain has filled the lake and this is something I’ve not seen for far too long. It looks full to overflowing and that is exactly what is happening today. Just enough water coming in at one end to flow out through the other. I stopped at the lake today to have a look at the water flowing over its spillway (if a one-foot barrier could be called a spillway). The flow is low, no more than a few litres a minute, and I find myself amazed at how water can enter at one end of the lake, have no visible effect on the level, and then flow out the other end. The logic and physics of it all are obvious and yet nature instills wonder.

I’m glad I stopped today and took a short walk downstream. Reeds and grasses have been lain flat as stronger flows than today’s have felt the pull of gravity. It got me thinking about goals and how we can move forward and fast when we have the focus. The water which is entering at one end of the lake could be considered our dreams. Ideas about what we want to achieve. The inlet becomes the lake surface and our dreams get flattened out, barely visible in our lives as they dilute across the vast surface area of the lake. Eventually, out the outlet, there is focus and the water appears to come together and continue it’s journey downstream towards its goal of reaching the ocean. The more water that enters the lake the faster it exits. Many people are content sitting on the surface of the lake enjoying the view. For those of us who aren’t Kenni Res can serve as a reminder to keep pumping in ideas and refining our focus.

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There is not much to say about The Elephant in the Room by Ed Baker. I got what it was trying to say about financial responsibility and yet it seemed very light. A quick 40-minute read which I enjoyed as I read it and then forgot the minute I closed the cover.

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In my last post I wrote about the notion of breakdowns and how a breakdown between what we expect and what happens can cause suffering. Today I want to touch briefly on a powerful way forward which is often overlooked.

If you need help, ask for it.

So simple and yet time and again I’ve evidenced people slogging away trying to solve their problems alone when all they have to do is ask. There are many reasons why they don’t. Pride, insecurity and stubborness are just three reasons. The biggest is habit. They are not in the habit of asking for assistance. They are in the habit of not asking.

For the rest of today and tomorrow note to yourself how often you think about asking for assistance and then don’t (or if offered turn it down). How strong is your habit?

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Over the last two weeks I’ve been heavily involved in home maintenance on some of our home computers. This has included replacing hard drives, re-installing multiple operating systems and reconfiguring wireless networks. The exercise highlighted to me the importance of dealing with breakdowns. Now, I’m sure for most people the word breakdown has a negative connotatoin and is associated with mechanical or mental breakdown. I use it here to mean something different and as shorthand for ‘breakdown in the transparency of life’.

You and I walk through life oblivious to many of the things that happen around us. We don’t see them and it’s in that sense that I use transparency to describe elements of life. When the transparency ‘breaks down’ something which was previously invisible becomes visible and we may even wonder how we’d never noticed it before. The rest of the article will describe these terms with some examples and by doing so I hope to help you understand that breakdowns will occur, do occur and how we habitually handle them has a marked effect on our quality of life.

When things aren’t working as they seem

The process of installing an operating system on a computer — in this case Windows XP on a computer that had been given to us as a replacement for my daughters’ monolith — is reasonably simple. I begin by wiping the hard drive, installing Windows XP, installing drivers for hardware and applying Windows updates. Then I backup the computer and can begin installing software.

Breakdown #1 — Where are the drivers?

A computer’s operating system doesn’t necessarily know about all the hardware in your computer. This is both by design to allow upgrades and a side-effect of the many pieces of hardware provided by many vendors in the marketplace. As this was an inherited computer my first breakdown in transparency was realising I didn’t have the correct video and hard disk drivers for the machine. I realised this after I had wiped everything off and begun installing the operating system. Computers typically arrive with a drivers disk which I didn’t have. No need to panic. I jumped onto another computer in the house and downloaded them. If I’d paniced I would have called the person who gave us the PC (who likely would have been unable to find the CD anyway) or in the worst case paid expensive IT support or simply given up and purchased a new computer. My point is, this stuff happens and it’s important how we deal with it. The three non-alternatives were actually escalation alternatives should the first have failed.

Breakdown #2 — How old is my waypoint?

Many computer games use the concept of a waypoint to save progress. In a typical 8–10 hour game it is not practical to play the whole game through and so waypoints are used. When rebuilding a computer I create my own waypoints by imaging the hard drive. These disk images are exact copies of what I have installed and if I need to go backwards, quicker to reload to the hard drive than starting from scratch. I had spent a couple of hours downloading Windows Service Pack 3, Internet Explorer 8 and other updates when one of them caused the computer to lock up. After 20 minutes of inactivity I turned the computer off and rebooted. It so happened the lock up occured in the midde of applying a patch to the Windows Genuine Advantage Software and the consequence was a legal copy of Windows was not being recognised as such. I couldn’t get past the problem and so had to revert to an earlier waypoint.

The breakdown? My waypoint was two hours of work and several hundred MB of downloads ago. I had pushed forward rather than saving where I was and it cost me. Have you ever thought to yourself, “I need to save this file before proceeding”, failed to do so and have your computer crash minutes later. I bet you have and I normally save whenever I have that thought. Let’s say my subsconscious is warning me (nb: just save a second draft of this post…). Anyway, in my eagerness to get the PC configured I hadn’t take the 20 minutes to save a copy and it cost me four hours. With all breakdowns the most powerful place of action is from accepetance they have occurred. Sometimes our only choice is to accept them and move on. I had to go back to two hours earlier and start again.

Breakdown #3 — Where is the operating system?

One would hope I had learnt from my earlier experience with waypoints and I had. I imaged the disk prior to installing the update that previously crashed and again afterwards. To do this I use Acronis True Image software. In the past I’ve used Ghost and you may have heard the term ‘ghosting a drive’. True Image allows you to partition off part of your hard drive for secure images. After I installed the patches etc., I imaged the drive to an external USB drive and to the secure Acronis partition on the computer’s main drive.

Next morning, I had a small configuration task to perform which only required a moment to boot up the computer, login to Windows and change a setting. I couldn’t do it. Each time I tried the computer failed to complete my login. “Great!”, I thought (with a large dollop of sarcasm for so early in the morning) I’ll have to go to the backups. I couldn’t. The secure image would not load. I tried again without success. Lastly I tried the external drive image. That I could access but when I tried to restore it nothing happened.

There are only two types of people. Those who have experienced a catastrophic hard drive failure and those who will.

The previous night’s lockup and the morning’s problem were the same. A dodgy hard drive. I didn’t know it at the time, but my external hard drive image was a saving grace. The state of the hard drive was transparent to me. I didn’t know it was failing although a conversation with the previous owner confirmed the strange lockups which occurred without reason. Once the drive had failed twice the transparency broke down and I could see it was the problem. That night I swapped the hard drive, restored the image and was done. The backup to the internal drive (that which failed) was because I was trying a new feature of the True Image software and not part of a plan. However, that I had a backup at all is from the experience of past breakdowns and points to them as opportunities for learning.

The second computer

Often, with a struggling computer, the solution is a reinstallation of the operating system. This was the case with my laptop. During the rebuild I tried Windows 7 and have to say I like it but in my case, on my laptop, there is an unfortunate habit of powering off without warning so I’ve dumped it. It was only when I reinstalled XP that the next breakdown of note occurred.

Acrobat Professional — Where art thou?

I think Acrobat Professional is one of the most useful pieces of software on the planet. So to many others which is why Adobe charges a lot for it, software pirates pirate it, and Adobe seeks to protect their investment. I so happen to have a legitimate copy of Acrobat Professional 8 and that’s where I’ve come unstuck.

To protect against illegal installations of Acrobat you must activate the software. This sends a copy of your serial number to Adobe who keep track of the total number of installations. To their credit, Adobe allow you to have Acrobat installed twice. Try a third time and you will not be able to activate and use the software.

Here’s my breakdown. I didn’t know there was a limit of two activations in place. I had assumed it was tied to the CPU/hardware configuration as other software that uses such activation systems often is. Remember I am reinstalling my operating system.

• Old, tired and sluggish, installation = 1 activation
• Windows 7, tried = 1 activation
• New install = 1 activation too many

The software is useful in that it suggests deactivating a previous copy. I can’t. Windows 7 is gone with several hours backing up the new system, restoring the old and trying to deactivate it fails. Apparently my firewall is blocking things which is interesting as I tried it without a firewall installed. Adobe support is very slow, phones don’t get answered and online chat doesn’t work.

Can I rant and rave in response? For sure I can and the few lines above I’ll write off as a warning to others but ultimately such action doesn’t help. I have no choice but to wait for their response which has been slow to date.

Breakdowns occur. Something is wrong if they don’t.

On any given day we will be accosted by breakdowns. Anything that interrupts the flow of life as you expected it would be is a breakdown. This includes green lights changing to red. Some will have significant impact on our lives and when that happens the habits we’ve developed in dealing with the day-to-day breakdowns of life will assist. This article was written to help you identify that breakdowns exist. Hopefully I’ve created a breakdown within you.

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I’m churning internet providers from Comcen to Bigpond (we were going to stay with Comcen but they don’t have the ports for ADSL2+ on my sub-exchange). Anyway as part of the deal Bigpond have sent me a wireless router at no cost. I thought great, a single unit to replace my current dlink wireless router/adsl modem pair.

And yet after an hour of playing with the new unit last night I put it away in its box. There are two reasons. It doesn’t have the ability to remove the aerial and replace it with something stronger and more directional which is something I need and what I think should be a basic feature. Secondly and more importantly I cannot find any way to lock town internet access by MAC addresses. Without any security people can steal your wireless bandwidth. This is limited with password security and encryption. MAC filtering uses the MAC address of your wireless card and restricts access only to approved cards. If you walk into my home with a laptop, even if you know my passwords you cannot access the wireless network.

Basic features that are missing. Sometimes making things simple makes them useless.

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I had one of those conversations you’d rather not have with someone at work. They asked, “What did we decide about…?” and my honest response was, “I don’t know. I can’t even remember the conversation”. Neither of us could recall with any accuracy what was discussed. That’s a waste of their time and mine.

That weekend I bought  Pulse SmartPen from Livescribe. This is a wonderful piece of technology. Here are some of the features:

• As you write the pen records what you write. Special paper with microdot technology and an infra-red pen combine to record handwriting. This saves scanning notes into a computer.
• As you are present in the room the pen records what you hear. This would have solved the memory lapse described earlier.
• Tap on what you wrote earlier in the meeting and the pen plays back the audio from that point. “What did we decide about…” is met with “Hang on, here’s what you said”. This link is retained once you’ve downloaded to the computer as well.

I’ve had to learn to take notes or table of contents markers during a meeting as placemarks for the recording. It’s a different way of working. So far I’ve rarely had to check a recording. It’s there if I need it. Just like the backup of my computer. I don’t expect to use it often but when I do I want to have already been prepared.

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Mentors play such an important part in our lives. Today I was blessed to hear that someone who I’ve been working alongside for several years now has been describing me to her friends as her mentor. I trust it is no coincidence I just heard from one of my mentors — Roy Sheppard, World Class Moderator — the very person who showed me there was such a thing as personal development and to whom I ultimately owe the identification of my calling to guide people to the path of self improvement and walk beside them on their journey.

Roy has just launced the World Class Moderator site to showcase his speaking work. Take a moment to have a look. You never know what may come from it.

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I’ve been using Dropbox to sync my PersonalBrain between multiple computers for a few weeks now. Dropbox copies files via the internet. As long as you follow the rule of ensuring you’re not running two copies of PB simultaneously — in other words, let the sync finish before firing up PersonalBrain— it’s robust. Keep up the practice of regular brainzips just in case.

For your initial load I suggest you try:

1. Leaving a comment below requesting that I refer you to Dropbox. The company provides an inital 2GB of space plus and additional 250mb for each referral for each party (up to an addition 3.0gb). So if I refer you then you will have 2.25gb to start with and I’ll gain as well. Enter your email address in the appropriate field. It’s not publically displayed and you’ll receive an invitation from my personal address.
2. Register and install Dropbox on Computer A and Computer B.
3. Practice with some non-brain files until you’re happy and understand the mechanics.
4. Turn off Dropbox on Computer B.
5. Copy (not move) your brain to the My Dropbox folder on Computer A.
6. Let the sync finish — could be hours depending on bandwidth and size.
7. Copy the same files to Computer B — or in other words, pre-load the files. This saves bandwidth and time.
8. Start Dropbox on Computer B.
9. Wait for the sync to finish before starting PB — it will be quicker because many of the files are already there.

Usual disclaimers about you being responsible for your data and adequate backups apply. Keep original copies until you’re sure and then keep them anyway. I’d hate for you to lose your brain. Yesterday I setup a new PC and thought it was right using the above method. Somehow I’d missed something but was able to recover by reloading a brainzip over the Computer B files.

You can have Dropbox running while you are using PersonalBrain. It will be able to update most files but not all. These will update as soon as you close out of PB (usually within a minute or two). If you shut down your PC before checking at the end of the day you risk getting out of sync so be diligent. It will take only a moment.

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Men and women are different. There, it’s been said by me and was also said a while ago in Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps by Allan and Barbara Pease. The point to note is this. Different does not mean unequal. Using a blend of scientific evidence and self effacing humour, the authors describe the differences in the typical male and female brain and thereby provide explanations for so many of the different patterns of behaviour between the sexes.

The distinctions given in the book are practical lead to understanding and then the ability to choose how we behave with one another.

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Google, you can have the lot. And I give it willingly.

First you helped me with a simple and fast search engine. This was followed up by the wonder of Google Earth and then Google Maps. Some other bits and pieces with Feedburner and Webmaster tools, then Google Reader last week took over from Feeddemon. Google Sketchup is in there as well. Now I’m giving to your care 5 years of emails and my calendar data as well. I trust you to do the right thing. For now Flickr can keep my photos.

I still don’t understand why Microsoft has such a thing about Internet Explorer. It’s the browser —it’s the data. An Google provides a standard, no-frills, simple and fast way to access it from anywhere.

Four days ago I started a new role with a different employer. By far the biggest hindrance to my productivity this first week has been the inability to access my existing knowledge, be that emails, calendar, contacts, newsfeeds or my PersonalBrain (the latter needing permission to install the software first). I have a Blackberry to carry some of that around but if you’ve ever been the victim of split-syncing (multiple data sources) then you’ll know it’s not so easy to fix.

Truthfully I don’t know what pointed me towards Gmail. I’ve had a Google Account for sometime and it may have simply been a byproduct of tidying things up. As I dug deeper and began to bring my existing email into Gmail I found instructions on how to Use Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007. With this I can access all of my mail from anywhere and still retain local copies. That works for me. No longer do I have to say, “I’ll dig that out and send you a copy when I get home/elsewhere”. The Blackberry client is great as well.

Calendar data has been a problem this past week. My new firm uses Outlook appointments extensively as they should. All my existing appointments were in my old system and synced to my Blackberry. Two diaries! Manually copying data from one to another works to a point and that point is when something changes. Again Google had the answer with Google Calendar. This one however took a while to work out.

I thought the flow of information was Work PC <-> Google Calendar <-> Blackberry <->Home PC. That lead to some nasty sync software (nasty defined as “I still had to think about it”), including Google’s Blackberry sync which fails horribly because it doesn’t sync all data. All I can say here is read before you decide. There is a risk of deleting calendar data from Outlook. On the other hand Google’s Outlook Calendar sync is fantastic. The order of Work PC <-> Google Calendar <-> Home PC <-> Blackberry works a dream. It transfers all data fast and keeps things in sync.

Google Reader for RSS feeds. Again, every computer has a browser.

And so on. Love with a search engine and mapping (one of the world’s great contributions) has led to a long term relationship.

Do I dare look at Picasa and Chrome?

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Eddie Erlandson’s interview with Michael Bungay Stanier (part of his series of Great Work Interviews) is a fantastic summary of our way of being. As described, Eddie brings all his medical and leadership experience to the conversation to talk about:

• The importance of physical, emotional and cognitive resets
• How wisdom rests in our body – and how to access that wisdom through emotion
• The best place to start to do Great Work

In case you miss it, the conversation describes all spheres of human existence and demonstrates how language, moods and emotions, and our physical body are all intertwined and influencing of each other. At only 25 minutes long this is well worth your time.

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It turns out that you can judge a book by its cover. In this case, Go for No! in which the premise of the book is summarised in the title. If you want success, don’t chase the yes — chase the no. It’s only from chasing no that you will get sufficient learning to enable the yes’s to occur.

We can often fall into the trap of failing to ask for something because we’re afraid of a negative response. This bold assessment that we know what the other person will say (how often do you know what you’ll say) stops us from creating the opportunity for them to say either ‘no’ or ‘yes’. How dangerous is it to hold back on a question because we can’t afford to hear no, yet by doing so we don’t allow the very yes we so desperately need.

This book describes why setting a target to achieve a certain number of no responses will automatically generate the required number of yes responses.

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What tribe do you lead is the fundamental question in Seth Godin’s book, Tribes: We need you to lead us. It got me thinking about the various tribes I’m a tribe member of and the leadership present or available in each.

Make no mistake, this is a book that challenges the status-quo. In fact, it may be better to say it challenges the status-quo about the status-quo. Within there is a challenge to lead which is so compelling you may find you’ve made the decision not to lead and didn’t realise it. This is quite different from the traditional view that leadership is a choice. Tribes shows us there is almost no way not to lead a tribe.

Audible.com has a free download of the unabridged audio version of Tribes.

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I’ve just taken the personality type and multiple intelligence tests  at mypersonality.info. You can see my results below. I am conscious these results do not define who I am, but rather how I appear to myself. Others may judge me differently and that’s a good thing. Know thyself and make changes where you need to.

There is nothing unexpected here for me though I will note that for many of the personality type items I selected what is easiest for me and so hit INTJ as previously. However, there are ways in which I’m consciously moving my personality type into different areas, with particular work on the interpersonal side.

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I run my Getting Things Done (GTD) system using PersonalBrain as my primary tool. Using Tags for contexts and a Thought Type for dates I’m easily able to model an online tickler file. Tickler files are used to remind you of things in the future — in the future so that you can forget about them now.

I firstly created an @tickler tag to hold any items I wish to be tickled about in the future.

In the image above you’ll see three items. An eye test, a podcast to listen to and a reminder to take a GTD belt self-assessment. That’s all great but how do I know when I need to be reminded of these during a weekly review? Well, I have each attached to a date and by expanding all on the screen (click the + button in the toolbar) I get both dates and project links.

Each date is typed using a Date thought type that I’ve created. My next eye test is due in May 2011 (2011-05). I plan to listen to the podcast in August 2009 (2009-08).

This simple blending of PersonalBrain and tickler files is working well for it makes the most of PersonalBrain’s linking structures. When I move them to my regular lists, it’s just a click or two away with no need to re-enter information. These items are @tickler because I know I’ll do them in the future. They could be stored as Someday/Maybe items but I personally have a different class of item on that list.

See also

Further information on how I, and others, use PersonalBrain for GTD can be found in this PersonalBrain forum post.

If you found your Facebook friends suddenly not doing anything i.e., you no longer see their updates in your News Feed, then this is the solution.

Are You Missing Your Friends Important Facebook Status Updates? | Facebook Profile Customization and User Lifestyles Blog.

It only took me a couple of minutes to set up a list of All Friends and thereby get their status updates.

This morning I listened to an engaging talk on storytelling by Shawn Callahan of Anecdote. I’ve known of Shawn’s work for a while and this is a great opportunity to see and hear his ideas on how stories are a powerful, yet often misunderstood element of our workplaces.