Ben Shoemate's Notebook

via http://thinkingforaliving.org/blog/entry/did-you-ever-imagine

Editor: Welcome guest author Jason Womack who's got some advice on how to get back to work on a slow day.
You just don’t want to do it anymore. No more task folders, no more email labeling, no more index cards in your back pocket. You just don’t have the energy today; the power of your productivity is at a low ebb. What do you do now? How do you flip that switch to get going again? Photo by Stewf.

Here are five simple things you can do, not related to making lists or reworking your system (again), which will inspire you to get back on the right track.

• Walk around. Anywhere will do. You can walk around your office. Visit a floor you haven’t been to before. Or maybe you have time to go around the block or visit that park down the street. It’s all about looking for something positive you have never seen. Taking time is smell the roses may be just a cliché, but those roses could be anything. A restaurant you’ve never seen. A friend’s cubicle. Some kids playing ball. Life is going on in the world around you. You just need to notice.
• Set an alarm and work on just one thing for that period of time. Maybe it’s just 5, 10 or 20 minutes. Maybe it’s two minutes. But at the end of the time, you will notice what’s it’s like to experience real focus. And if you complete the task, you have something to anchor your day around. You’ve gotten at least one thing really done.
• Open up a best-selling business book to a random page and read for five minutes. Let you mind apply whatever your reading to whatever you are working on. There is bound to be inspiration for a great idea or a new way of doing things.
• Contact someone you admire. If the internet has done anything, it has flattened the world and enabled us to contact people we respect in many different areas—your business, entertainment, politics or writing. Like an author? Find their web site and drop them an email. Make a list of all the people you want to meet someday and see how many of them you can find on the web. You’d be surprised how many respond.
• Send postcards to two friends you know you live out-of-state. It will make you appreciate where you live more than ever.

In short, here are some things that will get you going again:

• Appreciation of your surroundings.
• The accomplishment of a job done well.
• Connection with others.

That formula may not take a long time to finish, but at the end, you’ll feel brand new and be able to tackle the toughest tasks you have around you with more energy.

What are the switches that flip your energy back on on an unproductive day? Let us know in the comments.

Jason W. Womack, MEd, MA shares productivity tips that make it possible to do more without the added stress of working harder. For more productivity ideas and up-to-date posts, visit www.JasonWomackBlog.com.

A controversy is brewing over a popular Facebook application called PackRat, where users collect sets of illustrated cards for points and levels. The company behind the application, Alamofire, says that users generate up to 500 daily page views per day on the application trying to hunt down the right card to complete a collection.

A big part of the game is “stealing” cards from friends, and so a lot of users add other users as friends so that their cards can be obtained. The application’s popularity has also led some users to create Facebook accounts for the sole purpose of playing the game.

Some of those accounts are now being disabled by Facebook, according to this discussion forum on the application site.

What’s curious is the email sent from Facebook to one deleted user, which states that Facebook isn’t a social network (it’s a “social utility”) and isn’t meant to build large groups of new friends. Instead, Facebook is meant to reinforce “pre-existing” social connections:

Please note that Facebook accounts are meant for authentic usage only. This means that we expect accounts to reflect mainly “real-world” contacts (i.e. your family, schoolmates, co-workers, etc.), rather than mainly “internet-only” contacts. As stated on our home page, Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you, not a “social networking site”. It is meant to help reinforce pre-existing social connections, not build large groups of new ones. If this is in direct contrast to what you expected as legitimate Facebook usage, I apologize for any confusion. This is simply the intention behind the site.

Accounts that are used solely for the purpose of applications are in violation of our Terms of Use. Unfortunately, I will not be able to reactivate your account. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this decision is final.

Thanks for your understanding,

Lauren
User Operations
Facebook

It’s true that Facebook has stated clearly that their intention is to be a sort of mirror to the real world social graph. But it’s unavoidably true that new friendships are made on the site, too. Even friendships forged for the sole purpose of playing a game made by a third party developer.

Even former Facebook President Sean Parker (and current stockholder) said recently at TechCrunch50 that he had far more Facebook friends than real world friends.

Facebook’s real message here may be “please don’t make fake accounts just to play this game,” but that isn’t what they’re saying. I’ve emailed them for clarification.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Many people adore the look of photographs taken with older cameras. The millions of plastic bodied cheap lens bearing cameras that flooded the consumer photography market starting around the mid-20th century had flaws that have come to be a hallmark of their time. The dark vignettes, over saturated colors, and often blown highlights have a certain undeniably flawed appeal to many. Why scrounge the flea markets looking for a camera or waste the money on trendy new (but just as poorly constructed) expensive knockoffs?

Frank Lazaro, a member of the Digital Photography School community, has put together a fantastic tutorial on taking your digital photographs and giving them the vintage feel of older photos. He uses Photoshop and the tutorial and steps are geared towards Photoshop users, but none of the steps are extremely specific to using Photoshop. The effects could easily be recreated with a bit of tweaking to the process in another photo editing program like GIMP. If you're in the mood to tinker with some of your photos but aren't interested in being really hands on with the process check out previously reviewed Wanokoto, a web based image editor that helps you create vintage effects.