I met up with a friend this week and we got chatting about what motivates us in our work. He’s a journalist, I’m a user experience designer, but that’s just what we do on a day-to-day basis – we decided to dig a bit deeper and try to discover what underpins this.

We challenged each other to identify our principal motivation, a defining principle for our working selves. You might call it a ‘personal mission statement’.

This may sound like one of those lame self-improvement agendas, but I believe that we all have core motivations that remain constant in our lives but are manifested in different ways as we change jobs, roles and even careers.

For example, I’ve been a writer, a magazine editor, a trainer, an information architect and a user experience consultant. But underneath all those various roles lies a personal goal that’s common to all of them.

Up until this week I didn’t know what this common factor was, but now I believe I’ve got it. So, here it is, my personal mission statement (drum roll):

To encourage and enable other people to be creative.

That’s it! Sounds simple, obvious even, but as I reflect on the most rewarding jobs in my life (editor of a guitar magazine, training people to write better, designing experiences that are rewarding for users), they all have that aspect in common – they are my attempts to enable creativity in others.

It also explains many other things I’m attracted to: Why I love Apple’s philosophy, why I’m buzzing about Instagram, why I find Leonard Bernstein’s work as an educator inspirational – all this makes much more sense to me now I’ve determined the source of my motivation.

So what about you – do you have a personal mission statement? I would love to hear about your own motivations in the comments below.

So I thought I was going to ease slowly back into gear in 2011. But now here we are, two weeks in, and I’m close to full throttle.

Is it me or has the new year kicked in quicker and bigger this time round?

I put it down to the digital lifestyle.

I love my job, I love technology, I love digital communication. But one of the great things about the holidays was that I got to take a break from my digital life and indulge in my analog one. You know, the one without screens and buttons and statuses and ‘like buttons’.

It wasn’t a complete break. I kept my iPhone on. I checked my Facebook news feed occasionally. I uploaded some images to Instagram. I shared the iPad with the family.

But for two whole weeks the laptop was off (partly because my hard drive went down). I stayed away from my RSS feeds and I avoided Twitter, one of the main culprits in my own personal digital drain.

And it felt great. Refreshing even. Not because I don’t like that stuff (I love it), but because I need to take a break from it sometimes. The information tsunami takes its toll.

I’m not alone. This time last year Pete Cashmore of Mashable predicted digital distraction on a massive scale . Diane Broadnax took her a family on a tech cleanse for five days with great results, and Susan Maushart’s 6-month ban on technology in the home is worth reading for its lasting effects on her family’s life.

More and more people are aware they need help, which is presumably why William Powers’ Hamlet’s Blackberry was a best seller in the US.

And then think of the kids. Mine are too young to be fully fledged digital natives yet, but I saw a glimpse of the future in my nieces and nephews at Christmas. Four of them (aged 8 – 10) were mostly glued to an iPod touch or Nintendo DS. It took threats and cajoles to get them to put them down.

The technology solution

The ongoing promise that technology will solve this information overload seems not to be materialising. Those smart, personalised content filters we’ve been promised haven’t kicked in yet. So managing the challenges of the information age and dealing with the way it affects our lives is increasingly down to our own attitudes and behaviours.

Indeed technology continues to create more challenges to information overload than solutions. No sooner do I get back to my desk in January but I find myself signing up to a new social network called Quora. Here’s a great new tool that has yet more potential to enlighten, engage, interact, solve problems… and hoover up the tiny fraction of attention that’s left after everything else that’s demanded of me.

Okay, this isn’t meant to be a whinge. I’m enjoying getting back to work. I’m thrilled to find that the digital world continues to be an exciting, dynamic and innovative a place to live in. But before we get caught in the slipstream, let’s remember how good that break felt.

Do yourself a favour and make some resolutions

I for one am going to schedule in regular downtime this year. I think it will help my attention, sharpen my focus, give me greater perspective and, yes, make my life better. I challenge you to do the same. After all, you deserve a vacation.

Here’s a short list of my own resolutions:

Wish me luck!

In the meantime, if anyone has any tips for managing information overload, please let me know in the comments.

I don’t know about you, but I find the Christmas break offers a great time to reflect. As I spend most of this holiday time at home and with friends and family, it offers a unique break in my daily routine and valuable time spent at home.

I try to get work off my mind during this time, but my interest in digital communication and the way it changes peoples’ behaviour makes it a great chance to ponder what’s happened in the last 12 months.

So, this year I’m not going to attempt any predictions for 2011 – there are plenty of those around. Instead, here are a few things that occurred to me during the Christmas break in 2010.

Computers are nowhere near easy to use yet

An elderly family member who has limited experience using computers asked me to help him set up a new laptop running Windows, a printer, and a connection to a new cable broadband account. Pretty straightforward, right?

Er, no.

Seeing this situation through a new user’s eyes is incredibly illuminating.

For a start, there’s an overwhelming amount of information to deal with. My relative was asking me a dizzying number of questions, all of them totally reasonable and far from intuitive: would I like to use Bing as my default search engine? What is a McAfee tool bar? How can I go quickly to my web-based email online? Where are all the programs that I had on the desktop of my computer at work?

We are a long way from the ideal of a computer that you can just turn on and use.

This helped me to understand two of the very recent trends in 2010 that are clearly attempts to move towards this goal: tablet computers and the Google Chrome operating system – more on these below.

Tablet computers are ace

I showed the same relative (see above) my iPad, and the ease with which he got into using it comfortably was pretty astounding. Okay, so it’s a bit of an unfair comparison as I’d already set my iPad up to work online, downloaded all the relevant apps, etc. But it was clear that the tablet form factor works so much better for casual computer users.

I also found my own usage of the iPad a bit of a revelation. I’ve had mine since April 2010, and I’ve been using it pretty solidly since then, mainly for working on the move.

But this Christmas I saw the iPad in a new light. For the first time the whole family got to use it (yes I’ve been a bit stingy in sharing it with the kids before now). It was a major hit.

For light computing around the home it’s just fabulous. Using Facebook, checking for emails, looking up information online, keeping up with the TV schedule, reading books to my children, browsing YouTube clips, playing games – for all of these things it’s the perfect device, so much easier and more convenient than the laptop. No wonder analysts are predicting big sales in 2011.

Magazine and newspaper apps aren’t there yet

With all the family’s iPad usage, we rarely used newspaper or magazine apps to find information. I’ve tried most of them, and they’re often clunky, hard to navigate and limited in interactivity.

When we want information we go to the browser and find it on the web, or use specialised apps where relevant.

This must be why the numbers have been dropping off so drastically.

Apps that we did find useful include: TV Guide, book readers (iBooks and Kindle), YouTube videos, social media clients (Flipboard and Twitter – still waiting for a Facebook iPad app), the Marvel comic book reader (the boy and I are loving the Red Hulk mini-series), RSS reader, content aggregation, games and reference apps (the Art Authority app is an awesome use of iPad capability).

Conclusion – media apps need to get more innovative if they want my attention in 2011.

I need online storage

Just before the holidays the hard drive in my MacBook went down. That’s okay, I thought, I’ve been backing up regularly to an external drive. Except, three days later, that went down too (I’m told it’s rare for both to go down so close together, but that’s little consolation).

Fortunately I had moved most of my files to a new internal drive before the backup broke. But not all of it. I’ve lost some personal family videos, some music, and a few other bits and pieces. Not a disaster, then, but it could have been a lot worse.

This year I’ll do what I’ve been meaning to do for ages – I’ll get myself some external backup. SugarSync and Carbonite both look like good options.

The future is (at least partly) in the cloud

I’ve been following the arguments throughout 2010 for the move to the cloud, but until now I’ve not been convinced. Like others I have reservations about committing everything to cloud-based services.

So when Google pilot tested the chrome operating system running on a netbook-style computer at the end of last year, I (like many others) wondered who on earth would use such a device. As many have said, if I can get the Chrome browser and much more besides on a standard laptop, why limit yourself?

The experiences described above have changed my view.

Firstly, my hard drive disaster. Due to the fault in my backup drive, I had to manually re-set up my entire system (if it had been working properly I could have used time machine to reinstall everything to its previous state – but it wasn’t, so I couldn’t.

Re-configuring a computer system is a pain in the ass. I had to dig out library files from system directories, reconfigure browser settings, redefine default files on frequently used software, and much more.

Even now it’s not back to how it used to be. To give one example, I have 120GB of music, and although I managed to save most of it, it didn’t port the metadata. So all those years spent rating songs and measuring play counts to help me list my favourite music have been wasted. That’s what you get for being geeky!

Suddenly, in a flash, I see the benefits of the Chrome OS. Imagine that all I had to do when my hard drive went down was to get a new laptop, fire up Google Chrome, and sign in to my Google account. Everything’s there, just as I left it. No new set up, no re-configuration, no updating software, no ongoing headaches.

As one Google engineer puts it ‘Setting up a new machine takes less than a minute.’ This brings the computer closer to the TV experience – just turn it on and it works.

I can also see how this approach can help the day-to-day user experience, especially for my elderly relative (see above). The simplicity of using one browser as the centre of the computing experience, and accessing cloud services as applications makes total sense.

My predictions for 2011

Okay, I lied. I can’t resist making a few predictions. So here are four based purely on the personal experiences listed above. This is what I think the end of 2011 will look like:

1. Tablets will be heading towards the mainstream. Within another two years they will be more frequently used as home computing devices than desktops or laptops.

2. Cloud computing will take off for real. Google will sell extremely cheap Chrome OS laptops (less than £100 in the UK). Some carriers will give them away free with contracts.

3. There will be a small but significant bunch of exciting and innovative tablet and smartphone apps from one or two savvy media companies. And the best ones won’t look like magazines and newspapers with videos inserted in them.

4. Something entirely unpredictable will happen. This time last year the iPad and Google’s Chrome OS weren’t even announced. It was another astonishing year of change, and 2011 looks set to be no different. I for one can’t wait to see what’s in store.

The Apple iPad. Do you need one, or just really, really want one?

I admit I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy – I’ve used Mac computers for years, I have a MacBook, a classic iPod and an iPhone. Frankly, I don’t see myself using any other MP3 players, smartphones or computers any time soon.

I also love what Apple has done for user interaction on all their devices. Over the past ten years they’ve revolutionised the way we use computers, listen to music and access digital information on the move.

So since Apple announced the iPad, like many others, I’ve been thinking about whether I need one – or just really, really want one.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need one. But not for the reasons you might think.

For example, it’s not because I think the iPad is going to save magazines and newspapers.

I’m a big fan of printed media – I grew up loving and later working with magazines and newspapers, and I’m convinced that they will continue to provide immense value for readers as we go on through the digital age. But the idea that the iPad represents a renaissance opportunity for ‘packaged’ media is misplaced. As exciting as the Wired Magazine iPad app looks (see video below), this is not the best use of digital media.

The best use of digital media is represented by the world wide web, on desktop and mobile devices, where packaged media is ‘atomised’, where I can search for the precise information I want, where I can link freely to pages across any number of brands and websites, where I can participate as both a consumer and contributor and community member through comments, ratings and other interactive features.

The future for media doesn’t lie in trying to re-pack what’s been unpacked. It lies in rearranging information in new and exciting ways.

No, here are the 3 reasons I really need an iPad.

1. Weight

I did my back in a couple of weeks ago. It was so serious I couldn’t move out of bed for a couple of days. While I’m not certain what caused it, it can’t have helped that I was lugging a heavy backpack to and from my workplace. The backpack contained:

• My laptop
• A couple of heavy text books
• Some writing pads and pens
• Power leads for my laptop and iPhone
• A couple of magazines I kept meaning to read but never got round to

With my back continuing to give me problems, reducing my daily carrying weight is becoming less a matter of convenience and more a matter of necessity. This must have been around 7-8 pounds of gear I’d been straining my back with. The iPad could conceivably fit all of this into one small package that weighs just 1.5 pounds (0.68kg).

2. Form factor

Since the iPad launched I’ve started thinking how I actually use my laptop on the go, and whether that keyboard is really necessary. I’ve discovered that it isn’t. When I’m travelling by train, I’m usually taking my computer along with me to carry my powerpoint presentations, check my email and look at the web. I hardly every write documents on the go. Okay I’ll write the odd email, but that should be easily possible with the iPad’s on-screen keyboard.

I’ve also started noticing more and more scenes like the one below – people struggling to use their laptops while waiting for trains, buses, etc. This is clearly not comfortable, and surely not necessary.

3. The user experience

For me it’s all about the user experience, and I’m a big fan of Apple’s user interface (UI) design. Having lived with and loved the iPhone for over a year now, I’m convinced the iPad is going to feel even better, with a bigger screen and more exciting native apps

According to Apple the best iPad applications will ‘downplay application UI so that the focus is on content; present content in beautiful, often realistic ways; and take full advantage of device capabilities to enable enhanced interaction.’ Sounds great to me.

So what do you think – are those good enough reasons to need an iPad? Or am I just persuading myself because I merely want one? Please leave me your thoughts in the comments below.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on how I manage my information workflow for some time. Now that we find ourselves on the eve of an announcement from Apple that could change the goal posts once again (the much rumoured Apple Tablet computer), I thought now would be a good time to get this post written. Then I can compare my workflow in six months’ time and see if there are any major changes brought about changes in technology.

First some context on my requirements: I’m an independent digital consultant, working with various organisations (in the past year I’ve worked with the APA, Econsultancy, Telegraph Media, IPC Media, The National Trust, TheFilter.com and more). As part of my job, it’s vitally important that I keep up to date with relevant information as and when it happens. This is not easy, as the amount of information out there is huge and growing, while the channels through which it’s delivered are proliferating too.

Here are the tools I use right now to keep on top of the tsunami of information that confronts us in the golden age of digital, in order of importance for me.

Startup folder

I got this tip from Darren Rowse at Problogger. Basically, I have a folder in my bookmarks toolbar on Firefox (and now Chrome, which is rapidly becoming my favourite browser). Over coffee first thing in the morning, I use the ‘Open All in Tabs’ command at the bottom of the folder. I then check out each tab to give me a snapshot of what’s going on.

My Firefox startup folder.

My current list of startup tabs include the following content aggregators and social networks:

• Google Reader (see below)
• Facebook
• Twitter (see below)
• FriendFeed
• Delicious Popular Bookmarks
• Digg
• Instapaper
• Read It Later
• Linked In

RSS Feeds

Despite the claim by some digital gurus that RSS is being replaced by Twitter, I personally still find this my best source of information, as I can categorise my feeds for easy reference. Currently I have the following folders set up in Google Reader:

• Arts – this is useful for information for my blog on arts and culture The Culture Club
• Blogs – updates and tips on the WordPress platform, which I use for publishing my blogs
• Business – media and technology business feeds, such as PaidContent:UK and Biz Report
• Design – general design advice and inspiration, including Smashing Magazine and the The Dieline.com
• Digital Media – news and analysis on the digital world, including feeds from Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web, VentureBeat, and All Things Digital
• Media News – more general news and information about the wider media world, and journalism in particular, such as Buzz Machine and Online Journalism Blog
• Misc – sites like Zen Habits, which I follow for its nuggets of wisdom, and Bristol Media Jobs, which keeps me up to speed with what’s happening locally
• Search – SEOmoz, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch tell me all I need to know about what’s happening in the search space
• Sport – I’m a tennis fanatic so this contains all my feeds from my favourite tennis sources, including Tennis Planet, BBC Sport Tennis and GoToTennis
• UX – a wide range of blogs and sites sharing news and information about user experience design and usability issues, including UX Magazine, User Experience Network, Usability News and Boxes and Arrows

I use  Google Reader as my feed reader as it has the following benefits (many but not all of which are also possible on other feed readers):

• You can search back through all your feeds’ history. This is extremely useful for finding stuff you’ve missed, or re-finding information you read in the past. As Steve Rubel says you can treat Google Reader as a database.
• It’s got a social element – you can see what other Google Reader users like, you can add notes, share with others and tag posts, all from within the reader itself.
• You can bookmark in Delicious straight from the reader. This is invaluable when I want to save a post for future reference (see below for more on Delicious).
• On Firefox, Google Reader supports the Read It Later plugin. When I find a post that is too long to read right away, or that I want to refer back to in the short term future, I can save it to Read It Later (see more about Read It Later below) by just clicking on the ‘chevron’ icon at the top of each post. This allows me to carry on browsing feeds in Google Reader and go back to longer posts when it’s more convenient. Note – this functionality isn’t possible in Google Chrome at the moment, which is a shame, as I’m starting to use Chrome for Mac more frequently as my primary browser.

The Read It Later icon in the top left of every post on Google Reader makes filing for later viewing simple.

Twitter

Many digital folks have talked about how they’ve ditched Google Reader and now use Twitter to follow news and information in real time. While it’s still second to Google Reader for me (see above), I do often use it to keep track of breaking developments, and to discover links to longer content.I follow nearly 500 people on Twitter, for many different reasons, so the recently added List functionality was a blessing as it means I can group Twitterers into different categories. I follow lists from others, including:

• Scobleizer/tech-news-brands
• erikvold/seo
• dcypher/bristol-designers
• nobleviola/music

I’ve also set up my own lists, including:

• ttucker23/journalists
• ttucker23/tech-news
• ttucker23/tennis

I occasionally visit Listorious to keep up with other Twitter lists that are out there.

My favourite way of accessing Twitter from my Mac laptop is through TweetDeck, because I can arrange each list into separate columns, and it now integrates Facebook and LinkedIn updates in there too.

TweetDeck makes managing lots of followers on Twitter a lot easier.

Read It Later

As mentioned above, I often find that when I’m browsing feeds or looking at articles online I haven’t got time to read the piece in full. Read It Later is a great (free) service with which you can save articles in one place for checking out when you’ve got more time. You can sign up at the website, and keep track of your articles there or through a handy Firefox plugin. It’s also got a fabulous iPhone app (see below).

I experimented with Instapaper, a very similar service, but I found that Read It Later offers more options, especially through the iPhone app. The most useful of these is that I can save an article from Read It Later straight to Delicious if I want to bookmark it for the long term.

Delicious

I use Delicious, the social bookmarking tool, to keep all articles and web pages that I want to save for future reference. Unlike Read It Later, which is just a short-term holding area so that I can catch up, delicious.com/ttucker is the home of all my bookmarks, which I can tag to ensure that they’re easy to find. I also use Delicious for finding stuff I’ve missed, by regularly catching up with the Popular page, which logs the most popular bookmarks on Delicious.

iPhone

Since getting my iPhone 3GS I’ve noticed that I’m using this device to access information at least as much, if not more, than I use my laptop. According to research, 40% of iPhone users are doing the same, and this looks likely to increase.

For instance, I log onto Google Reader through the Safari browser on iPhone about 2-3 times a day. I can check my feeds on the bus, train, and any ‘dead’ time during the day. I’d love a Google Reader app for iPhone, but the mobile version of the site works fine, so long as I’m online.

The other great app for iPhone is Read It Later. The best feature is that you can download all pages to the iPhone and read them when you’re out of 3G and wi-fi range, on the tube, etc. I also like the fact that forwarding an article to Delicious after you’ve read the article is very straightforward.

Summary

The above workflow may seem overcomplicated, but I’ve integrated all of this into my daily routine. This makes it quick and efficient to stay up to date on subjects that matter to me, whilst filtering the information that I don’t need.

As Pete Cashmore says, 2010 is going to be the year of digital distration, so finding new ways to make information valuable and useful is going to be an issue for many more people, not just information junkies like myself.

I’d love to hear about your information management workflows, so please leave your tips in the comments below and tell me how you’re coping with the firehose of data that’s coming your way on a daily basis!

It seems clear that 2009 will be looked back on by future historians as a watershed year for tech. It was the year that Twitter conquered the world, that Facebook dominated media and that Google made significant strides towards becoming the operating system of the internet.

But what’s also clear is that, to coin an old phrase, we ain’t seen nothing yet. As a new decade dawns we’ll see all this change come into focus and new changes on the horizon. As I write, the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is showcasing a wide array of new and not-so-new technologies that may go mainstream in 2010, from 3D TVs to Slate PCs.

It’s not yet clear whether 2010 will be the Year of Mobile, the Year of the Tablet, or something as yet unforeseen. But one thing is for sure – it’s going to be a time of extraordinary change.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store. January is a great time for looking forward, and I’m particularly excited about the first Digital Breakfast I’m organising in my new role as Training Consultant for the APA. On January 26th we’ll be discussing the digital focus in 2010. The agenda will include  presentations from high profile speakers in the online, mobile and marketing industries, with the opportunity to discuss the digital trends with some of the country’s sharpest minds. It’s open to members and non-members, so if you’re interested in joining us, check out the APA Digital Breakfast information page, or email me for more information.

Visualisation of network effects. Illustration used by permission from the VM Foundry.

The legendary historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote a four-part history of Europe which broke down the key stages of modern European history like this:

• Age of Revolution: 1789-1848
• Age of Capital: 1848-1875
• Age of Empire: 1875-1914
• Age of Extremes: 1914-1991

If Hobsbawm were to continue his series into the 21st century, I’d like to suggest that he’d have to call the current era the ‘Age of Networking’.

Clearly the rise of online and digital media has shown that the killer apps online exploit the network effect. Consider these examples:

• Google – the networks of links.
• Ebay – the networks of buyers and sellers.
• Facebook – the networks of friends, family and colleauges.
• Twitter – the network of like-minded people.

But networks aren’t just limited to popular websites. In his fascinating book on the subject, Linked: The New Science of Networks, Barabasi explores the ways that network effects are transforming our understanding of many other areas of enquiry:

The robustness of the laws governing the emergence of complex networks is the explanation for the ubiquity of the scale-free topology, describing such diverse systems as the network behind language, the links between the proteins in the cell, sexual relationships between people, the wiring diagram of a computer chip, the metabolism of the cell, the internet, Hollywood, the world wide web, the web of scientests linked by co-authorships, and the intrcicate collaborative web behind the economy, to name only a few.

This new perspective provides new insights into familiar phenomena. I will take some examples at random to illustrate the point:

• Project management – new theories of extreme project management put networking at the heart of the process. As Rob Thomsett says in his book Radical Project Management: “Build a relationship with your stakeholders and you will be doing your job. It is all about relationships.”
• Media content – user generated content, commenting, peer reviews.
• Business – empowerment, ownership, partnership.
• Knowledge management – wisdom of the crowds, Wikipedia, etc.
• Marketing – the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Living in the age of networking means applying network thinking throughout all areas of activity. Try applying network thinking to your own work and you will find new opportunities and perspectives emerging.