Brad Salomons

Blog

  • multitaskable

    multitaskable

    I think a lot of us out there would like to think that we are superb multitaskers. I like to think that of myself. Or maybe you don’t. But we are out there and I know a lot of people who would fit that description: I can do everything, anything, as much as I want.

    Now…

    I have been doing this thing I’ve been calling a “career shift” —well, I mean, it stopped being a career break over a year ago when I started picking up odd jobs and part time work and going back to school. None of that is a so-called break anymore. It’s just a different kind of work, after all. My end goal is something different from where I was, but I am moving towards it with a careful, deliberate effort. So I’m calling it a shift. And in taking this approach I have been doing a lot—no, really, a lot—of multitasking. Or trying to, at least.

    I’ve been working jobs, volunteering, parenting, re-educating myself, writing, job hunting, trying to keep fit, coding, playing video games, reading more, socializing with friends, squeezing in a bit of travel—aaaaand, well… that’s the thing isn’t it? 

    As much as I’ve been doing all this stuff, I think I’ve become saturated. 

    Maxed out. Capacity reached.

    I am officially at the point where doing anything new seems to push something else out the back—and off the list.

    I started blogging more and my coding efforts suffered. 

    I upped the number of shifts I did each week at my part time job and suddenly I realize that I’m not making art.

    I’ve been reading more books, but almost simultaneously my progress on my novel ground to a halt.

    It’s not something I’m formally tracking, of course, but just trends I’ve noticed. Start one thing new, something old vanishes from my life.

    And yet I don’t view this as a weakness. My ability to multitask, something that I’ve long viewed without context or care or introspection is something that I’ve also long thought was nigh limitless. But actually it isn’t. And that’s okay.

    Understanding that the mind has limits, time is strict, that multitasking ones life and projects is finite, and that getting the most from ones efforts is a work of good and strategic choices—this is a kind of self-awareness that, for me at least, has been hard to come by. Knowing that taking on something new will take away something existing, or alternatively, giving up something existing will leave space for something new: this is a variable to help me understand my  ultimate potential to create, learn, and contribute. 

    And it sounds all-to-obvious to write that, but I think if more people could consciously articulate that variable about themselves they would not only make better decisions about their lives and careers, they’d probably find a kind of comfort in knowing that limits are nothing to fear and the very idea of multitasking should be evaluated with a unique and personal lens.

  • professional anecdotal

    professional anecdotal

    I have been observing the subtle art of the professional anecdote.

    As someone pointed out to me recently, LinkedIn and other similar networks, along with individual websites like this very site, a professional-ish blog, are rife with people wearing masks.

    Professional masks, of course. People post on sites and blogs like LinkedIn and their own portfolio websites and almost unanimously do so wearing a kind of digital mask. That is to say, much of what you read here, there and other similar places is almost certainly, to a degree, appropriately, necessarily, and interestingly performative.

    Not in a bad way. Rather, it is performative in a work way.

    We are all trying to be professionals, and build up a facet of our identities online that normally we would reserve for the office.

    And this leads to the fine art of the professional anecdote. How does one tell a work appropriate story that is simultaneously a little humorous, a little insightful, and all around something that might be the kind of story one would feel perfectly comfortable telling at a meeting or a conference or to a client? 

    A few minute before I sat down to write this a former colleague of mine, can I call him a colleague? Someone with whom I did business in the past to whom I am now connected on LinkedIn, wrote a little story about how on the way to catch a cross-country flight to attend a business meeting recently he encountered a faulty gas pump while refueling his rental car, soaked his only pair of shoes in gasoline, and consequently had to think on his feet (groan) while navigating airport security, a crowded flight, and an important business meeting. A little humourous. Insightfully relatable. And assuming it was told with a tact, perfectly the kind of story that one could tell at the start of a meeting with just about anyone. Professionally anecdotal.

    And it is an art form that while often derided a bit pejoratively, just as I did to a degree when I noted that this is a kind of performative mask wearing, it is also a part of professional decorum that is vital to anyone in business these days.

    I note this second take because on LinkedIn lately I have seen some people, clearly the kinds of folks who have crafted long and careful perceptions online to their colleagues, suddenly shift into deep and divisive political opinion, telling stories that tick all the boxes as above, but then also make people a little uncomfortable regarding the state of the world these days, from almost every perspective one might imagine.

    So I wonder: is this a blip, and will the fine art of professional performance online shift back to the apolitical “a funny thing happened to me on the way to work” anecdotes? Or are we entering a refreshened era of tinting those masks to match our political colours to better understand with whom we are doing business?

  • monster blue fame

    monster blue fame

    Despite my protests about the fluxable nature of social media, I have been posting on Bluesky.

    That site, for now, seems like the developers have set out to build the anti-twitter twitter, and that appeals to me enough to participate. Again, just for now. But for now maybe creeping closer to and end because this weekend they rolled out verification. Blue checkmarks. A kind of quasi-fame bestowed from upon high by invisible criteria and processes.

    I don’t like it.

    Yet another popularity contest for which the rules are vague and unpredictable.

    Yet another bit of nigh unobtainable digital swag the rest of us cannot but hope to acquire to validate our own opinions and voices. To elevate our own perspectives above the fray once in a rare while. 

    But that said I don’t have a better or an alternative answer. Do we let algorithms decide who is heard? Or do we let corporate moderation decide who is heard? Or is it that popularity remains with the masses, even though the masses are turning out to be as many bad actors or sock-puppets as there are real authentic humans.

    That never-satiable quest for fame seems to me to be one of the harbingers of the slide of truth and reality into the abyss within our societies lately. Celebrities writing op-eds. TV hosts filling important government jobs. Influencers deciding if your product or idea or service is worthy enough to exist.

    There was a time when having two hundred followers would have been enough for anyone.

    Today, if you don’t have at least a thousand times that you are practically no one.

    What have we created?

  • strategic simplicity

    strategic simplicity

    I write all of these things I post into an offline word processor first.  Then I do some light editing, copy and paste into the blogging software, and then ultimately push publish.

    Maybe you read that and thought so what? 

    Big deal? Obvious.

    We all have these simple little habits that keep us organized. They are each of them personal strategies to creep us towards whatever definition of success we’ve chosen. And each of these strategies are fundamental building blocks of who we are how we can get stuff done.

    I was observing a coworker yesterday inputing some data into a spreadsheet. She made a mistake and quickly realized that she had entered the data into the wrong cell. For me, I would have highlighted the cell, Ctrl-Xed it and then highlighted the right cell and Ctrl-Ved it, and been off to the next item. She used the mouse, located the undo button on the menu, clicked it to erase what she had written, then highlighted the correct cell and retyped the data.  Same result, but my method would have been literally five times faster.

    Never assume the little things are obvious or so what? moments. We might spend hours writing and talking about our big strategies for getting stuff done, but often I think I could teach a course on all the little things I’ve learned about getting things done and each individual step I take to accomplish it all.

  • social games

    social games

    I spent nearly a decade feeding the massive social media networks like Facebook and Instagram with my creative output.

    What did it get me?

    I could tell you that I learned some skills in social media engagement, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration because an invisible algorithm did most of the work.

    I could tell you that it gave me an excuse to write and create, but that would be something of a cop out because one shouldn’t need such excuses to practice one’s craft.

    I could tell you that it gave me an audience, but honestly I could have currated an email list of my friends and family and had nearly as many eyes to see what I made.

    What it really did was create value for someone else.

    What the social media networks never admit is that the house is only one guaranteed to win, and it’s always their house. Sure, some folks hit a jackpot and walk out richer and wiser, but most of us spend our creative chips and they vanish into the coffers of the app or network.

    I can’t tell you that you shouldn’t play the social media game, but I can suggest that there are far fewer winners there than there are the rest of us. And I can tell you that I have lately been, and will continue to be, putting more effort into building my own (much smaller and less social) networks with my creative energies.

  • human disadvantage

    human disadvantage

    I don’t have a problem with Artificial Intelligence tools.

    I do have a few problems with what I call the AI advantage.

    That is to say, I have a problem with the idea that these artificial intelligence engines, generative algorithms and the like, that they are somehow above the moral and legal code to which the rest of us are obliged to adhere.

    AI is just another tool, after all. It can do amazing things for businesses and individuals. I can drive change, teach, inform, advance and help give a leg up to anyone trying to bootstrap an idea into reality in a world already saturated with successes.

    But it needs to be used in a way that is fair.

    And if we cannot do that through regulation, it is probably incumbent upon us a society to accept and normalize a moral code for technology systems that mimic the things that sets humans apart from the rest of nature:  intelligence, creativity and thought.

    Computers are faster. AI systems work across geographic barriers with ease. And for now these systems are accessible to a broad public. Advantages. 

    And they have these inherent advantages as a foundational aspect of what they are and how they have been built. So, we should not let them carelessly break the rules which we have put in place for people. Specifically, we should not let them ignore copyright rules and fail to respect the intellectual property rights of humans.

    We would not tolerate a human being building a business on stolen property, so—even if we can’t seem to make our governments stand up and regulate it—we should, as humans, prevent this particular AI advantage from becoming accepted as a moral norm.

  • hiragana

    hiragana

    We have loosely settled on a trip across the Pacific.

    Unable to confidently travel southbound across the border for our semi-annual pilgrimage to the house of the mouse in California, my wife has set her sights on the sister park near Tokyo for sometime, hopefully, next year. And of course a couple weeks checking out more than just Disney, too.

    I love the idea of visiting Japan. The art and culture and food and architecture and everything that I feel would be familiar from the exports of media and such in which I partake locally.

    And as is my oft-usual approach to these things, I’ve started to prepare for this still-hypothetical trip by taking language lessons. In other words, I’ve been studying Japanese…for about a month now.

    And while the actual need to speak the language as a European-toned North American tourist has been repeatedly called into question by many friends, many Asian-descended themselves, I can’t help but feel having a basic grasp of how to (at the very, very least) read some of it might come in all too handy.

    I mean, let’s just forget for a moment the academically-rewarding aspect of learning any language, and take that as a given: Learning new languages is simply, well, human.

    But instead picture Brad stumbling through the Tokyo subway system or down a bustling alley and having some basic ability to read the signs for a shop or a washroom or even an exit. In that aforementioned Euro-centric approach I’ve taken to travel, the languages are almost always close enough and use the familiar latin-descended alphabet system. I get by. But arriving in Tokyo I would assume that recognition and some general familiarity with hiragana and katakana script will give me some advantage. And increase my enjoyment and comfort on such a trip, too.

    Thus, I have been learning. Learn slowly, of course, using apps and flashcards and online resources. But learning.

    And that hypothetical concept of a maybe trip to Asia next year seems a little bit more real in the process.

  • two hundred and fifty

    two hundred and fifty

    There are many ways to approach a problem, but by far my steady go-to approach has long been incrementalism.

    A little over a year ago I started writing a novel.

    This is actually a complex and confusing anecdote about sitting down to write a trilogy of novels, nearly finishing the first one, deciding that it was actually not a trilogy but just one great big story, then reopening what I thought was a climactic conclusion of my book to instead trudge into the effort of writing another entire novel-worth of story to finish the plot in a meaningful and interesting way.

    The first half took me two months. The second half is approaching a year worth of effort.

    Of course, in that time life has got in the way. I’ve been working, parenting, going back to school, and coding a video game—but I digress.

    The point is that I have been incrementally working towards finishing the novel. I have been writing it two hundred and fifty words at a time. Little steps. Inching closer to completion. Trudging ever forward.

    Is this the ideal approach?

    Heck, I don’t know. I’d like to tell you that I have stumbled onto some great secret of success, but the reality is that slow and steady progress is such an old piece of advice that it literally has it’s own spirit animal in the tortoise.

    Each day I sit down and write (at least) 250 words, one word at a time, one keyboard stroke at a go, all to add onto my novel. Each day I incrementally move slighty closer to the end. Each day I am 250 words closer to being done.

    My point is that some problems and projects are just big and there is no quick and easy fix.

    My fix, neither quick nor easy, is to write two hundred and fifty words each day. Like a tortoise in a foot race.

  • only reading

    only reading

    Used to be that when I bought a new piece of technology I wanted to push it to the limits to see what it could do. But earlier this week I bought myself a new e-reader and I’m approaching it with a completely different tactic: I’m using it solely as an e-reader.

    Let me elaborate. 

    A decade ago when I bought myself a similiar piece of technology, my first instinct would have been to dig into it and see how I could use it beyond reading books. I may not have gone as far as hacking the firmware, say, but I certainly would have connected it up to a computer within the first day, dug into the file system, tried loading other media types, experimented with connecting things to the bluetooth, attempted to use it as a game device of some kind, certainly dabbled in using it to write if that was any way possible. Played. Pushed. Nudged. Forced the single-function device to bend to my will.

    Today? I bought one of those new colour Kobo readers to replace my Kindle and continue moving away from my Amazon dependency. And I’m using it as a book. I’m going to read books on it. I’ve hooked it up to the accounts it suggested, linked it with my public libary card, and I downloaded a half dozen books. That’s it—and I have been reading.

    Only reading.

    And while I would like to emphasize that this does not necessarily signal a shift away from my inquisitive and exploratory nature, it may indicate that I’ve quenched that need to “multi-purpose” everything in my life.

    A decade ago I found joy in making simple things do complex things.

    Today I find joy in using simple things closer to and merely in the way they were intended. And I’m good with that.

  • down by the bay

    down by the bay

    I was lamenting the latest stage of the long, slow collapse of Hudsons Bay Company, once a literal icon of the Canadian retail landscape.

    The very history of this country is tangled up in the complex colonialist role played by this company in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and if for no other reason than that I’m sure there are justified cheers at the karmic collapse of this once epic company. Still, the collapse of the modern Hudsons Bay retail enterprise is nothing to celebrate, what with the scope and variety of employment it offered in many communities, its status as a signature anchor tenant in many shopping centres, and too, as one of the last historic holdouts against the dominance of Amazon and such. 

    I could probably write for pages on this complex role it played in communities, its decline and now complete disappearance from many cities, including my own. But instead, I woke up in the middle of the night and was tossing and turning in bed thinking about—I kid you not—the customer experience at The Bay.

    Maybe it was tradition. Maybe it was money. Maybe it was stubbornness. But the experience at that store never seemed to adapt to the modern retail world. From the ancient point of sale systems to an online experience that, on the three occasions I made use of it, revealed the reason Amazon holds a place of utter dominance in this domain. It was slow and cumbersome, like so much at The Bay. 

    But my strangest late night insight was in an unfair comparison to Ikea.

    We all laugh at the maze-like design of the furniture retailer, but the truth is the user experience in that store does two things very well. First, it gives the customer a little mini-adventure upon each visit. There are shortcuts, true, but I suspect many or even most shoppers walk the Ikea mile dutifully. Second, the maze walks you past virtually every product the store sells. The net result of this is that I, even mediocre consumer that I am, rarely leave without at least one purchase.

    The only thing that The Bay ever coerced any customer to walk past was the fragrance department, and the only adventure I got from that was testing my ability to hold my breath.

    I have no great insight upon this sad and seeming final chapter of a once-proud Canadian retailer, at least nothing that countless other online commentators haven’t already written on, save for maybe that even corporations get old and senile. And maybe that’s the lesson we should take from it, that everything has a time and place, and we should remember fondly the good times rather than shaking our heads at some analysis of a business failure, and rather accept that nature and the passage of time can take its toll on most anything.