Number 1 Productivity Tip.
Don’t subscribe to Lifehacker and if you have it, unsubscribe!
I like being a productive guy but if there is one thing I don’t like, it’s information overload. Lifehacker is supposed to be about tips that save you time, well they don’t. They post about 40 messages a day so if you subscribe to the RSS link you are swamped, and if you actually go to the site well then you are certainly not the target audience.
What annoys me most is that they don’t do the majority of the content themselves. They give a summary and link to another article, so you have to read the same thing twice. Another annoying trait is that they recap what they did on this day last year - who cares?
Now part of my anger is because I actually tried out their most interesting tip of the year, that you can get 32AA batteries from a single 6V block. I saw it about 3 months ago and figured I had to have a go. Well not only does it not work but I cut my finger doing it! I did it not because I was cheap but batteries are a mystery to me and it looked interesting.
So following my accident and the discovery that there were 4 weird tubes inside instead and no AA’s I revisited their site. I looked back at it and lo and below they finally put in the editors note that it does not work. 3 mins reading a tip, one wasted 6v and a cut thumb are all I’ve got out of Lifehacker so far. To have any authority they should at least test it themselves. It’s dangerous too as one those 4 batteries inside managed to overheat badly in my kitchen. If I hadn’t be more careful I could have burned my house down.
Lifehacker is not an expert and this is the problem with the Internet. If you talk enough about something, people assume you are the expert. The great coach, Vern Gambetta talked about this last week in his blog. It is hard to differentiate yourself by quality online and this is something that needs to change. A loud fool will have more impact on their field of work than a true expert in the current climate.
To conclude I will use a proper source on the matter of productivity. The rules of MIS here apply to the Internet also. “Information overload has the effect of negating any effective use of such an MIS”. (Kostetsky, 1966) Like lifehacker, like my shorted battery - Overload is always a bad thing.
Posted 08.10.07
October 17th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
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