It's coming….

I'm working on an ad for Carolyn Morris and the 2010 North Texas Walk for PKD. I've created the sponsor poster for them the last few years, and this year Carolyn asked if I would also work on the flyer (to be displayed at local businesses and such), and the print ads. The national PKD Foundation office sent the flyer file; I just had to add the local sponsors' logos to it.

It's beautifully done, but it was created in InDesign. I use QuarkXpress. I decided I would give InDesign a try.

I now have a few things to say about it. And even more to say about Adobe.

This is just fair warning — there's a rant coming. If you're an InDesign fan, or if you think monopolies are good for business, you don't want to read it.

Working on Saturday?!?

A few years ago I decided I was no longer going to schedule work in the evenings and on weekends. (I still have to do it occasionally, but it's no longer a regular thing.) This weekend, though, I'm finishing up a group of 25 articles for a Monday morning deadline. The very last step is uploading them; the next-to-the-last step is writing "teasers," the metadescription copy that appears with the Google search results. They're very much like teasers on TV, the short bits that are designed to get you to watch the next episode or stay tuned for the following show. I used to have a hard time writing them. But then I got interested in Deadliest Catch, and decided to catch up (so to speak) by streaming the first five seasons on Netflix and watching one episode after another. Now all I have to do is imagine Mike Rowe saying, "Next time, on Deadliest Catch…" and I swear it just comes to me.

If only I could find a way to do that with titles. I'm not great at titles, I freely admit it. Fortunately, the topic I'm working on this month is pretty serious and calls for titles that aren't too flip or glib. Otherwise, I get kind of stymied. H. Allen Smith, one of my favorite writers, wrote once about a magazine writer named Quentin Reynolds. He cranked out articles by the dozen, and hated coming up with titles. It was hard for him, and even when he did come up with one he thought was good, the magazine's editors would inevitably change it. So eventually he started calling every article, "Christmas in Many Lands with Quentin Reynolds."

Works for me.

Oh! And before I forget, if you're a Baby Boomer, or know any, in the DFW area, don't miss Jean Keener's talk this coming Tuesday, 8/17, at the Keller Library. She'll be giving advice on Social Security and how to maximize our benefits. From the flyer:

• Five factors to consider when deciding when to apply for benefits
• Why you should always check your earnings record for accuracy
• How to coordinate benefits with your spouse
• How to minimize taxes on Social Security benefits
• How to coordinate Social Security with your other sources of retirement income

Apparently SS benefits aren't just cut-and-dried, and it's probably a really good idea to know how and why. Jean is smart and very well informed, and these talks are a great opportunity to ask questions — for free — and get advice from a financial expert.

See you there. Now, back to work!

Maybe music will help

In the Lifehacker.com article I mentioned yesterday, Clay Johnson talks about using noise-reducing headphones to listen to lyric-free music in order to help him stay focused on his work. It may be possible to achieve even more, just by picking the right music. An article on Discovery Health (helpfully tweeted by @HowStuffWorks, and you should follow them, BTW) gives some excellent information about the link between music and mood. Apparently it's hardwired in our brains, and can be put to good use.

Getting things done

I'm really good at multitasking. Really, I am. Um, but sometimes I also have a little trouble getting things done. Wonder if the two are related....

There's a lot of information out there that indicates multitasking is pretty much a myth. According to San Diego Union-Tribune, our brains appear to have a finite amount of space for tasks requiring attention, and when we try to perform two demanding tasks simultaneously, we do neither one as well as we do each one alone. And if we take on three tasks, one of them gets dropped. Furthermore, Seattle Times says,

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.

Stress. Yup.

There is hope, though. According to an excellent article on Lifehacker, it is possible to rebuild our attention span and re-learn to focus. The first step, apparently, is to have fewer of those bursts of information. Well…okay, I do have a business coach/speaker/effectiveness expert friend who insists his students turn off the "you've got mail" alert sound while they're working, and he himself actually only listens to voice mails and returns phone calls twice a day! And, yes, I've learned that I have to quit out of my email client altogether if I have a big deadline. I can't leave it running in the background because I'll check it. Regularly. And often.

So if my choices are to know instantly when LinkedIn has some updates I might be interested in, or to actually finish that 500-word article in under three days, I guess I'll choose the productive route. Just don't be too shocked if I'm not particularly cheerful about it, okay?

I'll keep you informed on how well it's paying off!