Viewing Category: Shiny Things
Just about a year ago, I was obsessed with making a flat pen that would fit into a book or journal. A flat pen, I reasoned, would allow the pages of a book to "flow" better.
I finally stumbled upon some readily available ones right at Barnes & Noble, which commenter Claire had first brought to my attention the last time I was penhunting in Boston. Thanks for the tip, Claire!
The flattened pen is about 4.5 inches long, 7/16th of an inch wide, and a mere 1/8th inch thick. The clip adds another 1/16ths of an inch to the thickness, but still lies flat. While the build quality is a little on the light side, it's a pretty stable writing instrument for short sessions. There's some flex in the pen body if you exert some force on it, but it's one step above the usual cheap-o novelty pen. They are also prettier than the folding wallet pen I saw on LifeHacker.
Each pen was stamped "patented" with the mark "Slip Grippa", which lead to the manufacturer's website. If you're looking for tsotchkes to give away at a tradeshow, you can order them in a variety of colors from Grippa, singly or in packs. You can order them customized with your own logo and any one of 29 colors (PMS color matching is available too). Perusing the website, I saw that they also have a metal version that might have a more substantial feel. I'll have to get a hold of one and try it out.
If you're near a Barnes & Noble, the flat pens are packaged as bookmark pens and cost $4.95 for a CD-style case of 8. I've heard a rumor that they're also available at some drugstores.
UPDATE: So you want to see what they look like inside a moleskine?
When I was in Harvard Square for a meeting last week, I happened to notice The Swiss Watchmaker on Church Street. I popped into the store and looked around, and was struck by the matter-of-fact quality of the place. What was especially cool was that there was some kind of lesson going on behind the counter between a master watchmaker and two students. There was old-school craftsmanship was going on. Not having thousands of dollars to spend, I ducked out but noted this store's existence for future reference.
This weekend I was in the Square again, this time to hang out with my sister and her boyfriend. I had gotten in a little early, so I had some time to wander by the Swiss Watchmaker. I noticed a sun-faded sign in the window advertising something called The Invisible Clock II, which featured all kinds of alarm and timing modes. Always on the look for interesting time-keeping gadgets, I decided to drop in and ask to see the unit.
The Invisible Clock II
Being a Saturday, the store was a little more relaxed feeling. I spoke to one fellow named "Moose", who was happy to tell me all about The Invisible Clock II. It's a light but fairly-rugged feeling unit, powered by one AAA battery. It's about the size of a small pager, and comes with a belt clip. It's primary raison d'etre is to keep track of time intervals. Here's what it does:
It keeps track of up to 12 distinct daily alarms, which can vibrate or beep in different settable patterns.
It has a countdown timer that can be see to go off once or repeat, vibrating or beeping at any interval you want. It goes as low as 3 seconds, or as high as 999 hours. I was thinking it might be good for 15-minute interval timing.
It has a special Custom Timer mode that allows you to set a master interval, with up to 6 unique alarms within that interval. It will count up or count down, and it can be set to repeat auotmatically.
It's got a Meeting Timer, which you set for an interval for the length of the meeting. It will go off 50% of the way through the meeting, with 5 minutes to go, and then when time's up. Each alert has a distinct pattern of vibration or beeping.
It also works as a regular clock with date and as a stopwatch.
It has a cool electroluminescent backlit display. Yum!
It has a lanyard loop, so you could attach it to yourself in some fashion in addition to using the belt clip holster.
On the down side, it only has 4 input buttons, so programming this thing is like solving a puzzle in a puzzle-adventure game like Myst. Moose spent some time showing me how the programming worked, following the instruction in the 4-page instructional pamphlet. I asked him what people tended to use it for, and he said people who needed to take medicine at certain times, professionals who needed to time sessions, people who ran meetings, and so on. I myself just wanted it to remind me to keep track of what I was doing with [The Emergent Task Timer][ett] when I was away from my desk, plus I was attracted to the re-invention of the timer into a small device. At $45.00 it wasn't cheap, but the day I was in the store happened to coincide with a Sales Tax Holiday in Massachussetts. Swiss Watchmaker has a 10-day return policy, so I figured I could at least try it out and return it if I really didn't find it that useful. You can get the device for slightly cheaper at Time Now's website. They also sell on eBay.
I'm a little concerned about the quality of the side switch, which is used to set BEEP, VIBRATE or OFF mode, which you can see here is a pretty ordinary looking. I guess I am spoiled by the sealed slider-type switches you see on mobile phones. Other than that, the unit seems pretty solidly built. I'm going to try it for a week and see if it really helps.
Swiss Watchmakers
As I got ready to leave, I chatted with Moose a bit to learn a bit more about the store, and he was very passionate about what they did. The Swiss Watchmaker in Harvard Square is, from what I gather, one of a few very specialized establishments in the world that is capable of servicing the world's high-end watches.
- They can cut parts from scratch if they have to; unlike a lot of places, they have the guys right there in the store.
- The energy in the place is so rare to find these days: actual artisans and craftspeople who have studied for years to master their craft.
- Moose told me some cool stories about the decline of watchmaking even in the large established companies; one gold-plated brandname he described as now having "more lawyers than watchmakers" now. He informed me how a good mechanical watch kept better time than your average "quartz" watch, which can lose up to 15 seconds per month and still be regarded as "accurate". He described the process of adjusting a quality mechanical watch; each one has its own kind of characteristics based on its internal friction, and you adjust it based on that. Once you've found it, it keeps great time, but you need to let it sit for a while and watch it for a week.
- He also told me his opinion on the excellence of one particular watch he was excited about that was a tremendous value compared to more pricy watches, waterproof down to something insane like a kilometer (I may have misheard that). He explained why the winding knob was on the other side of the face: it's because when you bend your wrist, you don't want it to poke into your hand and break. Apparently, some people think it's because you wear it on your other arm, and Moose made a slight exasperated noise to indicate what he thought of that idea.
Clearly, Moose was a man who was passionate about watches. The next time I buy anything even remotely related to watches, I'm going to check out this place first. They had some specialized stopwatches that might also be suitable for task timing, but I didn't have time to look at them. Moose invited me to come down and talk watches anytime; he said something like, "think of this store as a working museum", which was an excellent way of describing the shop. I just love places like this.
While looking for a nice 4x6 card file, I re-discovered Magnatag, which makes custom magnetic whiteboard solutions. It's not the sort of thing that you see in your everyday office, as their products are geared toward specialized applications: engineering projects, print run management, inventory, and so on.
They have some interesting stuff...here's a small sampler:
Check out this modular infinite calendar system...sweet! Goes month-to-month!
Or just have a WHOLE YEAR mounted in convenient swinging-door fashion, right on your wall, with their SwingView system!
Yum...index card storage! Unfortunately, this CardView solution appears to use proprietary 3x4" cards. But it's a great idea!
The FileView Wall Filing System. OMG THIS IS THE FILE FOLDER STORAGE SYSTEM I WANT!!! Vertical, mounted on the wall, compact, with everything in view. YUM.
The Grip-A-Sheet is a lot like the check rail I got, except this one uses a transparent gripping mechanism (patented, even). You can see everything on the page. On my check rail, the top 3/4" is obscured. I even like the name :-) It comes in a variety of lengths, and seems pretty reasonably priced compared to regular check rails.
The RotoGraph is a SCROLLING infinite project planning GANTT-style chart for engineering project management! SUH-WEET!
When one magnetic whiteboard isn't enough, build an entire room from them.
Apparently Magnatag has been a family-owned business for 40 years...I'd like to find out more about the founder. You can't buy their products in stores, so you have to order online or by phone. I already have my catalog on the way :-) As a bonus, the company is located in upstate NY, an area of the country I am rather fond of.
I haven't actually seen or used any of their products, so this is just a heads up to anyone out there who is on the prowl for cool office gear :-)
UPDATE NOVEMBER 27, 2006: Magnatag's PR company arranged for an email interview with the founder, excerpted in this post. It's at the end of the post.
I finally mounted my check rail, but before undertaking this momental task I went to Home Depot to buy some kind of leveling device. I was originally thinking of getting some kind of fancy auto-balancing laser level, but they're expensive...$39 and up! The one I really wanted was about $80, but the packaging was done is such a way that I couldn't quite tell if it did what I really wanted. So, I thought I'd check out what I thought would be the boring old-style levels and save myself some money.
What I didn't expect was this sweet piece of machined aircraft aluminum:
The World of Levels
Levels deliver precision measurement in demanding construction environments, have to be shock-proof, lightweight, and easy to read. And of course it helps if they look cool. The one above is from the Empire Level Manufacturing Corporation website, which made the slickest ones I saw. Their claim to fame is some kind of innovation in the level bubble capsule itself, but I thought they just looked neat. Look!
COOL!
COOL!
Prices were about $16 for a 24-inch aluminum level.
Another neat purveyor of fine levels were the wooden ones from Johnson Level & Tool. They were made of laminated strips of wood, with brass edging and shock mounts on either side...really neat looking. These were a bit more expensive, at $25 for a 24-inch wooden level. I couldn't find a decent picture on their website, but there was a fancy web page for their new product line. It's called, er, "The Big Johnson":
I spent about an hour looking at every different level there, admiring the design and construction of each manufacturer's offering. It's interesting to note that both Empire and Johnson are located in Wisconsin, the land of cheese and hearty wursts. Is toolmaking a tradition out there? The president of Empire Level is apparently fifth-generation member of the family that founded the business in 1919. There's a cute picture of her holding the "the super-accurate True Blue® vial which is at the heart of Empire's premium level's and squares." Adorable.
Money is Still Money
Despite all this looking and shopping, I just decided to get this $3.99 Stanley plastic level:
Cheap, cheerful, doesn't take up a lot of space, and it gets the job done. Still looks cool, albeit in a more toylike way. And what really matters is that I got the check rail mounted:
Woo hoo!
I was at The Museum of Useful Things last week...what a great store! The website doesn't do the place justice; they carry much more than is shown online! I was excited to see they carried the Ex-cell Noteminder Check Rail, which is used by restaurants to hold orders in the queue.
I've wanted one of these things for years, thinking it would be useful for prioritizing my own tasks. I got the idea by watching a worker at McDonald's manage a priority queue during a busy lunch period. She put the priority items (for cars) on the left, scanning the tickets constantly to stay on top of what food needed to go in which bag . I was impressed; apparently I am not alone in this observation.
Now that I have my check rail, I need something to put in it! This type of task management has been on my mind a lot since I re-evaluated The Printable CEO™ series and noted that there were two major missing elements:
- Something useful for focusing on a single task
- Something useful for very high level strategic planning
Today I'm addressing the first one. Introducing the Task Order Up!
UPDATE: I changed the name from "Task Order Slip" to "Task Order Up" after reading Damien Tanner's trackback...much cooler sounding! :-)
The Big Idea
The main idea of the Task Order Up is maintaining context and continuity for a single task. With previous incarnations of The Printable CEO&trade, the various forms addressed groups of tasks, and are therefore more usfeul as "big picture" tools. The closest tool is probably The Task Progress Tracker, which was designed for managing tasks like a To Do list with finer-grained progress measurement. The Task Order Up ticket is similar in that it is also a form of To-Do list, but it ideally focuses only on one thing at time. One task, one ticket.
One of the original inspirations is my belief that, in a trusting work environment, all an employee needs to know are the following two things:
- What I am supposed to do?
- When is it due?
The manager / producer needs to know:
- What the employee is doing?
- How long did it take to finish?
- Is the employee being effectively utilized?
From the employee's perspective, the tangible work ticket allows them to manage their own tasks. It ameliorates the distractions that occur in a busy workplace too, since the work ticket becomes a visual anchor. Where was I? Oh, the ticket is right here in front of me. Once the task is complete, the ticket is also useful to review what happened that day, which makes filling out the weekly timesheet a little less onerous.
From the manager's perspective, being able to see what's on an employee's plate at any time without having to explicitly ask helps you from becoming needlessly annoying. The work ticket is a minature contract between you and the employee, outlining the essentials of what needs to be done by when. By observing the state of the check rail, one can get a quick picture of how loaded someone is at any given time.
While comparing our hip New Media lifestyle to short-order cooking may seem unglamourous...have you seen how productive those places can be? It's amazing. The really good places don't even need a check rail, but in fast food environments these things help maintain context and continuity. That helps with focus. I'm also thinking that having these slips of paper may help disambiguate the process of communicating what tasks are actually "on-deck" at any given time; that's always a challenge in a small business environment.
The Setup
Here's a more illustrative view of the check rail w/ three task slips. The idea is that you mount the rail near your primary work area and keep a bunch of these "current task" slips on them. Maybe at your workplace you use it to jot down quick tasks and hand them off to other people; I'm still working out the logistics.
The photo here is a temporary setup rigged for the purposes of this blog post, but I am planning on building some kind of holder out of 2x4s over my monitor.
Closeup View
The form is split into 4 visible sections. Note the header at the top is designed to disappear under the check rail's gripping mechanism.
Task Description -- What you are planning to do in terms of producing a tangible result. Tasks that don't produce tangible results are not really to-do items.
Date / Due By -- The optional due-date of the task. There is also a visible weekly calendar so you can make a mark when it's due. The theory behind the calendar is that this allows you to visually sort dates instead of doing comparisons in your head. You can mark something due as either in the AM or the PM by filling in the box or putting an X in it.
Procedure List -- Write down the things you need to do to complete the task. Use the bubbles on the side to track the amount of time you spend on the various subtasks if you like; they are supposed to be 15-minute bubbles. I find that visually this isn't quite working well, so this part of the form is still not quite ready. The original idea was that I'd write the procedure down like a receipe so I wouldn't have to think so much as I work, but that's a topic for another post.
There are small tick marks to align subtasks on the left. The tick marks on the right are for putting Concrete Goal Tracker points; for example, if one of your subtasks produces a result that is CGT-worthy, you might write "+2" in that column.
Hours & Points -- After the task is complete, finalize the task by filling in the amount of time you took. Also, sum up any Concrete Goals Tracker points that were earned; you can use the ticket to later fill in your weekly timesheet or whatever. Finally, there's space for a job code, if you're in an environment that uses them. Otherwise, you can just write down the name of the project or other note in the space.
Concluding Thoughts
I'm still working on this form, as there are two significant drawbacks:
It's hard to sum-up the hours from the bubbles in the left column -- They are supposed to be 15-minute intervals, but I think they tend to read as hours. If you don't fill them continuously, then you can't just count big groups for hours.
The "best" way to fill-in the To Do list portion is not clear -- If you use the bubbles as an estimate of time per item, then you have to skip lines or draw arrows to connect a set of bubbles to a particular line item. That would be similar to using the form as an emergent time tracker, but the results are visually cluttered.
The horizontal format of the Emergent Task Timer and Task Progress Tracker is more suitable for this, so I have some ideas on how to bring that back in while maintaining the vertical format. In the meantime, you might just treat this as a fancy todo list and see what uses emerge over the next few days.
This is potentially a very wasteful paper process. I personally like making forms so it's fun, but ultimately this should be a software-based system. I have most of the essential design concepts finalized now through previous iterations of The Printable CEO™; it's time to put some of my Actionscript experience to work.
BTW, if you're grouchy about not having a check rail, just use a big clip like this!
New Downloads
MAY 5 UPDATE: I increased the bubble sizes and spaced them farther apart, as they were a bit too small and cramped to fill out easily. Also, added a third variation with horizontal bubbles, that makes it a bit easier to count progress per task. However, summing hours is still a little inconvenient if you are used
» Download Task Order Up! with 8 sets of bubbles.
» PCEO-TOU01-3UP.pdf
» Download Task Order Up! with 16 sets of bubbles.
» PCEO-TOU02-3UP.pdf
» Download Task Order Up! with 8 horizontal sets of bubbles.
» PCEO-TOU03-3UP.pdf
» Download Task Order Up! with 8 sets w/ hour subtotals
» PCEO-TOU04-3UP.pdf
» Download Task Order Up! with hours decoupled from tasks
» PCEO-TOU05-3UP.pdf
Also, you'll want to check out the index card versions here:
Enjoy!
» More on The Printable CEO Series
