Cubicles – The Documentary

This is the first documentary I made back in film school. As you can see, my fascination with offices has been around for quiet a while.

If you’ve been wondering where cubicles came from, how they affect the way we work, and where office design is going in the future (and I know you have), then look no further, all your answers lie above.

You can check out more short films on office design at the Cubicles Film YouTube Channel.

I feel like Merlin Mann has some of the best thoughts on the whole hacking movement, and what it’s become. This video sums those views up pretty well. For more serious thoughts, we talk about it a lot in the film.

Saw this poster at The National World War II museum in New Orleans. Probably one of the best graphics I’ve seen that captures the spirit of life hacking.

Couldn’t find an actual graphic of the poster. Anyone have any better luck?

Great TED Talk by Dan Pink on how rewards do not make a great motivation tool. There’s tons of research from decades worth of studies that have proved this, yet the system still continues as normal.

There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

He also touches on Results Only Work Environments (ROWE), which I’m a big fan of and that idea was part of what inspired me to go independent.

Also making the rounds is the release of a study by Stanford concluding that multitasking makes you bad at everything you’re doing.

The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media.

So, bottom line, if you see an executive multitasking who works on rewards, run far away.

Laptop’s gotten too heavy? Do you get odd looks when you whip out your manual Royal Aristocrat typewriter at Starbucks?

Now you can take the cool restrictedness of Typewriter with you in your pocket. The Typewriter iPhone app is now listed on the iTunes store!

While iPhone 3.0 tried to thwart Typewriter’s goal of no copy/paste, it proved no match for an Elance programmer. No delete, no copy/paste. Just straightforward typing. Sort of (more in a second).

You can type in portrait or landscape mode. The files are saved as texts on your phone, or for an easier transfer the text can be copied into an email to send to yourself, Google Docs, or where ever you like.

Under options you have the same black text on white or green on black options, PLUS the option to turn full typewriter mode off. Typewriter mode would be the thing that you’re used to – no delete, copy/paste, insert. Turn it off and now you’ve got a basic text editor. You can also go back and edit what you typed with typewrite mode on.

I know I talked about free things on ProBlogger, but there was a bit more invested in this (I had to sign up as an Apple Developer on top of hiring a programmer), so it’s listed for $.99 (or whatever the equivalent is for your country’s store).

Visit the Typewrite App Store Page.

Please let me know what you think and leave some feedback here and at the App Store!

I’m starting a 1 for 100 contest. For every 100 new Twitter followers or Facebook Fans, I’ll pick 1 from the bunch and send them a free copy of the DVD, anywhere in the world.

The selection pool is out of the total followers for each service, not just the new followers, so spread the word around (retweet, post to your profile, etc.) and get more chances to score a copy.

Here are the three different pages (you can join all three):

Twitter – C47

Here’s a post you can retweet

600 – mrviet90

500 – hugepediafan

400 – shiprachauhan

300 – yellochick

200 – PhaontomLessons

100 – Michiels

Facebook – You 2.0 Page

Facebook – Coffee and Celluloid Page

Some details:

• As far as contacting goes for notification, for Twitter I will direct message you on the first day and again three days later. If I don’t hear anything by the fifth day, a new winner will be selected. For Facebook, same deal but via Facebook Messages. So make sure you get notified of these types of messages.
• Twitter accounts that are auto-following me back and have no hope of making contact with (ex: BarackObama) don’t count.
• I’ll keep doing this as long as I can, but just to set a date, after July 4, 2010, the contest will continue at my discretion.
• If you’re already following or are a fan, thanks, you’re already in the pool. I’ll be back awarding for the current numbers I have.
• If you win from any of the three services, that’s it, you can’t win anymore. However, if you already purchased a copy, you can still win another one (and then that’s it).
• This post will be updated with the winners.

Or you can skip the suspense and order a copy today!

The DVD has a pod like design. You 2.0 is a short film, to keep things moving and interesting and not waste your time. It’s designed to be something you can show to someone who knows nothing about life hacking, GTD, or any other weird terminology and they’ll finally get it. And if you already know all about that stuff, you’ll still get something out of it.

The rest of the DVD is extended interviews with both people in the film and not in the film. It’s cut down into individual pods on different topics by each speaker. And the cool thing is you can sort the pods by speaker or category.

So say you watch the film, and then you want to know more about GTD. Well you can go to David Allen’s interview and get much more in depth. Or you want to know more about the science and studies done on how we work. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics, has you covered.

Here’s a DVD outline:

• You 2.0 – A Documentary on Life Hacking
• Commentary Track
• David Allen – Getting Things Done
  • On Getting Things Done
  • 5 Stages of GTD
  • GTD is not about GTD
  • David Practicing GTD
  • On Stress
  • Image of a Hard Worker
• Tim Ferriss – The 4 Hour Work Week
  • Information Overload and Selective Ignorance
  • The 80/20 Rule
  • New Rich
  • Productivity
  • Low Information Diet
• HackCollege – HackCollege.com
  • College and Life Hacking
  • Life Hacking in the Bedroom
  • Creativity and Life Hacking
  • Ethics of Life Hacking
• Merlin Mann – 43 Folders
  • The Attraction of Life Hacks
  • The Original Life Hacker
  • Work Culture
  • Creativity
• Gloria Mark – Professor of Informatics
  • Problems for Modern Workers
  • 21st Century Worker
  • Technology
  • Self Interruptions and Distractions
  • Stress and Work
  • Work Styles
  • Consuming Media
  • Communication Chains
  • Invisible Work
  • Email and Random Reinforcement
• Gina Trapani – Founding Editor of Lifehacker.com
  • Gina’s History with Life Hacking
  • Image of a Productive Worker
  • Purpose of Life Hacking
  • Systems and Creativity
  • Pen and Paper
  • The Modern Worker
  • The End Goal
• Ramit Sethi – I Will Teach You to be Rich
  • Life Hacking Money
  • Conscious Spending
  • ‘A La Carte’ Hack
  • Optimized Email

The clips above are sorted as you see them by speaker, with the option to play all or individually. You can also sort them by topic:

• Creativity
• 21st Century Work
• Productivity
• Life Hacks
• Everything Else

Everything you see above comes out to a total run time of about 2 hours, and sadly that’s how much you can cram onto a DVD. So with every purchase of the DVD, you’ll also get online access to even more interviews, including Danny O’Brien, new start-ups from TechCrunch50, and more podcasts.

Sound good? Cool!

Order you copy now!

Episode 7 – Co-Working

Co-working is that nexus for independent workers that’s between working at home and a cafe. The concept originated a few years ago at The Hat Factory in San Francisco. It’s spread to the point where you can find a co-working space in nearly every major city worldwide.

Pictured Co-Working Spaces

Brikolodge

The Hat Factory

Independents Hall

La Cantine

New Work City

PariSoMa

Station C

Music - The Coconut Monkeyrocket and Martinibomb

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Episode 6 – Biz Stone on Twitter

(Please vote for it on Current TV to get it on the air!)

I’m very excited about this episode. In the past few months Twitter seems to have exploded. You’ve got twittering in space, on Everest, and Twitter races to a million followers.

Back when I interviewed Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder) in August, I’ll admit some motivation was out of personal joy to visit Twitter than something that directly related to life hacking. However I think the conversation proved to be very insightful, going beyond what Twitter is and moving to how it relates to society as a communication tool.

This episode is a good chunk of the interview. Time was short. We had actually arrived earlier in the day but Biz had to leave to go on Fox News because Obama was about to announce Biden as his VP through Twitter. Yes, we were Outfoxed.

Again keep in mind that this was shot back in August, so the earthquake he’s referring to was one from July 29, not the two that have happened in the past few days.

And also to give a point of reference on how popular Twitter was when we shot this, Biz made a comment that 50% of Twitter users follow 10 people and are followed by 10. I’m sure that’s no longer the case.

I hope you enjoy and find it insightful, and let me know what you think.

Credits:

Music - The Coconut Monkeyrocket and Martinibomb

Video – A Communications Primer 1958 (Easter Egg during the credits)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.