The boy, sporting a backwards baseball cap and droopy jeans, held out his fist and repeated, "pound it before you get in." I quickly looked around to see if I was being setup for a mugging but no one else was close to me.

"It is going to explode?" I asked.

"Um, maybe, I don't know," he responded.

"Well," I continued, "I'm only in if it explodes."

He nodes his head and the exploding fist bump resulted in he and his friends laughing hysterically and walking away.

As I got into my car, I couldn't help but wonder: did I just provide to those kids that I was cooler than they thought? Or did I prove that I'm less cool than they thought?

In Nicholas Carr's book, The Shallows¹, there's a review of several studies indicating that articles containing embedded links actually decrease reading comprehension. From the book:

The test subjects who read the pages linearly actually scored considerably higher on a subsequent comprehension test than those who clicked back and forth between the pages. The links got in the way of learning, the researchers concluded.

These results were found in a number of other studies as well. In each study, participants were given the same material to read with and without links, and those who read the material without links always tested higher on comprehension exams later. This immediately made me think that I was doing my readers a disservice by including links directly in the text.

A former colleague once said of my blog posts, "judging by your posts, you don't seem to believe in the philosophy that Internet writing should be short and scannable." He was correct. Most of my posts are lengthy examinations or explanations of technologies and techniques. My intent is for the reader to learn something or, at the very least, understand my perspective on something. I hope that people print out my writing and refer to it later. I've always written more for that use case than the quick-scan to pick up some junk knowledge.

With this new information about how embedded links affect reading comprehension, I'm looking at changing how I make references in my online writing. My first thought was to simply not include any links at all, leaving them off completely and allowing the reader to explore the Internet for more information. But that seemed counter to the advantages that online reading offers. Links are something that cannot be duplicated in print, so just dropping them completely seems like the wrong approach.

The next idea that occurred to me is to use the old footnote/endnote paradigm that we were all taught in school. Instead of embedding a link in a paragraph, I would include a superscript number indicating that there is more information about this sentence. Then, I would include a list of references at the end of the post. You'll note that this post is written in such a manner.

I'm not sure if this is the approach I'll go with long term, but at least initially it seems like a good compromise. Numbered references at the end of  a post still allow easy access to additional resources without disrupting the linear flow of the article text. I just want to give the readers of my online writing the best opportunity to learn as much as possible without distraction and I'm hoping that this will help.

References

1. The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

Hi Nicholas,

You have been identified as a candidate for Amazon or one of its many affiliate companies. We require all candidates to complete an on-line application in order to move forward in the selection process. If you are interested in being considered for an employment opportunity with us, please follow the below link to complete a short application.

You will need to know your login name and password to access this form.

You are automatically assigned a system generated password. To access this password, click the link below, then click "Forgot your Login or Password?" link at the bottom of the page. Enter your login name and we will send you an e-mail with a link to reset your password.

Your login name is: [omitted]

https://amazon.icims.com/forms?form=Applicant_Information_Form_US&item=1041146

Please remember to visit our website regularly for a comprehensive up-to-date listing of our vacant positions and apply for the one that is right for you.

Thank you,

The Recruiting Teams of Amazon and its affiliates

* Please do not respond to this email, this email is unattended.

So it appears I received an automated recruitment email from Amazon.

Here's the thing: if I actually wanted to work for Amazon, this would have changed my mind. This may be the way to get more candidates quickly, but you won't get quality candidates using this approach. The chances I'll reply to an automated recruitment email is zero. The chances I'll reply to an email from an actual recruiter are about 5% (based on my own past behavior).

I can't imagine any good candidates being flattered by an automated email message asking them to fill out an application even before talking to a human being. If this is what recruitment is turning into, I know a lot of companies who better get used to receiving subpar applications.

"Be here now," he would exclaim whenever the group lost focus. Which was frequent because, of course, we were teenagers. "We all have other things to worry about, but while you're here, focus on what we're trying to do. Leave your baggage at the door of the auditorium - you can pick it back up on your way out."

We all would refocus for at least a short period of time. That's really about all you can expect from high school kids who are all hanging around after class to sing showtunes and perform jazz squares in front of their friends. Years later, in my profession as a technologist, the lesson I didn't quite understand at 16 has become incredibly clear.

Being a technologist leads to meeting other technologists. They can introduce you to more technologists and before you know it, you're surrounded by them every single moment. Technologists are great: intelligent and opinionated and frequently lacking the eloquence to deliver his or her thoughts in a way that is palatable to those around them. And they love their toys. Specifically, the type of toys that are powered by microchips and connected to the Internet.

Technologists also tend to pride themselves on being excellent multitaskers. Why just watch TV when I could also be doing my taxes, following Twitter, and updating my Facebook status? Look at everything I can accomplish in the time you're just doing one thing! Thus, the iPhone became a must-have accessory for technologists due to its enabling of this behavior everywhere. Gone were the days when one might stand in line and start a conversation with the person in front of you. In its place, a line of multiple people each hunched over with a little black box in their hand trying to see what else is going on in the world. One might say that these people are everywhere but here now.

We feel that all this multitasking makes us more efficient. Yet studies are starting to show that ours brains are just not wired to  handle this type of processing. In fact, the more multitasking that you do, the worse your performance becomes. Even though we feel superior for accomplishing many things at a time, we're actually performing these tasks at a lower level than those who are shuffling fewer tasks. What's more, there is a high correlation between those who multitask and those who suffer from anxiety. It appears that the brain just doesn't like constant context switching to keep up with doing multiple things at once.

If you look at the computer screen of the average software engineer, you'll likely see the following:

1. Instant message client
2. Twitter client
3. Web browser (for Facebook, personal email, etc.)
4. Text editor (for writing code)
5. Mail client (for business email)

Some others might augment their desktop with additional information about weather or stocks. I know that I found myself switching attention between these, plus my stock ticker, constantly throughout the day. I felt like the day was moving incredibly fast and I was fighting to keep up. Switching back and forth furiously I started to find that I was missing important details. As it turns out, this is very common among multitaskers.

Last year, I made a decision to start making my daily workload easier: I stopped checking personal email during weekdays. That was one less thing I needed to do at work while I should be, you know, doing work. A lot of my friends rolled their eyes, some were angry that I wouldn't be responding immediately, and almost all thought I could never do it. Now, a year and a half later, people just know that this is the way I deal with personal email. What I found most interesting in my experience was how my life felt almost instantly less stressful. One less thing to do. Phew.

I later had a discussion about this with my friend Nicole as she explained her growing frustration with the amount of things she had to do. She had started taking a mindfulness meditation class and really enjoyed it (she then wrote about it on her blog). Around the same time I happened to see Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows (a book about our multitasking Internet culture) on the Colbert Report. He mentioned that the more we multitask, the worse we get at deep thinking. I know this because I have the video playing in the corner of my monitor while I'm writing this post.

Since then, I've been actively trying to limit the amount of multitasking I do. When my stock ticker mysteriously stopped working on my desktop, I just removed it instead of trying to fix it. The same with my Twitter client. My stress level started to drop. At home, I stopped eating in front of the TV, instead sitting at the dinner table. I made lists of tasks to complete and made sure that they were listed in priority order so I could read from top-to-bottom and focus on each individual task. When I'm writing, I now keep my IM client closed and force myself to finish the article before moving on to something else. And whenever I catch myself multitasking, I whisper, "be here now."

The technologists with whom I work are frequently not here now. I firmly believe that in order to do the best job possible, you must be able to focus on whatever is happening now. It enrages me to no end when a meeting starts and everyone is on their laptops doing something else. There is no way that meeting can be anything close to productive. Arguments about whether or not there should be a meeting in the first place aside, if you're in a meeting, you should be paying complete attention so that you can get out of the meeting as quickly as possible. The only time I bring a computer to a meeting is when I'm presenting. Any other time I carry with me a notepad and pen.

If I'm running a meeting, I usually ask everyone to close their laptops and put away their iPhones before we get started. Be here now. All of us. If there's something so important that you can't afford to put your laptop away for the entirety of the meeting, then you really shouldn't be in that meeting - you should be tending to whatever crisis requires your full attention. The interesting thing is that, while people groan, my meetings tend to finish early and achieve their stated goal.

I'm not completely satisfied with my current mode of thinking. Years of multitasking have most assuredly wreaked havoc on my neurons and it will likely take some time to get back into the deep thinking mode. I definitely want to take a mindfulness class and need to continue to work to focus on individual tasks one at a time. In the meantime, I will continue to look for easy ways to eliminate multitasking and continue to whisper to myself, "be here now."

As some people know, I have a background in acting. In high school and college I managed to get involved in all manner of performance, including musicals, dramas, improv, dancing, and even standup comedy. Stage fright has never been a problem for me - sure, I get nervous, but it's a nervous excitement that pushes me. If I were to compare the type of speaking I do now to any of the other performance types in which I've participated, I'd say it's closest to standup comedy. I don't say that because technology is inherently funny, or because I'm inherently funny, just that it's the same type of work.

In standup comedy, you are the actor, the writer, and the director all rolled up into one; if you bomb, you have no one to blame but yourself. You prepare like crazy, trying to understand your audience and practicing material over and over. If you're lucky, you pull someone in to critique you, but the final responsibility for the performance lies squarely on your own shoulders. Any part of it could go wrong: you could create the wrong character, the writing could be horrible, or the delivery could be off. All of these are still present in speaking at conferences.

So what happened to me? Looking back to four years ago when I gave my first public talk, I think almost everything was wrong. The character I chose unconsciously wasn't terribly effective - he was this aggressive lecturer, desperately seeking to prove he knew what he was talking about. He spoke at you instead of to you. I remember reading a comment from someone saying that he liked my content but not my speaking style. Looking back, I completely agree. The style wasn't conducive to my goal of teaching.
Seeking to improve, I sought out role models to emulate. I saw a lot of talks, watched a lot of speakers that were good and a lot that were bad, and came out with a lot of ideas. There are a few people in particular that stick out to me:

• Nate Koechley - When I got to Yahoo!, Nate was the resident rockstar evangelist. He traveled all around the world giving talks...and they were all damn good. The thing I loved about his presentations was the story he weaved into the talk. It wasn't just a bunch of random data, it was a journey along a path to discovery. I also loved his presentation slides - he had this great way of including photos that really brought the deck to life. Those who've been in my recent talks will note a liberal use of photos in my slides.
• Bill Scott - I also met Bill working at Yahoo!, but the first time I got to see him talk was actually once he left. Bill came back to Yahoo! to do a talk and the one thing that stuck out to me about his presentation was the tone of voice. Instead of sounding like a lecturer, Bill sounded like a guy who just having an informal conversation with a friend. In effect, the audience and he were sitting around a dinner table discussing technology. The talk was entirely comfortable and you felt completely comfortable asking questions because of the personal connection. Ever since I saw that talk, I tried to change my tone into more of a conversational one (I frequently also encourage people to interrupt me as I'm going along).
• Jonathan Coulton - Okay, JoCo isn't a speaker, he's a comedian singer/songwriter. But as I said earlier, I compare public speaking to being a comedian, so where better to look for inspiration? The thing I love about JoCo is his ability to banter. In between songs, he seemingly just says whatever comes to mind without attempting to be funny. The humor comes on its own through his wit, but there aren't any jokes per se. Because of this approach, he can easily react to outbursts from the audience - it's all just coming out of his mouth as it flows into his brain. He tends to say "um" and "ah" a lot, which we're always told is a Very Bad Thing for speakers. Yet in this context doing so actually makes him seem that much more human, and that's important in getting the audience to react positively. For instance, I love the small bit of banter at the beginning of this clip.

Patterning parts of my presentations against these three, I arrived at a character that I think works pretty well: myself. I was definitely not being myself when I gave my first few talks. People who know me know that I'm about the least serious person you'd meet, I'm kind of geeky, I make really bad jokes and am incredibly sarcastic. I tried to suppress all of that early in my speaking career and it just didn't work.

Now when I go up in front of people to speak, I don't switch into a different mode, it's still just me talking about something or other. I make sure that I have good story to tell, that my tone is conversational, and that I just say whatever pops into my head as I'm going along. With a couple of exceptions, I don't try to be funny. Trying to be funny backfires way too often. If I happen to be funny as I'm telling my story, then so be it - but it's not really a goal. My goal is to provide information in a way that's easily consumable, and I do that by being myself.

(excerpted from IM)

Driver: You're Zakas?
Me: Yes, that's me.
Driver: Finally! I tried calling you, why you no pick up?
Me: What number are you calling? Is it my home phone?
Driver: I call (repeats my home phone number)
Me: Yeah, that's my home phone number.
Driver: I call multiple times but you no pick up.
Me: I'm sorry, I don't usually pick up that phone when I'm not at home.