Datadoodle

Home » new york times » Page 2

new york times

Self-tracking: “If man were meant to fly” and other objections

by

Self tracking for performance has a place on the map now thanks to the May 2 New York Times Magazine article by Gary Wolf. But along with praise and interest, “The Data-Driven Life” also drew harsh, skeptical reactions.

Many of the objections were of the “if man were meant to fly, he’d have wings” variety. But many others were valid.

The practice will run over a few bumps before it joins mainstream performance management and business intelligence. Unlike the impersonal data we know and love, keeping data about oneself can be uncomfortable, difficult, and downright weird.

One of the articulate skeptics called it “robot envy.”… Read the rest “Self-tracking: “If man were meant to fly” and other objections”

Self tracking is business intelligence

by

Back when secretaries were common, you could have had yours track your day in 15-minute increments. In his book The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker suggested this as a way to find out what you really did all day. The results were usually, let’s say, a starting point for improvement.

Tracking your time then and now is personal, it’s messy, and it’s the essence of business intelligence: collecting data and reading it for guidance in business activities that matter. Is there anything that matters more to an organization than productivity of its people? For a small office or home-based business, this might be the best BI there is.… Read the rest “Self tracking is business intelligence”

You know it when they dance

by

Here’s that eternal question again: how do you know when whatever you’re working on is good enough? Today, two perspectives.

The Oscar-winning sound designer Walter Murch, speaking Friday night at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael California, told about talking shop with Michael Jackson’s engineers. They told Murch that they had no special insight, they just tried one mix after another as Jackson sat in the back, silent. They knew they had it right when he got up and danced.

The other way was the General Motors way. They took forever, and sometimes simply stopped trying when the bureaucracy’s deadline came.… Read the rest “You know it when they dance”