by Tom Evans | Apr 8, 2011 | Scribing
So I’ve had an iPad for the best part of a year now and loads of people have asked how I use it and what I’m using it for.
Or if it’s just a bit of a toy?
Well I’ve discovered using this new type of tablet (and watch this space for the clones) ushers in a whole modus operandi.
In short, it’s brilliant – especially for writers, designers, entrepreneurs, inventors and creatives. I would struggle to go back to using a laptop.
This new way of working merits the introduction of a new word – iPadivity.
noun [n] :
1. the phenomenon of increased creativity and productivity when using an iPad – and activity while doing the same
2. the generation of new ideas using an iPad
3. profitability from generating and using iPad apps
Now I have to say everything I’ve been able to do I could do with a combination of iPhone or laptop. Some of it admittedly even with paper and pen. While the iPhone scores on portability, it lacks screen real estate and typing is slow (this whole blog incidentally was written at speed using the iPad on screen keyboard).
The laptop is just so much heavier and I have always felt a bit nerdy to get out on a commute and certainly in a coffee shop. It also takes too long to boot if you just want to do something quickly and acts as a barrier in a business meeting. The 3G enabled iPad delivers a useful synthesis of both devices which is better than both – plus I have to say it looks cool !!
This Mind Map tells the story of what I am using it for … of course generated on the iPad as were all the graphics in this blog.
The first iPadivity gain is really good use of “dead time” – those times in the day when you would have been waiting for something can now be used to process email, do a tweet or two and check out news or write a blog.
The second iPadivity benefit is being able to read, listen to or watch pretty much anything – either online, in iTunes or your own archive.
The third iPadivity capability, and to me the most important, is being able to write stuff. Here the lightness and specific functionality of the apps comes into its own. For example, before writing each chapter of my new book, I’ve taken a hint from artist Cat Bennett and I am drawing using Brushes an image that encapsulates the concepts I am about to write about.
I am working to a master Mind Map structure for the whole book but I’ve also started mapping each chapter before eventually writing it in Pages.
This has lead me down several new avenues I simply wouldn’t have explored.
Now could I do this on the laptop or desktop – absolutely – but not when the Muse takes me – and certainly not with as much ease and FUN !!
Add to all of this, the ability to browse on a whim for research and dip into the brilliant Wikipanion app, my iPadivity is probably up 400-500% of where it was less than a year ago.
I’ve also used the iPad in several client sessions. Again, its unobtrusiveness is the key. It’s like having a paper notebook but where you can email the notes instantly. In the sessions I did last week, this included a colour-coded Mind Map of actions arising and a wireframe for an iPad app I am designing, using iMockup.
This of course points to an amazing iPadivity – the ability to encapsulate your knowledge and wisdom in an iPad app which you can share with other and generate profitability from … watch this space !!
So if you’ve got an iPad or an iPad2 or another type of tablet device, or are getting one, I’d be interested in your thoughts ….
by Tom Evans | Apr 7, 2011 | Scribing
Writing an article on knowledge is potentially a difficult task. It makes you ask the question what do you know and even what qualifies the writer to write knowingly.
You have to ask yourself questions like who is doing the knowing and how do you know that you know? For example, you may think you know what is true and right in your head but your gut might tell you it’s wrong. Your heart might not be in it and there may a whisper of doubt sneaking into the back of your mind.
This train of thought also brings into question where the knowing sits. Is it in our cognitive centres, in the very water of our cellular structures or somewhere even more ethereal?
What makes the whole subject even more difficult still is that ‘we know’ there are degrees of knowingness. During the Iraqi conflict, Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Defense Secretary, was caught prevaricating as there were things he knew that he’d rather not share with others. Nonetheless, inadvertently, he gave us a really useful framework for understanding the modern world in his infamous “known knowns” speech.
There’s obviously the stuff we know we know – the Known Knowns – at least that is until we find out whatever we thought we knew, we didn’t know that well after all. I get the Word of the Day from Dictionary.com every day and keep finding words I thought I knew the meaning of actually mean something else.
There’s stuff we know we don’t know – the Known Unknowns – like where we really came from, how come we are self-aware and why toast always seems to fall butter-side down.
There’s a weird category of Unknown Knowns – these are things we know but didn’t know we knew – like someone really likes you but you are just not quite fully aware of it yet.
Finally there are the Unknown Unknowns – these manifest as the Fear of the Unknown. They are the demons that stop us in our tracks. If we don’t stick our heads above the parapet to have a look, we can’t be harmed.
If this isn’t bad enough, what you think you know can get turned on its head in an instant. The ancients knew the Earth was round but in the Dark Ages we were taught it was flat. We now know its round yet everyone uses a map which is flat.
Knowing is altered by perspective. For example, if you add another dimension to the mix, literally, what is curved space and surfaces in a 3-D universe are flat sheets in 4-D. We can see in a 2-D Flatland that the ‘flat people’ could jump up. If they did this, to another ‘Flatander’ they would disappear.
So stating we absolutely know something to be true is inadvisable. All we can ever know is that we don’t know everything. Furthermore, as soon as we know something, there is inevitably something else to learn.
Claircogniscence
Traditionally knowledge has become a left-brained activity based the output from the Scientific Method which runs like this:
- Observe something
- Make a prediction based upon what is observed
- Observe or measure something else against the new prediction
- Make it into a Law – like the Laws of Gravity or Thermodynamics
This is fine until the Laws break down.
A more intuitive basis to work on is tuning into our innate claircogniscence. This a ‘knowing’ version of clairvoyance, clairaudience or clairsentience. The source of the knowing can be from any of our chakra points – normally gut, heart, 3rd eye or crown but also the alpha and omega chakras outside our bodies.
Incidentally, don’t ask me how I know all of this. I just do and I have complete faith that what I am imparting here is knowledge that will appeal to readers of the resulting article.
Claircogniscence is more than just knowing. It’s also an inner sense that it’s OK to know in itself and there is no need to share or even prove what you know. In healing and therapy, it is the most useful tool as you can instantly get a sense of issues and how to treat them.
It’s also a vital part of the creative process. You just know what you are writing, painting or composing is just perfect. You are connected both with your Muse and your audience. You are in flow – and you Know It. It is the progenitor of the most desirable output for the search for knowledge – that of gnosis.
Gnosis
Gnosis is the result of unquestioned claircogniscence and requires no qualification – it just is. The best examples end up being koans, aphorisms or maxims.
These are stories, questions or statements the meaning of which is not best understood by the application rational thinking but may be accessible through intuition. They just feel right.
Examples range from a Zen Koan that gives us an Known Unknown by asking an incisive question like:
“What is your face before your mother and father were born?”
– to one of Hippocrates’ sublime aphorisms that, on first hearing, begets the Unknown Known:
“Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult.”
– to the pithy and witty Known Known maxims that are the stuff of urban myths such as:
“In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.”
These kind of statements are just right; we feel it in our water. They are incontestable and don’t lend them to analysis unless you are feeling particularly fastidious.
True gnosis though more traditionally applies to a spiritual knowing.
What’s important here though is that gnosis is something which is personal. For example, it’s said that there are 33 paths of spiritual awakening. Now I don’t know if it’s true there are 33, there could be more or less. What I do know is that as soon as the path or the type of awakening is defined and proclaimed to be “The Way”, we have slipped from gnosis to dogma. All I know for sure is the path and way that I am following seems to be working for me but that I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone else.
Once you assume a dogmatic position, the acquisition of new knowledge becomes difficult and we are closed off from the next level of awakening.
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite “knowings” from the mind that was Chief Seattle –
“This we know. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. All things are connected. This we know.”
by Tom Evans | Apr 5, 2011 | Scribing
Rachel Willis, CEO and insightful editor of Lightworker Magazine posed a little problem for me recently to submit an article about a subject I realised I write little about.
Namely Love …
I took the decision to ‘channel’ it raw and this is what came out …
by Tom Evans | Apr 3, 2011 | Scribing
When we click on a link, we don’t give it a second thought – especially these days when we are presented with 100’s if not 1000’s of potential hyperlinks each day.
Links nowadays are not limited to those on web sites or in email newsletters. They abound in Twitter tweets and on Facebook Walls.
Knowing how and why people click on one link as opposed to another is of course of interest to the person who posted the link. Indeed understanding how we interact with any text is important for any writer.
Here’s a typical sequence of events:
1. About a second before we are consciously aware of anything, our right brain is continually filtering information before presenting it to our left brain for further processing and analysis. This is known as whole brain filtering.
2. To get past the gatekeeper of the right brain, which works holistically, we have to write content which matches patterns the right brain will light up to. Example might include:
- Keywords – e.g. Video, ebook, iPad, your favourite football team/author/pop group
- Rhymes
- Fun & puns
- Freebies
- Double takes
- e.g. If I had written Triple Take, the right brain would inform the left that there is something new it doesn’t understand that needs analysis
3. Once the left brain is presented the information, it analyses it further with criteria like – is it a con or a spam and is it something to deal with now or park for later? If the former, the motor commands to our arm and hand muscles to click on the link are issued.
4. When we then look at the destination page the whole process is repeated for the opening paragraph – or the image or first few seconds of the audio or video – and then so on for all subsequent content until we meet another link that we follow.
5. So our right brain analyses the whole and our left, the detail.
As for the Google search engine, both have to match otherwise our spam filter kicks in. For example, if we thought we were on a page containing a freebie but it becomes clear the point of the page is to sell you something, you will soon go elsewhere. Long sales pages try and subvert this process by beating the left brain into submission.
“OK,” it says, “I didn’t want to buy anything but it was $5000 and I can get it for only $20 today only.
“The overruled right brain screaming, “They saw you coming.”
6. For best results, the message needs to be completely congruent say from from initial Tweet, to blog title right through the body text to the final call to action.
7. If you have read this far, you will be approaching the call to action – yes, this blog is a soft selling page. Do you feel conned? I hope not as this blog contains some useful free information.
by Tom Evans | Apr 2, 2011 | Scribing
I am thrilled and extremely honoured to be able to contribute to the 1st issue of Inspire – a new free magazine from of the amazing WeCollaborate community.
My belief is that there is only a recession if you want there to be one – by bringing inspiration to the workplace, you literally breathe new life into it.
… you can read my article and other erudite thoughts from some amazing writers in the mag here.
by Tom Evans | Apr 1, 2011 | Illuminating
When you experience a moment of light, it is quite simply magical.
If you happened to have an Magnetic Resonance Imaging [MRI] scanner handy at the time, and you stuck your head in it, you would see every neuron in your brain lighting up as it connects with it’s neighbours. Over 10 billion neurons would light up in harmony shouting “Eureka” at you.
Moments of light like this are more commonly referred to nowadays as light bulb moments. As Archimedes, Newton and Saint Paul could testify though, we experienced them well before the light bulb was invented.
They are a special mode of consciousness where, in less than a second, you see the whole picture. Apparently, Newton intuited the complete theory of gravity in that split second and it took him the rest of his life to tabulate them. They seem like they occur in less than a second because, for that moment, you have jumped outside space and inside time.
It is assumed they are random yet it is possible to enter a special type of meditative state, with your eyes open, where you can experience them on demand. The first step in achieving this state of being is to understand what blocks such moments of light.
Imagine if someone cuts in front of you, into that safe gap you left, on the motorway. You feel affronted. Perhaps, if your life was endangered, you may utter an expletive or even flash your lights at the offender. At that exact moment, certainly what won’t be happening is that you will be having a moment of light. Just by a subtle flip in your thinking though, you could have had an idea for a new novel called Road Rage or a safety device for a car which told the driver the gap was too small to pull into. The issue is that your thoughts are controlling you, not the other way around.
If you are in any kind of heightened negative emotional state, be it anger, sadness, hurt, fear or guilt, light bulb moments are stopped dead in their tracks. Your emotional see-saw gets thrown off balance.
Even if you had a bright idea, there is just no brain space for it to surface. Any inspiration you might be feeling gets outweighed by heavy emotion. You will have to wait for the extreme emotion to abate.
This is why it’s best not to make a decision or send that email when you are angry. Take a few deep breaths, even wait for 24 hours and you will end up with a better outcome. You may even have a bright idea of how to respond to achieve a much more satisfactory outcome.
For most of the time, and most people, hopefully our brains and minds are running on a more even keel. Instead of rage, anger or grief, perhaps you are just beset with the daily worries of life. From this position, you can begin to enjoy flashes of inspiration and good ideas can get an airing. However, if you are in anyway fearful of the outcome of expressing or executing an idea, you will remain in stasis. You won’t go forward and you won’t go back. Everything will just be fine and dandy and the boat won’t get rocked.
In order to progress from this state of mind, we have to make a leap of faith. We need to see the fears and worries that beset us each day in a different light. Our unconscious mind is the source of such emotions. These fears and worries don’t exist in the real world; they are just inside our heads.
The Fool in the Tarot on the surface can be seen as a reckless figure without a care in the world. In some packs, he is only a couple of steps from walking over the edge of a precipice. He is however enlightened, with his face aligned to the Sun, the source of light. He only appears to be a fool to us as we haven’t reached his state of grace. His emotions are under control. Like the snapping dog at his feet, he knows fears are only there to tell him to pay attention to something. He doesn’t concern himself with them when not appropriate.
If the Fool could speak, his favourite phrase would probably be, “There’s no point worrying about something you don’t have control of.”
So it is not a case of ignoring fears when they arise but paying attention to them only when necessary. If you are worried about something, it is just your unconscious (or gut) mind telling you there’s something you need to address. Once you’ve taken action, move on.
When you make this shift, you become free to work with the light and have unlimited light bulb moments on demand. The see-saw shifts in your favour and you notice something new.
First, to appreciate how to maximize your light bulb moments, we need to look at the dictionary definition of the word ‘moment’. We see that, as well as meaning a moment in time, it is also a force applied at a distance from a central pivot. If you use the same force but with a lever twice as long, you double it’s effectiveness. This of course is nothing new, the architects of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid knew this.
When we use it in this see-saw analogy, the length of the lever is proportional to the level of focus in our consciousness and the level of our intent. If we dilute our consciousness by tackling too many things, the lever action will reduce. Channel your efforts and you will reap rewards much easier. With higher intent, the force at the end of the see-saw is amplified further.
So if your aim is to make a million dollars, you will be more effective in that goal if you’ve got a good and worthy use for the money – even if this is purely financial and personal. You don’t have to give it away but just to amass wealth for no purpose is an empty challenge which will just end up with you worrying what to do next. The see-saw will just swing back the other way.
Naturally if everything you bring to your consciousness manifests, you could end up being a busy bee indeed. So it’s fine to flip back from time to time to a balanced state for the see-saw. What is healthier though is to achieve balance using reflection and assessment as opposed to fears and worry.
