Via Nick Statt on CNet:
“There must be a clear and simple task; that task must provide instant feedback; there must be no distractions that either disrupt your concentration or make you ultra-aware of your own actions; and, key to the act of game playing especially, it must be a challenge with appropriate balance with regards to your own skill and the task’s difficulty.”
There are huge monetary rewards if you solve for flow correctly.
Conversations, as they tend to play out in person, are messy—full of pauses and interruptions and topic changes and assorted awkwardness. But the messiness is what allows for true exchange. It gives participants the time—and, just as important, the permission—to think and react and glean insights. “You can’t always tell, in a conversation, when the interesting bit is going to come,” Turkle says. “It’s like dancing: slow, slow, quick-quick, slow. You know? It seems boring, but all of a sudden there’s something, and whoa.”
My current conversation power move is eye contact. Eye contact. All the time whether I’m speaking or listening. For speaking, my natural state is to look away when I’m talking so I can focus on what I’m attempting to say, but I miss essential nuanced feedback. For listening, eye contact can feel uncomfortable because it can feel like staring, but, again, if you look away, you might miss essential conversational data.
It is with great joy and a little bit of sadness that I welcome you to next version of Rands. For a long list of dear friends, I’m “that guy”. I’m the guy who has told an endless number of people that the redesign of Rands has been just around the corner for the last… More
There are over 800 articles and podcasts on Rands in Repose, written and recorded over the past two decades. If you know what you’re looking for, your best search move is using Google or DuckDuckGo to find that specific article, but if you’re here for the first time, I’d like to give you the lay… More
I’m a rookie when it comes to listening to music, and chances are, so are you. Like me, you’re just fine using whatever headphones were supplied with your smartphone. You know there are better headphones out there, but you think, “What’s the point? I can hear the music just fine.” You can, but there are… More
When I do a talk, I introduce myself as “Rands. That guy who sounds like a fortune cookie on Twitter.” I relay this introduction with a mixture of joy and sadness. For me, the joy arrives when I successfully distill a complex thought down to fit the 140-character restraint of Twitter. These blurbs can easily… More
I remain steadfast in my belief that one of the best examples of the disproportionate value of the iPhone is the fact that we are able to completely ignore the fact that its form factor is horrible to use as a camera. Yes, the internals are amazing, the guts of the camera are terrific, but… More
April 2012 represents the 10th anniversary of Rands in Repose. I don’t normally celebrate these occasions, but serendipity has given me something to talk about. As you might have noticed, I’ve recently made a few design changes to the site. I’m honored to participate in Hoefler & Frere-Jones private beta for their forthcoming web fonts… More
I am told that the manner by which others understand that I am busy is when my writing coherence suffers. This primarily occurs in email when whole words are dropped, sentences become jumbled, and logic falls on the floor. Rands, I literally did not understand what you were asking in that email. Poorly written emails… More
Early in the design discussion for the logo for the latest Rands in Repose charity t-shirt, Robert Padbury responded to my early design feedback: “You know, I realized something when I was thinking about this the other day – People don’t really have more than the following three responses to a design: It’s awesome. It… More