FURTHER NARCISSISM
About Joshua Newman
[@joshuanewman]
Cyan Pictures
CrossFit NYC

PRIOR GENIUS
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Autobiography (11)
Best Of (64)
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Jess (20)
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T Minus 10 Days
Filed August 27, 2008 1:02 PM.

Down to the final wedding prep details.

The many final wedding prep details.


Buy This Now
Filed August 26, 2008 11:20 AM.

I headed to Barnes & Noble this morning to pick up a copy of Sarah Brown's new book, Cringe, which just went on sale today.

Cringe is "a compilation of real teenage diary and journal entries, letters, songs, stories, and lists--along with biting commentary, background, and self-examination from the now so-called grown-ups who wrote them."

Which includes me. And also a great lineup of people far, far funnier than I am.

And, lest you think I'm biased, when I was checking out with the book, the B&N sales girl started paging through, laughed out loud several times, and made a note on a sticky to head upstairs and pick up a copy for herself.


Overheard, 50th and Broadway
Filed August 26, 2008 10:49 AM.

Early 20's babysitter, to the two little kids with whom she was holding hands:

"You know what this is? This is Time Square. It's a place that people who don't live in New York like to visit."


Well Thought Out
Filed August 25, 2008 2:29 PM.

I enjoy immensely the large number of TV commercials explaining that television is going all-digital at the end of the year, which refer anyone with an analog-only TV and no converter box to various web sites for more information.

Because, really, the vast majority of people with antique bunny-eared black-and-white TVs also have computers with fast broadband connections right nearby.


One by One
Filed August 22, 2008 1:09 PM.

Coming shortly, a long, long (and possibly multi-part) screed I'm writing up about the good, the bad, and the ugly of productivity classic Getting Things Done, and how some of the ideas in the considerably more obscure British Do It Tomorrow deal with the shortcomings of the GTD approach.

In authoring that, however, I stumbled across this great quote worth sharing:

"Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you'd rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously."

Which is dead on.

Or, at least dead on at a philosophical level. At the cognitive level, however, research has made increasingly clear that people can't really multitask - do two tasks a the same time. Instead, they either background task - say, listen to music while working out - if one of the tasks has a very low cognitive load, or they switchtask - alternate back and forth between two different activities.

And, in short, research has also increasingly shown that each time someone alternates, they incur a bit of cognitive 'switching cost' - extra time spent catching back up to their place in a IM conversation, or re-reading the last few lines of an email draft after each switch.

So per the zen saying, "when you are chopping wood, chop wood; when you are carrying water, carry water." You won't just be more present and do both tasks better, but you'll take considerably less time doing them than you would trying to do both at the same time.


Getting Topical
Filed August 20, 2008 11:37 PM.

When you're starting a company, the hardest part is often deciding what the company won't do. The possibilities are initially endless, yet a small company (and, really, a large company, too) can only do so many things well.

It's a bit like going to a restaurant - you can eat anything on the menu, but you can't eat everything on the menu, at least without getting sick.

Blogging follows suit. Good blogs tend to focus in on one topic, or just a handful. Yet this one, over the past eight years, has wandered haphazardly from one topic to the next.

So, finally, and long, long overdue, I've been giving some thought to what this blog should be about. Based on the emails that roll in, it seems there are four areas about which people are particularly happy to read:

Those four, I think, cover about 90% of the best read entries in self-aggrandizement's past.

So, as an experiment, rather than simply randomly blogging up whatever strikes my fancy, I'll be trying to cycle through those four topics. That way, whichever one you're coming to find, you'll regularly get a dose of new, relevant content.

And, hopefully, with a snarkily egotistic perspective as the thematic link across all four, you'll want to give each and every post a careful read, no matter which of the categories you like most.

After all, self-aggrandizement is already 'doubtless one of the best sites on the internet'. If I do say so myself.


Home Stretch
Filed August 18, 2008 1:57 PM.

I realized this morning that I'm now t-minus 20 days to getting married.

Which, on the one hand, is totally thrilling.

And, on the other, is absolutely terrifying.

Fortunately, I'm still exceedingly excited about the marriage part. It's the wedding that has me worried. While all the major details are figured out, all the main moving parts in place, there are still more odds and ends to deal with than I can count. Seating arrangements, gift baskets for out-of-town guests, writing and printing programs, following up with every vendor we've previously locked down to make sure they're still happily locked.

And, of course, things are crazier than ever (though, finally and fortunately, in a very good way) with Cyan and with Jess' consulting company.

This weekend, as we were picking up our wedding bands, the jeweler (who's long since become a friend of ours) offered some good advice: just do what you can until you make it to the top of the aisle, and then wash your hands of the details and pretend you're a guest.

And, also, drink a lot of vodka.


Behind
Filed August 13, 2008 4:58 PM.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.


Panhellenic
Filed August 10, 2008 10:49 PM.

I remember once hearing a talk by the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, about how the decline of instrumental music instruction in schools inevitably led, years later, to a decrease in symphony audiences. Simply put, the people who most appreciated classical performance were usually those who had done some of it themselves.

Which seems to me particularly true in the parallel world of watching the Olympics. Prior to CrossFit, I had never tried to clean, jerk or snatch a weight, had never played on rings, parallel bars, or a pommel horse.

So, while I watched and enjoyed both the Olympic lifting and men's gymnastics events at Athens, Sydney, and Atlanta, I didn't until this year appreciate how really, really, holy shit I can't believe what I'm seeing, good these guys are.

I mean seriously. It's almost like all of these guys are Olympic-caliber athletes.


Pop Quiz
Filed August 9, 2008 5:18 PM.

"IF U LOVE ME AS I LOVE U THEN I & U WILL MAKE 1 OF 2"

This quotes is:

  1. A text message.

  2. A Prince lyric.

  3. A verse by Vermont's Ebenezer White, written in 1782, as a marriage proposal to Lucy Packard, his future bride.

Yes, number three it is.

Which seems to me a reasonable counterpoint to all of this 'IM and text shorthand is killing the English language' alarmism.

Turns out, we're not nearly as original or influential as we'd like to think.


Canonical
Filed August 6, 2008 3:54 PM.

Kleiner's First Law: When the hors d'oeuvres are passing, take two.

Kleiner's Second Law: There is a time when panic is the appropriate response.

- Eugene Kleiner, Founder, Fairchild Semiconductor & Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.


What the Hell(s Kitchen)
Filed August 5, 2008 6:33 PM.

When I moved into my apartment, some three years ago and change, I really liked Hell's Kitchen. I had already lived in the neighborhood for several years, and was moving just two blocks down and a half block to the east.

But that small distance was a big change. It put me on the corner of 8th Ave, less than ten blocks up from the heart of darkness: Times Square.

Which was bad. And with each passing year, got worse. The area gentrified. More and more tourists poured down my block.

By now, on my way to work, I have to elbow through crowds of gawkers from fly-over states. (A family of ten standing motionless in the middle of the sidewalk as the father points: "look, Martha, it's a tall buildin'!")

During 'christmas season' (September through February), I have to divert my commute entirely - five blocks up, five blocks back down - just to avoid the enthralled-to-standstill Rockefeller Center crowds. ("Look, Martha, it's a tall tree!")

Jess arrived long after the neighborhood's grit had been largely polished away, never lived closer to 9th Ave to see that there really are (or, at least, were) restaurants and shops nearby aside from the Olive Garden and the Phantom of Broadway Gift Shop ("We have good price I [HEART] NY shirt!").

So, not surprisingly, she hated it from the get-go. Not our apartment itself, which we both really like. But, in short, pretty much everything within a ten block radius of our front door.

And, increasingly, so do I. So, post-wedding, we'll be kicking off an apartment search.

It's a terrible, terrible time to do so. Sales prices are on the verge of 'readjustment', yet rental prices are fast on the climb.

Still, for the sake of our sanity, we're not sure we really have a choice.

As for specifics - like neighborhood - we're not yet entirely sure. Maybe downtown. Or uptown. In short, pretty much anywhere but where we are right now.

They say Time Square's the core of the Big Apple; by now, we're both pretty sure it's the pits.


Music & Lyrics
Filed August 4, 2008 1:43 PM.

Among her many other talents, Jess has a savant-like ability to remember every single lyric to essentially every single song, ever.

Some obscure early-nineties dance hit will come on the radio, and she'll sing along - not just with the choruses, but with the verses, too, word for word.

I, conversely, don't know the lyrics to anything. Even songs I've heard hundreds of times. Sometimes, when I'm driving for example, I'll actually listen to the words, and am shocked to discover the song is about something totally different than what I thought. But unless I really, really pay attention, the lyrics just seem to wash over me.

Over the years, I've spoken with a handful of musician friends, who say the same thing; they can hum the tunes, but don't seem to retain any of the words. It's as though we're processing the songs in a totally different way, with a totally different part of our brains.

It makes me wonder if the lyrics people, then, hear the music in a completely different way, too, if the melodies and harmonies I pick apart gloss together into a cascade of pleasant but undifferentiated sound.

I'm not really sure. But I do, at least, know it's one more area where Jess' and my strengths complement each other. Put us behind the mic at an evening of karaoke, and she'll be faking the melody, I'll be mumbling my way through words I'm more or less making up. Yet we sound, if not good, then certainly passable. Which, at least if the audience is drunk, is probably good enough.