jonwashburn: June 2007

Because to be successful in real estate in 2007 you must have some design tricks up your sleeve.

"To start it off let me post my top 5 list:
1. http://logolounge.com - Logo collection for inspiration categorized by keywords and industry. Pay site.
2. http://sxc.hu - Free stock photo exchange site.
3. http://dafont.com - Free fonts.
4. http://brandsoftheworld.com - Logo collection for download.
5. http://tuaw.com - Apple blog with news about Mac software."

This list was created by Ivan on his Creative Bits blog. 

I love ActiveRain (duh), but the problem I am having is that the more I participate the more wrapped into it I become.  Before I know it, I am following four or five active blog posts and my email inbox is going crazy with New Comment notices.  This presents a problem with me because my email inbox essentially directs the flow of my life.  When a new email comes in, I do what I can to review it and respond to it immediately.  Well you can see where I am going with this; 100+ notifications of New ActiveRain comments in a day can start to overload my circuits.  

So yesterday I decided to only check email 2x per day.  HAHAHAAHAHA... That plan lasted oh about 15 minutes.

Going back to the drawing board today I came up with a very simple, yes obvious, solution.  I would create an email filter for my new ActiveRain comments that puts them into a special folder and marks them "as read". 

Now I can keep in the loop when new comments are posted on blog posts that I am watching, while avoiding the need to open my email client ever two minutes.

It's not like this wasn't seen coming a mile away, but it is interesting how many of the real estate web 2.0 companies are starting to enter each others turf.

"Soon, we will be launching the capability for brokers to automatically upload active listings for free to Zillow,"

Next thing you know Zillow will be making some type of mortgage play... 

If you have nothing better to do with your time, check out the Iamfacingforeclosure blog created by Casey Serin.  A very trippy blog, that according to it's hater'z encapsulates everything bad about the real estate bubble.

Here is an interesting quote from a CNET article published today about the blogger: 

"A CNET News.com reader appears to have footed the bill for the Australia trip. In an e-mail message on June 2, that reader offered to pay $1,000 to keep the blog going--and apparently followed through. Serin wrote in follow-up message four days later: "That guy WAS for real. A true supporter. Crazy things happen when you're blogging."

Am I addicted to email?  If not I am most definitely addicted to my rss reader.  According to behavior psychologists I get the same type of rush or high when I receive a new email, or discover a new blog post in my rss feedreader, as gamblers get when they receive a slot machine payout or win a pot in poker. And this addiction is killing my productivity. 

According to Michael Shanks, an archaeologist and a professor of design at Stanford University, "Primary conditioning mechanism" is the inclusion of relatively small payouts in slot machine gameplay. These small payouts provide positive reinforcement to the player, a phenomenon that has been studied extensively by psychologist BF Skinner in experiments with rats. Skinner placed a rat in a box, with a lever at one end that would dispense a pellet of food. When, it its random behavior, the rat accidentally pushes the lever, the pellet of food reinforces this behavior. Soon the rat does nothing but push the lever repeatedly, expecting a pellet of food."

The similarities do not end at the intermittent nature of the positive reinforcement. Like in slot machine play the most important aspect of my email stimuli is the relative frequency of the almost jackpot. I am not drawn to check my email on a near constant basis for the countless "silly questions", "touching base", or "status updates".  I am looking for the jackpot of emails. The one that comes along every couple of days.  The one that says, "Jonathan here is some really good news", or even in a twisted sort of way "Jonathan here is some really bad news".

This type of behavioral response carries over to other things as well.  Why do I drop whatever I am working on, no matter how important it is, to jump and answer the phone or respond to IM?  Stowe Boyd says that my time is not my own, but belongs to My Network (friends, coworkers, etc).  Am I really most valuable as a cog working in unison towards the greater good of my group.  I think the answer for many professions is  increasingly becoming yes.  The key to this dilemma is in striking a balance between being available to communicate to move the project along, and having the non-interrupted groove or flow time. ("Groove or flow time" is what I call the time that only happens when you have enough time to really get into a groove or flow while working on something)

For me and my personal productivity problems, I am going to try some of the suggestion recently offered by Marc Andressen of Netscape fame.

My vows are as follows: (note, I highly doubt that I will be able to break my "addictions" so easily.  So these "vows" are really more "things I am going to try")

1.  Only checking my email two time per day.  The rest of the time my email client will be turned off.  That also includes my Crackberry.

2.  I will only check my rss feedreader in the morning.  I will only read the posts that are relevent or interesting to me.

3.  I will check and respond to voice-mail 2x per day.

4.  I will leave my email Inbox empty at the end of every workday.

5.  I will buy a white-board and hang it up in my line of sight and write on it and rank things I want to accomplish in order of importance. I will work on what is most important first.

Note: I will not change my IM behavior.  IM provides immediate feedback for My Network and typically does not disrupt my groove or flow time.  In otherwords I love my IM and it's one addiction I am not willing to part with.

I can't wait for Bloggers Connect in July. It is a one day prelude to the annual Inman Connect San Francisco conference which is always a highlight of my year. Most of the AR development team is going to be there and Matt and me will be present to award the winners of Project Blogger. I also believe Matt and/or myself will also be speaking on some of the panels.

In case you haven't heard of Inman Connect SF, it is basically like the Navy Seals version of the National Association of Realtors annual convention. Pretty much everyone behind the cutting edge real estate technology initiatives will be there.

If you’re thinking of attending, register before June 16th in order to get the discounted price.

Also, check out the Inman hosted conference call that was held earlier this morning about Project Blogger. It was an interesting call.

It always irks me when I hear the phrase the "agents are the gatekeepers"! That is ridiculous.  The lead generators are the gatekeepers.  The agents are the information.  To me the future of real estate marketing is all about communicating local market knowledge as far and wide as possible.  Pat Kitano has been providing the most consistent coverage on this fundamental change in real estate marketing. If I was an agent or managed a real estate brokerage I would be betting the farm on this upcoming trend.

Check out Pat's post he published today on this

Now that I have officially renamed my ActiveRain blog to something that more matches my state of being, I can start blogging more in line with the way God made me.

I have 9 windows open on my 30" display, I don't have the time - I mean attention span - to write out lengthy well thought out posts.

For about a week or so, I have been experimenting with a service called tumblr.com and I have found the tumblr style of blogging to be much more natural for me.   So I have decided to give that style a go here on my AR blog.  My posts will rarely even qualify as a post as they will not likely meet the 50 word limit; good thing I don't blog for points!

If you wanna see what my first weeks experiment looked like on my tumbl blog, check out linkblog.jonwashburn.com.

Oh and check out the conversation about Continuous Partial Attention 

Picnik is a new free program that allows you to upload and edit your photos directly within your browser.  I have seen a few of these types of programs in the past, but nothing comes close to this one.  

(Try out the "boost" filter, under the Creative Tools tab)