Do I climb the looming summits of some private Kilimanjaro of the mind, digging for gold with a pickaxe?

Or do I descend into some underground lair of wild ideas, slaying the best and dragging them to the light?

It is far less adventurous than that, I’m afraid.

The honest answer is: I absolutely don’t have a clue where they come from.

Far from having a systematic process of generating them, I’m more or less at their mercy. There are many methods of “being creative” and while I don’t think that they’re bad, real creativity can’t be coerced, at least in my experience.

But there are certain things that at least seem to provide a heightened probability field for their gestation:

1. Milking The Mundane

The only summit worth climbing for ideas, as far as I can see, is a mountain of unwashed dishes. Now, that doesn’t sound all too exciting? And yes, it isn’t. But it seems to work better than any smart mind-mapping method or $19.99 “creative thinking” manual.

I’ve read somewhere that the sensation of running water may be beneficial for stimulating certain neuronal currents, hence the many reports of “shower thinkers” who get their Eureka moments in the bathroom.

Apparently, the phenomenon is so widespread that someone managed to turn it into cash by selling waterproof notepads for the shower.

2. Networking Vs. Facebooking

In his book “Where ideas come from” Steve Johnson takes us on a tour of the “history of innovation”, hunting down behavioral patterns and environmental settings that create new ideas.

What he found is that the classic Eureka moment of the lone thinker sitting at his table contemplating something until suddenly the big picture comes together might be a concept that needs to be updated.

Behind the stories Johnson tells about historical innovations we see a larger pattern: Instead of the individual that comes up with new ideas alone, we see social networks in which innovation is emerging.

For more about this concept, I highly recommend his presentation on TED or Youtube:

 ”Social Network, you say? Great, I’m on Facebook all day long but I never get any ideas, at all.”

It seems we have to make a distinction here between social networks in an outer and an inner psychological sense.

As far as I understand it, each idea is generated by another one, a bit like cell proliferation in biology. Therefore, there needs to be some kind of starting point, an input with a certain quality.

These inputs can be generated by reading good books or talking to people. They form a network. My high school philosophy teacher used to tell us that he enjoyed regular conversations with Plato and Aristotle and while we laughed about his “voices in the head” what he really meant was that he had created an inner social network.

Also, it doesn’t seem to be enough to just add 5,000 friends or “follow” smart people. There needs to be some kind of mirror-image of these networks on the inside of a person.

3. Not Looking, Not Knowing, Being Surprised

Now, after having speculated about the effects of water on the brain and esoteric concepts of an “inner pantheon of ideas” I have to return to what I said above: I don’t have a clue where good ideas come from!

It seems that the best ideas come unexpectedly and seemingly out of nowhere.

There certainly is some sensation of just going with the flow or even being in an almost dreamlike state, where the everyday consciousness is somewhat faded out or in the background and doesn’t block new idea downloads.

And again, while methods like Oblique Strategies can sometimes work, it seems that it can’t be learned to have ideas. Many people will disagree with me, especially those who make a living selling books and seminars about “how to be creative” but I think in the end we have to admit that we don’t have a clue about certain things and over-analyzing them won’t yield their inner workings.

I’ve found the following quote from an interview with science fiction author William Gibson also very telling:

“[T]he part of me that sits here having this conversation with you is incapable of doing any very original literary work. The part of me that creates stuff is right now largely offline and unavailable, and I couldn’t summon it if my life depended on it. I have to make myself available and hope it turns up. To me, that’s where the good stuff comes from. It’s like, William Gibson doesn’t get ideas for novels while I’m walking around in the world” – source

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 Some rights reserved by blankdots

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

A book, printed on paper, bound in leather or glued together is a comforting thing. You can put it on a shelf, and it won’t go anywhere. If you scrawl in the margins, it will remain. If you leave it in a dry place and don’t drop any water, fire or bombs on it, it might even survive hundreds of years without any effort!

Ebooks on the other hand can’t boast such a certain fate. In fact, it’s rather difficult to pin them down. They change their fonts and paragraphs on a reader’s whim, they fill the pages horizontally or vertically, they move from smartphone to desktop to ereader, they seem to be in constant motion and transformation.

The books you purchased on your Kindle, for example, where are they? In the “cloud”, they say. Which sort of means that they’re everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time.

We don’t have a clue if people in the future will treat PDFs or ePUB files in the same way our archeologists look at ancient Sumerian clay tablets, for example.

Ebooks: Little Quantum Critters

Some people hate ebooks for that. They don’t want their tomes to act like Schroedinger’s Cat, all uncertain and shifting between existence and non-existence like flickering lightbulbs. They want something solid and reliable which doesn’t change once you look away or accidentally press a button.

And while I do sympathize with the general sentiment to preserve and conserve the time-tested, fighting ebooks seems a rather Quixotic attempt.

It is often said that we live in ‘uncertain times’. And while this may or may not be true (haven’t people always claimed that their times were the worst?) uncertainty surely has some great advantages.

One of them is flexibility. Another one is ubiquity.

These are among the reasons why ebooks are an increasingly popular alternative to paper books.

The flexibility part I already discussed above (changing fonts, size, paragraphs, etc.). But what about ubiquity?

Instead of lugging around cardboard boxes full of dictionaries and paperback novels the next time you move, you can put all of them on your ereader, slip it into your pocket and be done with it. And if they’re in the cloud, there’s no need to even carry a device. A username and password is enough.

Unfortunately, there are some barriers to this ubiquity. These barriers however are more of an economic and political than a technical kind.

Reclaiming Ubiquity

For example, if you buy a book over at Amazon it may not be that easy (or almost impossible) to copy it to a different device such as Kobo or Sony Reader which, of course, use different formats.

Luckily, software like Calibre makes it relatively easy to convert and transfer your tomes above and beyond artificial platform boundaries, but the ebook market of today can nevertheless  be confounding with its different formats, prices, devices and (arbitrary) limitations.

From a publishing perspective it gets especially confusing once you try to decide on what platforms and under what conditions you want to place a work while taking all your different readers (who own different ereading devices) into consideration.

Therefore, I’m happy to announce that after days of intense code-wrangling and database-tinkering we now have a completely revamped bookshop, in which you can find all our publications in all their available formats at one comforting glance! (After all, with all this uncertainty, it’s nice to have things organized a bit, don’t you think?)

learnoutlive.com/shop

If you have any suggestions, wishes, etc, please do tell us!

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img:  Some rights reserved by h.koppdelaney

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

I went straight from idea to application, to publication, all in just a few hours.

Am I saying that it’s dead simple to publish a bestseller? Certainly not. It’s still a lot of work.

But the playing field has been significantly leveled.

Perfect Is The Enemy Of Done

Did you ever meet someone who’s great at drawing, making music or anything and you said: “Wow, that’s great, why don’t you share this with a wider audience?” and then the person said: “Well, I just don’t think it’s good enough, yet.”

Now, this is not to say that there’s a sleeping Beethoven or Shakespeare in all of us. (If there is, he has to be coaxed out with some serious work or by the right environment.) Maybe some things really shouldn’t be published.

On the other hand, there is indeed lots of mediocre stuff out there. And much of it is by no means the product of people like you and me but backed by corporate capital. If you take any engineered pop starlet of the day and scratch the glossy surface, beneath there’s just mediocrity. Mediocrity all the way down.

They just slapped on so much make-belief make-up that we don’t bother to look twice.

The Entertainment Industry’s Fear Of Risks

Maybe, Hollywood and Co. aren’t in a crisis because of the Internet. Maybe, it’s not piracy that keeps their sales down, but mediocrity. How often does a big label sign an unknown artist just based on his gut-feeling? How often is not a great idea but simply extensive marketing research the raison d’être for that next Blockbuster or thinly clad “diva”?

The entertainment industry, despite all of its apparent evil, is also “just human”. They don’t want to take big risks. If there are millions at stake it’s better to be on the safe side than to do something new and ground-breaking. So they’re just busy rehashing whatever worked the year before. The result: increasingly boring books, movies and music.

An Army Of Ideas: Just Pick One

On the other hand of this spectrum, there’s people like you and me. We don’t have access to expensive equipment or mountains of cash to dominate production facilities and distribution channels.

But we don’t have anything to lose. And our ideas are legion.

Shifting away from physical goods to digital goods, online production and distribution are just a click away and often free.

Whereas movies are still difficult to make without a lot of funding, making music has become available to almost anyone with a computer and a bit of recording gear. Writing and publishing books seems to least depend on the technology: Theoretically, anyone with access to a keyboard can write a bestseller. But in practice, it all depends on that one idea.

If you got one, go for it! If it succeeds, great. If not, get up and try again!

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img:  Some rights reserved by TangYauHoong

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

What started out as just a little experiment (yours truly listening to punk rock and doodling away like a madman) quickly grew into a serious undertaking when I saw that this stuff actually seemed to help people or at least bring a bit of welcome unseriousness to the sometimes ardous task of learning German.

Therefore, I decided to create a follow-up, this time incorporating all the things learned in the making of the first and integrating constructive feedback from both friends and the general public.

One remark for example was that the pictures could be clearer, and while I’m still no Picasso, I optimized the image digitalization process for more contrast and clarity.

Also, my colleague Louis George Machlan pointed out that he’d like to have some audio for the pronunciation part, so this time I’m proud to present not only a picture book with vocabulary but an accompanying audio, as well!

And before I now talk a bit about the methods & politics of accomplishing this, everyone just interested in getting the goodies, can download it here for the next three days  (update: this offer has expired) (I’d love to make it free for longer, but Amazon only gives me only 5 days in 90 days, so just like Peter und das Huhn, there’ll be 2 more days, so make sure to follow us on Twitter.)

Kindle, we need to talk

After having gone overboard a bit with the audio and creating a background soundscape with special effects and imitating the sounds of krakens and exotic sea-birds, I had to start explaining both to myself and my readers how they can listen to the German voiceover. Huh?

If people download the book from Kindle it gets automatically beamed down to their Kindle device or app, right?

Ok, so far so good. Most Kindles have speakers and a headphone jack and they can play audio files. So it should be no problem to just sort of piggyback the audio on the picture book, right?

Wrong…

First of all, there’s no way to directly embed audio into the ebook format Amazon uses. Secondly, even if you use the Kindle “experimental” browser to navigate to a homepage with an embedded audio, it refuses to play it.

While I read that once upon a time Amazon allowed integrated media in ebooks, it now seems that it abandoned this for mainly two reasons, one being the precious bandwidth of its Whispersync technology responsible for beaming down the file directly to the device, the other probably having to do with Amazon’s trying to separate everything audio and route it exclusively through Audible.

In any case, you’ll be happy to know that I found a way for you to listen to the audio even on your Kindle. Both the file and an explanation how to listen, transfer it to your Kindle or computer are included at the end of the ebook, under the vocabulary & pronunciation section.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever do this again or how helpful this is for learners, but this is part of the reason why I’m doing this in the first place: to find out! So if you have any input on this, please let me know either here on directly in the Amazon reviews. Thanks!

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

In the wake of recent discussions about ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and a number of other Orwellian acronyms, the lines have been drawn rigidly. While the claims of anti-piracy lobbyists that illegal downloads destroy artists’ lives and lead to the annihilation of all artforms are somewhat amusing in their death-rattling desperateness, the claims of anti-copyright groups that torrenting the latest movies and music albums is a form of “free speech” are equally skewed.

But instead of further pitting these polarized camps against one another (and inevitably boring the reader with redundancies) I want to ask a different question here, altogether.

What if we stop looking at this issue as a moral one (good vs. bad) and start looking for alternative modes of behavior that lead beyond this dualistic abyss?

Technology (as usual) is not the problem

A strong argument for “stealing” media is: “because it’s easier than buying it!” – It sounds silly, but as the author in the linked article explains, it’s often ridiculously easy to get a movie by illegal means whereas purchasing it online requires the user to jump through all kinds of hoops and download extra software.

The fact that iTunes has (rather successfully) tried to become the #1 way of buying music online doesn’t mean that the principle of buying music online depends on an Apple ID and iTunes.  As I have shown before with the example of Sargent House, there are all kinds of alternative and more flexible ways already existing!

And interestingly, many of these alternatives are a lot simpler and offer the consumer a lot more (multiple formats for one price, no digital rights management, etc.) than iTunes or Amazon’s Music shop.

So, if there are alternative ways and they are really better why don’t more people use them?

There are at least two reasons for that:

1. people don’t know about these alternative methods
2. people don’t support independent artists

The first point is not really an excuse: head over to Bandcamp or Hyperdub right now and see how it is possible to first listen to a full album and then buy it with a few clicks (Bandcamp doesn’t even require you to have a user account!)

The second point is a bit trickier. Because if you go to Bandcamp and search for the latest Britney Spears album or whatever, you won’t find it.

In other words: Independent ways of purchasing media online go hand in hand with independent artists!

Regarding most artists signed on major labels just finding a quick way to buy the album with one click via Paypal or Google Checkout will prove to be almost impossible. If you don’t have an iTunes or Amazon account linked to an active credit card and all the necessary software installed, it’ll be difficult. So I’m not surprised people just get the torrent or rapidshare link and “have it over with.”

A Mini Case Study With Major Label Artists

Now, regarding that new Britney Spears album (don’t know if there actually is one), I can happily live without it. But there are also great artists on major labels (yes, it happens) – As an example, let’s look at Leonard Cohen (because he’s widely accepted as being “genuine” although being a major artist) and his latest album “Old Ideas”.

If I google leonard cohen “old ideas” download here’s what I get:

As you can see the first page shows us a cross-section of the whole ordeal: The links marked in red are the monopolies (Amazon and iTunes) and what I marked in yellow are “illegal” copies.

If you are like me and you don’t like to buy music from iTunes or Amazon and also don’t want to get your hands dirty torrenting, all that’s left is listening to the music on Youtube.

What kind of a choice is this?

Support Your Global Heroes

All of the above may seem complicated when looking at platforms, rights and terms of services. But behind this jungle there are two simple principles:

• By buying from iTunes or Amazon you don’t support the artists, you support the corporate world mainly
• If you want to support artists you have to buy the downloads directly from their homepage

Instead of asking ourselves: “How can I get this stuff?” we should ask ourselves: “How can I get this in the most convenient and flexible way while also supporting the artist in the best way?”

I’m convinced that people are in fact willing to pay. The reason why more and more people download music illegally is certainly not because they are all criminals but rather because the paid service don’t offer any special benefits worth paying for: back in the days owning a CD or Vinyl meant you could look at the cover art and booklet if you owned it, for example.

Therefore, also artists have to learn to look at the process a bit differently. Instead of asking: “How can we get the biggest sales and outrank all the major label artists in the iTunes charts?” they can ask: “How can we offer our music in the most creative and consumer-friendly way while also making sure that we don’t just get crumbs from each sale?”

But this is maybe a bit too much. Some consumers just want to own the stuff and don’t really care who profits as long as they can get it on their iPod as quickly as possible. And some artists on the other hand will find this process cumbersome, not wanting to deal with the business side of it and “just doing the art part”.

This unwillingness of both consumers and artists to take responsibility for the other half respectively has – so far – left the playing field to major music labels that made millions selling music and are now struggling for survival (and sueing everyone on their way to the bottom.)

As soon as physical storage mediums (CDs, cassettes & vinyl) began to fade away, and with it the necessity of costly distribution and production costs, the label empires were beginning to lose ground.

The two big online music retailers are following in their footsteps but if they don’t find ways to support artists and consumers while actually offering customers extended value, their fate is sealed.

The same applies to the movies, books and games industry. Never before did artists and consumers have more power. Why don’t we use it to shift the balance to our benefit?

 img:  Some rights reserved by Fernando Valença

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Now, I have to admit that there’s no way of just skipping that part altogether (it’s still worthwhile to learn to think in grammatical terms, it’s like dealing with software code) but also if you start too early with it it can ruin all the fun.

And there’s lots of fun to be had while learning any language!

Sadly, more often than not, the fun part falls by the wayside. For example, my wife’s first German course consisted almost exclusively of looking at tables: verb forms, declensions, plural, etc. She had always liked German as a language and was naturally curious and inquisitive. But after that first assault of German grammar, she was rather disappointed and it seemed the course had done more harm than progress.

Half Artefact, Half Nature

The exciting aspect of languages is that they’re half man-made artifacts, half natural occuring phenomena.

Many course books over-emphasize the first part: A neatly organized system of rules and logical explanations that fit like gears (if it weren’t for those darn exceptions!)

This is why in the last 10 years I’ve always been looking for new and exciting ways to to emphasize the natural part of learning German.

My colleagues Nina Hanáková, Jason West and Jason R Levine aka Fluency MC (and many more) are each working on this for English learners.

As a sidenote, I had many different English teachers but only really began to learn when I started watching more and more movies and English and trying to make wisecracks with American friends.

The breakthrough came with authentic materials.

“Peter und das Huhn” – An illustrated short story for German learners

This is why I decided to do a little publication: A picture book for adults. Or, if you like: an illustrated short story for German learners.

I’m also experimenting with Amazon’s KDP select program for the first time which means that you can download the book for free for the next three days. 

UPDATE: Sorry, Amazon only allows publishers to make a product free for 5 days. There are still two days left, I will activate them over the course of the next weeks. Stay tuned

Got interested?

You can get the book here!

Note: While this is both an experiment in terms of didactics and publishing, it’s also an experiment in …well, drawing. I’ve never considered myself much of an illustrator, so the drawings in this mini-course are somewhat reckless, but I hope the point gets across, anyway.

P.S.: If this is as much fun for readers as it was for me, make sure to tell me either here on the blog or leave a short review on Amazon. Thanks!

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

(As usual, what happened is rather inconclusive: laptop went to sleep and didn’t “wake up”. The nerds from the computer store told me motherboard is dead.)

It’s not that this is the first time I’ve seen a machine kick the bucket (I must have torn to a dozen machines in the last twenty years…) But it’s the first time I’m actually writing about it, which brings me to the first point…

1. If Your Machine Crashes, The Net Goes On

Ten years ago, when a system crashed and you slowly put the pieces back together or replaced it, you literally had to start out from zero, again. The core of the computing experience, as least as I experienced it back then, was nailed to the physical hardware.

Nowadays, when one system breaks, there’s a chance of just continuing seamlessly on another computer and still have access to all your files, contacts, etc in the time it takes to enter a username and password.

Obviously this largely refers to “light-weight” applications such as email and social networking but since Google Docs, even most of the sensitive data stuff like spreadsheets, letters, etc. can be stored in the cloud, so that even someone would go at your system with a hammer, you could just shrug off the broken hardware and continue working on another system as if nothing had happened.

By having my laptop run down the curtain and join the choir invisible, I became aware of how much of my daily user experience is already happening in the cloud. And while it’s a big part (I’d say 50+%) it’s  certainly not all of it.

Most of my creative work still happens offline. And this is where a crash can hurt!

2. Better BackUp Than Be Sorry

Before my laptop  shuffled off its mortal coil it was so kind to warn me by not waking up as usual. When it finally did came on again, I knew something was fishy so I did a backup immediately of all my manuscripts, pictures and whatnot. (I’m one of these people who know that theoretically backups are a good thing to do but never do them. Having become a bit paranoid after this episode, I found a neat little service called MozyBackup which automatically stores your stuff in the cloud. They give you 2GB for free. UPDATE: As Glenn recommended in the comments, there’s another service called SugaSync and they even give you 5GB for free.)

So when it was finally pushing up the daisies and its screen stayed black no matter how tenderly I pushed its power button, I had everything on a harddrive.

Everything that is, except the last 500 words of a yet unpublished short story I was writing shortly before it hopped off the twig.

(The geeks at the store managed to salvage the document, by the way,  and it’s now finished and awaiting proofreading – more info about this short story series here)

3. Planned Obsolence: It’s bound to break, anyway

Far from being a conspiracy it’s a simple fact that most electronics are built to break down quickly so you’ll have to buy another one, soon. There’s even a term for it: Planned Obsolescence.

And as my laptop (which had been dutifully carrying its load for about 2 years – they never last longer in my hands) finally bought the farm I jokingly said:

If the name Shenzhen doesn’t ring a bell, it’s a place in China where most (correction: all) of our electronics are produced. Despite the fact that Apple continues to make headlines with the problems at FoxConn, a factory in Shenzhen, virtually all major electronics companies produce their gadgets in Shenzhen. If you want to find out more about this, listen to this podcast episode here with the title: MR. DAISEY AND THE APPLE FACTORY.

One of my friends, a China specialist responded to the above tweet with the following:

If the name Ghana doesn’t ring a bell, either, this is the place where many electronics end up when they perish. Here’s a photo gallery of Ghana’s Global Graveyard for Dead Computers.

4. Digital Impermanence: Freeing the Message from The Medium

Interestingly, one day before my laptop dropped dead I was reading an article by Jonathan Franzen about why he thinks ebooks are bad. Like many others he argues that a book is better because it is made out of paper which is a more durable storage medium.

There’s something not quite entirely convincing about this. The ebook critics and digital storage sceptics are everywhere, arguing that in 10 years from now it’ll all be gone if we don’t start hoarding paper.

When my laptop gave up the ghost I became aware again of how flimsy the connection of an idea is to the material which carries it. There’s lots more to say about this, especially in the light of the current copyright disputes (and witch hunts), but I think we have to be careful not to confuse the content with the container.

5. Phantom Pain and Psychological Stress

Last but not least, it occured to me again how much we as humans are becoming fused with the tools we are using. They become part of us and we become part of them. While on the one hand this “extended nervous system” is a great thing, also our identity is stored and invested in these gadgets. The iPhone has almost replaced the car in terms of status symbols and Apple’s success may be largely attributed to the fact that they know how to capitalize on this soft spot of human-machine relationships which are far from neutral and unemotional.

Advertising campaigns are designed to make us feel that we are more with technology, that our gadgets will augment our life. And while I don’t want to lament this, I’m always keen to ask who we are without these “identity crutches”?

Are these things really always helping us to be “more connected” and “more productive” or do they actually increasingly shield us from relating to the world in a more direct and wholesome way?

Feel free to leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by Josh Bozarth

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Sometimes I joke that the day doesn’t have enough hours, the week not enough days and so on and so forth.

But in the end it is all about time management. Especially if you are one of us freelancers or “power procrastinators”.

So. Time Management. Sounds like something out of a business seminar or self-help book, right?

To me it did when I first heard about it. And to be quite honest, it still sounds rather dull: Time Management…

In most peoples’ minds it brings up associations of discipline, routine and planning. Freelancers want to be free of all of that, don’t they?

So, let’s see what happens when we get rid of time management altogether..

Manage Your Time, Lest It Manages You

You start your morning sitting in front of a screen and have a ton of things to do. So you first check your email, see what’s new on Twitter, hang around on Facebook a bit and before you know what’s happening it’s already noon.

By afternoon you still haven’t gotten anything done. But you have checked your email and facebook more than twenty times.

You have “so many ideas”, so much brilliance locked up inside of you just waiting for a chance to be unleashed, but somehow there’s never enough time (!) to get started writing that novel, to work on that song, to write the first few lines of code for that new project.

By the evening, your brain is tired. You look back at the day with a sigh:”If only I would have…” and halfhearted convictions for the next: “Tomorrow everything will be different” while you know that it’s probably going to be the same.

The above scenario is an absence of time management and while exaggerated it affects us all to some degree, especially if you’re one of us freelancers who can’t put the responsibility on someone else’s shoulder. Freelancer are their “own boss” but they’re also their “own worst nightmare”.

What to do? Here are a few time management ideas for freelancers…

A Handful of Tools & Practices For Taming Your Time

Here’s a few time management tips that I’ve found to be helpful:

1. Schedule A Meeting With Yourself

Now, this will sound weird to some people (it certainly does to me) but I’ve found that if I treat every task in my life like an important business meeting, a date (or any other appointment that I wouldn’t miss for all the world) things get a lot easier.

So, when I can’t seem to drag myself out of distraction, I go to my calendar and schedule a meeting with myself, let’s say: “Writing from 9:00-10:00″) – it’s very simple, but it works. And you’ll notice that getting started is the hard thing. Once you’re in it, you’re easily doing more than planned! Plus, the brain releases some of its satisfaction juices once a job is done!

2. Lock It, Block It, Break – Erase It!

If you’ve scheduled a “meeting with yourself” and you’re still checking Email, Facebook etc. it’s a sign you’re not giving yourself enough credibility. So we’re going to need bigger guns. One of them is blocking websites altogether.

I’ve described one way of doing it here.

3. Destroy The Internet (For a Limited Time)

While I’m happy to say that I’ve never had to resort to this last option, there’s a danger of unblocking temporary blocks of websites for the flimsiest of reasons like needing to “look up that message on Facebook” or “re-reading that article posted on Twitter yesterday”.

So, if you’re not taking your blocks seriously, use the Uber-Block: DESTROY THE INTERNET…or well, at least block it completely for a specific time.

There’s software to help you do that, but you could also just unplug your router for a period that you’ve agreed upon before.

But remember, freelancers – in the end, there are no magic bullets! And don’t worry, we all suffer from it. Here’s how Paulo Coelho deals with it, for example.

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 Some rights reserved by HikingArtist.com

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

These days, first thing in the morning I turn on my Kindle and read my personalized newspaper, hot off the press.

Here’s how (and why) I use a free and customizable way to feed subscriptions to my Kindle every day with Instapaper.

An Avalanche Of 1-Star Reviews: e-Ink ain’t Paper

If you take a look at the Kindle store under Newsstand you’ll find a lot of bad reviews. At the time of this writing, a subscription of TIME magazine which costs $2.99 per month has 95 reviews, 36 (!) of them only 1 star.  Bottom line: almost 38% of reader don’t seem happy.

And it’s not only TIME. Amazon’s Newsweek subscription has 52 reviews, 23 of them outraged.  NYT has 91 bad reviews out of 375…

I think a core problem here is that people expect the Kindle subscription to be the same (or very similar) to the paper experience. But what if a Kindle subscription could be something completely different, not just a daily lump from the same editorial board, but a highly customized and personalized newspaper which includes all your favorite blogs, magazines and more?

 Kindle Subscriptions: The KindleFeeder Way

If you google the topic you’ll immediately stumble over a service called kindlefeeder.com. It allows you to choose from a variety of different feeds and then send them to your Kindle.

At first I was very excited, but then I noticed a few things:

• automatic delivery is only for premium users (and there’s no other plan than $19 per month)
• there’s no way to share articles to my networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• some of the feeds don’t display full articles but only snippets
• sometimes the formatting of the articles was broken

After experimenting with this for a few days I decided to look for another way.

A Lean Mean Reading Machine: The Free & Social Way

The heart of this system is Instapaper because it allows you to send automatic updates for free and is wonderfully streamlined for sharing to virtually any social network.

First of all, let me show you a little chart of how I got it set up. Then I’ll walk you through the steps:

1. Check if there’s a new feed item and if yes, send it to Instapaper

2. Tell Instapaper to automatically send you a collection of your unread articles

3. Read & Share via Instapaper

This is how the process works. Simple, isn’t it?

A Step By Step Tutorial

1. Sign up for instapaper

Under “Account” click Manage my Kindle Settings

2. Set up Sharing under Account

3. Sign up for ifttt.com

4. Activate Instapaper under Channels -> Instapaper (direct link)

5. Use this “Recipe” to set up your first query. (You could also easily create your own, but let’s begin with an example)

In our example we will be adding the feed to odditycentral.com. Here’s how the recipe looks like:

You can put your own feed where it says “Feed Url” but for example’s sake you can also just hit “create task”

5.  Repeat the same procedure with different feeds. If the blog/newspaper you want to read on your Kindle doesn’t offer full feeds, you might find this little tool here helpful. Simply put the feed URL in there first and then add the url they give you to your ifttt recipe.

6. If you’ve done everything right, you’ll now get your personalized, custom newspaper delivered to your Kindle every morning at 5am.

7. Whenever you read an article you like, hit “LIKE” on your Kindle and it automatically goes to the networks you selected in step 2.

The Result

update:

here are some screenshots of how it looks like on your Kindle and how you can use it.#

in the beginning and at the end of each article you’ll find the following buttons:

clicking like will “broadcast” this article through the channels set up in your instapaper account.

In addition to that, at the end of all the articles, you’ll find the following two buttons:

clicking “archive all” will make sure you won’t get the articles sent another time. “Download Newest” will order a fresh supply from your Instapaper unread list.

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  Some rights reserved by B.K. Dewey

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

( tl;dr – wrote a short story, you can download it here)

I’ve lived both in the Far and Middle East. Both experiences left strong memories, traces, impressions. And I noticed very early that if I wanted to convey any of my experiences to others in writing, an autobiographical account wouldn’t cut it.

Short Fiction Instead of Travelogues

It lies in the nature of subjective experience that what to one person is life-changing, to another may be trivial. In other words, the things that leave a strong impression on us are not just very different, they are often intangible, as well.

This is why at the moment I’m working on a series of short stories (and not travelogues!) about the Middle East. On top of that the Middle East as depicted in these writings (you’ll find the first short story below) is completely fictional in order to avoid the straight-jacket of preconceived notions and opinions.

Individual Publications For Individual Readers

These writings will be published independently, that is without the help of publishing houses, marketing and extensive copy-editing. It is an experimental process and whether I’ll follow through with the rest of the short stories in this series will depend (to some extent) on how people respond to this idea of a fictionalized Middle East that still contains all its defining characteristics of conflict and contradiction.

What You Get For Downloading This Story

This first short story is completely free. You’ll find the download link at the end of this article.

A few notes:

I arranged it in such a way that by downloading it, you’ll get the story in what we call here an “Indie Publishing Pack”, meaning a zip file containing a styled PDF, .MOBI file optimized for Kindle and an .EPUB for Sony and other e-readers.

The idea is that if someone downloads an ebook (or short story) he or she should be able to decide on what device and in which way to read it. So, in order to take out the guesswork, you’ll get three versions at once.

(If you need help with transferring the files to your device, see also here)

Support Independent Publishing

If you like the story and want more, here’s how you can help and support this project by one (or more) of the following ways:

Your responses will determine when the next story comes out and if it published in the same way like this one.

And now *drumroll*, the Download Link

Here it is, the first short story about a fictional Middle East, titled: “Don’t Call Me Naomi”

         —> click here to go to the download page <—

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Skype is not just a software. It’s a verb. As the Oxford Dictionary informs us, it can be used both with an object ”When is a good time to Skype you?” and without as in ”We skyped before we met in person.“

Skype is a word that is understood by grandmas and expat toddlers all over the world. Chances are it’s even more widespread than “to google”.

Not so well known is that besides calling family and friends or having cat conferences Skype can be a great business tool for anything from online collaboration and training sessions to reducing phone costs.  It is (not only) for these professional users that the following tips will be interesting.

1. Quick Mute

Description: Quickly mute your microphone by hitting a combination on your keyboard

Benefits: Danger of sudden background noise such as a sneeze, car alarm or ringing phone? Need to talk to someone beside you while in a professional conversation? Hitting mute will spare your caller the distraction and protect your privacy at the same time. The best thing is that these hotkeys work even when the Skype window is not in focus, meaning it will work even when the call is running in the background. (Of all these tips, this is what I use the most)

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Hotkeys

Make sure Hotkeys in general, and the Mute function in particular are enabled.

Choose a combination. Finished.

(I chose Alt+Space because the keys are directly next to one another and I can easily mute/unmute with one hand)

2. Disable IM Sounds

Description: When you get a lot of instant messages or simply use this function daily, these “plop” sounds can be very annoying, especially with headsets, especially if it is for some reason too loud and a tiny IM shoots directly through your skull.

Benefit: One of the best tips to curb distraction and preserve sanity: disable IM sounds.

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Notifications -> Sounds

remove the tick where it says “incoming IM”

3. Disable Online Notifications

Description: Whenever one of the people on your contact list goes online, Skype will tell you by popping up little window on your screen, even if you’re doing something completely different at the time, such as writing a blog post or trying to figure out where your money went that month. If you have a long contact list with a lot of users, you’ll see a lot of these notifications. Most of the time they aren’t relevant. Also, whenever someone experiences connection instabilities he will “flicker” and you’ll see these messages popping on and off.

Benefit: Clear your headspace! Remove them!

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Notifications -> Notification Settings

Remove the tick where it says “comes online”

4. Call Phones All Over the Planet

Description: Use Skype to reach mobile phones and landlines

Benefits: Very cheap, good cost control and you have your phone book with you whenever you log in somewhere else.

How To:

Simply dial a number anywhere on the planet (Skype will help you to find the right prefix)

Skype will tell you to upload funds to your account. Yep, it’s not free, but still very affordable and convenient. I never use anything else anymore to make international phone calls.

5. Call Forwarding

Description:  Forward your Skype calls to your mobile phone

Benefit: Receive Skype calls even when away from computer and offline.

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Calls -> Call Forwarding

Note: You have to pay for this feature. Standard rates apply.

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Did you like these tips? Here are some more…

Even More Tips

Set up your personal Skype wake-up call

Run Two Instances Of Skype Simultaneously

Build Your Own Call Center with Skype

Record Your Skype Calls

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What tips do you use? Leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by HikingArtist.com

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Some of us have learned to love the screensaver images Amazon ships with their Kindle reading devices. Others quietly suffer the rotating  selection of dead poets and educational images of fishes and plants. And yet others simply ask: “What if I’d like to see something else?”

Personally, I belong to the third category. I was neither particularly thrilled nor appalled by the Kindle stock wallpapers of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and others. But, as so often, a little innocent question led me down a rabbit hole of business interests, hacks and limitless creativity.

So, in case you’re wondering. The answer is NO! You can’t change the screensaver on your Kindle. At least Amazon doesn’t want you to do it. Why? The answer to this question is a bit more complicated, but I’ve read on forums that earlier Kindles ( I think it was V2) actually had an option to choose custom screensaver images but Amazon scrapped it because newer Kindles used this feature to rotate advertisements.

Warning Notices  and Re-Claiming eReading Turf

Fortunately, that’s not the end of this story. Thanks to inquisitive individuals all over the world, there’s now a relatively danger-free way of re-configuring your Kindle so that it will allow you to choose custom screensaver or wallpaper pictures.

Compared to “unjailing” iPhones, there’s allegedly little danger of “bricking” (destroying) your Kindle this way, and the providers of the hack even offer packages to uninstall and reverse any changes you may have made, but it does require a bit of willingness to experiment.

If you want to do it, here’s a link to a detailed tutorial.  At the top it says “WARNING: Use at your own risk! “”

At first I was sceptical, too. But never underestimate the power of an innocent question. So, finally, I threw “caution” to the wind, it worked without problems, and I never missed Amazon’s Twains and Dickinsons. Instead, I now choose whatever I want to see, just like selecting a wallpaper on any other device I own.

Where To Get Alternative Screensaver Pictures From

Keep in mind that the best format for a Kindle wallpaper is 600×800 pixels and the e-ink doesn’t display color so you might as well select something grayscale from the start.

The easiest way to find suitable, ready-made Kindle wallpaper material is to browse collections.

Online Collections

kindlesavers.com

Stylish, minimalist collection.

kindlewallpapers.tumblr.com

contains some great ones!

note: there are other collections, but I’ve found them wanting.

Browse & Crawl

If you’ve exhausted all collections so far or couldn’t find anything you like, here’s four other ways:

1. Do a FlickR search!

2. Browse Tumblr for everything that was ever tagged with “kindle wallpaper”

3. Look at /r/kindlescreensavers/ on Reddit.

4. my personal favourite: use Google image search and set image size to “exactly” -> 600 x 800 px and color to -> “black & white” (see screenshot)

Make Your Own

If all of the above still isn’t enough, be creative and make your own! Tip: Use a service like www.picresize.com to transform your snapshots  into the right dimensions.

What’s Your Favourite Source For Kindle Screensavers? Leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by WheresWilson

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.