Productivity | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

ICloud Drive Silently Deletes Your Content

The first time it happened, I was writing a paper. The paragraphs I had just typed vanished into thin air, faster than Time Machine or Backblaze could save them. Gone. The next occurrence was during app development; Xcode suddenly flagged numerous errors in previously error-free code. My recent changes to several files were erased.

Months later, the mystery is solved: iCloud Drive detected a file conflict. It assumed different versions of the same file existed on my Mac and iPhone and couldn’t merge them automatically. This was impossible; the affected files were never opened on the iPhone. But they were in iCloud, as I had moved my Mac’s Documents folder there.

Dropbox manages version conflicts by storing all conflicting files side by side, labeled as “(John Doe’s conflicted copy)“. iCloud Drive, however, doesn’t show these conflicts in the file system. If you open the file in an editor that supports conflict handling, a popup appears asking which version to keep. Editors like Textifier, Xcode, or Obsidian, lacking conflict handling, leave iCloud to decide which version to store on your disk and in your backup.

Over time, newer backups overwrite older ones containing the correct version; your content is gone for good. The only way to get it back is to open the file with an editor that supports conflict resolution.1 Once moved out of iCloud Drive, even that won’t help. The content is lost.2

Masking version conflicts might appear user-friendly, but it has catastrophic consequences. You might not discover the data loss until years later, when reopening significant but infrequently used documents.

Until iCloud Drive exposes version conflicts in the file system or a central, easily accessible location, my strong recommendation is to move all crucial data out of it. Meanwhile, set up a Git repository to monitor your critical files; you might uncover surprising changes.


  1. I use iA Writer↩︎

  2. In my tests, moving the unchanged file back to iCloud brought back the conflicted version popup. This may not happen if the file has been edited or if you’ve continued working on a copy. ↩︎

Playtesting at Valve

Within a few days of prototyping a game mechanic, Valve’s designers start watching users play. And they conduct playtests once a week until their games are fun and it is “no longer excruciatingly painful” to watch.

On a side note: At least in 2012, when its Handbook for New Employees was published, Valve was completely self-organized.

Zettelkasten

Morgan Eua does a great job introducing Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method for personal knowledge management.

In follow-up videos with easy to understand examples she details how she implements a Zettelkasten in Obsidian.

For a more comprehensive overview, check Sönke Ahrens’ book How to Take Smart Notes.

Haruki Murakami's Deep Work  

Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running inspired Cal Newport’s theory of deep work. Newport explains:

Against the advice of nearly everybody, he sold his bar, and moved to Narashino, a small town in the largely rural Chiba Prefecture. He began going to bed when it got dark and waking up with the first light. His only job was to sit at a desk each morning and write. His books became longer, more complex, more story driven. He discovered what became his signature style.

Parkinson's Law  

You might have heard of Parkinson’s Law. It states, that a project will always fill the available time. If you have two weeks, it will take you two weeks. If you have two years, it will take two years.

Cal Newport dug up the original article in which C. Northcote Parkinson describes how the naval bureaucracy grew after World War I was won.

How Tech Companies Manipulate the Media

YouTubers MrWhoseTheBoss and MKBHD explain the techniques tech companies use to get a more positive coverage of their products.

Checks and Balances

Late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refutes the notion that the United States are such a free country because of the Bill of Rights:

But then I tell them, if you think that the Bill of Rights is what sets us apart, you are crazy. Every banana republic has a bill of rights. Every president for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean that literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff.

He then goes on explaining that what sets America apart is the structure of its government with checks and balances that make sure no one can amass too much power.

Full transcript on govinfo.

Goals, Not Tasks  

Matt Blodgett:

There’s a whole class of bugs that comes down to the developer followed very specific instructions without understanding the goal. And a well-meaning manager will take that to mean I wasn’t specific enough in my instructions. No! Computers need instructions. Humans need understanding.

Exactly.

I like to take developers with me when visiting customers. A common understanding of the goal removes so much friction and makes life so much easier.

I also recommend Basecamp’s Shape up to break down the barrier between product and IT and have small teams work closely together to ship a new product or feature.

Brown M&Ms  

When a promoter booked the rock band Van Halen they needed to provide a bowl of M&Ms, having all brown ones sorted out.

Julie Zeveloff:

As lead singer David Lee Roth explained in a 2012 interview, the bowl of M&Ms was an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band’s complicated contract.

“Van Halen was the first to take 850 par lamp lights — huge lights — around the country,” Roth said. “At the time, it was the biggest production ever.” In many cases, the venues were too outdated or inadequately prepared to set up the band’s sophisticated stage.

“If I came backstage, having been one of the architects of this lighting and staging design, and I saw brown M&Ms on the catering table, then I guarantee the promoter had not read the contract rider, and we would have to do a serious line check” of the entire stage setup, Roth said.

Decisions

James Clear in his 3-2-1 newsletter:

If a decision is reversible, the biggest risk is moving too slow.

If a decision is irreversible, the biggest risk is moving too fast.

Bottleneck

James Clear in his 3-2-1 newsletter:

Time spent working hard is often better spent identifying where the bottleneck is located.

Working hard on the wrong thing leads to frustration, not progress.

Leadership is, by definition, leading people away from where they already are.

–– Tim Urban

When all is said and done, much more is said than done.

–– Dave Cutler

How to Raise a Human

As part of NPR’s parenting series #HowToRaiseAHuman Michaeleen Doucleff visited a Maya village in Yucatán where even the youngest kids take great joy and pride in helping out in the house.

The Maya achieve this by letting the kids help whenever they want and however small the contribution is. In the beginning this takes longer than if the parents would do the task on their own.

Doucleeff writes:

The moms see it as an investment, Mejia-Arauz says: Encourage the messy, incompetent toddler who really wants to do the dishes now, and over time, he’ll turn into the competent 7-year-old who still wants to help.

Research supports this hypothesis, says the University of New Hampshire’s Andrew Coppens. “Early opportunities to collaborate with parents likely sets off a developmental trajectory that leads to children voluntarily helping and pitching in at home,” he says.

Or another way to look at it is: If you tell a child enough times, “No, you’re not involved in this chore,” eventually they will believe you.

Back in San Francisco Doucleeff tried it with her then two-year-old daughter:

So how did I turn a tantrum-fueled toddler into a chore-loving cherub (as if). To be honest, I needed to revamp the way I parent. I changed the way I interact with Rosy and the way I view her position in the family.

She made the chores the fun activity of the day, took her time doing them and included her daughter whenever possible.

For another article Doucleeff and colleague Jane Greenhalgh went to Iqaluit, Canada to learn how Inuit parents raise their kids to be calm adults that don’t get angry.

One part is not to yell:

“Shouting, ‘Think about what you just did. Go to your room!’ " Jaw says. “I disagree with that. That’s not how we teach our children. Instead you are just teaching children to run away.”

And you are teaching them to be angry, says clinical psychologist and author Laura Markham. “When we yell at a child — or even threaten with something like ‘I’m starting to get angry,’ we’re training the child to yell,” says Markham. “We’re training them to yell when they get upset and that yelling solves problems.”

Another one is storytelling:

For example, how do you teach kids to stay away from the ocean, where they could easily drown? Instead of yelling, “Don’t go near the water!” Jaw says Inuit parents take a pre-emptive approach and tell kids a special story about what’s inside the water. “It’s the sea monster,” Jaw says, with a giant pouch on its back just for little kids.

And one is role play:

When a child in the camp acted in anger — hit someone or had a tantrum — there was no punishment. Instead, the parents waited for the child to calm down and then, in a peaceful moment, did something that Shakespeare would understand all too well: They put on a drama. (As the Bard once wrote, “the play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”)

“The idea is to give the child experiences that will lead the child to develop rational thinking,” Briggs told the CBC in 2011.

In a nutshell, the parent would act out what happened when the child misbehaved, including the real-life consequences of that behavior.

All three articles are highly recommended.