Yesterday, Twitter turned three. A week before was my two-year Twitterversary. So that pretty much made me a late early adopter. And while I'm really enjoying Twitter now, back then I didn't get it. Not yet. Pretty much not at all.

I admit, these past few years I've pretty much rushed to sign up for any and every new online social or productivity service that sounded interesting. They all had strangely spelled (or simply strange) names like Flickr and del.icio.us and furl and Vox and Joost and Plurk. And those are the ones I remember, maybe even still use.

But pretty much most of them never stuck. It was just too hard to work them into my life. Too weird. Too difficult to use. And many I never tried out at all. Too uninteresting or too ... creepy, some of them.

When I signed up for Twitter, it was already something of a buzz in tech circles. I had looked at it for many months but never got around to actually signing up. It never really clicked in my head that it would be interesting. And after I did finally sign up, I found it alternatingly boring, distracting and challenging to work into my life. While I searched for people tweeting interesting things and followed them, I avoided anybody too prolific. At that point, following only people who posted a tweet an hour was about the max I could handle. A tweet or two a day was more like it. Otherwise I couldn't keep up.

In trying to make Twitter work for me, I did not follow people tweeting boring things, like "Drinking coffee" or "Waiting in line at the grocery store." (I still don't find that banality interesting. Who cares?) I was interested in people tweeting about interesting things – news, blog posts, events, or even just how they felt about that morning coffee or waiting in line at that moment.

Then something changed.

At some point, I crossed a threshold – a breakthrough point where I was no longer trying to track and read every single tweet of those I was following, and now getting a more impressionistic gestalt of the aggregate twittering. And I think that's the real trick about Twitter. You're a bird in a tree with thousands of birds around you, all tweeting. The tweets that interest you catch your attention. You may miss things, but the big stuff gets retweeted. And the more people you follow, the more sources that might toss out something interesting.

It's a liberating moment, when you reach this point in Twitter. You're freed from the need to track everything. What you catch you catch, and what you miss you miss (and likely would have missed anyway, if you weren't twittering at all).

It took a while, but Twitter eventually grew to take a place in my daily life that did not even exist before. There is no clear real-life (as in 3D, face-to-face) analogue. Twittering is communication in a way totally enabled by the technology, the applications. We simply could not be connecting transiently, ephemerally with so many people at the same time without being alone in a crowded room.

Now I'm using Twitter more and more, and while my Twittersphere has grown I've found Twitter to be ever more interesting and relevant to my life. But I was a late adopter, even after adopting, and stumbled quite a bit along the way. It can be a bit unnerving at times, especially on those occasions when someone unfollows me.

So if you're Twittering but not quite getting it, maybe you should try just diving in. Follow a lot of people. Browse. Engage.
And Tweet your passion.

And when you're too busy, don't worry about it. Twitter will be there when you're ready.

Here are some women you might want to follow:

• @kathysierra
• @blogdiva
• @laurennroth
• @agahran
• @thatwoman
• @webchick
• @add1sun
• @stacedout
• @pingkate
• @vdebolt
• @MichelleCox
• @AmyStephen
• @missrogue
• @gwenbell
• @mollydotcom
• @tresha
• @lauriewrites
• @LizaK
• @emmajanedotnet
• @leisa
• @lizriz
• @lizhenry
• @debroby
• @kanter
• @CaliLewis
• @zadi

Cross-posted from BlogHer.

Task management can be a challenge if you have a lot of stuff going on. "Urgent" things are always distracting you: the phone rings, colleagues interrupt you, a client asks for help, emails, newsletters, snail mail, IMs, Tweets....

You could be buzzing like a bee, getting a whole lot of things done, but not getting done the right things.

I would love to be using a Franklin-Covey Planner program on my Mac, but they don't make one for Mac. So the choices are:

1. Run the Franklin-Covey Planner on Wine or Windows using Parallels;
2. Run the newer Franklin-Covey software on Windows using Parallels;
3. Use the kludgey online version;
4. Use the Franklin-Covey system on paper; or
5. Adapt an existing Mac-friendly app for task management, with workflows to make it as close as possible to Franklin-Covey.

I've tried the first four, and after total fail with each, I'm now going with the last option.

And I think I found something with OmniFocus.

OmniFocus and Getting Things Done

I've been trying out OmniFocus off and on since the OmniGroup was doing private alphas. They have come a long long way. The app is much much improved now. They've really nailed some usability shine.

But I confess that the main reason I went back to OmniFocus (after working with Things for a few months) was that there's an OmniFocus iPhone app that syncs with the desktop versions over MobileMe. (So far, Things has syncing across wireless, but not via MobileMe.) And the iPhone app itself is quite robust, including geotagged contexts (which is helpful when out and about running errands).

That said, I'm not a GTD acolyte. Dogmatists can bark at the urgent and the easy. I don't have the time, and need to focus on the important.

OmniFocus and Franklin-Covey

The Franklin-Covey method involves a daily review of the tasks to be done. Each item is given an A, B or C, or left in a long-term "sometime" pile.

A

Must be done today.

B

Should be done today.

C

Could be done today.

In OmniFocus, I use the flag feature to mark the A items.

Context isn't everything (but it sure helps)

One of the wonderful things about OmniFocus is the Context feature. You can sort your tasks by context -- where you are, what program you're using, etc. At first I had a hard time figuring out context, but now I've gotten the hang of it.

What Franklin has that GTD doesn't

The needs are not covered.

1. To live.
2. To love and be loved.
3. To feel important.
4. Variety.

Governing values are not covered.

Long-term objectives are not covered.

Those things are more homeworky than specifically task-related, but you are supposed to work those things as reference points to make your prioritization process easier.

Speaking of prioritizatin.... If you have too many things to do? There is no prioritization, no automatic escalation. You have your top things, flagged, and the rest. Getting out of reactive mode and into proactive mode seems to be pretty much outside of the GTD system. You're on your own there.

In OmniFocus, I use the color coding for what's due in the next 24 hours and what is now past due to sort of have an upcoming lower priority list.

It's not perfect, but it's something ... a kludge to make what otherwise is a pretty cool and useful (by being available by all my Macs and my iPhone) app.

For some sage advice on getting over last year, check out paulag01's BlogHer post.

Resolution time. It's the occasion to institute changes. Or at least resolve to change. It doesn't always work out, does it? The diet gets dropped. The fingernails get bitten. The cigarettes get smoked. The exercise gets blown off. And that's that. Right?

Maybe not. If you've ever had trouble shaking an addiction or behavior that ends up not serving your needs, you might find some hope (and results) in this analysis of addictive behavior, courtesy of Hyrum Smith, founder and creator of the Franklin planning system.

This post isn't about planning or time management. It's about the five-step cycle that drives our behavior.

I know I know, you probably believe this is just a bunch of hokum. (We'll get to beliefs and how they affect behavior in a minute.) But I'm not prescribing anything here. This is just a look at how behavior happens. I think it's empowering.

(These notes are drawn from a Franklin videotape called "Gaining Control." As far as I can tell, it's long out of print. And since then, the Franklin Institute became Franklin-Covey, and Hyrum Smith has gone on to other things. If you find this interesting, there are some links at the bottom of this post to some tape and book resources where you can learn much more on this.)

"The Reality Model"

According to this analysis, there are five steps to human behavior. Here's the breakdown.

1. Human Needs

We each have four basic human needs.

1. To live.
2. To love and be loved.
3. To feel important.
4. Variety.

If we are lacking any one or more of these needs, we may end up trying to fill them in.

File this away. We'll get back to it.

2. Belief Window

We all have beliefs, principles, convictions that determine how we interpret the world.

In the tape, Hyrum uses an example, "Men are better than women." Another might be, "My self-worth is dependent upon never losing an argument."

3. Rules:

These are "If...then..." statements, using the principles in the Belief Window has the premise.

Following on Hyrum's example: "If I get in an argument, then I must win."

4. Behavior Patterns:

These are the actions that result from the Rules. Thus, in the example case, "I" can never back down in an argument.

5. Results:

Here's the question: Will the results meet my needs over time?

If "I" never back down in an argument, never compromise, never acknowledge someone else's point, then is that making my life better?

Natural Law:

Hyrum Smith then makes these interesting points:

1 - If the results of your behavior do not meet your needs, then you have an incorrect principle on your belief window.

Your actions are the results of your principles on your Belief Window.

2 - Results take time to measure.

Sometimes it takes years. Look at smoking. Or heavy drinking.

3 - Growth is the process of changing principles on your belief window.

You can't change the behavior if the principles causing that behavior are not addressed. If you believe, "I can't stick with exercise programs," then you can try starting a workout regimen but you probably won't have much success sticking with it. If you believe, "Older women cannot be attractive," and you feel old, then dressing up will feel like an exercise in despair.

4 - Addictive behavior is the result of deep and unmet needs.

This is the one where I think Hyrum really hit on something. We haven't talked about those Human Needs since they were listed. But this is where they come into play. When one of you needs is not being met, all your energy goes to filling that need. And if you have a principle on your belief window that is not serving your long-term interests, then odds are good that it's a result of an unmet need.

"I'm unlovable" could lead to a lot of self-destructive behavior. "I'm ugly," "When people get to know me, they won't like me," "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself".... All of these are principles that could be resulting from unmet needs. And thus the behavior resulting from those principles will not change unless the principles in the Belief Window change.

How to translate New Year's Resolutions into actions

So drawing from the behavior loops identified above, here's how to change:

1 - Identify the behavior.

2 - Identify possible principles driving the behavior.

3 - Predict future behavior based upon those principles.

4 - Identify alternative principles.

5 - Predict future behavior based upon new principle(s).

I would add this: Make sure your basic human needs – survival, to love and be loved, to feel important, and variety – are being met. Because that's the foundation of those principles.

This doesn't mean it's easy.

Just identifying the principles can be tough. Figuring out how to change them? That is more work than you can do in one afternoon. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes one day at a time.

One of the principles on my belief window is that if I understand something, I can change it. I think it's true. And now that I've blogged it (which helps me feel important and gives me an avenue to share a little love), I'm going to start putting this reality model to work in my life.

Resources

Hyrum Smith goes into all this much more. This blog post is just a thumbnail. Perhaps the closest available items where Hyrum covers this are:

Check out the book on Google.

This movie is interesting. Very dry. Very understated, for all the violence. Beat Takeshi Kitano directed this movie, his first outside of Japan.

(If you don't know Beat, you may still recognize his face.)

Wikipedia currently remarks:

Brother (2001), shot in Los Angeles, had Kitano as a deposed Tokyo yakuza setting up a drug empire in L.A. with the aid of a local gangster played by Omar Epps. Despite a large buzz around Kitano's first English language film, the film was met with tepid response in the US and abroad....

Between the disappointing response to Brother and Dolls [another movie he directed], Kitano became a punching bag for the press in the United States, who wondered if he had lost his ability to make a good film. Criticism was less severe in Europe and Asia though many commentators were not as lavish with their praise as they had been with previous Kitano films.

To my own taste, I prefer Brother to Violent Cop, Kitano's first movie as director. For one thing, you get to know why Beat's character Aniki is the way he is. In Violent Cop, Azuma is more of a cipher.

That said, Aniki is not quite as transparently purposeful or ambitious as the Wikipedia description would have you believe. He's a guy who doesn't back down. Ever. And that leads to some interesting reactions as he makes his acquaintance of the LA drug gang world portrayed in the film. What makes it all hold together are the flashbacks that tell us why he's in LA in the first place. Enough said about that.

For anyone interested in gangster movies, I'd say this is probably worth seeing. But for me it's the Kitano-style Japanese touches in the story and some characters that puts this movie in the yes column. Omar Epps is a likable presence, too.

I've been watching The Godfather on Blu-ray, and have been rather disappointed just how muddy the image is.

Credit where credit's due: the rich high-contrast nature of Gordon Willis' astounding cinematography is well captured for the most part. The shadows are as black as they were in the theatre. You can really appreciate the control of light, especially as characters emerge from darkness and disappear back into it.

But the high definition image resolution just isn't there. The details end up fuzzy. The sharpness doesn't seem up to par for a 35mm negative, that's for sure.

Other films from the period, including The Wild Bunch, haven't suffered so badly. What has The Godfather done to be treated so disrespectfully?

Given that Francis Coppola's company authors DVDs, I had to assume that the Blu-ray result on this film is testament to the poor quality of the surviving film elements available. I can only imagine what they had to work with for the opening wedding sequence, in which the outdoor shots seem very blown out – blown out in a video sense more than a film sense. No amount of restoration is going to put back resolution that has been lost.

As it turns out, that's precisely the problem. Stephanie Argy writes in American Cinematographer: Post Focus:

Widely regarded as an American classic and a landmark achievement in cinematography, Paramount Pictures’ The Godfather (1972) is identical to most films of its era in one respect: it was not properly preserved. Paramount, like most Hollywood studios, did not create a preservation program — “asset protection” in industry parlance — until the home-video boom of the 1980s proved film libraries could have indefinite, lucrative lives. Before that awareness took hold, original negatives were typically used as printing negatives, which meant the original negatives for popular pictures took a lot of abuse. The Godfather was not only popular, it was Hollywood’s first blockbuster, and over the years, “the neck of the golden goose was certainly wrung out,” says the film’s cinematographer, Gordon Willis, ASC, with typical candor.

This really is heartbreaking, that a cinema classic such as this is left with a Blu-ray that looks more like an upconverted standard DVD.

On Amazon, Reviewer Wayne Klein claims...

"The Godfather" was meant to look grainy so those of you who hate grain will probably wonder why they didn't eliminate it. That's because to do so would have required altering the look of the film not restoring it and the usual result of eliminating film grain is that you lose detail.

The problem is that you get some grain, but only in the most underexposed scenes where the lab had to push the image more than otherwise. This is nothing like the well-used print I saw years and years ago in a revival house in LA, which was scratched and broken in places but had some fine cinematic detail. One of the appeals of Blu-ray is that it can actually present much of that rich detail. But The Godfather does not showcase that.

Back on Amazon, reviewer Kieth Paynter writes:

If you are looking for a "wow" disc to show off your Blu-ray home theater sound and video, this is not it. If you are looking to experience modern American Gangster cinema in its 1970's glory, this is as close as you are ever likely to get, muted sepia-esque color, film grain and all.

These were not done exclusively for the home market. The priority was that they were restored for theatres, because that is where they would be judged the most critically, and all indications are that they do not disappoint. Never watch these films in your living room with the lights on. Watch them like you do in the theater, lights out, to appreciate the effort that went into these films.

That's excellent advice. You can't appreciate the rich blacks in the compositions with the room lights on.

The Godfather is still one of the greatest movies of all time, and if you have never seen it, put that on a must-watch list. This Blu-ray is not going to get you the cinematic experience, but at least it has the richness. And all of the story is there, as vivid and compelling as ever.

Perhaps of interest: An American Cinematographer article on The Godfather restorations done some time ago.