Stop, Listen & Learn - your friends rarely lie

Maybe it's just me, my ego and I, but until recently whenever most people proclaimed something as 'really-cool', 'great', 'must-have', 'the next best thing' etc. I would generally give them the skunk-eye (a righteous disbelievingly look).

Malcom Gladwell; author of the Tipping Point (tag: 'must-read') labeled people who spread a new idea (or ideavirus) as 'sneezers'. Sneezers are a marketing persons dream and are actually rare and typified not just by the knowledge they are willing to share but by virtue of them being credible, trusted and If I may add authoritative.

The point Gladwell makes is that when someone whose opinions you value and trust speaks you tend to listen more attentively and are more likely to follow their recommendation.

In my experience the people whose opinions I take on board tend to be charismatic and good story tellers. So in the past month I have tried to put this to the test by 'acting-on' or 'trying-out' almost everything that anyone I came into contact with has recommended and the results have been amazing!

Here are just a few of the things that I now consider cool thanks to Simon, Richard, Dan, Dereck, Paula, Peter and the bloke who watched my struggle with my swing at the driving range last week!

1) The joy of Stumble Upon - (www.stumbleupon.com) once registered you can select your interests and then click the Stumble! button which will take you to a random website that matches your interest. Unlike Google results have been rated by people. Better still when I now search on Google I can instantly see which websites have been reviewed by fellow stumblers.

This is how some of my search results look:


2) How to get out of bunkers - form a very open stance with your feet, keep most of your weight on your left hand side and think about the club gliding under the ball.

3) Text Expander - this little piece of software will save you time - guaranteed. I am for ever typing very similar phrases over and over. Not any more now i use a few keystrokes which auto complete the sentence for me - lovely.

My challenge to you is to list the things, in the last year, that you initially scorned, scoffed or inwardly rejected that you embraced at a later stage. If you are like me you probably then went around telling other how 'cool' YOUR discovery is.

Rules to make your life better # 12 Making sense of iTunes Star Ratings

'Lessons to make your life better' is a series of very little rules to help mike life easier, quicker and generally less annoying.

iTunes star rating is a perfect example of something which should be a no-brainier; however I soon found that I was rating tracks without applying any thought or logic.

I am betting that right now you are considering skipping this article and concluding that I must have way too much time on my hands to even think about this stuff - let alone write about it. But I implore you to give me the benefit of the doubt for a few seconds more.

The trouble is if, like me, you actually use the star rating you soon find the limiting factors. Firstly there are only 5 stars! and this means you have relatively little to play with when you are trying to rate 3,500+ tracks. Secondly if you rate hundreds of tunes over any period of time without a system you will soon find that you will start disagreeing with yourself.

So here is my rating system which, in part, has been developed to hep me delete the dross and promote the truly great.

* 'I never want to hear this track again as long as I live' (delete it, this track should never have been purchased let alone added to your library)

** 'I don't care if I don't hear this again for a long time' (consider deleting this track - I think of this as a sin-bin star rating)

*** 'I wouldn't mind hearing this again, not now though' (worthy of being in the library all day long)

**** 'I want to hear this again sometime real soon' (this is what I got an iPOD for in the first place to hear tracks this more often)

***** 'I am going to listen to this again' (an absolute tireless classic or the tune of the moment which you can't get enough of)

The beauty is you can always up or downgrade your star rating at any time. The point of this lesson for me is to have my iPOD full of music that at the very worse 'I wouldn't mind listening too'.