All of jay_ghreen's Comments + Replies

Thanks for the article. It makes me feel less crazy for having an intricate productivity system in place. It seems to me that either people I know have much less difficulty being productive than me, or I am overestimating their productivity,

I have been using GTD and pomos on and off with some success. I do 32/8 pomos but I have a tendency to multitask, I need to work on that. I think co-working might help, I do online co-working sometimes but it is not as effective.

I have the tendency to drop the habits in emotionally difficult periods when being productiv... (read more)

I didn't realize these signals were used by Occupy until I looked for good pictures and stumbled on that article while writing my previous post.

The group I was referring to has no ties to Occupy. I'm not sure where we picked up the meme. The wiki article mentions other groups were using some of these signals before Occupy.

They were already using them when I joined, so I'm not sure.

Raised hand: 'want to talk'

Point at someone with both index fingers, alternating (this gesture is a bit hard to describe, it's like if you were making guns with your hands and shooting at them, with a lot for recoil): 'direct response'. You can usually tell how urgent they think the point is by how hard they're moving their hands/how close they are to the edge of their seat, etc.

Triangle with index finger and thumb of both hands: 'process point / meta-communication'

Twinkles (wiggling fingers of both hands): when unprompted, 'I agree/like what you just said... (read more)

7ialdabaoth
Oh, you're using the Occupy system! (I started to recognize it as I read through.) Out of curiosity, how many groups have adopted that system post-Occupy, vs. how many Occupy-descended groups have inherited it? EDIT: Is mentioning Occupy bad around here?

At one organization I work with we mostly have a 'wait' culture, and it is socially enforced, since we have recognized that many of our members are 'waiters' and will not speak if interrupters do not give them a chance.

With more than 3-4 people we use several hand signals to facilitate conversation. We have the usual raised hand to speak next, but we also have a separate gesture for 'I have a direct response to what you just said', which takes priority over raised hands. It works as a 'soft interrupt', and it is up to the current speaker to let the interru... (read more)

1TheOtherDave
How did you get everyone using it? (As I've commented on elsewhere in this thread, I tried to get a similar scheme going using colored index cards once, but it didn't really take off.)
6ialdabaoth
I find all this VERY intriguing. I'd be interested to hear what specific hand signals you use, to see if they match the ones I've traditionally used. For completeness, here's my set: * Raised hand - "I would like to ask a question / speak next-in-queue" * Raised fist with index finger pointing upwards - "I have a direct response to what you just said" (some people extend this by raising multiple fingers as they cache more points, and raising the hand higher as the urgency of a point gets promoted) * Raised fist with thumb pointing upwards - "I agree with this" * Hand out, palm forward/down, fingers pointed towards speaker - "please table this for now" / "please give someone else a turn" / "you are violating conversational norms"