I decided today I don’t agree with them. I want a way that I can effectively capture ideas that come in that flash and are gone when more pressing issues arise…

I remember some talk early last year around how doodling can help memory recall, and I know the study was focused on quite a different concept than what I’m about to propose. But it was certainly the initiator for my thinking here, so figure it deserves some credit (or blame if what I’m suggesting is silly).

Based on only having a limited amount of time to capture an idea, quickly doodling a simple picture and labelling it seems like something that could perhaps create a “key” to enable unlocking and exploring that idea in more detail at a later, more convenient time. Could this technique have saved my now lost idea? I’m not sure, but I’m willing to give it a go – my gut feel is that it should. I think the physical act of drawing should provide some body to the quite elusive nature of a “flash of inspiration” – but I’m very interested in people who are more widely read / educated in human psychology offering some opinion in the comments below.

Making the assumption that the core concept is sound, I like the ease of application of the technique. If you are a person who prefers a notepad and pen, then you can apply the technique. If, like me, you have an iPhone or Android handset in your pocket, a pretty simple app could be created to make the idea capture simple and fluid – which would be a nice experience as entering lots of text can be a complete pain. I guess you could just as easily use the voice recorder on these devices in a similar mind-jogging way, but maybe it’s just me, that seems to lack a certain “da Vinci” like quality that can be associated with the tactile experience of doodling.

As always, very interested in others thoughts on this. Not precious about the idea, if you think it wouldn’t work then please make a comment. Additionally, if you have seen mobile apps that can be used to support the concept it would be great to get a heads up on those.

Depression’s Upside @ NYTimes.com

My Thoughts
Well for my own experience, I think the article is a very accurate depiction of my own mental state (certainly at the moment). The illustration of depression coming about in response to certain external stimuli in the same way that the body’s immune system responds to infection is especially powerful. Kudos for the article also goes for stating that it is still too early to “judge the analytic-rumination hypothesis”, as there are obviously a great number of theories about depression and this will obviously become another one of the bunch. Like I said though, I do identify with the majority of what is said.

On the flipside, while I am encouraged by the thoughts put forward in the article, I am also very mindful that the analytic-rumination hypothesis offers little comfort to the loved ones who live with us who exhibit this behaviour. If this is the way I was created, then I believe a few things are critical in my response to my behaviour:

1. To work with my family to be able to inject the appropriate space in life to effectively ruminate and analyse, thereby compressing the amount of “down-time” required to process the stimuli that has triggered the state.

2. To develop the wisdom to know when there are factors outside of my control in a situation, and develop the ability to effectively “file the case” until additional evidence is acquired, ready for processing.

3. Work on my ultimate goal of being able to take a holiday from “Analytic-Rumination Damon”. While my belief is the condition is something very core to my being, I will strive towards creating periods of time (ideally weeks) where I process information differently. It’s definitely something that I have the ability to do, but does require getting some of the big decisions sorted and then a choice to just “go with it” and see it right.

By collaboratively working on each of the points above, hopefully the depressive condition can be made more manageable for both myself and my family. As always would be interested in hearing others opinions on the article or my response.

While I have always attempted to be as open as possible with my managers (given the impact the condition has on them), I have found it much more difficult to be open about things with my peers and people who work for me. Well today, I just chose to tell it how it was, and I honestly think that was the best thing to do. That does, however, mean I need to be this open with everyone so I am not putting others in a difficult situation of knowing something about me that is not widely known.

I liken my ongoing battle with depression akin to running in “thongs” (for non Aussies you would know them as flip-flops, a piece of footwear that does take some effort to move quickly in). I emphasize that this is an analogy that helps explain my situation, but depression is such a varied condition that it will be completely inadequate to describe the way it affects someone else.

Like running in thongs? How so?
Well I’m a pretty ambitious guy. Not ambitious in a desire for power or money, but absolutely ambitious with regards to a desire for rich and meaningful knowledge and life experience. As a result I’ve had a very rewarding professional, personal and spiritual life – I’m a respected manager and peer at work, a loved husband and father (for which I’m grateful – @SquiggleMum and the kids) and a committed Christian since I was a teenager.

I reckon with my level of ambition, I spend most of my waking hours mentally and emotionally running. Add inappropriate footwear (depression) into the mix, and well, I’m going to stumble; or get very tired feet. In certain situations, such as high-pressure or high-expectation life situations it is more like running in thongs on sand, or up an escalator. It’s more demanding on the individual and also more likely to result in damage. I can point you in the direction of a couple of youtube videos that illustrate the point nicely, but also ruin my attempt at a serious blog post. What can I say, it’s a gift.

My History
I was first officially diagnosed with depression about eight years ago, when my wife became increasingly concerned with my mental state and we began seeing an excellent psychologist. That day feels like a long time ago now, and from that time I have been medicated for the condition with varying levels of success. How long have I actually had depression? Did it start eight years ago? No, probably not. When I reflect back on my life I recall feeling desperately low prior to that time. I can certainly recall periods back when I was a teenager when it all just seemed too hard, but then I think it probably did for everyone.

I’m sure some will want to know whether I have ever been suicidal. I guess the short answer is: “I’ve never attempted to end my own life”. Have I wished that I could just get off the merry-go-round or sit on the sideline for a little while – absolutely. Have I caused myself physical pain on occasion? Actually yes. Not for a long time, and it’s horribly stupid but yes – at the time it seems like one of the only ways to bring everything into equilibrium. You are mentally and emotionally hurting, but physically you are fine. It just seems so wrong and hard to process, and thus you give yourself something easier to digest.

Medication and Treatment
When I was first diagnosed with depression, I felt certain that medication would be required and wasn’t sure how this would affect my life. It was required and didn’t really destroy my ability to interact and operate with other people in a fairly normal manner. Has it been effective at treating the condition? Yes and no, primarily in the the last 5-6 years it probably has been.

I did have to accept what the purpose of the medication was before it really started to do its job though. 5 years ago, I started going to see a psychiatrist in addition to a psychologist. At the time I though this was completely over the top. Best thing I ever did though. The thing I really appreciated was his straight-forwardness. Basically, I didn’t fall into any of the nicely labelable and treatable forms of depression. Was I bipolar? I had some of the signs, but not to the extent for that particular label to apply. So what was a suitable treatment then? Before that time, I had tried about three different types of meds which I wouldn’t consider very effective.

Solution? For my situation, take less potent medication (basically a mood stabilizer) and start taking some serious responsibility for my own mental condition. In my case, medication was only part of the solution and I had to take some responsibility for taking care of the “stinking thinking” that I get caught up in; such as, worrying about situations that I have no control over of, etc, etc. Easier said than done, definitely, but absolutely critical in managing a depressive illness. Something I’ll probably be doing for the rest of my life.

Wrapping Up and my Sincere Thanks
There is a lot more that I could talk about with regards to this, but I would stress I am no expert. Just a guy who’s been living with the condition for quite some time. The way we each as individuals deal with the situation will vary greatly, both as people who carry the condition and those who live, love and work with others who carry it. People struggling with depression aren’t alien, and thankfully we live in an age where less of a stigma is attached to the disease. That still doesn’t make it easy to talk about it. Certainly not for me, and there will be those of you reading this that will be thinking – man, I never knew that about Damon. Well I guess you do now – but try not to treat me any different, cut me slack or offer sympathy or condolences. In my situation, that’s not something I desire or that is helpful. Just remember that I’m running this race called life in a pair of thongs and I occasionally get tired feet or trip up. One day, maybe I’ll get myself a nice pair of running shoes or learn how to take it a little easier and walk a little; but I suspect not.

To those who have known about this and supported me in the past, you have my heartfelt thanks. I have been truly blessed with great people around me that have made my life up until this point very rewarding. I’ve been given opportunities to progress at work, with people being aware of my condition and willing to take some of that risk on based on their belief in me. My wife has been very patient and understanding over the years, and even my kids are starting to understand that Daddy needs some space now and then. My wider friends and family that know have acted in the way I have wanted them to, and haven’t treated me any different post me “coming clean with them”.

My thanks also go to people in the online world who are brave enough to be transparent with their situations. Without your bold contributions, it is unlikely I would have posted anything here today.

As I mentioned previously, more than happy to talk to anyone about my experience of depression and answer questions both here on the blog, via email or face-to-face where possible.

I believe the web is currently informationally, functionally and economically constrained from further evolution.

We currently believe that a website’s traffic volumes are an accurate measure of success – and thus an accurate reflection of monetization potential. The message of a post that was published on Mashable yesterday suggests that competitive analysis tools such as Quantcast and Compete offer an accurate measurement of the success of a web entity. Although some possible explanations are offered for Twitter’s waning usage, that is the general tone. I am pleased to see the Twitter CEO challenged the claims, although I’m sure his claims have been met with a healthy dose of skepticism (which is probably fair).

Do we all really think that Twitter’s website traffic is a wholly accurate measure? I do use the Twitter web client (and I expect to be ridiculed for this), thus contributing to the web traffic but I also use Tweetie on the iPhone too – and the likes of Quantcast and Compete have zero visibility of that. So I really don’t know how it is truly possible, even in this case when we aren’t attempting to compare Twitter with another site, purely trending its own traffic volumes.

The Web with a different ego?
My personal opinion is that Twitter represents a different kind of “web ego”. Twitter’s growth and success is generally associated with concepts of immediacy and openness. Through open APIs developers around the world have taken a very simple concept and created a multitude of applications, and each of these apps has assisted in growing Twitter as a web presence and brand. Do you think that Quantcast and Compete have visibility of the traffic that each of these applications is pushing into Twitter? I don’t think so. The likes of Facebook and friends would have gladly stayed closed entities; representing the old “web ego”, if it hadn’t been for Twitter coming along and mixing it up a little. Yes Facebook is an amazingly successful web platform, and it deserves some respect, but its business model (ye olde advertising) is very much tied to site visitors interacting on the actual facebook site.

I guess some would say: “At least facebook has a business model”. I think that is fair comment. Without doubt Twitter’s biggest challenge is how to continue to grow and actually start to show some return on investment to those companies that have helped them grow to this point. I hope they solve that one though, because if the next generation of web sites/apps/services can be freed from single-dimensional measures of success and comparison, I think we will see some really interesting things happen.

Update:
ReadWriteWeb has published an article that talks to Twitter’s actual growth (in terms of tweet volume). I think that article nicely illustrates why services like Compete can’t really now do what they set out to do with websites – even though RWW guys don’t talk about difficulty with tracking, when you refer back to the Mashable post you can definitely sense the contradiction.

On doing a bit of a trawl through the web, it’s not that it hasn’t been tried in the past (see things like LineBuzz and Probloggers comments on LineBuzz). In general, I think the concept makes sense and there are definitely times that I would like to comment specifically about a particular paragraph or phrase in some text rather than the entire article. So why hasn’t it worked in the past?

A Look at LineBuzz

Using LineBuzz is pretty simple and just requires the import of some javascript from their site. This is great, simple to implement and it means that you can potentially use it on any site, and could include something like a Tumblr blog (as an example I’ve set it up @ http://damonoehlman.tumblr.com/) which doesn’t support comments out of the box. It is however a little on the ugly and clunky side (a screenshot of the buzz window is displayed below):

The Line Buzz Comment Display

Additionally LineBuzz gives you the ability to delete a comment that has been made on your site as a means of moderation:

Some comments on the Problogger post expressed concerns around moderation, so this is probably something that could use some tweaking (maybe just to simply allow users not to auto-approve comments).

Why didn’t it work?

Does it just come down to how well it has been implemented in the past? Was the implementation that LineBuzz came up with too clunky for people, or are people just not that interested in targeting their comments at particular pieces of text in an article? Is it more natural to comment on the whole text of an article and thus inline commenting only has value in a collaborative editing space rather than publish and feedback space?

Not sure that I have the answers to the above, but I do know that we humans are fairly shallow creatures so if something doesn’t look and feel nice we aren’t likely to use it. Add a few functionality flaws on top and you have a recipe for poor product uptake.

Could something like it work now?

Personally, I think it will. With a strong trend towards twitter and micro-blogging, I believe people will be more likely to micro-comment on things they have read. Integration with existing social media is key though, and if was implementing an inline commenting solution myself I would definitely be looking to use something like twitter as the delivery mechanism. Basic flow for use would be something like:

1. Read article on web, and be compelled to comment on a part of that article
2. Select the appropriate portion of the article
3. Input comment on text, submit comment.
4. Tweet is delivered regardless, and comment is submitted for approval by article author. (I guess there could be a problem here with people responding to the tweet and the comment not being approved, might just need a moderator “kill comment” function).
5. Other approved (not killed) comments are also displayed on the article.

In my opinion, it could work. If the guys at LineBuzz were to put a fresh coat of paint on their interface and actively improve the product, I think there is real potential for some success. It’s not Google Wave, but it is something that could be useful right now. Should LineBuzz improve their product and give us something to talk about? Should someone build an alternative? Maybe.

Have thoughts on the above topic? Leave a comment below.