The Beatles and Productivity

With the release of The Beatles: Rock Band and the remasters, it's a good time to revisit how incredibly productive they were over a short time. One of my favorite bloggers has a personal retrospective (1, 2, 3) on this as well the strength of the music.

I'm quite amazed at what they achieved in such a short time. There has been nothing comparable in recent music. Consider that U2 put out their first album in 1980 and their 12th in 2009.

Malcolm Gladwell may have cheapened the achievement of The Beatles somewhat (in Outliers) with his theory that it takes 10,000 hours to excel at something. The argument is solid that it takes time to develop expertise, but it glosses over the genius that must go along with the dedication.

The other part of the equation is that a person's most productive years are problem their 20's. Most of us piss those years away, but if you are talented, skillful and already experienced at that age, you can accomplish great things.

Here's a link to one article about The Beatles and time management.

Google Trike

I was musing on posts by a blogger who goes to a lot of effort to document places in and around Toronto. He brings many archive photos into the mix, comparing the views from the past to today.

Now that Google Street View is available in Toronto, it makes you wish someone could take this off-road. Google has taken a step towards this with the Google trike, a vehicle that can reach areas not accessible by car.

The future is to crowd-source the creation of "street" views so that people can photograph, film and document any place they can hike, bike, walk or swim to. Makes you wonder what a device that can do this will look like and how portable and consumer friendly it can be.

Baseball Today

Here in Toronto, major league baseball has had a decade in the wilderness after the Blue Jays World Series years (92 and 93) and then the strike. But the early play of the team this year (and a very big win tonight - Halladay over Burnett) has brought back some interest.

Closer to home, Matthew, my 8 year old son had his first rookie league game tonight, and it highlighted exactly what is good and bad about baseball.

The bad: it's boring. You stand and wait, sit and wait, and suddenly you have to do something. More bad: it's hard. When you do get a chance to do something, it is quite likely you will fail, especially at this age. After his first inning in the field, then a failed at bat, he was very discouraged.

The good: when you do get action, it's fun. The following inning, Matthew played first base. Lot's of action. Coaches giving pointers. Cheering.

We do have a very good league. It's in the middle of a big city, with a great facility, and through all the age divisions there may be more than 800 kids playing. But I can't imagine there is much interest in smaller communities. Observing my friends and my kids friends, there are maybe a handful who play baseball. Soccer and hockey players probably outnumber baseball by 10 to 1.

I would love to see renewed interest in baseball, but I'm not optimistic. I'm a lifer though, and hoping to pass it on to my kids. Andrew (almost 10) starts tomorrow and he's quite excited.