Today we bring you several current story prompts that moved us deeper into relatable conversations.  We start with a few life questions reminding us to evaluate what's important and make changes to increase time spent with it.  After that, a discussion on blank pages and how to make things easier for users.  In a great story about music and technology, one of our favorite bands, The Pixies, pressed vocal prompts for Google.  With the coronation a few hours behind us, we added our favorite picture of the event.  Cheers!

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In a post from September 2021, Ryan Holiday of Daily Stoic shares 12 questions that will change your life.  The title is written for the algorithm, but the info is a good reminder of what's important.  Some of the questions are about who you spend time with, others focus on what you want, and a few more dig into what your days look like.  Most are questions you have seen before; I like to pick out one or two of the questions that resonate with me now when I see lists with commentary like this.  If your relationship is good, you should not worry about who you spend time with.  If you spend too much time building a company and neglect your personal life, it might be time to reflect on what’s most important to you?

When I was a young executive busy with a company I had just started, I found myself spending too much time working and needing more home-time.  My wife and I were in a new city with a four-year-old son.  My wife signed our son up to play tee ball at the local rec center, and I was the dad that showed up late to every game in a suit.  If you have ever been to a toddler tee-ball game, it is more activity than sport.  If you show up late to the activity, you will be unanimously elected to help coach the bases.  On one particular game, my job was to get the kids to run from second base to third base and as I stood screaming at the kids to run, my young son sat there on second base waiting for me to tell him to run to me at third base.  The helmets we made the toddlers wear were all too big, and as he ran, the helmet falling down on his little face, he managed to make it to third base, standing beside me with the biggest grin I have ever seen.  My heart melted, and on the way home from this event, I called my accountant and said, I've got to change something; I'm spending time in the wrong place.

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Seth Godin gives us a quick tutorial on why removing the anxiety that might come with specific product designs is essential.  The purpose of the printed phrase “This page intentionally left blank," regardless of its origin, is to help a reader understand quickly there wasn't a mistake in the printing process.  Providing that information improves reading and, in some cases, comprehension by removing distracting thoughts.  Similarly, some manufacturers have put all the hardware for each step in the assembly of an item in an individual bag marked by the step.  For example, if you ordered a desk and it's shipped to your house in a big box when you pull everything out, you won't have to figure out what screw or board goes where – the steps come with the pieces already separated.  For those of us who seem to be dyslexic when it comes to reading assembly instructions – we are grateful.

In our favorite kind of story, Gizmodo tells us the story of a bizarre bug in Google's Pixel phone that can trigger an alarm to turn off when it hears The Pixie's song Where Is My Mind.  We are more interested in the tech behind the bug than the randomness of someone playing the song and having it turn off an alarm.  That made us smile!

Alarms.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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