Tag Archive for ‘Merlin Mann’

I used the “Perfect” equalizer settings, shared by Merlin Mann, when I first saw it on his site many years ago. But I mostly abandoned equalizer settings when my music playback transitioned to mobile.

I was poking around Prism yesterday, though, and remembered it had an equalizer setting that I’ve never used. For whatever reason, these old iTunes settings sprung to mind, I did a bit of searching to find them, and I plan to give them a try in Prism. The app’s settings don’t quite line up perfectly with iTunes, so it’ll take a bit of tuning to get right.

➝ Source: 43folders.com

On the off chance you missed it, the folks behind one of the best podcasts of all time have made their return. I sure hope this isn’t a one-off.

➝ Source: californiaking.org

Reminds me of a great quote by Merlin Mann: “buying a new pen isn’t going to make you a better writer.”

A few days ago, I finally had the opportunity to dive into Workflow. It’s an application that I’ve had installed on my iPhone for months, but just haven’t had the opportunity to give it a shot. I’ve been aware of it for much longer, though. And if you follows he writing of Federico Viticci on MacStories, like I do, you’re also aware of how powerful the application is.

Workflow is reminiscent of Quicksilver to me. When I bought my first Mac in 2006, Quicksilver was the one power user, productivity app that I just had to have. Anyone who read 43 Folders or listened to MacBreak Weekly during that time probably felt the same way — Merlin Mann was a huge advocate for Quicksilver.

While Workflow is more akin to Automator than Quicksilver, I feel it does a lot of the same things for power users on iOS as Quicksilver did for Mac users. When I sit down at another person’s Mac, I will inevitably hit control+space and am thoroughly confused when an app launcher doesn’t appear — I don’t know how to function on a stock OS X install anymore.

I’ve only built a couple of workflows with the Workflow — I plan on sharing them once I do some more testing — but I can already tell that, just like with Quicksilver on the Mac, I’ll soon find it difficult to use an iOS device without Workflow installed.

And just as Quicksilver will be forever associated with Merlin Mann in my brain, Federico Viticci will be to Workflow. He’s written extensively about the application since its introduction in 2014 and has shared countless tips for getting the most out of the app. I plan on reading all of the articles from MacStories’ Workflow tag as I continue to familiarize myself with all of its features. And I encourage you to do the same. Especially if you still feel like iOS is a lesser operating system that isn’t capable of “real work.”

Start your week off right by watching this hilarious live episode of You Look Nice Today from XOXO 2015.

Joe Caiati:

I decided to think about what exactly is waking up my iPhone and vying for my attention. After going through these app’s settings and discovering that most of them have fine-grained notifications, I was able to shut off a lot of distractions. […]

I am finally trying to make my device serve me. I may not have broken the urge to wake the screen up to see if I missed a notification, but with less of them coming in, I can put my iPhone back in my pocket and focus on more important matters.

I’ve always been very aggressive about denying a newly downloaded application’s ability to send me notifications. I’d rather turn them on later if I found the app to be useful — which happens very rarely. But, I know that most people don’t deal with notifications in the same way and often allow them from apps they’d rather not.

On a recent episode of The Vergecast, Nilay Patel noted that he thinks the new way to gauge if someone is bad at computers is by checking to see how cluttered their notifications are. And, I think he’s right. Tech-savvy users seem more likely to be in-tune with how distracting notifications can be and more willing to actually tweak the settings necessary to limit those distractions.

And, this whole conversation really is about distractions — about striking the right balance between staying informed about the stuff you care most about and eliminating your phone’s ability to steal your attention. It reminds me of something I heard Merlin Mann talk about years ago (I have no idea where). He talked about how incredible it was that people allow their phone to steal their attention regardless of what they’re doing — that people have a compulsion to answer it whenever it rings.

Merlin suggested breaking yourself of that habit so you could maintain focus on what you are doing and get back to whoever called when it’s more convenient for you. I think notifications should be managed the same way and eliminating ones that are unnecessary is a great first step to having your device serve you and not the other way around.

Great talk about learning and curiosity by one of my favorite guys from the internet. It’s really good, especially the bit at the end.