Tag Archive for ‘Productivity’

Nathan Snelgrove:

My desk is littered with guitar picks, some keys, a stack of receipts, a few USB cables, four notebooks, a couple microfibre cloths (not just for wiping monitors, but also for polishing guitars), coffee cups, a stapler, wire cutters, and a Swiss army knife. 

I should put some of this junk away, but one thing I realized in this conversation is that a messy desk is a productive desk, and a messy office or studio is probably the same.

My office is a bit of a disaster. Especially now that I’m on parental leave. It has become a catch-all for items that we don’t have a place for. And since I’m not working in there regularly, there’s next-to-no incentive to actually keep it tidy.

But even before its current status as a catch-all, my office has always been messy. I suppose I’m generally too busy getting work done to take the time to neaten things up. I used to try and hide it during Zoom calls with a blurred background, but as of late, I usually just let it fly.

➝ Source: nathansnelgrove.com

Marius Masalar:

There’s been a lot of conversation in my circles recently about how to effectively save links and deal with articles you want to read later.

The trouble these folks run into is that their queue quickly grows to impractical proportions, forcing them to give up, empty it, and start again.

I don’t pretend to have the one true solution, but since this isn’t a problem I run into, I thought it might be worth outlining my approach in case it helps.

I don’t have the same workflow as Marius, but I’m glad he started the conversation. And I think his thoughts on the matter or certainly valid and could likely be adopted as is by many others or altered to fit your mindset.

Personally, I save just about everything to Instapaper. When I read my queue (in Reeder), I don’t go there to read necessarily, I go there to process the links that I’ve saved. As I go through my queue, I’ll move links to my to do list, watch videos, subscribe to new RSS feeds, read articles, link to interesting things here on Initial Charge, share links on Twitter, save thoughts in Bear or Day One, and so on.

The key to keeping my Instapaper queue under control is to actually make the time to go through it regularly. Marius has some great thoughts on this:

Those articles aren’t going to read themselves! It’s all well and good to have a system for saving things, but if you don’t have a method for doing something about those things then of course you’re going to find yourself frustrated.

I have two main article reading times: morning and evening. I always hit at least one of the two, and on normal days I do some reading during both time windows.

I don’t make time for processing my queue as much as I used to, although I haven’t found myself saving as much to Instapaper recently either — so it’s likely a wash. But my prime time for going through my queue is right before bed. My wife and son go to bed before I do, which gives me a little bit of time where I can focus on the task at hand.

If it’s worth anything, Marius’ article is actually the last item in my queue, so once I hit publish, I’ll be at Instapaper Zero.

➝ Source: mariusmasalar.me

James Somers:

The obvious benefit to working quickly is that you’ll finish more stuff per unit time. But there’s more to it than that. If you work quickly, the cost of doing something new will seem lower in your mind. So you’ll be inclined to do more.

The converse is true, too. If every time you write a blog post it takes you six months, and you’re sitting around your apartment on a Sunday afternoon thinking of stuff to do, you’re probably not going to think of starting a blog post, because it’ll feel too expensive.

Some good examples of this in the full piece. The key take away: if you want to do something well, do it a lot. And do it fast.

Rands:

Your most precious asset is your time. You can start and adopt the following set of habits right now to give yourself hours of your life back. Equally important, these habits will substantively increase the quality of your time by reducing stress, increasing focus, and ultimately improving the quality of the things you build with your hands.

There’s some great suggestions in here.

Préshit Deorukhkar:

Today marks the launch of Things 3 — a completely rebuilt suite of apps from the privately funded company based out of Stuttgart, Germany. I’ve been using and testing Things 3 for Mac and Things 3 for iPhone & Apple Watch for over a month now and this is, by far, the most refreshing and polished change I’ve seen an app update launch with.

I’ve used Clear as my primary task manager for a few years now, but it hasn’t been updated since 2015 and their iCloud syncing functionality has been broken for quite a while. Syncing between iOS devices works fine, but as soon as you throw a Mac into the mix, all of you devices refuse to sync.

The only way to fix the issue is to stop using the Mac app entirely and open up a hidden menu in the iOS app that allows you to reset the iCloud sync data. It’s an irritating bug that, because I rarely use macOS, I’ve been lucky enough to mostly avoid. But to me, this bug is representative of a bigger problem, the app is essentially abandoned. It’s been over a year since the last update and I don’t expect to see one anytime soon. It’s time to move on.

The release of Things 3 is the perfect opportunity for me to jump ship on Clear and transition to something that’s under active development. So far, I’m very impressed. The onboarding experience was top notch, the interface is gorgeous, and I love how it organizes all of my tasks in a way that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed.

I’m not thrilled that the iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps all have to be purchased separately, but the folks at Cultured Code are offering each of them at 20% off the regular price until May 25. If you’re at all interested in Things, it’s a good idea to make your purchasing decision before the price goes back up next week.

Brent Simmons:

Here’s why I work in an office: when I’m around other people — it doesn’t matter who they are — I feel a constant low-simmering level of anxiety. And I find it extremely difficult to be productive when I feel any level of anxiety at all.

Same. I find it incredibly difficult to work while other people are milling about in the same room as me.

John Voorhees, on Moment’s app usage feature:

There are no public APIs for tracking app use on an iOS device, so Moment reminds you every morning to go to the Battery screen in the iOS Settings app and take a screenshot of the number of minutes you used each app. Moment reads the time each app was used from the screenshot using optical character recognition. If you use more apps than fit in the screenshot, you won’t get data on the ones that don’t fit, but in my experience, there was space to fit about a dozen apps, which covered my most heavily used apps.

It’s unfortunate that developers have to resort to these types of solutions, but it’s definitely a clever workaround.

Marco Arment:

Quitter is a Mac app that automatically hides or quits apps after periods of inactivity, inspired by my Automatic Social Discipline method. It’s great for minimizing distraction from social apps like Twitter and Slack, news readers, or even your email app.

I don’t spend much time on the Mac these days, but when I did, this is the kind of app I would have loved.