512 Pixels

Background

I wrote this back in September:

At the end of the day, I don’t give a crap about categorizing tasks due to location, topic, tags or what color shirt I’m wearing. All I need is a convenient way to list tasks and their deadlines. Nothing more; nothing less.

Shockingly simple, I know.

For me and my simple needs, Things and OmniFocus are overkill. With systems like this, I spend more time entering tasks than doing them. When I was using Things, by the time I was done going over the day’s to-do list, it was time for lunch. OmniFocus just gives me seizures.

For years, I’ve used Remember the Milk to get things done. It is a relatively flexible system, but I’ve been growing more and more unhappy with it. I think the very option to use of priorities, tags and contexts makes me nervous.

On the analog end of things, I have found that keeping a physical, paper notebook full of tasks to be frustrating. Not only is it another item to carry around everywhere, editing tasks and deadlines on paper is too messy for my tastes.

Starting earlier this week, I’ve been using TeuxDeux for task management. And I love it. It has no lists, no tags and no notes. Just task names, due dates and a place to keep “someday” tasks.

As it turns out, I was a little short-sighted when I wrote this piece. After using TeuxDeux — which is a great app — for several weeks, I discovered that I had moved to a solution that was too simple. My job is comprised of numerous projects, all moving forward at once, but at different speeds. Adding school, freelance and family to the system made it all the more complicated. I need the ability to see my tasks from a 30,000-ft view, or up close and personal, easily.

So, I continued to bounce around, until I finally pulled the trigger and gave OmniFocus a shot.

Lots of people think about OmniFocus as “Things with OTA sync.” Such a statement far understates the strength of this application.

Bandwidth and Life Management

Over the last few months, I have come to understand that I have limited bandwidth in my brain. Just like a computer network, I have a set number of lanes for traffic, and when big things come, smaller issues get pushed to the outside, and eventually, get dropped altogether.

As I’ve come to realize my struggle with depression, this has become an increasingly important issue. I’ve been working to cut unnecessary things out of my life. I can’t afford distractions from my family, my job and getting better. So what does a piece of software have to do with this? A ton, as it turns out.

The more I can off-load onto a system that I trust, the more bandwidth I have available for dealing with the things that matter more deeply than errands or meetings.

Being able to file away tasks in a manageable way helps me think clearer, be a better employee, and a better husband. I’m getting more done, and OmniFocus makes it easy to stay on top of things.

Being productive doesn’t make me a better person, and can’t make me better. But it does help me wring a little more sanity out of my day.

The Nitty Gritty of OmniFocus

OmniFocus can be overwhelming to learn. I — like most people, I imagine — struggled at first to get my head around it. After tweaking for a bit, I’ve settled on a workflow that works for me:

• I use the Inbox often while away from my desk, and process the Inbox daily at 4:45 PM.
• I don’t filter what goes into OmniFocus. If I remember it on my own, that’s just a bonus.
• I use 9:15 AM as the default due time, as it is when I settle in at my desk at work each morning. I set other times throughout the day for tasks, as needed. Push notifications make great reminders.
• I don’t use Contexts at this point. I have projects nested inside folders, based on area of responsibility. (Here’s a screenshot.)

Am I using OmniFocus to its full potential? Probably not. But in another, very real way, I am, since I’m getting things done with better results than ever before.

Harry McCracken, after listing several articles about Apple not ever entering the phone market, etc.:

It’s worth noting that while all of these stories turned out to be wrong, that doesn’t mean that the folks who wrote them were clueless. Some of their rationales, in fact, were darn logical–they just happened to be erroneous. Very few people outside of Apple have a knack for channeling Steve Jobs’ thought process. And even if you understand Apple better than most people, it will surprise you at least some of the time. Declaring that it will never do something is always dangerous.

Apple — for all of its secrecy and planning — is a pretty flexible company. The iPod was produced in less than a year, and often, the company’s moves seem early, since Apple likes to define a product category before others even think it up.

I was fortunate. I found many of my passions — the Mac, journalism, design and photography — all at once.

My high school had an excellent newspaper program. The paper — named The Panther’s Prey — has won countless awards over the years. My freshman year, I applied to work on the staff. While I enjoyed writing, and had dabbled in computer graphics, I was by no means an expert in anything.

Shockingly, the the advisor let me join the staff as a sophomore.

My first job was within the advertising department, working as the ad designer. Before I knew it, I was working with Photoshop 6, QuarkXPress 4 and Mac OS 9 running on a PowerMac G3 All-in-One.

While at first I struggled, I slowly became better at laying out grayscale advertisements. I studied the shortcut sheets for Photoshop and QuarkXPress over lunch. I started building Photoshop actions and Quark templates.

As my skills grew, I got to lay out pages in Quark. Combining photos, headlines, stories and ads on a single page is a difficult task, but I loved it immediately. I still remember the anticipation that I experienced while waiting for Adobe Distiller to pick up a PostScript file in my watched folder and crank out a PDF for proofing.

At the same time, I started learning about the machine I sat in front of for 75 minutes a day. The “Molar Mac” ran OS 9 very well, but some of the other machines the newspaper had didn’t. I learned about AppleTalk nodes, Extension Manger, Rebuilding the Desktop and more.

I quickly became the unofficial IT guy.

It wasn’t all sunshine and puppies, though. When we migrated from a hodgepodge of beige Macs running OS 9 to a batch of second-hand iMac G3s running Mac OS X 10.2 with a PowerMac G4 running 10.2 Server, things blew up.

I attempted to copy the font folder from one machine to all of the others, but didn’t know a thing about user permissions, rendering several of the machine useless until the school IT lady could come fix things — and give me a stern lecture. But like Mac OS 9 before it, I was determined to learn the new OS, and quickly started learning Jaguar’s quirks and tricks.

As I was becoming more proficient with the Mac and creative tools, I was also learning tons about writing. One of the best things Mrs. Fitzpatrick did was make everyone on staff write stories — no matter what their staff position. The newspaper was my first exposure to the AP style, not to mention my first time having my work carefully edited. And sometimes destroyed. While it was difficult to deal with a ton of red ink all over my stories at first, I grew to appreciate the feedback.

I also discovered my love of reading my words — and seeing my design work — in print, in the hands of readers. Seeing my photos printed was even better.

Frankly, publishing is addicting. Clearly, I’m still hooked.

Over the next two years, my time at the newspaper continued to become more and more important to me. I became good friends with my co-staffers — friendships that still exist today. I also grew in my skills, and was promoted to the news section editor, and my senior year, co-editor-in-chief with my buddy PJ.

PJ and I had complementing skills. PJ was much better at writing and editing (and probably still is), and I was stronger on the technical end of things. Between the two of us, we were unstoppable. We re-designed the paper’s look based on feedback we got in several competitions, and published some excellent stories. We pushed the envelope of what had been done at the Prey before us, and worked hard to train the younger staff member to continue without us at the helm.

Looking back, I can’t believe I was so fortunate to work on a publication of that caliber at just 15. In the decade since, I have used all of the skills I started learning in room A–24 at Bartlett High.

Which is what school should be all about.

A tornado ripped through Jackson, MS, south of Memphis earlier today. Here’s some incredible footage of the storm:

We are all so small.

Amen, Ben. Amen.

RIM’s leadership has gone from comical to just plain sad.

Be sure to listen all the way to the end, and you’ll get to experience my Extended II as I hammer away on it.

I’m not sure how I missed this, but I love having a preview within MarsEdit that looks just like the site. It’s worth the time to set this up if you publish directly from MarsEdit, like me.

Earlier today, Cisco announced that the Flip line of cameras is no more. Here’s what Marketwire said:

Cisco today announced that it will exit aspects of its consumer businesses and realign the remaining consumer business to support four of its five key company priorities — core routing, switching and services; collaboration; architectures; and video.

Now, I have no doubt that Cisco is trying to focus more on its core strengths. But at the same time, Cisco, as a cooperation, exists to make money. Piles and piles of the stuff. My guess is that the Flip wasn’t helping that happen anymore.

I think the Flip camera is just another product that has been caught in the crossfire between all-in-one devices and the democratization of previously expensive technology.

The iPhone is the obvious example here. The price of Apple’s smartphone has come down, and the tech has only gotten better. It shoots great video, so why buy a dedicated device when you’ve already got an iPhone 4 in your pocket?

The best tool you have is the one you have with you, after all.

I think this is at the heart of the Flip going on the chopping block. If Cisco tried selling the brand off, it doesn’t seem to have succeeded. I guess others have learned what Cisco just learned the hard way: if you’re going to sell a stand-alone product, it has to be awesome.

DSLRs haven’t gone anywhere since the iPhone launched. Laptops are still around in this iPad-crazed world¹. But I’m not surprised to see the Flip go.

The Discovery Channel:

On April 12, 1961, a young test pilot from the Soviet Union named Yuri Gagarin climbed into a space capsule called Vostok 1.

Space travel fascinates me.

Jim Heintz, for the Associated Press:

But Chernobyl is in fact still a dangerous place, as the rules for visitors make clear. Don’t touch any structures or vegetation, don’t sit on the ground or even put your camera tripod there, don’t take any item out of the zone, don’t eat outdoors. Guides make sure the visitors understand that various spots in the zone are more contaminated than others and insist no one wander off the designated paths.

Crazy. Be sure to check out the photo gallery — the images are haunting.

These videos combine two of my loves: Star Wars and making fun of Windows.