Lion Apps

I’ve been running the Lion beta for months and, although I can’t talk about the details yet, I can say that in very little time we will all look at our key apps that don’t update to take advantage of Lion features critically. With auto-save and full screen modes you will have apps with Lion support and without it. It will be really clear which is which and those in the second category will, most likely, get left behind.

Juggling

In episode 23 of Back to Work, my friend Dan Benjamin argued it is not possible to do two things really well at the same time. Specifically, Dan explained that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to seriously pursue two different big things. He used the example of starting an iOS app business while holding a day job. Dan made a good case that the attempt to do two things well results in you sucking at both.

Ouch.

I’m doing a lot of things at once. Am I torpedoing myself? Dan’s argument led to some soul searching about what I’ve been up to lately. I simultaneously agreed and disagreed with Dan throughout the show. At one point Merlin Mann used me as an example. I practice law by day and write technology by night. Dan explained that I didn’t count because I’m not a, “normal human.” That’s the one part that Dan got wrong. I’m very human and this stuff is really hard.

A Very Regular Human Indeed

I laugh when someone refers to me as a productivity guru. I am a mess. My mother chose well when she named me David. I spend my weekdays in the trenches with my clients against a seemingly endless stream of Goliaths. I spend my free time (the weeknights and weekends Dan was talking about) writing for MacSparky and podcasting with the Mac Power Users. Add to this my family, friends, and other social commitments and I quickly find I don’t have just two things. I have six or seven. That is my normal juggling routine. Now add to this the spinning chainsaw that is a 25 chapter book, due in just a little over a month, and you can see how I am well and truly screwed. Or at least it would seem. The thing is, right now I am having more fun than ever.

Saying No

Saying “no” is something I’ve only recently figured out but, like a religious convert, I’m exercising this particular muscle plenty. If you want to juggle, you have to learn to say no. Even jugglers have their limits. There are degrees of difficulty in saying no. Television and video games are the easy ones. The day I decided to stop responding to every MacSparky e-mail was a tough “no”. (I still read everything you send me.) It gets even harder when you turn down opportunities. In the past six months I’ve turned down some great opportunities including writing for some really smart people, sitting on an American Bar Association planning board, and expanding my career. I don’t have any regrets with any of those, but they weren’t easy. The real corker, however, is saying no to your family and friends. That is a fourth degree no. This stuff is hard.

The key to it all for me is balance. I try my very best to give the things and people I love attention and accept that it is not possible for me to be all things to all people at any one time. I’m also not too hard on myself. I do my best and try each day to get a little better.

Where Dan’s words ring true for me is this very month as I push to complete a book. It is this extra commitment with the obscene amounts of extra time it requires that I get Dan. Now things are nuts. The next month is going to requires me to say no to some things I’d rather not. It is a temporary thing and will pass soon enough. If every month was like this one, though, I’d fall apart, just as Dan predicts.

Big and Small Touches

Wouldn’t it be great though if I could constantly juggle all of this? If I could run a law practice, blog, podcast, speak, and write books and not go insane? That would make me awesome with my very own superpower. That, however, would also be bullshit.

Writing the book is my edge case. Normally I seem to get by just fine with the law practice and MacSparky. I think, for me at least, this juggling act isn’t a super power but instead a selfish thing. I really like everything I do right now and I’m addicted to the big and small touches.

Just looking at my law/MacSparky juggle, I see these two things scratching very different itches.

I became a lawyer because I enjoy helping people. Stop laughing. You’d be surprised how many lawyers find themselves in this profession for exactly the same reason. People come to me with some really big problems. My clients need help and I can make the difference between pulling out of a nose dive and making a big smoking hole in the ground. My work as a lawyer has a major impact on their lives. Those are my big touches

MacSparky, on the other hand, leads to many small touches. I get e-mails from people all over the world explaining how some little thing I posted or said made their lives better. I love those small touches. When the Mac at Work book shipped, I received an e-mail from a single mom who explained how she used a bunch of my workflows from the book to shorten her work day, saving her about 10 hours a week (500 hours a year) for more time with her daughter. When I wonder why I’m working so hard on this next book and saying “no” so often, that e-mail is why. Both the big and small touches that mean a lot for me.

Dan is Right

Despite all of the above yammering, Dan is right. You really can’t give two things everything. The trick in all of this is finding that tipping point when outside interests go from being simply a hobby or dabbling into the pedal-to-the-metal Next Big Thing. Recognizing that moment and having the guts to jump on it is key. That is what I think Dan was talking about and he is absolutely right. My only qualification is that this idea of just one thing shouldn’t prevent you from dabbling and hobbies. You never know where those things might lead. (I think Dan would agree with me on this.)

Since I’ve accepted Dan’s argument, I’m agreeing that if I did just law, or just wrote about technology, or just podcasted, I’d no doubt be able to commit more energy and be better at the one thing. However, I’m still not interested in picking just one. Maybe I’m too gutless to jump but I don’t think that is the case.

Emerging from this rabbit hole, I realize that at this point in my life, I couldn’t imagine myself giving up the big touches or the little touches. I’m not willing to jump on just one thing because I’m enjoying several things way too much. My life is more enriching now because of all the things I do. In other words, I intend to continue juggling.

Marked - Markdown Preview App by Brett Terpstra

When my friend Brett Terpstra told me he released an app, my immediate response was, “I’m in.” Brett has brought us some amazing donation-ware, including my beloved NValt. To be honest, I’d buy Brett’s new app just on principle. Marked (App Store Link) opens Markdown, MultiMarkdown, text, and HTML files and previews them as HTML documents. It watches the source document for changes and live updates. This means you just got live Markdown preview for any text editor for just 3 bucks and you are helping out a swell guy while you are at it. Go get it.

Mac Power Users 53: Workflows with Dr. Mac

Mac Power Users Episode 53 is available for download. Katie and I had the pleasure of interviewing Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus, the prolific author and many Mac and iOS books.

You can get it on iTunes here or on the web right here. If you haven’t already, why not subscribe?

My Fancy-Pants Journal

This morning I listened to Back to Work, episode 23, where Merlin talked about notebooks and it reminded me of my fancy-pants journal.

I call it my fancy-pants journal because I remember buying it five years ago and how special I felt. I paid $30 for it. It has leather binding, gold (painted?) page edges, and artisan paper. This book is gorgeous. I got back to my office and promptly wrote my name in the cover with my very best script.

That was the end of it. The fancy-pants journal has been in my drawer for FIVE YEARS and I haven’t written a damn thing in it.

I’ve taken it out, clicked my pen, even scratched my head as I flip through the pages. (Did I mention they are artisan paper?) No matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to write in this “journal”.

In contrast, I have no respect whatsoever for my Field Notes pocket notebooks. I scratch ideas in them with terrible penmanship. I jam it in my pocket. I tear pages out (perforation or not). And when I’m done with them, I throw them in the trash, without ritual. So where does this leave me? I’m taking the fancy-pants “journal” home and giving it to my 9 year-old. Five years is enough.

Task Management and Your Calendar

In relation to my OmniFocus talks and screencasts, I often get questions and e-mails about how I incorporate my calendar events.

I don’t.

In my mind, calendar events and task items are two separate and distinct things. Put simply, tasks are things I need to do and calendar items are places I need to be. The only overlap is when I have tasks relating to a calendar event. For example, if I have a meeting with you tomorrow at 10 AM to finalize plans for a death ray we are building together, I will have some tasks in OmniFocus to prepare materials and designs in advance. (Since these items would need to be done before we met, they are excellent candidates for a due date.)

In contrast, if I have an appointment with my optometrist to get fitted for a monocle, there are no related tasks and it would not appear anywhere in OmniFocus.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.

Home Screen - Kourosh Dini

Not too long ago I discovered this wonderful book, Creating Flow with OmniFocus, by Kourosh Dini (Twitter). I began corresponding with Kourosh and discovered that, in addition to being an OmniFocus wizard, he is also a really smart guy. I asked Kourosh to share his iPhone home screen and he agreed. I can tell you in advance this is one my favorite home screen posts. Kourosh’s thoughts below about non-reactive working is really thought provoking. So Kourosh, show us your home screen.

What are your most interesting and useful home screen apps?

My most interesting and useful apps are likely OmniFocus, iFlash, MindNode, Instapaper, Square, PlainText, Magnatune, SomaFM, Flashlight, and ePocrates:

• iFlash is a simple flash card app that syncs with a laptop version of the program. If I’m standing in line at the grocery store, it’s nice to pull out “flash cards” and practice memorizing whatever it is that I’m interested in at the time.

• MindNode - I tend to mind map in waves. I’ll go for long periods without making one and then suddenly want to do several. MindNode can create maps that I’ll export to the desktop version. It is also simple, which I like.

• Instapaper still blows my mind as a great way to gather things to read. It distills what I want to read into its simplest elements and, by doing so, provides a good frame in which I can read it.

  I will purposely save long articles to Instapaper even if I have the time to read it in the browser as I’ll then be better able to focus on the article itself. With fewer distractions, I can stop reading, think, and return to reading much more easily than with a browser.

• Square - The fact that I can do credit card transactions using my phone is as astounding as it is convenient.

• PlainText - I could likely go with any number of writing apps. I’ve lately been on a kick of integrating various writing apps and working towards a better organization/consolidation of writings. The process has been significantly inspired by your discussions on DropBox and Hazel.

• Flashlight helps me wander the house at night.

• Magnatune and SomaFM are very nice music apps. The former has yours truly as an artist and the latter has the Groove Salad and Secret Agent stations, which I very much dig.

• ePocrates is a great resource for reviewing medications, their dosing, listed adverse effects, among other useful info.

• OmniFocus helps me do stuff in a huge way. See next response.

What is your favorite app?

Far and away, OmniFocus. I’m biased, but there’s a reason I have that bias in the first place. The iPhone version is a solid productivity app that functions, for myself at least, as a satellite to the desktop.

As an example of its utility, I use it as a writing app as much as any of the others, not to mention its task management abilities. Anytime I have an idea while walking near my office, I have an inbox to store it. I’ll have a “Thoughts to Add” project associated with a project-in-progress. The task itself functions as a title, and its note field is useful for ideas to jog my mind later. Syncing then adds the task to the desktop where it can remind me of the previous day’s thoughts as I type away in the morning.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Listening to the Secret Agent station on the SomaFM app while walking downtown. Not sure why, but there’s something just wonderfully silly about listening to that station while no one around you has any idea.

What is the app you are still missing?

None really. In fact, I’ve probably gone overboard with them.

While technology has a lot to offer, I also know that I grow into things slowly. It takes some time of devoted attention to really get into a well thought out program. If there are too many programs available, especially when their functionality overlap, I tend to slow the learning process and cheat myself out of some of those “I’ve got an idea!” moments. This is precisely what is happening with my writing apps at the moment.

Then again, someone will show me some new app, and I still run off to that shiny object.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Likely, too many.

One thing I actively work on, and have been actively working on for sometime, is maintaining a non-reactive mode of working. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as technology continues its steady advance promising “convenience”, I believe it’s not really a convenience which it delivers. Rather, it’s a shortening of a distance between thought and action. If I’m not careful, this can lead to a more reactive way of working - checking email, twitter, and the like reflexively.

People have grown through a period of time where thought had more opportunity to gestate, merge, form, crystallize, and otherwise before it would eventually manifest as intention. Now, as that distance has shortened, we are delivered a new problem in that we have to devise new methods of holding onto our thoughts, working through them, and eventually delivering them in ways that require holding off the natural inclination of acting upon opportunity.

Just because I can search for an answer to a question instantly, doesn’t mean I should. Simply resting my mind on a question and letting thoughts meander can deliver some pretty cool ideas. But when I instantly search for an answer, I can actually deprive myself of those new concepts that can only come from a period of thought.

The iPhone, other smart phones, and apps and programs in general, are just tools. Like any other, I need to continue learning how to use them, especially as their nature is to change. So, I guess a better answer to the question is “Too many, but the iPhone is still very useful. I continue trying to learn an optimal use.”

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

Nothing really. A bit tangential to the question, though, I tend to watch their iTunes/Application/iBook type stores and wonder how they’ll evolve. Somehow I compare them to Steam, which is a video game sales portal designed and developed by Valve Software. It’s fascinating to watch the development of interaction between customer and corporation and how the paths parallel regardless of file type. There’s nothing I’d add or change that I can think of, but I like to see the continued innovation of the interface.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Nope, just happy to be here.

Thanks Kourosh.

Amazon No Mas

As a California resident, I, along with my remaining golden staters, got summarily kicked to the curb yesterday by the Amazon Affiliate program. I don't blame Amazon for this. California is broke and trying to collect more taxes, which may or may not work. To be perfectly honest, I never felt comfortable asking readers to buy stuff through my link. We all have too much stuff. Turning off the Amazon page feels like removing some karmotional baggage so adios Amazon.

SuperDuper: Lion Compatible

I’ve spent a lot of money on really stupid things in my life. Spending 27 bucks to get painless clone back-ups of my Mac most certainly was not among them. Today SuperDuper developer Dave Nanian announced that: 1. he is about to ride in a cycling marathon that includes 14,000 feet of climbs in one day, and; 2. SuperDuper is ready for Lion. These two facts, combined, make Dave awesome in my book.

Using 1Password

I’m probably at risk of being called a corporate shill since 1Password sponsors the podcast but there really is nothing better. Eddie Smith posted some amazing statistics today. In the Sony breach, 92 percent of the users had the same password for different logins. Using just a few passwords means that if anybody gets your password, everybody has your password. If you haven’t yet, just go download 1Password and set it up on all of your computers and mobile devices. Then rest easy knowing you are much more secure than 92% of everyone else.

MacSparky.com is sponsored by Bee Docs Timeline 3D. Make a timeline presentation with your Mac.