Category — productivity

I really like Aperture 2, in fact, this week I purchased Aperture 2 and officially made the switch from iPhoto to Aperture 2 for photo management and basic photo editing. The controls, newfound speed, keyboard shortcuts, and streamlined interface speak to me in way that Aperture 1.5 didn’t and for a pro app, its very user friendly. I hope to make the transition to a DSLR in the next few months so I’m using this time to become more comfortable with the basic functionality of Aperture before I dive into my first DSLR.

Empty Closet, originally uploaded by legalnonresident. 

I have done the impossible. I listed half of the junk in my closet on craigslist. I sold my cabinet and an old HP tower. Well, I didn’t sell the HP tower, I traded this guy for an iMac G3. It even has the airport adapter. All I need is an Airport card, an a slight ram upgrade and it will ready to go. I hope to sell and throw away many of my belongings in the next 2 months. I can barely contain myself!

So a while back, I posted my ideas for implementing a gtd system in my life.. Now, It’s time to report back on what has worked and what has not. I think it is important to remember what getting things done is all about- getting away from the computer!

Digital Stuff

I feel like I have a pretty good system for keeping my schedule straight and keeping my computer free of clutter. After months of experimentation, I decided what works best for me is to use iCal for scheduling and Omnifocus to keep track of to-do lists. The problem with iCal, while it is great for my needs, is that it’s not portable. Spanning sync solves this problem by syncing my iCal with my Google cal and my Google cal with iCal. I have been considering an iPod Touch purchase which would allow me to edit my calendar on the go. All of this combined with .mac syncing is very powerful and great for me because I don’t like to think about these things (who does?). [Read more →]

Gmail now supports iMap.. finally! Now if they would only roll it out to both of my Gmail accounts. I was actually thinking about shelling out 99$ for dot mac. I guess I can wait.

link.

So recently I have been all about getting things done, saying no, and throwing stuff away. It’s a lot of fun. My weapons? My MacBook Pro, Index cards, Smart folders, an external hard drive and a filing cabinet. Let me explain..

Digital World

So how do I keep my computer uncluttered? Its very simple actually. Everything file has a home even if is a catch all folder like, personal. But I also hate extra folders, so what should I do about extra folders? Smart folders. I can delete smart folders and everything stays in place. And I do not store unused doc and apps on my hard drive. Everything gets dumped on my external,.. old notes, songs I never listen to, old pictures I would rather forget and icons. Smart folders and Tags are my new best friends. I wrote an Automator.app workflow that allows me to add tags to spotlight comments on the fly. Tags look like this.. &personal or &work. The beauty of this system is that you don’t need any shareware apps so search,.. all you need is spotlight and or a few smart folders. I also utilize Quicksilver’s tagging plugin. I use smart folders for current projects, after they are complete, they get deleted and I never have to thing about them again. They get dumped on my trusty MyBook Pro. If I need to find them again, I just hook up the external drive and use spotlight.

What about mail? I use the same approach with mail. I recently switched from web based gmail to Mail.app and I have not looked back. Having an archive that can be searched while offline has saved me on several occasions. Everything that gets read or is important gets archived in a DMZ. Current projects get smart folders rather than actual folders, when a project is over i simply delete the smart folder.

What about GTD Apps? No. I tried iGTD and I hated it. Too much work for me. All of my “todo” items (including bills) are added to iCal manually or through Quicksilver.app (transferred from note cards). Complete items go away after they are checked.

Analog World

I’m really bad at life and I am an information junkie but here are a few things I am trying to implement at home.

1. Get rid of temptation (don’t bring stuff home).
2. Throw (almost) everything away.
3. If its important, it gets filed away.
4. Everything has a home, mail in a basket, clothes in a laundry basket, books on a shelf. if it does not have a home it is not important enough to keep.
5. Throw away unneeded cables (most cables) and other cables are stored in a box.
6. “ToDo items are listed on my hpda (i.e. note cards) and if the todo is for a day other than today, it gets put into iCal. When I cross everything off a note card it gets thrown away.

We will see how all of this works out in the next month or so.