Zapier has a nice list of productivity apps and services on their blog. The cover a huge variety but focus on individual task managers and not collaborative team services. There were a few I’d never heard of or considered.
By way of Drew on Twitter
A couple of nice posts about Sublime Text over at TechnologyNotes. I use the heck out of Sublime Text, because it’s ubiquitous and powerful.
In Jeff’s posts, he highlights his awkward dance with Sublime Text and how he settled into it by replacing a bunch of other applications. That’s a pretty good reason to make the move. His write-up of using Sublime Text for task management describes more or less how I do it.
I’ll admit it. I’m a project manager that really hates Gantt charts. I dislike them because they surface a project schedule at that cost of depicting dependencies and details. They have their place but I prefer that place to be on someone else’s display.1
I prefer to draw timelines myself and I like to capture more than just task sequences. I create flow diagrams for an entire project and include details like milestones, risks, trigger events and team functions.
David Sparks makes some of the best eBooks and now he’s branching out into video. His first video-only Field Guide is pretty fantastic if you use OmniFocus or you’re considering it. $10 is a deal for 2 hours of professional level training for an app as complicated as OmniFocus.
Here’s a sample on Vimeo.
I start about half of my emails in some sort of note system. Some start as scribbles on paper but most start as plain text in nvALT or Drafts for iOS. This isn’t so much about the tool as the motivation and process.
I learned a hard lesson early in my adventures of writing words on a computer screen: The last thing you write is the recipient address.
The recipient should only be added to an email when it’s time to push the Send button because buttons are easy and words are hard.
This episode of MPU with David Allen was very good. I had an aversion to GTD until I heard an interview with David Allen many years ago. In it he explained that GTD wasn’t so much a set of rules but a set of common sense suggestions that work for some people. That’s what got me to read the book.
In this MPU episode David Allen straddles the line between laxidasical dismissal of the GTD fanaticism and a strong recommendation to get some good structure around our lives.
One of the tips I shared in the recent Technical Difficulties show notes was that the FastMail URL links point directly at a specific message or view. I’ve used this feature for awhile when linking to email messages. Unlike linking to Mail.app messages on the desktop, FastMail message links work anywhere, including on iOS.
Jonathan Poritsky pointed out that this is especially valuable now with the OmniFocus iOS 8 extension. While viewing a FastMail message in Safari, trigger the OmniFocus extension to add a new task.
I use a heck of a lot of concept maps when I plan.1 But, because I work on Windows part of the time and because MindMeister has terrific functionality for collaborating on maps, I spend a fair amount of time in their web app.2 Unfortunately, their iOS app is not very good when compared to highly polished apps like MindNode or iThoughts. But, their collaborative features and ubiquitous access keeps me as a paying customer.
I like writing. I like podcasting. I like screwing around with apps, scripts and code. But being an adult sometimes means sacrificing what I like for the things I love. In the past 9 months I’ve completed a complex project for work and started another personal project that has forced me out of my cruising altitude. With large projects, it’s not usually the hours of focused work that interfere with less important projects.
Allison House:
Beginners often hear fake it ‘til you make it, but scrappiness and transparency count for a heck of a lot. My mantra was whatever it takes. With an iterative approach and non-stop communication, newness wasn’t a stumbling block—it was just another creative problem to solve along the way.
I’ve always hated the faking-it approach. It’s hard to live that way and still enjoy the work.
