productivity
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I can’t decide. It’s Any.do for now, as of February 25, 2013. Wunderlist has great native apps on most platforms, both mobile and PC, but Any.do is the best mobile solution I’ve found, and that’s where I really need a task manager. ↩
Microsoft has acquired Wunderlist
Microsoft has acquired Wunderlist
Amir Mizroch of The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft bought Wunderlist’s parent company 6Wunderkinder for between $100 and $200 million. Microsoft is on a roll, having recently acquired Sunrise calendar and purchased email app Acompli and rebranded it as Outlook for mobile. All three apps are well-regarded, particularly Outlook which was lauded by Vlad Savov at The Verge for its email, contacts, calendar and documents integration. [^1]
Wunderlist is my task manager of choice, so I’ll be keeping an eye on this story. If you haven’t tried it yet I highly recommend having a look.
[1]: Lawyers, however, should think twice before using Outlook for work because it runs everything through Microsoft’s servers to provide its more powerful features. Read more about the concerns at WindowsITPro.
Google Calendars as a timekeeping tool
Google Calendars as a timekeeping tool
Keri Mahoney of Law Technology Today writes about using Google Calendar to track and bill for attorney time, but this is a clever technique for anyone who needs to track time.
Alternatively, Toggl is great for basic time tracking and Harvest is even better if you want integrated invoicing and payment processing.
Millenials won't use subpar enterprise software
Millenials won’t use subpar enterprise software
Paul Boag writes at Smashing Magazine:
Frustration will only increase as millennials enter the workforce. These people are digital natives, and they expect a certain standard of software. They expect software to adapt to them, not the other way around.
My generation were loud about the outdated software our employers used. We begged, insisted and shouted from the rooftops that efficient workload management demanded a higher level of polish, functionality and user experience.
Even massive software makers like Oracle do little if anything post-sale to ensure their products get the design and functionality upgrades they so desperately need. You can pay an army of contractor-consultants to customize the database architecture and processing flow, sure, but the interface is still all ’90s.
That was then, though. Today, the up-and-comers are just as unlikely to accept awful software and user experience. The difference is they won’t ask or shout at all, they just start using third-party tools. Sometimes this is fine, but other times there are serious security concerns with using third-party software for company work.
Read Boag’s article, especially if you manage any young folks, because this stuff is happening and you should take the opportunity to learn from them. They’re going to gravitate toward good user experience and efficiency, and that’s good for business.
Workflow Tech, Part 2: Catalog
Introduction
I focused in the first of this three-post series on how I capture information for use at home, work, for study, and in creative pursuits. This article is part two in that series, where I’ll spend about 500 words talking about how I name, organize, and save files across several platforms and devices.
Catalog
I use TextExpander on OS X and iOS devices. TextExpander probably fits into all three categories, but I put it in Catalog because I use it overwhelmingly to name and tag files. It’s not free, but it’s worth every cent if you find yourself typing the same things over and over again.
You can attach frequently used snippets of text to shortcuts like “ddate,” which automatically expands to “January 20, 2014” the moment you type it. I like to prepend the date to new the blog posts I draft as text files, so I made a TextExpander snippet that expands “.dnb” to “140120.blog.” and then I can add a name after the second period. So the file I drafted this post in is called 140119.blog.Workflow.txt, but all I had to type was “.dnb Workflow.”
That file name is also a big and relatively new part of how I catalog stuff. Computers can change the date they attach to a file based on when it was modified, when it was downloaded, or for other reasons. So I append the creation date to every file I make, formatted as a 2-digit year, 2-digit month and 2-digit day. Then, a period (many people use a dash, it’s a matter of taste) and the type of file it is, like blog, work, fic for fiction. You get the idea. The third component is the title, with multiple words
I find a new use for TextExpander every day, so it’s vital not only to working productively today, but to working even more productively in the future.
Then, of course, there’s Dropbox, which I use primarily to store files I’m manipulating across different devices. Images I edit and store for work, documents I need to share with people who don’t use Google Drive, and the text files in my /Notes folder, where I draft everything I write, all get synchronized across my home, work and laptop computers. With Dropbox mobile apps and the widespread integration of the service by third-party apps and services, there’s never a problem accessing the most up-to-date version of what I’m working on, whether I’m online or off.
Evernote, which I mentioned in my Capture post and about which I’ll write a more in-depth post eventually, is also great for cataloging after you’ve captured stuff. I tend to use Evernote only when there is email or multimedia involved, sticking to plain text notes in Dropbox for regular old writing tasks. But when email or multimedia are involved, Evernote can’t be beat.
I have a notebook for music, where I tag notes lyrics or audio or both. I have another notebook for finance, where I store and tag all my emailed receipts and other financial bits. I even have a notebook for recipes, which I can share with my wife so we can collect stuff as we find it. Evernote “stacks” even let you make what is essentially a notebook of notebooks.
Much of the work over at the Evernote Blog focuses on how to catalog with the app, so check it out if you’re interested. But I usually start my cataloging workflow in my default notebook, which I’ve labelled Inbox, since I’m so used to processing incoming email from that label.
Since we want capture to be as friction-free as possible, I just save into my default notebook. Then, a few times a week, when I need some mindless busywork to do, I’ll dive into my Inbox notebook and start moving and tagging. Sometimes, I realize I don’t really need something and delete it altogether. I highly recommend the default-now, process-later approach so that using apps like Evernote in the field isn’t cumbersome or time consuming.
Conclusion
I could go on forever about this stuff, but the basic system I use for cataloging is a naming convention when it comes to plain text and a notebook + tags system when it comes to images, PDF, and audio in Evernote. I’m sure everyone’s different so feel free to contact me on Twitter and tell me about your workflow.
Evernote's desktop apps get integrated reminders and a task list, no love for mobile yet
Evernote’s desktop apps get integrated reminders and a task list, no love for mobile yet
Evernote’s reminders are great news, and something I’ve been waiting for since at least February, but here’s all that matters to me:
We have big plans to expand the functionality, and to bring it to more platforms in the very (very) near future.
I can’t wait to get this on mobile. I’ve long hoped that some day Evernote would become the one-app-to-rule-them-all for me. I already use it as a data archive, storage for manuals, occasional journal, research tool, and songwriting management tool. True, cross-platform task management would supercharge the service for me, and may even end my Any.do versus Wunderlist problem.
In related news, Wunderlist has added hashtag support in its web incarnation, and so far I’m actually finding it’s very useful.
How to add tasks to Any.do or Wunderlist via SMS
This post is exactly what it says on the tin: I’ll share two recipes from if this then that (IFTTT), the service that connects otherwise unconnected pieces of the internet together in epic productivity bliss.
Did I oversell that? IFTTT is truly amazing. One of its most useful functionalities is the ability to send an SMS to the service that triggers IFTTT to do something else. So, you can create a “recipe” that will forward all text messages in which you include a “#t” to another internet service, like an email address. Email addresses are particularly handy because many other services use them, everything from Evernote to Tumblr assigns users an email address so you can send stuff into your account right from your email provider of choice.
That way, an IFTTT recipe can receive a text message and, as long as “#t” appears somewhere in the message (without the quotes), it will send an email to anyone I ask. Some services that let you add content via email assign unique email addresses that can receive email from anyone. They’re secure from spam because the email address is nonsense. Evernote does this.
Others, however, use a universal email address and whitelist each user’s own email as the only one allowed to send stuff to that account. Task management services Any.do and Wunderlist both use this method, allowing registered users to send email to do@any.do and me@wunderlist.com, respectively. If the address you use to send the message is registered, the message subject is added to your account as a task, and the body is included as a note.
Any.do is dedicated to creating the best task management experience on a mobile device, and they’re doing a great job. Wunderlist, while they have great mobile apps, is more focused on combining them with solid native desktop apps on all platforms. While I watch them add and refine features, I’m using them both.
I know, I need to get a life.
Anyway, this IFTTT recipe adds a task to Any.do via SMS. And this IFTTT recipe adds a task to Wunderlist via SMS. You should be able to edit the tag if you want, but I find “#t” is conveniently short, and the recipe will remove it from the final task anyway.
I have a couple more IFTTT recipes to share, so if you’re interested in this stuff, stay tuned.
Whitson Gordon finally figured out Evernote
Whitson Gordon finally figured out Evernote
I’m not being snarky: he writes at Lifehacker about how he never “got” Evernote, until recently. It’s a great article and I can say I’ve made at least some use of every technique Gordon discusses. The most important? Use Evernote all the time, for everything, and it will become a powerful part of your workflow.
Evernote CEO hints at future task management integration
Evernote CEO hints at future task management integration
Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, talking to Lifehacker:
What’s your favorite to-do list manager?
You know, I don’t actually have one. I use Evernote, which isn’t particularly great for to-dos yet. Yet.
Despite having tried every task management app I can find, and settling on Wunderlist1Any.do for now, I’m very excited about an integrated Evernote task management solution.
$85 million round by Evernote
It’s one of my favorite services, and the first I decided to pay for on a monthly basis. I think Libin, despite his transparent business style and easy-going manner, is genius of the caliber of any CEO at a company ten times Evernote’s size. He built something awesome, gives most of it away, and amplifies the magic for a small monthly fee.
You don’t get to 45 million users without being awesome.
Mitigating My Mitigating
This post by Michael Schechter at his site A Better Mess hit home for me because I recently migrated this site permanently to Tumblr from a self-hosted Wordpress installation as part of a larger effort to consolidate the things I do in life and on the web. I’m also looking for a way to squeeze some exercise into what amounts to a 12-hour “work” day between my day job and evening classes. I am like Mr. Schechter in that I start lots of little projects, often with little or no eye toward whether they will still interest me in the long-term.
Sometimes they do. For example, I made Memeframes as a way to quick-glance Techmeme and its sister sites and I use that daily. But Fiction By Joe Ross, a Tumblr vehicle for my original sci-fi, hasn’t seen an update since July—and not for lack of material. It just isn’t in my weekly workflow.
Anyway, give Schechter’s post a read if you ever find yourself struggling with a similar problem.
What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day
What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day
Kevin Purdy, formerly of Lifehacker fame, shares the morning strategies of several people in this Fast Company article. I have never liked the empty proclamations of Tony Robbins and his ilk, but the rest of the article is interesting.