Category Archives: Productivity

How I’m using Dropbox.

Since I talk about Dropbox quite a bit anywhere and everywhere I can, I’m often asked for app recommendations and about the services that I use with it. The beauty of it is that these things can and do change from time to time because so many apps and services plug into Dropbox that there’s always something new to try. So here are some of my uses and apps as of right now.

For starters, I don’t use my OS X home folder for anything, if I can help it. Everything important lives in Dropbox. I can’t move my Library in there, but if I could, I would. If I lost my MBP tomorrow, I could be back up and running 90% of the way just by logging into Dropbox on a new machine. That makes me feel good. Now, onto some more specific things.

1Password: The alpha and omega of all my Dropboxing. 1Password is the single most useful app on any of my systems, and my world lives inside it. Security’s no joke, and 1P makes it easy. Constant updates, communicative and friendly developers and a willingness to always improve make it my number one app, anywhere.

Notes, Reminders: Notes are stored as plain text files and kept in a folder called Notes. I point the awesome Notational Velocity fork nvALT at this folder on the Mac, and whatever app I’m currently using on iOS at it as well. Right now, that happens to be Elements by Second Gear. It’s clean and fast. Reminders are a different beast. Currently I’m back using Appigo’s Todo, which I’d purchased a million years ago, but which has seen some pretty decent updates. My tasks sync in a Dropbox folder and appear on all my devices. This could change by the time you read this, but that’s what’s great about Dropbox. Another one of my favorites is TaskAgent, although it’s more for lists and doesn’t have reminder functions built in. If you just have one list, you might check out Due, which is also great.

Camera Uploads: This is a service that’s now provided directly through the Dropbox app. Before it was offered, I used many different iOS apps to get my camera roll into Dropbox, and I still use one called CameraSync because it uses geofencing to determine when to activate and upload your pics, taking the manual process away entirely. I set it up for the office and my house, and when I go between them, I get a notification that my pics are uploading. It’s like magic. (I also have Photo Stream turned on as a fallback, but I like that they’re also in Dropbox automatically as well, for obvious reasons – Photo Stream has a 1,000 pic/30 day limit).

Byword: My favorite writing app for Mac and iOS. Hook Byword up to your Dropbox, and your works in progress are everywhere. I store them as plain text (.txt) files for portability into other writing apps as well.

Day One: My journal of choice. Byword is for things I intend to put somewhere on the web, Day One is just for me. A gorgeous Mac and iOS app, with tons of features and improvements. If you’re not using this app, you’re seriously missing out on a flagship writing experience. Again, I choose to store the data file in Dropbox, because I want to be able to pull it apart if I feel like it (or need to) and iCloud’s data container doesn’t sit well with me.

Scanner Pro: A great quick utility by Readdle. If I need a PDF of something I’m looking at in the real world, I grab my phone or iPad, take a picture, and Scanner Pro converts it to a great looking PDF and drops it into my Dropbox for me. Easy.

Drafts: Quick capture and instant dumping into a variety of iOS apps. I keep a “Drafts” folder hooked up to Dropbox and have it set to capture text notes that I intend to file away in my large note file. Hazel watches this folder and drops .txt files into the other one for me.

TextExpander: Super time-saver. TextExpander takes snippets of keys you assign and drops giant chunks of text in their place. I keep the settings synced with Dropbox between my systems.

Paper: My favorite sketching app. Although I don’t use Paper all that much, when I do, it exports my journals right into a Dropbox folder. I end up using this to quickly diagram things for clients sometimes. It helps to have a picture to go with what I’m saying, and if we’re all in agreement, I can save it, export it and refer to it when I go to create a formal wireframe document or something like that.

Software: I keep a master repository of all kinds of .dmg files and installers in Dropbox. I’ve been a Pro customer for years, and recently had my storage space doubled to a massive 200gb, so this is even less of a problem now than before. Super convenient when you’re managing multiple systems in an office environment and the Mac App Store isn’t how you plan to do it.

System: I keep a folder called System in my Dropbox, and the purpose of this folder is to preserve app settings and things like that. If I can, I’ll install an app and configure it so that its settings automatically go there, but if not, I can always manually copy/move some things around or set up Hazel rules to duplicate these settings/files. Alfred is a good example of an app that runs out of this folder – all my extensions and tweaks are synced between my Macs into Alfred from here.

What else?…

Sharing: throw things in a Dropbox folder, get a quick link. Better than email for giant files, and usually works ok for everyone.

IFTTT: there’s all manner of cool automated things you can do with IFTTT, a web service that aggregates other web services to do some nerdy heavy lifting for you. I’m currently pulling all my Instagram shots in automatically, as well as Facebook pics I’ve been tagged in. I also have something set up to automatically forward a document from my iPhone to a folder specified by me in Dropbox, but I don’t really find myself using it. Still, it’s cool and it’s just scratching the surface.

iPhoto: I wouldn’t recommend trying to point multiple machines’ iPhoto installs to one library you keep in Dropbox (seems to have issues, YMMV) but if you only have one machine on which you use iPhoto, it’s an easy way to back that giant file up (if you have the space).

I could go on and on. When I record podcasts, they dump directly into a Dropbox folder from Audio Hijack. I keep a folder just to sync stuff between my MBP and my Mac mini server at home if I need to. A different folder to share things with my wife and her MBP. The possibilities are nearly limitless, and growing every day. It’s a fantastically reliable and functional tool I’ve grown to rely on. I’d hate to go back to computing without it.

If you’ve got a great way to use Dropbox, I’d love to hear it.

Twitter | App.net

Un-simplified, and happy.

I recently talked about my intentions to simplify my workflows by using the default Apple apps on iOS and the Mac (Notes, Reminders, etc.) as replacements for the many apps I like to jump between. My goal was to see if by just letting go of my need to tinker with the connective tissue between parts of my workflows I could improve both my base anxiety level (derived not from fear, but from a constant feeling of “could I be doing this more effectively?”) and my ability to focus more on the “work” and less on the “flow” overall. I stuck with it for several weeks, and the results are in.

It’s… not for me.

The short version: between heavy-handed interfaces and iCloud flakiness, I gave up because I felt that I was neither gaining relief from the productivity improvement demons nor was I focused on my work. Instead, I was waiting for the other iCloud shoe to drop (data loss) and talking myself into the idea that this was good enough for me, when the truth of the matter was that it really isn’t.

I’ve been reliant on Dropbox for so long I can’t even remember or imagine a world without it. Many apps take great advantage of the APIs Dropbox has in place to both sync settings and data with moderate to high levels of success based on the app and its implementation. There are two reasons I feel better about this path:

  1. Dropbox exists in a tangible way on multiple computers I own as well as in the cloud
  2. Flexibility between interfaces

The first one is easy. I don’t trust iCloud fully yet. Every time I saw three copies of a single note appear in the Notes app or a reminder re-add itself to a list after completion, I added a tiny tick mark to the wall in my mind. Which is not to say that Dropbox sync services are without folly; certainly they can and do fail from time to time, however I always have the opportunity to throw my data into another app and test the waters elsewhere. I can easily see my data in Dropbox, which is important not primarily for sync settings, but for things like my plain text notes, which might be transitory and not long-term in nature as I’d discovered, but important to see and preserve as I saw reason to take the information down and capture it. Seeing duplicate notes appear was the flip side to the coin where notes suddenly vanish, and I’m not comfortable with that.

Second: Apple’s UI choices are polarizing if nothing else. There are many choices I enjoy and find delightful, and many at which I continually level disgust and contempt. With the relief provided by giving up my tinkering ways to Apple’s choices comes a compromise I’m unwilling to make right now – I’m stuck looking at yellow paper that formats plain text in obnoxious ways and parchment lists that while functional, are hardly the optimal way to organize (in my mind, at least) the tasks and efforts I need to complete. By using apps that plug into Dropbox, I’m afforded a variety of ways to look at the exact same data. Sometimes I need that variety, and it comes at the price of my inability to sometimes stop myself from exploring other apps and interfaces. I look at these screens entirely too much each day to be unhappy with what’s staring back at me. I can work at leaving well enough alone with regard to fiddly bits, but I can’t work at liking a UI I simply don’t.

The fundamental truth I learned about myself, which I mentioned in the first sentence of that other post is that I am a tinkerer. I like to try different things, break stuff, put it back together, and start from scratch. It’s something I can’t really turn off entirely, nor do I want to. It’s a curiosity I’ve had since I was a kid, and I hope my daughter expresses the same interest in exploration, whether it’s with software or any other interest she’s passionate about. I try new apps and add layers of complexity because I need to. It’s an evolving little puzzle I do with myself, like a game of Jenga in reverse. Occasionally I find something rock solid and leave it working, but there’s always something else to move on to, some new thing to play with, some new web service to leverage to make the mental machine run a little more smoothly. Understanding this about myself means I don’t feel guilty anymore about trying a million different ways to do a simple thing because I can rest a little easier knowing I’ve ruled out the ways I didn’t know before.

So, back to plain text, back to Dropbox, like a favorite pair of jeans. Sometimes you buy new jeans, sometimes you wear a suit, and sometimes the jeans sit in your drawer for a few weeks. But they’re there, and you know it, and it makes you happy.

Glassboard and getting back on our feet.

When Hurricane Sandy hit us, our office, like most in our area, was completely shut down. We had no power, and our entire staff was scattered. We had about thirty people with varying levels of cell service, power, and internet connectivity. We needed a way to get everyone in one place quickly and easily, and that was becoming an increasingly tall order. That’s when I remembered the excellent Glassboard by Sepia Labs.

Glassboard is a private social network for groups. You create a board, invite your participants, and everyone can post and read into that board. You can add photos, reply with comments to posts, and receive push notifications when others update the board. The thing that really worked for us was that the service is available as an iPhone app, an Android app and a web app (still in beta, perfectly functional). This meant that across all our staff, everyone would be able to use it in some capacity – those who had cell service but no home connectivity could use the apps, and those with home connectivity and no cell service could use a browser.

In a matter of a few hours, we had status updates on everyone (all safe, thankfully) and were talking about a contingency plan for the office and our client obligations. Glassboard allowed us to communicate effectively and quickly across a variety of platforms, and took the guesswork and aggravation out of organizing a group of our size. It’s a great tool with some talented people behind it, and I look forward to seeing its continued development.

It’s free with optional pro account upgrades, and you should check it out. Our Iterate interview with Brent Simmons of Sepia Labs (and many other great things) will be up soon.

Simplified.

I’m a tinkerer. I’ve always been a tinkerer, I’ll always be a tinkerer. I fiddle, I test, I try, I look up, I download, I delude myself into thinking it’s all in the goal of figuring out some better way to do things. In some cases, it happens that it’s true. More often than not, I realize that I’ve gone down a road I didn’t need to, but the journey of discovery usually pays for itself.

I love this stuff. I really do. But time is fleeting lately, between craziness at work and a new tiny person with some serious demands on my time waiting for me at home. I started to wonder: can I strip away small bits of complexity from my workflows and actually enjoy what most people would consider the “Apple experience”? I’ve long crafted elaborate workarounds to avoid using the default apps that ship with OS X and iOS, but they’ve matured to a point with 10.8 and iOS 6 that I’m entertaining the idea of giving them a shot again. The place that sees the most impact (unsurprisingly) is with productivity apps, traditionally my most fiddly bits. It took some intestinal foritude to take these first few steps, but in the interest of personal self-discovery, I suppose it’s worth it.

I’ve tried dozens of task/to do apps. I go through them like tissues in cold season. I landed on using OmniFocus for tasks a few months ago. I was initially impressed with how flexible it is as a product (I’m a big Omni Group fan), and how you can adapt it to how you wish to use it. What I came to realize is that I personally wasn’t using more than a few of its terrific options, which made it akin to killing a mosquito with a rocket launcher. So I’m giving Reminders another look. With the release of Mountain Lion, a dedicated app ships with the OS, and it’s on iOS already. So far, it seems to be doing an extremely servicable job for what I need, and Siri integration is really nice.

I’ve used plain text files stored in Dropbox for basic note-taking for a long time now. I’ve long preached the flexibility of plain text as well as the fun of plugging multiple apps into a single stored location and being able to try all kinds of things. As it turns out, about 60% of the notes I take are of no value to me after a certain period of time, and so I deleted a bunch of them. This freed me up from the mental burden of thinking I needed to keep everything around. Once I cleared that hurdle, I decided to try Notes again. As with Reminders, OS X ships with a dedicated Notes app now, and I wanted to see if I could get by with it. I’ll still compose anything more than a transitory note in plain text and keep it in Dropbox, but for basic capture, I’m sticking with this for now.

I just got brutally honest with myself and realized that I never actually do cool things like converting my plain text captures into Markdown and then emailing myself HTML snippets while automating task generation. I love the idea that so many apps allow you to do so much more than the basics, but if I’m being honest, then I can’t pretend I use all that stuff. So if the Apple apps are good enough, then why the question at all?

My main hangups center on how much I trust iCloud. I feel like maintaining folders of .txt files that I can easily point to and drag somewhere else *feels* right to me. I know I can dig out the Mobile Documents folder buried in ~Library, but it’s not the same. And I could back up my OF database in Dropbox and have days’ worth of copies to fall back on should the app fail for any reason. With iCloud, I basically have to put my trust in Apple that these bits of information, upon which I rely for my daily organization are going to be there when I need them. I’m not super comfortable doing this, but at the same time, I’m trying really hard to let go of my need to grip everything so tightly. Partly because I’m tired of the endless tinkering with my workflow, and partly because I’m envious of people who don’t even have these thoughts. It’s a sickness, you know. A beautiful, enriching, crippling sickness.

The experiment’s underway. All my short-term text is in Notes, and tasks in Reminders across my devices and Macs. It’s a strange feeling, using apps now that I’ve long derided as “not enough” and realizing that they are in fact, just fine. I don’t know if I’ll stick with this – it depends on my neuroses about this data and how long I can keep them at bay – but it feels oddly freeing. Like a weight has been lifted. Fewer moving parts, fewer options and switches, and a focus on something else.

Actually doing stuff.

(to be continued, I’m sure…)

Putting on my big boy pants.

I started using OmniFocus about a week ago. I’d avoided it for a while because it seemed way too complicated for me, but I decided recently that while I’m able to manage my tasks and to-do items, I need to step up my game and start becoming serious about the loose ends. The goal was to finally push all the disparate buckets of capture into one meaningful place, and to more accurately gauge how well I’m doing in terms of completion. I’d just been making lists, and lists don’t exactly provide the context or the motivation I was looking for with this process.

From my cursory understanding of it, I’d always thought that the GTD mentality was overkill for what I needed. When I waited tables in college, I would remember detailed orders, from multiple people, easily. People would try to mess with me and quiz me, but as I rattled them back their orders, they quickly acquiesced. So keeping stuff in my mind has not really been a problem for me. But when I actually started to throw things into the OmniFocus inbox with the purpose of methodically clearing my head, I noticed a weird kind of comfort that came from not having to remember all those things. Some people feel overwhelmed by this process, the remembering, I never really did – but not doing it feels so much better, I wish I’d tried this earlier.

It’s taking a little while to fully embrace the entire philosophy, because I’m still finding a way to apply it to my workflows, but it’s interesting to be sure. I definitely see value in it, although I don’t know that I’d ever become a GTD zealot the way some people end up. It’s fairly complex and a lot of people don’t need this level of complexity. However, there is a certain freedom in being more serious about the lists I was previously making and applying a new level of rigor to them. I feel like I’m putting a little more pressure on myself to actually complete things by being more realistic about what I can accomplish and when I can do it. It’ll be an ongoing experiment, but I’m feeling pretty good about it.

I love finding better ways to do things. Wanna talk about it?