End On End

Tools to Manage Time, Attention, and Focus

2012-02-22T20:57:00-05:00

With three girls 13 total months apart (twins and an older sister), I often get asked how I keep organized, so I figured a post on my favorite tools would be beneficial to others.

The key is my iPhone, which is my second brain for the most part. There are three apps I use to help keep me organized: Omnifocus, Evernote, and Clear. I’ve tried a TON of different to do apps and other productivity tools over the last year and I always come back to Omnifocus for my to do list; Evernote for storing links, reference materials, and other useful content I come across during the day; and recently Clear as a simple list app. More on all that below!

Omnifocus

Omnifocus is a premium to do app for the Mac and iOS. The price puts a lot of people off, but when it comes down to support, app quality, and usefulness, there are few apps that can compete. You need to pay a premium for that kind of experience. Plus, in the end, $20 (iPhone price) for a to do app is nothing considering you’ll use that app more often than pretty much any other application on your phone. If you consider one year ownership, that $20 works out to $0.05 per day, so it’s nothing really.

Organization

I took time to reorganize my todo list last night, with a main focus on simplifying the organization and implementing a different strategy for contexts. (Contexts, for all of you not familiar with David Allen’s Getting Things Done, are generally thought of as places or methods to do work – so Phone, Desk, Home, etc would be considered standard “contexts”.)

Projects

My new main projects view now has three folders: Personal, Work, and Eko Agency.

Inside Personal, there are two folders: “Personal Projects” and “Rituals and Reviews”, with the latter holding all of my regularly scheduled items (chores, payments, Omnifocus reviews, etc.)

Then I added “Single Actions” and “Someday” task lists. Single Actions will hold all of the one-off items, while Someday will hold all of my ideas for future projects or items with no due date.

Work is set up similarly, but I used different names to make them stand out from my personal list: “Work Projects”, “Work Routine”, “Work One Offs”, and “Work Someday”.

Eko Agency is also similar, but more streamlined since it’s less of a focus for me: “Eko Projects”, “Eko Someday”, and “Eko Single Actions”.

Contexts

As far as contexts go, I chose to take a different approach than a standard GTD setup. My new method is based off an article on Simplicity Is Bliss called ’A Fresh Take on Contexts’, which argues a better approach for contexts revolves around time and attention – so how much time and energy you have available, as well as the level of focus needed for your tasks.

With that said, here are my new contexts:

Low Energy: tasks that take longer than 5 or 10 minutes, but don’t require a lot of focus.
Keep Flow: short tasks, less than 10 minutes and no differentiation on level of focus. More on this below!
Full Focus: tasks that take longer than 5 or 10 minutes and require a lot of focus.
Errands: pretty self explanatory.
Waiting: stuff I am waiting on other people to do before I can move a task or project forward.

I did want to spend a little more time describing “Keep Flow”, which is just a shortened way of telling myself these taska are quick and easy. Tasks I can pick up when I’m bored, feeling stuck, or not feeling up to taking on something bigger – kind of an anti-procrastination context. That way I can knock off a few items quick to get back into a productive mode.

Under Keep Flow, there are a few contexts: Call, Email, Read, Quick Dashes. Where Quick Dashes are active tasks that don’t take much time to complete – usually less than 10 minutes.

The cool thing about Omnifocus is I can create two custom views (called Perspectives) for this new Keep Flow context: one for Work and one for Personal, that I can use to break down that context even more and have a ready made list of quick tasks while at work or at home. Brilliant!

Then finally, my favorite feature of Omnifocus for iPhone is the Forecast view, which shows you the next 5 days, as well as Overdue and Future items in a quick view. You can even hook up your calendar to show meetings and appointments in this view as well. So useful!

Evernote

Evernote is an amazing service that allows you to capture and store information in centralized location. You can then tag and organize your information to make it easy to find and refer back to on a regular basis.

What I like to collect:

Gift ideas.
Recipes (Initially. I end up adding them into Paprike Recipe Manager for actual use in the kitchen.)
Useful programming, e-commerce and web development articles and guides.
An archive of good articles I’ve read on the web. Topics usually include: politics, Mac/iOS software tips, and Buddhism.
Site bookmarks (iOS apps, web apps, etc.) to check out later.

Capture

It’s so easy to get virtually anything into Evernote, from any device you use on a regular basis. I have the browser extension set up on all of the computers I use, an email address I use to send entries to (they automatically get added to your inbox), as well easy share buttons integrated in my feed readers: Google Reader and Reeder for iOS.

Access

I have the desktop app installed on my MacBook, the Chrome app on my work computer, and the iOS app on my iPad and iPhone for easy access pretty much anywhere. The search is great too, so you can find that hidden gem in your pile of notes very easily.

I highly recommend Evernote. Did I mention the basic service is free? Go sign up and come back, I’ll wait…

Clear

Clear is a simple list app for iPhone that costs $0.99. It has a really unique gesture-based UI that is fun to use, so that alone makes it worth checking out.

I use Clear to keep lists of things I don’t need to put in Omnifocus: movies I want to see, books I want to read, basic post ideas for this blog, music I want to check out, quick shopping lists, and other temporary lists.

Clear excels in quickly creating lists (it opens much faster than Omnifocus and item entry is very fast, as well), so it’s a perfect fit for my use case.

Summary

That’s pretty much it – three tools that organize my entire life.

What do you use? Share in the comments! I’ll also answer any questions, if you need help or want more detail.

RSS Feed Note

2012-02-13T16:18:00-05:00

A quick note for RSS subscribers

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The old feed will re-direct to the new one for 30 days, but after that you will no longer receive updates via the old feed.

If you subscribed after I switched to the endonend.org domain, you should be fine. No need to do anything.

Thanks for reading!

Fear of Starting

2012-02-13T12:35:00-05:00

I’ve written about starting before, most prominently in New Year, New Attitude. My favorite part from that post:

Start more of what you love. Just start. Make those daily decisions that push those things forward and don’t make excuses.

I don’t think “just start” covers it all, though. It’s fine for a lot of things, but those big projects that you care a lot about are still hard to “just start.” Why? Fear of failure.

Peter Bregman addresses this in a blog post over on Harvard Business Review:

Because, ultimately, the reason we procrastinate on a big, long-term project isn’t just because we have too much time or don’t know where to start. And it’s certainly not because we think it’s not important. In fact, it’s the opposite.

We procrastinate on that big project precisely because it’s important. So important, in fact, that we’re too scared to work on it.

His advice?

Don’t ignore your fear. Acknowledge it.

Here’s why acknowledging your fear works: You’re scared because you expect a lot from yourself and you’re afraid you’ll underperform. When you acknowledge that fear, you’re acknowledging that you might not have all that it takes to meet your expectations; you might not have all the tools, information, skills, etc. Admitting that, in turn, reduces your expectation of getting it perfect right off the bat.

And lowering your expectation of getting it right is the key to getting it started.

Acknowledging fear comes down to first, lowering your expectations, then building off the tools, information, and skills you acquire to constantly iterate and improve the project.

So, what big project have I been scared to start? The iPhone app. It’s on my love list for this year and I haven’t done anything that could be considered “starting.”

So, my next steps – with due dates:

Collect resources and information necessary to start, then improve the app (ongoing, no end date)
Setup development environment on MacBook (started, not finished - due February 19th)
Sketch out basic screens and functionality (due February 29th)
Begin building! (starts March 1st, with new goals and due dates TBD)

My ultimate goal is to build something that can at least supplement our income, but I think a more realistic goal to start would be something that works in a beta sense, then build from there…

Stay tuned for updates!

Fathers as Parents

2012-02-11T22:47:00-05:00

Jonathan Liu, stay-at-home dad and an editor for Wired.com’s GeekDad, attacks the gender roles and unequal treatment of dads as parents – specifically in the recent Census Bureau report, Who’s Minding the Kids?

The U.S. Government thinks so, too. I was surprised to find that my duties as a stay-at-home dad are considered “child care,” according to the Census Bureau. But that’s not all: “Designated parent” is defined as the mother, unless the child lives with the father in a single-parent household. And if the father works and the mother stays at home with the kids? Well, they don’t really count that time at all as “child care” — it’s not really considered in the equation.

Not to mention, this gem from the report:

If the mother is not available for an interview, the father of the child can give proxy responses for her.

Lucky us, right?

This bias leads the report to come to conclusions like: of the 63 percent of preschoolers who are in a regular care arrangement (regular basis, at least once per week), 4.2 percent are cared for by moms and 15.2 percent are cared for by dads. Amazing, right? This would make you think stay-at-home dads are on the rise, but it’s thay way because they don’t count the time spent by moms in your standard married couple families.

As a father who puts in a ton of effort and time into the my kids’ lives, this kind of thinking and “official” reporting only helps to solidify our society’s views of fathers and men in general. It’s time for the bias and gender roles to end.

Self Assessment & Self Worth

2012-02-10T13:40:00-05:00

I think it’s very valuable to, every now and then, take an inventory of what you like about yourself. What you feel you contribute to relationships and the world around you. Not only does it help boost your self esteem, but it can be helpful to re-visit your past lists to see how you’ve changed the opinion of yourself over time.

I’m in need of a little self worth and encouragement today, so I made my list…

I am:

smart
funny
kind
patient
loyal
easy going
generous
a good father
attractive enough
humble (hard to write that after making this list, but that is not the intent of making this list anyway!)
flexible
forgiving
trusting
unselfish
sincere
sensitive
optimistic
honest

Mindfulness

2012-02-10T12:40:00-05:00

Mindfulness is the on-going process of staying awake – alert in the moment.

Merlin Mann, on one of my favorite episodes of Back to Work.

The Happy Secret to Better Work

2012-02-10T09:15:00-05:00

If you have 12 free minutes today, I highly recommend watching this TED talk by Shawn Achor.

A key quote from the talk (and there are a ton of good ones):

if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness. 90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality.

Shawn suggests that spending as little as 20 minutes a day on the following activities, for 21 consecutive days, can help you build the habits that can basically re-wire your brain and body to be more positive, happy, and productive.

Write down three new things you are grateful for each day. Research shows this will significantly improve your optimism even 6 months later, and raises your success rates significantly.

Write for 2 minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours. This is a strategy to help transform you from a task-based thinker, to a meaning based thinker who scans the world for meaning instead of endless to-dos. This dramatically increases work happiness.

Exercise for 10 minutes a day. This trains your brain to believe your behavior matters, which causes a cascade of success throughout the rest of the day.

Meditate for 2 minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out. This will help you undo the negative effects of multitasking. Research shows you get multiple tasks done faster if you do them one at a time. It also decreases stress and raises happiness.

Write one, quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising someone in your support network. This significantly increases your feeling of social support, which in my study at Harvard was the largest predictor of happiness for the students.

This is my next project for personal growth. Who’s going to join me?

via: Simplicity Is Bliss

Art Class

2012-02-04T10:00:00-05:00

Last night, the Mrs. and I took a studio art class at Albright-Knox. The subject for the night was pastels and taxidermied animals – how could we go wrong?

It was my first art class since high school and probably the first time I’ve sat down and tried to do art since then… and it was awesome! We had such a good time.

Here’s my initial sketch of the bobcat we both selected:

And our “final” work (we both ran out of time, though I rushed to finish off the feet to get close to being done.)

Melisa’s is on the left and mine is on the right.

Karate

2012-01-31T11:13:00-05:00

Karate is one of my all-time favorite bands. Here is one of the few clips of them on YouTube – a song called “Caffeine or Me?”:

I really need to convert that Karate show I filmed in Seattle into a YouTube friendly format… the world needs more Karate.

brave, brave is a meaningless word // in the 20th century // save, save for the times that you heard // when it means stupidity // like, right now, if you could disappear // i know that you would // if you could start this year again // if you could, if you could

is this me or caffeine? // caffeine, caffeine, caffeine

and i can tell by your weight to the world // that you need to have it all // and i can tell by the weight of your words // that you call political // and i would beat you up if i could // make me feel like a boy again // you make violence feel so good // like it should, like it should

is this me or caffeine? // caffeine, caffeine, caffeine

excuses are okay // however senseless they might be // and senseless is to say // that they dont make sense to me // excuses are okay // however senseless they might be // excuses are okay

Family camping trip booked!

2012-01-28T13:19:00-05:00

Yesterday’s love list update post inspired me to make progress on one of my items – I booked our August family vacation trip to Wellesley Island State Park.

I was even lucky enough to score a waterfront campsite! We are so psyched.

January Love List Update

2012-01-27T10:57:00-05:00

Wow. January is almost over already!

I just wanted to post a quick update on my Love List progress.

Things I’ve done well so far:

Kept on top of my priorities. (27 days in my new Moleskine planner. Each day has a ton of crossed off to-dos. I’ve also not procrastinated on any important task this month.)
Exercise. (Almost every other day for most of January.)
Blog once per week. (This is my 8th post this month.)
Purge stuff. (We unloaded like 15 bags of stuff to the Salvation Army a week or so ago. More to come!)
Blog design. (Moved forward one step, as I re-launched blog on the platform I’m going to use going forward. Design is next!)
See more movies. (Movies in the theater, I’ve seen recently: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, twice, The Muppets, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Mission Impossible.)
Go bowling. (Took the kids!)

Works in progress:

Take more photos. (I’ve taken more, but not a significant number and mainly only the kids.)
Read one book per month. (I seriously need to get on this. I started off good, but haven’t read in probably 10 days.)
Re-connect with friends. (Another thing I started off doing well, but failed the last week or two. Changing that this weekend and next, hopefully!)

FAIL or Starting Later

Go to more shows. (A few good shows are coming up!)
Go camping. (Need to make reservations soon!)
Spontaneus weekend trip. (Nothing yet.)
Create an iPhone app. (Have an idea, but no progress yet.)
Meditate every week. (Totally failed on this.)
Move my career forward. (No progress yet.)

I’ll post a recap like this at the end of each month to update my progress. How are you doing on your goals or love list?

Choices

2012-01-18T09:04:00-05:00

There are three choices in life:

You can live in the past by dwelling on the poor choices, mistakes, or yearning for something you used to be…

You can worry about the future by living through fear of “what ifs” and uncertaintity…

Or you can focus on the present and make the best choices you can in the moment to enhance your happiness and the happiness of people you care about.

I choose the present.

“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.” - Buddha

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload

2012-01-12T09:04:00-05:00

Have a Kindle or the Kindle app on your phone/tablet? Grab this free, highly regarded book by Mark Hurst on dealing with information overload in the digital age. What are you waiting for?

The Little Things

2012-01-11T09:04:00-05:00

Recently Seth Godin took a quick look at why one of his favorite restaurants was special. He came to this conclusion:

I think it’s the hand-fitted gestalt of thousands of little decisions made by caring management out to make a difference.

And he expanded on that, turning it into the secret of success in business:

This turns out to be the secret of just about every really successful enterprise. Sure, you can copy one or two or even three of their competitive advantages and unique remarkable attributes, but no, it’s going to be really difficult to recreate the magic of countless little decisions. The scarcity happens because so many businesses don’t care enough or are too scared to invest the energy in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being extraordinary.

I think it’s important to remember that basic idea in all aspects of life: invest energy in the little interactions you have with the people you care about. Whether it’s your significant other, your customers, your employees, or your kids. They add up – they create the magic that is a great relationship.

The question I’ve struggled with lately, though, is: when you are on the receiving end of these “little things”, how much do you read into them?

Take this example:

Got my Christmas present from work: lotto ticket & mini flashlight complete with corroded batteries. At least I won $8. twitter.com/endonend/statu…
— Jason Dettbarn (@endonend) December 20, 2011

On one hand “it’s the thought that counts”, right? I’m not entirely sure that’s the case – especially when it comes to giving obviously defective gifts to a good number of people. Is that gesture offensive or am I looking into it too much? I’d like to think a company would treat it’s employees a little better than that, especially when they just closed the warehouse in our site and fired half the employees. Many of whom stayed on until this month to help with the transition. Seems disrespectful, doesn’t it?

At the very least, it’s as Godin says: many businesses don’t care enough or are too scared to invest the energy in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being extraordinary.

Maybe I am looking too much into this or maybe I just have high expectations. Another part of me thinks that this is a signal that it’s time for a big change. We’ll see.

The Complete Guide to Snapping the Fuck Out of It

2012-01-11T09:04:00-05:00

Julien Smith asks 6 great questions for the New Year:

Do you know which five opinions of yours, right now, are 100% wrong? So the first step in all of this is to consider that it’s possible that you are wrong – not a little, but a lot– in fact, that you’re fucking everything up and that you need a wakeup call.

Hey, so how’s that method working out for you? Get out of your usual habits and do something different or you will get nowhere.

Do you know what effort feels like? When was the last time you felt that you had to do something, because you knew it was important, but it was too much work, too much emotional labour, and further, even if you did do it, you don’t even know how? Then, how did it feel when you did it anyway? Yes, exactly.

When was the last time you questioned your direction? Go do something you actually care about – trust me, I’ve had enough conversations with successful yet miserable people

How are you going to be changing the world? If you had to leave something behind, if you were going to die and be entirely forgotten but could change one thing, what one thing would that be?

Why would you work on anything else but what actually matters?

A great post to read if you are feeling stuck or sick of your resolutions failing every year.

Better Through Less

2012-01-09T09:04:00-05:00

To go along with starting, I think it’s very important to decide what not to do as well. To eliminate all the things that are not providing value or helping you focus your attention on the things you love.

I highly recommend reading Merlin Mann’s Better essay. Here’s my favorite part, where Merlin describes his process for eliminating all the things that don’t provide value or move him forward:

To be honest, I don’t have a specific agenda for what I want to do all that differently, apart from what I’m already trying to do every day:

identify and destroy small-return bullshit;

shut off anything that’s noisier than it is useful;

make brutally fast decisions about what I don’t need to be doing;

avoid anything that feels like fake sincerity (esp. where it may touch money);

demand personal focus on making good things;

put a handful of real people near the center of everything.

All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better. Everything better. Better, better.

What does that mean for me? Not quite sure yet, but I’ve already started to work through that process:

I am going to use the tags love list and better where appropriate, so you can follow my progress here on my blog. Stay tuned!

The twins

2012-01-06T09:04:00-05:00

Two beautiful girls.

New Year, New Attitude

2012-01-05T09:04:00-05:00

So, it’s finally 2012. And this year certainly got off to an interesting start.

To end 2011, I re-connected with some amazing old friends. We went bowling, out to eat a bunch of times, did some drinking, and just talked a lot. It was awesome. I had so much fun.

I also spent the entire New Year’s weekend here in Buffalo, as my wife took our 3 kids to Albany and Long Island to visit her family. It wasn’t something I was happy about, as I love spending time with my family, but it was the right decision for a number of reasons.

After a very fun few days with friends, I decided to not spend the weekend being down. I wanted to keep the momentum going and start the new year on a good note. So I made a list of all the things I’ve put off around the house, all the errands I needed to run, and just started. Between Friday and Monday I checked off 25 items off my list. I finished all but one thing I set out to do and that project was a large one I probably could have spent the entire weekend doing. It felt so good.

Not only that, I did things for myself: I went shopping and bought myself a new pair of jeans (I ripped a hole in my favorite pair while working) and a new pair of Van’s to wear to work. I also went to a New Year’s Eve party at WNYBAC in downtown Buffalo, by myself no less. (I don’t think I’ve gone anywhere social without Melisa in a very long time, if ever.) I even had some down time and watched a whole season of Breaking Bad. (Amazing series, by the way.)

In the end, all of this gave me an enormous boost of confidence. I was even happy. (Even as my marriage was on the rocks and my kids on the other side of the state.) It made me realize that, as I looked back at the last 6 days, I haven’t focused on my happiness in a long time. I lived for a long time looking to things (computers, video games, TV, and other distractions) and other people to make me happy. I put very little effort into making myself happy.

I already mentioned that I am forgoing your standard resolutions this year and replacing it with a love list. I am going to focus on this list of things I love and want to start this year, because the act of starting is often the hardest part of actually doing anything. For example, running isn’t hard after a few times out, but getting your shoes on and going outside is infinitely more difficult. Once you start, the running part is easy.

All of it begins with the first item on my love list: Be on top of my priorities & make sure I fund them. No procrastination. The first step to happiness: be mindful of your priorities (the people, activities, and things you are passionate about) and make sure you give them the attention and energy they deserve. To make those small, daily decisions that push those things forward. That’s the one habit I want to build in 2012. If I can do that, I’ll accomplish a lot. There’s no excuse for not doing that, if you really truly care.

In addition to not funding my happiness, the thing I’ve been good at my whole life is procrastinating and taking the easy way out. And those habits play a part in your happiness. Merlin Mann summed it up well on a recent Back to Work podcast:

The more you procrastinate, the worse you feel. And we procrastinate when we feel bad. So we procrastinate more and it becomes a feedback loop. – Merlin Mann

So true. My behavior and attitude has played a large part in my happiness over the years. I haven’t been sad, per se, but not happy and full of life. A comfortable feeling, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but when you become complacent and stop growing you get stuck. And that’s where I’ve been.

I can do better. I’ve always felt like I could do anything I put my mind to, but somewhere along the way I got stuck. Now I am growing, looking inside myself, and changing my attitude toward everything important to me. It’s time to make those small efforts to move my happiness forward every day. So far it’s been great. It’s intoxicating even. Even as I went back to work on Tuesday, I’ve been productive (18 to-dos checked off in two days) and work hard every day to move something on my love list forward. Nine days and counting. Each day great.

So, my advice for the new year?

Start more of what you love. Just start. Make those daily decisions that push those things forward and don’t make excuses. Don’t focus on the result, because each day you make those decisions, you are building the habit that will make success possible. Focusing on the result will only get you discouraged. That’s why most resolutions fail.

Just start. Every single day.

My 2012 Love List

2011-12-29T09:04:00-05:00

Instead of new year’s resolutions, I am going to make a love list. I got the idea from the blog Be More With Less and basically it’s a list of things you would love to do or start in the new year.

The list is fluid and will change as my life changes. I’m not going to judge myself if some of these don’t get completed. I am going to put this list somewhere so I see it every day and spend at least part of my day moving one or more of these forward. And then at the end of 2012 I will do a retrospective to see how far I’ve come on these items.

“Success will never be a big step in the future; success is a small step taken just now.” ~Jonatan Mårtensson

My 2012 List

Be on top of my priorities & make sure I fund them. No procrastination.
Re-connect with friends.
Move my career forward.
Create an iPhone app. I have an idea and I think it’s a good one. Time to make that happen.
Exercise or Yoga 3 times per week.
Purge “stuff”.
Meditate every week.
Read one book per month.
Blog once per week.
Go on a spontaneous weekend trip.
Create my blog design.
Go camping at least twice.
Take more photos.
See more movies.
Go to more shows.
Go bowling more often.
Complete the 21-day Happiness Challenge

Do you have a love list for the new year? Please share!

Rules for 2012

2011-12-28T09:04:00-05:00

The rules of a creator’s life. (Creative Something)