Jamie Rubin, Evernote Evangelist for Paperless Living, posted today about how he organizes his notes in Evernote. In this helpful and detailed post about his organizational scheme, he explains the importance of having a clear set of goals for Evernote before you create or tweak your own organization system:

One things I’ve learned is that there can be as many organizational schemes as there are people using Evernote. There is no wrong or right way to do it. What I describe below works for me because it meets the goals I set out from the very start. And while the organizational scheme you choose may look entirely different, it should be based on a clear set of goals. You should be asking yourself: why are you trying to organize your notes in the first place?

A clear set of goals is something I was missing when I began using Evernote in 2008. The result is an “organizational scheme” that flirts daily with chaos. I’m still able to find notes and information when I need them, but it takes much longer than it should. I have too many notebooks and an absurd number of tags. I mean an absurd number of tags.

Early in the game, my philosophy was to tag liberally. So I did. Unfortunately, this renders my tags much less useful than they should be and causes friction every time I create a note and need to decide how to tag it. Further, I have countless tags which are being used on only one or two notes. Some tags aren’t being used on any!

Needless to say, my Evernote account needs some serious TLC. It’s a great tool and I still depend on it heavily as a part of my daily workflow. It would serve me well to invest a bit of time to do some housekeeping.

Step #1: Set some concrete goals.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

(Photo Credit: .pst)

That said, this post from App Storm may have convinced me to give it another try.  It’s packed full of useful tips, suggested tweaks, and other information to help you get the most out of Mail.app and your email workflow.

If you’re already a Mail.app user, then you should definitely give it a look.

If you use a different Mac or web email application, then perhaps this post will convince you to give it a(nother) try.

(via 52 Tiger)

Humility makes you disappear, which is why we avoid it.

Paul Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God in a Distracting World

Creating a new email is a quick process that takes me only a couple of seconds. I usually have Postbox, my email client of choice, running in the background. It’s simply a matter of switching to it using the Application Switcher (press ⌘Tab, holding down ⌘ and tapping the Tab button to cycle through your open applications), then pressing the keyboard shortcut C or ⌘N to compose a new email.

Unfortunately, it isn’t quite that easy to send a message via The City. Navigate to The City and login, if necessary. Click on “Messages.” Then click on “Write a Message” and I’m finally ready to compose my message. This isn’t the end of the world, but the process certainly isn’t as quick and snappy as sending an email.

Fortunately, using bookmarklets and keyboard shortcuts, it’s possible to make the process of creating a new message on The City almost as fast, saving precious time over the long haul.

Does your church use The City? If so, here’s how you set it up:

First, make sure your Bookmarks Bar is showing and not hidden. In Safari, you’ll find this under View > Show Bookmarks Bar. In Chrome, it’s View > Always Show Bookmarks Bar. If you prefer a keyboard shortcut, you can toggle your Bookmarks Bar in both browsers using ⇧⌘B.

Now, open up a tab in your browser to the “New Message” page on The City and click and drag the favicon for the page down to the Bookmarks Bar.

Safari immediately allows you to edit the name of the bookmark. You can edit the bookmark’s name in Chrome by right clicking and selecting Edit. Choose any name you wish. I typically use the shortest recognizable name possible in order to save room in my Bookmarks Bar.

Here’s where the real magic comes in. Safari assigns keyboard shortcuts to the first nine bookmarks in your Bookmarks Bar, in order from left to right. For example, you see in the photo above that my newly created City bookmark is third from the left. Therefore, to go to this bookmark, I press ⌘3. My Pinboard bookmarklet would be ⌘2 and Instapaper, ⌘1. ¹

Now, to create a new message on The City you simply pull up Safari, use the keyboard shortcut ⌘3, and you’re ready to start typing. ²

Simple. Fast.

I stumbled upon this helpful idea on the mosx tumblelog yesterday.

This little TextExpander snippet will change 2012 to 2013 whenever I type it. Simple, but effective. I anticipate it will save me a lot of frustration over the next month or two.

We call this new feature the “OmniFocus Mail Drop”. Unlike previous mail-processing features, we wanted a method that wouldn’t require any of your devices to be present in order to add items to OmniFocus, we wanted to add the much-requested better attachment support, and we wanted to reduce the amount of extra work you had to do in order to get your items into OmniFocus as much as possible.

To this end, we implemented the feature as part of the Omni Sync Server. Accounts on the server can now have a special email address generated. Any message forwarded or sent to that address will be processed (including attachments) and added to your OmniFocus database right there on the server.

This is going to make it a lot easier to process emails and get them into OmniFocus when I’m away from my computer. My iPhone just became a much more valuable tool for managing my email workflow.

Find out more about the OmniFocus Mail Drop, including how to sign up here.

It’s a fresh lie for a fresh year. ‘Cause, if you were really resolved to do something, you wouldn’t need a calendar to tell you it’s time. ²

It’s a good point, really. If there’s a change worth making in my life, then why would I wait for January 1 to make it? Why not make that change today? Probably because I’m not very serious about making said change.

Maybe it seems weird that an Internet publication, especially one devoted to covering technology, would be urging people to spend less time online. But here we are. 

I’m guessing that a lot of our readers are like us, and have mixed feelings about how much time we’re all spending online. And maybe, if we all put our heads together, we can find a solution.

In my case it’s all about my kids. They’re twins, age 7. I have this terrible fear that they’re going to remember me as some old guy who lived in their house when they were kids and was always staring at a smartphone. Or, worse, they’ll remember me as some guy who was always in another city, calling home once a day to say good night.

As someone who necessarily spends a lot of time online, sitting in front of a computer, I’m really looking forward to following this series. In our busy, fast–moving, always on, always connected world, I want lead my family well and model healthy, God–honoring discipline in this area of my life.

It’s good to see others wrestling with this as well—especially the staff at a widely read tech blog.

What I did not know, was that the more clear I got about who we were theologically, culturally, and functionally would help people know that our church was not for them. A vague vision leaves room for everyone, but a clear vision does not. If no one ever leaves your church it may be that your vision is simply to vague. I wish I could go back and tell myself to prepare to lose people as I became more clear regarding who God had called us to be.

Ryan Huguley on clarity of vision and the three most prominent lessons he learned in the first three years of planting a church.

To say that Launch Center Pro is an app launcher doesn’t quite do it justice. The App Cubby website describes it this way:

It’s like speed dial, but for more than just phone calls! Launch Center Pro creates lightning quick shortcuts to specific features buried deep within apps.

You see, it doesn’t just launch applications (though it does, in fact, launch applications). It provides direct, one-touch access to many of the functions performed by applications.  For example, if I want to create a Day One journal entry every day with the day’s weather, I can set a shortcut within Launch Center Pro to create a journal entry entitled, “Today’s Weather Forecast.”

With Launch Center Pro’s long and growing list of supported apps, the possibilities are nearly endless.

My Setup

Below I’ve included screenshots of my Launch Center Pro setup. Admittedly, it’s still relatively basic. I’m hoping to spend more time in the next week or two customizing it and making better use of its access to features within my apps.

When I open Launch Center Pro, you see my home screen, which includes twelve buttons:  four action buttons and eight group buttons. ¹

Photography

The Photography group is fairly straightforward and includes icons for all photography apps I use that integrate with Launch Center Pro.

The Instagram icon, for example, launches directly to the Instagram camera.

You will notice that the native iPhone camera is not represented among the icons. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Launch Center Pro. I take a lot of pictures with my phone, so it sits in my dock for quick access. ²

Flashlight

Flashlight is a stock action button which turns on the LED flash on the back of your iPhone. It seems like I use my iPhone as a flashlight almost every day, so I chose to keep it on my home screen.

Brightness

The brightness action button toggles your screen brightness between two customizable levels. This is useful, especially when I’m using my phone in low light settings.

Capture

The Capture group contains action icons that allow me to capture text and information quickly. I have action buttons for Byword, Simplenote and Day One that create new notes or entries with one swipe of my finger.

Drafts and Sparrow

I use both of these applications heavily, so they own real estate on my homescreen.  Sparrow is my email client of choice for the iPhone.  Drafts allows me to create a plain text notes quickly and then send them to a long list of destinations, including Evernote, Dropbox, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Productivity

The productivity group contains many of the tools I use to get work done. You will see icons for some of my favorite productivity apps including Agenda Calendar, Due, Evernote, OmniFocus, and Dropbox. It also includes action buttons to create a new calendar entry, create a new email, and create a new reminder in Due.

OmniFocus

I’ve post about OmniFocus and Launch Center Pro previously. ³  Launch Center Pro’s deep integration with OmniFocus makes it worth the price of purchase alone. It’s a perfect example of the power and time-saving potential of this application.

If you use OmniFocus to manage your tasks, then pick up Launch Center Pro today.

Read

The name pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?  I use this group most often to access Instapaper, Reeder, and my Bible app.

Social

I can compose a new tweet, check my Facebook News Feed, or launch Google+ via my Social group. I would love to add Tumblr to the mix. Unfortunately, however, Tumblr doesn’t offer Launch Center Pro integration at this time.

Call/Text

The Call/Text group includes direct dial and direct text message actions for a few select contacts (my wife, etc.). It also includes Google Voice and a dial-by-contact action button which simply pulls up a search field.  Enter a few letters from any contact’s name, select the phone number you want to dial (work, mobile, etc.), and it makes the call. Pretty snappy.

Google Voice integration is a bit of a disappointment. I use my Google Voice phone number to communicate with 90% of my contacts. Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow Launch Center Pro to access any of its buried features. This means no direct dial options and no action button to compose a text message to a specific contact. The simple ability to open the Google Voice app directly to the dialer or my text message inbox would be helpful, but no dice.

This isn’t a Launch Center Pro issue, it’s a Google issue. Perhaps the Google Voice developers will consider opening up their app and allowing deeper integration in the future? I won’t hold my breath.

Listen

Finally, the Listen group offers access to Spotify, Pandora, the native Music app, and others.  The Apple Podcasts app does not support Launch Center Pro. ⁴

Wrap Up

I like Launch Center Pro. I like it a lot.

One can expect the list of supported apps and actions to grow, especially as Launch Center Pro gains popularity.

As I said previously, my setup is relatively basic and still evolving. I’ll continue to tweak it over time in order to better suite my needs and maximize the amount of time savings I can squeeze from it.

It’s currently 40% off “for a limited time.” Pick it up in the App Store today.