Internet Business Productivity

Part 7 - Simplifications and Annoyances - iPad as my main computer

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:00:51 -0700

As I mentioned in my last post about the "fun" aspect of the iPad, it's been a month since I really started using the iPad for most of my computer-related tasks and I've gotten some great feedback from all of you reading my blog and my tweets and shares. Now it's time to share the Good, the Bad and the Ugly about working on the iPad and how I've managed to simplify my work even more.

My Dropbox setup

As I mentioned in my post about clouds, on of the main storage options for me on the iPad is still Dropbox and I use it like this:

I have a main Dropbox account where I store all of my data and I access it mainly through the Dropbox app and Good Reader.

I set up a secondary Dropbox account that shares all of its folders with my main account and I use this account for most of the apps on my iPad. I just don't trust all the apps to have access to my main Dropbox account and all of my files. Only the files located on the secondary account.

What annoys me: Dropbox app on the iPad doesn't actually "sync" with the iPad. I mean, if you "star" some files, they'll be offline but you can't "star" folders to have really a seamless offline storage on the iPad. There is a 2-year old thread on the Dropbox forums about it and they still haven't done it. Seriously? I have a 64GB iPad and cannot sync the 5GB of Dropbox files to it? Why not?

My Evernote setup

Because of what I mentioned earlier, I use Evernote as my main cloud storage now. It has "offline notebooks" and syncs them beautifully. I'm now emailing lots of stuff to Evernote (more than I used to) as I prefer to store the info there and have it offline on my iPad whenever I want. The legendary search and OCR of Evernote works great, too and their iPhone apps (together with Food and Hello apps) help me get more stuff to Evernote and let me have the information at my fingertips at all times.

Side-note: Nozbe syncs with Evernote and we're working on a tighter sync with them to make sure I can make any of my notes "actionable" and "sharable" with others. Can't wait for that to happen.

What annoys me: Their iPad app has gotten a lot better over the years and I love it... but "processing" notes is not ideal. I cannot easily "move" my notes from my "inbox" notebook to their corresponding notebooks - need to edit the note first and then change notebook. This can be done a lot better (and the Mac app is better for it). Hope they'll improve it on the iPad.

Nebulous for writing

I got rid of Simplenote. It was cool when it lasted but when writing a note in Simplenote it got "accidentally" deleted when I was typing it (due to issues with their sync) I decided not to trust it anymore. Now I just use Nebulous for all of my writing. It works seamlessly with Dropbox and has great searching capabilities. I wish it synced with Evernote, too. Dropping Simplenote let me focus on Evernote and Dropbox as my main clouds now.

I simplified my blog posting routine: Now I write all my blog posts in Nebulous where they are saved in Dropbox automagically. The app has a "full screen" view, spell check and preview of the Markdown code which I use for typing. I send my blog posts directly from this app to my blog. Sweet :-)

What annoys me: Not much, lack of Evernote sync and "focus" mode of AI Writer. Other than that, it's great.

Other apps I frequently use:

Textastic for coding - I don't do much coding these days but when I do, this app does the trick. Very cool indeed. Works fast, is very stable. Nice.

Clipboard History - it's not ideal, it crashes at times and I need to switch to it to save stuff from clipboard (I wish it copied everything I copy to clipboard in the background but I don't think iOS allows for this). I just wish iOS had a full clipboard history built in.

TextExpander - I use built in keyboard shortcuts in iOS but for longer text snippets I use TextExpander. Many apps work with it, including Nebulous and AI Writer.

A note on keyboard shortcuts

Many folks asked me about it. iPad is not a PC. It's a touch interface and one can argue if the lack of keyboard shortcuts is a problem or not. I just don't like keyboard anymore. Yes, I love it for typing (just like I typed this blog post) but I don't use it all that much when I use the iPad. I prefer to use the iPad alone, type short things on the on-screen keyboard and just use my fingers to navigate and move around. Keyboard is an "additional thingy" to the iPad, it's not an integral part of it. Some of you might not like it. I love it and I think that this is the future of personal computing. That's also the reason why I went with the Zagg Flex Keyboard instead of any "cover with keyboard" - I don't want a "netbook" - I want an iPad.

Next up: Office, Browsing and Social Media

In my next posts I'll focus on these aspects of my "computing" life and why iPad excels in these and why I love working on it even more... stay tuned.

How did you simplify your iPad life? Which apps help you simplify your workflows?

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Part 6 - Portability and Fun - iPad as my main computer

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:18:42 -0700

I'm back from my holiday trip and back after a long and tiring week of work (we just launched new Nozbe Desktop and new Productive! Magazine issue! Yay! :-) and it's time to get back to posting about my workflow and my new toy, I mean, "work device" called the iPad. This time we'll focus on iPad's real strengths - portability and fun.

A month has passed...

It's been more than a month since I picked up my new shiny iPad 3 and decided to do most of my work on this new device instead of my trusty Macbook Air. It was also the first time I went for a two-week trip without my laptop. Here are some thoughts on that.

iPad is very portable... duh!

It's not like I discovered something here. iPad is half the weight of my Macbook Air and half the size. This means I can put it into my man-purse and take it with me. No need for a full-blown backpack there. 10 hour batter life is exactly that - 10 hours worth of life - each 10% is one hour. Sweet and very long. On my trip (as I wasn't working a lot) I used to charge it every 3-4 days. When I'm back, I charge it basically every night. I don't use cables in between.

iPad is just more convenient when traveling

It's just not clumsy when I want to pull it up from my bag and use it. I take it in one hand, use the other to navigate and that's it. A lot more comfortable than using a laptop on a trip (try to hold a laptop on one hand and type with the other!). I don't need to sit. I can just stand (or walk slowly) and use it. Sweet.

iPad means more "fun" than "work"

When I pick up my laptop, I tend to think "work" and start opening up web sites, checking email, etc. When I pick up my iPad I firstly ask myself this question: "Is there anything I absolutely need to do now?" As I have my flows for work nicely designed on the iPad, if I don't need to work at this moment I simply open up Kindle app (for ebooks), Reeder app (for news) or Pocket app (for the articles I've saved) and start reading. And I usually use it in portrait mode, without keyboard and stuff. It just naturally transforms itself from a "work machine" to a "play machine" or simply a very versatile "reader device".

This was especially convenient on a plane. I'd use it at times with my Zagg keyboard to write things (i.e. "create") and then I'd just pick it up to read. A real Transformer :-)

I tend to use the iPad more now

This week has been crazy. We've been working a lot just to catch up, we've launched a few things and we've mainly succeeded. And the whole week long I preferred to just pick up my iPad to work instead of my laptop. I just enjoyed working on the iPad more... it's just more fun, I feel more and more productive on it every day now... and I hardly need my laptop anymore. We'll see in months to come, but I lean towards my iPad a lot more these days than towards my laptop. Strange feeling, you know?

Do you use iPad a lot these days, too? How do you use it?

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Traveling America - Tips and Tricks

Sun, 06 May 2012 08:23:38 -0700

I live in Europe and I'm not American... but I do like to travel to the USA every now and then (usually two times per year). Mostly business mixed with leisure. When my friends want to go to the USA they ask me for tips and tricks. So I thought I'd write a blog post hoping, that my American friends (as well as my other European friends who also travel to the USA) who read this blog will add their tips in the comments. Please do. I'm by no means an expert.

Prices in America

Well, American currency is US Dollar and you're expected to use this "green" currency. What you will not expect when you come here for the first time is that pricing in the USA is "different". In Europe the prices you see are the final prices. If something costs 10 EUR, that's what you pay. Our VAT ("value added tax") is included in the price. In the USA the prices don't include the "sales tax" which varies in different states (or even counties) so if something costs $10, it usually costs $10 + ~ 8-10% sales tax which means it costs you almost $11 dollars. And the tricky part is that some shops do display final prices. But only some. Most don't. You'll find out what you'll have to pay only at the cashier.

Prices in the restaurants get even trickier. If you're ordering $10 burger, it will cost you that, plus sales tax plus a tip (aka. "service fee") of around 15%. Meaning a $10 burger will cost you at least $13 bucks. And it's not like in Europe where you give a 5-10% tip "if you like the service" - they expect you to pay 15% every time. If you want to pay the full price for your meal without sales tax and tip, get a $2 hot-dog from a hot-dog stand in Manhattan, NYC :-)

Other than that, prices in America for most goods are lower than in Europe, so once you've understood how the system works and don't feel ripped off by the taxes and tips, you'll enjoy better prices than on the old continent in the Euro-zone.

Renting a car

Distances in America are seriously huge so unless you're going to NYC-Manhattan with great metro-public-transport system, go get a car. Now this part gets tricky as there are many sites advertising great prices but many fail to mention the insurance. The car-rental companies make it even more difficult with various insurance options and it's easy to get lost. My basic health insurance for travels doesn't include car insurance in the USA and chances are your doesn't too, so make sure to purchase CDW (Collision Damage Waiver) with your car rental - it basically means you're not responsible for the car "at all" and it costs from $15-40 per day and many price-comparision web sites failed to mention it.

I've had many strange experiences with renting a car where I'd rent quite cheaply and then see I'd have to pay around $30 a day for insurance. That's why I recommend companies like Alamo where they put the insurance in the price right there. I've also had a car from Enterprise, Budget (where I overpaid for insurance) and others but I keep coming back to Alamo. Whatever company you choose, make sure it's pretty close to the Airport terminal and rent a car for the whole stay. It's very convenient to get from the plane to the car and later drive back and go straight to the terminal. And one more thing - get a big car - usually the price difference between compact and mid-sized or even full-sized cars is minor ($10-$20 for the whole stay) and it's really comfortable to travel in a bigger car.

When driving, mind the signs on the roads, especially when it comes to parking. They have "street cleaning" and some parts of the streets are parking only at certain hours. I learned this the hard way when they towed away my car - this lesson cost me $250. It's cheaper to spend $20 for overnight parking in a big city.

Hotels

As America is a car-friendly country, you can find a motel almost anywhere. Cheap motels (around $50 per night) can be really good at times, most are fully equipped and are relatively clean. If you're not on a budget, I recommend hotels around the $100-$150 price range which are really good. These "Inns" offer breakfast (more on that later) and very big rooms, mostly with flat-screen TVs and big bathrooms (and very often have swimming pools). If you choose "Hyatt Place", "Hampton Inn" or "Holiday Inn Express" you can't go wrong with either of them.

In big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City... double or even triple (in case of NYC) these prices. It's a whole different world out there.

The motels and inns usually offer "continental" or "american" breakfast which basically means no veggies, but coffee, waffles, scrumbled eggs, bacon and yoghourts. Your most important skill will be to learn how to do waffles - I love it :-) Even though the breakfast is by no means complete, it's great to be able to wake up, go to the breakfast room and have some coffee and something to eat without dressing up and all of this.

Shopping

You might not consider traveling to the USA for shopping purposes but think again. This is a shopper's paradise. The electronic gear is cheaper (laptops, cams, Apple products) - just remember that there will always sales tax added to the price. Clothing is a lot cheaper than in Europe. As I'm trying to live a lot more minimalistic life now, I've basically given away my old clothes and buy only a little of each type of clothing... and I buy them in the States and I buy them from the best brands (quality-wise, I'm not a show-off :-) in the huge Outlet stores in the USA. Now I really enjoy my jeans, my polo-shirts, my pants, everything. Just find an Outlet Mall on your way.

To compare the prices let me give you an example: An original Polo Shirt from Ralph Lauren costs in Europe 100 EUR. In the States it's about $75 in Macy's, in the RL official outlet store it's $45 and in Marshall's Store (where they have many brands) it can cost $35 (~25 EUR). It's still quite expensive for just a shirt, but I have only a few of these and I love wearing them. Again, becoming a minimalist teaches you to buy yourself good things, but few of them and only the ones you truly enjoy wearing.

If you go to Macy's - you can find great prices there. First off, get yourself an "international traveller's card" - just ask any cashier - it's 10% off on almost everything you buy (after all the discounts) and shop around first in their online store. When you go to their store and see something that costs more than in their online store, they have to match this price. My wife does it all the time. And she loves purses from Macy's :-)

Cosmetics from companies like Clinique or Estee Lauder is half the price (compared to Europe) so if you use them, buy them in the States. I use after-shave from Clinique and it lasts me for half a year (and I shave daily) so I bought two for an entire year worth of shaving :-)

As for electronics gear, this is a paradise for me - they have more gadgets than anywhere else, especially if I need a certain type of thingy for my iPhone or iPad, I'll surely find it here. And I do. Usually Best Buy and Apple Stores are my travel points :-)

Internet connection

Most hotels offer some kind of Wi-fi connection, but it's usually crappy. But it works. Starbucks and McDonalds offer free Wi-fi and more and more coffee shops do that, too. Apple Stores have the best Wi-fi - I'm writing this post at an Apple Store in Los Angeles (in the Grove).

Do you have more tips for me?

That's it for now, in my next posts I'll focus on West and East Coast as I've travelled some here. If you've also traveled to the USA, please share your tips below in the comments! I hope my American friends will also contribute with their tips as they actually live here.

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Part 5 - Traveling - iPad as my main computer

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:22:58 -0700

On Monday we landed in Los Angeles for our two-week vacation with my wife visiting West-Coast, Grand Canyon and other spectacular sites nearby. It's the first trip ever that I didn't take my laptop with me. Normally even though I wouldn't work too much (as I really want to spend this time with my wife), but as my laptop is (was) the center of my digital life (and I am a geek), I'd take it anyway. Now that I'm on my iPad only trial I just took my iPad. And nothing more. And I even planned the whole trip on the iPad. Here's how:

iPad is ideal for traveling... because it's so small

First let me tell you that iPad as such is ideal for traveling. Weights a lot less than my laptop (which is already an ultra-light Macbook Air!), needs less accessories, holds 10 hours on battery without any problem and can be turned on really instantly which is seriously amazing. It's a perfect travel computer as such. And when I want to read something, it converts to an ebook reader in an instant.

Great apps for traveling help you plan the trip

Traveling with an iPad? There are apps for that! Here are the ones I used:

TripIt! - thanks to the suggestion by David Pogue of the NYT, this is the "mother of all travel apps". When I ordered our plane ticket, rented car, hotel... whatever, I'd always receive a confirmation email. Forward it to TripIt and it beautifully parses the emails and adds them to the app. Perfect. In my last post I mentioned why I love how the apps work with email.
Booking - I've been always using Booking.com for booking hotels and the iPad app works beautifully, too. I stopped using the web site, only use the app now.
FlightRadar24 and Flightrack PRO - both apps are great for following the airplanes, making sure we're not late and having up-to-date info about the flights. The latter syncs with my TripIt account which is really neat :-)
Navigon and Google Maps - I use navigation on my iPhone (Navigon in Europe and Copilot Live in the USA) by an extra view of the maps on my iPad helps me plan a trip. Google Maps app on the iPad is still a joy to use.
The Weather Channel - great app for watching weather forecast in various places at a time. Indispensable.
Evernote - as Evernote is my personal brain, I forward my travel confirmations there as well, just to make sure I can access and search them anytime. It's a backup solution for me, although I prefer the view that TripIt offers me. But I still have the habit of sending stuff to Evernote just in case.
Mercury Browser - I use this browser very often especially when ordering flights or cars as many web sites detect the iPad as a mobile phone and send me over to a crippled mobile site and won't even let me to go to their "normal" site. Mercury Browser has an ability to "imitate" I'm not on the iPad and it works.
1Password - I use this to store passwords across all of my devices. Works beautifully and this app is one of the essentials on the iPad for any type of browsing, especially accessing different travel sites with my credentials. Or my banking account.

What's the journey going to be like? Should be fun!

I'm only starting my two-week trip so I'll be posting later how iPad worked, but so far so good. The planning and preparation on the iPad worked beautifully. Now it's time to see how iPad substitutes my main computer on this journey. Fingers crossed!

How do you find traveling with the iPad? Any tips or apps I missed?

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Seven years married to my best friend

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:43:02 -0700

Yesterday (Monday) exactly seven years ago me and my wife said "yes" and commenced our journey together through life as husband and wife. Suffice to say, we still love each other and currently we are celebrating our anniversary traveling only two of us (we left our 3-year old daughter with my parents). As every young couple we've had our ups and downs but I think that over the years what was the key to our successful (so far!) relationship was this: My wife is my best friend.

When Harry met Sally

This is our favorite movie as it's quite similar to our story in some sense... We met in high-school and instantly became very good friends. We both liked dancing, partying and going to the movies. We had many things in common. Yet we never "clicked" romantically. As we grew older our friendship matured. I had my share of relationships with other girls, my wife with other guys, we'd consult one another and help each other in trying times. All as friends. Even though I considered my friend "sexy" I didn't want to spoil this perfect friendship. We both didn't want that... but we eventually couldn't help it. We were falling in love and finally we stopped being just friends. We've known each other a little over 10 years when we got married. Crazy, huh?

A key to successful marriage is Friendship

In one of his blog posts Michael Hyatt writes the very same thing and he has more than 30 years of marriage to confirm that, but as we live in our relationship 7 years now and have friends who are couples (married and not... and not anymore) we have also noticed that love and sex are great (and they really are!), but at the end of the day, it's the friendship that helps you stay together every single day.

The worst that can happen is that you spend an evening with the person you like most

When my wife was doing an internship in an European Agency we would party a lot with our friends who were also interns and most of them were singles. They had to go out as much as they could... as their alternative was a lonely apartment. We partied a lot, but when we didn't feel like it, we'd always enjoy a quiet evening, because either way we were spending it with a person we liked the most anyway. And this is what counts.

Friends and buddies change... your significant other does not

Over the years I've had many good buddies, great friends and fantastic pals... but times changed, we moved, they moved, we keep in touch but priorities also change. My wife is still with me and she's still my best friend. And I do hope she's here to stay :-)

Learn to be friends if you're not yet...

We've seen couples base their relationships on different things than friendship... and it works OK for them short-term, but with years the fact that they don't share interests together and just plainly don't spend "fun" time together pays its dues. They start living separate lives. And I don't think it's ever too late to become a friend (and hopefully the best friend) of your significant other.

"She wants what's best for me and I want what's best for her"

These words aren't mine. My father (36 years married to my mother) said this to me before my wedding day when I asked him about his secret to a long, lasting and loving marriage. Everyone who knows my parents knows they live by this rule to this day. And they are best friends, too - even though they got married one year after they first met.

I didn't write this post to brag. I don't know what the future holds and I'm happy with me and my wife (and my daughter) and our small milestone today. I'm just happy that I'm married to my "sexy" best friend :-)

What's your key to a successful relationship?

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Productivity with Jason Womack - video interview for Productive! magazine #12

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:37:44 -0700

Finally we're getting the Productive Magazine #12 ready and this time I'm excited to present you a person I admire who's one of the top productivity and performance experts in the world, Jason Womack - and here's a short 13-minute interview I did with him a while back:

View and comment on YouTube

And especially for the iPad version of the Magazine I quickly did a one-minute re-cap of our interview. After watching it you will want to watch the entire thing :-)

Here's one minute with Jason Womack:

Best regards,

- Michael

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Part 4 - Email, clouds and APIs - iPad as my main computer

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:28:17 -0700

The more I use the iPad the more I explore its "nuts and bolts". The more apps I try the less I need... and the more I appreciate the small, subtle things app designers have gone to actually make my new "productivity machine" better. In this part of my iPad-only saga I'm going to focus on several aspects of my iPad's apps:

Email. To zero. Every day.

When I wrote my first post on the iPad two years ago I didn't know it'd be so true. Processing emails on the iPad to zero is so beautiful. It's really great. I'm "touching" emails and processing my inbox to zero every single day. I love it. The best part is that my Mail application is not "asking for attention" in the dock, it's there when I need it... and I use it several times a day and it's a great experience every time.

Email integrations work, and help.

When you're on a desktop is so easy to drag and drop files to other apps, to desktop and take it from there... here on the iPad I start appreciating how many apps have taken a great approach to Email integration and enable me to "forward" emails to them. Evernote, Nozbe (of course!), Tripit, Buffer, Kindle... and many others. I find myself emailing other apps a lot more often than before... thus processing email to zero even faster!

I love the APIs of apps. They play so well together!

My favorite "content consuming" apps are Reeder, Tweetbot, Pocket (formerly Read-it-later) and well, Safari. Except for the last one, all are very tightly integrated with each other as well as my clouds like Evernote od Dropbox so this makes using them a breeze and making sure I don't lose the articles I want to keep or read later (for which the iPad is a beautiful machine, too :-)

Bonus - IFTTT = If This Than That

This service is like "one API to rule them (APIs) all" and I've already configured it to post all of my Instagram photos to Evernote, when I star an item in Twitter or Google Reader, send them to Evernote or Pocket... and other stuff. It's like an Automator for the web... and for my iPad. Works beautifully.

Bonus 2 - GoodReader - one app to integrate them all

I can't say enough about GoodReader - I thought wrongly that it's "only a PDF reader" but it's an app that integrates all the "files" on my iPad with my clouds and other apps. This is a must-have if you're serious about the iPad as your working machine.

Bonus 3 - Second Dropbox account

As I mentioned, one of my main clouds is Dropbox and I can't say enough about it. I store many files on my Dropbox account and need GoodReader to have access to all of them... but I don't need all of the apps to have access to my entire Dropbox account so I decided to create a second dropbox account which shares some files and some folders with my main Dropbox account. The second account is free with 2GB of storage but it's plenty enough for my needs and for the needs of the apps that sync with it. All of the folders I have on this account are being shared with my main account... so that I can access this second account from my main account but not the other way round (for all the files). This way I'm less "scared" when I give access to my Dropbox folder to all of the apps that ask for it.

The last bonus - iSMEStorage

To enable Dropbox to WebDav sync - which in turn gives me access to my Dropbox files directly through WebDav from the Pages, Keynote and Numbers apps, I needed to buy a $5 app called iSMEStorage - there is no subscription, just an "iOS only" plan where I can set it up to "translate" my Dropbox files to WebDav.

There are more tips coming

As I'm discovering my iPad only way I'm finding more and more subtle things that, once set up right, help me work more efficiently on my iPad and in many way more "focused" than ever before.

Do you have any tips for me? Do let me know!

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Video of my dual-monitor setup for twice the productivity

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 05:37:04 -0700

This weekend I posted a new Productive! Show video - episode #43 where I'm showing my typical home-office setup before my iPad only experiment. I like dual-screen setup as it helps me quickly change focus and I'm sure that after my experiment I'll very often support my working on the iPad with an additional screen. For now, this is how my typical-pre-iPad-only setup looked like and why it's very productive:

Watch and comment on YouTube

I already discussed two-monitor setup on my blog before. Now in a video I'm showing you how it works for me. Does it work for you, too? Please let me know if you ever tried it :-)

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Part 3 - Designing Flows - iPad as my main computer

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 06:35:41 -0700

Many people have asked me why I'm trying to go iPad-only when I'm so productive on the Mac and don't really need to go so far. Well, apart from being excited by the challenge and the new gadget, the other thing is to really re-think how I use my computer and why I do things I do the same way. I've already discovered in my last posts that I need to use different cloud services and also need to change the way I write which brings me to the real deal here: I'm really re-designing my "flows" or processes

The work is not a place to go, it's a thing you do - was my favorite quote when I was writing my master thesis years ago about tele-working... and the "PC" is also just a machine that should help us get our stuff done... unless we are in the "PC-manufacturing/repairing" business where the PC is our job.

My iPad-only work imposes constraints that make me re-think how I use computer every day

As you have seen in my post about writing - I have to "design" the way I do writing on the iPad and the Mac. I have to make sure there's almost no friction there and I focus on writing and not on "setting up to write". I want to get my writing done as easily as possible.

There are more processes to come

What I'm saying here is that over the course of next weeks you'll see more "flows" or "processes" on this blog where I'll be explaining how I do stuff on the iPad with the apps at hand. I'll be posting how I:

do photo management and sharing with m family
do videos for my show and for my family
do coding
do feedback loops with my team
do email
do reading
do listening
do everything else...

These all are completely new processes for me and I'm studying them to make sure I finally get them right, with as few apps and services as possible but also in the most focused way possible, too.

My iPad became my ultimate flow-management tool

Thanks to the fact that the iPad is so small, so full of great, focused apps, I can learn new processes and optimize the way I use my computer. And because there are no windows on the iPad, there are no distractions. It's a different beast but my guess is, that even if I do get back to work on my computer for 20% of my time, I'll be working on it in a totally different way than before, thinking about these processes a lot more.

Which flows do you use? How do you design your "processes" on your PC or your iPad or iPhone? Have you thought about your computer this way before?

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Part 2 - Writing - iPad as my main computer

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:55:44 -0700

It's been almost a week since I got my new iPad and decided to work iPad-only and I've been enjoying the experience very much. I started with setting up my 7 cloud services which not only help me keep only the relevant stuff on my iPad but also sync beautifully with both my iPhone and my Mac. Today I finished compiling the #12 issue of the Productive! Magazine entirely on the iPad and wrote several articles so I'll focus on how the iPad works as a writer's machine.

The hardware: iPad + keyboard

Most of the time I type using the on-screen keyboard and funny enough it works pretty well. I can "almost" touch-type which is actually surprising. I can type pretty fast on this thing.

However, for some serious typing (like this blog post) I tend to use an external Bluetooth keyboard for two reasons:

1) I can really touch type and don't think about it at all
2) I can see the entire screen and actually use the iPad in the portrait mode which is simply designed for typing.

My keyboard of choice is the ZaggKeys Flex keyboard and it's amazing. I believe it's the lightest and the smallest Bluetooth keyboard out there and it has an amazingly cool "keyboard cover" which serves as an iPad stand. Brilliant and very useful.

Up on the picture you can see me reviewing the interview I did with Jason Womack - and both my iPad and my iPhone are supported by the Zagg's stand.

The other cool thing about the keyboard is that it doesn't change my iPad into a "netbook" just like other "folios" or "covers" do. I still prefer to have "just the iPad with smart-cover" and use the keyboard occasionally.

When I check emails and process them to zero, I actually like to have my iPad flat on the table to "touch" the emails with less effort and have the keyboard handy in case I need to fire up a quick reply. Although very often I process to zero and write short replies with just the on-screen keyboard.

Writer's apps and the cloud.

Just like I mentioned in my last post most of my writing is done in Simplenote and stored in its cloud there. Simplenote is an elegant writer as such. However sometimes I need to write "richer" articles and this post I'm writing in "Markdown" so I decided to use a different setup.

1) I set up Nebulous and AI Writer to use Dropbox and have a folder there called "MarkedTexts" where I save Markdown-powered text files.
2) I like to write in AI Writer 'cos it's more elegant than Nebulous and has the "focus-mode" which I love.
3) Later for final editing I switch to Nebulous because it also has a preview of Markdown.
4) Once the post is ready I quickly paste it to Pages to catch the spelling mistakes. Once that's done, the article is saved in Nebulous again (in Dropbox). From there I "email" the article to Posterous.
5) That's it. I've been typing it on my Zagg Keyboard having the iPad in horizontal position. Sweet.

As a bonus I paste all of my articles to Simplenote to be able to access them quickly with Simplenote's ultra-fast search.

Bonus - Scrivener

I'm currently exploring some ideas for books and have drafts for three books in Scrivener on my Mac. Thanks to suggestions from Augusto Pinaud I've managed to sync my Scrivener drafts with Dropbox and Nebulous to be able to edit them on the go with my iPad.

iPad is a pretty slick writer's machine

I'd say that after a few experiments iPad can be a pretty powerful writer's machine. It's focused interface, relatively big screen and full-screen apps... together with a good keyboard make it a very light and very portable writer's studio. Here's to me finishing at least one of the drafts and finally shipping my first ever full-blown book to you :-)

Have you ever tried writing on the iPad? What's your setup?

P.S. Here's one of the guys who wrote an entire book on the iPad without an external keyboard:

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Part 1 - the Clouds - iPad as my main computer

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:46:09 -0700

Today is my first day of working entirely on the iPad. As I mentioned in my last blog post over the course of the next weeks I will try to make this very iPad my only computer, actually spending 80%+ of my time working on the iPad. The last two days I've been setting it up and made a few discoveries... about the clouds and the significant part they'll play in my "iPad only" journey. Here we go:

Life in the cloud... and there are more clouds than we think

Lots of companies are talking about moving to the cloud and how it can be accomplished and there are many "cloud" services out there... and what I have found out is that in order for my ipad experiment to work I really need to use several cloud services and balance between storing data in the cloud and locally on my iPad. Luckily I have 64GB of storage so plenty to go by... but I need to go away from just storing everything here. It's not possible... and it's stupid. iPad is a post-PC device and needs a different approach. And it's very exciting :-)

7 Clouds to rule them all

Over the last few days I've been playing with different apps and setups and found out that there will be at least 7 cloud services involved in my iPad only setup, here they are in order of importance:

Cloud #1 - the iCloud for settings and some files

The default iCloud is of course the basis of my post-PC iPad - my contacts, calendars and other Apple-relevant stuff is synced via iCloud. Many apps (like "Day One" for journal) also sync via iCloud. We are using a common iCloud account with my wife to sync our contacts and calendar as well as our particular iCloud accounts for our personal needs. I'll talk about this setup sometime in the future. Oh, and my iPad will sync today for the first time with the iCloud. Exciting.

Cloud #2 - Dropbox for most of the files

Most of my "normal" files are synced via Dropbox - I'm a premium member but have found out that with about 10Gig of space I'm pretty much covered for most of my file storage. Many apps sync with Dropbox (like 1Password) which is great and helps me stay in sync with my home PC if I need to. Dropbox apart from the iCloud is the second storage space I will use a lot on my iPad.

Cloud #3 - Evernote for media-rich notes and stuff

I'm a big Evernote fan and I've been using them for three years now. That's why it was so important to me that Evernote synced with my Nozbe project management app. Thanks to Evernote I'm not "producing" so many files anymore (hence no need for a very big Dropbox) - I dump many things to Evernote, my sketches, scans, documents, I clip articles I find interesting thanks to the Reeder integration... basically I treat Evernote as my second brain. The cool thing is that Evernote does OCR of images and makes them searchable thus making it my ultimate "dump service" for media-rich notes.

Cloud #4 - Kindle for eBooks and... PDFs

As I prefer audiobooks, I tend to directly use Audible app on my iPhone, but some books are not available in audio so I use Kindle... and recently I discovered that Kindle gives you 5GIG of storage for PDFs... and as a Productive! Magazine editor I get lots of PDFs to read. I used to keep some of these in Dropbox and others in Evernote... now I've removed them from both and sent everything to my free.kindle.com email address. Now I can read them in Kindle on my iPad and it remebers my last-read position... and it's a real joy to use. Great iPad-friendly discovery.

Cloud #5 - Simplenote for text-only notes

I write this blog post in SimpleNote. I've been using Notational Velocity on my Mac (NValt fork by Brett) and it syncs beautifully with Simplenote on my iPad. This serivce is far superior to Evernote for simple text-only notes. The search is instant and saving to the cloud as I type. Syncs with NValt on my Mac and has full-page writing mode. As I write very often (blog posts, articles, esseys) this one is a killer writer's cloud for me :-)

Cloud #6 - Nozbe for tasks

Of course I use Nozbe on the iPad for task and project management. I the iPad app designed by Macoscope guys as well as plain-easy Nozbe web interface. We are currently tweaking the Nozbe desktop interface to use it for the iPad as a web app - this will soon be available with more iPad-friendly look and feel. Now that I've moved to the iPad my team is working overtime to make it happen. Thanks to Nozbe we (team of 12) communicate through tasks and hardly send emails to one another. Nozbe syncs with my desktop on my Mac (we just released our Mac and PC app) as well as my iPhone.

Cloud #7 - Google for Mail, Docs and Calendars

Although I don't like where "getting evil" Google is going, I still can't replace my Gmail account as well as Docs for collaborative writing and Calendars for collaborative scheduling. I've set up my Gmail account in my Mail.app as well as the dedicated HTML5 Gmail app. I'm actually paying Google for more space there.

7 Clouds to manage them, one iPad to bind them

These are so far my most important "cloud" services and I'm happy I finally got around to re-designing my computer setup. The iPad only experiment made me re-think the way I work and I love the results so far. No longer is my PC my "central hub" the 7 Clouds are and they compliment my iPad beautifully. The major difference between the iPad and say a "chromebook" is that lots of stuff is still happening locally on my iPad, I can work offline most of the time... and when I connect the stuff syncs right away (although I do have 4G model so I'm very rarely offline).

Do you use "Clouds"? How does your setup look like? Did I miss anything?

Stay tuned for the next episode of my "iPad only" journey by following me on Twitter and subscribing to my blog. Thanks!

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iPad as my main computer - prologue

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:35:30 -0700

Two years ago when the first iPad arrived I wrote a post about how it will increase your productivity. I believe it's even more relevant today than it was then. Let me explain: I bought the first iPad right after it was on sale and I've loved playing with it, reading stuff on it, consuming content on it... and I've been using it as an "additional" device until today when my new new iPad (3rd generation - I skipped iPad2) arrived. I decided to give it a shot and start using it as my main computing device for the next 30 days and I will document it on this blog - here's my thesis:

iPad as it is today can beautifully cover 80% of my computing needs...

... and following the 80/20 Pareto rule it's more than enough... and I'm hoping to be happier and more productive on it. Let me explain:

My setup: White 64GB WiFi+4G iPad 3gen + ZaggKeys Flex keyboard

With this setup I'll be seeing how I can do computing in a totally different way. How I can focus on the essentials, be more productive and have more fun along the way. I will try to discover the true power of the cloud and how the limits the iPad can reach. I also understand it's not for everyone, but it might be for me. Let's see.

1. Light, connected, always online, working from anywhere

My current MacBook Air is 3 lbs and it's a 13" size, meaning it's quite light and quite portable... but the iPad is half the size and half the weight, lasts a good 10 hours on battery, is always connected to the Internet (4G model with flat rate Internet) meaning I can take it anywhere with me and nobody will even notice I have my entire "office" in a small bag. My dream has always been to work remotely from anywhere and I've been doing it my whole professional career running Nozbe but now I can go even more mobile with the iPad. It's inspiring and I want to see how far I can take it.

I've also seen some friends of mine use iPad a lot more and these are guys who I admire and who get serious stuff done with their iPads, so why not me? I'm a productivity guy after all, right?

2. New setup, new challenges, exploration

I remember the thrill of November 2008 when I bought my first Macbook Air and switched to the Mac after two decades with a DOS/Windows setup. I had to re-think many of my workflows, change my setups, start using different tools, different apps, rely on new things, throw away the old stuff and old thinking... it was like a fresh start and it was a big change... and I loved it. This is how I'm feeling now. This is going to be exciting!

3. The power of "The Cloud"

With the iPad as my main computing device I'll have to do things differently. I cannot replicate it as a "different kind of PC" - it's a post-PC device and it should be treated like that. Like Mark who started coding on the iPad without having a local server but using an external one. It's a different world and different approach and I'm curious how it'll go!

I'll have to rely even more on Dropbox, Evernote, maybe use VNC to my home PC or set up a different cloud server. We'll see how it goes but I'll be trying to gradually use my home PC (Mac Mini) less and try to work without it altogether. I don't know how far I'd go but the "cloud-centric" setup will be the key in my transition.

4. There is an app for almost everything

Most of the apps on the iPad are beautiful, focused and easy to use. They embrace the constraints of the device making them totally perfect for my focused productivity trial. And boy there are apps for almost everything. Seriously, the "there is an app for that" slogan fits perfectly here. Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be uncovering which apps I use, which make me productive and which make me miserable... this is going to be fun!

The only serious drawback I see in the iPad design is the "writing problem" - meaning, you can't touch-type on the iPad and it's essential for me not to think when I'm typing. That's why I bought myself a ZaggKeys Flex keyboard (actually got it as a gift from my parents, thanks folks! :-) - as far as I heard it's the lightest, smallest and slickest Bluetooth keyboard money can buy. I'll use it when I'll need to write more. I didn't want to settle for a "cover+keyboard" combo like ZaggFolio or other similar solutions as I simply don't want the bulk - I don't want a kinda-netbook thingy - I want an iPad with keyboard when I need it. I'll usually not carry it with me, only at times when I'll be getting some serious writing done.

5. Zen, simplicity and focus on productivity

In the next 30 days I'll try to prove I can be productive and happy while doing most of my work on the iPad. It's a big challenge and it might not work out, but the zen and simplicity aspect of it attracts me. The focus on apps that do "one thing at a time" and portability of taking my office anywhere seems really powerful... and beautiful.

Maybe it's just the geek in me, or maybe I'm just an Apple fanboy who bought into the hype of the post-PC era by Steve Jobs. Or maybe it is the future of computing. I'm not sure yet but I do want to find out.

It's only the beginning, stay tuned for updates.

Subscribe to my blog or just follow me on Twitter as I'll be updating this post with links to my future posts as my experiment takes shape. Today is the day one. I just got my new iPad and fed it with lots of apps. This is the prologue - it's the beginning. Fingers crossed, guys!

Did you ever try do do "more" on the iPad? How's your experience been? Do you have any tips for me as I'm starting this?

I'm Michael Sliwinski and I'm an entrepreneur who's also the...
.. Founder of Nozbe.com - a time and project management web application
.. Editor of Productive! Magazine - a global PDF publication on productivity
.. and a blogger as well as a producer of a weekly 2-minute Productive! show.

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Trick: how to write long emails without typing much

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:06:25 -0700

These days my Email Inbox it as always at zero, but my "Starred" folder with emails that need a longer reply from me has quite a backlog. I'll clean it up tomorrow so if you're waiting for a reply from me, tomorrow will be your lucky day! :-) Anyway, the problem with writing longer emails is that well... it takes so much time to write them. That's why I try to resort to only 5 sentences per email... but sometimes I need to write a longer one... and recently I found a great trick: Don't write, just talk!

Famous David Allen's 2-minute rule

As I mentioned, even though I have a backlog of a few emails I need to reply to, my Email inbox is at zero. I process the inbox 2-3 times a day and wipe it out - usually archiving everything, deleting a few mails, replying quickly to the ones I can reply to within 2 minutes or less, and "starring" emails that need my careful attention later. I recorded a Productive! Magazine Show video about it :-)

The 2-minute rule is really powerful and I use it especially when after reading a message I know exactly what I'm supposed to write back. If I know what I should write back, there's no time to wait, I reply write then. I'm a touch-typist so I do it fairly quickly. But what i I know what to write but I know for a fact the response will take me more than 2 minutes... more like 15-20? Well, there is a way of still replying right then.

Example of my conversation with Patrick Foley

Patrick Foley, a good friend of mine, was writing an article on pricing and wanted to pick my brain on my experiences with pricing Nozbe over the years, how I think startup owners should price their service, how I did it, what I learned from it.

As pricing is a topic I've been studying a lot over the years and I'm still experimenting with it... and as it's a crucial part of my business and reason why Nozbe, although being bootstrapped is a cash-flow positive company with a team of 12 now and growing, I wanted to share some thoughts with Patrick... but at the time I got his email I was busy getting Nozbe Desktop to launch and couldn't dedicate around 30 minutes to answering him in a long email, but I knew what I wanted to tell him and I didn't want him to wait for my answer... so what did I do?

There is an app for that: iPhone's built-in Voice Memos

I grabbed my iPhone and fired up the "Voice Memos" app and started dictating an answer to Patrick. It felt like if I was talking to him right there. I just explained him some of the basics and my logic behind pricing, how I feel pricing enables you to "choose your customers" etc. The recording took about 6 minutes. When I finished I clicked "share" button next to it and chose email - I wrote a quick note explaining why I chose this form of "writing email" and hoped my advice would help him.

Patrick replied quickly to me and thanked for my quick response and he commented on my voice message to him:

"I think most people fear it would be impersonal (at least I do) – yet it actually felt MORE personal to me."

I'm glad he felt like this, as it felt more personal to me, too. I really felt like I was talking to him via this voice message.

Voice is faster, use it and don't type so much!

I've used this trick several times now and will continue to use it even more. I think it's a very cool way of writing a personal and detailed message in no-time. If you've followed me long enough, you know I'm a big fan of voice - I don't read books, I listen to them (at 2x speed at that) and now I'm starting to talk a lot more via email than write... let's hope Siri gets even better - we'll get used to voice even more!

And by the way, Patrick's article is great, it's a must-read for anyone responsible for setting prices of their products. Go read it here and share it through the internets via the social medias :-) I'm glad my 2 cents helped him :-)

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Benefits of splitting a day

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:01:35 -0700

I've mentioned several times already that I split my day into two different halves. In the morning I focus on creating stuff and only after 12 pm I start replying to emails and responding to everybody. It's been working very good for me.

Mornings are just for me

Running a company requires lots of my time and I can find myself replying to emails all day long. By dividing my time to morning time and afternoon time I can focus to create and set strategy from my company in the morning. I really need that time for myself.

This way I can concentrate and work free of any interruptions - write, sketch, draw, plan, brainstorm... and I'm guaranteed to get things done this way. I try to get my three main rocks (three most important tasks for the day) done until noon.

Afternoons are for people - especially my team

First I reply to my team. I make sure everyone gets some feedback from me. I try not to fail at this but at times when I'm very busy folks need to be patient with me. I hate it when I don't have the time to get back to my team and test things they're working on. That's why I focus on this first.

Meetings come in the afternoon, too

Following this rule I schedule meetings (ususally Skype calls) between 12 and 4 pm (with exceptions for my American friends as I live in Europe).

@mail and @phone contexts

The rest of the day I spend replying to email and calling people and taking phone calls. Actually phone is still a pretty powerful tool. I call people up if I want an answer fast. I don't mind interrupting people at this time with my phone call as I assume everyone's like me and has already done their most important things for the day :-)

Working standing vs working sitting

The noon also usually changes my working style - in the mornings I'm working standing and at noon I take my laptop, get a cup of coffee and go sit on a terrace or in the living room. This way I can benefit from sitting nicely and start replying to people :-)

The benefit of splitting the day is FOCUS

That's the most important thing - splitting the day in two gives me focus and time to work. I love it. Running a company of 12 (as of today) requires lots of attention and can come down to constant emailing and responding to others' requests. When I split my day I have the time for me and I'm constrained to responding to folks only for half of the day.

This approach reminds me of a story about a CEO I read that when he showed up in the office he'd have his door closed until noon... and would open the door shortly after to signal to his teammates that now they can approach him. I do the same... only as we have no office, I just don't reply to email, skype or any other form of communications :-)

Did you ever try to split your day? How did it work out for you?

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Thoughts on piracy, greed and entitlement

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 08:02:33 -0700

Recent posts by MG Siegler on piracy and an additional explanation later, as well as Oatmeal's cartoon made me think about piracy and my attitude towards it. In a nutshell - piracy is bad but the content providers are wrong to build walls in front of us. I'm mostly with MG here.

Old walls don't work anymore

I live in Europe so we're used to receive all the content way later than our American friends. It was OK in the 80s but now with broadband internet it's really not a big deal to get the content anytime you want. The old geo-wall doesn't work anymore. The big media companies still don't get it... and instead of providing content for us, they keep on maintaining the walls and try to punish us for piracy by saying it's the same as stealing.

What's the root of piracy? The fact that you cannot get the content legally but you can get it easily from other sources.

Apple understood it - when Napster failed the big content providers started fighting Kazaa and other torrent-related networks instead of building their business around Napster-like model. Apple built iTunes Store and they quickly became dominant in the market.

The key of Apple's success is that you can get content at a click of the mouse. That's why I love my AppleTV so much :-)

AppleTV rescued me from pirating movies

My wife is an IP lawyer and she never agreed on us pirating movies... but she did want to watch the movies with me... and renting movies from the rental shops took so much time... every time... so when we bought the AppleTV we finally got what we wanted - an easy and affordable way of streaming movies legally by renting them from Apple directly. No more driving to the rental shop, just "what do you want to watch today?" and with a few clicks streaming it to our LCD screen. Sweet.

Even Apple didn't get it totally right...

... when they removed TV-Shows rentals. With $0.99 per episode, we were exploring different shows and watching them directly through AppleTV. For less than one buck it was a no-brainter. When they removed this option, we just settled on one show (we bought a season pass) and we stopped watching more shows. It was stupid on Apple's part to remove it. What we did is we started using my proxy server in the US (I'm having one as most of my business is done in the US) for streaming directly from Hulu... for free. Sorry Apple. I don't want to own shows, I want to watch them and that's it. Just like I don't want to own movies.

Although I'm legally watching movies, I still need to use tricks

Like I have my American iTunes account although I don't live in the US that I need to fill up with prepaid cards. Like I'm watching Hulu though and American Proxy server... The geo-wall is still there and I need to get over it anyway. Even though I'm paying. I even wanted to pay for Hulu Plus but they won't accept my non-american credit card. Need to get one upon my next visit to the US.

You see what's happening here? I still need to use tricks... to actually legally pay for content! Isn't that crazy? Well, many of my friends who still pirate movies and shows think I'm crazy...

The point is - when you build walls and don't let us pay - you do force us to pirate or find ways...

This is 21st century. We have access to the internet, you know? We even have the money to spend, you know? It's got nothing to do with entitlement or bad will. It's got to do with new ways of consuming content. We have broadband internet, iPads and iPhones... and we want to consume the content through these devices and pay for it... but maintaining a status-quo by the old media companies is stupid... and I'm hoping something very soon will disrupt them heavily. Building walls is not sustainable.

Guys, just use the energy to serve your growing number of potential customers and not to build and maintain the walls... the walls will fall, sooner than you might think. MG's post is a great example of it.

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I'm still standing! - my latest video show

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:43:45 -0700

If you've been following my Twitter feed recently, I've been experimenting with a stand-up desk, thinking I should try to avoid a sitting position as much as I can... meaning - I shouldn't be sitting 12 hours a day... so after two months I'm still standing:

I originally posted this video on my Productive! Magazine site (I encourage you to check out past episodes) - here's also a YouTube link.

A few tips while working in a stand-up position:

Here are some of my thoughts on working with a stand-up desk:

- get comfortable shoes, with as soft a sole as possible.

- first week work only 2-3 hours standing max, your legs will feel totally destroyed anyway...

- later try to change positions, move a lot... and work max 4-5 hours standing

That's basically how I work. As I mentioned on the video, I appreciate sitting a lot more now. I love to work in the morning standing, fully concentrated in the "action mode"... and around 1-2 pm unplug the laptop and sit comfortably to answer email or chat via Skype...

I'm suddenly more eager to exercise despite the fatigue

Additional benefit - I'm exercising more eagerly now - the stand up position warms me up to do more exercise. It's really cool. And totally unexpected as my feet feel really tired after I've been standing for quite a few hours.

Anyway, I'm still standing and I'll keep on experimenting with alternating between standing and sitting.

Have you ever tried working standing? What's your experience been?

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That which does not kill us makes us stronger

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 10:05:00 -0700

Yesterday our Nozbe Desktop application's submission got rejected on the Mac App Store for reasons a little beyond our control. We built our app using a platform that no longer is supported on the App Store. This meant we'd have to change our app, rewrite lots of code, learn new platform and do it in a couple of days to make sure we make it for next week's launch...

We did it. Almost. We're resubmitting tomorrow :-)

Having an amazing CTO helps :-) (Thanks Tomasz!) When this happened I told him that instead of trying to repair the broken platform, we should migrate to the new one right away and see how complicated this is. My optimism helped here, too. My CTO gave up and we both started digging deep. Asked a couple of friends for help explaining us some things, read tons of documentation and built the thing. We wanted to migrate to a new platform and thought it'd be a long project... and the situation forced us to do this now. And quickly.

The upside? The app is faster, works with Lion's full-screen mode, keyboard shortcuts work better... many improvements all around - and this all in two days of hard work we were forced to do. What we thought was a big problem turned to a gain for us and for the Nozbe users. You'll see the app next week - you'll love it :-)

When we lost a person from our team... we got 4 new ones :-)

In the beginning of this year one of our developers working on a key project decided to move on. I can't force anyone to stay, but I felt really bad as the timing was just not right. Our small engineering team got even smaller... and we had really ambitious plans for 2012. Again, talked to my CTO about this situation and we decided to go for an unorthodox method of hiring and try to get a lot more developers at a time and grow our team substantially. We dedicated two weeks and some travels to this and to cut the long story short, did an amazing team-building event and got 4 new talented developers in the process. We wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the blow of one developer leaving.

When things go bad - they make you rethink your situation and go for radical measures.

You're forced to think outside of the box. To shift, change attitude and get outside of your comfort zone and do something different. Actually, come to think about it, drawbacks should be treated as indicators that you're doing something well, but should fix the direction you're going. Instead of asking: "Why does it always happen to me?" we should be saying: "Well, this didn't work well, what does it mean? What should I do next to change course and do something even better? Maybe I wasn't aiming high enough?"

It reminds me of Seth Godin - who when talking with me said that his lizard brain is like an indicator... the same I think applies to drawbacks.

Let me finish this one with an optimistic song by Kelly Clarkson with footage from my favorite show lately, Glee:

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How many inboxes do you have? Here are mine

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 04:08:01 -0800

One of the main concepts of "Getting Things Done" is the notion to have an "Inbox" - meaning a place where all the stuff goes and ideally a place that will be cleared out (i.e. "processed") by you every single day... or at least on any other regular basis. Usually it looks like this:

On top of that in these busy times we have more than one Inbox...

I'm not an exception here - I have more than one inbox in my life... and I'm working hard on streamlining this to as few inboxes as possible, but I have still plenty of these. Let me show you my inboxes and I'm curious to find out how many you have and how you clean them up:

Physical Inbox in my home office

In my home office I have a physical inbox for papers, documents, receipts, snail mail and such... I put all of these there and process them later. Usually by the end of every other day this inbox is clear. I either scan the documents, file some of them, trash the unnecessary ones... the clue is that everyone in my family knows that if they want me to deal with a document, they need to put it there.

Physical inbox when I travel

I'm in Dublin now traveling and my physical inbox is a pocket of my travel bag. I put all the receipts and business cards I collect there. When I arrive at my home I put all of these into my physical home office Inbox and process them.

Email Inbox

I use three places in my Gmail account: Inbox, Reply-Later, All Mail (Archive) - I clear my email inbox to zero every single day and try to reply to all incoming emails as soon as I can (if my reply takes less than 2 minutes) and put some of the emails I need to reply later to a separate folder and archive the rest. This inbox has to stay at zero every day in order to keep me sane.

"Downloads" folder on my Mac

All of the stuff I download from the Internet, all the attachments from emails that need my attention later go to my "Downloads" folder. Again, need to clear it up at least once a week. This folder is my "digital Inbox" on my Mac. It grows pretty quickly and when it does, I know I need to process it to zero.

Inbox in Nozbe

Tasks that pop into my head on random basis are being placed in my Nozbe Inbox. Again, need to clear them up once a week during my weekly review. This Inbox is a typical "action inbox" and all my tasks are going there. When processing my previous inboxes I see a task, I put it there... and when the "weekly review" comes this inbox needs to be cleared out.

"_Inbox" Notebook in my Evernote

When I browser the Internet, read blog articles, jot some notes, I put them all in my default "_Inbox" notebook in Evernote (I use Safari/Chrome extension to clip web articles and Reeder on my iOS devices to clip directly to Evernote) - I process this inbox at least once a week, usually more often as it's very easy to move the notes to their appropriate folders.

Read-it-later queue

If I come across a video I'd like to watch later, I add it to my "Read-it-later" queue. Very often when reading news and blogs I don't have the time to watch a video but when I'm later at my mac, having a break, eating breakfast, I launch my queue and start watching these videos that piled up. It's a great way to make sure I have something interesting to watch when having a break. I don't need to clear this inbox so much, It's just a repository of videos I want to watch later.

To sum up, I have several inboxes and all of them have their flows:

1. Travel inbox items go to my physical inbox and this entire inbox is being processed as often as possible (usually every 1-3 days)

2. Email inbox is being cleared to zero every day

3. Downloads folder is being cleared every 3-5 days, some of the files become my tasks in my Nozbe Inbox.

4. Nozbe Inbox items are being cleared every week during my weekly review

5. Evernote Inbox is being cleared quickly, usually daily, Read-it-later queue is being cleared as it goes... no strict rules there.

And how many Inboxes do you have? How often do you clear it to zero? What's your flow?

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Giving benefit of a doubt to everyone!

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:29:54 -0800

A definition of "giving a benefit of a doubt to someone" I found somewhere on the Internet is "to believe something good about someone, rather than something bad, when you have the possibility of doing either" - which basically means - if someone you know does something strange/wrong, you assume he either made a mistake or had good intentions... instead of flat out thinking he's a bad person.

Why am I writing about this? Because I believe we should give benefit of a doubt to everyone!

Benefit of a doubt in the family (or among friends)

We are used to giving benefit of a doubt to people closest to us. The ones who we know very well. Because, well, we know for a fact they are good people. And even more - we know they like/love us so they wouldn't do anything against us, right? Exactly.

Assume everyone is good, because well... almost everyone is.

I prefer to assume everyone is good. I say we give the benefit of a doubt to everyone as they (you) all deserve it. When you do that, the life and people seem just better and the positive thinking about others transmits your positive attitude to them. And most of the people are really good.

Don't let exceptions spoil your life

Somewhere I read a great business advice: "because one customer screws you over, don't make the life of the rest of your customers miserable". And an example quoted there was really cool: "When you run a restaurant with restrooms and someone pees on the floor in the restroom, clean it up and don't put a sign saying: NO PEEING ON THE FLOOR - it will make most of your customers, who don't have a habit of peeing on the floor uneasy and won't prevent you from having another guy do this sometime in the future."

This applies to business as well as life

Very often when we design something for the customers in Nozbe (and a great example is our 60-day money back guarantee) I get questions from my team: "what if someone tries to cheat us?" I always have the same answer: "We'll know that anyway. We'll ask them to stop. And we'll move on. Most of our customers will not cheat us and they'll appreciate what we've done. And even if the ones who cheated got away with something extra, we have at least a good deed on our account :-)"

It's not about being naive. We do have to stay alert and react accordingly when someone does something bad, but let's not deal with this for too long - most of the people we deal with do good things. And we thank them for that!

Wouldn't the world be better if we gave everyone the benefit of a doubt?

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First thing you do in the morning

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:09:44 -0800

Yesterday night I was tinkering around my home office to get it ready for this week. If you've followed me long enough, you'd know I like to play around my home office and optimize it from time to time. I went to bed around midnight and today I woke up quite late for my standards, at around 7 AM and after a morning routine I appeared in my home office to start working. I didn't fire up my email client nor did I open my news reader. I started my day with a weekly review and now I'm cranking my tasks for the day. I didn't open my email inbox until noon. Why?

Do you respond or do you create?

When you work with more people than just yourself (and it doesn't matter if you're running a company like me or work in a company) it's very easy to find yourself in a "response-only mode" - meaning, you spend your entire day responding to email, phone calls... basically you respond to wishes and desires of everyone else, except the ones of yourself. That's why I try not to reply to emails or phone calls before noon. In the morning it's my "creation-only mode" - I focus on what I need to do - on my creative mind. Later I'm available to everyone who needs me :-)

Seth Godin reassured me with his fantastic blog post where he wrote:

"If you're an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/responded/insisted to what happened yesterday."

You'll know what happened yesterday anyway - you'll know soon enough - when you start your morning routine focus on creating - on what you can bring to the table and what you can create to inspire and move others.

I see so many people trapped in response-only mode that after a full week they simply don't know where the time has gone. I was like this several times in the recent months, that's why I made the rule to make sure I create first, respond second.

Create first, respond second.

Don't get me wrong, your response matters. I'm leading a team of 12 people now (we've just grown!) and they all need my reaction and I have to make sure I respond quickly to them. But if I don't create time for myself, schedule time for my creative self, we'll not move forward at the pace I'd like us to move. That's why it's critical for me to schedule my creative time.

The way you start your day makes all the difference

When you start the day with a creative mind set, your mind works, your ideas show up.... and by noon you feel you've accomplished something... and later in the day you'll have the time to also talk about your ideas with other folks from your team and thanks to this feedback you'll improve your original thoughts. And the bottom line is simple - you'll feel better, productive... and you'll know you've gotten some stuff done today. Make sure to start your day (and week) right!

How do you start your day? How do you plan your week?

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