Productivity Tomorrow

My Home Screen Setup

2018-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

I’m a big fan of the “home screen” posts I see on other Mac blogs, so I thought it was about time I made one myself! I currently keep 3 pages of apps on my phone, and it’s been working well for me for quite some time. The 1st page includes all the apps that work with items in my house. This includes everything from my Sonos system to the various pieces of home automation I have. It comes in handy to have the multitude of apps that make my house function all in one place. The 2nd page is my “main” page. It has all my favorite apps that I use at least once a day. And lastly, my 3rd page is just a bunch of folders of all the rest of the apps on my phone, broken down into categories. I organize the folders with my most used apps first and head to that page anytime I need to play most games or scan something with page scanning app. It’s my “main” page, though, which will be what the rest of this post focuses on. Removing all the native Apple apps on my main screen, below are all the third-party apps why I need them there.

1Password

This app really doesn’t even need to be explained…does it? If you are a Mac or iOS user, you absolutely need to be using 1Password. My Wife and I have the 1Password Families subscription and keep everything we need between our individual vaults and a central, shared vault. It works great and they are really stepping up their mobile app game and making it easier than ever to create new logins when needed.

Tweetbot

My Twitter usage kind of happens in spurts. Right now I would say I’m in a bit of a lull. I check it regularly and post occasionally. I follow a below average number of people and keep it lean so I can really enjoy the posts of everyone I follow. I used to be a “Twitter completionist” but stopped that a good number of months ago when I just wasn’t reading the tweets quick enough.

Facebook

This apps seems to be getting itself into deeper and deeper hot water lately, but I still find it pretty irreplaceable. All my friends are there. I manage pages for clients there. And I’m a moderator of a ketogenic diet group full of some amazing people. Some people get annoyed with Facebook, but I just hide the feeds of people that tick me off. You have been warned.

Fantastical

Fantastical is my calendar app of choice. I don’t add new appointments on my phone all that much, but I like the design of the app when viewing my upcoming appointments. I have the Mac app as well and it’s pretty indispensable during my work day keeping me on track of my upcoming appointments.

Overcast

I. Love. Podcasts. Don’t you? My commute isn’t as long as it used to be, but I still try to get in all my favorites like ATP, 2 Keto Dudes, The Obesity Code Podcast and of course the Getting Things Done podcast. Overcast is fantastic. I subscribe to more podcasts than I can really keep up with, but it’s easy to pick and choose the episodes I want to listen to.

Bear

Following a long run using nvALT and plain text files, I moved to Bear in October ‘17 and have really enjoyed it! I use it at work to take notes on projects. It’s just so beautiful I find myself looking for excuses to use it more. Searching and tagging are awesome and the Markdown support is amazing. I throw everything I can into this app.

Day One

I’ve really gotten into journalling, or at least “logging my day” lately. I found a TextExpander script that outputs all my completed items from OmniFocus into a new entry called “What I Accomplished Today”. I set daily and weekly goals for myself as well as journal my thoughts when I can. It’s another beautiful app I love using more and more.

Paprika 3

There was a LONG hiatus on updates before Paprika version 3 dropped. I almost thought they had abandoned the product, but in November 2017 they finally released the new update. My recipes inside the app have been a mess recently, but a month ago I totally overhauled it and now it’s in tip-top shape. Since going keto, I removed most of the bad recipes I no longer would be eating and I now have the categories and ratings dialed in where it works really well for my Wife and me.

AnyList

If there is one app my Wife and I use the most together, it’s Anylist. From connecting it to Alexa and having her add items to our shopping list to having our whole house “someday/maybe” list in there, AnyList is an amazing list manager. They have desktop, web, and mobile apps and they all just work seamlessly together. One of the best apps in my arsenal.

Pocket

I have a love-hate relationship with Pocket, only because I struggle with saving too much stuff to it I eventually get frustrated and have to purge it out periodically. I love how I can save both articles and videos and I have a daily ritual to read or watch at least 1 item to keep the items manageable.

YNAB

Out of all these apps in this list, YNAB is the one I love the most. This app has allowed my Wife and I to get out of debt, save for the down payment on our house AND move in without putting a single dime on a credit card. We set our budget at the beginning a month and review it weekly to make sure we’re on track. If needed, we make adjustments and “roll with the punches” where we need to. If you struggle with money then you absolutely need a budget, and you need to let YNAB help you get there.

YouTube

I think I’m finally seeing why the “kids” these days are on YouTube so much. It began when I built my 3D printer and I found the channel “Jimmy Shaw’s Tidbits”. He had the same printer I did and started making videos. I just found them super helpful and entertaining. My love of YouTube further developed when my Wife and I went keto. We always look forward to the next High Falutin’ Low Carb or Keto Connect video, and there are a good number of other great keto YouTubers with awesome recipes. It’s one of the few apps I use that is both a source of entertainment AND education.

HQ Trivia

My Wife got me playing this fun trivia game where you get to win cash! It’s a fun quick diversion, and hey, you learn new things! I don’t think I’ll be retiring on HQ money anytime soon, but it’s still fun to play.

Spark

Spark is my mail app of choice at the moment. I’ve used both Mail.app as well as Airmail pretty extensively, and I occasionally switch back and give them a try, but Spark has been working well and fairly bug-free for me for the last 5 or 6 months. I really enjoy the design of the app, the ability to favorite folders as well as its move folder suggestions. My biggest complaint though is you can’t easily add folders from the favorited folders, but its a solid e-mail app nonetheless.

Omnifocus

And that brings us to last but definitely not least, OmniFocus. It’s the Rolls Royce of task managers, and it’s how I stay sane in my personal life. I live by David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”, and OmniFocus is one of the best ways to practice it. While Bear is more of my daily inbox of new things, I quickly move anything personal into one of the many projects inside the app. I love checking my tasks off on my Apple Watch, and it feels great to save all my completed items each day to Day One so I can see how much I’ve accomplished. I can’t wait to get my invite to the OmniFocus 3 beta, but until then I’ll keep rockin’ the next actions and doing my weekly review in version 2!

Honorable Mention - Slack

Slack gets a mention because my Wife and I just started using a few days ago. We’ve setup channels for different areas like meals, fun, tonight, and nursery, to seperate out our communication. We’re only a few days in but its been working really well. It needs to survive at least a couple weeks to make it to my home screen…that’s “sacred” territory!

So that about wraps it up. I like to leave a little space at the bottom of my main screen for occasionally temporary downloads and so it doesn’t feel so cluttered. Are there any apps you think should really be on my home screen? Tweet me at @cyberbobcity and tell me about it!

Gaining Insight By Tracking My Time

2017-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

Last week, I stumbled onto the Time Tracking Challenge from Laura Vanderkam. I had recently enjoyed her wonderful TED talk on “How to gain control of your free time”, so I started following her on Twitter. Of course I’m always willing to try a new habit, especially on a Monday morning when I have all the positivity and promise of the week ahead. I signed up and immediately started tracking what I was doing, in 15-minute increments, for the 7 days.

Tracking Everything

Laura provided an Excel file you could use to start tracking. Being a Mac and iOS guy, I opened it up in Numbers and saved it to iCloud so I could update the file from either my Mac or my iPhone. It actually worked quite well, though I ended up a couple times with conflicts and had to figure out which file I wanted to keep.

As I got started, I found it was actually easier than I thought it would be. I was already used to tracking during my work day for billable reasons, so really the only thing new was tracking my off hours. I first downloaded an app that could do repeatable 15-minute timers so I could just get a notification on my Apple Watch to remind me to document my time, but I downloaded a trial that would only repeat 4 or 5 times. I stopped using it within a couple hours because I was doing fine remembering without it. I never really went any long stretches without updating my file. At most, maybe 2.5 hours or so passed while doing one or two tasks, and then I would update it with everything I did during that time.

I did notice some interesting things during the week. Similar to how tracking your food intake makes you more accountable for what you put in your mouth, often times I was more motivated to do something productive just because I wanted to write down that I was productive on my timesheet.

I think I also felt less guilty during my leisure times. My wife and I actually took the Tuesday off when Apple announced its latest products, and I felt at ease relaxing and watching the event as well as researching and exploring the new products because I knew I had been pretty productive earlier in the morning and was planning to get back to my to-do list later in the afternoon. It was easy because what I did was written down and viewable from a distance and I could reflect on it.

Analyzing My Time

Laura instructed her participants to organize their time into some general categories. To do this I made a quick legend using colored boxes and decided on 6 categories:

Learning - Any time spent learning programming languages, music, etc.
Leisure - Time spent relaxing, surfing, watching a movie, hanging out with family
Day to Day - Basically eating, showering, dressing, and driving
E-Mail & Organization - Time spent on processing email and any notes I might have taken, and working with Omnifocus
Working - Actual time spent working on meaningful projects, either at work or home
Sleeping - This one is pretty obvious

I then went through my spreadsheet and assigned one of those 6 categories to every 15-minute block by color coding the cell. I then figured out the breakdown of just how I utilized my time by percentage as well as how many hours during that week I spent on that task.

What I Learned

So after tracking and analyzing 672 blocks of time spanning 168 hours, what exactly did I learn?

First of all, I was actually more productive than I felt I was in the moment! When you’re in the middle of a hectic week, it’s hard to really see exactly how you’re doing. Reflecting back, I had a higher percentage working on meaningful things than in leisure time, and I think that is a great place to start. This week included a day off of work, but during that day I actually spent a good amount of time on projects at home so it balanced itself out. I’d really need to track additional weeks to see what kind of trends I might see from week to week, but I feel I had a good balance. I got a lot of productive things done, but also had a lot of fun too.
I do feel I was more productive this week than a “normal” week just because I was tracking. If that’s the added bonus to tracking, it could be worth doing on a consistent basis. The following week I had some really unproductive days without tracking. Is it a coincidence? Is my gained productivity worth the expense and hassle of tracking my time? The answer could be yes, but I think I need more weeks under my belt to really decide on that answer.
Averaged out over the week, I really wasn’t stuck in email and organizational tasks that much. I like to keep a clean inbox, but sometimes I feel like it’s a never-ending battle that I just can’t win. Even though I spent more time earlier in the week on email to get it empty, I spent less time towards the end of the week keeping it up. Eight hours of dealing with email and organization tasks during a whole week I think is fairly acceptable.
Learning needs to take a more prominent space in my life. I consider myself a lifelong learner, but viewing this week’s snapshot, I only spent 2 hours learning. I’d like this number to be more like 10 to 15 hours per week. I have so many things I want to learn and do, I need to block off sections ahead of time to make these things happen. Laura advocates keeping a list of “100 Dreams”, which is pretty similar to David Allen’s “Someday/Maybe” list. I have no shortage of dreams I’d like to accomplish, I just need to schedule them in at specific times. Now that I’ve done this tracking for a week, I think it will help me plan ahead and create these windows of time to add in more learning.
I could stand to optimize my Day-to-Day time. I tend to be fairly lazy in the morning getting ready. If I tuned that a bit, I’d have more time to be productive or to do something that is actually fun instead of just browsing Facebook & Twitter. This also took into account time cooking and eating out. I’ve actually been fasting more lately which totally helps lower this section of time. It is nice on days when I’m fasting that I can just skip the trouble of cooking and cleaning and get onto things I really want to do that night. There are a few hours to be gained here, but not that many.

Next time I do this, I think I will break out social media into a separate category. All of us could stand to have less social media and more time playing some board games with friends and family. It was a great experiment that I’m probably going to do very soon, if not this coming week. I could probably use a better tracking system if I do this more often. I know there are some time tracking apps out there that get pretty good reviews, I’m not sure if they would be more or less of a hassle than a simple Excel spreadsheet. I could use what I’ve learned from this week and pre-plan in blocks of time for more of my someday/maybes. It will be easier now that I have experienced a week of it, and I have some baseline numbers to compare against. I think this exercise would be beneficial for anyone who is looking to get more meaningful things accomplished. Thank you to Laura Vanderkam for hosting it and I look forward to doing it again!

Productivity & A Ketogenic Diet

2017-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

On January 1st of this year, my Wife and I brainstormed our goals for 2017. It included a decent number of items, one of the most important being to get healthy and lose weight. As any good productivity nut, my goal was specific: lose 80 pounds by December 31st. I’m a big guy, and losing that weight would be the absolute single biggest improvement I could make in my life. But as everyone knows, losing weight is hard. Really hard. Unfortunately, that is where the procrastinator in me kicked in, and pretty much no progress was made on this front for the first half of the year.

July came, and with my Wife listening to more and more audiobooks during her commute to work, she found a book that looked interesting called The Obesity Code, by Dr. Jason Fung. She started telling me about it and surprisingly I was instantly on board. It described an alternative idea to why we gain weight, and why it always seems to come back when we try to lose it. It was a radically different solution than anything we’ve ever been told. I started reading the book and doing research on the topic. As I learned more, it seemed like such simple common sense! It was like a light was switched on in our brains, and we started following the guidelines immediately. It was a complete lifestyle change and within a few weeks it became the new norm. The Ketogenic Diet, along with both intermittent and extending “fasting” became the solution I had been looking for.

What is Keto?

The Ketogenic Diet, or Keto for short, is simply a diet with under 20 or so grams of carbohydrates, a moderate amount of protein, and enough fat to make your body enter a state called “ketosis”, in which it burns fat instead of sugar. The “low carb” approach may remind you of the Atkin’s Diet from the early 2000’s, and while the early stages of the Atkin’s diet might get you into ketosis, the diet starts to differ further from there on out.

There isn’t any big scheming company behind the ketogenic diet. There are no special bars to buy, expensive shakes to drink, or pills that have to be taken at every meal. It’s simply a low carb, high fat diet, and with everything I’ve learned, it’s a diet I think I can easily stick to. When you’re in ketosis, your body has no choice but to burn fat instead of carbs to get energy. Well, what exactly do you think my body is overloaded with right now? FAT! Now I can put to good use all that stored body fat to use as energy. It’s like I have a super power!!

To outsiders, going Keto seems like a fairly impossible and unsustainable task, and I can understand that. “I can’t drink soda? Eat candy? French fries? Pasta? Bread? BEER?”. The answer is no. Well, not really. All of these starches and processed foods just turn into sugar in your body, keeping your insulin sky high. Insulin is what makes your body store fat, feel hungry, and gives you cravings for more of the same junk. When you stop giving the body sugar to process, insulin then drops down and lets your body start using that excess fat for energy. Being hungry all the time and having to snack constantly is now a thing of the past. Most importantly, it’s stops the cravings for more sugar laden foods. You simply stop wanting them!! So far, this has been the hardest thing to explain to people that ask what I’m doing. When I got rid of the carbs and started eating fat to fuel my body, the weight just started coming off almost effortlessly. You also get to eat amazing flavorful food. Why? Because fat tastes good! Cheese, bacon, eggs, heavy cream, macadamia nuts, and avocados are all keto staples I’ve been eating, and they’re delicious!

Adding In Fasting

Getting your body into ketosis and becoming “fat adapted” (basically a state where its “good” at burning fat) opens the doors to your “fasting” ability. Yes, you heard me right, fasting. Essentially not eating any food. People throughout history, of all races, of all religions, have been fasting for thousands of years. For some reason, whether it’s big business or just the ease at which people are able to acquire food now, fasting has gone by the wayside. When you’re in ketosis and you haven’t eaten for 16 hours, or 2 days, or 14 days, your body is easily able to burn “that Krispy Kreme you ate a decade ago”, a common phrase from one of my favorite podcasts called 2 Keto Dudes. Fasting also helps readjust your body’s set weight, so you aren’t fighting it as you try to drop some poundage. Keto and fasting go hand in hand, and it is the one-two punch to start getting your weight under control. I know it sounds terrible, but as I practice fasting more and more, I’m beginning to like it just as much as my feasting periods! It’s just a great balance.

My Previous State

I’ve been interested in productivity and have long followed the practices of David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done”, but I knew my weight and my state of being was hindering me. So often I was tired and unable to focus. I’d come home from work during the week, wanting to make progress on a project around the house, or learn something new, or practice guitar, and that motivation was shot as soon as my butt hit the couch after dinner, sinking into an evening of TV and Internet surfing. I’d set out on a Saturday morning ready to be extremely productive which usually ended in a nap from about 11am till 3pm.

Besides the lack of focus and energy, there was also the constant nagging at my psyche that I really should be doing something about this. With all the misinformation out there today, it was easy to convince myself not to get started because I didn’t really have a good solid plan on what to do. It always felt wrong to me that a healthy weight required having to give up so much delicious food. I’d go hardcore and get up everyday and work out, but then fizzle out two weeks in. I’d try to avoid the lure of breakfast and lunch that my company provided one day a week, but easily failed when it was one of my favorites or if I tried to limit myself to just one helping. I’ve tried lots of things in the past and I could only keep them up for a week or two. I had lost all trust in myself to really do anything, so I did nothing.

My Amazing New “Norm”

Now, I’m pretty much bursting with energy. I started standing for part of the day at work. I bought a cheap Ikea coffee table to put on top of my desk to convert it to a standing desk, and I stand now usually for about half the day. I actually WANT to do things like walk around the block, or to a nearby park on my lunch break to do a lap or two. I couldn’t wait to go canoeing at a local park, just so I could get in the water and paddle. This urge to move and exercise is only growing, and I haven’t had to force myself at all.

I’m able to easily focus on any task I attempt. With my current productivity skills already at hand, I finally feel like I’m now able to put them to good use and follow through. Instead of my Omnifocus going dormant for a week or two at a time, I’ve been able to make progress and check off a few items every day. It’s been my missing piece of GTD.

Food is now so much less important. Lunch used to be a big focus every day at work, and I’d be starving for it by 10am. Now I barely need anything till 2pm. The “addictive” cravings for a lot of the foods I loved are gone. I do get excited experimenting with new keto recipes with my Wife because everything is still fairly new. It’s been really enjoyable trying new things. We even just got the Joule sous vide machine and have made some delicious perfectly cooked steak!

While Keto is amazing, it’s no quick fix. Each week there is still ups and downs, but for the first time ever, I’m really enjoying the journey and I truly feel I can do this for the rest of my life. I have no reason to stop doing this. I get to eat really delicious food that we’ve been told for decades is just not good for you, and I get to feel amazing AND lose weight during the process! Like I said, I have a “super power”!

We celebrated my birthday around the first week of us starting this new lifestyle, and while my niece and nephew hilariously called the low carb flourless chocolate cake my Wife made “disgusting”, I thought it tasted great and was the perfect start to thirty seven. I’ll keep you posted on how I’m doing periodically, and I’m sure you’ll occasionally see some keto blog posts in the future. We’ve been doing this for about 7 weeks now and I’m 40 pounds down. My 80 pound goal is totally in reach, and I can’t wait to get there!

Some Keto Resources

I am no doctor and I’m not giving out any medical advice, but if you have struggled with the same things I have, I highly recommend you check out the following resources and learn more about Keto:

The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung - The book that turned us on to Keto and fasting
The Complete Guide To Fasting - A more detailed and hands-on guide to fasting
DietDoctor.com - Loaded with great info and recipes
2 Keto Dudes Podcast - One of my most favorite podcasts. Any .Net coders will know Carl Franklin from the long running .Net Rocks podcast.
2 Keto Dudes Fix Diabetes Part 2 - A video “The Dudes” put out with a really great primer on going Keto.
KetogenicForums.com - The amazing effort by “The Dudes” to create a community of great like minded people, all trying to learn more and get healthier!
High Falutin’ Low Carb - Our favorite channel on YouTube. Wes is hilarious and his recipe battles are epic!

Rituals Unraveling

2017-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

It’s been ages since my last post here at Productivity Tomorrow. Last time you heard from me, I was on top of my game. Having been two weeks into establishing some very positive rituals in my life, I felt very much in control. I was touting the joys of going to bed on time, planning out my day, journaling and taking vitamins. Unfortunately, I was completely oblivious to how each habit would slowly come unhitched shortly thereafter.

I was about 4 or 5 weeks into my habits and I was still doing well. I’m not sure exactly the point in which I got derailed, but I believe it was missing a daily guitar practice or getting sick of my breakfast smoothies. Reviewing my journal notes, I also thought I would be more productive and feel so much better than I actually did. Instead of adjusting slightly, I let those small items completely ruin everything.

At the time, I was also tracking my food intake. My Wife and I saved pictures of everything we ate in an app so we could hold each other accountable. I didn’t consider it part of my ritual, but when we quit using it, it too added to the feeling that I was coming unraveled.

It’s actually kind of funny. As I review my journal entries, I was actually doing pretty good. Heck, I was at least still journalling and setting daily goals. My mind was convinced that I was failing, which brought about even more negative change. It took just over 6 weeks for me to stop doing all my habits. I’ve tried once or twice to get back on the horse, but I couldn’t get any momentum started. That is, until the promise of a new year.

I’ve felt hopeless letting it all slip away, but at some point you need to pick yourself up and try again. As 2017 approached, I knew it would be the perfect time to reboot those rituals. New Years Day was the time to do some goal planning, regrouping, and getting those habits instilled once again. I downloaded the Productive iOS habit tracker app and started adding my rituals back.

So what am I doing differently to avoid running into the same problems? I’m just not doing quite as many of them, at least not right off the bat. I’ve left the easy ones in there like drinking water when I wake up and putting my clothes out the night before. I’ve also kept my nightly journal entry and setting up my 3 goals for the next day as well. While the last two do take a good amount of willpower, they are the two most important. I haven’t added any food related habits or my guitar practice back yet either. So in a nutshell, I’m starting smaller and taking it one step at a time.

In the coming weeks, I plan to ramp up and add other habits back in slowly. I’ll let it sink in for at least two or three weeks and then add another. The possibility of losing momentum is extremely high right now. I need to stick with the things that are working. If I get off track, I need to realize I’m off track and make a slight course correction so I don’t crash and burn again. It’s a New Year, and I plan to make it one filled with growth and productivity.

My New Daily Ritual

2016-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve struggled with making my mornings healthy and productive for as long as I can remember. I don’t eat right. I don’t exercise. When you look at me, you can see it. When I try to get work done, I can feel it. But for the last 2 weeks I’ve kept an amazing set of habits that have put me on the right path and I’ve hardly had to use any willpower to do it.

It all began when I started browsing around the Asian Efficiency website after they gave us Macstock attendees access to the Omnifocus Premium Posts section of their website. I found many posts talking about creating a “morning ritual”, and the morning routines of some of the most productive people in history. I’ve tried many times to get into the morning groove, trying habit apps to check off each thing I needed to do every morning. Every single time, I fizzle out 2 or 3 days in. It just doesn’t stick.

While reading these posts, I started to get inspired again to give this a try. I purchased their Morning Rituals Starter Kit. The starter kit consisted mainly of a video which I watched immediately and began to create a plan of my own morning habits. Things were beginning to develop.

Coincidently during this time, I got an email about an upcoming “Evening Ritual Challenge” from AE. Since I was already in the “rituals” mindset, I signed right up. This is when things really started to happen.

Within the first 2 days of the challenge, I learned something so simple about morning habits I couldn’t believe it. To have a “good morning”, I really needed to have a “good night” beforehand. What does that mean exactly?

First I need to know when to go to bed. I wake up at 6:30am normally and I’ve read most people are best with 8 hours of sleep, so I need to be in bed by 10:30pm. The key for me, I learned, was to set an alarm for 1 hour before I needed to be in bed. That hour is to do my evening ritual to prep me for tomorrow morning. It rings my wrist at 9:30pm telling me to close up what I’m doing and get ready for bed. For me, that means I need to make my morning smoothie, plan my goals for tomorrow and a whole host of other tasks so that when I wake up tomorrow, everything is already laid out for me.

It’s like a super “cycle of productivity”. The things I do at night feed into how productive I am in the morning, which feeds into wanting to prep those same things again the following night. All of this, triggered by a simple alarm an hour before bed…

I currently use the the Productive habit tracker app for iOS and Apple Watch. It looks great, is easy to use, and quick to check off a completed item.

So what exactly am I doing? Here it is.

My Morning Ritual

“It’s going to be a GREAT day!” - I learned this one from Mr. Tiny Habits, Dr. BJ Fogg. The first thing I do every morning, barely after my feet touch the ground is say “It’s going to be a GREAT day!”. This helps get my mind in a positive, anything is possible mindset. Yes I can see you through the computer screen shaking your head laughing. Don’t, it works. Just try it for 1 week, and mean it when you say it, and I guarantee you that you’ll feel better about your morning as you move through it.
Stretch - I’ve been lying in the same position for 8 hours. It’s time to stretch it out a little bit. It helps wake me up and get loose.
Use the Bathroom - I’m not sure if I need to explain this one… If I do, this blog probably can’t help you.
Weigh Myself - I’ve been focusing lately on being healthy, and you can’t see how far you are away from your goal unless you know where you are. I don’t get too hung up on the numbers, I just want them documented to use as a guide.
Drink 16oz of Water - I remember doing this before I heard that it was a good thing for your body. I chug about 16oz of water to get me rehydrated. It also helps wake me up and gives my stomach something to do.
Get Showered & Dressed - Again, plain and simple. This includes brushing my teeth, doing my hair, beard oil, deodorant, cologne, etc. I don’t need reminders for all these little tasks because I already do them. Having this as a habit though makes me get up and do it immediately on the weekends where previously I’d sit in my pajamas till the afternoon and not get anything done.
Drink Morning Smoothie - I had watched the episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown went through how he lost his weight. I wanted something fast and easy in the morning, and a smoothie, when prepared the night before, fits this bill perfectly. Here is a link to the episode if you want to learn more about it. On the weekend, this gets replaced with a healthy breakfast since I have the time to cook one.
Take Vitamins - I’ve taken a multivitamin more off than on over the past 10 years. Now I’m taking a multivitamin, extra vitamin D, and fish oil. I won’t go into the benefits here, but they do a body good. A few of them are giant and awful. I just take a big gulp of smoothie, drop the pill in and swallow. The smoothie hides almost all the nastiness.
Review Today’s Goals - I open up Day One and review the goals I set for myself today. Laid out is my most important task (MIT) as well as 2 other tasks, and I have separate sections for professional and personal. 6 tasks total unless it’s the weekend when I’m not at work.
Work on MIT - “Eat that Frog” as Brian Tracy says. Do your most important, hairy, scary task first thing and get it out of the way. If you ate a frog first thing in the morning, you would know that it is probably the worst thing you’ll experience all day.

I also love coffee in the morning with my Chemex and beans from a local roaster, and I make it most days during the week, but I don’t HAVE to have it everyday and don’t consider it one of my habits.

I’ve tried to do many of the above steps routinely before, but following my evening ritual is what has kept it together for the last 2 weeks with honestly not much willpower at all.

My Evening Ritual

Prep Morning Smoothie - Alton Brown’s smoothie uses frozen fruit, and works best if you let it sit in the refrigerator overnight to thaw a little bit. So I prep everything that goes into the smoothie at night in a medium size Ninja container and in the morning, I just blend it up and pour it into a tumbler.
Prep Tomorrow’s Lunch - As I’m working on eating better, I need to be not eating out as much. Now I bring my lunch in a cooler bag with some ice packs. Obviously this needs prep so I can just grab it in the morning as I leave for work.
Set Tomorrow’s Goals - In Day One, I plan out what I want to get done tomorrow and what my most important task is for work and at home.
Reflect on Today - This also happens in Day One, only in seperate journal. I’ve really been liking Day One 2.0’s multi-journal feature. When I can, I keep a log during the day of how I’m doing. At night I use a TextExpander snippet to add prompts for what was good about today, what was bad, whats on my mind, etc. I also review the goals I set for the day and see how I did.
Brush my Teeth - Why do I have this listed at night and not in the morning, because I tend to forget to do it at night. I added this one so I can make sure my teeth stay healthy, and it’s great kissing my Wife goodnight with fresh breath.
Put Wallet & Glasses on the Night Stand - Previously, I was always looking for where I left my wallet or glasses the previous night. Now they are right there by my bedside waiting for me to leave my bedroom in the morning.
Lay Tomorrow’s Clothes Out - Laying out your clothes the night before is one of the most stupid simple tasks that for me reaps one of the highest benefits. When you wake up in the morning and your clothes are laid out, you immediately say to yourself, “I guess the maid set these out for me to wear, how nice!”. It just makes you feel good! There is no decision to make in the morning because it has already been done for you…just not by the maid.
Read/Listen to 10 Minutes of a Book - This I got from the book The Slight Edge. If you read just 10 pages, or 10 minutes of a book each night, you could read 2 to 6 decent sized books each year! Just think of what you could learn and the skills you could master. Many times I already have this checked off because I listen to books on Audible in my car on the way to and from work.
Read 1 Article in Pocket - “Read It Later” services are an addiction for me. I get so enthused by many of the article titles in my twitter feed and on podcasts I listen to that I just can’t help myself. I do want to read them, just not “now”, and usually not till much later, so it seems. I use the Pocket app at the moment, and right now I have 138 articles stored in there. To boot, I probably save 2 or 3 new articles per day. Going forward I think I’m going to make a plan just to decrease that amount by 10 every day until I get to a manageable number, either by reading or deleting.
Put Phone & Watch on Charger - My iPhone and Apple Watch need to be charged daily, but before, I’d usually fall asleep with my phone in my hand and it never got on the charger. Now it’s always charged because I want to check off this habit to complete my day.

What I’ve Found So Far

I’ve had a few interesting insights in the 2 weeks I’ve been doing this.

I need surprisingly little will power to do all these habits. I just do them. I barely even think about it really. I want to check off each of the habits in Productive and as Seinfeld says, “Don’t break the chain”.
I really don’t have much time in the evening on weekdays. Previously, I would end up watching 2 or 3 hours of TV during and after dinner. Now since I know that bell is going to ring at 9:30pm, I need to get stuff done. I have 4 hours from the time I get home to the time I need to get prepped for the morning, including time to make and eat dinner. So at most I’ll watch 1 show and get to doing other things.
Getting in bed by 10:30pm is hard. I have so much I want to do. Cutting off whatever I’m doing at 9:30pm has been difficult. If we’re out doing something past 9:30pm, then I can’t get started on my morning prep until we get home. I know the prep MUST get done, so I end up going to bed later than I want. I’m thinking about making “Be in bed on time” as a habit to help force me to go to bed, but haven’t made a decision on it yet.
It feels really good. With every habit I check off, I feel like I inch that much closer to reaching my goals and being the person I want to be, building more and more momentum with each day that passes.
These habits are helping instill other positive habits in my life. For the last 2 weeks, I’ve practiced guitar for at least 15 minutes each day and I plan on adding 15 minutes spent working on this blog as a daily habit very soon.

What’s Next

So listen, I’m still only 2 weeks into this. I get it. The chance of all things going south are huge in reality with how many times I’ve failed in the past. In fact, I’m specifically not adding any exercise into the mix yet. If I’m not able to keep up with it, I’m worried I’ll let myself down and as a result, stop doing these other habits. But I really don’t feel like this could all be thrown out the window because of a misstep, though. The 2 rituals work in tandem to keep the cycle going. If I go another 2 to 4 weeks with out any hiccups, I think I’ll have enough momentum to add in the exercise. The BJ Fogg in me says I should add it in right now, but make it so tiny that I couldn’t help not doing it. Like “walk around my house for 3 minutes”. We’ll see.

I’ll post updates in the coming weeks on my status. If any of this sounds like something you want to do, just do it! Setup a morning ritual. Support it with an good evening ritual. Keep it simple. Keep moving forward!

Bind Jekyll To All Available IPs

2016-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

For anyone that uses Jekyll, I found this really useful tidbit yesterday on codehive. I like Andi to proofread my posts before I upload them. By default, “jekyll serve” only binds to “localhost” which allows me to view the site in my own browser, but it doesn’t give her a way to easily see it on her own computer. By binding it to all available IPs, she can access it over our local network to proofread. It’s very handy!

…on the same machine, you can open up a browser and point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:4000 or http://localhost:4000 and access your Jekyll site. But what if you want to check browser compatibility, say on a mobile device or a different desktop?

You can do this by running this command jekyll serve –host=0.0.0.0…

Then on a different device that is connected to the same network as the Jekyll server, point your browser to http://192.168.1.X:4000 and your Jekyll site should load right up.

Using Automator to Handle Receipts

2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Recently my Wife and I attended the 2016 Macstock Conference & Expo. It’s a wonderful event where each year we get to meet new people with common interests and learn amazing things about our Macs.

One of my favorite presentations this year was from engineer Kirschen Seah about Automator, the fairly easy to use “Swiss Army Knife” built-in to every Mac. Not only did Kirschen do a presentation on Automator, later in the day she also led a “deep dive” session into the same topic. I followed right along to learn what I could during the class. I had heard about Automator, and being a programmer and productivity geek, I’m sure I had opened it before, but until now I had not used it to create any helpful workflows.

The best way for me to learn a new topic is to dive in and use it on something relative to me. Browsing around at the actions available in Automator, it looked like the perfect way to get my monthly company expense receipts organized and prepared for submission.

The Problem To Be Solved

Each month I need to submit to our HR department any receipts I need to be reimbursed for. Many of these receipts are created on my Mac from online web orders. Up until now, I would save a PDF of the receipt to my downloads folder, then open Evernote and drag it in. At the end of the month, I would either print them all off one by one to hand in, or I would have to copy them up to our company’s server that has Acrobat installed and use Acrobat’s “Combine PDF” feature to combine them into one document I could email to HR in case I’m on the road.

Both of these tasks were very annoying and I knew there had to be a better way, I just didn’t know what way that was until Kirschen demonstrated just how many things Automator can do!

Web Receipts & Dropbox

As I started to figure out what would be the best workflow to get these receipts organized, I immediately found an option in Safari I’d not noticed before. When printing a document from the web and clicking the down-arrow next to the PDF option, I saw “Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder”.

Upon further research, I learned this was just a folder called “Web Receipts” created in Documents upon first use that would store all receipt PDFs you saved here. This looked like a great place to keep them all, but I really wanted this folder in Dropbox so I could access this folder from multiple devices and eventually save receipts from my iPhone as well.

To fix this, I used the code below to move my Web Receipts folder to Dropbox and created a “symbolic link” to it in Documents. This essentially “tricks” the Mac into thinking the Web Receipts folder is in the same place, even though I moved it to Dropbox. Please Note: This is completely optional and is not necessary if you are perfectly fine with the default home of the Web Receipts folder.

cd ~/Documents
mv Web\ Receipts ~/Dropbox/BobzStuff/Web\ Receipts
ln -s ~/Dropbox/BobzStuff/Web\ Receipts Web\ Receipts

With Web Receipts now stored in the cloud, I could easily save receipt PDFs to this folder throughout the month. Now, I just needed an easy way to combine them all into one file for easy printing or emailing.

Adding In Automator

Here is where Automator goes into action. I created an “Application” Automator workflow called “Combine Receipts” right inside the Web Receipts folder. It consists of the following actions.

Get Specified Finder Items - I pointed this action to my Web Receipts folder in Dropbox so Automator knew what folder I wanted to work with.
Get Folder Contents - This retrieves a listing of all the files in the Web Receipts folder.
Filter Finder Items - Here I only want to select PDFs as well as exclude any previous month’s combined receipt files.
Sort Finder Items - Of course I’d like them in order, so I sorted them by the creation date in ascending order.
Combine PDF Pages - This is where a lot of the magic happens, combining each PDF into a single document. The file is then stored in a temporary directory with a random name.
Rename Finder Items: Name Single Item - Here I name the file what I really want to call it, “This Month’s Receipts.pdf”
Move Finder Items - Finally, I move my renamed file back to the Web Receipts folder, replacing any previously combined PDF.

So now, at the end of the month, I can easily just double click on “Combine Receipts.app” and it will work it’s magic saving the combined receipts right in the same folder for me to turn in.

Wrapping It Up

So with just a few fairly simple drag and drop items, I’ve created a really powerful workflow. I know there are lots of ways to solve a problem like this, but with Apple’s Automator being baked into every Mac, everyone should at least give it a try to solve a problem they might have. Just open up Automator and play around. Experimentation is the one of the best ways to learn more about an application.

As a developer, figuring out solutions like this is exactly what we do. For those that aren’t developers and have never programmed a single line a code, Automator is a great way to “test the waters”. Using the same skills to work through the problem, you too can feel the gratification that comes once your masterpiece is complete and it works exactly like you planned.

I would like to thank Kirschen Seah for her great presentation at Macstock. I’m definitely putting the information I learned to good use! Macstock 2017 is already in the works, so if you’d like to learn some cool new tricks and meet some awesome folks, visit macstockconferenceandexpo.com and follow @macstockexpo for more info!

Groundhog Day And The Slight Edge

2016-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

In my last post, I mentioned one of my favorite movies was Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. It’s a classic. It follows a man named Phil Conners who is stuck reliving the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again. While it’s a comedy, I believe there are many hidden lessons that could use a little reflection.

I’ve recently read a book called The Slight Edge. It’s premise is one I’ve been hearing more often lately from more people; You will never instantly transform into the person you want to be. It happens one baby step at a time and consistency is key.

The Slight Edge states how many of us want to go from planting a garden one day to harvesting it the next. Unfortunately it just don’t work that way. The garden needs to be “cultivated”. Many weeks need to pass, and with it the daily ritual of sun and water, until the day finally comes where you can harvest. Life works the exact same way.

The best part about the movie is near the end when Phil begins to transform himself. After getting bored living with “no consequences” and then trying two dozen ways to kill himself, he begins to change. If he is going to be stuck reliving the same day over and over for eternity, he wants to do so improving himself and the world around him.

Phil takes up French poetry, playing the piano, and even ice sculpting. He starts being friendly to strangers and helping a homeless man. In total, there’s just a handful of scenes focusing on these improvements, but magically by the end of the movie, he’s transformed.

It’s easy to see why we are so attracted to the idea of wanting things “right now”, harvesting right after planting. It’s everywhere we look. We see a total of 3 clips in the movie of Phil practicing the piano and by the end of the film he’s playing on stage on par with Mozart.

How many actual days do you think Phil Conners woke up hearing “I’ve Got You Babe” and using the day to learn piano and ice sculpt? The late great Harold Ramis, the movie’s director, once estimated Phil relived that same day for over 10 years. He then increased that estimate to a much larger number after a website published an article inquiring about the same topic and came up with an estimated 8 years, 8 months and 16 days. I thought 1 to 2 years sounded right.

What they don’t show you in the movie is the roughly 3,000 days Phil spent practicing piano and grabbing that chainsaw and block of ice to hone his craft. That is the hard part of transforming yourself, committing day in and day out. But unfortunately, that is also where success comes from. The key here is you don’t have to spend a massive amount of time everyday to get there. Making small improvements, but doing it consistently is much more effective then spending 8 hours toward your goal once or twice.

Next time you watch Groundhog Day, don’t think about how he became an amazing pianist seemingly overnight. Think about all the days they didn’t show, making small, incremental improvements in himself.

If there is a goal you are going after that is very important to you, don’t get started on it tomorrow. Get started on it today. Spend 15 minutes, 10 minutes, or even 5 minutes, and do it every single day. That 15 minutes a day will turn into over 90 hours towards your goal over the next year. That time also gets compounded like interest every day you work on it. You build up momentum and get closer to your goal even faster. Soon, in the not too distant future, that goal will be realized.

I need to read these words and act on them just as much as anyone reading this. I really enjoyed The Slight Edge and definitely think it’s a worthwhile read. Go ahead, start reading it today. Just 10 pages, but read it everyday. You will have completed it in under 20 days.

What goal are you going to get started on today and spend 15 minutes to move closer to fruition? Tweet me @cyberbobcity. I’d love to hear all about it!

Do the thing, and you shall have the power. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

5 Reasons Why YOU Should Attend Macstock 2016

2016-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

Last year I heard about a brand new event happening very close to me that sounded amazing. It was called Macstock, a conference and expo meant for friends and fans that would have normally gone to MacWorld, had it not been shut down. I never got the chance to go to MacWorld, but since the event was so close by, I signed my wife Andi and I up immediately.

Having never participated in an event like this before, we honestly didn’t know quite what to expect. What we found though was a wonderful community of people, joined by their love of Apple devices and learning more about them. We met so many wonderful people and had such a great time, deciding to purchase our tickets for this year’s event was a no brainer.

Macstock 2016 is shaping up to be even bigger and better than last year with 2 full days of sessions! Below are 5 reasons why you should come and get out out of the house to meet your fellow Apple aficionados in July.

Reason #1 - You Will Learn New Things

I always love the face of someone after I show them a new trick, feature or keyboard shortcut on their computer or device. It’s like a whole new world has opened to them. It’s good to learn new things. This year’s Macstock schedule has a TON of great sessions lined up. Everything from Omnifocus and Mac Automation to Podcasting on iOS. One of my favorite sessions from last year has already been scheduled up for 2016 as well. The Speaker Round Table Q&A had all the event’s speakers up on stage, answering various questions in a fun, informal setting. No matter what your skill level, you are sure to learn something new.

Reason #2 - You Need To Break Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Last year, Andi and I walked into the door not really knowing anyone. We were shy at first, but as the event got started we instantly felt very much at ease. Every person at Macstock was there to learn about Apple stuff and meet other people. Everyone we talked to was so nice. You already have a lot in common with the other attendees and speakers. Take a chance and introduce yourself. Here, you are among friends.

We all spend a lot of time looking at our iDevices, but Macstock is a chance to get out, face to face, and meet others with similar interests. It may be uncomfortable at first, but attend this event and talk to just one person you’ve never met before. I guarantee you’ll be glad you did. All growth in your life happens outside of your comfort zone.

Reason #3 - It’s Right Here! (if you live in the midwest)

While Chicago does get a decent event or two from time to time, most of the great tech events happen out west. We FINALLY have an awesome Mac event right here in our own backyard! I’m lucky to live just an hour south of the event. Even if your drive is a bit longer, that’s just one more podcast worth of information you can devour on your way there. It’s a win-win!

If you are a fan of the movie Groundhog Day like me, you can visit many of the notable landmarks from the movie very close to where the event is being held. Last year Mike Potter, Macstock’s founding father, had even stopped and got us a calendar and brochure showing us the different landmarks to go see from the movie. Now that is personal attention.

Besides what you can do in the immediate area around the event, Chicago is still only an hour and thirty minutes away with lots of fun things to do. My favorite is the Museum of Science and Industry, which in fact currently has a Lego “Brick by Brick” exhibit you are sure to enjoy.

So come for just the conference, or stay to experience all that the Chicagoland area has to offer!

Reason #4 - There Is A BBQ!

Last year Barry Fulk and his amazing wife opened up their home to all us Mac geeks for the first ever Midwest Mac BBQ. It was a bit of a drive from the conference but definitely worth the wait. We met many new friends, podcasters Allison & Steve Sheridan of NosillaCast, Chuck Joiner from MacVoices with his lovely wife, and many more. It was a great time, even with the rain pouring down on us. We huddled under the tents and kept right on talking and enjoying each others company.

This year, the BBQ will be held at the exact same location as Macstock so there is absolutely no reason to miss it! Apple talk along side grilled meats makes for a very good evening.

Reason #5 - Your Support Means Events Like This Will Continue

As more and more things move online, events like this are even harder to find. Attending Macstock shows the community that there IS still a market out there for these events and that all the hard work that is required to make them happen is not only worthwhile, but essential to the community. Mike & Barry have spent many months working tirelessly to make this year’s event a success. Speakers are attending from all over the country after prepping their presentations to teach us new and exciting things. All that is left is for us to register, listen, eat and enjoy!

I want to thank Mike Potter, Barry Fulk and all the speakers and volunteers for creating and participating in such a great event! July 16th and 17th is not far off! Head to the Macstock Conference & Expo web site RIGHT NOW and get your golden ticket!

Cloud Outliner 2 Is Pretty Cool

2016-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

In one of David Allen’s recorded seminars, he mentioned going around your living space with your significant other and making the “mambo honker” master list of everything that isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, where it’s supposed to be. My wife Andi and I started this inside our house a while back but it was left dormant and unfinished. Lately both of us have been really focusing on organization and productivity and it spawned us wanting to get started on it again. We’ve been focusing on the backyard a lot recently so we thought the best place to start was there.

I’ve been in the market for a decent outliner for a while now. I’m a big Omnifocus fan, but Omni Group’s “Omni Outliner” is just too expensive for my needs at $80 for the Mac and iOS combo. With starting our master list again, I really wanted it in an outliner where we could move things around easily and keep a hierarchical list of rooms with the items that needed to be done under each room. I searched the App Store and found Cloud Outliner 2 for the iPhone. It immediately appealed to me because one of it’s flagship features is syncing with Evernote, an app we already use. Instead of having yet another place to store information, these lists could be located where we already go to for information. I purchased the Pro version for iOS and we headed to the backyard, glass of alcohol in hand (a requirement for any home list making session).

Even after just a few minutes of use, I could tell Cloud Outliner 2 was exactly what I was looking for. It was easy to get items into the app and move them around when needed. I tested out the Evernote sync too and it was nearly instant, plus it’s a two-way sync. Changes made in Evernote modify the original outline as well.

I’ve now purchased the Mac version which syncs in just the same way. $13 for the pair of apps is completely reasonable to me. We even started a few other checklists as the ideas really started flowing during our discussion. We now have seasons prep lists started for things we need to take care around the house to get ready for the next season.

Well done.

Cloud Outliner 2 Pro for iOS

Clout Outliner 2 for Mac

Nerd Cave - Part 2

2016-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

Read all about Nerd Cave - Part 1

So my faux wood wall was awesome, but the bright yellow wasn’t quite as spectacular. From the beginning, I had always thought about adding some sort of large vinyl graphic to it to really make it pop.

The company I work for, TechPro, recently got into the large format printing business, purchasing a Roland solvent printer/cutter that can do everything from stickers to car wraps. It was the perfect time to do a little experimentation.

I wanted to add an additional pop of color on the wall as well as display a motivational message. I came up with “Be Creative. Be Awesome!”. I mocked up the design and found a colorful stock vector to use around the “Be”, creating the letters out of the negative space. I preped the file one weeknight and then printed it out the following day after work.

To get the graphic up on the wall with perfectly straight letters, you use what is called “transfer paper” to lift the artwork off it’s backing. You can then begin to apply the graphic to the wall, slowly working your way down, peeling the backing off. It was a little nerve racking, this being my first time doing it, but the Fathead type wall material I used was very forgiving.

Once the graphic was firmly pressed down, i began to peel off the transfer paper which left the finished graphic. It was just perfect!

Now that my wall was finished, I could finally move my desk into place and get my computer system setup. I hooked up some LED lights I had stuck to the back of my monitors and purchased an additional set from CostCo to go under my desk. This also happened to be the start of the Christmas season, so I chose the colors for the following pic wisely. I’m very happy with how everything turned out and I really enjoy working down there now.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of The Nerd Cave!

Nerd Cave - Part 1

2016-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

In June of 2015, my wife and I had the privledge of buying our first home. We felt very lucky. We found the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood for us in the hometown I grew up in.

In our previous apartment, I had a three monitor computer setup on a fairly large IKEA desk, along with a few other computers and servers. I now needed to find a good space to set these up. Luckily this new house had a great finished basement. Originally, I was just going to carve out a portion of one of the basement areas, but with my particular desk configuration, there was no way to set it up as I had planned. It made more sense to turn the small room at the bottom of the stairs into what I now call my “Nerd Cave”.

It all began with a bright wall of yellow. I love accent walls with bright color, so I picked a nice sunshine yellow for the back wall of the room. My amazing in-laws offered to paint the wall and trim for me. I came home from work one day and BAM! I had color!

The Wood Wall

My wife and I tossed around the idea of doing a wall made of wood in our dining room. I had done some research and I thought it looked really cool, but my wife just didn’t know if it would work and we ended up not doing it. The Nerd Cave, though, was the perfect place to give it a try.

I had a fairly small budget, so I was looking for way to be cost effective. What I came up with was using faux wood floor planks made out of vinyl. I wanted a greyish color to match the yellow. I found some on Walmart’s web site in a color called “silver spruce”. The reviews of the product were good so I ordered up one box as a sample. I recieved the sample and really liked the color. After some calculation, I pulled the trigger and purchased the rest which ended up being only about $110.

Since the panels were meant for the floor, I knew I needed to add to the adhesive already on the bottom of the planks. I wouldn’t want these falling off the wall or sagging. Talking it over with my Dad, we decided some basic contractors glue should work. I picked it up at the store and was all set.

I asked my Dad if he could give me a hand on the project and he happily obliged. The Next Saturday morning, we got started. The planks were fairly easy to apply. The hardest part was cutting the edges and fitting a corner that wasn’t perfectly square. We took it piece by piece and in about 5 hours we were done!

It looked amazing! I moved my large desk into place. The white top really just popped off the yellow and wood wall. As with anything in life, it feels wonderful to see ideas in your head come to fruition. And this was only the beginning…

Click Here for Nerd Cave - Part 2!

Perfectionism Won...

2016-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

I failed. I admit it. It’s been almost 7 months since the last post in this new project. I’d like to say I was setting myself up for a loss. I mean, I created a blog on procrastination… You didn’t actually think you’d see regular updates, did you?

In trying to figure out what went wrong, I realized I wanted every post to be absolutely “perfect”. I’d start to imagine myself writing the next post and the weight of perfection scared me away and pushed me to do other things I thought were easier. Fear is just one of the powerful forces that can end in procrastination.

But I’m over it. Its 2016 and I really want this blog to flourish. I’ve heard a lot from Shawn Blanc in the past few months. He’s publishing a vast library of content about being focused and making meaningful productivity. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I need a physical, time sensitive goal. That goal for me and this blog will be 1 post per week.

Having a goal won’t do much if I don’t plan a way for me to actually accomplish it. To do this, I’m going to schedule daily writing time. Just a little. If I can establish a “tiny habit” of writing for 15 minutes per night, that will help move writing from the part of the brain I need willpower for and into the more automatic region. Another benefit I’ve found in the past is that even though I set a routine for a small amount of time, I end up getting in the grove and keep going for a longer period.

Another problem that arose were times I wanted to just link to something helpful I found on the web and just write a few sentences about it, or respond about a current event that didn’t really need it’s own full blown post. So I’ve now created a new post “template” for these so I can quickly get a timely post out there when I need to. I think a constant stream of useful posts, be it short or long, will continue to help stop my procrastination.

This post is a way of forgiving myself, letting go of the past and moving on to a more productive future. While I might not have been working on my blog these past many months, I have been productive on some cool projects I really wanted to complete around my house. The next few posts will be showing them off, so stay tuned!

Keep moving forward.

You REALLY Do Need A Budget

2015-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

For many procrastinators, thinking about personal finance can bring up worse thoughts and images than public speaking while naked. From late paid bills with extra fees piled on, to getting your water shut off from non-payment, it can get scary. I have definitely been there. When things are headed downhill in the finance department, our first response is usually “I just don’t want to think about that right now…”, pushing off the problem for yet another day and letting it get that much worse.

There is one piece of software I rely on and has had an immeasurable impact on my finances. That software is called “You Need A Budget”, or YNAB for short. It has helped my Wife and I save for and purchase our new home well under two years since we got married. It has also allowed us to not purchase a single item for our house (or anything for that matter) on credit. As a new homeowner, you wouldn’t believe all the little things you never knew you needed to buy. Most of all, YNAB keeps us stress free about our finances. We NEVER have an argument about money, and it’s not because we aren’t talking about it.

What Is YNAB?

YNAB is not only an application that runs on both Macs and PC’s, but a methodology of managing your money using 4 simple rules. It started simply as an excel spreadsheet, created by Jesse Mecham, which he used to track his own finances. To make rent, he decided to start selling it, and YNAB has now grown into a full-fledged application and business with a whole team surrounding it. It’s really quite an American business success story.

I’m not going to go through the rules here, because the YNAB web site already has a ton of great info on them. The system works like this, when you get some income, you figure out what you need to do with it until you get paid again. You split it up into different categories like rent, groceries and entertainment. When budgeting, you also look ahead to less frequent expenses and put some money away in a category for them (did someone say car insurance?).

When you spend money, you add transactions into an account, similar to most financial software. The difference with YNAB though is that these expenses get attached to a category you previously created in the budget and deducted from that category’s total. It’s like the old system of cash in envelopes, just upgraded for the 21st century. You put money in an envelope when you receive it and take it out when you need to spend it. Simple.

Entering Transactions On The Go

YNAB was good, but it wasn’t until version 4.0 that it became truly amazing. They released mobile apps on iPhone and Android, allowing you to add new transactions “in the moment”. It added seamless syncing with Dropbox as well as the ability to take advantage of your phone’s GPS to remember the location where a transaction occurred. Now when I get my receipt at the grocery store, I can enter in the amount and YNAB automatically recognizes where I’m at. It even remembers the category and account from my last transaction there and adds it in. Entering a new transaction literally can be done in under 15 seconds.

Staying Engaged With Your Finances

Back in the days of Microsoft Money, the holy grail for me was getting my bank to automatically download my transactions into the app, sorting and matching them up with what I might have entered already. These days, I enter every transaction either through YNAB’s desktop app or the mobile app, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure, YNAB can import my bank statement, but manually entering these transactions is what keeps my Wife and I engaged, surfing on top of our finances much like GTD helps you stay on top of your projects and actions. YNAB has trained us to revisit the budget often, and in doing so, rest easy that we are keeping ourselves on track.

Forget The Past

One of the things I liked most about YNAB when I first got started was the idea of forgetting the past, and focusing on the future. Sure you’ve made some mistakes. Yes you have absolutely no emergency fund in case your car breaks down. Just start right now with what money you do have, and give those dollars a job. Forget about trying to import your last 3 months of bank transactions. The past is not the point. You have money, just figure out what this money needs to do before you get paid again. That’s it.

What’s even better is if you do fall off the wagon, they have a handy “Fresh Start” feature. It leaves all your accounts, categories and payees setup, but clears your transactions. This lets you start over with your current balances so you can get back on track quickly. In the early days, I probably used this 8 or 9 times.

Combining Our Finances

We’ve now been using the same YNAB file since we got married in October 2013 and haven’t missed a beat. Before that, we each had our own bank accounts, some debt, separate YNAB files and we honestly fell off the wagon a lot. Combining our finances and getting it all out on the table in a single YNAB file is what made everything click for us. Now we have a team of two people overseeing everything. When one of us is slacking, the other picks up and gets those transactions entered. Neither of us is solely in charge and we both get an equal say. It works perfectly.

The Power Of “An Allowance”

It sounds childish really, having “an allowance”, mainly because it’s usually only talked about in the context of a parent giving one to a child, but the allowance is really a crucial part of our system. Depending on how much we have available to spend for the month, we decide on an amount both my Wife and I get equally. This is to be spent on whatever we feel like, no questions asked. It could go for an occasional Starbucks drink, a new tech gadget or a craft project for my Wife. This practice has given us the freedom to buy whatever we want, whenever we want and not have to check with each other. Do we sometimes go a little bit over? Of course! But luckily we review our budget often and we have the added bonus of a little thing called a “buffer”.

YNAB’s End Game - The One Month Buffer

One of the main goals of the YNAB method revolves around Rule #4, “Live on last month’s income”. Too many people these days are living paycheck to paycheck, spending much of their income the same week they receive it. YNAB instructs you to begin to create a “buffer”. Each month you try to put a little more away. The buffer gives you breathing room. Spent a little too much eating out this month? No problem. The buffer has you covered.

Once you do have enough in your buffer, close to what you might spend in a month, that’s when things get really interesting. Now you can assign any new income you receive this month into next month’s budget. It’s hard to do and it takes a while, but doing so frees you up from having to time payments and, more importantly, lets you know exactly how much you can really spend this month.

In purchasing our home, our lease was up 4 to 5 weeks before we closed. My parents allowed us to move in (luckily rent free) which really helped our savings. We closed on June 1st but only just a few days ago made our first mortgage payment. That extra time allowed us to complete our buffer and start living on last month’s income. Now we pay all our bills and work our budget on the 1st of the month using the income we earned last month. We know exactly how much we have to spend. There is no mystery!

A Couple Criticisms

I consider myself an advanced YNABer, and since I use it so often, there are just a couple of minor issues I’ve found that can be annoying.

When entering transactions, they don’t stay in the same chronological order you entered them in. Transactions on the same date get sorted by the amount of the transaction by least to greatest. If I slip for a few days and have to enter in 4 transactions from the same day, it would be nice for it to match the order I see them on my bank statement.
YNAB is big on saving for a rainy day, but we like to budget for specific items that belong in the same category. The only way to identify what your intentions are for that savings is by adding note and keeping it updated on the category for that month and future months. The only other solution is to split out each item into it’s own category which seems cumbersome.
Using credit cards, especially when you have preexisting debt, can be quite complicated in YNAB. Maybe it’s just the nature of the beast, but in the early days I did a lot of head scratching, unsure of what I might have messed up. Luckily YNAB offers tons of free classes and videos to help you which you should definitely take advantage of.

The Proof Is Over Our Head

YNAB has worked for us. Every day when I wake up, back out of our driveway and take a good look at our home, I can see what we were able to accomplish.

I understand this post probably reads like a paid advertisement, but it’s impossible to separate my glowing opinion of what Jesse and the team have been able to create since our lives have been so dramatically improved by its existence. There are lots of apps and methods out there, many of which I’m sure work great, but I can’t see myself ever using anything but YNAB.

If you are at all struggling with money, you need to try this software. They have a free trial available and if you’re a student they will even let you use YNAB for FREE! Now that is true commitment in helping prevent future generations from falling into the debt trap and just one more reason why the folks at YNAB are so good.

Grocery Shopping On A Budget

2015-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Grocery shopping is a fairly consistent procrastination item for me. It’s a chore, and like most other chores, I’m really good at pushing them off to their special place (aka, “tomorrow”). In between now and when I go grocery shopping next is a smorgasbord of eating out, taking out, and what usually ends up to be pigging out on unhealthy items that I should not be consuming. What I have found that helps get me to not only grocery shop more, but enjoy it more, is a system of both tracking our spending and what we’re eating.

1. Budgeting with YNAB

Since saving for and buying a house, keeping a budget has been very beneficial for us. An amazing app and methodology called YNAB (which stands for You Need A Budget) lets us categorize how we want to spend our income. It’s like the old system of putting your cash in envelopes, but updated for the 21st century. There are all kinds of things, big and small, we need or want, both now and later. Budgeting helps us make sense of it all. We give every dollar a job as to not overspend and to make sure our money is going towards what we value most. This is actually Rule #1 in the YNAB system. While we have had an overall spending goal for groceries and dining out, it’s gotten a little out of hand.

My wife and I do all of our budgeting on the 1st of the month using all of the income we made in the previous month, also known as YNAB’s Rule #2. We then know exactly how much money we have to spend for the whole month. Yesterday we decided to spend no more than $600 on groceries this month. That gave us $150 per week for our 2 person household. That still may seem high for some people, and it probably is, but it’s a first attempt at decreasing our grocery bill to an amount we feel comfortable with. Tracking is what is important, and from there we can then set a goal to lower it further.

2. Planning Our Meals with Paprika

It doesn’t happen as often as we’d like it to, but we try to first do a meal plan for the week before we go shopping. Doing so gives us a fighting chance to both eat healthy and spend as little as possible by coordinating our meals. We look over the calendar to see what we’ve got going on, and pick recipes out of Paprika, our favorite recipe app, to make for the week. Using Paprika’s included meal calender, we select a recipe to cook each day for dinner. After that, we send all the items needed for those recipes directly to the shopping list. We then add any other miscellaneous items along with stapes for breakfast and lunch and we’re ready to go. Paprika is absolutely great for this. It even lets you export your meal calendar to the native calendar app, but we found that clutters up our calendar more than we’d like, and it doesn’t sync in case we need to make a slight change midweek.

3. Tracking the Total with ShopAssist

Today, I took our system to the next level with an awesome app I found called ShopAssist on iOS. The problem was that I needed a good way of keeping track of what were buying in the store to make sure we were sticking to our $150 budget. ShopAssist let me keep track each item, including the tax, to make sure the amount on the receipt was within our budget. Let me tell you, having my Wife check off the items on the list in Paprika while I added each of them to ShopAssist really kept me engaged. I actually enjoyed shopping!

In the app, you choose a category for the item you’re putting in your cart. Then, enter the price and the quantity. It automatically adds the tax (which you configure in the settings) and adds it to the list, subtracting that amount from your total.

One of my few requests for the app was that I wanted it to remember the category of the last item as I entered the next item. For instance, in the dairy aisle, entering 6 items while only pressing the dairy button once would have been great. I also didn’t notice the scale icon for produce in the top right corner until later, so the best I could do without it was enter full pounds of various fruits and veggies in the quantity box.

We ended up just a couple dollars off from the final receipt and $15 under our budget. Sticking to “just the list” also helped us get in and out of the store faster as well as avoid all the processed snacks and treats we needed to be avoiding anyway. It all around just made the trip that much more rewarding.

What’s even cooler is when you’re done it gives you a summary breakdown of each category, how much you spent and what percentage of your total receipt that category occupied. I can now see those results week to week to compare how we’re doing. In the age of quantitative results for everything from exercise to productivity, this was really cool. For a $0.99 app, ShopAssist delivered both on great design as well as superb functionality.

As a procrastinator, starting healthy habits is extra hard. Having the engagement during our shopping trip as well as the reward of staying under budget is just what I need to keep this routine going forward. I really enjoyed the process and I’m excited for next week to spend the second quarter of the budget!

The 11" MacBook Air - A Productivity Powerhouse

2015-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Having great tools to help you be productive is one of the best ways I know of to combat procrastination. At the top my list would no doubt be my 11” MacBook Air.

I’ve owned many computers throughout the years, starting with the brand new Apple IIE my Dad brought home when I was a kid. Revealing the beige colored box from it’s packaging introduced me to what would eventually be my life’s work. It was the machine I first started programming on, using PLOT, HLIN and VLIN to create images on screen (like a killer baseball field). I used PrintShop and an annoyingly loud dot matrix printer to do some of my first graphic design work. It was amazing for it’s time. Fast forward to today, it’s remarkable how far we’ve come.

I didn’t venture back into the Apple computer camp again until just a few years ago. I was allowed to get a Mac for work. As a designer, OSX really appealed to me and I wanted to start learning how to make iOS apps as well. At the time I had an iPad which was super portable. I thought, why not get the biggest MacBook Pro they make? I wasn’t planning on lugging it around with me anyway because I had the iPad. While that was good in theory, in practice, I DID end up wanting to bring it with me, and that laptop was a beast.

The Appeal Of The Air

In 2013 when the new MacBook Air’s came out with the Haswell chipset promising killer battery life, I was ready to ditch the bulk and go light. A beefed up i7 11” MacBook Air was about $1400 and I was sure I could sell my 17” for about $1000. This new machine would be so light and small I would have no problem bringing it around with me everywhere. The possibility of programming anywhere was the real draw for me.

Portability

While the 11” MacBook Air is no longer the smallest MacBook they make, it’s still the smallest computer with the “real horsepower” I need to do what I do. I now barely ever leave the apartment without it. I purchased a really nice bag to carry it in, the Muzetto Outback Canvas that my Wife insists on calling my “man purse”. It’s perfect for a walk to the local coffee shop for a two hour work session.

Battery Life

Apple touts the 11” Air as having 9 hours of battery life. I’m usually doing something that requires a little more power than just browsing the web, like Photoshop or .Net Development, I consistently get about 7 hours or so on a charge which I’m very happy with. With a charger at home and at work, I really never have to bring a charger with me. I did get an extra one to keep in my car should I need it in an emergency.

.Net Development

Much of my day job is doing Windows development. When researching whether the 11” would be feasible for that purpose, I was able to find a few posts from Windows developers who prefer a Mac. Most of them used either Parallels or Fusion with the occasional mention of just using Bootcamp.

I have found the 11” with VMWare Fusion installed to be just about perfect. The machine is plenty fast to get what I need done and working on the Mac just makes me enjoy my work even more. If you think you need to use Windows hardware to make Windows applications, you’d be wrong. The 11” Air is a perfectly capable development machine for Windows. I used to use Parallels for my Windows install, but their limited licensing to just one computer pushed me over into the VMWare camp.

Web & Graphic Design

Photoshop, Indesign & Illustrator are apps I use everyday, and they run great on this tiny little machine. When I need more screen real estate I just hook up an external monitor and go at it. The only negative in this area is screen color. The color gamut of the 11” screen is not very good. Many times when using an external monitor and comparing, you can tell the colors look pretty washed out. All the other positives of this computer make up for this one negative. If you want to be able to design on the go, this is your machine.

Development Using XCode

So far XCode has been the biggest wrench in using such a small screen. It really requires an extra monitor when doing much of anything with Storyboards. The number and size of window panes just makes it hard to even see a whole iPhone screen at one time. It’s when using XCode that I’ve felt the small size of the monitor the most.

With that said, I am fairly new to XCode and iPhone development. I’m sure there are some keyboard shortcuts I should learn to wrangle those windows with speed to help in the effort. I have no problem taking the blame on that one. Even with the cramped space, it’s still possible to get work done in XCode on the Air. My first iOS app Bunco Calc was created completely on my MacBook Air.

Comparison To The 13”

Don’t hide it. I know you are pondering the question. It’s the question that lead you here, “Should I get the 13 inch over the 11 inch.” I unfortunately can’t truly advise you in this area, because I’m biased. I already picked my poison. I faced that same decision that you are and the weight and size of the 13 inch was just too great. Sure I would appreciate the extra screen real estate, but it would come at too great a cost to it’s best asset, portability.

Docked At Work

While I’ve used this machine for a while now on the go, it was until about 3 months ago that I moved to using it full time at work. I ditched my 3 monitor PC setup for the MacBook with one additional monitor. It’s heavenly… I can easily use all my favorite Mac apps like nvAlt and Omnifocus along with my keyboard shortcuts to help me get my work done throughout the day. I can use the 3 finger gesture to slide over to Windows (which more than one of my PC loving coworkers questioned how I did it). When I’m ready to leave, I just unplug and slide it in my bag for it’s trip home. The simplicity of it is beautiful.

But What About The New MacBook?

I know, I know. That sexy new slim computer is just begging you to purchase it, but realize that under that is barely more than an iPad with a built in keyboard. I’m sure that computer works for many people, but for any designer/developer I think you need to look elsewhere. I really hope next year I can get a similar machine to my Air with an added Retina screen displaying that crystal clear image we all want. The new MacBook is just too slow and the 13” MacBook Pro is still to large and heavy, so the wait continues…

Advantages

Unbelievably portable
Powerful enough for all types of development and creative applications
Great battery life

Disadvantages

Limited color gamut
Difficult to use XCode with such a small screen

The 11” MacBook Air is truly my most favorite computer I’ve ever owned. From the ability to do any of my creative and work tasks from almost anywhere, to the all day battery life I receive, it’s simply just a perfect machine. When you can use the speed and power of a large desktop computer in such a small perfect package, how could you not be interested in this machine.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I own Apple Stock, but only purchased it recently.

Hello World

2015-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

Like many of us, my life is in a constant “World War” scale battle with procrastination. It affects almost everything I do, every day of my life. Though I do consider myself a productive person, I struggle with not only the things I “need” to get done, but especially with the things I “want” to get done.

I am a web developer and graphic designer at a small tech company in the suburbs of Chicago, IL. My work consists of everything from .Net applications to web sites built with Joomla to graphic design projects. I truly enjoy being able to go from a half day of coding to working on a menu design for a local restaurant. Both of these roles are ingrained in me, and I absolutely love what I do.

I can’t exactly pinpoint where in my life procrastination became a problem, but if I had to take a guess I imagine it would be high school. Whenever I could, I would push off doing any large homework project, leaving it for the last possible minute. Often I was able to complete it on-time and do a half way decent job. Other times I fell flat on my face. It was the Hail Marys that I pulled off which kept the “Perpetual Procrastination Machine” rolling along in my brain…

About 10 years ago, I discovered the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. Within a matter of days I was hooked! David laid out everything so clear and simple. To this day I am still a huge “GTD” guy. My weekly reviews keep me sane, and what better system for an avid procrastinator then to use one that can be endlessly tweaked and modified! I joke, but I would be an absolute mess without GTD.

Since moving to the Mac a few years ago, I discovered the world of Mac blogs and podcasts. I’ve looked up to powerhouse productive people like Brett Terpstra and David Sparks for years now. They seem to get so much accomplished and create so many cool things! Apps, books, podcasts, scripts, and screencasts; you name it, they have done it! These guys are who inspired me to create this web site. I want to become one of these ultra productive people.

Now, in my thirties, I love acquiring knowledge. I rarely want someone to just “do” something for me. I want to learn how to do it for myself. The struggle with productivity still haunts me. With someone who likes to learn, this means an endless number of books I’d like to read and a very large list of someday/maybe projects. I bet you can relate.

This web site honestly started out while procrastinating! It was built with Jekyll, a static site generator. What better way to avoid important things I should be doing then to learn about yet another system to create a web site! I first thought about hosting this site on GitHub. It would be super simple to setup and would be fairly fast. There unfortunately just wasn’t enough procrastination built into that setup! I decided I wanted to host it at home, using an old junk Dell computer that was destined for the recycling bin. I would have to get it running, get Linux installed, learn and setup Nginx and a deploy method. This was beginning to look better. My idea was that I would run the site off this old computer and cable Internet connection until the point it became so popular that I could no longer handle the traffic. There was something about that I really liked. I got it all setup and was ready to go.

After a couple more weeks though, I started having all kinds of really good thoughts and blog post ideas. I now began to have reservations that my site would start to gain some traffic and then go down or load slowly. From that point on, I just wanted a stable and super fast platform. I had heard about Amazon S3 and Cloudfront, and this would be the perfect time to learn about it. That brings us to the site in it’s current form, and proof that the procrastination battle wages on.

So I welcome you to Productivity Tomorrow, a blog about my battle between procrastination and productivity. Among these pages you soon find helpful articles, tips & tricks for the Mac, book and app reviews and even some screencasts I’ll “eventually” get to. Many posts will be about encouraging productivity, while others will be about the fun diversions that can keep us from it. If you can relate to my story I’d love to hear from you. We have such a wonderful Mac community that I honestly just want to be part of it. I simply want to create something cool that others find useful. Please feel free to contact me on Twitter @cyberbobcity. I know I’ll be itching to take a break to respond.

Thanks again for stopping by!!