My friend Patrick Rhone has recently launched a new site devoted to running a minimalist Mac. It’s chock full of great tips for de-cluttering your Macintosh computer.

It’s also gotten me thinking about the idea of minimalism and eliminating unnecessary stuff so that I can be more productive. More on that later!

1. Launch Automator. The first thing it will do is ask you what direction to go in. We want to use the Custom option.

2. Scroll down until you find “Launch Application.” Or just type “launch” in the search box and you’ll see it immediately.

3. Select and drag “Launch Application” to the pane on the right to start building your workflow.

4. The pane on the right displays a popup menu that allows you to choose what application to launch. You may have to choose “Other” at the bottom of the list, and navigate to the application you want.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as needed if you want to include other applications.

6. Save it as an application in the Applications folder.

7. Invoke Quicksilver and launch your app. That’s it!

If you want to go back and change your workflow, you can always open an existing workflow in Automator.

It’s so good I stayed up til 1 am reading it. (And I meant to go to bed about 11:30…)

Anyway, go check it out and get yourself a copy. You’ll be entertained and have that creative noodle tickled. Plus, the whole issue is chock-full of Futura and sports a different graphic style, quite a departure for Wired. I don’t know if it’s intended to be unique to the issue or if it’s the way they’ll do things for the next ten issues or so, but it’s a pretty interesting departure for the mag.

Again, go read it. You won’t be disappointed.

I’m sure you know Paul McCartney as a singer and song-writer. But did you know the ex-Beatle also paints?

A few years ago, I got the book Paul McCartney: Paintings. He does these big, expressive, semi-abstract pieces that have a sort of visceral effect, with lots of drips and runs. Very much influenced by Willem de Kooning’s abstract expressionism.

With all his talent, even Paul McCartney can get stuck. In Paintings, he shares a fun, creative little strategy he has devised for dealing with stuckness. He has a scenario he revisits every now and then. He has an alter-ego named Mr. Blendini, and Mr. Blendini makes paintings for an imaginary friend named Luigi, whose restaurant has an empty alcove. Luigi needs a painting to go in his alcove:

“I like blending, to take a color, mix a couple of colors and blend them through, and so when I am doing that, I always imagine myself as Mr. Blendini… The Luigi thing has to do with when you are thinking to yourself and you can’t help the conversations that go on in your head. For me, if I ever get stuck, and I think, Why am I doing this? Why am I standing here putting paint on this thing? do I want to sell it? and if I can’t think of any reason, again I have this fictional person in my mind, who is Luigi and he owns a restaurant. He has this alcove in the middle of the restaurant, a little alcove, and he needs a painting. He has asked me, ‘Please, Mr. Blendini, please make a painting for Luigi’s alcove.’ So I always think, This is for Luigi.”

It’s a neat trick, conjuring up an imaginary place where your work will go. It may be not far off from where you want it to go eventually. If you want your work to appear in a particular, imagine it in that place. Make it fit.

Image from beatlesclubmanchester.com

As you can tell from what I’ve written elsewhere, I’ve come to the conclusion that “productivity” is not the point. And being organized is not the point, either, although it can be tremendously helpful in a number of ways (that we’re not going to delve into today).

The point is whether you are making anything at all. You can plan and plan and plan all day long and have little to show for it, except for a bunch of plans. I’m reminded of the Beatles song “Nowhere Man,” which is about this indecisive head-in-the-sand guy who makes “all his nowhere plans for nobody.” In fact, “isn’t he a bit like you and me?”

If you spend all your time capturing without doing anything about it, there’s no point. It’s all a bunch of useless stuff. It has no value. Ideally, a good review process will eliminate the things you’ve captured that aren’t worth any further time, energy, or thought.

Don’t get me wrong: Capture is good. In fact, it’s necessary, if you want to act on the ideas you have. We all know how easy it is to forget the great ideas we have. Whether you capture stuff on index cards, in a sketchbook, on a voice recorder, or with a camera, don’t go overboard to the point it becomes a fruitless obsession. (I know I’ve mentioned this before.)

The real reason I write this is that the past few months I’ve really fallen off the creativity wagon. Sure, I bang out creative stuff all the time at my day job, from clean, simple direct-mail campaigns to funky film-noir-inspired photo shoots to smart magazine-style website layouts, but my fine art painting and photography have been neglected since last summer. Yet like the Nowhere Man, I’ve got a list of plans for things I want to create, but never get to them.

I’ve been reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. In it, she presents an interesting twist, although I advise this with caution and a grain of salt: try “un-planning.” Have an overall sense of purpose about your work, but don’t be afraid to follow rabbit holes for a bit. This reminds me of one of the concepts presented in The Artist’s Way:

“Get through your first 50 failures as fast as you can.”

So explore. See where the path leads you. Isn’t that what art and life and love are all about, anyway? But do have the prescience to know when to stop following a certain path when all you’re doing is gathering information with nothing to show for it.

J.J. Abrams loves boxes. As a kid he would take things apart, telephones, TVs, what have you. For a TED talk he gave a few years ago, he brought in a Kleenex box he had dismantled just to look at how it was constructed, the scoring, the printer registration, etc. In his talk he spoke about this magic mystery box he got from Lou Tannen’s magic shop when he was a kid. [Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:02. Transcript available here.] 30 years later, he still hasn’t opened it. That’s a lot of restraint for an eager, energetic guy who ripped apart a Kleenex box in a hotel room the night before his talk.

Personally, I’m not sure I would have had that much self-control with such a great magic box. I probably would’ve ripped the thing open as soon as I got home. Or sooner. But what’s important here is the idea of mystery, peeling away layers slowly until one arrives at the core of the thing they’re looking at. Or the core is never found. To use a worn-out cliche, I think many times with things in our lives the journey is far more important than the destination. Slowly unveiling mysteries and living off that suspense seems to be what has driven Abrams, informing his life and his work. Aren’t his shows Lost and Alias exactly that, all about mysterious, seemingly un-knowable things that are only revealed (or further obscured) bit by bit, layer by layer? Whether you like his work or not, it’s still compelling.

Do we have to have all the answers?

Sometimes you never get to the core, but I think that’s OK. Sometimes it’s better to not have the answer handed to you. What would be the fun in that? There’s no opportunity to explore for yourself, to use your imagination and be full of wonder about the possibilities that may exist. If we had all the answers, what would compel us to dream big? You can probably think of someone (perhaps yourself!) who failed to act because they didn’t bother to consider what possibilities existed.

My takeaway

For me the biggest takeaway from Abrams’ talk is this: how can I inject what I do with suspense and mystery? Abrams talks how films like Jaws and Alien build suspense and sometimes don’t even show what the big scary thing is. And sometimes the real gold is in the small, quiet moments between the big momentous ones.

That’s what that makes great movies, books, films, artworks compelling. Even when things seem plain as day, there’s always a little more to it than just that. What can you leave “unsaid” to be more compelling?

Feel free to comment here, or comment on the work.life.creativity forums. If you don’t have an account there, we’d love to have you.

Those of us who have gotten really excited about it in the past few years and blogged about it have ceased to do so, or at least slowed down to a trickle. While MF is a relative latecomer the “productivity” scene (although it has never really been just about productivity in and of itself in the first place), I let this site go stagnant, due partly to technical difficulties and partly to my own blocks. I’ve seen some other productivity-focused blogs start out all gung-ho and then fall by the wayside. Brett Kelly at Cranking Widgets announced last week that he is done with productivity blogging, and then over the weekend posted a rant about how GTD sucks. This past summer I helped launch work.life.creativity. with a bunch of other guys who saw an overall decline and therefore a need for something new in the productivity arena. Then we posted less and less frequently, and eventually became victims of that same decline ourselves. Most of us jumped on the GTD bandwagon in the past 3-4 years, but we are starting to get off and stay off. People aren’t getting back on. They’re straying into other systems, developing their own. Even my own personal productivity system has evolved quite a bit from “kosher” GTD to something a bit different. While I think that’s standard for anyone who has practiced it for a year or two, I don’t think GTD as a system is really “sticking” anymore.

I think the movement, if you can call it a movement, if you can call it that, is dead. That’s right: (GTD) Productivity (with a capital “P”) is dead. But why? Why are all these former GTD zealots so down on the whole thing, giving up on the productivity stuff and going around making big announcements of resignation?

But I don’t really think that it’s dead, not by a long shot. Instead, I think GTD is too complicated for a lot of people, especially the ones who expect the system to do everything for them. (It even makes toast!) Without rehashing too much of what everybody else has said, the whole GTD thing causes too much anxiety and adds too many layers of complexity. I’ll touch on some of the GTD-centric concepts that I’ve had trouble with. Contexts? I started out with a ton of them, but now rarely use them anymore. I have moved to a more project-based mentality. I only use a context list when I’m running errands. Ganging tasks together makes sense, but you can’t live your life in such a way that you do like activities all the time. Sometimes you just have to make a single phone call right at this moment, instead of making ten in a row. Weekly Reviews? They take too long. It shouldn’t take two or three hours just to organize my thoughts about what I did last week and what I plan to get accomplished in the upcoming week. Brain Dumps? I’ll just say this: the customized Incompletion Triggers List I’ve created is subtitled “Hello, Anxiety.”

In short, I don’t think GTD is sustainable for a lot of people. It requires so much effort to keep it going. It’s needlessly complex. Too many layers. Too many if-then situations.

But on the other hand, I think productivity is still of utmost importance. Perhaps more so than in the past two decades. I get the impression that GTD evolved in response to the rise in knowledge work in the late 80s and early 90s, designed to give people a way to manage their ever-increasing number of inputs. As we enter a totally new economic era, I think productivity is still important, but without the layers of complexity. Everything is smaller. More compact. Small businesses make up the bulk of business today, and they’re lean and nimble. [Seth Godin](http://sethgodin.typepad.com] says that small is the new big. Feature bloat is a thing of the past. (Or should be.)

I believe that Simplicity is going to be the key to productivity from here on out. Patrick Rhone has written an excellent post about this over at The Weekly Review. His key to being more productive is keeping it simple. Bill Westerman has written about his GSD system that uses pen and paper. Why can’t we just do stuff? why can’t our trusted system be more simple and efficient in itself? A good system shouldn’t require that much mental overhead.

More importantly, I think Creativity is the going to be the new Productivity. Besides, what’s the point in spending tons of time being hyper-organized if you’re not making anything? Productivity by definition implies that you are producing something. Creating something. If you’re spending all your time shuffling context cards, fiddling with some overwhelmingly huge contextually organized list of things you have to do, easy to get bogged down and in your own way. If your system keeps you from producing/making/doing because of its complexity, you’re more likely to be discouraged and give up. You’ll end up with a huge case of Stuckness. That’s the opposite of creativity or productivity.

So, I think for several people I know, GTD is over. It has some good principles that still apply, but it’s just too involved for some. It’s not lightweight enough. Personally, I’ll keep using it in a highly modified form. I think a simple, productive system is what’s needed for all of us, so we can get off our rear ends and start creating. Doing. Making. Producing.

I think you’ll agree with me that we need to stop treating Productivity as some special “thing” that has to be cultivated in some lofty ivory tower. We need to drop the capital “P” and just get to it, without devising some complicated method for it. Remember that old Nike slogan? “Just do it.”

“Productivity” is dead. Long live productivity!

It helps you visualize your outcomes and solve problems in advance

Michelangelo was known to keep sketchbooks and make drawings constantly. Using various materials, he sketched not just possibilities for works in progress, but studies of anatomy and drapery that helped him create stronger artworks. He sketched out different ideas, worked out problems. For his sculptures, he would start with a sketch, then create a wax miniature of the big piece, and only when he was happy with that would he even touch a block marble. Drawing helped him work out the kinks and visualize what he was going to carve.

I know how useful this is from personal experience. I’ll never forget one painting I did in college where I didn’t do much of a preparatory drawing for a knife painting of a still life. I hastily did the preliminary drawing on the Masonite, planning to correct my drawing mistakes as I painted. I quickly realized this was a mistake, since the errors were never corrected due to my laziness and lack of planning. The finished painting didn’t have very good structure and looked sloppy. Since then, I’ve always made tight drawings for my paintings, even if my brushwork is loose. It really goes back to the old proverb, “Measure twice and cut once.”

It keeps you visually articulate

Sure, drawing is good for preparation. But it also keeps you visually articulate. What do I mean by that? Well, drawing is a language and a skill. If you’ve ever tried to learn a language, you know that it requires at least a bit of maintenance. You may be able to pick it back up again, but it gets rusty if you don’t use it. You lose your vocabulary. Drawing constantly ensures that you keep and expand that vocabulary. Especially if you keep trying new things like using a different medium or approach.

Drawing keeps you visually aware

Artists have a tendency to notice and see things that other people don’t, such as shadows, textures, juxtapositions. When you draw constantly, you’ll continue to increase and enhance that ability to see and notice things. People who draw all the time are more likely to find more interesting forms and patterns just from actively practicing this “visual awareness.” Take, for example, the sketchbook of Portuguese artist L Filipe dos Santos, recently featured on Koi Koi Koi. He makes Rorshach like inkblots between sketchbook pages, then draws something into/over it.

Drawing keeps you in top form.

An athlete does stretches and small exercises every day in addition to his main training. In fact, he does it as part of his main training. A marathoner does upper body workouts and lifts weights even though his main goal is to run long distances. It keeps him balanced. It wouldn’t make sense to only exercise his legs, would it? Well, drawing stretches your “artist muscles” and keeps them in shape, regardless of your creative discipline. It keeps your mind, eyes, and hand(s) sharp and responsive. Your eye-hand coordination improves and stays sharp. You maintain that visual vocabulary just by virtue of using and exercising it.

Capture your ideas before they disappear

When you draw constantly, you’ll catch ideas before they go away. Get in the habit of carrying some sort of capture device, whether it’s a Strathmore sketchbook or a digital voice recorder, so that your ideas don’t disappear into the void, forgotten.

Document how an idea develops or progresses

Drawings can document the progression of your ideas. They can educate your patrons about how you do your work. (And thus your sketchbook can become a good marketing tool.) I’ve shown works in progress on my blog, and they fascinate people who aren’t familiar with the process of art creation. Seeing the development of a work of art fascinates other artists, too, since they like to see how other artists think and work. It satisfies that professional (and very human) curiosity of “How did they do that? What can I learn from this, and apply it to my own work?” Picasso’s Les Demoisells d’Avignon was preceded by over 700 preparatory sketches, according to the BBC show The Private Life Of A Masterpiece. (Episode Synopsis) It’s always interesting to see a piece evolve from an idea seed into a finished product. Who knows? Maybe these evolutionary sketches will make their way into your retrospective book someday.

Summary

So, in summary, drawing constantly (how often is up to you) is an essential habit, whatever your discipline. My suggestion? Try to draw every day, and carry a sketchbook and pen or pencil with you everywhere you go.

Fast forward to late this summer. I discovered that all the Adobe CS3 apps allow you to export your shortcuts to a file (plaintext or html, depending on the app in question). Bingo! I simply exported the default keyboard shortcuts, pulled them into InDesign files, formatted the information nicely, and exported that to PDFs.

After sharing those files on the work.life.creativity. forums, I condensed them down so that they only showed the items that had actual shortcuts assigned. There are a LOT of possible commands in each program, and comparatively few come with keyboard shortcuts out of the box. Most of the most-often used ones are mnemonic, so that helps. (Pressing “P” gives you the Pen tool.) The ones that aren’t just have to be committed to memory.

The Default Cheat Sheets

• Adobe Illustrator CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet (PDF)
• Adobe InDesign CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet (PDF)
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet (PDF)

You Can Roll Your Own

Here’s the great part of it all: it’s easy to customize keyboard shortcuts to your liking. Delete the ones you don’t use, reassign those to commands you use more frequently or make sense to you. (I’d avoid changing the basic ones like Save, Close, etc. from the OS defaults.) Simply choose Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts and start modifying the ones you want to change. I recommend saving them to a unique name so you can come back to your own setup if your settings get reset. (It happens sometimes when the auto-updater runs.) Once you get your shorcuts set up, you can make your own cheat sheet.

Memorize the shortcuts you use the most. Next time you go through the menus looking for a command, look for the keyboard shortcut next to it, and commit it to memory. First, learn all the basic commands (Save, Close, Quit, etc.). Then learn the tool shortcuts. Get to where you have one hand on the keyboard and one hand on the mouse, avoiding mousing through to the menus. Build that muscle memory! So commit those shortcuts to memory, and make them work for you.