The Weekly Review

Although I’ve set up and am content with my log file to track certain information, I received an invite to the private beta for Daytum. I took a few moments to check out this service.

In the world of web apps, this one is quite simple. It allows you to create two types of content: Counters and Statements. Counters are just that and statements are similar to a status update like Backpack offers. There are some good examples of how people are using the service on the front page of the site.

It could be a useful service, but there is one issue I’m not keen on. Everything you post here is publicly viewable. Here’s a shot from the front page:

I could not find an option to keep your items private. Unless you are interested in letting everyone know how many cups of water/coffee you drink each day, this might stop some people from using the service.

Made a visit to kung fu grippe today [via Chris Leboe], one of the lesser known abodes of Merlin Mann. It’s not one of my regular reads, as I prefer Merlin’s voice over at 43 Folders.

But today he posted an article titled “Better” that, in my mind, is exactly what a lot of people are struggling with today. I know I am.

I’ve talked about this issue before. Since March, I’ve grown more aware of the effects of this illness. Namely, what Merlin is referring here today. Those of us who spend so much time feeding ourselves content and attempting to create something of our own are torn in many directions. There are so many avenues to explore and learn, but we don’t have enough time, energy, or focus to create something of high value.

This has hit me especially hard this last week. Now that I have six months away from my job to do some exploring, I’m indecisive of where exactly to concentrate my attention. Do I focus on becoming a better writer? Web design? Programming? Or increase my current system administration knowledge? Hard to say, but I know if I try to do even several of the above, I’ll remain a jack of all trades (and a not a very good one at that), and a prince of none.

All the while, my feed reader will continue to deliver rapid fire content informing me of the latest app available etc. Merlin summed this up well in my favorite bit from his post:

What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks — empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.

For me, that’s hitting the proverbial nail in the head. These habits that stop us from being really good at one thing also most often take us away from the important people in our lives. It’s funny, but productivity methodologies like GTD should be helping us with this.

I’m glad of this reminder today. I know I have two items to take away from this: 1) I need to continue to improve my discipline Scratch that—discipline only takes you so far. I need to shift my priorities by dwelling on that which is truly important, so that I don’t desire to waste my time with fruitless activities and 2) Decide on a direction and focus on increasing my skills in that area, in order to get really good at something.

In six months, I hope I can give some good news.

Thanks to Patrick Rhone, I’ve been playing with the idea of using some type of log file to keep track of miscellaneous bits of information. A few options seem to have risen to the top, and I’m testing them out to see which will fit my workflow the best (more on this in a couple of weeks).

In the meantime, I came across a site last night that offers this very type of service in a web app. It’s called ididwork. It’s a simple idea—anytime you do anything, you write a short entry and hit return. It offers a few other options as seen below, but it’s a basic tool.

While I was checking the app out, it made me think of the new Journal option added to Backpack in May. The gang at 37 signals used a similar type of tool to track what each team member was working on. They liked it enough to add it to the Backpack application.

These tools are good options, but are lacking in a few ways that make a local desktop solution more appealing to me. Searchability is the first thing that comes to mind—Backpack search doesn’t include Journal entries.

Anybody else using some kind of solution to fit this need? Let me know—there’s not a lot things I enjoy more than reading about other people’s productivity systems!

A few small changes were made here at The Weekly Review over the weekend. Since it’s inception in February, the methods of posting here have not been entirely satisfying. I’ve always wanted to be able to post two types of items on my blog: 1) articles written by myself and 2) links to other content I find interesting/amusing.

When this site first started, links from my Tumblr account were imported into the sidebar. But that required two separate RSS feeds, which was not ideal. So that was removed and I simply included as much content as I was comfortable with in the blog itself.

Over the past six months, there have been a lot of links not shared because I didn’t have much more to say other than I found it interesting. And I didn’t want to mix in link content with the article archives.

So, to make a short story long, the archives have finally been updated in such a way that link posts are not included, allowing me to post both types of content. You can see a reverse chronological list of TWR articles here and all archived links here (the sidebar has been updated to reflect that change). The RSS feed will contain both, as will the index page.

The hope here is to give me the ability to express myself fully and that you, readers, will enjoy it all.

Came across this link on LifeHacker yesterday. An interesting theme for GMail and GCal, Google Redesigned offers a refreshing new look for those who find Google’s interfaces too utilitarian.

For Firefox only, the theme runs on it’s own extension, rather than using Stylish or Greasemonkey.

Google has created a nice gadget to stay up to date on the events, medal standings and Olympic news headlines. Unless you want to view actual video footage, this is a good option for last minute Olympic coverage.

Check out all the available Olympics gadgets here.

(photo by Brian Solis)

After seeing this image last night, I had to admit to myself how overwhelmed I feel at times when it comes to social media. There are so many options available, it’s enough to make your head spin.

Does this resemble the dot.com bubble in any way? Are there enough people using services such as Swurl to keep these companies viable? It’s telling when the race is on, not to create the next great service, but to create the best aggregator, the tool that connects all your web 2.0 services into one ‘lifestream’.

And whether or not these are financially viable, I wonder more how these affect our lives. I’ve signed up for a lot of accounts over the past couple of years to take a look at some of these tools. A couple, like Twitter, have stuck and see regular usage. Most are forgotten.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but my worry is that I’ll be so busy configuring my lifestream, I’ll neglect my actual life.

Am I the only one?

An addendum to yesterday’s post, Looking Back.

One of the questions I’ve asked myself lately is this: has my writing improved after six months of blogging? When I look back at some of my posts, I cringe. Improvement is necessary. Staleness is not acceptable.

So—has there been improvement? I think so, in some areas. For example, consistency with usage of typographical characters. Other areas, not so much. But I think I’m still struggling in a key area.

I haven’t yet found my voice.

In his interview with John Gruber, Shawn Blanc asks John about his approach to writing articles on DF, and whether it had changed over the years. John’s answer has stuck with me:

That’s hard to put into words. Early on, I had to think about my “voice”. I was conscious of my style. Now, not so much — I “just write”, and the style seems to come naturally. Part of that is that you get used to anything over time, but a bigger part is that the style changed slowly over time — I kept tweaking it until I found the perfect pitch, at which point it became something I didn’t have to think about to achieve.

Put another way: early on, I had to concentrate both on what I was saying and how was I saying it. Now I just concentrate on what I’m saying.

Some days you feel it—words just come out and the way they intertwine, forming a larger whole … it just feels right. But too often that feeling is nowhere to be found.

This is my challenge. This is where improvement is needed. I look forward to the days where I can focus solely on the content, and the delivery comes naturally.

I was speaking recently with a reader of this site when he mentioned this nugget of information: for the first couple of months of reading The Weekly Review, he thought the title referred to a weekly software review. Only later did he realize it was intended to mean more.

After our discussion, my mind kept circling back to this part of the conversation. Something was bothering me. How many other readers of this space have had the same perception?

This hit me hard.

Today marks the six month date since the first post was published on The Weekly Review. Naturally, some reflection has occurred in the past couple of weeks. Was I still focused on the same reasons that compelled me to start this site? Have I learned from my mistakes? Improved my skills? Blogs are about sharing and the kind of blogs I enjoy the most are those that share a part of the author’s personality. Have I given the right message about who I am?

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 visitors have graced this site since February. And while there’s certainly nothing wrong with spending time exploring the beauty of well designed software, I never intended for those readers to think of The Weekly Review only as a Macintosh review site. Or a purely GTD related site.

Rather, the intention was that this site would be perceived as the personal site of Chris Bowler. And the content would be a reflection of who I am. And after thinking this through, I know that whatever perception people have of this space and its author, it’s because of what I’ve done. Or haven’t done.

And I don’t want to be just another Mac fanboy or GTD cultist.

Don’t get me wrong—I’ll still be writing about Macs, software, and personal productivity. They are all a part of who I am. A big part.

But I have other passions and interests that need attention. So things are going to change a bit around here. The changes may be slight, but I hope they’ll give people a better understanding of who I am as well as the intended purpose of this site.

What is that purpose? I think that’s described best from this excerpt of the About page:

I realized that developing a habit of regular review is more than just a way to get things done. It goes beyond GTD and is needed in everything we do, especially considering the speed at which life comes at us in this day and age.

Who wouldn’t benefit from taking a some time each week and reviewing all areas of life? Family, spiritual matters, hobbies, personal projects—all these areas require reflection to review goals, and measure if progress has been made, and what’s next. I hope this site can enable me, and possibly help others, improve in this area.

Lastly, although it’s work at times, writing for this site has been fun. And I want it to stay that way. Being true to myself is the best way to ensure it does.

Thanks for reading.

Although my initial use of this application was limited to three or four files, Google Docs has grown on me over the past couple of months. I’ve moved more and more documents online now and use it for everything from budgeting to tracking the trades in my fantasy football league.

Of course, being a web application, accessibility is part of the usefulness—I can get to my documents from any computer. But there is more to this app. For an online offering, it has been designed in a way that is reminiscent of a desktop application, offering a familiar feel to the user.

I’ve been mulling over whether or not Google Docs could be used as part of a GTD setup. After some thought, I think it can fit the needs of two GTD tools.

Research/Information Management

Whether you use paper or an electronic tool, there is always a need to hold on to pieces of information. Sometimes that information is used for active projects and sometimes it’s kept for some potential future purpose. With GTD, the idea is to have a trusted filing system where that information can be easily accessed at any time.

I currently use Yojimbo in my setup, but I think Google Docs would be another solid option.

The prime reason for this is the use of tagging. Now, on a first look, it doesn’t look like Google Docs uses tags. Rather, it employs the more traditional file folder structure. And this is true—Google Docs uses folders and for folks who prefer this hierarchical structure, they can file away to their content.

But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that Google Docs uses folders the way GMail uses labels. Which is to say that they both make use of the concept of tagging. Documents can be added to multiple folders at once, the same as applying tags in applications like Yojimbo, Together or Evernote.

Here is the dialogue where you have two options: 1) you can move the document(s) to a different folder, essentially removing one label/tag and adding another, or 2) Add the document(s) to another folder, in essence adding a second label/tag.

And here is how the document is shown to belong to two ‘folders‘.

For whatever reason, the interface has been designed in such a way that it’s not immediately obvious that your docs are taggable. But once you get used to working with the menus, you can start to organize your files in a structure that fits your system.

Folders can be created for each project you have. And documents can be added to those folders and even shared across multiple folders.

Task Management

This is another need where you could possibly use Google Docs. By using the tagging folders in conjunction with saved searches, you could manage all your tasks in similar fashion to other applications of this type.

It’s not the easiest setup for creating tasks, but if you want an online that’s free, try the following:

Creating Tasks

Create a new document and write the name of your task. This will be the name of your document as well. Then, add some kind of special character combo that you would rarely use in an actual document—I use °T. Next, save and close your new document.

Creating a Task List

Once you’ve created several tasks, enter your special character combo into the search field and hit return. You should now see a list of the documents that contain your special ‘code‘. That’s it—you’ve created a task list.

Now, any good GTD setup gives you the ability to quickly look at all your tasks—even on pen and paper. So you would not want to enter a search every time you needed to see your list. That’s where the saved searches in Google Docs is helpful.

These saved searches are the same as a smart folder in Finder in OS X or Mail.app. Click on the link titled, “Show Search Options” and enter in your criteria. Save the search and give it a descriptive name.

Now when you look at your source list (sidebar), there is an expendable Saved Searches option. I gave my saved search the name Tasks. See below:

Deleting Tasks

When you start knocking off tasks, simply return to your list, check them off and hit the delete button.

It would be simple from here to create folders (again, tags) for each project. You could create all the task documents you needed and assign various characters to them. °T for tasks, °NA for next actions, °C for @computer if you use contexts etc. Tasks could be added to these various project folders and then you could create saved searches to pull your different types of tasks together.

It wouldn’t take much to set up Google Docs to be almost as robust as a lot of full blown task management applications. Creating tasks is not as simple as some other tools, since you are essentially creating new documents. But aside from that, the benefits of a free, searchable and taggable application are tempting.

You could use Google Docs to meet both these needs listed above—it could easily handle your reference information as well as your tasks.

Throw in Fluid or Prism for SSB and Google Gears for offline access and you’ve got a quality tool to help you be productive.