Tag Archives: procrastination

getting things done, mac, mac os x, workflow

Back in Mac: GTD Edition

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Part of the series.
(Series created on August 13, 2011, and applied retroactively…)

Catherine got a MacBook (Combo Drive) last week. Though it’s her computer, I’ve been using it pretty extensively in the past few days. And it’s changing my life for the better.

Long story short. My iBook (Dual USB) from 2001 went kaput in December 2005. In a hurry to get a new computer and being a bit short on cash, I ended up a few weeks later with a refurbished eMachines desktop running XP. Though my original dissatisfaction with the machine probably had to do with the lack of RAM, I still thought fondly of my Mac OS X days and was longing for the day I could use a Mac again. Now that I can, I know why I missed Mac OS X so much.

At this point, I come to think that those people who love XP machines are those who like to play fast-paced games and/or to pirate software. I love computers for other reasons so these don’t apply to me.

Contrary to what is said in the Justin Long and John Hodgman ads, I tend to see Mac OS X as a way to get things done.

Yes, Getting Things Done is the title of a best-selling book by David Allen and has become a buzzphrase in recent years. I was indirectly influenced by some ideas from the book but I prefer to use my own methods of time-management. Still, I can easily associate the Mac with GTD the concept, if not GTD the book (which I haven’t had the time to read).

This past weekend, I read a “Final Assessment” on a Mac OS X application called iGTD. It’s a rather straightforward tool for managing tasks. Kind of a “to-do list on steroids.”

I tried iGTD for a few minutes last night. Neat app and it might end up being useful. I’ll give it more thought as time goes on but as I need to switch between different computers, I don’t think it’ll become my ultimate solution.

Trying iGTD was also a chance for me to try QuickSilver again, after all this time spent on an XP machine. I really like QS and I can really see how it fits in the GTD frame. It’s a convenient way to accomplish a large number of tasks very efficiently. It’s not the fact that it saves you a few seconds at a time which matters. It’s the fact that it makes it easy to not think about what you want to accomplish. Kind of what the QuickSilver people call “Wei Wu Wei – Act Without Doing.” QS is really a Mac OS X thing. It only works on Macs and it really fits in the Mac-based methodology for computer use.

Another example of Mac OS X apps to get things done: OmniOutliner. This is probably the single app which I most missed on XP. Sure, there are outliners on XP. But none of them made my workflow as smooth as OO did. I tried NetManage EccoPro and eventually abandoned it. EccoPro is very powerful and it was an ok replacement for the actual outlining functions but the fact that it hasn’t been developed in ages means that it lacks the kind of features which really make things go smoothly.  In other words, EccoPro is not that compatible with the Mac way of just doing things.

Things are so easy in my OO workflow! For instance, while preparing for courses, I would use OO to take rough notes while reading course material. (Actually, I took many of these notes on a PalmOS device to transfer to OO. That part was never so seamless and I tried everything to improve it but it was a vain attempt. Transferring from Palm to EccoPro is a bit simpler.) In OO, transforming raw notes into course outlines was extremely easy and efficient. I could then easily transform those outlines into printable lesson plans and slides using LaTeX, Keynote, PowerPoint, or RTF. All told, I could transform rough notes into course material in less than 10 minutes without thinking much about what I was doing. Made everything so easy that it really took me a while to adapt my workflow to XP. In fact, I can’t say I ever did. Sure, XP people will say that I could in fact do the same thing thing on XP, that I’m just an Apple fanboy. The fact that the PalmOS integration with OS X wasn’t so smooth seems to prove that point. But the key point here is not about my ability to do things. It’s about the flow part of workflow. Every method I used on XP to accomplish the same tasks eventually worked and I became quite good at them. I probably ended up spending just a few minutes more on any of these tasks. But nothing was really smooth. I could never be mindless about the process. I constantly had to make sure everything was working.

As it turns out OO also fits in the GTD frame. In fact, the first time I heard of GTD was probably on the OO user mailing-list. Some people there wanted the ultimate GTD solution based on OO. OO didn’t have a lot of GTD-savvy features but it seems that it could fit in the GTD methodology overall.

One step further, I think Mac OS X as a whole fits in the GTD frame.

But I probably will never jump on the GTD bandwagon. AFAICT, GTD is mostly based on sorting tasks and tracking them. Again, “to-do list on steroids.” But, contrary to my mother and to my wife, I’m usually no good with to-do lists. I keep accumulating stuff in them and end up more frustrating. Centralized systems work better for me so I do a lot on Gmail. Those who don’t know me extremely well certainly think that I’m completely disorganized. But I’ve found ways to organize myself through apparent chaos. In short, I’m messy and I’m proud of it. But I do respond to the very concept of “just getting things done already” which seems to be associated with GTD-friendly applications. In this case: iGTD, QS, OO, and… Mac OS X.

It sure is good to be back in Mac!

Blogging, getting things done, play, ramblings, writing, writing style

Blogging Spree

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Weeeeee!

My, oh my!

It might be the Back to School mood, or it might be something (I was advised to write more, for personal reasons) but it seems like I’m going through an intense blogging phase!

Man!

You know what? It feels gooood!

Several of my latest entries were in fact drafted a while ago.

And this one is a collection of short entries that could have been expanded entries.
Late August Quickies

So, all of these aren’t new entries. But publishing them helps me in many ways. As silly as it may sound, these drafted entries were starting to become a burden on me. So, publishing them feels like lifting that burden. This feeling is behind many people’s “to do” lists. My mother talks about that feeling you get when you cross out an item in your “to do” list. It’s hard to describe but it’s easy to understand if you’ve ever felt it. In my family, “to do” lists are called “vélo (faire du),” an example of our oikolect. It comes from the French “bike (to do).” My older brother noticed that item on one of my mother’s “to do” lists lying around and found it pretty funny. It stuck. My family also has a term for the opposite of procrastination, “fullfur” (/fUlfyr/ in IPA). It comes from English “full,” which has been used by young French-speakers in Eastern Quebec to mean pretty much the same thing as “totally” as used by U.S. youths, and “au fur et à mesure” in French, which means pretty much the same thing as English “as you go.” Both of these terms go well with my family’s ideas about time-management. Not that we all follow these ideas. But I have been enculturated into these ideas.

Anyhoo (!), back to blogging sprees.

They’re quite therapeutic. Maybe because they stimulate da buh-rain.

And I notice a number of things about writing and blogging strategies. Seems like blogging really works best if it’s kept spontaneous. But going back to previous entries can be pretty satisfying too.

There’s pretty much no reason to wait before posting an entry. RERO!

As I expected, writing a lot without too much self-censorship really helps to develop writing abilities. Not I’m necessarily that proud of my writing but I do write a lot and some people have complimented me for my writing style. Especially as a non-native speaker of N-guh-lish.

Editing can be easy and fun if enough time has passed since the last revision. It can be a b*tch when it’s done right away.

The entries I’m most proud of (yes, there are some) don’t tend to be the most read ones or the ones garnering comments. But they feel really good to write. In a way, the fact that they’re not read so much encourages me to stay humble, which is helpful to any writer.

Linking is fun. So is playing with categories/labels/tags. Actually, it’s quite likely that nobody notices my use of categories as counterpoint to my entries, but I do it for fun anyway.

My growing obsession with getting more comments might die out pretty soon. And as soon as it does, I will be getting so many comments that I’ll have to moderate my blogs!

There’s a chain reaction or domino effect to blogging. You write about one thing which makes you want to blog about another thing, etc.  So you go on a blogging spree during which you want to post 25 entries a day. Eventually, your blogging fervor peters out and you only blog a few times a month. It’s quite likely that getting comments has a large influence on whether you’re on a blogging spree or not.

Given the way blog entries are read, it doesn’t seem to matter much if an entry’s structure is tidy or “chevelue.” Good thing too as my thoughts tend to be pretty scattered. (Yes, really!)

Erm, and, it’s actually hard to press that publish button, sometimes.

amateurs, Beer, Blogging, brewing, brewpubs, experience, homebrewing, Learning, professionals

"Don't Quit Your Day Job" (Brewing as Hobby)

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[Oh, my! I do hope I won't get too hooked to blogging! I'm scared!!! ;->]

Thinking about brewing, as I often do. Responding to a message about a post I sent to the HomeBrew Digest about beer and beliefs.
In relation to my previous post on work and debt. And compartmentalization.

"Don't quit your day job"
I have no intention of doing such a thing. I love my "day job" (insofar as I have one). I see no reason to quit it.

[Yup, blogging in my case encourages the use of first person singular pronouns, a habit I try to kill in many contexts. But if it's supposed to be self-indulgent, let's do it the self-serving way…]

Some homebrewers I've met hate their day job and see brewing as an escape. [It might be something of the same for me (doing a bit of
self-analysis here) as I may use it to procrastinate. Although, brewing needs planning. Procrastination I mostly do with thinking about brewing. Anyhoo…]
Those homebrewers who brew to "get away from it all" are oftentimes the same guys (yeah, mostly guys in homebrewing circles, nowadays) who want to "Go Pro" and open a brewpub. Now, that's not silly and it's kind of easy to expect, but it might be ill-advised.
Going Pro means a huge investment on money. Of course, we all dream of having enough money to invest in brewing. Hey, if I win the lottery, I might go nuts with brewing gear and if I win enough, I might even give the brewpub idea more of a thought. But…
Going Pro also means transforming a cool, relaxing hobby into an obligation to perform. Sure, many small brewpub and microbrewery owners do it their own way and the lottery win should imply that you don't need to turn a profit. But still, professional brewing is bound to be more of a pressure. And many aspects of brewing aren't necessarily so much fun. And these are the ones that become very important in the Pro world. Not to mention the whole business side. Some people enjoy it but
these are few and far between.

A well-known homebrew celebrity (!) who became a brewpub owner is quoted as saying that if he were to start again, he might not go pro. Nowadays, he doesn't brew anymore. And even though his pub is often packed, he still struggles to make ends meet. Not a pleasant feeling.

Then, the ideal solution should be collaboration. One "business-type" to handle the business and one crazy brewer. Well, the crazy brewer won't be so crazy when the business guy talks about minimizing risk.
A big important notion, risk. A hobby is fun because the stakes are low. You scrap a 5-gallon batch, so be it. You lost a bit of time, a bit of money. So be it. That's life. And you learned something. You scrap a batch as a commercial brewer, uh-oh!
So that's one reason even the most adventurous brewers end up making a lot of fairly uncompromising beer. Another reason is that what pleases the brewer might attract a few beer geeks but the beer geek market is incredibly small as compared to the swill drinkers. Lots of talk about that. But brewing capacity (volume) is correlated against risk.