I have this terrible propensity to build up systems because the systems offered off-the-shelf seem inadequate for my needs. When I used Evernote, I couldn’t just use it “off-the-shelf” so to speak, I had to build systems around it. When I started using Obsidian, I did the same. In the days when I wrote in Google Docs, I…
Over the years I have spent quite a bit of times on various experiments. In the 2010s, I considered the idea of the paperless office, embraced Evernote as a tool for paperless productivity, and wrote a popular series of posts on the subject. So far, in the early 2020s, my experimenting has shifted somewhat. I’ve…
There are some tools that I use that are so seamlessly integrated with my workflow that they are almost invisible. They work so well that I simply don’t think about them. That really isn’t fair since tools like these do far more than they get credit for. And since I had a particular tool in…
Sometimes I don’t recognize the problem that is right in front of me. Take, for instance, the book I am currently reading, and nearly finished with, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. I started this book just after finishing The Big Roads by Earl Swift. Sometimes I finish a book in…
Back in June, I wrote about the project management paradox. In that piece, I tried to answer the question, Why is it that I can manage large, complicated, technical projects at work, but be paralyzed with indecision when it comes to managing my own to-do list outside of work? What’s worse, I can’t even settle on…
Not long ago, I came across Ryan Holiday’s notecard system for remembering, organizing, and using everything he reads. It was instantly appealing to me, the way that reading about John Gadd’s journals changed the way I did my own journals back in 2017. You can read about Ryan’s methods at length, but the gist of…
For an overview of this series, see the debut post on my morning routine. Background I’ve been using email for more than half my life. While it was available to me in college, I didn’t begin to use it until I started at my job a few months after I graduated. That was 1994 and…
For an overview of this series, see the debut post on my morning routine. Background Recently, I wrote about how I form my habits. In light of that post, I thought I’d write about my evening routine since it helps to reinforce the habits that I have been working to form. I wrote about my…
For an overview of this series, see the debut post on my morning routine. Background I don’t know about you, but I’ve got too many photos in my photo library and I don’t know what to do with them all. They are all digital, of course, so they don’t take up space. But there are…
Evernote has made some significant improvements lately. They have completely reengineered the backend. They have refreshed and improved the user interface. And they recently introduced integrated task management–something users have been requesting for a long time. There is one feature that I would find incredibly useful that Evernote still needs: a Last Viewed date for…
With my recent plan to focus on my writing and improve my overall well-being (a.k.a. Project Sunrise), I have been hunting for small efficiencies in workflow that can have an outsized impact on my day. My morning routine takes about two and a half hours to complete. While developing the routine, I teased out actions…
Introduction: Playbooks are Practices Welcome to the inaugural post of my new column, “The Weekly Playbook.” Each week I plan to feature a playbook that I use to help make my life a little easier. What is a playbook? A playbook is like an enhanced checklist that provides steps or outlines for a specific task…