Jim Eagar Reading Time: 7 minutesChris Bailey’s latest book, How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times is a mixture of many positives and, unfortunately, some negatives. Bailey has produced some excellent work in the area of productivity. My go-to book to recommend to someone interested in an introduction to productivity is Bailey’s The Productivity Project. I’ve also benefitted from his Hyperfocus: …
Reading Time: 3 minutes1. What is the Pomodoro Technique? I first read about the Pomodoro Technique a few years ago in productivity books and articles. It’s a method developed in the 1980s by a university student, Francesco Cirillo, to help him focus on his work and also take regular breaks. Here is a step-by-step description of how the …
Reading Time: 2 minutesMy wife surprised me at Christmas with an original Happy Macintosh icon print by Susan Kare. Susan was the artist who created the icons for the original Mac interface. Her icons literally brought a smiling face to a computer. At a time with only bland PCs with no graphics, DOS interfaces, and in-line commands, her …
Reading Time: 5 minutesA task manager is designed to help you get all the things you need to do out of your head and into a system you can trust. David Allen, the writer of the seminal productivity book, Getting Things Done, wrote “Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them.” We’re not good at remembering …
Reading Time: 4 minutesI don’t see much written in tech circles about introversion. I think that’s strange because it appears to me most tech nerds are introverts. 1. Are You an Introvert? There is a lot of misunderstanding about what introversion is. In our culture, extroversion is held up as the ideal personality. Many introverts grow up thinking …
Reading Time: 4 minutesI’ve known about Keyboard Maestro (KM) for years, but I always thought it was too complicated and advanced to fit my needs. I was wrong. My Misconceptions About Keyboard Maestro Recently, in MacSparky Labs, David Sparks did a program on “Mac Launcher Deep Dive.” In this video, Sparks showed how he uses KM to automate …
Reading Time: 4 minutesI’ve been using Craft for a couple of years now, much more so since last summer. I was initially attracted to Craft because it is a beautiful environment to work in, and enables me to easily create attractive and functional documents. As I’ve worked more with Craft I’ve found myself using it for a number …
Reading Time: 4 minutesSometimes great insights come from the least expected sources. Who would guess that a book about business marketing would help me to better understand and articulate what my role is in writing this blog and doing presentations? Building a Story Brand My friend Joe Moyer (who writes the excellent blog 24Letters) recently told me about …
Reading Time: 4 minutesMany, if not most, of us who write experience self-doubt about whether our writing is any good, has any value, and what that says about us as individuals. Even well-published, professional writers suffer from the same feelings. Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling Outlander series of novels. She has a scientific …
Reading Time: 6 minutesHookmark has revolutionized my use of linking between files in my workflows. I’ve been aware of the value of linking files with other files in different apps for some time. I’ve done some linking between apps that internally support linking, such as linking a file in Craft to a task in Things. However, the problem …