The Problems You Don’t Know

I’ve been running pretty hard the last few months between the day job and finishing up the Email Field Guide. In the process, I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times with my OmniFocus task management discipline. Everybody probably knows that feeling of seeing the red badge of “Overdue” show up on the icon and know that it has been several days since you opened up the application and sorted through things. You know there is ticking bomb under your kitchen table and part of you would rather pretend it’s not there and keep eating Cheeze-Its.

I’m here to tell you to put down the box of delicious cheese-flavored crackers and instead cut the red wire. If you are using some of the tricks I showed in my OmniFocus Screencasts, it will not take that long to quickly get through your task list. Even if that means pushing 95% of your tasks off until next Monday, that 5% left is manageable and just think how much more time and money it will cost to rebuild your kitchen if you let that bomb go off.

Here is how I did it under fire the last few weeks.

1. Enable A Clear Perspective

I have a special perspective to help me sweep the decks. It removes all project distinctions and instead just gives me a long list of all active tasks. This makes it really easy to grab big fat chunks of them using the shift or command keys while selecting.

2. Use the Inspector to Process Multiple Tasks

On the Mac version of OmniFocus, open up the inspector and move the start date to some safe date in the future for large swathes of your selected task backlog. Set a record for how many you move with one selection.

3. Defuse the Bombs

There will be a few important things left. Deal with those and get back to the big project that put you behind in the first place. Remember, this too shall pass.

The thing is there are the problems you know and the problems you don’t know. It is the ones you don’t know that will get you every damn time.

Apple Solar Farms

Have you seen these pictures of the solar farms Apple built in North Carolina? It looks like Apple is most certainly putting its money where its mouth is with respect to clean energy. While I have no basis for such an opinion, I feel Tim Cook’s hands all over this.

iOS 7 Game Controllers

I’m surprised people aren’t making a bigger deal out of the new feature in iOS 7 that allows hardware manufacturers to develop game controllers for the iPad and iPhone. I think there is room here for someone to make a really great controller and I’m sure if they did, game developers in the super-competitive world of iOS game development would quickly adopt it. I also think it would usher in a whole different breed of joystick and button-mashing games that we really aren’t currently getting on iOS. Touch arcade recently reviewed the MOGA Ace Power controller, which doesn’t appear to be the killer controller we are looking for.

Talking with Brett Terpstra on the Systematic Podcast

I’ve been doing a nerdy sort-of press junket to talk about the Email book. As a result, I’m on the latest episode of Systematic with Brett Terpstra. Brett got me talking about all sorts of divergent things. I’m not sure if he knows it or not, but Brett is really good at taking interviews in interesting directions.

∞

The Sweet Setup

Shawn Blanc and friends has a new website, The Sweet Setup, that provides recommendations for the best apps on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Think of it as The Wirecutter for Apps. A ton of work was put into creating this site and it shows.

Mavericks and New Contacts

Did you know that in addition to returning to a sane user interface, the Mavericks Contacts application also adds the ability to paste a full address in one step? Just paste an address (single or multi-line) into a contact’s street address field and the application parses it for you. It doesn’t pull the contact name or phone number but the days of individually pasting street address, city, state, and zip are over. David Chartier over at Finer Things Mac even has some sample links to try this out.

More on the Email Field Guide

The initial reception for the new Email Field Guide has been fantastic. I’ve already received some great emails from readers explaining how the book has changed their game and feedback like that pushes every single one of my buttons.

There is an error in the book with respect to Screencast 4.20. I’ve posted the missing screencast on Vimeo and I’ve got it at the bottom of this post. I’ll fix this problem with the 1.1 update that will ship in December. If you haven’t bought the book, watch the screencast anyway so you can get an idea of its content. There are 36 separate screencasts in the book showing how to use different email technologies.

Over the weekend, the Mac Power Users published a new episode about email. I promise it’s not a one hour commercial for the book but instead some real practical tips for making email easier.

I honestly believe the MacSparky Field Guides are some of the best work I’ve done in my life. Thank you again everyone for supporting me in this.

Merlin Mann’s Great Discontent Interview

The Great Discontent did a great job on this interview with Merlin Mann. There is a lot worth quoting here but this passage really resonates with me.

“Over the years, I’ve learned to be a little bit easier on myself while simultaneously trying to be more realistic about what I can actually do. I think a lot about do-ability with whatever silly project I want to do next. I don’t think about whether something is easy or not: I think about what trade-offs I have to accept in order to do it well, on time, and on budget.”

I still find saying “no” and making hard decisions about what projects to take on extremely difficult. Merlin was the first person that confronted me on this issue and I’m grateful for that. My own neurosis aside, this is a great read.

Animated Sheet Music from Miles, Bird, and Trane

I so much enjoyed reading/watching this post. For your Sunday afternoon why don’t you sit back and watch Charlie Parker do something amazing with Confirmation.