I covered them briefly on RTM’s blog but they’ve changed a bit since then, and I’d like to flesh them out a bit more.¹

Obviously my work has meant that I come in contact with a lot of users’ methods that they share on the forums, and I’ve borrowed a few.

The first method I ever implemented was Doug Ireton’s “classic” post on the RTM blog on implementing GTD.

My setup deviates from that though. The basics are there—I try to minimize use of due dates, I organize my tasks by physical context (home, phone, computer, work, etc.) and I try to make my list capture everything.

However, I try to keep my setup as minimal as possible, a lot more minimal than a full-on GTD setup. The biggest thing is that I don’t really organize my tasks in projects; that’s just not how my work or life revolve.

To show you what my organization looks like, here are my lists on the website:

As you can see, I only have two proper lists²: Mine and Shared. The only reason I have two is to separate tasks that are shared with Deanna. (I’ve shared that list with her.)

The rest of my organization is tag-based, and I’ve created a number of Smart Lists (shown in blue) to organize them in ways that I regularly use.

I use my Inbox as a place where my quickly added tasks end up—something I’ll email in, a handful of tasks I think of and want to get in quickly without setting any properties, etc.—but I empty it regularly.

Most of my Smart Lists are pretty obvious (and correspond to a particular tag or two), but a few of them are worth mentioning:

• zzz: This is a Smart List that puts tasks to sleep until a certain time before they’re due. (When I’m looking at my list of tasks to do at home, I don’t care about the bills I have to pay until it’s time to pay them.)
• !Next: (((priority:1 OR priority:2) AND NOT list:zzz) OR (NOT tagContains:@ OR list:Inbox status:incomplete)) AND NOT (list:Target OR list:Grocery)
  This is a list of all “next actions”, things I can do presently. Naturally, this will exclude anything I’ve “put to sleep” as mentioned above, and also things that I’ve designated as something that I’ll get to later. It also catches anything I haven’t filed correctly (anything not tagged correctly or in my Inbox) and it will exclude anything in my special Target and grocery lists.
• !Today: ((dueBefore:today OR due:today OR priority:1) AND list:!Next OR (NOT tagContains:@ OR list:Inbox status:incomplete))
  This is a Smart List that shows me the things I really have to do today—or should at least try to. On a really good day, I’ll clear this list. It’s everything from the !Next list that’s overdue, due today, or high priority.
  Perhaps its obvious, but this is where I spend the bulk of my time, with the occasional jaunt over to my !Next list.

Lastly, my Tag Cloud shows how my tags/lists are being used. It should be no surprise that a lot of my tasks are things for me to do on the internet.

My goal with my organization is to make it quick and easy to use. I can quickly add a task that will show up where I’ll see it (!Next and !Today) and organize all sorts of tasks that won’t show up there.

Let me know if you’d like any more pointers or tips on how I do things.

1. Firstly, you should read my notes on GTD; if you don’t understand that, my methodology will make less sense. I’m not going to reexplain it here.
2. Inbox and Sent are lists RTM creates

Remember the Milk is one of my favorite websites.¹ Keeping a list of tasks, keeping it simple, and keeping it current are ways I manage my life. It’s nothing super profound or super important for me, but a list of tasks keeps me from becoming overwhelmed.

Principles

My basis for task management is GTD. Merlin Mann summarized it quite well, and I still think of his four-year-old article when discussing GTD:

Basically, you make your stuff into real, actionable items or things you can just get rid of. Everything you keep has a clear reason for being in your life at any given moment—both now and well into the future. This gives you an amazing kind of confidence that a) nothing gets lost and b) you always understand what’s on or off your plate.

Obviously it’s great for professionals where you’re more or less paid for being productive, but I’ve found the principles to be very useful for my own personal life as well. (I’ve found that it goes very well with Inbox Zero—incidentally also by Merlin Mann—which basically prescribes that it’s not worth your time to waste it on email, and that your goal should be speedy mail management and an empty inbox.)

Method

So I’ve been convinced about these GTD techniques for a few years. Here are a few ways I’ve attempted to implement them:

• Tiddlyspot: A host that offers free Tiddlywikis, Tiddlyspot showcases a few “flavors”, two of which are geared to GTD usage. Quite useful, easy to get used to, but only really usable on the internet and from a computer. And way too fiddly for my taste.
• Remember The Milk: It shouldn’t surprise you at this point that I use Remember The Milk², but I’ve been using them for two years. RTM’s services are its strength; you can access your tasks wherever you are—on your computer, phone, in your Gmail, etc.—and be reminded of what you have to do.

Sorry this post doesn’t have a great finish; like I said, I’m pretty much publishing it as-is, and I don’t have anything profound to say at the end of this. Let me know if you’d like my thoughts on something else.

1. I work there now, but didn’t when I started this post.
2. Uh, hello, I work there, remember?

If Google sells this in the App Store for zero dollars, those millions of bucks Apple makes off of GPS app sales will likely disappear. It’s not for us to worry about until there’s no more GPS competition except Google, and we’re dependent on their pace of progress, but no competition is a bad thing. And it’s a little strange that Google’s search money is going to pay for a free map app that is competitive with stuff that costs $100 a year from full-time GPS makers like TomTom. Unfair is the word that comes to mind. But I can’t say I don’t want this app.

Agreed, on all counts. I wonder if Apple will try to play any differently with this than with other navigation apps since this is Google; does that make it any more “confusingly similar” to the iPhone’s Maps app (driven by Google Maps)? I think not, but I also wouldn’t be confused by a mobile Firefox (Fennec) or Google Voice.

It’s easy to see Google’s (and their users’) advantage in entering a competitive market this way, but yeah, I wouldn’t want to be their competitors either.

It does scare me how much data Google now owns, more in how they ditched their licensors so they could do something like this. But I want this app too.

Andrew Godwin runs a really nice service called LastGraph that creates these graphs based on one’s Last.fm profile data.

Of course, what would this be without a new one? (I had to check it out again, of course.)

Always an interesting view.

All together now!

Tabs show up hierachically, on the side by default

An interesting—if not fully integrated—extension. Too many options, messes with the default tab order (when closing tabs, etc.) but organized and uncluttered, even with twice as many tabs open.

It’s not too often I’ve seen a Firefox extension that really changes the way I (can) operate.

I don’t consider myself blindly brand-loyal to the Mac.

I know, right? Co-founder of a indie Mac software company?

I find Mac OS X to be the least frustrating of the currently available options, but the buck certainly doesn’t stop there. We have miles and miles to go in terms of making computing better. I want my socks blown off, and I don’t care whether it’s Apple, Microsoft, Google, or the open source movement that does it, as long as someone does.

I hope that making it¹ Someone Else’s Problem will work out for you. If you put your faith in Apple/Microsoft/Google, or even in the open source movement, you can expect what you get. Since at least I can participate in the open source movement, if it doesn’t blow off socks, I can say that’s my fault².

1. “total usability utopia”, for lack of a more all-encompassing word
2. in part, of course

Android

It’s probably no surprise that I’m a big fan of Android—it is produced by Google—so ideally I’d get an Android device next.

However, I’m not terribly inclined to switch to T-Mobile; their network is smaller and not as robust in all locations. And the G1 leaves a lot to be desired, so I’d rather wait for the next iteration. But how long will that be? Hard to say, though they may have a new, awesome device soon, so it may be worth waiting.

I had also mentioned that AT&T would likely be producing Android devices, but that dynamic seems to have changed somewhat: I suppose because of their ties with Apple and the iPhone, they’re not keen to produce any competing devices currently. And I can understand that, though it’s unfortunate.

It does seem like I’d be joining an active community though.

iPhone

An iPhone would be a solid choice, and I certainly think the devices deserves (most of) the acclaim it’s been getting, but I’m not switching from one proprietary mobile device to another. Even if it is Apple. I’m also not impressed with the inability to run background applications, and while jailbreaking the phone would open up a lot of extra functionality, I’m not inclined to do that. I don’t want to support Apple by buying their device if I don’t actually support how they design their software.

Other?

So my two choices feel like this: Get an iPhone (and possibly jailbreak it) or switch to T-Mobile if/when they release a second (slicker-than-G1) device.

Are there other choices? Which do you think I should do?

Users don’t like change, and as a product becomes more popular, users will grow ever more resistant to change.

The entire article (about Facebook’s contentious changes to their News Feed) distills to that one sentence. It’s not a Facebook thing¹, it’s a people thing.

Really, I grow tired of all this resistance to change. While I’ve been there too—it’s easy to get habituated—it’s annoying to hear. Microsoft Office 2007², Firefox 3, Safari 4, BlackBerry, iPhone, etc. etc.

It would seem that if people had their way, interfaces would become static (at some unspecified point) and remain there. Rather than fixing quirks, users would simply habituate to them. And there would be little room for innovation.

I understand that designers/engineers don’t always get things right, but especially with computers, there is a lot of change from year to year, and that’s a good thing. An inclination to embrace change would go a long way to enjoying the dynamic world of technology.

1. But I do understand that Facebook removed functionality in this update, and that is a problem. But a different problem.
2. I hear complaints about the Ribbon all day at work, worst of all from my coworkers!

So Dinosaur Comics is probably definitely my favorite webcomic. And recently @TheBestCupcake has been rocking some hilarity on Twitter.

This is a recipe for some reasonably delicious success (if I do say so myself):

Anyone else been burned by accidentally copying over something you were “saving” in the clipboard? Or how many times have you opened a text editor just to paste some text therein while you were copying multiple things?

Enter the clipboard manager, which basically keeps a history of things you’ve copied to pick at a later date. Think of it, well, like a real clipboard: what you “clip” later is simply put on top of your previous clippings and you can easily get back to all of them.

Here are some I recommend; pick according to your operating system:

• Parcellite (Linux)
• ClipX (Windows, XP anyway)
• Clipper (OS X)¹
• Jumpcut (OS X)²

Enjoy!

1. I haven’t used this one, but it was the best of what I surveyed on the internet. If you know a better one, let me know!
2. I’ve been informed that Jumpcut is better than Clipper, if only because Clipper features no keyboard shortcut.

I noticed two friends who use their mouse to repeatedly select and deselect text in web browsers as they read pages online. This is absolutely crazymaking for onlookers, but really satisfying for them.

De-Re-Selecting from Chris No on Vimeo.

I do this all the time (my favorite way is to triple-click the paragraph) and, yes, it drives people looking at my screen crazy.

Probably the other big one I do is to draw selection rectangles on my desktop or in a file manager window.

It’s inexplicable to me, but Chris mentions some possible reasons:

When I talk to each person about these behaviors, there’s not a lot of conscious decision-making going on here. The web-page-highlighters aren’t intending anything when they do this, it’s just something they enjoy doing. But even though these behaviors don’t help move any tasks or goals along, they’re satisfying. And because they provide a release for nervous energy and/or let us be expressive, they become an extension of ourselves to which we have some small emotional connection.

Ultimately, I don’t really care why, but it’s an interesting thing of note.

Do is quietly taking over my desktop

Here’s a current screenshot of my computer.

Ultimately, both the panel and Do remain off-screen, so I have a full screen free of distractions when I’m working on something.

Collapsing my panel into just the upper-left corner was simple, but a few GConf tweaks made it hide more and faster:

• /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/auto_hide_size 0 (Makes it hide completely with no on-screen remnant while hidden)
• /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/enable_animations unchecked
• /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/hide_delay 300
• /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/unhide_delay 200

For those latter three:I found these to be the best for making the panel feel responsive and getting it out of the way when I don’t want it; YMMV.

One of my favorite commands that I’ve found is simply called Search, courtesy of Blair McBride. It enables any existing search engines (OpenSearch) to be used within Ubiquity, so rather than issuing “amazon really neat stuff” or “google that thing I wanted to look up” I can simply issue “search politics with Google News”. The sky’s the limit.

Couple that with Add to Search Bar extension and you have some real power. Add to Search Bar allows you to right-click on a search field (on any website) and add it as a search engine in Firefox. Certainly the heavy hitters will be auto-detected as search engines, but this allows you to search what you want (e.g. Google Images, Boxoh universal package tracking, Snopes). Because a) I’ve collapsed my Search Engines bar and b) don’t use it directly anymore, I’ve added a lot more search engines:

My list of search engines

I’ve suggested to the Ubiquity team that OpenSearch engines be automatically added (and the command syntax a bit less awkward), but the Search command is certainly a step in the right direction.

As a matter of fact, computer problems existing has little to do with what OS you use. I’ve seen Mac owners complain about various Mac problems and Linux users complain about various Linux problems. There is no such thing as “just works.” Windows does not just work. Mac OS X does not just work. Linux does not just work.

The only way around this I can see is a redefinition of the phrase just works. Here’s my new working definition:

Fill-in-the-blank operating system has caused me personally (and no one else necessarily) fewer problems than other operating systems I have used, and when I do encounter problems, they are ones I can tolerate and not big enough for me to abandon this platform for another one.

As someone who works in tech support, I can say that this is definitely true. It’s pretty much a level playing field with regards to the problems you will encounter.

For me, GNU/Linux is free, has a more consistent user experience, and has a great community in which to play a part (e.g. seeking the inevitable support, learning more, contributing yourself). That’s what gives it the advantage over Windows/OS X in my book.

This idea deserves a full essay, but for now, consider: In the same way that Apple took Mac OS X and Cocoa and shrunk them to serve as a handheld device OS, I think Google could take Android and grow it to serve as a PC OS. Wine would be to Android what Classic was to Mac OS X.

The big win is saying “screw you” to KDE and Gnome and all those crap Linux interfaces and APIs. Start over with something new, cohesive, better, and, most of all, which is not, conceptually, a watered down clone of Windows.

I’m really not sure where Gruber is going with this. Google seems to like Wine for various reasons (mainly Picasa), but I don’t really understand how it could vault Android into desktop fame. It seems Wine is a “watered down clone” of Windows (its internals, anyway) and I don’t really see much future in it.

Obviously Gruber and I disagree on the various successes of the “open-source desktop” mission, but I don’t think Wine is the way to success.

John, I await your full essay; perhaps I misunderstand?

To that end, here is my favorite tip for keeping up on comments: Co.mments.com, a great site to subscribe to comments on any blog. You simply track a page and it will update you via email or RSS (your choice). It works on a majority of sites/blogs/forums, and there’s a handy bookmarklet you can use in your browser that works on any page. Check it out and see what you think.

I prefer using this to other methods because it doesn’t require anything on the part of the blog author (and many don’t opt in to this kind of functionality). Also, I prefer seeing comments in RSS to email, and co.mments gives me one RSS feed, so I don’t have to keep subscribing to a new feed for every post—I simply track new conversations and the feed is updated automatically.

Also, putting my proverbial money where my proverbial mouth is, here are a few things I’ve done on my blog to offer you some choices:

• You’ll see the ability to subscribe to comments via RSS below. (OK, I didn’t actually do this; it’s a WordPress feature.)
• Since I like co.mments.com so much, I’ve also added the ability to track a post’s comments via co.mments.com. (See underneath the comment form.) The link is kludgy, but using Javascript in WordPress is an obstacle I haven’t tackled (yet).
• Lastly, you can also track comments via email, as per the Subscribe to Comments plugin. (Also underneath the comment form.)
• If you’re someone who wants all comments on all posts, you can subscribe to my blog’s comments feed. WordPress doesn’t offer that to the browser as an available feed, and I’m disinclined to add it given the other choices above. (However, if you want this, make the case; I’ll be pretty easily convinced.)

Sorry I hadn’t done these sooner. “Comment management” is definitely a feature I have wanted to offer on my blog, I just hadn’t put in the time yet to implement them. (Thanks for the kick in the pants, Steve!)

(One heads-up: the OpenID plugin encourages you to install the XRDS-Simple plugin. The description is there, but I missed it.)

My general goal is to make my domain as useful as possible, and this is definitely a big step.

I haven’t looked back since I switched from Tumblr to WordPress. Hosting my own blog is much more satisfying and I have much more control and flexibility over my content and its appearance. It’s reassuring to see that others have found the same.

So I realized last week that Tumblr doesn’t honor pingbacks/trackbacks; two friends linked to my blog and I got nothing. WordPress does them automatically, and I’d think Tumblr should (to fit the no-nonsense blogging platform that it is.) I guess it fits the somewhat solipsistic nature of Tumblogs, but it certainly doesn’t help build an online reputation.