Another little app that I discovered to aid my Mac life recently is another free one. I discovered this one through a post by fellow micro.blogger Jarrod Blundy, and it has become a staple of my Mac usage ever since.
Do you ever have to go digging around in finder to head to the same usual folders time after time? Me to. We have a Dropbox shared archive at work that drives me insane with the amount of level changes I need.
This afternoon, I randomly decided I was going to go into town and buy a bullet journal. No idea why, just seeing all the new year posts around and numerous people setting theirs up made me want one. The only issue is that I already know this wouldn’t work for me, I’ve tried it, and only a few days ago writing two posts outlining why this wouldn’t work for me. That wasn’t going to stop me though.
I’m on a bit of journey at the moment. One that I am determined not the be preachy about but one that I will share some thoughts and feeling about along the way. Since quitting Twitter, I’ve been assessing where and how I want to spend my time and due to random Googling about social media topics I came across a video by Sam Massey.
He talks about quitting social media and references a video by Dave VanDonge as his main inspiration.
For once, the YouTube algorithm came up trumps and I stumbled, across a new channel to subscribe to. Jeff Su makes productivity videos (doesn’t everyone on there) and I’ve found some of his content really helpful. First whilst researching improvements for my productivity, and I then watched a video on simple Mac that he thinks are underrated.
Two stuck out straight away for me and I have been using them ever since.
A couple of days ago I wrote a link post, the same as I have done hundreds of times before. Found an article online somewhere, read it, picked out a few things that stuck out and threw them into Apple Notes. I typed out my thoughts on the couple of highlighted areas and published these to my blog.
No more thought was put into this than I have put into every other link post I have ever published.
It’s been a little over a year since I wrote about setting up iOS focus modes. At the time, it was a new feature in iOS15 and one that felt far from ready for release. The confusing UX and complicated options lead to my conclusion that hardly any people would use the feature. Now 13 months on, my feelings have changed very little. Improvements have been made, but the hoops you have to jump through, and the missing features, mean that Focus Modes on all Apple devices still suck.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it. Everyone who’s used the web knows what a blog is. They were the web for a very long time, before all this social media nonsense kicked off, and there’s a very real push for more people to start them. The belief is that you have to have something to write about, or you need a special set of skills, but in reality you don’t need anything.
It would appear that the author of the linked post has some very wrong ideas of his own. I think my post still stands up as I took the linked article at face value. However given the informtion that I now know the post could be seen in a completely different light. I did not know this at the time of writing and will not be linking to this person again.
I really was. Despite not feeling very well, and not due to New Year’s Eve for once, I wanted to publish something today. Not because I had much to say, but because I am on a bit of a roll lately and have found that the act of wanting to write something usually pushes something into my mind.
This is in stark contrast to my thoughts a few months ago, where I chose to keep quiet unless I had something to say.
Following my link post talking about bullet journals, I received quite a few replies. Many from those that have, like me, tried and failed to use physical tools, but some from advocates. One worth noting was from sketch noter Chris Wilson, and my response was something I wanted to expand on.
I have come to terms with the fact that, despite my love of physical things, digital tools suit me better.