Category: Productivity
-
Firefox Focus
I’ve been giving the Firefox Focus browser app a try on my iPhone to have a more private experience while browsing the web. Hopefully, I’ll see less ads (which are always blocked) and the sites will load quicker.
-
Busy Doesn’t Mean Productive
-
Transmit 5 Released — chorus.fm
Transmit is my favorite utility for FTP and connecting to other cloud accounts and today Transmit 5 make things so much nicer! Panic at have released a great update to my favorite file transfer app: Seven years after the first release of Transmit 4, our well-loved and widely-used macOS file transfer app, we sat down…
-
Email Free
I checked my personal email for the first time since Saturday this evening. My inbox was full with nearly 200 messages, but nothing was urgent and only needed to send a few replies. Plus I was able to process them all in about 30 minutes. I’m going to start checking my inbox only a few…
-
Deep Work
Since returning back to work from paternity leave, I’ve found it hard to concentrate for long periods of time. It seems like there is so much going and my mind goes in a zillion directions. Today, I started reading Deep Work by Cal Newport in hopes of learning some techniques to exercise my brain…
-
Time Blocking
I’m a huge fan of time blocking 🙂 What is time blocking? Time blocking is the act of scheduling sessions of work on a calendar. By deliberately assigning work time on a calendar, we automatically acknowledge the immutable resource of time. Several productivity writers tout the strengths of time blocking including Mike Vardy at…
-
Still Learning Spanish
Today is the 147th day in a row that I’ve completed Spanish exercises in the DuoLingo app.
-
Podcast Listening Trifecta
I’ve been listening to podcast since 2007 when I had an hour-long commute to my corporate job at Whirlpool. Upon graduation, I bought my first iPod; a 30GB video click wheel model. Since I had a long drive, 5 days a week, I would load up on financial podcasts (like the Dave Ramsey Show) and…
-
Here EGO
A few days ago I posted about buying a new reel mower for our grass. This wasn’t the optimal solution. If the grass was too long, the mower didn’t work right and my old battery powered Ryobi mower wasn’t holding a charge long enough to mow my whole yard. After a bit of research, I…
-
Saved Four Hours
I got an email today from Text Expander that last month I saved four hours of typing by using short snippets that expand on my Mac. Most of the snippets are for replies at work, but some are for personal. A few examples: dde expands for my personal email address hhome expands for my home address llog asks for…
-
My First Standing Desk
Four years ago, I got really excited about building / having a standing desk. I read all about the health benefits and wanted to have one of my own. Before I went all in, I had to build a prototype to make sure: I liked standing and working Figure out what dimensions to build my…
-
A Day in the Life
This post is part of a series describing what Automatticians do on a daily basis. You can read more posts like this by following the tag #a8cday on WordPress.com and Twitter. Here’s a look in at my “typical” day, even though every day changes, due to my wife’s work schedule and/or three year old daughter’s…
-
2016 Taxes Completed
Well, my part of them anyways. I sent everything off to our tax professionals this morning. Such a great feeling knowing that item is off my to do list before our baby comes. And now we wait. To see how much we owe. Fingers crossed it’s less than $5000 🙂
-
Overcast on a Mac
Today I learned of a neat little menu bar app that will allow you to play podcasts from Overcast on your Mac. Plus, it allows for speed increases, so I can listen to podcasts at 2x speed 🙂 And Overcast syncs my location in the episode, so I can start listening on my phone and…
-
Franz
I enjoy finding Mac apps that help me stay more organized and Franz is the perfect app for that. A friend of mine pointed out this app at WordCamp Cincinnati and I’ve been using ever since (mid October). Essentially Franz is a website wrapper where you can run multiple messaging apps like Slack, Facebook Messenger,…
-
Project Simplify
In January, I set out on an initiative to get rid of excess stuff in my life. I think I heard this on the Minimalist podcast, but the premise is to remove items that have no use or bring you no joy from your life. So on January 1st, I found a useless trinket in…
-
January Recap
Hard to believe January has come and gone and we are one month into 2017. This year sure is flying. January has been a really productive month for me and I continue to rely on OmniFocus to let me know what I should be doing each day. Since I’ve added my habits and rituals, I’m…
-
OmniFocus Dashboard
My main perspective in OmniFocus is called the Dashboard and this is where I spend 95% of my time in the app. It’s a list view of everything that is available and flagged or due soon. It also contains my daily GTD tasks and daily routine things (like publishing a blog post). I could bore…
-
Entering Tasks into OmniFocus
There’s four ways that I get tasks into OmniFocus. Email The Omni Group gives each OmniFocus account a private email address that you can send messages to get a task in your Inbox. I’ll do this by forwarding to the OmniFocus task I created in Gmail. The great thing about this that the body of…
-
OmniFocus Perspectives
Yesterday I mentioned the one of the main reasons I like OmniFocus is because of the custom Perspectives. Think of these as filters to see the available tasks. Here are my perspectives in the sidebar of OmniFocus: Inbox This is where all of my task go when I enter them into OmniFocus. I’m bad at…
-
Why OmniFocus?
I’ve been an OmniFocus user since 2014. I frequently refer to it as my brain as it remembers all the things I have to do. I use OmniFocus to break my life down into four broad categories: Team Hartzler Headquarters (things to do around here, personal growth) Automattic Your Website Engineer Someday / Maybe (includes…
-
Productivity Week
This week I’m going to be sharing how I use my to do list app OmniFocus. It’s basically my brain as I put everything that I need to do in this little app. I love how it syncs with all my devices and I can even tell Siri to remind me to do something and…
-
A Bit of Planning
I haven’t set many goals for this year, as I know life will turn all kinds of crazy in about 60 days with a newborn and three year old, but I have spent a bit of time adding new rituals/habits to my daily life. They are as follows: Train my brain daily with an iOS…
-
Switching to Dvorak
In September 2015, at our Grand Meetup, I started to teach myself how to type with an alternative keyboard layout called Dvorak. Our CEO Matt is a huge advocate of the alternative layouts and here’s the main reason why, per Wikipedia: Dvorak proponents claim the Dvorak layout uses less finger motion and reduces errors compared to…
-
Speed Up Videos
I can typically consume content much faster than real-times speed, so I have a Chrome extension that allows me to speed up all videos. It’s called Video Speed Controller. I have it set on 1.5 speed by default, but normally bump it up to 2 or 2.5 depending on the type of video. And if the plugin…
-
Twenty Two Books
I enjoy reading and I set an ambitious goal of reading 50 books last year. Well, I didn’t reach 50, but I did read 22. I track everything I read in GoodReads so I can remember what books I read 🙂
-
Clearing All the Things
The week between Christmas and New Years is my favorite time of year to clear out inboxes, messages, todos, and get ready for a reset. My brain likes to focus on starting new habits at the first of the year, so I’m prepping myself for some new habits in 2017. Here’s what I’m thinking: Inbox…