Making the Most of Notes
Taking notes in classes and meetings of any kind used to be a straightforward affair: you either took notes on paper with a pen or pencil, or you didn’t. When you were a kid, you had marble notebooks full of notes. As you moved up from grade to grade, the notebooks grew thicker, their rules narrower, their spines bound with spiral metal coils. As an adult, maybe you had a journal; at the very least, you had a legal pad.
The modern note-taker, however, is faced with a choice: handwriting notes, as discussed above, or typing notes on a device.
Typing on a laptop or tablet offers some clear benefits: typing offers a clear speed advantage for anyone even passably conversant, and immediate cloud sync means you don’t have to worry about losing your notes. And while you might puzzle over what you meant to type, you will certainly be able to read the text. Lastly, typed notes are easy to share right away.
Handwritten notes, however, offer some benefits that might make up for the relative slowness and inconvenience of the practice. There is evidence, for example, that handwriting leads to better encoding (remembering what you wrote). Better encoding means more accurate recall. And the ability to annotate and spatially interject is hard to replicate in a text editor or outliner. Some people just like it better.
But it’s a false dichotomy to say that you can’t have one without the other.
Here’s what I tried:
Notability is a note-taking app for iOS and macOS that offers iCloud sync. I attended a workshop the other day and I took a few pages of notes in Notability using the Apple Pencil. I wrote, I moved things around, I formatted with different colors. I drew lines to other sections on the page. I drew arrows to let me know that one thing led to another. I created boxes on the side with ancillary information or sidebar data. I underlined and used color to distinguish the level of importance.
It was a nice way to work.
Notability
Notability will also spit out sections of handwriting as text. I was able to select sections of the notes and then have the software recognize the characters and turn my scratch into text. I had Notability drop the text into the clipboard (you can also opt for OCR right on the page), and I pasted the result into Bear.
In Bear, I cleaned up the formatting errors that Notability made in formatting and interpreting so that it matched the content of my handwritten notes. Performing this provided a valuable review of the topics and helped me focus on what I wanted to communicate to others at work. The notes are in Bear, where I usually store meeting notes.
Bear
I can’t say that I’ll always use Notability like this. Handwriting on the iPad uses up a lot more battery than typing. I won’t always have the Pencil with me. I won’t always want to review everything. But it does allay the sneaking sensation that typing notes isn’t as effective as my old handwritten method. The printed word forces a structure on the writer: top to bottom, left to right. Sure, you can use an outliner like Omni and drag sections around, but that’s not the same thing. But the digital advantages are very real.
This Fountain of Self-Refuted Boasts
George F. Will–a conservative–on Donald Trump:
It must be misery to awaken to another day of being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.
The shabbiest U.S. president ever is an inexpressibly sad specimen – The Washington Post:
DDC Stuff Sheath
Via Tools and Toys:
Sometimes, we just want our shit as “orange as possible.” And we all know what a back pocket on the back of yer jeans will do to a Field Notes memo book, right? So we made a little leather sheath. Just that simple. Just something to protect our latest Field Notes memo book, and, wrangle all the scraps of paper and what not that are always bouncing around in our pockets, or falling out of our Field Notes. Simple moves.
I carry a Moleskine Cahier around and it’s pretty beat up by the time I fill it up (I don’t do a lot of writing on the go; I have a stack of index cards at my desk and those are pretty much what I use for notes). This seems like a great idea.
OmniFocus Notifications
OmniFocus 3.2 for Mac brings notifications to the Mac!
In Preferences, in the new Notifications pane, you can set notifications to appear on any combination of due, deferred, and latest start date. You can choose sounds for your notifications, too.
Speaking of notifications, remember Growl? Good times.
Focusing on Due/Flagged Perspectives in OmniFocus
I will readily credit OmniFocus for keeping me from forgetting things that I need to do, and for being able to sleep at night because I’m not worried about what I might have forgotten.
(How to do things, stop procrastinating, and make good choices, not so much.)
OmniFocus makes capture almost effortless. I can send (or forward) an email to a custom email address, trigger an action in MailMate, Force-touch the icon on my phone to reveal a “New Inbox Item” link, or send a string out of Drafts. With Siri Shortcuts, you can skip the typing altogether.
Upon a weekly review, I’m usually relieved to see that I have a pretty good awareness of what I should be focused on, and occasionally jolted by something I would have otherwise forgot. But that’s what the system is there for: to hold ideas.
Two aspects of GTD at the ground level have always tripped me up: the review, and getting down to work.
Review
The review is a matter of time and discipline; you have to decide that at some time during each week, you’re going to look at OmniFocus. You’re going to use the Review feature and go project by project, task by task, and check off things you have done, delete things that you don’t have to do anymore, change project statuses to complete, on hold, or dropped, and move things from your inbox to a project list. For a lot of your tasks and projects, you’re just reviewing them to remind yourself that you still have a commitment to those tasks and to the larger outcome. You review your open loops.
Actually doing work
David Allen’s Getting Things Done recommends working off of your context lists. You have to consider your context: Where are you? Is this a good time to use the phone? You might, then, work off of your phone context list. Are you in a noisy cafe? Maybe you want to process email. In that case, you might work off of your @email context list. Are you out and about? Consult your @errands list.
This approach can certainly work, but anyone who works in an office can very likely make phone calls, process email, and complete writing or brainstorming tasks. Other elements are more instructive regarding what you should work on. Priority, due date, and your energy level are more likely to be your motivating factors when context is less salient.
Of course, GTD frowns on priority–for example, tasks are high, medium, or low priority–as a matter of categorization. And I get it: ever get emails from someone who rates every message (!!!)? You can waste a lot of time deterring what is a !, what is a !!, and what makes a task rise to the !!! level.
OmniFocus now supports multiple tags in instead of single contexts, so you are free to tag phone calls as !, !!, or !!!, as you like. But that’s a GTD no-no.
Flag, Man
The review serves to remind you, in part, about where you need to focus your energies. It reminds you of what is coming at you: due dates, events on your hard landscape, and emergent commitments. It also reminds you of projects on hold, things neglected, and even commitments you need to renegotiate.
So here’s what I do: upon review, if an item has a hard due date, and I didn’t date it thus, I assign a due date. If it’s not something with a hard due date, but I want to work on it between the current review and the next review, I flag it.
It may still be important to winnow down that list into more manageable lists, so I create three custom perspectives in OmniFocus:
- Today: all action items that are either due or flagged (or both)
- Due/Flagged (Work): all action items that are either due or flagged (or both) for work commitments only
- Due/Flagged (Home): all action items that are either due or flagged (or both) for home commitments only
The Today Perspective
Numbers 2 and 3 are essentially the same as Today, but separating work and home-related tasks. (I keep all projects related to each domain in their own folder in OmniFocus.) I toggle between all of these throughout the day, because I can sometimes run an errand during lunch, for example, or on the way home after work. Likewise, I can make a phone call while I’m out and about or during lunch.
The Home Perspective
None of this is perfect; I still forget things. But, as with my use of MailMate to process email, it does help me narrow my focus so that I can see what needs to be done in the near future, rather than looking at 100+ action items and panicking.
The Work Perspetive
Apple’s Not Alone In China
Om Malik, writing about Apple’s revised quarterly guidance:
China slowdown is actually a much wider problem. It is unlikely that the Chinese government will ever talk about problems in its economy. So we are slowly starting to see US companies give their assessment of the Chinese economy. For instance, back in mid-December, when all of us were floating on cloud eggnog, FedEx was reporting earnings that pointed to tough times ahead. “The peak for global economic growth now appears to be behind us,” chief marketing officer Raj Subramaniam remarked on a conference call with investors.
And Trump’s trade war:
The trade war — which has gone from being a tweet to a tornado that has ripped the roof off one of Silicon Valley’s stalwarts. Trade wars obviously have a consequence, and Apple is suffering like every other luxury and fashion brand that has been too reliant on the Chinese consumer. Like Apple, they too have been puking on the side of the proverbial Wall Street. Tiffany, for instance, is down almost 14 percent over the past three months. Coach is performing even worse, almost as bad as LVMH, the company that owns Louis Vuitton, Loro Piana and a whole bunch of others.
Apple isn’t alone in feeling the pinch.
A Ghost Story
We watched A Ghost Story on Amazon Prime this week and it is a possessing piece of work.
Thus Spake iOS
M.G. Siegler touts a powerful iOS accessibility feature:
Basically, whether I’m in Safari or Pocket or Medium reading, I use the iOS ‘Speak Selection’ functionality to read things to me. You can do this almost anywhere within iOS (once you enable the feature in ‘Settings’) by selecting a block of text and hitting ‘Speak.’
This works nicely in the Kindle app as well. I’m embarrassed to admit that, as an Instapaper subscriber, I didn’t know about the reading function.
Listen on 500ish
Deadwood 2019
Deadwood from HBO returns:
[I]t’s about the town’s maturing and becoming part of the Union and what that event sets in motion, in a very personal way for the people that it brings in town and what ensues. The toll of time has not just struck Deadwood and the characters but all the people making it as well, you get to see the faces of people 12 years later. And it was really profound. Actors were crying at the table read — not necessarily from the script but the emotion of being back and doing something we all loved doing so much. You normally have a great experience and then it’s over. You don’t normally get the chance to do this in life. It was kind of a gift.
David Milch is a true auteur in this franchise.
Chevy Camaro, WWI Bunker Edition
Mark Baruth of The Truth About Cars on the turbo, 4-cylinder Camaro:
Not a fan. All of things that make a Camaro bearable are missing from the four-cylinder turbo, and you still get all of the fun of a ridiculously small trunk, non-functional backseat, and WWI bunker comfort and visibility. Combine that with all-season tires and you’ve got a real loser on your hands. The EcoBoost Mustangs are superior in every way.
Software in the Week Between
The week between Christmas and New Year is a good time to fart around with new software, some of which is often available on sale.
PopClip
PilotMoon’s PopClip utility is an extension that hovers an iOS-style bar over text that you select. You can then select actions from an extensive gallery of options. Your PopClip bar is customizable; you can add and obscure services you are likely to use. Likewise, you can interact with text from sources (i.e. look up a word or phrase, or tweet out a selection) or edit text of your creation (capitalize, title case, etc.).
PopClip Selecting Text in Safari
PopClip will not appeal as much to users who keep their hands on the keyboard, as it’s primarily a mouse-driven interface. It will, however, appeal to iOS users who rely on the text selection menu that appears inline when selecting text.
PopClip Actions Menu
PopClip is on sale for 50% off ($4.99 USD) on the Mac App Store.
PopClip Selecting Text in Drafts
Keyboard Maestro
Keyboard Maestro was around when macOS was “OS X” and had pinstripes. In short, this utility allows you to automate functions of the Mac by assigning keyboard shortcuts. Pre-programmed samples include searching Google for selected text using control-shift-g, and invoking a clipboard history using shift-control-command-v. You can, of course, create your shortcuts.
In the wake of TextExpander becoming a subscription service, Keyboard Maestro emerged as a viable replacement for those of us who shunned the new payment model.
Learning OmniFocus offers a selection of Keyboard Maestro macros for users who want to wrangle their task list from the keyboard. This is a great way to jump from any application to your OF inbox or any other perspective, for example.
KeyBoard Maestro Macros for OmniFocus
The Shelves
Gladys and Yoink are both emblematic of “shelf” apps; these are apps that allow you to park text snippets, images, or links, ideally for temporary storage while you decide where to put them. Both Gladys and Yoink offer iOS and macOS versions, and sync between devices. Gladys offers both a free and paid version ($0.99 USD); the free version allows you to keep 10 items in the application. Yoink offers a demo on macOS and paid versions on both platforms ($7.99 and $5.99 USD respectively).
Yoink on macOS
Both applications offer some advanced features. Yoink looks more like a proper Mac utility, with a transparent tray that slides out and varying ways to invoke the tray’s behavior. Gladys offers unique export options, like creating and expanding .ZIP archives.
Gladys on macOS
Glittering
The New York Times sets out to answer the question you didn’t ask: what is glitter?
Most of the glitter that adorns America’s name brand products is made in one of two places: The first is in New Jersey, but the second, however, is also in New Jersey. The first, the rumored farm site of glitter’s invention, refused to answer any of my questions. “We are a very private company,” a representative said via email. The second is Glitterex.
The bulk of Glitterex glitter is made from plastic, though some varieties come from other sources, like aluminum. Clear glitter looks like tiny pieces of a dead jellyfish. “Then,” he said, “we go into the next iteration of a substrate, where the clear film is metalized.” He picked up a shining silver strip of material. “Potato chips bags start with the same polyester film; it’s metalized with aluminum.”
Mylar, aluminum, and corporate intrigue!
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson’s *The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life* is ostensibly about not giving said f*ck, but it’s really about figuring out what you do care about. Manson exhorts the reader to sever ties to the notion that seeking happiness will lead to it, and to, as the Marines say, “embrace the suck.”
One of Manson’s most useful recommendation in terms of finding a semblance of happiness is to spend your time doing what you would do if you didn’t have to:
True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
Manson is at odds with the idea that life can be sunshine and roses all day; in his calculus, you will encounter suffering no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Simply thinking about how things could be better, in effect, makes you less happy. How are we to deal with this? Find out what version of struggle you would take on irrespective of need.
What determines your success isn’t, “What do you want to enjoy?” The relevant question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps and shame.
In fact, it’s in the encountering of problems that we find meaning:
Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life.
It’s internal control, rather than external, that provides meaning. Steer your own ship, in a sense.
Manson lets the reader know that trying to be exceptional, as well, is likely to lead to less, not more, happiness. Manson wants you to know that it’s OK to be average:
This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless. And this mindset can quickly turn dangerous, to both yourself and others.
Manson cautions the reader to avoid finding meaning from things beyond our control. Take popularity:
Popularity, on the other hand, is a bad value. If that’s your value, and if your metric is being the most popular guy/girl at the dance party, much of what happens will be out of your control: you don’t know who else will be at the event, and you probably won’t know who half those people are. Second, the value/metric isn’t based on reality: you may feel popular or unpopular, when in fact you have no fucking clue what anybody else really thinks about you.
Manson rejects the Platonic notion of self-knowledge; you will be far happier if you reject making decisions based on who you think you are and experiment–and fail.
I say don’t find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that’s what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the differences in others.
There is much more to the book, including Manson’s ultimate test–accepting mortality and measuring everything you find important against this inevitability. There’s a lot to ponder. There’s also plenty of Stoicism and shades of both Nietzsche and Existentialism in the book. But it’s not about caring less. It’s about caring about the things that will give you a greater sense of satisfaction with your life. That’s, at least, what Manson is shooting for.
Fresh
Yoink! has been getting some positive press lately, and it (and a similar iOS app, Gladys) put me in mind of the excellent Fresh by Ironic Software. Fresh, which is macOS only, has a drop zone like Yoink!, but is a touch more complex. It shows recent documents as well as things you’ve put manually in the Cooler, and allows you to tag files. It’s fiddlier than Yoink! in a good way.
