From the category archives:

tips and tricks

the tinkering context

by John on February 6, 2008

David Allen’s Getting Things Done techniques have been very helpful for me. The one that has most benefited my workflow has been the concept of organizing tasks by context. For example, every task is categorized based on the context where it can be completed, ie, @home, @errands, @mac, etc.

A few months ago, I created a new context: @tinkering. The idea behind @tinkering is that it is a place for those tasks that don’t require much in the way of concentration. Some examples from my current @tinkering context include an email reminder to a friend about a book they borrowed, a wordpress plug-in I want to try out, and adding a recommended reading page to this blog. When I need something less intensive to do, or if I have my laptop handy while watching a movie, I can work through the @tinkering context.

I originally set it up as a sub context of @mac, because these were all tasks that required my computer. However, I’ve recently made @tinkering into it’s own context. OmniFocus shows tasks from a subcontext within the parent context as well. I decided I didn’t want to have these tinkerings cluttering up my @mac context, which is full of to-dos that require more thought or effort than a typical tink.

If you want to try out the @tinkering context, let me help you get started. Go ahead and add “subscribe to the Creativityist RSS feed” as your first task. See how easy that was?!

Popularity: 35% [?]

{ 0 comments }

capture everything: ideas

by John on February 4, 2008

This is part 3 of 5 in a series on capturing everything. Other entries:

Once you start to really get serious about capturing every thought of value (and some that aren’t), you’ll quickly realize there are two types of thoughts you want to remember. On the one hand, there are the tasks that we’ve already talked about. These are items that you need to remember to do, usually, but not always, within a certain timeframe.

On the other hand, there are ideas. They are usually incomplete thoughts — maybe a concept you want to develop for a new project, or a notion that will fit in well with something that you are already working on. These are ideas you want to live with, to sit with, to revisit over and over and develop more substance around them. To add them to a task list isn’t helpful, because they usually aren’t something that you can or want to just complete and check off. On a task list, they only serve to distract you when you are really trying to get a few things done.

I think it is critical to have an idea catalog — a digital moleskine. I know that many like to fill notebook after notebook with ideas and then shelve them to revisit later. There is something glamorous about notebooks full of ideas, but I prefer to capture them on my computer. It helps me easily organize thoughts or track them down later. For Windows users, I’d recommend OneNote. When I switched over full-time to a Mac a few years ago, this was the only program I worried about not being able to replace. On my MacBook, I’ve settled into Yojimbo and I love it. The rest of this entry will be Yojimbo-centric, but I hope anyone might be able to find motivation, at the very least, from it.

Just like when capturing tasks, I want to be able to quickly and reliably capture ideas with minimal distraction from what I might be working on at the time. Though it is easy enough to create a new note in Yojimbo itself, there are two main ways I capture ideas with Yojimbo.

Similar to OmniFocus, I can quickly capture a thought and add it to Yojimbo with Quicksilver. There is a convenient little Yojimbo plugin that is available in Quicksilver. I just type -space to activate the Quicksilver window, type a period followed by the thought I want to capture, tab over and hit ‘Y’ for Add to Yojimbo, and then hit enter. The thought is tucked away for later, and I’m back to whatever I’m working on in seconds.

The main shortcoming of this first capture routine is that Yojimbo just inserts whatever I type into both the title and the content of the new note it creates. If there is a little more I want to capture, Yojimbo has features to help me easily capture a thought from whatever I am working on. I can type F8 no matter what I am doing, and a quick-entry windows opens up. (This keystroke can be set to whatever you like in the preferences.) A window pops up where I can type a title and then the content of a note. If there is something in the clipboard, it is automatically included as the content of the note which is also really handy.

Yojimbo also includes a little dock that sits on side of the screen. Anything can just be dragged to that tab, and it is added to Yojimbo. However, I like to keep my desktop clean, so even that inconspicuous little dock is a little too conspicuous for me. Between the two techniques I describe above, I don’t really have much use for the dock.

Of course, all of this just gets the ideas into Yojimbo, which can quickly fill up with notes. I use it for capturing ideas, research notes, book notes, software licenses and even my daily pages. In a future post, I’ll share how I organize all of that within Yojimbo so that I can review what thoughts are in process and tuck away others that I don’t want to see all the time.

Popularity: 73% [?]

{ 0 comments }

capture everything: tasks

by John on January 28, 2008

This is part 2 of 5 in a series on capturing everything. Other entries:

My mind rarely seems to stick to one thing very well. Dang, this coffee is good. I need to work this Coldplay album back into my rotation. My foot is falling asleep. I wonder whatever happened to that ventriloquist dummy I had as a kid.

See what I mean?

When it comes to capturing everything, I want it to be quick and painless. When I’m trying to focus on a project, I just accept that at times, my mind is going to wander, and often to a task I need to remember…and then it will just drain mental energy. When that happens, I want to be able to get it noted and then forgotten about in the shortest time possible. Having a quick and reliable system allows me to recapture my focus with the least amount of effort and give my brain the space to get back to being creative.

OmniFocus is my task manager because it is ridiculously versatile in the ways I can get my tasks tucked away for future reference. Here are a few examples of how I can quickly add something to my task inbox:

OmniFocus has built in integration with Quicksilver. Using Quicksilver, I can add a task to my OmniFocus inbox without ever leaving what I am working on. All I have to do is type -space to activate the Quicksilver window, type a period followed by the task I need to do, tab over and hit ‘S’ for Send to OmniFocus, and then hit enter. It’s only five keystrokes, plus typing the task to remember. Then, I’m done and back to whatever I was working on. The task is now off my mind and patiently waiting in my OmniFocus inbox while I’m back to creating. Here’s a peek at the simple Quicksilver window that pops up:

I also try to keep my inbox at zero by converting email messages that require a thoughtful response into tasks. A simple (and free!) little script known as Mail Act-on, combined with a few mail rules, allows me to rapidly convert an email message into a task to be completed when the time is right. The rule looks like this:


Hitting ‘/-i’ in Mail activates a third-party script that I downloaded to create a task out of a mail message. After I activate the inbox rule, a simple little screen pops up that will let me assign the message a project, context and dates if I desire, so I don’t even have to see it in my task inbox:

The rule that is pictured above also moves my message out of my mail inbox and off my mind. Thanks to the wonders of gmail, I don’t archive any email on my machine. But, because OmniFocus will link back to a message when I’m ready to reply, the rule also moves the message out of my inbox and into a local archive so it is available to me when I’m ready to reply. All I have to do is click the link that is attached to my OmniFocus task and the email pops back up, ready for a response.

If you are a Mac user, I hope these tips can be immediately useful for you. Some of these tricks work not only with OmniFocus, but with other GTD apps like iGTD and Things. If you are a Windows user, I hope this can inspire you to research similar techniques. (And if you are a Windows user who has some techniques to share, please contact me if you’d be willing to do a guest post.)

Next up in this series…capturing thoughts. Until then, happy capturing!

Popularity: 80% [?]

{ 4 comments }

daily pages

by John on January 22, 2008

I find that ideas are best flowing when I am in a regular routine of doing daily pages. Daily pages might not be the right name in my case — perhaps weekly pages, or even fortnightly pages, would be more suitable. I’ll go ahead and stick with daily as a reminder that they are worth doing that often. Daily pages are a regular discipline just to generate output to get your mind moving.

I was introduced to daily pages through The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. (She calls them morning pages…I’m not sure how or why I switched to calling them daily pages, but I’m not changing now!) In this book, she calls them “the primary tool of creative recovery” and describes them this way:

What are morning pages? Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness: “Oh, god, another morning. I have NOTHING to say. I need to wash the curtains. Did I get my laundry yesterday? Blah, blah, blah…” They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions.

Sometimes my daily pages are just as boring as she describes above. On the other hand, I am often surprised at how deep they sometimes get as they help me clear my thinking about something. And, I can definitely say that when I am in a season of doing them more consistently, more creativity flows out of my cleared head.

Please don’t think that daily pages are just a tool for those who write. It doesn’t matter what your medium of creativity is, daily pages can be a valuable tool in your creative flow.

Popularity: 31% [?]

{ 2 comments }

Newer Entries →