I’m a designer and front–end developer. I enjoy crafting quality macOS applications on the side. I’m also passionate about industrial design, typography, architecture, and art.
He makes an app called Finbar, which I use for searching my menubar from the keyboard.
Planning out my time with iCal calendars and groups, and being able to click back and forth between that planning view and David Allen’s “hard landscape,” is very appealing. I’d forgotten your earlier post on this topic, but I’ll be returning to it for ideas.
The printed calendar I carry with me doesn’t have the kind of detail yours does, but it does have the advantage of giving me four months of schedule in my back pocket. Do you print your calendars to any special size—e.g., for pasting into a Moleskine—or just to letter-sized?
The daily agenda for a trip sounds like a great idea for many (salesmen, in particular), but my trips are almost always focused on a single project. I’m more likely to be juggling appointments on the days I am in front of my computer.
Thanks for mentioning iCal. I have ditched eveything else and find that iCal has everything I need for GTD.
It’s a calendar, to-do (to-do’s can be sorted by calendar, too, by the way) list, tickler file (just put “See File under “file name” in the notes field) and, well, everything else that GTD requires.
Here’s the reason I forced iCal to work for me: I don’t carry a PDA, just a sony ericsson phone, and everything that is in iCal, including tasks and alarms, are synced with my phone quickly via iSync. I even have a script to open iSync, sync them, them quit iSync, all by hitting Shift-F8. So I just tap the hotkey when I get to my mac and leave it, and all my stuff is current all the time and very portable, always in my pocket.
Another great thing, it doesn’t just import from iCal to the phone, it syncs them, so when I’m out and I need to add a task, I can do it shorthand on the phone and it will sync to a calendar called “Inbox” in iCal when I sync up.
I would love to use fother fun GTD software, but alas, I don’t need to. If you carry a syncable phone with you everywhere, I highly recommend tweaking iCal to work as your GTD system.
Did I mention there’s tons of little apps and even widgets that let you see your iCal stuff at a glance without bringing up iCal? Very nice.
#TBD…
I was think about switching from #Things to #TaskPaper. Task-management is the last piece where I still don’t use plain text, albeit using Markdown in Things notes (see 2023-12-09_12-09 Things to-do journaling template).
TMTask table includes projects, headers, and to-dos.hook files linking back to projects as way to have a fake Spotlight index.
Knowing that the database is fairly easy to understand, I’m a bit more confident that I can export my to-dos out of Things. I can even use the SQLite database directly as an archival format too.
The non-existence of end-to-end encryption is still bugs me though.
I’m an experienced software engineer living in Magdeburg, Germany. Available for projects that match (
Swift()/[Objective C]).
Programmers complain about distractions all the time. But when we journal and document our actions, we can drop them in the moment and pick them up later from where we left off. It’s like bookmarks for our lives (see next actions 2.7).
We will also have a history of our actions in the journal, which can be used as a reference when we have to go back in time.
Automations should be exported into Git repositories. They have to be installed since most automation tool expects a script, a shortcut, or a macro to be imported into a library, or installed in a special place, but we can still export and assemble files from our tools into a repositories.
Keeping these repositories up-to-date can be a burden, since we have to manually export files. But it’s still beneficial to keep these under version control, since sync problems can happen, so we can go back to a previous version more easily.
When committing atomic changes of a “thing”, it has to have the following items included:
If the commit includes these, we can directly commit it into the main branch.
However, this wouldn’t work in a team setting since it requires too much discipline from other people. Also committing directly to the main branch can be dangerous.
PR commits don’t need to be that strict.
Merge commits on the other hand needs to be in a specific format.
issue numberThis is my standard notes template for journaling about a #Things to-do in its notes.
# 2023-12-09_12-07
Notes about what happened with the to-do…
# 2023-12-09_12-09
Yet more notes about what happened with the to-do…
Source: Hook: getting out of the Dock - Discussion & Help - Hookmark Forum
To display the icon on the Dock:
defaults write com.cogsciapps.hook background.app.mode 0
To revert it to be a background only app:
defaults write com.cogsciapps.hook background.app.mode 0
I’m going to keep my interstitial journal separate from my Zettelkasten. My journal doesn’t need Git and all the bells and whistles of my Zettelkasten. I just want to have a simple place to quickly draft ideas.
Some notes may move over to my Zettelkasten, which I can automate, but it’s very private, so I don’t want to accidentally publish something.
People seemingly like Arc because of its tab management. I think it can be replicated with Safari as well using tab groups.
Arc doesn’t even have bookmarks, but Safari does.
I should manage my Pull Requests like this, since they are very important.
I can quickly search today’s notes by typing fdate into The Archive’s omni bar. Typinator will expand today’s date.
I also modified my Open Current Note in Zettelkasten shortcut to give me an option to open the note in The Archive too. I just figured out that it searches for the note and gives me backlinks.
Follow-up on 2023-12-02_16-34:
I should stop adding URL slugs to my Zettelkasten notes. It’s just adds noise when I’m linking notes with long titles, like this one → 2023-12-08_15-54-increase-your-productivity-on-personal-projects
I could actually support pipes in links, so I wouldn’t see the long URL slug. → 2023-10-17_00-21
Simon Willison is the creator of Datasette, an open source tool for exploring and publishing data. He currently works full-time building open source tools for data journalism, built around Datasette and SQLite.
Prior to becoming an independent open source developer, Simon was an engineering director at Eventbrite. Simon joined Eventbrite through their acquisition of Lanyrd, a Y Combinator funded company he co-founded in 2010.
He is a co-creator of the Django Web Framework, and has been blogging about web development and programming since 2002 at simonwillison.net
automation-things-journalJournal About Things To-Do
date, published, things_url, title attributes in the frontmattertitle → name of the selected Things itemdate → the current datepublished → falsethings_url → URL of the selected Things itemOpen Things To-Do Journal
thearchive://match/TERM works like the search but displays a good match directly; this is similar to Wiki-Links. You likely want to use this.thearchive://search/TERM searches for TERM as if you typed it inI created the new repository for my first automation script. https://github.com/zsbenke/automation-taskpaper-checklists
It would serve as a demo.
Since I want to use TaskPaper as just another editor app, I should move my interstitial journal file out of it.
I cancelled some parts of this project. → 2023-12-09_10-04
I think I’m going to give up my TaskPaper journal. I just think The Archive app makes so much sense as a journal and Zettelkasten.
I can develop notes and journal about stuff here. It’s even have images integration, and I can use the old style Notational Velocity app.
I indexed my #Zettelkasten notes in DEVONthink and also turned on syncing without uploading indexed items. On other devices, I also want to have this database synced, but I should also set it up the same way as on the original laptop.
I want to use DEVONthink to browse my Zettelkasten locally. It can even get and parse hashtags. But I can’t use hypens in the name of the hashtag for the Hungarian suffixes.
I should create a shortcut which let’s me export a selected Things todo into my Notes folder as a plain-text file, so I can use it next to Things as a drafting place for next actions as notes.
It would be enough to open it in TextEdit.
A capture log is a journal-based version of the inbox, where ideas are getting captured. This was an idea mentioned by Merlin Mann 2024-10-23_08-21-merlin-mann for the first time, where he wants to yell into the void and let Siri capture his ideas, with automatic metadata like creation date, a location, and optionally the weather.
A capture log is kind of a journal about our ideas. It’s like a tail for our life.
The Inbox is a medium which contains items that change frequently. It is a temporary place that holds new information in the short term. It’s like a tail for our life as Merlin Mann said it 2024-10-23_08-21-merlin-mann. → 2.14.12
The Storage is a place which holds processed information on the long term, optimally organized in some form of fashion (2.8.2.4.5 The file system is a backend for our projects). Organization categories should have clean edges, so we know what to store where.
By using these two information holders, we can separate the processing and organization part of #GTD.
I don’t browse my stuff by category or by area. I browse it by project.
Since I use #Hookmark to link related support material to my projects, I use the Things quick-find panel, to quickly jump to a project, then click on a link or invoke Hookmark to open a related asset.
Since Things provides taxonomy for our life 2.10.4, by keeping ideas there, this taxonomy will be true for ideas instead of tasks. Things is my Finder 2.8.2.4.3.
Ideas need to be developed: the idea manager workflow 2.8.2.4 will make sure that I have a complete overview of all of my ideas organized into projects and areas.
Follow-up on 2.8.2.4:
Next to Reminders, I also have to create Calendar events for Things to-dos. Having the next action creation automated, makes using Things as an idea manager easier.
When I run the New Next Action shortcut on the selected to-do, Shortcuts ask me if I want to create a new reminder or a new event. Events are created for the next day, then revealed in the Calendar, so I can continue to edit them.
When I’m working with projects in a #GTD system, I need to have a way to plan projects. Previously I used external apps for this, but having a different view on my task manager app – combining it with Reminders for next steps – I can create an interesting use case for Things, where the app is used as an idea manager and not a task manager.
#Things allows me to create todos and attach long-formatted Markdown notes to them. In addition to that, having the date and checklist-related functionality let me add details on how a task should be performed.
In essence, a to-do for me in Things doesn’t mean a next action. It is closer to the analogy of Trello and cards.
The basic system is built on this foundation:
Scoping, Ready, and Blocked.An idea is something that is getting worked on as I get more information on the project. These todos are represented by a todo tagged with Scoping. If I have everything collected about the idea, then it gets the Ready tag. These todos no longer contain unknown details or questions, they are well-researched and ready for implementation.
When a todo is completed and needs review or it’s blocked, then it turns into a Blocked idea. I add a new item to the checklist about why it’s blocked, and I use notes to log the history of events. This is a remixed version of the “@Waiting for” list in #GTD integrated into the #Kanban like status tags.
I don’t work from Things though since I need to have concrete next actions stored somewhere. Since I don’t want to mix plans with next actions, I integrate Reminders with Things (2.8.2.4.1 Things to-dos can be a source of Reminders and Calendar based next actions). Using Shortcuts automation, I can create a linked reminder for any selected Things item, and move it to the appropriate context list in Reminders. Having this separation makes it possible to use Reminders to store bookmarks where I can quickly jump into plans stored in Things. Since Things no longer contains next actions, it can be treated as a #Zettelkasten like #PKM app which is about ideas working towards a clear goal (projects).
Csak úgy tudunk javítani a helyzetünkön ha elfogadjuk azt. Ez az első lépése annak, hogy az irányításunk alá vegyük a dolgokat. Amikor ellenállunk, és/vagy nem vagyunk képesek elfogadni a dolgokat, akkor nem fogjuk megtalálni a kormányt.
Az állandó testellenőrzés növeli a tényleges fájdalom szubjektív érzését azzal, hogy a figyelmünk lézerfókuszáltan egy érzésre összpontosul, ami bekapcsolja az agy harc vagy menekülés reakcióját. Az elme okozza a szenvedést önmagának. Ebben az állapotban egy megerősítő folyamat indul el, ami végül további gondolatokat szülve egy gondolat és félelemspirálba tereli az embert a fájdalom feltételezett növelésével. Ez azért van, mert meg akarunk szabadulni a fájdalomtól, pedig A fájdalommal szembeni ellenállás csak több feszültséget szül.
A fájdalommal szembeni ellenállás csak több feszültséget szül. Amikor fájdalmat érzünk és megpróbáljuk azt eltolni magunktól – A fájdalommal szembeni ellenállás a múltban lévő állapottal való összehasonlításból származik –, akkor csak feszültséget generálunk, ami növeli a fájdalmat. Ezzel szemben, amikor elmerülünk benne, őszinte kiváncsisággal közelebb kerülünk hozzá, akkor az elménk nyugodtabbá válik. A fájdalom egy érzés, amire az elme teszi rá a szenvedést. Csak úgy tudunk javítani a helyzetünkön ha elfogadjuk azt.
Az anticipatorikus szorongás okozhatja az elme ellenállását a fájdalommal szemben. A szorongásnak hatása van a dolgok kimenetelére. A fájdalomra az elme reakciójaként adott ellenállás oka az, hogy félünk a fájdalomtól, meg akarunk tőle szabadulni, mert az a múltban nem létezett. Ennek hatására az elme automatikusan sztorikat kreál a fájdalomról.
A naplózás segítséget adhat abban, hogy letisztázzuk, hogy mi van irányításunk alatt és mi nem.
Napi naplót vezetve tisztábban láthatjuk a különbségeket a múlt és a jelen között, így kirajzolódhatnak azok a korlátok, amik elválasztják az irányításunk és nem irányításunk alatt lévő dolgokat.
Amennyiben tisztában vagyunk ezekkel a határokkal, előnyünk van abban, hogy a jövőben tudjuk, hogy mely csatákat érdemes megvívni. A naplót backward tickler file-ként használva a múltból tisztábban reflektálhatunk a jövőre.
A fájdalommal szembeni ellenállás a múltban lévő állapottal való összehasonlításból származik. Az az állapot, amikor még nem volt fájdalom. Ez az összehasonlítás viszont nem valóságos, csak egy ötlet, Az elme automatikusan sztorikat kreál a fájdalomról.
A fájdalom elfogadásához nem jó hogyha összehasonlítjuk a múltat a jelennel?