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Book: Filling the Blank Screen now out in paperback

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IMG_0715.PNGBBC writer William Gallagher follows up his hit productivity book The Blank Screen with more informative, sparky and witty chapters about being creative and getting your writing done. Over 100 of the best, most talked about and most useful articles from The Blank Screen news site have been compiled, edited, updated and given a scrub. Learn about how writers and even normal people can get started on the writing they keep putting off. See how to get over problems and to that finish line – and about how about the only thing more useful to you than that expensive computer you’ve got is that expensive smartphone.

“Filling in the Blank Screen is a helpful read and has a lot of wisdom for us aspiring wordsmiths. It was a clever and witty read. You’ve got a great way of making it sound like a conversation with the reader. Very natural prose.” – George Bastow on Twitter September 7, 2014

Get it on Amazon now.

Don’t update OmniFocus 2 for iPhone yet

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You may not have a choice: I just found that my copy has been updated automatically. Reportedly this update was released “inadvertently” and wasn’t intended to launch until iOS 8 arrives in a few days.

The reason I know this is that the update in the App Store says so. It also says that people have been finding problems with it on iOS 7 and that therefore The Omni Group is working to resolve things.

But in my casual use of OmniFocus 2 for iPhone tonight I’ve not hit any snags. Plus, I’m updating to iOS 8 the instant it’s available so the worst that can happen is that I stick to OmniFocus on my Mac and iPad for a little while.

So. If you can avoid the automatic update, do. If you can’t or you haven’t, hopefully it’s a shrug. But at least you’ll know why if you hit a snag suddenly.

This is the time you feel worst

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When you’ve got a rejection. Or, according to The Atlantic, “depression strikes most around 7 or 8pm.”

It’s from a study that was not just solely American but also primarily about American teenagers. But it was done as an afterthought. There is a US service that’s like a texting equivalent of ChildLine or the Samaritans: teenagers can text in with their problems. You can immediately see how that would be good.

What perhaps Crisis Text Line of New York didn’t immediately see was that texts are logged and stored with a date and timestamp. With masses of texts all automatically, naturally having this information, it was like handing the charity a gigantic information resource.

So there are details about when people needing its help were feeling at their worst. And by when, it’s to the second. Do read the full piece because this technically curious secondary affect of the texting service contains some heartlifting details.

Five signs your office is creative

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If you ask me, there is just one: you produce creative work creatively. Do that and you’re creative, QED. But when you’re looking at a particular office space, there are things you can tell immediately.

Such as this: if there are big, wall-sized decorations with words like “Imagination” then there will be creative people consciously ignoring them. That’s what non-creative people think these offices need and the real creatives are the ones who wouldn’t be seen dead being motivated by that.

Visual.ly believes there are more visible indicators of office creativity and, I suppose naturally, the site lists its top five visually. Have a look.

And you think you’re busy

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Assuming you’re not actually overloaded at this very moment, take an hour or so to look at people who are. These are showrunners: American TV producers who have to run their dramas like businesses.

It is truly a phenomenal job in terms of having to be productive – and productive all the time. I remember one showrunner mentioning in an interview that the shock of the job was just how many decisions you had to make in the moments walking back from the toilet to your office.

Decisions that affect the employment of at least dozens, typically hundreds. Decisions that affect the enjoyment of millions and thereby the income, sometimes counted in the billions of dollars, that your studio or network will get.

Video chatting phones – in 1970

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Bell Labs was right about so many aspects of video chatting.

They were right that it would a little bit awkward. That it’d provide “an enhanced feeling of proximity and intimacy.” That people would use it as a way to get out of tiresome business trip. That, someday, really, we’d all use it.

They were just wrong about how much anyone would be willing to pay for it.

In 2014, video chatting is one of the clearest “hey-it-really-is-the-future” features of day-to-day life. But it was first commercially available 44 years ago, when Bell Labs debuted the private “picturephone” in Pittsburgh in 1970.

The First ‘Picturephone’ for Video Chatting Was a Colossal Failure – Sarah Laskow, The Atlantic (12 September 2014)

OmniFocus 2 for iPad just days away

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And it’s going to look a lot like OmniFocus 2 for Mac. These are good things.

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The Omni Group just announced:

Well, we’re very happy to share that OmniFocus 2 for iPad and OmniGraffle 2 for iPad have been submitted to Apple for review. And they’re both incredible.

OmniFocus 2 for iPad has some great new features and a brand new look. We’ve added a few useful extensions, too, like Sharing and a Today view. You can even create perspectives in Pro.

And finally. Expect each of those extensions in OmniFocus 2 for iPad in OmniFocus 2 for iPhone. As a free update, of course.

Just a short bit about a few apps and iOS 8 – Derek R., The Omni Blog (12 September 2014)

I’m not sure what that bit about extensions means. The full piece has a little more about iOS 8 which notably adds this new type of feature called Extensions but I’m not clear that’s what this is about. If it is then it means we’ll have OmniFocus functions available within other or all apps. That’s got to be good: that might add to the Mail Drop capability of adding tasks from Mail.

But we’ll see. And whatever the extensions are, I will have bought OmniFocus 2 for iPad before reading to the end of the sentence that says it’s available.

Shrug. Might work. Music to be productive by

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I don’t know. The other day I got into a right Kate Bush mood – it happens to us all – and I did find that I was incapable of playing her music while I worked. Couldn’t let it be playing, I had to listen hard, I simply could not concentrate on anything else.

Naturally, then, I switched her off and went to my old Discoveries playlist. (Don’t click that. It goes to a confessional piece with a long list of music and I am still holding on to the hope that you respect me.)

Allegedly, apparently and reportedly, there are alternatives to music you like. There is music you don’t listen to.

There’s a joke there, but I’m not reaching for it.

Music to be productive by. You can tell I’m not sold. But see what you think: if it works for you, I’ll give it another go.

Lifehacker picks the best productivity books

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Well, sort of. Very often Lifehacker.com will ask readers what their favourite something or other is and then after a few days will reveal the top five. This time, it seems a bit more open season: go to this thread and nominate a book you like.

So, for instance, you could nominate, oh, The Blank Screen – UK edition or maybe the US edition.

Thank you.

But right now there are some sixty-odd recommendations in there and I truly didn’t know there were sixty-odd productivity books. Take a look through the comments so far and see if there’s anything that takes your fancy.

This is the US edition of Lifehacker so naturally the books are chiefly American but if you can’t order them from Amazon UK, you can still get them from Amazon US and wait a bit.