Reeder for Mac now available

Posted by William Gallagher

This week’s updates to the iOS versions of Reeder have been followed by the first full release of Reeder 2 for Mac. It’s now out of beta and available to buy from the Mac App Store for £2.99 UK, $4.99 US.

It’s an RSS reader: it brings you all the news from any number of websites who have these RSS feeds and that you chuck into Reeder. There are many such services and if they’ve stuck around for any length of time at all, they each have their fans. I’m sufficiently a fan of Reeder, though, that when it was pulled from the App Store last year because Google changes stopped it working, I stopped reading RSS.

Only on my Mac. I couldn’t stop reading it on iOS and I’m not sure now what the chain of events was. I think Reeder lasted longer on iOS but anyway, the iPhone one was updated last September and I so very clearly remember the delight at that coming out while I was on holiday. Learnt about it, bought it, had a really good time getting reacquainted with an old friend in a new design.

Similarly, the iPad version is a pretty constant friend.

But I did miss reading news on my Mac, most especially on those days when I’m here for twelve or fifteen hours. Maybe I should go take screen breaks, but I just used to really enjoy spending a few moments downtime catching up with news. Today, after so very many months without Reeder being available on the Mac, it is again and I’m enjoying it again.

Here’s me enjoying it.

I’m not going to claim that Reeder is the very best RSS software, I am just going to say that it is the very best for me. And along with OmniFocus, Evernote and Mail, it’s got to be on my machine for it to feel like my machine.

Watch: “Lucy and the Efficiency Expert”

Posted by William Gallagher

The full episode from The Lucy Show, first aired 12 December 1966 – 47 years, 5 months and 15 days ago – this is a Lucile Ball comedy about what happens when a Time and Motion kinda guy interferes at work.

Apparently it is now out of copyright – if you know that’s wrong for any reason, do tell me so I can remove this.

It was written by Ray Singer, Milt Josefberg and directed by Maury Thompson. Starring Lucille Ball and Phil Silvers.

Seriously, it’s the small moves that work

Posted by William Gallagher

Seven weeks ago I decided I wanted to try creating an email newsletter for The Blank Screen. Six weeks ago, the first one went out to about ten people. Today the sixth went out to forty.

I’m not saying anything about the quality of the work – though that people are adding themselves to the newsletter is enormously gratifying – but I am saying that it was an idea that became a thing.

It’s now a normal thing. I knew this morning that my day would begin with writing a Self Distract blog as ever, then that I would do the newsletter. Then I’d be off writing an article for someone else and a script for someone else, but the newsletter is a regular, locked-in part of my week now.

There was a moment when I was first bringing The Blank Screen book to the web as this news site that I thought about an email newsletter. But I thought it would be a lot to take on atop everything else. Now it’s just here and it’s normal, it’s what I do.

It’s fun and it’s hard and to make it worthwhile anyone reading it takes planning and writing effort but I know I will do it every week. I suppose it takes discipline but it doesn’t seem that way now I’ve started and it’s running. It feels more like momentum.

I think creating new things is often like an engine: it takes a huge amount of energy to start – it literally takes an explosion – but then once it’s running, it keeps on going very easily.

I thought about this today just because I mentioned to someone that this morning’s newsletter was the sixth and I stopped mid-syllable. It can’t be six weeks, can it? Six editions? Already?

The thing I’m taking away from this is that you can do new things and you can enjoy them, you just have to start.

Not just one inspirational video but five and a bit

Posted by William Gallagher

I never used to pay much attention to inspirational videos: I just assumed they all ended with phone numbers for you to buy something or to hand over money for nothing anyway. YouTube is changing that but I am still resistant – except when it comes to commencement lectures. Brainpickings.org has collected five such videos and an extra similar one in a set that is particularly strong.

The featured speakers are Ellen Degeneres, Aaron Sorkin, David Foster Wallace, President Obama, Conan O’Brien and (the extra one) Ray Bradbury.

It’s hard to pick but I think my favourite is Ellen Degeneres’ which goes thisaway:

But watch the lot over on Brainpickings.

When you have two equally urgent things to do

Posted by William Gallagher

Do one of them.

That’s it. No great debate, no big decision, just do one of them. Either of them. Doesn’t matter which. Try random, try flipping a coin, try alphabetical order. Just try something, just pick something, and start on that right now.

In the most extreme case I can think of, you have two commissions from different places. Both equally important, equally urgent, both equally on deadline, both equally hard to do. And you can’t afford to disappoint either commissioner.

Even then, do one.

The odds are that you won’t really disappoint anyone: even if the other piece is a bit late, often that’s okay. But even if it isn’t, even if choosing to do one commissioner’s job will seriously disappoint the other, you should still do it. Because the alternatives are worse.

The first and most obvious alternative is that you will try to do both pieces in the same time. We can do amazing things under pressure but even if you manage to finish both pieces, neither will be good enough. Cue disappointment from both commissioners and the certainty that you won’t be hired again.

But then the second alternative is that you try being clever. Clever is good. Except in this case you try to prioritise the pieces, looking at which commissioner will be the most valuable to you later, which job is the better. But we’re talking about the most extreme case when there are two exactly equal tasks. Even if they aren’t spot-on equal, though, this truth applies everywhere and everywhen: the time you spend deciding between the two is wasted.

Don’t spend time prioritising, spend time doing.

¿ Best calendar tip ever ?

Posted by William Gallagher

You noticed that headline, didn’t you? It’s because of that ¿ and how remarkably it stands out.

Incidentally, this doesn’t work at all if you happen to be reading this on a screen that doesn’t display Spanish-style upside down question marks. But if you can see them, you can use them and they are remarkably useful in calendars.

I have more and more events or meetings to go to and it’s rare that I know immediately when they’re on. If it’s that the meeting will be ‘in a few weeks’ or ‘early in June’ then I’ll put a To Do reminder in OmniFocus to find out and confirm the date then. But the most often thing is that I’ll either offer or be offered a particular date and time and it has to be confirmed later.

You can’t risk agreeing to a date and then double-booking yourself but where possible you also don’t want to block out some time that may not be used. So I’ll use a ¿ at the start of the name.

I did this just now: went to Fantastical, tapped the + sign to add a new event and typed this: “¿ Yasmin tea 1-4pm tomorrow at Yorks Bakery”. There are two elements there: I know the range of times I can get to a meeting with Yasmin, I’m waiting to see if she can do any of those. So that’s why it’s “1-4pm”. But the key thing is that ¿ because, wow, it stands out.

¿ Yasmin tea 1-4pm at Yorks Bakery

See? You can’t miss that.

If you’re on an iPad or iPhone then the ¿ is on the standard keyboard: just press and hold on the regular ? key to get it. (I use a Belkin external keyboard on my iPad and on that I need to press Alt/option and ?.) On a Mac it’s Alt-Shift-? and if you’re on a PC, hold down the Alt Gr key (to the right of the spacebar) and on the keypad type the number 168.

This idea is stolen, by the way. I believe I got it from David Sparks and Katie Floyd on MacPowerUsers who I believe may have got it from Merlin Mann. Now you’ve got it too