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Pattern weeks – part 2

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I'm still fiddling. Previously on Pattern Weeks… I was working to bring some kind of structure to my typical or pattern week, chiefly because every week was changing and I knew I wasn't getting enough done. For a detailed previously and maybe reasons why you might like to think about it too, see Pattern Weeks.

Now I'm embarrassed to say that I wrote that and was planning all this back on 31 December and we're now a fortnight further on.

But I do have the plan, at last, sort of.

I ripped up lots of versions and settled for working out a list of things that I really have to get done. I used OmniOutliner for that; lots of bashing in things as I thought of them, as a search of my calendar and To Do list brought them up. And then lots of juggling around. A fair bit of realising that this bit or that was quite similar to something else on the list, I could save some time by doing them one after another.

I ended up with tent poles in the week: inviolate times when invoiolate things have to be done inviolately. They won't be. But they will be more than if I weren't looking out for them.

And that's nearly where I am now. I've got the list, the kind of super-list, the overall no-details-but-big-picture list and I have these tent poles. Certain few of these things have to happen at certain times and I know the things, I know the times.

The intention is to end up with wallpaper on my Mac with this pattern in my face. I'm about a quarter of the way through producing that image in Adobe Illustrator and it's a Tetris-like calendar kind of image with big red boxes, little green ones and some yellow 'uns too.

I'm trying to work out how I'll show that to you when it's done and all the boxes have all their text in – without you being able to see that the big red box that stripes across the whole week at the same time is really just breakfast.

But I'm getting there and it's proving useful plotting and pondering. So I wanted to share that with you, even as I can't yet share the plan.

I must be a great writer, I get up early.

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Hand on heart, I'm having trouble adjusting to getting up at 5am to write. Given that today is the 190th time I've done it, I may have to accept that I never will figure it out. Alternatively, I'll have to accept the old man concept of naps.

But the problem is at the end of the day and during the evening, it's fine when I get up and often it is fine actually getting up. Not today, as it happens, but often. Okay, sometimes. Alright, once. Once I fair bounced out of the bed. Madness.

However, I think my getting up early like this works as much because the phones don't ring – and I cannot call anyone – as because it happens to be the time that suits my writing. In my head I'm a late-night jazz kind of guy, possibly without the jazz, but in my typing fingers I'm an early riser.

I know you can't equate the time you get up to the quality of your writing, but that hasn't stopped a lot of people trying. Now comes what may hopefully be the definitive analysis. It's got to be definitive because it doesn't come up with an answer. It just shows you a lot of facts. A lot:

We ended up with a roster of thirty-seven writers for whom wake-up times were available — this became the base data set, around which we set out to quantify, then visualize, the literary productivity of each author.

Take a look at Brain Pickings' gorgeous infographic about famous writers and what time of day they got up out of their beds, the lazy bastards.

Ten months 0% finance offer at Apple

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Apparently only available in some parts of Europe – I just checked, the UK is one of the parts – this is a nice deal from Apple. I bought my office iMac through a similar deal last year and it was handy to keep my capital and only pay out a portion each month.

Mind you, it was also nice when the months ended and I could call the iMac my own. Just about the day my ten-months interest-free payment ended, though, Apple brought out a new iMac. It's as if they knew. The cunning rascals.

There are terms and conditions on this deal and you should eye them up carefully. See apple.com/uk/store for details.

But the key points begin with the fact that you can only get the deal on hardware (seemingly you might include some software through the store's attempts to upsell you). Next, it's 0% financing for ten months and this is separate from Apple's longer-term financing deals. I don't know anything about those. But they don't get any of this 0% lark.

Last and maybe a killer point: you have to spend over aproximately £450. But then this is the Apple Store, you can do it. The iPad Air that I raved about here the other day starts from £399 but I would (and did) spend more by getting one with greater capacity. The new iPad mini with Retina display starts at £319 but bung in more capacity or a Smart Cover and you're away

 

New project coming: “Learn Omnifocus” with Tim Stringer

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This is so new it isn’t here yet. But Tim Stringer of technicallysimple.com is launching a Learn OmniFocus project which will be a mix of videos and tutorials about this software. I’m actually in two minds about this because I’m the type that prefers to learn on the job, to find out how to do things because I need to do them. And it works: I now feel I know OmniFocus very well. But partly because the promise of video tutorials is a good one and partly because I want you to know I’m not the only nut for OmniFocus software, I wanted to show you this link: http://technicallysimple.com/announcements/coming-soon-learn-omnifocus/

That’s an announcement about the new programme and it includes a sign-up form. I’ve signed up.

But it’s an interesting time to be doing this. I’ve mentioned OmniFocus before and doubtlessly will again but there are three versions of it and at this specific moment they are in a bit of flux. The iPhone one was only recently updated so that’s done, if you like, but the iPad and the Mac have a ways to go.

Less so the iPad one. That is by far the best version of OmniFocus and if you can buy only one, that’s the one to only buy. Except the iPhone version was dramatically improved by its being updated for iOS 7 and you have to expect that the iPad one will get the same or a better update too.

The Mac one is harder to explain. OmniFocus has been on the Mac for years and it shows. It just feels old. Looks old. And it is comparatively hard to use: it’s very powerful and I’m glad I got into it right alongside the iPhone and iPad ones, but it’s unquestionably harder to learn. So early this year I was very glad to sign up for the beta test of OmniFocus 2 for Mac and eventually along came a beta version. I liked it very much. Found lots of problems, as you’d expect and presume from a beta, reported them all back, saw at least most of them fixed. And then it stopped. I assumed the firm was done with the beta testing and the final product would be out presently.

No.

What really happened is that Apple had unveiled its drastically reworked iOS 7and The Omni Group paused the Mac development and instead focused on getting a new iPhone app out in time for, and to exploit the features of, iOS 7. They did it, they did it well, and the very first thing I did after updating my iPhone to iOS 7 was to buy the new OmniFocus.

But it was a purchase. It wasn’t a free update. And I am fine with that, I am more than fine with that because OmniFocus has saved, my bacon, kept my sanity and even – yes – lifted my heart. Of course I’ll buy the new one.

Except, the way the Apple App Store works, there can’t be any free or reduced upgrades for even new users. If you bought OmniFocus for iPad today and a new one came out tomorrow, you wouldn’t be happy. I think you’d be happier than you expected because the iPad one is so good. But you wouldn’t be happiest.

So reluctantly, I’m saying hold off buying the iPad one for just a while yet if you can.

The Mac version is different: so long as you buy it directly from the company, The Omni Group, instead of via Apple’s Mac App Store, you’ll be fine: buy version 1 now, get version 2 free (I believe) when it comes out – whenever it comes out. The Omni Group store is here: https://store.omnigroup.com

But there wouldn’t be a need for OmniFocus 2 for Mac if the first one weren’t hard to use so it’s tricky to recommend you buy something that’s difficult, that you may get very frustrated by and which will be replaced at some unknown but soon time. 

You might be best off buying the iPhone version and just enjoying that for now. But oh, the iPad one is a treat to use.

If you only buy one productivity aid this Christmas, make it…

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…an iPad Air.

I used to think I relied on my old, original iPad but it was a toy compared to the new iPad Air. Mind you, I did give my old one to my mother about two months before the new model came out so I had a lot of time to notice how much I was missing having one. Actually, my OmniFocus work fell off badly: if you don’t know OmniFocus, I should tell you that it’s a kind of bionic To Do manager that pretty much completely runs my life. If you are now intrigued by OmniFocus, I have to warn you that it only runs on Apple gear. It’s also comparatively expensive – well, it’s expensive when you compare it to all the free To Do apps; it is not in the slightest bit expensive when you contrast it to how much use it has been for me.

One of the things it does is let you focus only on what has to be done right now and what can be done right now. It does that by hiding away everything else but that only works, that can only be allowed to work, if you periodically review everything on your list. There’s a thing called Review. It’s not wonderful on the Mac version of OmniFocus, it doesn’t exist at all on the iPhone version, but it is gorgeousness incarnate on the iPad one. So good that you are fooled into thinking it’s an easy thing to look at all your tasks and then as you go through everything, it’s so remarkably easy to see what you’ve got to do that you tend to just go get it done. I timed myself once for The Blank Screen book, just finding out how long a typical review took me and I was astonished that it was two hours.

In those two hours, I reviewed about fifty different projects with a total of, I don’t know, a couple of hundred tasks. I found I’d already done a lot of them – I want to say thirty, I’m not sure now – and as I went through them all and saw ones like “Email Bert to ask for your spanner back” I’d email Bert to ask for my spanner back. By the end of the two hours, I’d marked off many more tasks as done. And most importantly of all, I knew where I was with every project.

And could immediately forget it all. Forget it, knowing that it was all in hand and that it was all in OmniFocus. Knowing that if it wasn’t something that would come up in the next couple of days, I would at least see it during the next review. I could concentrate on now. The fact that you can park the thinking and churning and worrying about things you can’t do yet and instead put all that engine effort into what you can, it’s life-changing.

Except it fell over completely when I gave away my iPad.

So the first thing I installed on my new iPad Air last month was OmniFocus. I swear to you that I breathed out. And I thought that would be something to tell you, I thought that would be enough to tell you, all by itself.

Except you may already know that iPad Airs have a ten-hour battery life. What I did not expect is that I would use up that battery life almost every day. The ten hours is true, actually the ten hours is conservative, but I use the iPad so much that I have had to charge it up again nearly every night. Don’t take that as a criticism of the battery, take it as a gulping assessment of how very, very much I use this machine.

Most of what you may have read on The Blank Screen blog was written on that iPad Air. I’ve written thousands of words on it in just the three or four weeks I’ve had it. 

And yesterday, Angela needed my bag as a prop for a play and that meant I couldn’t carry my iPad around with me all day. (As sturdy as it is, it’s also so light you can’t believe it’s strong so I’m looking for a case but haven’t found one I like yet.) I swear to you I got itchy. 

And that’s when I realised I am now life-support-dependent on my iPad Air. 

Have a look at them yourself. If you happened to choose to go through this Amazon link and then bought an iPad Air or maybe a car, I’d see some cash coming my way. But check it out on Apple’s own store instead: they have a lot more detail and some particularly well-made videos about the product.

Go to a real-life Apple Store too: just walk in and pick one of these up. I was working in Paris the day they came out and I tried one in a store there but wasn’t all that impressed with the apparent lightness. I was by the speed and the gorgeous display. Now that I have one, I’m very impressed with the display, the speed and the lightness too. Maybe I was wearing thick gloves that first time. I don’t kow.

Write this down, it helps

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Tomorrow is the first of December and at some point during the day, I will email a report of all I've done throughout November. Nobody has asked me to do this, nobody is waiting for it, nobody will do anything with the report. But it helps me enormously to write it down and to have someone to send it to.

Earlier this year I earned a place on Room 204, a programme run by Writing West Midlands for up to 15 writers who are of a certain standard, who are based in the area, and who need something for their careers. It's a very deliberately formless kind of year that you get with this scheme: it's not like there are lessons or there are, I don't know, tests. Instead, you get a year connected to this group and can make of it what you need.

I've made a lot of it. It's done a huge amount for me, it's given me a new career in presenting and two of my books this year came out of chats I had with them.

But this isn't about me, it's about you. And I want you to have the thing that I got from Room 204 which particularly helped me, which I think may particularly help you.

It's this. Right at the end of my first meeting with the Room 204 folk, we talked about the rest of the year and it was mentioned that if a month goes by without us happening to work on something together, I should just keep them up to date with what I've been doing.

That's quite clear, quite easy, and I deliberately took it the wrong way. There hasn't been a month, I don't think there's been a week, that I haven't been doing something with Room 204, for them, or ignited by their work, but still at the end of every month, I tell them what I've been doing.

I also tell them now that there's no need for them to read the emails. I'm sending it to you, I say, but I'm writing it for me.

Because simply writing down in a clear, coherent and sometimes very long email what I've done in the month makes me realise what I've done in the month. Written these articles, been published here, pitched that, got filmed for this, sometimes it's a giant list of things. There's no question but that it reads like I'm boasting.

But that's fantastic. What have I got to boast about? Apparently, monthly, quite a bit. It's nice to safely boast to good people because it's great and unusual and wild to realise that you have something you could boast about.

Only, if I have – so far – sent each of those monthly report emails off with a certain satisfaction – that is only one of the three huge, huge benefits to me of doing them.

The second is that I look at the email as I'm compiling it and I remember what I've done. You do this, I know you do: you finish something and you're off away on to the next. We don't look back much, do we? Being a productive kind of person means always rushing on to the next thing, getting stuff done and out, getting on with what we so long to get on with.

Stopping to look back across the last month is a waste of time but it is an extremely useful waste of time. I'll start to write to Room 204 that it wasn't a good month because my mind will be on the failures, the rejections, the various and many problems that come up. But then I'll write something like “Made chair of the West Midlands Screenwriters' Forum” and think, okay, that wasn't bad. Unexpected. And I thnk it'll be a lot of work, but it wasn't bad. And then I'll remember that a pitch worked out. I'll remember that this is the month I finally got paid for that thing I did.

By the end of the email, I've changed my mind about the month. I'm feeling vastly better. So far, anyway. Some months are better than others but I've still yet to have a really bad one. I'll let you know how that goes.

So there's the little bit of boasting, just enough to feel a teeny bit good, and then there's the other psychological thing of changing my mind about how it had been a bad month.

The third thing is that I can't do this monthly email in one go: I forget too much, far too much, of what I've been doing. So as I do things, I add a swift line to an OmniFocus To Do task. Just jot down two words, enough to remind me, anything.

And that always prompts me to find something else to add to the list. All the way through the month, this drive to have something else to add is with me. I wince to tell you this but I have made calls solely so that I could say something like “Pitched to British Council” on my monthly list.

And, sometimes or even quite often, that call works out.

So tomorrow I will be writing my unasked-for, unneeded yet boastingly boosting and useful monthly report about myself and my work to Room 204.

Give it a go, would you? It will help you too.

Saving: 1Password is 40% off

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US holiday savings seem to be here in UK too: 1Password for iOS is about 40% off. Between my iPhone, iPad and also the Mac version (not currently discounted)' I must use this password- and credit card-manager about 20 times a day.

It stores all your myriad passwords, credit card details, all sorts. Tap a key and it'll go to a site, log you in and fill out all the credit card details so you can spend fortunes easily and rapidly. Hmm. But I do recommend it. Upgrading from one version to another has sometimes been bile-ful but when that's done or you're buying it for the first time, it is a fine piece of work.

A lot of software and hardware firms are having sales in the US because of Thanksgiving – it's not a huge deal in the UK, we're bigger on the Fourth of July – and it's simply easier to mark applications down worldwide than schlep about through Apple's App Store settings to limit it to the States. But you can be sure the price will go up again in just a few days so go take a look at it now. And if you're undecided, if you haven't got time to check it out now, just buy it.

That's what I did in a sale many years ago. Bought it and meant to use it but just forgot. Then my wife Angela showed me it on her iPhone and within the day I'd moved it to my front screen. Later I used the Mac version and showed her. Now we both rely on 1Password enormously.

Here's the link to the iPhone and iPad version that's on sale: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/1password-password-manager/id568903335?mt=8

 

Reeder 2.1 now out

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You can argue whether this is screamingly productive of me or not, but I use Reeder perhaps forty times a day. In case you don't know it, Reeder is a newsreader so when I have a moment standing by my kettle, I'll flick through headlines and read articles there. At least it's quicker than going to each of the 200-odd news sites I read. And definitely quicker than going to them and finding that nope, they don't have any new news since the last time I checked them three minutes ago.

There are many newsreaders: just search the App Store for the phrase 'RSS' as it's that little-used Really Simple Syndication that powers them all. RSS makes news come to us and I can't fathom why it hasn't taken over the world.

But I got into it very many years ago and have used very many RSS apps yet now it would take primacord explosive wrapped around my waist to make me stop using this particular one. Reeder is that good. It used to be even better when there was an iPhone, an iPad and a Mac version and it will be better again in the same way. Some day. Hopefully soon.

In the meantime, Reeder was updated for iOS 7 while I was away on holiday and I bought the new version immediately. You and I hadn't met on here then or I'd have rushed to enthuse about it to you. Instead, I had to tell everyone in earshot and they all looked like thank you, yes, that's really great, William, whatever makes you happy.

Now that you're here and version 2.1 has just this minute dropped on the App Store, let me enthuse about it live. Here's the only bit you really need to know, here's the App Store link: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/reeder-2/id697846300?mt=8

But I'd also like you to know that among the myriad bug fixes and semi-demi-myriad new features, there is a particular fix I am going to enjoy. Recently when you ran Reeder in the iPhone and there was a new story with an embedded video, no power on Earth would make that play in landscape. It as solely in portrait. This was the only thing that ever made me think I preferred the previous version of Reeder. But now it's apparently fixed. At least on the iPhone it is.

I say apparently because that's how quickly I've rushed the news to you: the update dropped this minute, this moment, and as we've been speaking, the app has been updating itself on my iPhone. Off to watch some video landscape and also to go get it all for my iPad.

Time magazine: “5 Things Zapping your Company’s Productivity”

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Is it possible to give you half a link? I want to recommend Time magazine to you: I have it in my RSS feed and it's a regular, meaty read. I find I enjoy it online vastly more than I do on paper: the magazine has such a small size and thin paperstock that it doesn't physically feel like the quality read it really is.

Or rather, that it usually is. Today there's an article on the things that stop people in offices being productive and it's okay: it's certainly worth a skim. But it's a bit thin and it's all a bit obvious too. We all think things are obvious when we already know them so maybe it's just that they happen to hit things I've come across. Maybe the five will include one you've not thought of.

So for that reason but more for saying 'ere, this is usually a very good read, here's Time magazine's article on the 5 Things Zapping Your Company's Productivity: http://business.time.com/2013/11/25/5-things-zapping-your-companys-productivity/