Mike Vardy's Blog, page 119

Except…

One of the best things you can do when you are trying to improve your productivity, is to accept less. This is very hard to do, because the more you have on your plate the more productive you appear — both to yourself and to others.

But appearances can be deceiving — especially in this case. More things to do doesn’t mean more productivity. It only really means more things to do.

By taking on more you are spreading yourself out too thin. The more things you have, the more you have to lose track of. The more you try to do, the less you’ll you’ll be able to do well with everything you do.

If you’re trying to accept less, don’t try to make it happen overnight. Instead, look at your task and project list regularly and decide to do what’s on there “except for _________”, and whittle it down bit by bit. By doing this you are looking at what you’ve committed to regularly and curating what you’ve committed to do at the same time. You’re connecting better with your to do list, and that’s a big win. (And you might just avoid what Eddie Smith calls the “coming to Jesus review” more often in the process.)

The truth is by saying “except” to more and accepting less, you’ll be setting a whole new level of expectation for yourself — and those around you will see that. You can rightfully expect more from your life when you accept less.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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Review: The iSlider

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I spend a lot of time these days writing on my iPad. I made it my only writing machine while at Macworld, and I’m writing this piece on it right now. I’ve made a point of using my ZAGGmate case in the past to write on my iPad regularly (as it contains a keyboard), but with the iSlider by Rain Design I can leave my old case behind and know that I’ve got a stable stand for writing with my iPad with me wherever I go.

As with all Rain Design products, the look of the iSlider is top-notch. It feels sturdy and looks slick to boot. The best aspects of the design are twofold: it allows the iPad to remain steady when typing at any angle and its sleek design makes it the most portable standalone iPad stand to date.

In Use

The iSlider can be positioned in several ways, allowing for easy viewing of media or for lengthy typing sessions. In fact, there are well over 15 positions that you can place the iSlider in when using your tablet (although I do use I for my iPad, it can be used for other tablets).

The stability of the iSlider is one of its greatest features – no matter what angle you place it at it is virtually impossible to tip your table backward off of the stand. The sides are less stable, but even while rigorously typing I didn’t feel as if I was going to tip the iPad off the stand in either direction.

The tablet is held in place by an easel-like ledge on the front and a slip-free coating on the movable portion of the iSlider. When I tried to move the tablet from side to side on the movable portion, I couldn’t. Again, the stability of the iSlider is quite stellar – and the fact that the stand almost disappears beneath my iPad creates the minimal look that many “productivityists” tend to look for in a product.

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In Storage

When you are done with the iSlider, you simply pull the movable portion all the way out, press it down into the sliding component, fold the ledge down an push it into the aluminum stand. What you’re left with is an object not much larger than an iPhone. Seriously…it’s that compact. The iSlider comes with a pouch that you can place in in when not in use, allowing you to keep the aluminum as scratch-free as possible. Should you not want to a bag with you when you leave home with your tablet, you can take the iSlider and put it in your coat pocket – or even in the back packet of your pants – and you are good to go. The iSlider gives me a portable workstation; one that I can take with me to the local coffee shop or use with my Levenger Lap Desk while I sit in my living room and write…like I am right now.

If you’re looking for a portable stand for your tablet that is worth its weight in both form and function, then you can’t go wrong with the iSlider.1 It will retail for $49.95 USD and will be available soon at the Rain Design website.

1 Full disclosure: I received an iSlider for free as a review unit for the purposes of conducting this review.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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How I Use Sketchnotes for Task Management

Last night we recorded an upcoming episode of Mikes on Mics with Mike Rohde, author of Sketchnotes. I’m not going to spoil all of what we talked about – the episode will be available for you to listen to soon enough – but I am going to share with you how I use a form of sketchnoting for task management — specifically in the capture phase.

The image below gives you an idea of what this looks like…

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As you can see, I vary up the size of the lettering to illustrate the importance of tasks. I try to mix it up to make capturing fun for me, and if other tasks get captured that take precedence over ones that are already captured in fairly large lettering, I’ll bring images into the equation. For example, you’ll see that I use arrows to draw attention to the task of writing this post which was captured in smaller type. I’ll also vary the width of the lettering to make sure that something important – but not too important – doesn’t get lost in the shuffle (like I did with my task of reviewing email).

I use a combination of upper and lower case letters, making the sketchnotes as “artistic-looking” as I can. I also try to fit the letters in a Tetris-like fashion, allowing me to play while I capture and fit more on each page at the same time.

Taking notes like this gets me excited about keeping up with the habit of capturing – and even though I’ve been capturing tasks for years, I keep using this method so that the process is still as fun and fresh as it was when I started.

What I do may not be the purest form of sketchnoting, but it works for me. If you’re new to the idea of capturing your tasks – no matter how big or small – then you might want to give this method a try. And pick up Mike’s book while you’re at it – it’ll get you set on the right path. Sketchnoting may just help you connect with your tasks better than ever before – and I think that it’s a fun way to connect with them at that.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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Review: HAND Stylus

I’ll be up front about this: I’ve never really used a stylus with my iPad all that much.

I own a Studio Neat Cosmonaut, and it has largely sat unused after the initial excitement of having it wore off (it’s a great product, just not my style – pun intended). I won a stylus at Macworld – and promptly gifted it to someone who wanted a stylus for their own tablet.

So I’m not a stylus person.

But the HAND Stylus is the stylus I want in my toolbox when I need one, and here’s why:

It is incredibly well made. It feels sturdy in my hands and doesn’t feel overbearing in the process. It doesn’t feel cheap and it looks as if a great deal of thought has gone into every aspect of its design. From the choice of colours available (I chose green…naturally) to the heft of the stylus, the HAND Stylus is the most useful stylus I’ve ever had the pleasure of using without feeling weighed down by it.The retractable tip is a killer feature. The tip on this stylus is retractable, which is a great selling point. It’s also thinner than my Cosmonaut, allowing me to use it to sign any PDFs that come my way or take notes with something that has precision that is unmatched for any stylus I’ve tried (mind you, you do have to apply more pressure than with most styluses to get the smaller tip to really work) . But again, the ability to retract the tip — which is replaceable, by the way —  is huge.

I can’t say that I’ll use the HAND Stylus every day, but I’ll use it more often than my Cosmonaut – and its design has stopped me from looking elsewhere. If you’re looking for a functional and well-designed stylus to add to your arsenal, then the HAND Stylus is a great choice.1 You can get it for $29.95 USD (a package of 6 additional tips is $9.95 USD) through the company’s website.

1 Full disclosure: I received a HAND Stylus for free as a review unit for the purposes of conducting this review.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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Get the Most Out of Evernote with Evernote Essentials 3

Brett Kelly’s book Evernote Essentials didn’t just help him land a job at Evernote, but it has helped many others wrap their heads around how to make the most out of their Evernote experience. Today he’s taking the popular e-book to the next level with the release of Evernote Essentials 3, which brings all things Evernote up-to-date.

This new version of Evernote Essentials will allow anyone who wants to pick up Evernote be more efficient and effective with it – and he also touches on some of the apps that enhance it like Evernote Hello, Evernote Food, Sktich, and Penultimate.

Here are some of the highlights of this updated edition:

A nearly complete rewrite. Brett has rewritten over half of the book to deliver the goods in a whole new way.A massive chapter on version 5 of Evernote for the Mac and tours that are specific to both the Mac and Windows versions of Evernote.How to import and export Evernote data, go paperless with Evernote, and many other use cases.A deep dive in to searching with Evernote, as well as a section on tagging that will make power users swoon.…and a whole lot more, including a complete redesign of the e-book.

Brett has painstakingly put this new version of Evernote Essentials together and his dedication and care shows on each and every page. Evernote Essentials 3 clocks in at 159 pages — nearly double the amount of pages in the previous version. The stuff that he’s packed into this e-book is practical in both delivery and scope – and that’s truly a great accomplishment.

As with the prior version of Evernote Essentials, the price is just $29 and is only available in PDF format. And since Evernote is in active development, Brett will provides you with free updates for the life of the product.

If you’re looking to wring every last ounce of usefulness out of Evernote, then do yourself a favour and pick up Evernote Essentials 3. It is the quintessential book on all things Evernote – and an essential for any Evernote user, regardless of skill level.1

1 While I do mention this on my Start Here page as an overarching statement, I will remind you that I am an affiliate for this e-book. That said, I don’t promote or attach myself to something I don’t believe in, and I most certainly believe in this work. If you are an Evernote user, go and get Evernote Essenitals 3 now.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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The View

Today my publisher called and told me that the book is doing well. This is good. They’re happy, so I’m happy.

I’m watching Toy Story with my son right now, and for the first time ever he is sitting through it – and is happy doing so. He’s happy, so I’m happy.

But until this afternoon, I hadn’t written all that much since I returned from San Francisco. That made me less than happy. Far less than happy.

It wasn’t that I absolutely had to write. I had some stuff ready to go, and was planning a lot more stuff beyond that. That said, planning isn’t writing. There is nothing wrong with planning – unless you are planning to avoid working the plan itself.

And that’s what I was doing.

Luckily, I found a way out – and it’s a way I often use to get out.

I got out by taking a look at the view in front of me. Everything on my desk sigfinifies something, and my looking at the view I was able to connect with not so much “what” to write, but “why I write in the first place.

When I look at the view, here’s what I see (but don’t necessarily look at) every single time:

A bobblehead of The Vision: That visual reminds me of my vision statement, which helps me connect with the deeper reasoning of why I do what I do.A Beat Resistance plaque: This is from the limited edition book Do The Work by Steven Pressfield that I got via Seth Godin’s Domino Project. It forces me to acknowledge the Resistance and to push past it – no matter how long it takes and how difficult that may be.A Green Lantern paperweight, costume ring, and HeroClix figure: These visual touchstones help me tap into the will I need to break free of my funk and start making things happen.A custom Green Lantern ring made by my daughter: My daughter made me a GL ring out of paper that I use not only to help me tap into willpower, but to remind me of one the reasons why I do what I do: to show my kids that you can be whatever you want to be and make a living while doing so.A modified “PRIORITIES” Successories framed print: I took the stock photo out of it and placed one of my children in its place. The saying says, “A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” That visual keeps me grounded and reminds me that I need to make things happen not just for me, but for my wife and kids.

All of these things are on my desk in plain view. But beyond those things is a mirror that is embedded into the desk itself, which gives me a look at the thing that ties it all together…me.

Everything comes back to me, and all of those visual reminders bring me back to that. I spend some time surveying the view and that helps me get back into the “write” mindset.

Sometimes the view is all you need to see where you want to be – and why you want to be there.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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The Macworld Reviewables

After spending some time this week going through all of the items I brought back from Macworld, I’ve started to put together some thoughts on them. Over the next two weeks I’ll be writing reviews for many of the gadgets, books, and apps that I received during that time.

Here are just some of the items I’ll be looking at:

Rain Design’s iSliderThe Hand StylusmyFC PowerTrekkNuGuard KX iPhone Case

I’ve got a few apps I’ll be discussing as well, and each of the posts will be aligned with what I usually write about here at Productivityist.com.

(FYI: I’m using Drafts to write this on my iPad — which is propped up on the iSlider. So the work is already underway.)

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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Mailbox: The Band-Aid for Email

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I managed to score early access to the new Orchestra-created mail app for iOS, Mailbox. The idea behind the app is to allow you to get to a point where you aren’t weighed down by your inbox – it allows you to use gestures and taps to turn your emails into actionable items (of sorts). For the most part, it does that very well. But I’m not convinced it’s the way people should go with email. So while Mailbox is very well-executed, it could hurt productivity more than help it.

By spending an inordinate amount of time in your email app, you are setting yourself up for a call-and-response environment. Email comes in at a decent pace, and focus is tough to achieve. With Mailbox, you can quickly get through your emails by either adding them to a list (there are several already in place and you can create custom lists as well), “snoozing” them (putting off dealing with them until later – and there are a wide variety of “laters” offered in Mailbox), or archiving/completing them on the spot. Using a user interface that is very reminiscent of Clear, Mailbox can really make processing email a much faster exercise.

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The “snoozing” option is both a neat feature and an incredible procrastination device. You can “snooze” emails to be dealt with as follows:

Later TodayThis EveningTomorrowThis WeekendNext WeekIn a MonthSomedayPick Date

That’s a lot of options. This is where Mailbox really enters task management territory. This is also where the process of getting through your inbox slows down if you give when you’re going to revisit an email some thought. I think that Mailbox would work well in tandem with a paper planner of some sort at this juncture, because you essentially have a paper planner that has your non-email related tasks/actions on it, and then Mailbox handles your email-related ones. There’s bound to be crossover as well, but using both together will give you a better chance to avoid having things fall through the cracks.

(You can also change the settings for “snoozes” in the Settings function, including altering the start of your day, start of your weekends, end of workday, later today, and “someday” variables.)

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There’s also the ability to move emails to lists, which is another great feature in that you can customize them. Lists essentially can act as contexts or as projects in Mailbox, so a savvy user could create lists for where they need to be to complete an activity, what project the email message is attache to, or who the email relates to. Again, since emails are often dealt with within the app there are limitations with location-based contexts, since the context most often used is going to be, well…email (or, as Orchestra hopes, Mailbox).

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There are (of course) notification settings — and you can set the badge settings to three levels as well (actual emails needing attention, displaying a “1” when you have any emails needing attention, or no badge at all), which means you can be as connected to your email inbox as you want.

There have been a lot of reviews of this app already, so I won’t dive too much into the “how to” aspect more than I already have. While Mailbox does have its limitations, I have no doubt in my mind that the Orchestra team is going to bring in a few of the aspects of Orchestra To-Do into Mailbox somewhere down the line (I mean, they state as much in a recent blog post). That said, for those people using a task management application already, Mailbox really isn’t going to do all that much for them. In fact, it will probably take away from it more than anything else.

For those people who are yet to use any sort of task management app, Mailbox could be the gateway. I am not a fan of managing your tasks within your email app, but Mailbox is on the right track if that’s your thing. I think the next wave of productivity should focus more on the relationships then on the platform. That’s where an app like Cloze is more appealing to me than one like Mailbox. Mailbox does email and tasks, making it multidimensional in terms of how I process email and tasks. Cloze has become my communication hub, making it multidimensional in how I foster relationships. I’m more aligned with the latter than the former, because I use my task management app to help me direct my day. Email often puts someone else in the driver’s seat.

Email isn’t broken…how we use it is broken. I go as far to say that how we used it was never quite right in the first place. Mailbox is doing its part to help you get through your inbox by making task management within your email app more effective. Unfortunately, I don’t necessarily think that that is the way to go.1

If you do, however, get in line. There’s quite the queue in front of you.

1 This idea, however, has got me curious.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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The Little Things

The little things matter.

How they matter may vary depending on what you’re doing, but they do matter. Sometimes the smallest of things can get in the way of the bigger picture, like tiny sticky notes covering up the real meat of your paper planner. Sometimes the little things can weigh the most, especially if they come at you when you least expect them – and have thought you’ve done all you can to keep them at bay.

The little things can grow into bigger things. They move along The Eisenhower Matrix like ducks in a carnival game, hard to hit and frustrating you to no end. Then new little things come along to replace the ones that got bigger, and soon the big things that are really important to you are completely hidden from sight.

Capturing the little things is important. Noticing them and dealing with them matters. Failing to do any of that means that they become bigger than they need to be, and that means you take your focus away from where it needs to be.

How you handle the little things correaltes to how you handle the big things. All are important for different reasons. All are different for important reasons. The trick is to figure out what the differences and reasons are for you.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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On Going iOS Only

I returned from San Francisco on Sunday, which marked the end of my iOS-only experiment. Not having the weight of my MacBook Air with me (not that it weighs all that much) was a refreshing change of pace for me while travelling, and I’m likely to go that route again the next time I hit the road.

The key to doing this was all in the front-end work – something that I’m a fan of regarding task managment as well – and it worked amazingly well for the purposes of this experiment. By getting all of the work that I knew I’d need to do on my MacBook Air out of the way before travelling, I made sure that I really wasn’t going to miss my main machine all that much.

That said, there were certain things that I missed:

My original iPad — while 3G-capable — won’t work outside of Canada using 3G. So in order to interact online with my iPad, I had to have a wireless connection. That wasn’t always available to me, and when it was it wasn’t all that strong, either.My iPhone 4S was more than able to do most of the work. In fact, on my journey home I wrote my first ever blog post on it while using the ZAGGmate as the keyboard. That way I could post the piece directly from the phone (which has 3G) and bypass the iPad altogether.Although my 4S does have 3G, I am not able to tether it like I can here in Canada. That means that there was no way to use my iPad without having a wireless connection; making it great for writing and checking email when wireless was available, but I made the most use of my iPhone because I was connected for 75% of the time (certain parts of the drive offered no service of any kind).

Would I go iOS-only again? Absolutely…but I’d want to be even better prepared.

Beyond doing the work needed on my Air beforehand, I’d want to make sure that apps like Poster were set up properly (my Markdown setup wasn’t right as my first post had lniks that didn’t translate properly) and that I made sure all of the settings on my iPhone allowed me to make that my primary device for the trip. The iPad would be great for long-form writing, but the iPhone would be (and was for this trip) the go-to device for online engagement like social media, email, task management1, and blog posts.

All in all, this experiment didn’t impact my productivity in a negative way. If anything, it reinforced the need to make sure you set yourself up in advance on all of the devices in question, and not just with the work on the one you’re leaving behind. I’m looking forward to my next trip when I do just that — and see if it impacts my productivity in a positive way.

Want to start the year you want anytime you want? Pick up my new e-book published by Diversion Books The Front Nine: How to Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want for just $4.99 today!

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