How I Work

May 2016

I'm always on the lookout for new and better ways to do things - ways to make work more efficient and fun.  Maybe you are, too.  I've read a number of these "How I Work" posts in various places such as Lifehacker, and typically pick up an idea or two.  So, here's mine.  Comments, suggestions and feedback welcome.

Desktop

My home desktop is a computer I built myself running the latest version of Ubuntu Desktop.  Why Ubuntu? I like the clean and simple interface, excellent performance, automatic updates from Canonical and other sources, and it runs just about everything I need.  Favorite apps: Chrome, Slack, Spotify, Atom, Libre Office, GIMP, Shotwell Photo Manager. I can't live without dual monitors, including a nice flat screen second monitor I picked up at Goodwill for $25.

E-Mail

I quit using a desktop e-mail client some years ago, and just use Gmail exclusively now. See my Gmail Tips and Tricks page for some nifty things I've learned to help me stay at Inbox ZERO.  I try to process personal e-mail only once or twice a day, and have been generally successful with that of late.  Google Inbox was updated recently to allow for easy deletes, and I haven't gone back to Gmail since.

To Do 

Wunderlist: In the past year, I have really ramped up my usage of Wunderlist.  It's simple, quick, has a lovely UX, and it helps me keep focused on everything I need to get done at work and home. At home, I use this mainly for a shared grocery list with my wife, and have several other lists for things like recurring home maintenance, movies recommendations from friends, personal to-do's, etc. We moved to this when Astrid was gobbled up and shut down by Yahoo. It's great for a quick checklist and is available for iOS and Android as well as a nice browser experience.  In Deutchland gemacht!

We use Wunderlist to add items to the grocery list whenever they come up, and it provides a notification to other users sharing a list when things are added or completed (you can turn that off if you don't like it).  It's kind of fun to hear a <ding!> in real-time when something is crossed off the list while your spouse is at the store, so I leave the notification on.

Backup 

CrashPlan: I love this service so much I purchased a four year subscription to get the lowest price.  I backup all of our computers to the CrashPlan service automatically, and I back up some stuff from peer-to-peer within the family.  It's all encrypted and you can backup to any friend's machine who gives you their private key, for FREE.

So, set up machine-to-machine backups (or to an external drive) in your home for when a hard drive fails and you will be able to recover quickly.  Use their cloud component to back up the same stuff in case all your local backups get wiped out.  Or, backup your computer(s) to a friend or family in a different location at no cost.  It's encrypted so they won't see your files.  Make sense?  And yes, I have tested the restore functionality.  It worked flawlessly.

I get a weekly e-mail from Crashplan with the status of all the machines I have on our plan.  I can see if any machines haven't connected or been backed up in a while, and take care of them before weeks and months slip by and we have a problem.

Twitter

TweetDeck: quick and easy to setup, officially part of Twitter, and thus well-supported and not likely to run into API issues or other problems that seem to plague some of the third-party Twitter clients.  What's great about TweetDeck?  Live column streaming for one.  I use Twitter Lists and then create columns in TweetDeck to just see tweets from the people on the list I've selected.  I also create columns with specific hashtags or handles to only see matching tweets.  For example, I have one set for #INWX that comes in very handy when severe weather is rolling through the area.  You can tweet directly from TweetDeck using multiple accounts, but I tend to use Buffer (see below) for that.

The multi-column layout lets me catch up quickly on recent Twitter activity, and is great for when I want to pay close attention to some critical situation or something generating a lot of traffic.

Buffer: A great tool that will help you in two main ways. First, you can write a bunch of posts at one time, and choose which social profiles to send them to, and then Buffer will spread them out throughout the day or week so that you don't have to be at a computer all the time in order to have a social media presence. Second, since they shorten your links for you, they are able to provide more analytics than if you just were to post to Twitter or Facebook directly. For example, they can tell you exactly how many folks clicked on each of your links.

I use Buffer to schedule tweets and post to Linked In.  I'm not a huge Facebook user, but it works with that as well.  Google+, too.

Bit.ly: I had a bit.ly account before I found Buffer, so I just connected them together.  If you find you like Buffer and are using it exclusively to Tweet and post links, you could just use it's native link shortener and not use bit.ly.  Links and bundles created with bit.ly can be used anywhere, whereas Buffer is really just about posting to social networks.

I mainly use Bit.ly in conjunction with tweets, but have used it a few times with LinkedIn posts, too.

Notes 

Google Keep: Super fast and easy to use.  It has a minimalist UI with just enough features to make it extremely useful.  For me it beats Evernote for making quick, short notes and pics of things I want to remember near-term. It's just ready to go on my phone when I need it with very little effort. If you have to click more than once or twice to start taking notes, you are less likely to use it, right?

I use Keep to capture ideas for work, to-do's occasionally, ideas for writing, other things people may have used tape recorders for once upon a time.

Evernote works best for me as something like a long term filing cabinet.  I use it extensively when I travel to conferences - making a notebook and storing pictures, handouts, travel documents, maps, session notes and recordings, people I meet, etc.  I also use it for project notes and snippets.  The premium subscription ($50/yr) enables more storage and file types, and the search feature is where Evernote really shines.  You can spend a lot of time on notebook organization and tags, but the search is so good I'm not sure that you need much more than that for somewhat casual use such as mine.

Earlier this year, I decided to go all-in on Evernote for meeting notes at work, as well as for being closer to paperless overall.  I found Task Clone and used that to hook Evernote up to Wunderlist and Google Calendar.  So far this is working great.

Editors

I used to use Sublime Text for editing code of all sorts.  It's packed with advanced features but is not at all intimidating or confusing for light, occasional users like me.  Built-in syntax highlighting for all the popular languages, CSS auto-completion, and a nice ecosystem of plug-ins and extensions. Available for OS X 10.6 and higher, Windows (32 and 64 bit) and Linux.

When I have to edit a short block of code in a hurry, I would typically paste it into Sublime Text, set the language context so I get syntax highlighting, and then crank up the text size so it's easy to read.  It auto saves your open files so I can just close it and re-open later and be right back where I left off.

I recently discovered the Atom editor, and quickly moved to using it over Sublime Text.  It's like the upgrade to Sublime that just never happened. Package management is somewhat simplified, and there is a robust community out there developing and updating packages for all sorts of things.

Mobile

My current phone is the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge running Marshmallow and the stock Samsung launcher.  I have pages on the phone setup for "most used" apps, "travel", "notes", and "entertainment".  When traveling, it's very handy to just flip to that page and have maps, Uber, Waze, TripAdvisor, TripIt, Concur, etc. all in one place.

I previously used the brilliant Aviate launcher. In a nutshell, it shows you the apps and information that are most relevant to your current location ("Spaces") and time of day. It groups apps into Collections (like trays) which can be accessed anytime, or associated with specific locations or types of locations such as restaurants, airports, stores, etc. If you have an Android phone, I highly recommend giving this a try.  My primary mobile apps are Hangouts, Google Now, GMail, Spotify, and DoggCatcher.

Photography

When I went "full Ubuntu" at home, I had to say goodbye to Picasa.  I'm using Shotwell for now, and it's just fine.

For what minimal photo editing I need to do, I just use Gimp (GNU Image Processor).  It's free, does everything an amateur like me would ever need, is well supported with books, YouTube tutorials and has a pretty vibrant user community.  Works on all flavors of Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Listen

Music

I decided a couple years ago that purchasing music song-by-song or album-by-album just didn't appeal to me any more.  The tools for finding great music and building and sharing lists have gotten so good (along with the algorithms used for custom "radio") that I became comfortable with just paying for an "all you can eat" subscription to Spotify Premium (no ads). No more iTunes store, Amazon or Google Music for me, I'm all in with Spotify now and love it. Spotify rolled out a Family Plan earlier this year, so all four of us enjoy Premium for $24.99/month.  Can't beat that.

Podcasts

After trying several podcast managers, I settled on DoggCatcher for Android a few years ago and have not looked at another since.  Does everything I need and more, and has been the subject of continuous improvement by its developer as long as I've had it.  Automatically retrieves set numbers of episodes, has advanced queuing and playlist features, but is still easy to just use out of the box without digging in too deep.

See my post on Build Yourself a Better Radio Experience for more on getting started with podcasts and some of my favorites.