Tag: howiwork

I’m not quite sure how it happened. Somehow I wound up on the night shift. I’m sitting here at 3:22 a.m. writing this. Over the last few days I’ve been staying up later and sleeping in. Misty, the root of all evil. I blame the cat for last night. She doesn’t want to play until I’m in bed. Then it’s super fun time. She keeps me awake by head-butting me for attention and attacking my feet.

Hazel is a all-purpose file moving tool for the Mac. It can move and rename files based on rules for a given folder. But it can do a lot more. This is how I use Hazel to manage my screenshot workflow. I don’t like a bunch of files littering the desktop. This action sweeps them up and renames and resizes them for me. Folder setup Mac OS X saves all new screenshots to the Desktop.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. My week starts on Monday, the numbers are current through Sunday night. Overall, I’m seeing a downward trend, and need to reverse it. I spent some of my writing time reading this week. I finished two novels, and started picking apart the writing style for future reference.

This is a follow up to my distractions post. The Neo2 arrived today, and I’ve been testing it out. This post will be the first thing I’ve written on it. Keyboard The typing experience is good. The keys themselves are solid, and use a plastic spring mechanism. I like the feel. It’s somewhere between an old clicky-clack keyboard and the newer chiclet style found on MacBooks. It’s quiet and I’m not worried about the noise being a distraction in quiet places like a library.

How are you removing distractions so you can write? § My first response was “focus.” If I am fully engaged in a task, a bomb could go off and I won’t notice. I think this is a universal concept. Books have been written about The Zone or getting into Flow. The fastest way for me to realize that I’ve been in a state of focus is the surprise when I’m knocked out of it.

My main writing tool is Ulysses III. Simply put, it’s where my text is. In a way, it’s like an office. When I open the app I write. What is Ulysses Most importantly, Ulysses is a writing environment. All writing is done on “sheets,” which are managed by the app. The sheets (documents) are kept in a library, organized with a database. This means all files are kept out of sight and don’t clutter up the documents folder.

What is one thing that you need to get done but can't? § This is one of those questions usually worth avoiding. I have several things in my life that have gathered significant entropy. The problem is none of them have a deadline attached. No deadline, no results. That’s just how I run things around here. My gun-to-head answer would be: downsizing my stuff. In starting the new year, I moved from my normal bedroom to the guest room.

Rather than having a daily debate about today’s agenda, you can decide once that you will do something, and then decide every single day how to do it. § A way of saying “just do it” with built-in commitment.

My schedule is my enemy. Each morning I have an alarm set for 7:30. The plan is to wake up and get moving no matter how well I slept. It’s been my hope my body would respond to this, and go along for the ride. Then I would be tired and go to sleep at a time that would let me wake up feeling rested at 7:30 a.m. I’ve noticed a few things about my energy levels during the day.

One nice feature to have in a blog is post-by-email. It’s mostly overlooked, and even not activated by default. What I like most is that I can write in my usual app, then use email to ship it off. There are several dedicated blog postings apps available. Desk.pm and MarsEdit are the first that come to mind. I’ve not tried either, and that might change in the future. For now, I’m writing everything in Ulysses and it’s easier to keep it all together in one place.