Circle Six on OS X Productivity

I thought that over my next few articles I would expound on a few of my favorite applications. I’ll highlight a few classics and a few apps that I think have a really bright future. This first post is going to be about productivity. I always seem to start with a disclaimer, so let me start by saying that I can’t seem to get along with any of the GTD apps that are currently out there. I stick with a combination of a text editor, an online to-do list and some e-mail management software. I’ll elaborate in the rest of the post. But this post isn’t going to be all about GTD, as there are quite a few apps that make my life easier, therefore increase my productivity, without actually relating to David Allen’s method. And here they are…

Online Life Organization

Starting with my to-do list management, I depend heavily on 37signals’ Backpack. Keeping my life-organization centralized and online allows me to access and update it from (almost) anywhere. I use it in a couple of ways. First and foremost, my main page consists of lists for each day of the week, in which there is a placeholder titled “waiting”. I populate the list with my to-do items for the day, and check them off as I complete them. Often, I’ll get to a certain point on a task and have to wait for something or someone before I can check it off. It then gets moved down below the placeholder. The placeholder is colored red and bold using textile markup to make it easy to spot. The other benefit to the placeholder is that you can’t move items into an empty list when re-ordering, so always having a placeholder in each list allows for simpler re-ordering. At the end of the day leftover items are moved to the next day. At the beginning of a day I’ll take a look at the upcoming day’s items and re-prioritize as necessary.

After the days-of-the-week list there is a weekend list and an upcoming projects list that I check regularly to see what needs to be moved into an action list. The Calendar feature is also spectacular as it rings my cell phone half an hour before an appointment, which relieves me of the need to constantly be at my computer or checking my upcoming appointments.

I also create a page for each of my clients, which could also be classes, vendors, etc., whatever you need to keep extended notes on. These pages include specific to-do lists, notes from meetings, mockup photos, copies of emails and documents sent to me, transcripts of phone calls, etc.

I use a couple of OS X tools to ease the use of Backpack. First, PackRat is a great piece of software that happens to come with really good customer support, served up by author Rod Schmidt. It allows for offline management of all of your Backpack pages, including a much easier way to re-order lists. I can use it to take notes at a client meeting on my laptop when there’s no wireless connection and then sync up with my Backpack account back at the office.

I also use my own Backpack Bundle for TextMate. I actually use a GTDAlt notation in every item in my Backpack lists (i.e. @call Contact Mark Trainor 555-1212). My current incarnation of the bundle includes the ability to download lists for the day as GTDAlt project files in TextMate and work with them. I haven’t perfected 2-way syncing yet, so it’s not ready for release. It needs a lot more error checking as it requires very specific syntax right now. Anyway, if you’re curious, check out the bundle and see what it can do.

While we’re talking about online apps, I’ve been using Google Docs & Spreadsheets quite regularly. I’m quite pleased with the interface and not having to sync my docs or email them to myself when I go home is really nice. Auto-saving and collaboration features make this a complete replacement to desktop office applications for me. At least in the areas of word processing and spreadsheets.

Offline Organization

One of my favorite new apps is Cha-ching from Midnight Apps. It’s personal money-management software with a really fun and beautiful interface. A true pleasure to work with and I find it very effective for my needs. It allows for quick overviews of expenses, multiple accounts, tagging of transactions, budget management and it hasn’t even completed its initial development cycle yet. Pretty good for a Beta.

DEVONthink has become a serious tool for me ever since I got a free copy from MacAppADay. I store all of my PDF’s, online faxes (Trustfax), software serial numbers and more in it’s handy database. It works well with the way I think and helps me keep random pieces of information organized. I’ve worked with other software, and I know there is a lot out there for this purpose, but this is the first one that I’ve found that actually got used after the first week.

I have an & more">Amazon.com book addiction. Circle Six has an ever growing library. I organize our book library with Bookpedia. Sorry Delicious Library, you’re beautiful, but I had Bookpedia first and you failed to import the database. It didn’t matter, I’ve always loved Bookpedia and had no reason to switch. I just enter the ISBN number of books as I buy them and it gets all the information I need from Amazon and other sources. It lets me check books out to people and keeps track of who’s had what for how long. I don’t bother cataloging my movies, I don’t play video games, and I have very little else to keep track of. Bookpedia does exactly what I need.

Utilities

This will not be news to anyone. Quicksilver is the single biggest productivity enhancer I have. I have it interfaced with Backpack, Mail, Headdress, Google, Terminal, Pathfinder and more. I’ll cover it in more detail in another post. If you’re not currently using Quicksilver, your not making the most of your OS X operating system. In my opinion, the functionality of Quicksilver really should just be built into Leopard ;-).

Typinator is another one of my favorites. I’m actually planning to switch to Text Expander shortly, as it has a much more extensive feature list, but for now Typinator is my tool. Especially when typing emails I find it a huge time saver. With a little tweaking, you can adjust either app to automatically correct your most common typos. There’s another tool called Spell Catcher X that I’m going to cover in another post, but for now let me say that it lets me add spell checking to Photoshop and allows for spelling suggestions as I type in user specified applications.

E-Mail Organization

You really can’t be organized if your inbox is a mess and you can’t find emails or keep track of important items. I used to use Outlook but was lured away by some of the great plugins and the innate simplicity of Apple Mail.

My first obstacle was spam. SpamSieve has quite literally solved that problem. After about a month of training, which takes very little effort, it is now a very mean spam-fighting machine. It has a 99.9% success rate and at this point in time trashes zero of my good emails. Spamsieve uses a Bayesian filter and adapts to changes in spammer’s techniques over time. It can incorporate with several major email clients, including Entourage, Mail and Eudora, and can play nice with your other email filtering rules.

There are several plugins available for Apple Mail that can make handling your everyday email less of a chore. MailTags and Mail Act-On are a killer combo for organizing, prioritizing and acting on emails. Whether you subscribe to GTD or just need to keep track of emails and projects, either of these programs or both in tandem are really, really great. One feature of MailTags that is not often mentioned is the ability to copy a URL to a message and paste it into another application, such as DEVONthink. I can link directly from a project to an email in my inbox, which is often handier than copying that email out of context and losing access to related emails, replies and the tags and projects to which it’s been assigned.

MailSteward has been a lifesaver for me twice now. I use IMAP, but even servers are fallible and an email backup is paramount when you use it as your primary form of communication with the rest of the world. I backup my database regularly and use it’s search features often. MailSteward creates a database on your drive that includes attachments, all of your mailboxes (including sent messages) and can include tags from the new version of MailTags. The database can be burned to a disc or backed up offsite.

Missing in Action

I know, I know, I didn’t mention your favorite app. List it in the comments for me. I’m always curious about new software. I guess I’m kind of a software junky. Especially Mac software, and especially shareware. Mac shareware is my #1 reason for being a total Mac-head. Stay tuned for a few more series’, including my take on the best new Firefox plugins, dashboard widgets, image\video share\freeware, and more. I’ve decided to mine my addiction for blogging material ;-).

backpack» Geekery» GTD» mail» osx» productivity» quicksilver» software» tools»