The corner of the internet that I inhabit has been up in arms about yet another app, Ulysses, switching to a subscription-based pricing model. From the perspective of the developers trying to build a successful business this probably makes a lot of sense. The business analyst in me applauds them for finding an approach that will smooth revenue flows and help fund future development.
But changes like this can have unintended, or at least unforeseen, consequences. To my mind, the key question is how many users will switch over to this model? The developers may discover the addressable market shrinks considerably as their app will suddenly have a lot less appeal to hobbyists who are not earning revenue through their use of the app. They will probably sell subscriptions to authors and professional bloggers, but will that offset the losses? Did the developers truly understand the size of the market who would be willing to play for on-going use of the software?
User Centricity
I fear that developers are not taking a user-centric view to the subscription conundrum. Subscription revenue no doubt looks great in spreadsheet models with its recurring revenue. However, let’s apply the ‘job to be done’ approach to this issue, from the perspective of the end-user. I suggest that the job to be done is to provide a mechanism that will let me take notes that are ubiquitously available, and write occasional blog posts to be published to Wordpress. Boiled down further, the job to be done is text editing and organising.
So my choice is not to subscribe to Ulysses or not. My choices range from open source text editors, to Apple Notes, to a word processor, or an alternative subscription-based product. If I didn’t want to blog, I could get by with a paper notebook and a pen.
It also creates a further issue in that it will reduce the likelihood that I will bounce between a number of apps. Up until now, I had decided to use Ulysses for blogging, Bear for notes, Scrivener for work reports, and DEVONThink for research and storage. I’ve paid for all of these apps.
With subscriptions becoming more prevalent, I will have to reduce my app consumption because I don’t want to be on the hook every month for apps that I may not use. I don’t want to reduce my personal free cash flow by paying a swathe of subscriptions, particularly for apps that are essentially supporting a hobby that generates no income. I will become more selective in my software choice. My overall long-term expenditure on software may decline. If many users have the same opinion, then the overall market activity is going to decline. The outcome becomes worse for all developers.
As I said earlier, unintended consequences.
My Choice
This whole subscription brouhaha has led me to review my note-taking writing structure, and I’ve decided to rely on another subscription app I pay for, Bear. Those developers charge less for a very similar product, and they were up-front about the software being subscription-based from the outset. In my opinion, Bear has a nicer look and better reflects Markdown styles. The only thing I lose is direct-to-blog publishing. However, I can pretty easily copy or export text in Markdown or HTML, both of which can be directly pasted into the Wordpress CMS.
By choosing another subscription-based product, I demonstrate that I’m not entirely against recurring costs. But if I can have one recurring cost rather than two, then I’m all for that.
My situation is a real-world example of user-side app rationalisation that I think is likely to occur at scale, with the onset of subscription pricing.
Trying to run a business without useful and accurate performance information is like trying to drive a car without a speedometer. Sure, you will be able to guesstimate how fast you are going, and sometimes youâll even get it right. You might even get away with a bit of speeding! Most of the time though, you will be driving at the wrong speed. You will either not be taking full advantage of the carâs performance or youâll get a speeding ticket.
In a business sense, running a company without timely and accurate performance reporting may deliver occasional success, but itâs not a recipe for long-term sustainability. A lack of insightful reports detailing costs, sales, productivity and profitability generated through effective data capture at the source is likely to result in a lack of insight about what is critical to the companyâs success.
Costs and Pricing
Production costs and pricing can be deceptive. Clearly, a firm must ensure ensure that the price they charge the customer accounts for the costs of the people and equipment directly involved in the production process. That price, however, also needs to have a sufficient margin attached to it such that it encompasses a share of all other cost overhead of the business, from rent and electricity, to paying for accounting and staff training. Furthermore, it has to incorporate a profit margin that will enable the business to retain some earnings for future investment and deliver a dividend to the investors/owners. Suddenly, the per unit price being charged needs to be much higher than may have initially been thought.
Without accurate information it can be easy to lose track of how effective this balance between price and cost is. Cross-subsidisation of profits across activities and products is another challenge. Soon enough, it can be almost impossible to understand what profit is being generated from each element of work. This can result in a situation occurring where both people and machinery are busy but the company loses money anyway. To avoid this frustrating eventuality, a business needs to ensure it is capturing and collating business information that will generate alerts at the time such a situation arises. Otherwise the problem will remain hidden and by the time it is discovered it will be too late to react with impact. Now the business is chasing its tail with the next piece of work not only having to cover all the standard costs but also make up for the losses incurred by the earlier work.
Identify Issues at the Source
If problems are only identified when complete revenue and expenditure figures are entered and aggregated within end of month financial reports, it is too late. Management needs to stay ahead of the game. A good manager needs to ensure that the business is capturing information throughout the production process, and that this information is able to deliver insights about the productivity, performance and profitability of its activities at any point in time.
Just as the job of a carâs speedometer is to provide real-time feedback, a business also needs to be able to read and react to its own (as close to) real-time performance. Without this structure the business is not being put in the best position to succeed, irrespective of any other activities underway.
Entropy is the loss of energy in a system to the point that it is no longer available for doing mechanical work. It is the reversion to mean; natureâs effort to return everything to stasis.
Entropy is occurring everywhere, all around us. It is a fact of our life. Companies are fighting entropy as well. Without concerted effort and capital being invested, and ensuring there is talent deployed throughout all levels of the business, the expectation is they will wither and die. People working within companies are also fighting their own entropic decline. Over time, people get bored, burnt out or generally lose interest in their job, which can lead to a decline in performance.
To fight entropy in business you need new inputs of energy. This can come from bringing new employees into the firm, who have new ideas and ways of thinking that can jolt the business and offer new opportunities. The business can find new products and markets and establish challenging goals to feed motivation and drive performance. Another option is investing in business improvement and better systems to automate work, thereby transferring the risk of entropy to machines and information technology, and away from individuals.
The laws of nature define that entropy cannot be defeated, but we as humans have become very adept at fighting it. Within companies, the fight against entropy also rages, and its the job of the board and management to set a direction and focus effort towards initiatives that will motivate the organisation to continue to battle to keep it at bay. The problem is that entropy is incessant. Companies need to continually guard against its debilitating effects, or suffer the inevitable consequence of decline.
I was looking at my current CV a few days ago which still exists as a Word document based upon a custom design I cooked up about 15 years ago. Since it’s creation I’ve just continued to add to and tweak the design rather than build a new document. This ‘lazy man’ approach has been made easier by not actually moving jobs very often. Turns out, staying put has some advantages!
My CV, though, was an artefact of a paper-based era. I wanted to have something that was more dynamic, and a little more design-oriented that could offer some visual queues about the relevant stages of my career to date.
The de facto place for online CVs in the work world that I occupy is LinkedIn, so of course I keep my record of employment there. It’s where recruiters, acquaintances and stickybeakers all go to check out your professional bonafides. The cold hard truth is, however, that LinkedIn is just another social network funded by venture capital that is leveraging your information and privacy to sell advertising and ‘premium’ memberships. So if I’m promoting myself, I also want to be able to do that on a site which I own and control completely, and that isn’t using my information to make money for others.
So Day One has become the next software application to adopt a subscription pricing model. This app developer has monkeyed around with its price/product offering for some time, and Day One has always been towards the expensive end of the curve for what could harshly be described as a glorified text editor. I guess it was inevitable they would ultimately end up converting to a subscription model in an effort to smooth revenue flow. Currently the developer is stating it will continue to support the current app and won’t force a move to the subscription version, but there is no doubt the first foot has fallen. At some point, I’m sure the other shoe will drop and it will be subscription or bust!
I’m not against subscription-based business models for software. I pay subscription fees for YNAB, Setapp, 1Password, Fastmail, Headspace, and maybe some others. I am willing to pay for software that I use and enjoy, and that satisfies my own price/value decision matrix.
Day One’s announced subscription seems expensive, especially when converted to Australian dollars. Expensive enough that rather than happily paying to carry on with an app I have used for more than 4 years, I am instead casting around for alternatives. The best and most immediate alternative I can see is to move my journaling to Ulysses. I’ve found a Workflow, ah, workflow that auto-populates date, time and location into a neat header box so the journal entry has a basic level of context. What I would lose from Day One is the pretty and additional metadata and the journaling-specific user interface. Photo import can be replicated, albeit perhaps not quite as seamlessly. The major problem with Ulysses is that it just doesn’t feel like a journaling app - at least not yet. Maybe I would get used to it in that context with time?
As mentioned, I’ve used Day One consistently for four years, and it has gained enough of a mental grip on me that I might miss it were I to migrate. Still, there is a limit to the number of subscriptions my budget can handle. When I have other, fully paid apps just waiting to be used, it becomes difficult to justify paying yet more money on an on-going basis.
I’m probably still on the fence right now, but Ulysses may be taking the lead…
I consider the two fundamental resources in work planning to be:
The calendar
The to-do list
The calendar represents the hard landscape: events that are non-negotiable, time-based and require you to be doing a certain thing, at a certain time, at a certain place, possibly with another certain person. If it’s in the calendar, it’s a certainty. Calendar entries are commitments to yourself and possibly others.
The to-do list is used to track tasks needed to be done to move the ball forward. The list is potentially filled with a lot of items that may not necessarily be linked with one another. They are commitments to yourself, but they are not tied to being done at a particular time and donât generally require the involvement of others. I use OmniFocus for managing my task list, but it really doesn’t matter what is used, as long as there is a trusted location to track everything to be done.
As a general rule, Iâm not a fan of putting tasks onto calendars. I think they are two distinctly different things that should exist in their own dedicated spaces. However, like any good rule, there are times when this rule should be broken.
Leveraging multiple calendars
The beauty of using modern electronic calendar systems is they support multiple calendars. The classic and most obvious application of this is creating seperate work and home calendars. In addition to these staples, however, it can be helpful to create a weekly plan calendar.
Each calendar’s visibility can be toggled on and off, depending on the needs of the moment.
Using the weekly plan calendar can facilitate the addition of tasks onto a calendar view without gunking up your regular calendars that represent real physical events and commitments. This leads to the next step: time blocking and setting commitments for your future self.
Time blocking
The purpose of time blocking is to help establish a plan for a forthcoming period of time and build accountability for your time. The idea is to create work sessions that are linked directly to items on your task list. Transferring tasks to a calendar and applying estimated timeframes in the form of a timed calendar entry can help build a visual map of work to be done. Visualisation is a great tool to help identify whether your to-do list is realistically achievable in the time available. It can also help enforce urgency by indicating how potentially little time is available for meaningful work. Finally, it can be a reward system. If you get ahead of your schedule, you’ve earned yourself some relaxation time, safe in the knowledge that you aren’t falling behind!
My approach
I generally reserve the time blocking approach for when I have a lot going on, and I’m starting to feel overwhelmed by it all. Ideally, at the start of the work week I will set aside half an hour, and look at my calendar of commitments. These are the scheduled events with other people that are locked in (usually weeks in advance) and that I need to fit all my other work around.
The next step is identifying the tasks that represent the ‘big rocks’ that I need to progress. What projects need to move forward this week? What are the tasks that need large sessions of time to get into a flow?1
Once I understand what time slots I have available for task-based work, I start creating related events on my weekly plan calendar, filling my days more completely. I need to take some care here though. I’m not an automaton, so it is important not to schedule every last minute of time. Doing that is just setting myself up to fail. In any week, unexpected things are bound to arise and time will be needed for this stuff, in addition to the general administrative tasks of email, communications, management issues, and so on.
With the weekly plan calendar populated and tessellated with my other calendars, I end up with a clear picture of my work week. At any point of time I know what I can and should be working on. I know that if I stick to the plan I set for myself, I will be closer to my goals at the end of the week than I was at the beginning. It’s a practical approach to personal accountability.
The overhead of doing this planning is not always worth the effort, but when lots is happening and it feels like control is being lost, this is a great way to reassert your plans and ensure that the important is not being overwhelmed by the urgent.
Writing is a great example of this - you can't really do it for 30 minutes here and there; you need a solid chunk of several hours. ↩
In the aftermath of Apple’s WWDC conference and an almost unprecedented number of new pieces of hardware have been released at what is theoretically a software development conference, I get to do some imaginary shopping.
For the past 18 months, Apple’s hardware lineup has been so out of date (except for iPhone, of course) that I’ve not even wanted to buy anything with imaginary money. They’ve righted the ship now, but in doing so are almost listing to the other side. Now it’s so difficult to identify the perfect device, I’m paralysed by choice.1
macOS
With regard to the Mac lineup, the 5K iMacs with P3 panels and Kaby Lake processors represent the first time I’ve been tempted by a desktop computer in about a decade. Combining this with extended iPad use as a mobile platform could actually work, come iOS 11.
But laptops are still the most flexible option. The MacBook (Adorable) is becoming competitive and is so diminutive, but it is still hamstrung by having a single port and when stacking price against performance, perhaps a MacBook Pro is the better option. The MacBook (Escape) is probably the pick here. Touchbar seems like a dead end that the market nor developers are excited by. Yet only the Touchbar models have TouchID which is a useful feature.
So, in terms of macOS, the most sensible use for my imaginary money is to keep it in my pocket and instead wander over to the iOS table, and see if this is an easier decision. My existing 2013 MacBook Pro has a few more years left in it, anyway.
iOS
This is the Apple cash cow platform, so what have they got to sell me? In terms of iPhones, I’m not even looking. Work provides me with an iPhone SE which is a form factor I quite like for basic tasks, and I’m not about to absorb another phone contract. Anyway, this is not an iPhone release event, so let’s move to iPad.
iPad
I’ve been a believer in iPad since it was released and I put in my pre-order as soon as the online store switched to pre-sale. I’ve been wanting to upgrade my iPad Air, and the first compelling reason to do that was the iPad Pro 12.9" (1st gen). But then the iPad Pro 9.7" was released and everything got out of sync with what model had what features. I knew the sensible thing to do was wait for the next revision.
My waiting has paid off, because these are the devices I’ve dreamed of. Beautiful 120Hz ProMotion displays, accelerated Pencil sampling and come iOS 11, proper support for multitasking. Yes, I want one! But which one? The 10.5" looks to be everything I could want, until I realise it doesn’t support two full screen iPad apps side-by-side. One of them has to use the iPhone view controller. That does not fit with my productivity needs.
So it looks like it falls to the iPad Pro 12.9 (2nd gen). This has all the power I want, but I will be trading off couch comfort. Where is my Goldilocks iPad?!
Missing the four quadrant product matrix
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and started its turnaround, one of the first things he did was rationalise the product line down to a four quadrant matrix. It was simple: on one axis, professionalconsumer, on the other axis, laptopdesktop. Here was enough breathing room between each of the specs and the prices of these machines that it became quite easy to choose which was for you.
Now, as Apple’s product line expands, they have a much larger matrix. This has resulted in overlaps across price, capability and function. Is the iPad a suitable laptop replacement; or is a laptop a necessary complement to an iPhone?
With my imaginary money, I think my decision is to keep my MacBook Pro and replace my ageing iPad Air with an iPad Pro 12.9". That should be enough to keep me going for the next year or two, at which point solving the computer problem will be a more pressing problem which I hope, by that time, has a more apparent solution.
They have become a perfect example of the theory of paradox of choice. ↩
A good tradesman values his tools, and generally has a preference for one piece of equipment over another.
In my trade, the computer I use is my primary tool. My tool of choice is a Mac. I am able to be so much more productive on a Mac because itâs the tool I know inside out. Over years I have customised how the operating system works, added on various tools, and generally made it work even better for me than it does out of the box.
Unfortunately, in my organisation Windows remains king. My employer doesnât have a formalised Bring Your Own Device policy, but at least in recent years they have made WiFi available for staff, although it is firewalled from the main networks.
Corporate IT versus innovation
Employees are assigned Windows-based equipment to staff, and only company-issued hardware is supported by IT. Only their Windows devices are able to connect and authenticate directly with the official network. These devices are also completely locked down so the user cannot install or customise these platforms to suit their own needs or abilities. This is based on the assumption that a worker will only ever want Microsoft Office, and the overriding preference for corporate IT to make their job easier.
I think this approach stifles of innovation. The use of applications that go beyond Office can allow for employees to discover more creative solutions to problems. If the only tool you have is Word/Excel/Powerpoint, then every problem has to be resolved in the same limited way. Yet I love mind-mapping with iThoughts, then using OPML to move the concepts between a map and an outline in OmniOutliner. I am faster using Launchbar than the Macâs Finder (and infinitely quicker than using Windows Explorer!). I have Keyboard Maestro1 and Hazel managing the system and moving files and folders around automatically on my behalf. I write long-form business reports in Scrivener. Then, I can use all the hooks across the Apple ecosystem to establish synchronicity with an iPad 2. All of this customisations represents innovation that makes me more efficient, but all of it is in circumvention of corporate IT. If I limited myself to a Windows PC I would be worse at my job. I wouldnât be happy if my carpenter was forced to use a junky Ozito saw for all his work, and I donât see why knowledge workers are so often limited in the same way.
Firms need to move with the times
With the move to more cloud services, firms have the opportunity to release the reins on device management. Establishing and supporting a Bring Your Own Device policy becomes much easier when the device simply becomes a node connecting to cloud storage, email, and so on. If a company doesnât support an employeeâs efforts to expand their creativity and efficiency, they are likely to lose their most productive and creative people.
Also, consider the next generation of workers that have been brought up on phones running mobile operating systems. If a business doesnât effectively support a multi-device, syncing approach, they may find that younger workers truly struggle to manage.
Written by a Perth developer who lives just a few minutes away from me. ↩
Unfortunately, corporate IT strike again with the iPhone. They installed an MDM profile that prevents all use of iCloud - even for syncing of preferences and settings. ↩
Traditional Kanban boards are used in manufacturing and other production environments to help visualise the flow of work and bring to attention any potential backlogs or other issues that might impact upon efficiency or productivity. When I travelled to Japan a few years ago as part of a study tour on lean manufacturing, I witnessed all sorts of kanban boards in operation to help provide factories with necessary production information.
The essential premise of a kanban board is to demonstrate the flow of work along the value chain of production. At the fundamental level, the kanban board starts with a column for âwork to be doneâ, then one for âwork in progressâ, before the work task exits the value chain as âcompletedâ work. Visually, a simple kanban board will have these elements drawn as columns on a whiteboard with a series of sticky notes representative of each element of work. As the work progresses, the sticky note is physically moved along the kanban board.
Kanban boards can be used more broadly than in just manufacturing environments. More recently, software development has adopted many of the processes and tools of lean manufacturing, including kanban boards, in the design and implementation of agile, scrum and other team-based development methodologies.
Personal Kanban
I have an interest in kanban at a more atomic level - that is, how can the use of kanban boards help an individual to understand and visualise their own personal workflow. For knowledge work, understanding where somebody is at with work projects and having a grasp as to whether the situation is under control, or at risk, can be hard.
Iâve recently been reviewing my own productivity management system to see if I can better implement personal kanban myself, to help me understand just how much work I have at any one time, and how my own âbacklogâ is looking.
My Technical Implementation
I previously wrote about OmniFocus and how that brilliant application keeps me on track. Into that I have now created some kanban contexts, and tied these to a kanban perspective.
[caption id=“attachment_52” align=“alignnone” width=“214”] My OmniFocus kanban contexts[/caption]
This helps me work on my task list by seeing my backlog of items, seeing what is currently active, and being able to work on them to completion.
While OmniFocus is excellent, one of its key weaknesses is reporting and data presentation. It helps manage work brilliantly, but it doesnât do so well at providing context. Not a management report is to be seen, other than being able to create any combination of list.
To help with visualisation, Iâve had to turn elsewhere. I have recently revised a few Trello boards that I use to help visualise my workflow, simplifying the board design and ensuring there was a very clear âleft to rightâ flow. In the process of updating Trello, I investigated a few other online kanban boards (namely Kanban Tool and LeanKit) to ensure there wasnât a better option for me, but the best experience remains Trello.
My final step was to really nerd out by leveraging the hard work of Jan-Yves Ruzicka who has built a Ruby library called Omniboard. If you have the capability to install Ruby, and the MacOS developer tools, Omniboard can create a fantastic graphical presentation of your OmniFocus data. This is output as a single, stand-alone HTML file which can be saved to Dropbox and thereby made accessible from any device at any location.
[caption id=“attachment_51” align=“alignnone” width=“1163”] OmniFocus data presented in Omniboard[/caption]
To fully automate the process, my final task was to have Keyboard Maestro executes a shell command to update the Omniboard file on a regular basis. This ensures I have a regularly updated personal kanban board based on the activity and progress I have recorded in OmniFocus.
The Point Being?
The ultimate outcome of all this tinkering is that I now have:
a tactical view of my to-do list in OmniFocus;
a visual representation of my workflow in Omniboard; and
independent high-level strategic kanban boards operating separately in Trello.
If clarity of information is important to managing workloads, then I am now in a much better place than before implementing these changes. You may not wish to go this deeply down the rabbit hole, but I have found it any interesting exercise in designing a workflow system that not only helps me get stuff done, but letâs me see how much capacity I have to get more stuff done.
Iâve always been a money tracker. I still have ledger books from when I was 14 years old, with my handwriting tracking my money in and out. I would reconcile it to my bank savings account with little ticks.
I think I learned this habit watching my Mom as she would carefully manage the family finances at the kitchen table.1Â There was never enough money to go around (not that I was aware of that at the time), so much of my Momâs job was timing cheque payments, deferring bills, and calculating how much, if any, might be left over for the week. Such was life for a divorced mother of four living on not much more than a pension and without any support from her former husband and father of the aforementioned children.2
As I grew and got my first part-time job, my money-tracking ways continued. Each week I would record my income, and understand how much money I had available to get me through to the next week.
I got a bit older, graduated university and got a real job. By this point I had graduated to electronic money tracking. For a short while I used Microsoft Money, before settling on Quicken and using it for years. Each year, they would release a mediocre upgrade and I would pay the license fee to keep using it. Year after year that software got worse.
I got married and we took a traditional approach to finance by merging our money. What was mine was hers, and what was hers was mine. Fortunately, my money tracking addiction could continue since while my wife is financially aware, she didnât have a compelling urge to record and reconcile the way I did!
Eventually Quicken became so terrible that I couldnât bring myself to pay for it anymore. This was a dark time. There was no compelling software to adopt so I rolled my own Excel spreadsheet and used that. This was probably the first time since my ledger books that I wasnât recording transactions. Instead, I tried to take a high-level approach by using a budgeting/forecasting model. It felt like it was working at the time but in hindsight we fell into a bit of a financial hole without realising it. We were relying on future income to cover past expenditure - what is referred to as âriding the credit card floatâ.
About 3 years ago, I realised that my carefully managed spreadsheet was busy work that was actually not helping us meet our goals. I did another software review and this time I found the application that changed everything: YNAB (short for You Need a Budget). YNAB took me back to my roots. It required transaction monitoring and was backed by a ledger that needed to be reconciled. But the magic trick of YNAB is that first and foremost, it is a budgeting system. As much as I had tracked money for all those years, and generated my income and expenditure reports, it was always backwards looking. I was auditing what had already happened, but not making commitments about what my money should do in the future. YNAB completely changed my perspective on personal finance management.
YNAB is all about giving jobs to the money you have on hand right now. You budget that available cash down to zero, then stop. You donât live on the credit card float. You donât plan to spend more than you have. You allocate the money to a series of planned expenditures, and then track progress against that. If you overspend you get immediate feedback and can adjust your budget through reallocation - as YNAB says, you âroll with the punchesâ.
While this seems like short-term budgeting, it actually facilitates long-term goal realisation. You suddenly realise how finite your cash supply is, especially after accounting for those recurring bills and putting money aside for the big annual bills3. With the little amounts that are left over after setting money aside for the necessities, you can make some hard decisions about what you want to do with that discretionary cash.
Since using YNAB we have never been in a more solid financial position. We can pay all our bills as and when they fall due (even the big ones). We can save and invest for our familyâs future. We can set aside money for fun.
The best thing of all, though, is that we do not fight about money. We have no nagging money stress between us. We share our income, we share our expenses, and we share our savings goals and spending intentions.
After having managed my money very carefully for almost 30 years, this is the best itâs ever been. I endorse YNAB wholeheartedly. Get it, use it, love it!
The owners are dedicated to their craft and are really working hard to grow and improve their company. Through the Business Evaluation process we dug deep into their business model and identified a number of ways to improve the business even further. Whatâs more, is the Entrepreneurs' Programme also provided them with $20,000 of government funding to help make their plans a reality.
Our work has been so successful that we wrote up a case study of our engagement with the business.
If you think your Australian firm would benefit from this free of charge service, please donât hesitate to contact me.
I was one of the first on the Gmail bandwagon. Back when the only way to get an account on the service was to receive an invitation code from somebody else already using it. I remember desperately asking around my networks, until I finally found somebody who was able to supply me with a code - I was in!
Having an @gmail.com address was a point of pride. You were a cool kid with a cool email address, and not one of those sad hotmailers, embarrassing yahooligans, or a joker advertising your local ISP. Using Gmail was also transformational. It was probably the first web app that was genuinely better than desktop software. It was fast, had quick keyboard shortcuts, huge storage (1Gb at launch!), and of course your email archive gained the power of Google search.
Times were good. Google kept adding features, making the service better. It added storage so you really could just archive email. But over time, Gmail began to acquire cruft. It became less efficient and it started to frustrate me. The tagging system impacted IMAP compatibility and caused annoyances syncing with local mail clients.
The most frustrating aspect for me was it’s half-hearted approach to supporting custom domain names. Early on, it seemed as though Gmail were onboard with people using custom domains. As time passed though, the business imperative took over and they shifted full custom domain support to their GSuite paid service. So my @andrewcanion email would generally reveal its true Gmail nature, which annoyed me.
A couple of months ago, I decided enough was enough. It was time for a change. I wanted to find an email service that supported custom domains, that would support proper IMAP, offer push email, that would respect my privacy and not sell advertising based on my email, and be a reliable and good service. All of this necessitates payment, and at this stage of my life, I’m okay with that.
After reviewing a few options, including GSuite, Office 365, Zoho and Rackspace, I ultimately chose Fastmail. Their service ticked all the boxes and offered one extra bonus - they are an Australian company. So I could buy local (albeit in US dollars).
So far, the service has been brilliant. Their web app is great, their documentation brilliant, and their customer service quick and accessible. It’s amazing how much better a service can be when you are a real, paying customer.
I’m at the point now where I actually want more email! I don’t think I’ve ever said that before.
If you are looking to upgrade your email experience, I highly commend Fastmail. If you use my referral code to sign up, you also get a discount. I am sure you will not be disappointed.
I have a vision of myself without the support of OmniFocus. Iâd be wandering around in a semi-permanent state of confusion, wondering what the heck I should be doing with my time and trying to keep all the âto-doâsâ of my life active and remembered in my brain. The stress of it all would be horrible!
Instead, I have OmniFocus. This application acts as my external brain, keeping all my various projects and tasks ordered, across all my areas of responsibility. It syncs across my Mac, iPhone and iPad so that I can know what I should (and can) do at any point in time. It keeps me on track with my work, bringing up tasks to do at the right time, and keeping them out of my sight when thereâs nothing I can do to move the project forward.
I have been on the OmniFocus bandwagon for years, but Iâve been on the âGetting Things Doneâ bandwagon for even longer. I think I started using that way of managing my work in about 2003. Now, I canât imagine working, living or thinking about my stuff to be done in any other way.
I have been an active user of OmniFocus since before it was OmniFocus, and was instead just a user-generated add-on for OmniOutliner. The app is just so fantastic to use. Of course, it does have itâs foibles, and the biggest problem is aligned with the biggest problem of GTD in general these days, which is ubiquitous context. When GTD was developed, you went to your office to handle paperwork, and your computer desk to âdo emailâ. Smartphones hadnât been invented and if you wanted to sync data, it probably involved a serial cable between your computer and your Palm Pilot.
This created physical barriers that prevented you from doing stuff, which the methodology termed context. (Un)fortunately, now we can pretty much do anything anywhere, rendering the concept of context almost obsolete. While people have tried to use other axes such as energy or mindset, thereâs nothing as good as the essentially redundant physical context. OmniFocus, for better or worse, continues to cling to that context mode.
Nevertheless, that can be worked around, and it still offers a fantastic view of your life in task form. Look at whatâs urgent, look at what you can do now, look at what you are waiting on to be able to progress - it can slice and dice your tasks in any way you need.
I couldnât live without it. I donât want to live without it. I donât want to have to keep all my thoughts juggled in my head - thatâs crazy! My brain is for value-adding, not remembering stuff!
Following on from my thoughts about Setapp, and now having all this extra software choice in my life, is that I now have to confront the challenge of choice.
For many, many, years I have been using OmniFocus to manage my life - keeping all my work and personal projects and tasks safe and sound. I was using OmniFocus before it was even an app - back when it was a series of OmniOutliner scripts put together by Ethan Schoonover to replicate this magical GTD (Getting Things Done) philosophy that had entered the world not all that long before. So Iâve got a long-term relationship with OmniFocus. I love it. But as with any relationships, there are hurdles and things that you really wish were different. I wish OmniFocus had graphical elements, like visual timelines and kanban boards. I wish it had better abilities as an information/document manager. I wish it would move away from the arcane view of âcontextsâ which in this modern, connected, mobile world are not nearly as useful as they were in David Allenâs 2001 world where he could walk to the park and suddenly not be able to answer email.
So, Setapp has some alternative apps. One in particular, Pagico, looks nice. It has some interesting file management concepts. It has a visual timeline. Maybe I could get to like this? But, hang on, I have a decade of history with OmniFocus. The switching cost - not in dollars - but in time and effort is huge. OmniFocus has inertia, muscle memory and comfort in its favour. How can Pagico compete with that? So Iâve tried using Pagico, and it looks pretty on the surface. But underneath it feels a bit⊠brittle. The sync engine is weird and the mobile apps feel pretty terrible anyway. The interface seems slow. I am struggling to trust the app.
Maybe I should just stick with OmniFocusâŠ
Okay, so letâs go with another choice. Iâve used Scrivener for many years and more recently have been using it heavily as the starting point for the report writing I have to do for my work, before it is transferred into a CMS or Word file. I like Scrivener, but it is big and heavy for what I need. So now, with Setapp, I have Ulysses. This is an app that Iâve followed but not ever felt compelled to buy since I had Scrivener already. Now, though, I can give it a chance.
So I have to learn a new app, remember to always write in Markdown, and then hope that I can easily get the text out of Ulysses in a format that I can use it in for its final form. Yes, Markdown is great but bureaucratic government systems donât grok it, okay?
So Iâve got to deal with another app choice, and now potentially have my stuff spread across two different word processors. But, of course, Iâve built an ecosystem around Scrivener across macOS and iOS - but Setapp only gives me the macOS version of Ulysses.
The list goes on, and I guess this is capitalism at its finest. There is never the tool to use. Wherever a successful product is built, others quickly join the party. This is not something that is limited to software - this happens throughout the economy. Some of these apps are really good, and some come with their own idiosyncrasies. My challenge is to decide which of all the flawed products, speaks most to me. Which of these apps has been designed most in the way that my brain works, and which have flaws that least often affect me? This is the challenge of choice. I think I might just need to look on the bright side, and realise that this is all just grist for the mill of a software tinkerer, indulging his hobby.
Tonight I installed Setapp on my Mac. This service provides a wide range of full version software in exchange for US$9.99 per month. There is no escape from software as a service, and I appreciate the challenge that software developers face trying to earn an income and support a living with the old âfull version plus upgradesâ pricing model.
A couple of the applications in the Setapp bundle I have been eyeing off for a while; some I have wanted but not enough to pay for; and some Iâve no use for. The only downside is that many of the âhighlightâ apps I have previously bought independently, so Iâm missing the good deal on those ones.
I admire MacPaw for having the idea and the temerity to build this kind of store, and to attract a wide range of developers into it. I wish everybody involved the best of luck. Appleâs own Mac App Store is a cesspit of garbage apps (and sandboxing restrictions) that has never really worked for me, or it seems, quality developers. Perhaps Setapp can be subscription software done right.
If youâd like to sign up to Setapp yourself and give this service a try, Iâd be much obliged if you did so using my Setapp referral link. Thanks!
Many years ago I started a Movable Type blog when the web was young, and doing such things was hard.
Then a young upstart named Wordpress arrived, and I couldn’t resist its modern design and dynamic database structure. I transitioned, and spent hours monkeying with CSS to get things looking just right.
Then the web became social, and I gave up on blogs. The big shift was to micro-updates and photoblogs and pseudo-conversations through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, respectively.
Gradually, the web became corporatised around these big brands.
Time has moved on, and Movable Type and Wordpress are still out there, but I don’t have the time to invest like I used to, nor the interest to dig in, nor the will and desire to set up on a large-scale web host. So I am trialling a new approach. This time, using RapidWeaver and its very simple blog module. It seems too simple. It seems like I will find myself frustrated by its ‘simple’ approach. But that is probably all I need. I don’t intend to blog every day. I don’t even expect to have a readership.
This is just a hobby for me; a rekindling of something I used to do when I was younger, and when time was more available.
My OmniFocus kanban contexts[/caption]
OmniFocus data presented in Omniboard[/caption]