The Weekly Review

In this episode Jean and James talk about the capture phase—getting things out of your head and into your trusted system. Topics include capturing commitments with a short timeline, some Siri frustrations, Post-it Notes, and techniques to avoid being mortified when attending the opera. James offers up a fleeting ten dollar word or two. Both Jean and James manage to go an entire episode without mentioning Mailstrom or SaneBox.

Do you have a life-hack for capture you’d like to share?

Articles and tools mentioned in this episode:

(Jean mentioned she uses Parallels Toolbox for Mac for Do Not Disturb. James forgot to mention he uses the built-in option-click on the Notification Center icon in the toolbar to turn on Do Not Disburb.)

Trick or treat? It’s the week of Halloween and a major Apple product announcement, aka two productivity busters. We look at human failure in scheduling and Jean’s epic red wine bottle disaster. There’s no trusted system that can overcome human fallibility, and life sometimes throws you a curve ball that your task management system will not be ready for.

On the productive side, we process some email episode follow-up from last week, including Jean’s discovery of the iOS app Chuck, put out by the Mailstrom folks, for effectively slashing your inbox while mobile.

Our Email Processing Tools

In this bonus-length episode Jean and James compare and contrast two services they use to keep their email inboxes manageable: Mailstrom and SaneBox. Each service has its own core ‘superpower’ and philosophy as well as areas where their functionality overlap.

Jean and James trade stories of productivity milestones, as well as tasks they need help with. Jean finally completed her 2017 tax return, with help from PDFpenPro and TurboTax. James is working on an app that he’s not ready to announce yet, and he’s using Sketch to design the interface. We finish up with an extended discussion about how to decide what gets tagged “Next” in our OmniFocus systems.

PDFpenPro

TurboTax

Sketch

What’s The Forecast?

Jean and James discuss that dilemna of the digital age: Use third-party apps or the apps built-in to iOS and macOS? Jean uses a fair number of third-pary apps while James tends to stick to the built-in apps, with a few exceptions. Topics include launchers, timers, clipboard managers, and a shout out to the built-in Reminders app.

Jean and James explore the potential for increased productivity by incorporating RSS feeds into their daily workflows. Jean has been using RSS readers for years while James jumps in with both feet and reports on his experiences. Both are excited by a feature of the RSS service Feedbin that can move email newsletters out of your inbox and into a feed. Also, James makes the biggest faux pas yet in his brief podcasting career.

RSS Tools We Talked About:

Episode 23 was all about getting started with our new iPhones and iOS 12. But there was other big news this week: OmniFocus 3 for the Mac was released. We realized we needed to do a special second episode to talk about James’s article What’s The Forecast?, which appeared on the Inside OmniFocus blog. Learn more about how James uses the Forecast perspective in OmniFocus 3 to manage his work and meet his deadlines.

Recorded on September 21, the Autumnal Equinox or, as we know it, iPhone Delivery Day. James’s phone was delivered right before we started while Jean’s was still out on a UPS truck circling Portland. We were maybe just a tiny bit distracted. But we do manage to discuss some of the new productivity features in iOS 12, such as Screentime, Shortcuts, and Memoji. (OK, maybe that last one is an anti-productivity example.)

Jean and James share their excitement for the upcoming releases of macOS Mojave and OmniFocus 3 for Mac. James follows up on last week’s calendar discussion with some thoughts on using the Forecast perspective in OmniFocus 3. Jean considers options for finishing her taxes since her longtime accountant has retired. Jean and James assure TurboTax that neither of them have a railway pension.

Organizational fun begins with the calendar. James and Jean talk about the journey from paper to digital calendars, to iCal on the Mac and the array of choices from third-party developers. We also discuss our approaches to the important question of what things actually belong on a calendar versus what should go into our trusted task management systems. Finally, we look at how sharing a calendar requires one to define even more clearly what is really happening and what is not.

XOXO Festival, Portland, Oregon

Fantastical

BusyCal

WhenWorks