The Weekly Review

We celebrate our annual tradition of watching the Apple’s iPhone announcements and then chatting about them. If you are looking for in-depth tech analysis of all of Apple’s products and feature updates, you should listen to a different podcast. If you want to know what we are buying, in what colors, and our reasons (or rationalizations), listen in.

This week James and Jean talk about the importance of backup equipment and backup planning for failure, inspired by a major technical issue that made Jean’s MacBook Pro unusable for podcasting.

Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind by Dan Charnas

In this episode Jean describes about her recent experience in trying Forest Bathing, which James misremembers as Tree Swimming. The conversation turns to related topics such as mindfulness and that our own well-being is an important piece of being productive. James realizes he hasn’t been for a walk in the woods for a long while but is inspired to do so in the near future.

Association of Nature and Forest Therapy

Forest bathing: What it is and why you should try it

The secret to mindful travel? A walk in the woods

Your Guide To Forest Bathing (Expanded Edition)

James and Jean have been traveling quite a bit this summer. We take a moment to review travel hacks and whether we’ve added anything to our travel toolkits in the pandemic era.

In this episode Jean and James talk about donuts of control, including recognizing things beyond your control. For Jean, this includes the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. James tells the story of how hearing a song in a drug store reminded him things out of your control can be a happy surprise. Plus, a dash of out-of-date slang. 23 Skidoo!

The serendipitous song mentioned in the episode:

James and Jean read an article critiquing Personal Knowledge Manager (PKM) and relate some of the ideas by the author and the commenters to how we feel about GTD.

We do not use the word BS spelled out (like the original post), because we don’t want the Explicit tag, and honestly, it’s not really our style to use expletives.

Personal Knowledge Management is BS by Justin Murphy

Ridwan’s link to the post and the comment thread

In this episode James talks about his first trip to the Atlantic Time Zone in three years. Jean talks about trying to beat the heat this summer. Jean and James talk about tracking important package deliveries as James was hoping a certain light-as-air M2-powered laptop might arrive before his cross-continent trek.

This week’s episode is a little shorter than usual, thanks to the summer temperatures that have made Jean’s office a bit too warm for podcasting. James’ new approach to active projects in OmniFocus results in a new acronym. We also chat about the wisdom of getting things done well in advance of their deadlines. 🐕🐮

Clarus the Dogcow

In this episode, James talks about using a new product for hanging things on walls. Jean learns that projects that depend on other people can be delayed through no fault of your own. James gives an OmniFocus update about his new use of flagged items and two new automation scripts he wrote to turn template projects into active projects. Jean and James talk more about automation, Shortcuts, and the tradeoffs in time between setting up automation or just doing a repetitive task.

3M Claw

To enhance her personal system for getting things done, Jean has added Tot to her collection of simple low-friction productivity apps, which already includes Drafts and Due. Drafts has worked for a weekly review checklist and Due keeps track of daily to-dos, and now Tot fills a gap left by Omni Focus for planning projects and managing their completion, thanks to the addition of Smart Bullets.

Tot: Your Tiny Text Companion

Drafts: Where Text Starts

Due: Never Forget Anything, Ever Again