The Weekly Review

This week, James and Jean talk about some holiday gift ideas: things we would like to give, things we might not give, and things we don’t want to get ourselves. James shares a neat trick he uses to keep track of gift cards.

It’s Thanksgiving week in the United States, an opportunity to think about what we are grateful for this year before the crazy holiday season takes off. We take note of the technology, entertainment, science, people (and one pet) that have made our lives better this year.

Star Trek: Prodigy Flashcast

James Dempsey and the Breakpoints

Micro.blog Micro Camp

In this week’s episode, James tells Jean the story of how the fate of a five dollar connector can immediately reorder your priorities, change the course of your day, and even get your cat to lick the kitchen floor. Jean talks about her delicious upcoming weekly to-do while James gets ready to say farewell to a trusty old MacBook Pro.

We talk about the Ultimate Productivity Lesson, prompted by Ridwan in his post on the brevity of life. You can keep checking off items on your to-do list, until that Big Check-Off. In case you think it will be a downer, we manage to stay pretty chipper about the whole topic.

Ultimate Productivity Lesson by Ridwan Jaafar

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

As the year winds down to its final two months, Jean and James discuss where 2021 has gone. Conversation turns to taking a few moments to do a personal year in review before the holidays begin. Jean accomplishes a deferred task in a short amount of time. James returns from Hawaii with some logistical issues further complicated by an unexpected acquisition.

This week, James comes to us from Hawai’i, where he is mostly on vacation. His weekly to-do was “play ukulele,” which (spoiler alert) he managed to accomplish. We chat about how we manage mixing work with vacation.

Jean is still having trouble placing one phone call, and would have been happy to talk about Dune all episode long, if only James had also seen it.

James and Jean have known for a while that Apple would be releasing new MacBook Pro laptops. That created a project—decide on which MBP to buy and place an order—that was on hold until now, even if we never actually added it to our trusted systems. James has completed this project, Jean is still working on it. In other news, James’ house is now earthquake-resistant and laundry-capable, wrapping up a couple of other long-standing projects.

What happens after you finish that big project? How do you feel afterwards? This episode Jean and James talk about what Jean has dubbed the ’post-productivity hangover’. For Jean, there can be a feeling of not knowing what to focus on next. For James, there is a seemingly inevitable period of being in a funk for at least a few days. Plus, earthquakes, laundry, song liner notes, and concomitant Swedish death cleaning.

One More Thing… Liner Notes

Coincidentally, both James and Jean launched their unannounced projects this week, and now they can finally talk about them! James released a new single, One More Thing…, a tribute to Steve Jobs on the 10th anniversary of his death, a collaboration of over 30 musicians. Jean worked on the release a major new version of the app Kaleidoscope, recently acquired by her developer friends in Germany and Austria.

Listen to One More Thing… by James Dempsey and the Breakpoints:

Check out Kaleidoscope 3, the world’s most powerful file comparison app.

In this episode Jean and James allude to some projects they are working on but aren’t able to talk about just yet. The discussion includes how accomplishing tasks can be very different when working on things that need to be kept under wraps. James talks a bit about working on a top secret project at Apple and how even the best laid plans of secrecy can leave unexpected gaps.