Twelve Hours

A few months ago I wrote about how I’ve spent my software career constantly building new ideas and putting them out into the world to see what sticks. It’s scary as hell to release a new product into the world – never knowing how it will be received. But that’s the modus operandi for how … Read more

Handling Repeating Tasks and Routines in OmniFocus

After reading my last post about my OmniFocus setup, Evan Lovely asked Could you talk more about your Routines? What’s in there? Does anything repeat? Do you set defer or due dates on them? He’s referring to a Single-Action List I have inside my “Personal” folder called “Routines”. Inside this project are actions and checklists … Read more

My Checklist For Releasing a New Mac App

In my previous post about how I use OmniFocus, I made reference to an on-hold project template called “New App Release”. Anytime I release an update to one of my Mac apps, I follow this checklist. In case it’s useful to other developers, here’s what it contains… Thanks to Tony Arnold for prompting me to … Read more

My Evernote @Inbox

The best Evernote realization I ever had was to create an Evernote notebook called “@Inbox” and make it your Default Notebook. (The @ in front of the name ensures it will be sorted to the top of your notebook list.) From then on, you can quickly save notes and web pages into your Inbox notebook … Read more

My OmniFocus Habits – Four Years Later

I’ve been using OmniFocus since the Kinkless days. Over those many years, my life has changed in countless ways, and with it, so has the way I use OmniFocus. Perhaps the best compliment I can give the app, is that it’s always managed to be exactly what I needed it to be at any given … Read more

Delegating Tasks and Outsourcing Your Indie Business

A few weeks ago there was some discussion online about hiring virtual personal assistants to help offload non-essential business tasks. Around that same time a Twitter user messaged me (and quite a few other indie devs) asking what sort of business tasks we would consider outsourcing. I’m pretty sure this industrious @replier was just looking … Read more

Constraints

I often find that constraints, real or artificial, can be a huge motivation and productivity boost when I find myself stalled on a project or piece of work. Forcing yourself to work within a specific limitation can cause you to find a creative solution in a direction you might otherwise never consider. In my own … Read more

Paul Kim on His Indie Journey

I want to give a big thumbs up and a hug to everything in this fabulous post by Paul Kim. I missed it back in August when this discussion was initially happening but came across it on Gus’s blog this morning. Paul writes about his expectations starting out with Hazel and what he’s discovered looking … Read more

Marching Through the Wilderness

(How could I not title this post after one of my favorite David Byrne songs?) Gus has a terrific post on his blog about what he calls “the wilderness” – a period of time between major software releases “where I’m pretty lost, and I don’t know what to do.” His working theory on the matter … Read more

Assigning Relationships Between Tasks and People in OmniFocus

For years I’ve used on-hold “waiting” contexts named after coworkers and family members to denote tasks that I’ve assigned to other people and am waiting on them to finish. But a few weeks ago I had a realization that there are two other types of relationships between tasks and people that I haven’t been tracking. … Read more