Productivity

We Are Bad at Moderation (Or: Why I’m Deleting Twitter and Instagram From my iPhone)

In a recent episode of his podcast, Tim Ferris interviewed Greg McKeown (who is the author of Essentialism).

And something Greg said that I thought was awesome.

He said we are bad at moderation. That it’s oftentimes better and easier to go all in.

As an example, Greg shared how he cut out sugar from his diet. He found it to be easier to completely eliminate all sugar rather than to eliminate 95% of sugar.

By trying to moderate his sugar intake rather than eliminate it altogether he had to constantly make choices and concessions and compromises for why it was okay or even necessary to have a certain dessert. (I totally can’t relate at all.)

However, by eliminating sugar altogether it removed all future sugar-related decisions. He didn’t have to think about it any more. Thus it was easier to go 100% without sugar than to go 95%.

And as I was at the red light, listening to this podcast, I was naturally translating Greg’s advice into my use of technology.

I immediately was thinking about my own social media usage. I already use Do Not Disturb quite liberally; I have a Screen Time max for my social media apps; I keep both Tweetbot and Instagram in folders off my main Home screen so they are not as easy to access. And yet! And yet I still find myself spending more time perusing my social media timelines than I would like.

Hold that thought…

Then, another conversation topic between Tim and Greg in the same aforementioned podcast episode, was related to making margin for that which is essential.

To help illustrate this point, Greg led Tim through an exercise by asking him these two questions:

  1. What is something in your life right now that you think is very essential and important, but is something you are not giving very much time or attention to?
  2. What is something in your life that you do NOT consider to be essential but yet it is receiving too much of your time and attention?

Right away I knew the answers to both of these questions for myself.

For me, as I have shared with you here already, I want to be writing and publishing more frequently to my personal blog. I consider that to be very essential and important and, as I told Sean McCabe, I want to give more time to writing.

And can you guess the thing in my life which I consider to be not very essential but which is receiving more of my time and attention than I think it deserves? Social media.

According to my iOS Screen Time reports I spend an average of 27 minutes per day on Twitter and 22 minutes on Instagram. That’s 49 minutes of social media scrolling that honestly does not add much, if anything, to my day-to-day life.

(I have a lot more thoughts on this, and I already have drafts of a few articles in the works that I look forward to publishing. Such as: the value of social media for building real-world relationships; the differences between a social media account and a personal weblog; and the pain of not being able to pursue every awesome tidbit of information we come across online.)

All this to say, I am taking the month of February and I am deleting the Twitter and Instagram apps from my iPhone. I’m not quitting social media altogether; I just don’t want to have it at my fingertips.

This is just an experiment, but it’s something that I’m excited to try. I don’t know what, if any, results will come from it. But I’m giving it a shot.

My desire is that without social media on my phone I’ll have more margin with my time and with my thoughts that will be unto more reading and more writing.

And as a side note, if you haven’t read Greg’s book, Essentialism, I highly recommend it. I’ll leave you with this apt and relevant quote from the book:

Today, everyone waiting around in an airport or a waiting room is glued to their technology tools of choice. Of course, nobody likes to be bored. But by abolishing any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think and process.

The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.

We Are Bad at Moderation (Or: Why I’m Deleting Twitter and Instagram From my iPhone)

Initial Photos and Thoughts From My First Live Event

Yesterday we hosted our very first Live workshop for The Focus Course!

We had 32 people here in Kansas City and I led them all through the Focus Course. It was so much fun! And I am so tired!

I’ll be writing quite a bit more about the event in the weeks to come, but I wanted to share a few initial thoughts from my perspective.

For starters, the whole event went just about perfectly! (Thank you Isaac and Joanna!!)

This was our first live event of this scale and polish. It was the content of the Focus Course combined with a live presentation of my whole ethos behind Delight is in the Details. A lot of group training events like this are rich in content but poor in delightful little details. I wanted to do things a bit differently, and seeing it all come together it was clearly worth the effort.

And speaking of the content…

It was so incredible for me to work in person with people and witness as the dots connected and light bulbs went off for them as we all went through The Focus Course. It was amazing to watch people “get it”… From getting their life vision figured out, to finally understanding how habits and scheduling can help them live a better life. Or getting a breakthrough in goal setting, or understating the value of margin. All throughout the day people were getting these little moments of revelation, and it was an honor to be a part of that process and to see it happen in person.

This morning I woke up, and I wrote this in my journal:

“If it is true that health in one area of your life brings about greater health in the other areas… and if it is true that when we align our values with our calendar we can reach our greatest potential with the most joy in the process… and if it is true that we have a finite amount of mental energy within any given day and we need help to keep our life on track…. if those things are true, then therein lies the power of a focused life. Because a focused life enables those things.”

This event was life changing. Can’t wait for the next one!

Initial Photos and Thoughts From My First Live Event

A Review of the Clear Habit Journal

Clear Habit Journal

A few days ago I received my pre-ordered copy of the new Clear Habit Journal.

This notebook is a collaboration between some good friends of mine: Joey and Adam at Baron Fig and James Clear.

I have used a Baron Fig notebook just about every single day for the past five years — it’s a central tool in my Hybrid Productivity Method.

So needless to say, I was wildly excited to check out this new notebook. I may or may not have completely geeked out last Saturday when my copy arrived.

The design of this new notebook is absolutely fantastic! I love the feel, the colors, the type, the layout, the gold foil stamp on the front. Everything about this notebook just screams quality and attention to detail.

What I also love about the Habit Journal is how simple it is. For me, as a hard and fast notebook user, the Clear Habit Journal is exactly the right mix of useful templates with open, blank pages.

In the front of the Journal is an “Index” spread followed by a “daily log” section where you write down one line per day.

The Index is where you build your own table of contents as you go, writing down any important sections and the page number(s) they’re on. I do this in all my journals, so it’s great to have it pre-templated already.

The One Line Per Day section is absolutely brilliant. You choose your own writing prompt, and then have one line to answer that prompt each day. There are 31 lines per page, and 12 pages. So you get a section of your journal that has an easy-to-read summary of your entire year.

Clear Habit Journal

Your daily prompt can be whatever you want it to be. For January my prompt is “Highlight of the Day”. But you could do anything. Such as your Most Important Task, or Something You’re Grateful For, or Something You Learned, etc.

In the back of the Journal are two more sections. A “Habit Tracker” and a “Toolkit” section.

The Habit Tracker is nice and simple. You simply write down the habit / routine that you are workin on and then you check the box that corresponds with the day of the month.

Having clarity about your goals for the year is critical. And then tracking your progress on your goals is what turns them into reality.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, there are two new routines I’m focusing on this year: more time reading and learning and more time writing and editing. So I have my normal routines that I already track, which include my workouts and personal prayer times, and now I also am tracking time spent reading, writing, and editing.

Clear Habit Journal

Then there is the Toolkit section which has some ideas and instructions for how to use the 167 dot-grid pages that comprise the bulk of the journal.

James wrote out several suggestions for how to make better decisions, how to think more clearly, how to prioritize things, how to be productive, how to log your workouts and/or your diet, etc.

One of the pages is on how to make smarter decisions by writing out your prediction, the decision, and then reviewing it again at a later date. That is a brand-new approach for me and look forward to implementing it.

There are other helpful little details as well. Every page is numbered, there is a pocket in the very back cover, there are two bookmark ribbons, and the Habit Tracking pages are perforated so you can remove them if you want.

All in all, the Clear Habit Journal is a great mix of helpful templates and then blank space. It’s useful and adaptable. And it fits exactly how I do and want to use a notebook. I really love this notebook.

But… (and this is a very big but)

There is one — ahem — large problem: The size of notebook itself.

My singular frustration is that the Journal comes in only one size: the normal-sized, “Flagship” Baron Fig.

I have used many of this sized notebooks over the years. And so I know from my years of experience that this sized Baron Fig will last me about 6-9 months at most. However, the way that the Clear Habit Journal is set up, you would ideally use it for a full year because it has 12 months worth of daily prompts in the front and 12 months worth of habit tracking in the back.

In early 2017 I began using the new “jumbo” size Baron Fig and I absolutely love it. Not only do I love the largest pages because they give more room to write and draw and just spread out my ideas. The bigger size pages also make it so that a Jumbo notebook lasts me more than a full year.

I decided to throw my gripe out the window, and began using the Clear Habit Journal for a few days. But I just couldn’t do it. I kept thinking about how once August got here I’d be out of the dot-grid pages and would have to start a new notebook, and my year’s worth of one-line prompts and habit tracking would have to either be migrated or split up.

But then, also, the smaller pages just felt too crowded. I really missed the extra real estate to let my writing and ideas breath and spread out.

So, alas, I ended up switching back to my Jumbo size notebook. But I brought with me some of the ideas and design elements from the Clear Habit Journal (thanks, James!) and I am incorporating those elements into my own notebook to improve the way I use the jumbo Baron Fig.

Basically what I’m doing is combining the daily prompts and the habit tracker into a single spread that looks like this:

Bullet Journal Daily Habit Tracking

Thanks to the larger size of the Jumbo Baron Fig, I have space to fit the “one line per day” prompt and also track up to 5 or 6 daily habits… all in one spot. I reserved 12 pages toward the front of my Jumbo Baron Fig notebook to accommodate a page like this for each of the 12 months of the year.

Clear Habit Journal

One huge advantage of a notebook like the Clear Habit Journal is that a lot of the template design work is done for you. This can save a lot of time and mental energy. (I, for instance, spent about 90 minutes last night manually creating the new index page, monthly habit tracking page, and hand writing in the page numbers for my Jumbo notebook.)

I am sad that I won’t be using the Clear Habit Journal, because it is such an excellent product. But at the end of the day the size turned out to be a deal breaker for me.

But I am probably more the exception here. I know that there are many people who prefer Baron Fig’s traditionally-sized flagship notebooks. And then I heartily recommend the Clear Habit Journal. It’s fantastic. And if they ever make this notebook in the Jumbo size then I’ll be the first in line to get one.

If you want to order a notebook from the folks at Baron Fig, use this link.

A Review of the Clear Habit Journal

The Best Habit Apps For Your iPhone  →

If you’re looking to improve and/or start some new habits and routines, then one of the absolute best ways to help yourself stay steady is by tracking your progress.

That’s why, over on The Sweet Setup, we just updated our review for the Best Habit Tracking app.

I have a few daily and weekly habits that I track in my Baron Fig notebook as part of my Hybrid Productivity Method. But if you prefer a digital app for tracking your routines, then check out our review of the best habit tracking apps here.

The Best Habit Apps For Your iPhone

Want to Write More in 2019?  →

As I mentioned on Tuesday, one of my main areas of focus this year is on improving and giving more time to my writing and editing routine.

As you may know, Ulysses is the central spot for where I store all my notes, research, and other tidbits of inspiration. It’s also where I toss all my writing ideas, and it’s where I actually do all my writing. (Mostly on iPad these days.)

What’s so awesome about Ulysses is that it excells at each of these functions: it is ideal for capturing ideas and it’s also the best app there is for doing the writing.

If, like me, you’re looking to do more writing as we begin 2019, then you should check out Ulysses.

And, to help you get off to a great start, over on The Sweet Setup I put together seven links to the best articles, tips, tricks, resources, and other how-tos that we have.

Want to Write More in 2019?

How and when do I carve out time to read distraction free?

September and October have been good to us readers this year. I have a pile of brand-new books that I can’t wait to dive into.

Yesterday I tweeted about how if you’re also diving into a new book (or 5) then you might be interested in how to build your own, alternate index of notes and ideas. Having your own index is, to me, a game-changing strategy for reading and studying any non-fiction book. (See also: My approach to learning and taking action.)

In response to my above tweet, I was asked how and when I’m able to carve out time to read.

Well, the way to make time for reading is the same way you make time for anything else. You pick a time (schedule it) and then you show up.

  • I wake up an hour before my kids in order to make time for my workout and to read.
  • After the kids go to bed and I have tidied up the house, I try to read for at least 15 minutes before doing anything like watching a show or working on other projects.
  • Before going to bed I read for 20 – 30 minutes. This is usually fiction (if I read non-fiction business or finance books, then my brain gets going and I can’t wind down for sleep).
  • Saturday and Sunday afternoons we (usually) have quiet time during my youngest son’s nap. While my older two are doing their quiet activity, I will usually read for a bit.

To be candid, I don’t read nearly as much as I’d like to. And I have two things I want to adjust in my daily rhythm to make more time for reading and studying. One of them is to switch to audio books rather than podcasts when I’m driving in the car. The other is to make more space for reading at the start of my work day and in the afternoon. I’d like to at least double the amount of time I spend reading each day.

However… right now I am focused primarily on a new workout routine (which is something I hope to write about soon), and I have about three more weeks to go before I feel that my new workout habits will begin to settle in and become easier to follow through with.

I try to only focus on one big area of change in my life at a time. And since I’m focusing on my health right now, I’m not worried about changing my reading habits just yet. I will wait until I’ve hit a stride with my new workout routine and thus can give my energy to focus on building a new reading routine.

How and when do I carve out time to read distraction free?

My iPad Home Screen

Gosh, it’s been about a year now since the 10.5” iPad Pro came out. I bought one right away, and it has become one of my favorite gadgets of all time.

I’ve had an iPad since the very beginning. I stood in line on that Saturday morning in April 2010 to buy the original iPad. And since then I’ve also owned an iPad 2, iPad 3, a 2nd-gen iPad mini, a 9.7” iPad Pro, and now, of course, the 10.5” iPad Pro.

The iPad Pro (with iOS 11) is not like the other iPads. In fact, it feels to me like what the iPad was meant to be all along: Fun, powerful, versatile, and not annoying.

It’s the “not annoying” part that has finally come around. The iPads of the past have always been fun and versatile and powerful to an extent. But they also have always had certain limitations that brought about frustrations at times.

Thanks mostly to iOS 11, the iPad is fun, powerful, and versatile. Full stop.

Shawn Blanc iPad Pro

As you may know, on Monday Apple is kicking off their annual conference: WWDC.

I’ll be out there in San Jose for a few days going to live podcast events and meeting up with my fellow Apple nerd friends. And, needless to say, I’m excited about what Apple will announce on Monday at their big keynote event.

In conjunction with the jumbo-sized Baron Fig notebook, my iPad has become a regular part of my every day creativity and productivity.

Even though I have an iMac with a fun and clicky keyboard at my desk, I find myself doing nearly as much work from the iPad as from my Mac. This is thanks entirely to a few things that, up until last year, really didn’t exist on the iPad.

Obviously, there is iOS 11 (“The iPad Release”) with its side-by-side app views, drag and drop, and, of course, the Files app itself with its system-wide integration which has been a huge game changer. (I’ve got a whole other story about how Dropbox has basically become obsolete for me, but we’ll save that for another time.)

And then, there are the apps I use most: Ulysses and Things. Both of which are world-class on the iPad (especially so with the most recent updates to Things 3.6 and Ulysses 13.)

All that said, today I wanted to share a bit about my current iPad setup so that if anything changes next week, there’d be a benchmark to compare against.

Shawn Blanc iPad Pro Home screen

Hardware-wise, I use one of Apple’s smart keyboard covers with my iPad. It’s a pretty great keyboard — it’s just fine to use for typing, and I love that it can also fold back behind itself to prop up the iPad, and it easily pops off the side if I want to use the iPad strictly as a tablet.

As for apps, here’s a list of all the apps I use on my iPad the most (not including Ulysses or Things which I already mentioned above).

  • Basecamp: This has become command central for the whole Blanc Media team. We run everything in and through Basecamp. (No more Dropbox, Slack, or email.)
  • Bear: Some day I’ll write more in depth about the differences of how I use Bear versus Ulysses. But, in short, Bear is for all the simple and temporary stuff like shopping lists, travel plans, or research for buying and installing Jeep parts, etc.
  • Day One: My biggest use for Day One on the iPad is when I do my weekly reviews on Sunday afternoons.
  • Music: For listening to jams when writing and working.
  • Paper: For doing the occasional sketch to accompany an article (like this one).
  • Safari: My web browser of choice. It’s fast, native, and I use iCloud tabs quite a bit as I love the ability to get to any web pages I have open on my other devices.
  • 1Password: Despite the prevalence of iCloud Keychain, 1Password is still a must-have app. I use it constantly, and even keep it in my iPad’s dock for quick access.
  • Mail: While it certainly leaves a lot to be desired in terms of search and integrating with 3rd-party apps, I still appreciate its simple clean design.
  • CropSize: This is an iOS app that lets you crop and resize images and export them for the web. You can even save particular “workflows” and simply apply that saved process to one or multiple photos with just a few taps.

I can’t wait to see what Apple has up their sleeve on Monday for iOS 12. One thing I’d love to see would be keyboard shortcuts for the share sheet (which is something that Michael Rockwell mentioned about a week ago). It’d mean being able to save a web page to Instapaper or add a URL to Things through a keyboard shortcut rather than through a few taps.

At some point the thought does become: why not just use a laptop?

There are a few things here and there that would be awesome on an iPad. But what is also so great about the iPad is how you can pop off the keyboard and use the device like a tablet. Rotate it into portrait mode and read from it. Draw on the screen. Drag and drop things. Build-in internet connection anywhere.

It’s all of those touch-screen-tablet-specific-abilities that make the iPad so great and versatile. It’s not about making the iPad more Mac-like, rather it’s about making the iPad easier to use.

My iPad Home Screen

My Number One Productivity Tip

“What’s your number one productivity tip, Shawn?”

I get asked this question all the time. And I have a somewhat bizarre answer. When people first hear it they give me a weird look. And then as I explain it, everything clicks.

The tip is this:

Tonight, before you go to bed, set out your clothes for tomorrow.

See? I can already tell that you’re thinking to yourself: What? Shawn has lost it.

Here’s why this matters:

  1. You’re helping your future self.
  2. You’re setting an easy goal that you can win at (which helps you to win when you set harder goals).
  3. You’re learning how to plan ahead and keep your word to yourself.

Who would have thought there would be SO MANY NUANCES to something as dorky as setting out tomorrow’s underwear?

This idea of helping my future self and following through on my own commitments is something I use all over my life. Not least of which is my weekly review.

(If you’ve been through our best-selling productivity course then you are already familiar with how and why I do my daily and weekly planning. So I won’t go into all the details here.)

A Brief Overview of What My Weekly Review Looks Like

On Sunday afternoons, I sit down for about an hour to review my past week and to plan for my upcoming week. The two apps I use for this are Things and Day One.

The times of my life when I am most productive and relaxed can pretty much be exactly correlated with the times of my life I have maintained this habit.

By taking time to review the past week and plan the next one, it helps me spend my entire week better. And not just with work-related stuff — it helps immensely with personal and family life as well.

What I do is I review the past week’s wins and losses, and make notes of all the highlights and lowlights of the week. As I mentioned, I do this for my work and my personal life. I look through my Baron Fig notebook and also my Things Logbook to glance briefly at all the tasks and goals I accomplished (or didn’t). I also jot down any events or memories or parenting fails.

This retrospective takes a total of about 15 or 20 minutes.

Then I take just a few minutes to review what big goals I’m focused on right now (which are always crystal clear, thanks to our focused, 8-week work cycles). This helps me stay on track with what is most important and to ensure I’m focused on the next steps I need to take.

With that done, I then take another 15 or 20 minutes to plan my upcoming week. I write down the week’s 3 Most Important Goals, along with any other miscellany that I want to see happen. (Again, I go into all of this is a LOT of nerdy detail in All the Things.)

Why A Weekly Review?

It’s not easy to coach yourself. Part of moving from Unconscious Incompetence to (un)conscious competence requires feedback loops. Having a coach or mentor can help with this, but so too can it help to keep short accounts with yourself to track and monitor your progress.

In short, this habit helps me stay creative, productive, and focused.

Just like setting out tomorrow’s socks, the weekly review and planning time is a way for me to help my future self. With my plan in place it means that for the whole rest of the week all I have left to do is follow through with the plan. And that makes things so much easier!

As my friend, James Clear, says, highly focused people limit their options. If you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything.
Moreover, with the weekly retrospective, I am capturing the “smaller” moments in life — things that don’t really seem like a big deal right now, but often times are a big deal in aggregate especially when looking back.

This is critical to skill development, personal development, and more.

If you’re interested in getting a more detailed look at how I use Day One, as well as my full checklist of all the weekly (and monthly) review questions I work through, check out our brand new course: Day One in Depth.

My Number One Productivity Tip

Monk Mode for All the Things

This week I have been in monk mode, working on the video tutorial screencasts for All the Things.

Things are coming together (no pun intended), and they’re looking awesome!

I purchased ScreenFlow 7 from the Mac App Store on Monday and have already spent a solid 50+ hours in the app. If you do any sort of screen casting, ScreenFlow is what you want.

At the beginning of the week my screen casting workflow was all sorts of weird. I’ll probably write more about it later, but let’s just say that after 3 days of very slow-going progress, I tried a different approach that literally reduced my creation and production time by 75%.

As I’ve been working my way through every nook and cranny of Things 3, the process has endeared me even more to this app. I’ve been using Things 3 since it was in beta, but this process of teaching people how to use the app has, obviously, caused me to become even more familiar with it than I already was.

That familiarity has given me an increased confidence and joy when using this app day in and day out. Plus, I myself have even learned a handful of new tricks that are pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

All that said, because I have been so heads down doing these video tutorials, I broke the chain of my daily blogging schedule. Alas.

Between November 28 and January 26 I published an item every single day. 59 days; 59 blog posts. I am bummed to have broken the streak, but I will be picking it back up again.

I have quite a few thoughts on the value and importance of writing and publishing daily. But, these past two weeks I’ve been focused on creating something that is currently more important, and so something had to give.

It has been challenging and fun to create all of this. And I love that we are seeing it all start to come together. Can’t wait to share it.

Monk Mode for All the Things

Behind the Scenes: Shooting Video for ‘All the Things’

Yesterday we shot eight of the videos for All the Things.

Many people have asked me about my video recording setup, so I thought it’d be fun to share some behind-the-scenes details from yesterday’s shoot, and also walk you through our process and the gear we use.

First, a bit of context…

These videos are part of my upcoming course, All the Things, which we are on track to launch in a few weeks.

The course will actually have two parts:

  • Part 1 will be in-depth tutorials on how to use the app, Things 3.

  • Part 2 — which is basically a whole other course in and of itself — is where I go into detail about my best practices, templates, personal systems, and more for managing your tasks and being productive (including a very detailed walk-through of my “hybrid productivity method”).

It was yesterday that we recorded all the videos for Part 2.

The Process

Outlining and planning: I spent several days last week and this week going over all the feedback and input from our survey responses, making sure that I was addressing all the most important topics and questions.

Writing: Then I outline and write all my course scripts in Ulysses (of course). Once written, I read through each script out loud and adjust the language so it sounds natural as I speak it.

Recording: Once the course video scripts are ready, I transfer them onto my TelePrompTer app (more on that below), and we transform the office into a recording studio.

Personal, side-note abut using a Teleprompter… When I first did video shoots like this for The Focus Course, I felt somewhat disingenuous using a Teleprompter. It felt like having pre-scripted talking points took away from the genuineness of the video. But in reality, using a TelePrompTer is just smart. It means I can stay on topic and communicate more clearly. If anything, using a telemprompter is more genuine because it allows me to spend time beforehand carefully considering what it is I want to say, and then ensure I say those things.

With everything set up, we are ready to record. Some videos I’m able to knock out in one take. And some take a few tries.

Yesterday we were in a groove, and we recorded every single video in one take…. except, for one… For the audio, we use a lav mic plugged into my iPhone. And though I had my phone on Do Not Disturb, my mom called me toward the end of one of the video shoots. Since she’s a Favorite her calls go through, and even though I didn’t answer the incoming call caused my recording app to stop its background recording, and thus we had to re-shoot the final 5 minutes of one video. (Hi, mom! ?)

Gear List

Okay, if you’re interested in the nerdy details, here they are:

  • I use Ulysses to write and plan all the video scripts.
  • This Teleprompter app paired with my Apple bluetooth keyboard. The keyboard is kept by my foot and I tap the space bar to start and stop the scrolling words. This allows me to move through the script at my own pace, which is so nice.
  • This Teleprompter rig is how I set my iPad Pro up to function as the teleprompter.
  • For recording audio, we use this Lavalier Microphone plugged into my iPhone with Røde iPhone app.
  • Camera: Canon 6D with either the 50mm f/1.4 or the 20-70mm f/2.8 that we borrowed from a friend.
  • These umbrella lights.
  • This Tripod, that has an adjustable telescoping extension so we could shoot the overhead video where I walk through exactly how I use my notebook and set up the different pages for my weekly and daily planning, etc.

If you have questions, or suggestions, hit me up on Twitter: @shawnblanc.

Behind the Scenes: Shooting Video for ‘All the Things’

The Best Task-Management App  →

After considerable deliberation, over on The Sweet Setup, Things 3 has become our new pick for the best productivity app.

I was an avid Things user way back in the day, but then switched to OmniFocus because of over-the-air sync.
About a year ago I switched to Todoist for a few months, and then back to Things when version 3 shipped in the spring of 2017.

As I wrote back in December, Things 3 has been getting consistent updates since it shipped. And many of those updates have been some of the most commonly requested features that I’ve seen — such as adding in the ability to have repeating to-dos within projects, keyboard shortcuts to iPad (basic, but still better than none at all), iOS drag and drop support, and the Send to Things email feature.

Things has been around for quite a while, and over the years Cultured Code had developed somewhat of a reputation for shipping awesome updates and then going silent and letting their product begin to stagnate. But from where I’m sitting, that is no longer the case.

You can read the full review here (were we also casually announce something brand new that is in the works).

The Best Task-Management App

The Full Focus Planner  →

Speaking of notebooks, if you like the idea of using an analog notebook but you do not like the idea of filling in all the details on your own, you should definitely check out Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner.

In my office I’ve got one each of the Freedom Journal, Mastery Journal, Best Self Journal, Passion Planner, and a Cultivate What Matters planner.

Of all of these, I think the the Full Focus Planner is the best one. Though I don’t use it personally — I prefer the blank pages of my Baron Fig — the Full Focus planner emphasizes the things that matter most for managing your day and doing the things that matter. I basically follow a very similar structure in my own notebook, but I fill it in myself.

The Full Focus Planner

Matt Ragland’s Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity

A few weeks ago my friend, Matt Ragland, posted this video showcasing how he uses his notebook for planning out his day, week, and month.

There are two things I like about this video. For one, Matt’s journal is not a picturesque scrapbook. While I love the gorgeous lettering and sketches that so many people do with their notebooks, for me, I need something more basic and pragmatic.

Secondly, and most importantly, I found many really interesting ideas in here. Particularly, I love how Matt maps out his week with 10 time blocks of 4 hours each (see below and at the 08:29 mark in the video). These time blocks help him gauge if he is spending too much time in one are (such as meetings) and not enough time in another area (such as reading).

Matt Ragland Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity

If you’ve never taken a week to track how you are spending your time, you should try it. If you dare.
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Anyway, speaking of notebooks, it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Baron Fig Confidant notebook. I’ve been using one to plan my day for almost four years now, and I have some thoughts on the analog planning approach that I want to share about, particularly as it relates to the seeming tediousness of it.

In the next few weeks you can expect me to dive in to the nerdy details of how I use my notebook to take action and keep moving forward.

Matt Ragland’s Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity