Some thoughts on productivity

In the recent months I have become somewhat of a productivity junky. It all started with me finally buying the 'Getting Things Done' book by David Allen.

I had heard about the book so many times but didn't find time to start reading it (talk about productivity ;-) Picking up the book pulled me further and further into the rabbit hole than I would have imagined. But I am glad it did as it has helped me a great deal. I am not sure if it is a true boost in productivity or that I just feel more confident (and relaxed) about all the things on my plate. 

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert passed away at 70 years after losing his battle against cancer. While I had never before heard of Mr. Ebert I instantly became attracted to his work. In particular his sharp, humorous and critical movie reviews. You can find all of them here. 

“Roger Joseph Ebert (June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American journalist, film critic, and screenwriter. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death. In 1975, he was the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, an award given to newspaper writers. As of 2010, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad. Ebert also published more than 20 books and dozens of collections of reviews.”
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert

Backup!

I still vividly remember when about 8 years ago I lost a lot of our pictures while re-installing my operating system at 11 at night (which I shouldn’t have been doing at all). I was able to retrieve some of them (they had been uploaded to Facebook or printed) but the whole ordeal cost me some serious sleep. With the ever growing collection of precious digital memories (not just photos) I am making sure that something like this will not happen again. I have grown wiser over the years and now have some serious redundancy built into my backup system. In this article I’ll walk you through my system.

Instapaper

Anyone who spends considerable time online, whether it be casual browsing, doing research or wading through Twitter or Facebook timelines, will come across information to keep for later. Instapaper lets you do just that. Instapaper is one of few popular ‘read it later’ services available. Or as Marko Arment (the founder) puts it: A simple tool to save web pages for reading later. I am a huge fan and use it extensively. 

Mailplane - the best of both worlds?

Although I am not a big fan of Google as such, I really do like their e-mail service, and the Gmail web-interface in particular. I have been using Gmail for my personal e-mail ever since it was still in beta and over time it has become my central e-mail hub. I am using it to manage several accounts so that I only have 1 place to handle e-mail. 

becoming a 'developer'

de·vel·op·er
/diˈveləpər/ Noun A person or organization that develops something. A person who grows or matures at a specified time or rate.

I’ve always had a particular interest in writing my own application, either for Mac OS X or iOS devices. I recently picked up a book, Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide by Aaron Hillegass and I am starting to work my way through it. I’ve had a fairly promising start and I am determined to finish the book and someday release an app of my own. Now only to find the time!

ps: I recommend getting the Kindle version of the book, it makes for much easier searching.

cookoo watch

I recently picked up a cookoo watch. It seemed like a good idea whilst I was waiting for my Pebble to arrive. Cookoo is a 'smart' watch that lets you receive notifications from your phone on your watch. However, it hasn't been that smart. Ever since it arrived it has been pretty much dead-in-the-water. It wouldn't connect to both my iPhone 4S or 5. The internet seems to be filled with similar problems and the latest iOS app update didn't resolve the issue for me.