This Week in Mobile Tech Manor #88: Back to Paper
The busy week is drawing to a close, and that means it is time to share the happenings at Mobile Tech Manor with you. It was a week of software changes that have brought a major revision of my work methods in the Manor. It was a time of reflection on the way I work, and a shift back to the days of the paper organizer. A utility I have used for a long time was relegated to the out file, and a new one rushed in to take its place.
I recently switched web browsers (again), and this week I was still using Google Chrome. Chrome is so darn fast and has evolved to the point it is very stable doing my work. I am in the web browser all day, every day — sometimes on more than one computer at a time — and Chrome worked nearly flawlessly. I only saw the dreaded “Aw snap” screen a few times. That’s the screen you get when Chrome can’t load a web page for some reason. I found it humorous that it was always the same web page that caused the errors — Google Reader. I hit refresh each time and the page loaded no problems, it’s just ironic that Google’s own web page was failing. I am otherwise impressed with Chrome and will continue using it on both Windows and OS X.
The paper organizer
Remember the paper organizer that was so popular years ago? Those Franklin day planners that were everywhere in the corporate environment? You’d walk into a conference room for a meeting and find the table covered with those organizers, as almost everyone had them in front of them.
I used one of those many years ago and I must admit my work day was better organized for it. Once my work methodology embraced the organizer, it became second nature to use it best to fit my work. I developed a way to capture important information on the fly, and just as importantly I learned to refer to it regularly so nothing fell through the cracks. It was a pain to carry the organizer with me everywhere, but it did the job well.
I’m not a paper kind of guy though, and I made a big effort back then to offload the organizer’s functions onto a digital platform. I found the PDA of yore to be the perfect vehicle for this function, and was able to tailor a system that worked well for me. The key was the PDA was always at hand, and it became a key tool in organizing my day. The paper organizer became a thing of the past as its digital counterpart took over.
When I shuttered my consultancy a few years back, the daily organizer routine fell by the wayside. It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part that led to this, it simply evolved through the different nature of my work. I wasn’t juggling as many different projects, and I was not working with so many different companies and colleagues. I guess making an effort to keep every aspect of the work day organized didn’t feel critical, and it’s surprising how easy it was to fall out of the good habits developed over years. The daily organizer, paper and digital, fell by the side of the road and was history.
A new system for handling the errata of the work day evolved, and I thought it was serving me pretty well. I migrated a lot of the organizational tools to the cloud and cobbled a system together using computers and smartphones to handle it. While this method has worked, it has never become second nature to me like my earlier methods. I was occasionally missing something I shouldn’t have missed, simply because having the information available and actually checking it were two different things.
My email and calendar system are in Google Apps, due to the setup at GigaOM. This works well, as I can access the information easily from smartphones and computers with ease. I spend most of the day in the web browser when sitting in front of a computer, and this cloud-based system works well for that.
Task management is another matter, unfortunately. I have experimented with different tools and methods to handle tasks, many of them chronicled in this column over the past two years. I eventually settled on Remember the Milk, a cloud service that has worked OK. I was able to integrate it into my Gmail setup in the browser, and use standalone apps on different smartphones to work with my task list each day. I thought it was working well, but still found that occasionally something fell through the cracks as I would forget to update RTM, or miss checking it regularly. This has been bothering me for a while, and this past week I did something about it.
I gave a lot of thought comparing my past organizer methods with my current work flow. It struck me that the primary difference in these two systems was how the organizer, paper or digital, was always with me and thus easy to develop the habit to regularly refer to it. Building a good system to keep track of my life was one thing, but habitually referring to it so nothing got missed quite another.
I realized that my problem was related to the tools I was using. I had my organizational utilities scattered over multiple devices, and that impeded with developing proper habits to oversee my information. I was keeping track of things fine while sitting in front of my computer, as I had all the tools integrated into my workflow in the browser. Where it was falling down was when I stepped away from the computer. I wasn’t regularly checking on things using the smartphone (or other mobile device). I was falling victim to the fact that my different tools were scattered around different devices, and that led to the “out of sight, out of mind” problem.
Thinking on this situation, it hit me why the paper organizer of old was such a good tool for many. Everything was in that one tool, so developing proper habits to interact with the information was easy to do. Now I left the paper world a long time ago, and had no desire to enter it again. What to do?
Paying attention to the way I work, I realized an important fact. Since getting the iPad, it is almost always within reach everywhere I might be in the house. Plus it is easy to carry around given its form, and I often bring it with me when I head out for short outings. In that regard it is much like that organizer of old in that it is always at hand. I thought about that for a while, and worked on a system using the iPad that can handle my work day in a manner that fits my current work methods.
I started using the calendar app on the iPad in earnest, and found it does a good job when actually used regularly. The ability to “zoom out” of my schedule and see what’s looming in the future makes it a good tool for the way I work. I sync the calendar to multiple Google calendars, and once I made an effort to use the tool regularly as I should I found things dropping into place.
The Remember the Milk task management was falling short on the iPad, as there is no native app for it yet. I was using the iPhone app on the iPad, and while it worked it wasn’t taking advantage of the larger screen of the slate. I looked around and got a free Toodledo account, which is similar in function to RTM but with one important difference — there’s an iPad app for that. Once I had the Toodledo system working as I preferred, I started looking around for a task management app on the iPad that let me interact with my task list as I needed. The Toodledo app is good, but it’s limited in how I can display the task list to focus on the stuff I need to concentrate on at any given time.
I found ToDo for the iPad, and the clincher was it syncs with Toodledo. I didn’t have to build yet another task management system, I just input my Toodledo account information and in seconds ToDo had all of my tasks properly incorporated. The graphical presentation of ToDo is strangely comforting given my objective of getting back to my organizer roots, as it presents the task list in a pseudo binder. The program gives me complete control over my task list and how it is displayed, and it has made a positive impact in my daily routine.
My new system is working well because I have all of the tools and information in one place, the iPad. This made it easy to develop the proper habits to get on top of my work day. The iPad is not the only solution to do this by any means, but it’s always at hand and presents a lot of information at once to provide a decent picture into my day. It has become a digital organizer like that old paper variety, and it’s working well for me.
I reviewed iThoughts HD this week, and since then it has become an integral part of this new system. I have used mind mapping for years, mostly as a graphical outliner for complex writing projects but also a a project management system. I prefer graphical maps for such uses, and iThoughts has allowed me to pick up where I left off years ago. This is working because I have developed the habit of using the iPad as the organizer of my important information. Since it’s always at hand, I find it natural to make a mind map when a new project is just a glimmer of thought. With this simple tool that idea becomes a real project in just a few minutes.
On the web
You have probably seen the video of the 13 year-old Greyson Chance performing a Lady Gaga song at a festival. When I first ran across the video early in the week, his performance hadn’t been picked up yet and I knew it was going to be big. Real talent is hard to hide, and this kid has it already. Notice how the crowd of kids is silent during his performance, the sure sign of shock at how good this kid is.
e-Book of the week
This week I read a collection of short stories by Stacey Cochran, The Kiribati Test. The stories were entertaining, and while not the best I’ve read worth the penny Amazon charged me for the Kindle version. Yes, Amazon was selling this book for a penny, and I found it on the best sellers list. It’s not there now, so I recommend you check that list frequently. I’ve picked up lots of free and cheap books this way.
Wrap up
That’s my week, I hope you get something useful in sharing it. I’ll be back with the next installment next week. Take care.
Interesting to hear your thoughts on Chrome – my experiences mirror yours exactly. I love it for its speed, and it’s gotten more than enough stable (I use it on Windows and two Linux distros). But I also had problems with Google’s services – not only Google Reader, but also Gmail, which is much more annoying. I’d have to reload once or twice, but still. I found out on the internet that there seems to be a bug in the way Chrome handles SSL 3.0 (though off-hand, this might be Linux specific). Anyhow, try un-checking SSL 3.0 and use SSL 2.0 instead.
As for your thoughts on streamlining the process we use to keep ourselves organised, paper really does have it’s merits. Not long ago, I again tried using a medium-sized spiral notebook, but I found the ‘search’ function horrible :) Anyhow, I’m using my iPod Touch for taking notes (I use the regular Notes app for most things, adding in Evernote every now and then). I’ve found a brilliant website for to-do lists – TeuxDeux.com (I’m still waiting for them to come out with an iPhone app). The most important thing about a calendar is something you mention – the ability to sync with Google Calendar, so far, I’ve found the included calendar app on the Touch good enough.
JK, I was having a problem with Google Mail a few weeks ago, and it turned out that an extension I was trying out was the cause (or rather, the site and the extension didn’t play well together, don’t know which was the real problem, but I can’t work without GMail, so the extension went…)
Hi James
Great job for many years now !!!
I also use Todo, plus a calendar called Pocket Informant (PI).
The calendar also syncs with Toodledo and it is good to be able to see both dates and todos in the same app. Even if Todo is mainly used to organize and input the projects and tasks.
PI will soon be released on ipad and you should give it a try.
I also read your excellent review about Ithoughts HD.
Love it too !
I use another one in complement, called Instaviz, very useful and intuitive.
(I tried almost every mindmap app on the iphone)
Keep going and all the best for you and yours.
Olivier
Thanks. As a long-time Pocket Informant user on phones, I am anxiously awaiting their iPad version. I can only imagine the cool things Alex will do with that big touch screen.
James,
I’m loving my iPad and am also looking for a good task manager. Thanks for your thoughts on these two apps. One question: Why do you need both? I’m confused, I guess, about what each does.
I don’t need both. I got the Toodledo app and found it lacking so I then got ToDo.
Hi, recommending for mindmaps online software called mindmeister.com. They already have iphone app and this software also sending reminders to your email.
Like James (and many others), I have tried many task management approaches and tools. I gave OmniFocus a try when OmniGroup released an iPhone/Touch app because it allowed me to work with tasks on my Mac, as well as regularly check things on the device I always had with me. That I can sync my home Mac, office Mac, and iPhone (now iPod Touch since switching to a Nokia e71) is really helpful. No matter where I am, I can work with my tasks, which helps me look at them more often.
Appreciate the insight on managing task lists as I am considering moving my personal tasks to the cloud…away from my work tasks in Outlook. Would you say that RTM and Toodledo are equally good as online services with the apps available for Toodledo being the tie breaker?
They are very similar. I do find the online presentation for ToodleDo is easier for me to work with than that of RTM.
Great post. It helped to crystalize my thinking. I had been working with an Ipaq 110 for calendar, tasks, contacts & notes. I synchronized to Outlook and it was working well. Laptop that I synced to broke, so tried different approaches so as not to have to reinstall. I tried Remember the Milk for tasks and Google calendar for contacts. Also used small notebook for entering tasks when out and about. But always felt not fully informed. Was moving back to the Ipaq, but concerned that if I lost it, I lost all my data (problem with paper so it was the reason I was trying to work “in the cloud”). After reading your post, it clarified my struggle, so yesterday went through the process of syncing Outlook to my Ipaq and I’m back in business! It was as painful as I had envisioned. I had hoped I could work in the cloud, but as you experienced, I needed something that was always available – even though I was trying to work with it on a netbook.
James, Good post, and for me returns us to the question of how we interact and make the best of our technology, rather than letting it dictate to us.
It’s interesting that you identified your habits and behaviour:
I gave a lot of thought comparing my past organizer methods with my current work flow. It struck me that the primary difference in these two systems was how the organizer, paper or digital, was always with me and thus easy to develop the habit to regularly refer to it…….habitually referring to it so nothing got missed quite another.
I realized that my problem was related to the tools I was using……I was falling victim to the fact that my different tools were scattered around different devices, and that led to the “out of sight, out of mind” problem.
Paying attention to the way I work, I realized an important fact. Since getting the iPad, it is almost always within reach everywhere I might be in the house.
My concern however is that your use of multiple 3rd party tools for specific tasks/services may be more of the problem rather than the use of multiple hardware devices. In my experience designing and working with “cloud based” services, the client device should be inobtrusive and immaterial. So my epxerience should not alter significantly if I switch from desktop to netbook, to smartphone etc. Thus, I personally shy away from signing up to a 3rd party service such as RTM, Toodle etc. When I have a need, I evaluate them, and if I feel they try to enforce additional work rules/practices on me then they are discounted. So as I’ve migrated from the paper Filofax, to Palm Vx to iPhone, I’ve tried to keep things simple and be aware of the “out of sight, out of mind issue”. So I’ve developed my own system which has ditched the old Yahoo Sync/Outlook set up to something akin to GTD in GMail. As email drives everything I do, these are managed accordingly and effectively by simplified labels – “Action” etc. If a task is time oriented then I simply create a Calendar item. Tasks now are simply managed by flexible lists. These can originate from the iPhone notes app, or an email draft. Temp notes get synced to email drafts. More permanent or more important synced to email actions or to Google Docs if the note is an idea rather than a task. Everything I see on my desktop/netbook I can see on my iPhone and I don’t have any 3rd party services such as RTM or Google Tasks getting in the way, and my info is not “out of sight” due to some technical integration system, i.e. RTM is not compatible with this device etc etc.
So in a sense I’ve gone full circle back to the way I worked with paper. That’s creating and using simple lists. When something is done, it’s crossed out or now simply deleted.