I will spend those hours with my family and whoever else happens to be physically in my house (maybe I’ll even let myself get bored). I’m doing this for a few reasons. First, I was becoming resentful of the people and things that were preventing me from working during that time. Those “people” happened to be my children and that “thing” was parenting. I ended up stressed about what I wasn’t doing.

So obvious. So important. So something I’m not good at putting into practice.

★ Permalink

A new rule: sacred time | 52 Tiger is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Alfred, the incredibly useful productivity utility from Running with Crayons, lets you create “Groups” for launching a bunch of apps and files all at once the Powerpack add-on is required. Add everything you want to a list, give it a keyword, and call it up whenever you want your Mac to do more of your work for you.

Seriously, is there anything Alfred can’t do?

★ Permalink

Alfred – Finer Things in Mac is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

I can see myself happily using Siri and Reminders for more of those one off reminders that always felt frivolous and out of place in my OmniFocus “Single Actions List”. Tasks like specific items I needed from the grocery store were horrible to manage in OmniFocus and I could not easily share them with my wife. Reminders app solves this problem with shared lists and does so with style and finesse, telling Siri to “add item XYZ to my Groceries list”.

Minus the Siri bit1, this is exactly how I see Reminders. Very simple, quick reminders that I only need access to on my iPhone. More specifically, I only use it for the geo-fence reminders. The current OmniFocus implementation of geo-fence reminders is clunky at best. Reminders keeps things very simple, which is great for light tasks.

★ Permalink

iOS 5 Reminders – Don Southard is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

I think the tie means, “I will be so subservient as an employee that I will do even totally senseless things just because you tell me to.” Another reason to avoid wearing a tie for a job interview is to show you’re not interested in employers that want such subservience.

Well, yea. This. Mr. Stallman has an interesting outlook on life. You may not agree with it all.1 This is perhaps the best writing I’ve ever read about ties. Ties are the most evil thing man has ever devised. Ladies, you just wouldn’t understand.

★ Permalink

Ties – Richard Stallman is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

This is a great update. Download it now.

Understatement of the year. I don’t even know what it costs these days. Buy it anyway.

★ Permalink

Instapaper 4.0 – Marco.org is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

It’s easy to know when to upgrade your computer because, for most people, it happens after 3-4 years when things start to slow down, hard drives fail and batteries lose the ability to hold a charge. Phones are even easier – tuck the old model in a drawer, purchase a new model, rinse, repeat every two years. But what about iPads?

This is new territory for all of us. The iPad¹ segment of the market is entirely new to us. We’ve figured out when to upgrade computers and phones, because we’ve been using them for years.

There is very little Apple can do to the iPad hardware to entice me to upgrade at this point. I skipped the iPad 1, and currently have an iPad 2. It’s blindingly fast, amazingly small, an has a ridiculous battery. A Retina style display could push me over the edge… but that’s probably about it. A hardware failure is the only other reason where I could imagine upgrading.

★ Permalink

When Do You Upgrade? – Curious Rat is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Real productivity is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

As one day melded miserably into another, something else began to fill the void. Life, I think it’s called. Freed from the tyranny of 24/7 availability, I found myself offering snatches of desultory conversation to my wife over breakfast. I had time to watch the goldfinches landing on our bird feeder; train journeys were spent looking out of the window and chit-chatting with fellow passengers (at least those not glued to their own BlackBerries).

Michael Simkins, on his 72 hours free of a smartphone. I use that term loosely, of course, since he’s a Blackberry user. Questionable technology choices aside, I think we could all benefit from a bit of time free from the phone. Though I can’t say I would handle the theft quite so gracefully as Mr. Simkins.

★ Permalink

To the man who stole my BlackBerry – thanks – Telegraph is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

In essence, it's come down to this: I found the iPad to be indispensable not because of what it does that my other devices can’t do, but for what it does that I don't want to do on my other devices.

Exactly.

★ Permalink

Oh, iPad – Nathaniel Mott is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Do you know that it’s supposed to be LaunchBar with a capital B, but Launchpad with a lowercase p? Me neither. Shawn Blanc put together a list of all the common miscapitilization1 that we encounter as nerds on the internet. More importantly, he made a TextExpander snippet group, so you never have to think about it again.

★ Permalink

Common Miscapitalizations — Shawn Blanc is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.