Repeating tasks are a core feature of any GTD type system. There are some tasks that repeat on a regular basis – things like taking out the garbage, paying taxes, backing up your computer. Some of these tasks are done daily, some weekly, some monthly, and some quarterly. Being able to schedule a repeating task to remind you to do these things is absolutely critical to keeping you sane, and making sure everything gets done.

Back when I used Things 1, and now that I use OmniFocus2, repeating tasks are a staple of my system. I don’t want to have to remember anything. I want my system to remind me to do the things that I need to do. That is pretty much the entire point, after all.

Repeating Task Overkill

There comes a point, however, when your entire daily task list is populated by repeating tasks. You wake up in the morning and look at your OmniFocus Due list, and every single task is of the repeating variety. This is a trap!

When all of your tasks are repeating, that means you are just treading water. You aren’t moving forward on any of your projects. During your super busiest3 times, this is probably fine. But normal times? It’s a horrible, horrible trap. You’ll be checking off boxes left and right, thinking that you’re making progress. Instead, you’re going nowhere in a big hurry.

Always make sure you are moving forward

Look at your Due list for today. If it’s entirely, or nearly full of repeating tasks, it’s time for a Super Review. Go through each and every one of your repeating tasks to make sure they are necessary. If you can repeat them at a slower rate, do it. Maybe you don’t need to check your PO box every week, when ever two weeks will do just fine. You get the idea.

The more repeating tasks you can knock off your list permanently, the more work you can actually get done. Due lists should just be your first stop, not your only stop.

Next Actions

Build a Next Actions perspective, if you haven’t already. This is where you should aim to spend more time, as it will actually move you through projects. This is the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. This is how I set up my Next Actions list:

Basically it shows the next available task of every active project I have. I don’t have to look at things that I can’t do, which means less clutter. When you’re checking off tasks from this perspective, you know you’re really making progress.

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

A look into the tools I use for writing, reading, and reference.

Writing:

I write on three different devices – my iMac, my iPhone 4, and my iPad 2. One of my core needs is that anything I write must be instantly accessible and editable on any of these three devices. This is non-negotiable. It’s the biggest reason I nearly never write with paper and pen.

iMac writing tools

nvALT gets the nod here. Not only is it simple and easy to use, it’s ridiculously powerful. Every single one of my notes and articles is visible, editable, and most importantly, searchable. I simply type in the search box and the results are instantly pared down until I find what I’m looking for. Even better, nvALT has Markdown support built in. Simply hit CMD+CTRL+P to view or hide a Markdown instant preview. Neato.

I have nvALT set to sync with Simplenote and Dropbox, in the form of plain text files. This is for both convenience and security. The more places my data lives, the less likely it will disappear into the night. I am paranoid of losing data, and go to fairly obsessive means to prevent data loss. That’s a topic for another day, though.

iPhone writing tools

Contrary to my single-app preference on OS X, I spend time in two writing apps on the iPhone. First, and most used, is Simplenote. I love Simplenote for its simplicity. There aren’t pages of preferences to fiddle with. There are just your notes, synced effortlessly with nvALT.

App number two is Nebulous Notes. This is an unpolished app, at least compared with Simplenote. However, it has the wonderful ability to create macros, which I wrote about in my review. When I’m writing any significant amount of Markdown, Nebulous Notes is where I spend my time.

iPad writing tools

If you guessed that they were the same as my iPhone apps, you would be right. Even though it keeps my Twitter buddy knowsbestt up at night, I haven’t used iA Writer. One day I’ll rectify this, just so he will talk to me again.

Other iOS Notes

Occasionally, I’ll hop into Elements instead of Simplenote or Nebulous Notes. I have no good reason for this, other than it’s pretty. Well that, and it has a Markdown preview button right there on the screen. I don’t like to venture into Elements often, because I’ll catch myself coming down with the Idiot Staring at a Blank Screen Syndrome.

This is a visualization of my how my writing is synced. As you can probably tell, there is one flaw in the system. If I edit an app using Nebulous Notes or Elements, the note is synced immediately to Dropbox. However, it is not synced to Simplenote. This is a problem if I’d like to edit that note in Simplenote later.

The common ground is nvALT. The only solution here is to leave my Mac running with nvALT open. That way any changes made to one of the Dropbox files are reflected in Simplenote, and vice versa.

Textexpander

Does Textexpander deserve its own header? Unquestionably. I have many dozens of snippets in Textexpander that save me so much typing it’s ridiculous. If I type a particular phrase / line of code / whatever more than twice, I make a new snippet. These snippets sync across my iOS devices, so I never have to worry about maintaining separate snippet databases. I don’t care if you have any of the apps listed here except for this one. Get Textexpander. Go ahead and get it now; I’ll wait.

Reading

I use two apps to read, and both are indispensable.

Reeder

Reeder handles all my RSS feeds. I have Reeder for OS X, iPad, and iPhone. The iPhone app sees the most use by far, because I have it with me all the time. When I find something interesting that I don’t have time to read right away, I send the article to Instapaper. Quick, easy, and ready for me when I actually have time.

Instapaper

Oh, Instapaper. I send articles to Instapaper from Reeder, Twitter, and random browsing. Occasionally I clear my queue, but not very often. Instapaper won’t pester you with red badges, though. It doesn’t care if you have three articles to read or three hundred. It will keep your articles safe until you have time to get to them, whenever that may be.

I spend more time in Instapaper on my iPhone, though it’s certainly far more enjoyable on my iPad. The bigger screen makes it an absolute joy.

Reference

For long-term reference I use two systems. All text-based reference material lives in my Simplenote / Dropbox text system. Anything non-text based (mainly PDF) lives in Evernote. I have tried Yojimbo, since it has so many fans, and I just don’t get the attraction. It’s a perfectly nice app, to be sure… but having access to my reference database from any computer, including my iOS devices, makes Evernote the clear choice for me.

That about covers it. I don’t like to use tons of apps that overlap in functionality. My setup is a bit more complicated than I’d really like, but it works well for me now.

Writing, Reading, and Reference is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

I don’t jump on the bandwagon of the latest and greatest text editor. I used Notational Velocity for the longest time, until I finally 1 switched to the excellent nvALT for its Markdown support. Different applications sucha s iA Writer and Byword have been getting press for years, and I let them pass me by.

My Problem

My problem with writing is that I don’t write enough. I let myself get distracted by all sorts of nonsense. These problems are mine, and they can’t be fixed with a shiny new app, no matter how magical or distraction-free it is.

I’ve written before about my most productive writing setup. It is one where I turn off the Mac, and grab my iPad and bluetooth keyboard. I set it up on a desk with nothing else… no Mac. No iPhone. Just my fingers and the words they make appear on the screen. This hasn’t changed, and I don’t expect it to.

By its very nature, the iPad is designed for writing. You may not think so at first, but you have to get creative. One app at a time2 forces you to focus. It forces you to make words appear on the screen. Otherwise you’re just an idiot staring at a blank screen. No one wants to be that guy. I know I don’t.

An idiot and a blank screen is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Though I try to keep my life as simple as reasonably possible, life happens. Often it’s my day job that gets insanely busy to the point where I just don’t know what to do next. I can be working on dozens of projects at once, each seemingly more important than the next. Spending time on one project means not spending time on another, which is VERY VERY BAD.

Unlike modern Intel CPU’s, I’m not multi-core OR multi-threaded. I can only do one thing at a time, no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise. I know this, yet I still fight it. Constantly.

Too many projects. Too many deadlines smashed together. Too much work to do, not enough time. These are issues we all face, and you’d think we’d have it all figured out by now.

Nothing happens in the midst of chaos

When you’re busy trying to make progress on your sixteen highest priority projects, guess what? You’re going nowhere in a big hurry. In fact, I often find myself literally doing nothing in the middle of these times. Task after task gets piled on, and it gets to the point where I just stop doing them all. Instead, I sit and stare into space, my brain hurting.

Five minutes of doing absolutely nothing seems like a complete waste when you have so much to do. And it is. But it’s also about the best thing you can do. Your brain needs to rest a bit, especially when you work it like a dog.

After five minutes of a vacant stare, everything starts to clear up for me. I suddenly know what I should be working on, and I accept the fact that everything else will be waiting for a bit. Before I know it, I’m hard at work, and ticking boxes off in OmniFocus faster than they are being added back.

Turning Chaos into Order is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Markdown is not new. It’s nearly seven years old at this point, which makes it about one hundred and fifty Internet Years old. AOL was probably still relevant when Markdown was first created, which tells you something. [1]

I’ve resisted even trying Markdown until the past week or so. It wasn’t difficult or complicated, of course. By its very nature, Markdown is designed to be simple. Simple to use, simple to read, simple to edit. So, after much unnecessary procrastination, I have been writing almost exclusively in Markdown for a week now. Specifically, I’m using the MultiMarkdown variant. [2]

Learning to Edit

I’ve always hated editing. My writing process consists of random fragments of thought, followed by a short burst of putting things in some semblance of order, and then hitting publish. I hate editing. Or, I used to hate editing. Writing in Markdown keeps my work much cleaner and easier to read, which means it’s infinitely easier to edit. I won’t suddenly start churning out masterpieces of written word, but I am learning to edit. That’s a start.

Footnotes FTW

Footnotes are something that I’ve wanted to add to this site for ages. Due to sheer laziness, I’ve never gotten around to setting them up. Sure, there are plugins that handle footnotes with ease… but I install the fewest plugins that I can reasonably get away with. Less plugins means a faster loading site.[3] As much as I like footnotes, you don’t come here just to read them, do you?

New workflows will be created

For now, I’m writing in nvALT, which has a neat MultiMarkdown preview window. I can write until my fingers bleed, and then hit CMD+CTRL+P to see what my drivel looks like after conversion to HTML. If I’m satisfied, I can click View Source, press CMD+A, CMD+C, hop over to a WordPress window, press CMD+V to paste the contents into the editor.

So while the actually writing and editing is very simple, the process of getting the HTML to my site is not quite perfect. I’m sure there’s a great way to automate this process… perhaps I’ll finally need to look into Keyboard Maestro.[4]

Thoughts on Markdown is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

By default, both Windows and Android annoy the shit out of you. That is their default, out of the box state. When you buy a Windows computer, there are many things you must do to make it serviceable. When you buy an Android powered phone, you must go through a similar process.[1]

This is the wrong way to create happy users.

My first experience of using my shiny new, probably expensive device should not be one of uninstalling crapware or discovering task managers so my phone doesn’t freeze. Instead I should be able to do what I want.

Apple has more loyal customers because from the very first time you take your new gadget out of the box, it doesn’t annoy the shit out of you. Revolutionary, isn’t it?

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

In the next room sits a 24″, dual core, 4GB of RAM iMac. Two years ago it was a powerhouse, and it’s still pretty great today, all things considered. Yet I write this from my bedroom, on an iPad hooked up wirelessly to a bluetooth keyboard.

A huge hunk of powerful glass and metal sit, unused. Today, right now, for this task, it’s not the best tool. The distractions it offer are too many. Sure, it’s great for many, many things. For designing and coding websites, it is certainly the best tool. But for writing? Perhaps not.

The iPad can multitask these days, of course… but not in the same manner as a desktop computer. I can only see the app I’m working on at the moment, and nothing else. Since I’m using Simplenote in full screen mode… all I can see is the text that I’m writing.

No dock. No Safari. No Twitter. No Google Plus. No multitouch trackpad to make flicking through apps a breeze. Nothing. Just words on a screen.

Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. This isn’t meant to be profound… but if I didn’t step away from the desktop, these words wouldn’t exist at all. That’s enough reason for me to step away once in awhile.

Just some words is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Before you tacitly enter a long-term contract to subsidize the sedentary lifestyle of your inanimate dependents, question whether they’re really worth the cost. I think you know the answer.

Remember kids: just say no to storage units.

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Suburbs of stuff – Practically Efficient is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.

Wow. Google found a badass designer hiding amount all their brilliant engineers. The new Gmail look is gorgeous, and far better than any skin I’ve ever seen. Click on the Gear / Mail settings / Themes / Preview or Preview Dense. Done.

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

Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. Its the sorting of whats worth your time and whats not worth your time. Its saying, “I deem Keeping Up With The Kardashians a poor use of my time, and therefore, I choose not to watch it.” Its saying, “I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six times, so Im not going to read this one.”

No matter how badly you want to see, read, and do everything, it’s just not happening. You have to accept that. You must learn the art of culling.

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We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything : Monkey See is a post from: The Simple Llama - where you can learn to live a simple life today.