I’ve been procrastinating on writing this post for years. Partly it was because my post on how to use Evernote to implement Getting Things Done is by far the most popular post in this blog’s history. Partly it was because Evernote gave me a Pro account to review and I felt that one negative review was enough for a while. Then after I had procrastinated for a while, I wasn’t sure if my criticisms were still valid: maybe the platform had been improved since then?

So I just reinstalled Evernote and NOPE.

Evernote’s clients follow a strict hierarchy: desktop client > web client > mobile client. There are things you can do on the higher level client that simply cannot be done on the lower clients. I’ve noticed this is particularly common with platforms where the primary client is on OS/X. That follows Jakob Nielsen’s recommendations for mobile app design, but I am an early cloud adopter: my phone is my primary user interface and I have no interest in downloading stand-alone clients.

I ended up dropping Evernote for Getting Things Done in favour of using email for one simple reason: phone developers put a lot of effort into making sure email synchronization works right. On my old iPhone, Evernote synchronization was very unreliable. Evernote for Android has background synchronization, which should approach the reliability of email push synchronization, but you need to have a Pro account to sync folders for offline reading (the star feature in the old version of Evernote appeared to sync things for offline reading but it didn’t).

Evernote is designed as a web clipping and note authoring service – it does those tasks pretty well. But it is advertised as a kitchen sink platform, and some of those uses are simply hacks. A vivid memory was when a version of Evernote came out that was unable to synchronize notes with no content – in my Getting Things Done implementation all the notes had no content! It made it clear to me that I was using the app outside its intended use cases.

I just checked out Joel on Software again after a long hiatus during which I cared not for accessible talk of software development best practices. Fog Creek has a new product, available for free, called Trello.

It’s essentially a simple way of storing lists of todo lists online, working with them, assigning them to people, and tracking completion. I’m using it right now to manage my own personal development/art projects and it’s pretty sweet.

It’s true what they say about recording todos being relaxing. I’ve just written down a plot sketch for a story, blocked out two screenplay outlines I might combine, added two lists for tracking some sales leads, planned post production for a video I’m working on, planned production on another, blocked out two software ideas in my head, and made a quick todo list for learning more about Kinect hacking.

I wasn’t fully aware of all of it until I put it all into Trello. At some level all of that was/is living in my head causing me “argh, I should really be…” stress. Now it’s all online, and prioritized, into nested lists. Now I can choose what to do and not do and use The Now Habit to crunch through some of it.

All this took maybe 1/2 hour — maybe less. inb4 “you should go do things instead of organizing things to do and then blogging it.” Somehow Trello’s also made me confident enough to stop using email for todos and get to inbox zero.

Trello is designed for teams but scales down to a singleton really well, and you can log in with your Google account (single sign-on is finally happening peeps).

No word yet on the ultimate software design test: is it better than a piece of paper? It’s certainly more fun and just as quick, which is a good start — it’s a program you can think in, which is rare.

And there’s also a mobile app.

In response to my insanely popular (Google top 10) post on how to use Evernote to Get Things Done, the people at Evernote kindly gave me a Pro license for a year so I could test out Evernote as a to-read list. Gettings Things Done says that when you come across something you’d like to read and you’re not in a reading context, you shouldn’t just leave it open in a browser tab or whatever. Instead, you should have a central place where you can put to-read items, that you can dig into whenever you find yourself with some spare time. My to-read items consist of both HTML and PDF, so I’d need Evernote Pro to hold the bulky PDFs.

Owning an iPhone means that you can do something productive – or at least distracting – when you find yourself with time to kill out in the world. My plan was to populate Evernote with the clipping bookmarklet and then use the iPhone app to burn through the stack.

Unfortunately, the iPhone app is designed almost exclusively for inputting notes, not reading notes:

• On my 3G the app is slow and takes a long time to load, so you can’t use small slices of time. Even worse, it crashes all the time.
• Every time you close and reopen the app (like when you get a txt), it goes back to the new note screen – it takes a number of clicks to get back to the note you were reading.
• It doesn’t save your place in notes, which is catastrophic for long PDFs.
• The PDF viewing interface sucks. 3rd-party PDF viewers are never as good as iBooks, but Evernote particularly sucks. And there’s no “open in Safari” button, never mind a “save to iBooks” button for when you have a PDF that needs the full-strength viewer.

Some of these issues could be solved if I had an iPhone capable of multitasking. If I had iTunes on my desktop, maybe I’d just put all my PDFs in iBooks. But Evernote is definitely not designed with the to-read use case in mind and it fails at it.

I’ve switched to keeping my to-read list in Instapaper: I’ll review it once I’ve had some more experience. Thank you to Evernote for being confident enough in their product to allow me to evaluate it.

Today I had a tough conversation with a professor. He said that I was talented, and that my procrastination problems made him feel sad for me.

Thanks to Jared this blog has a minor reputation in the productivity sphere. His post on GTD with Evernote is an MPF classic. But GTD doesn’t work for me. It’s too high-level. It presupposes a level of organization utterly foreign to me. It assumes the answer to my productivity problems is to make my completely-nonexistent system more efficient.

What do you do if you can’t even start? What if you’re not just disorganized, but anti-organized? What if productivity setups you come into contract with implode?

Despite Merlin’s disdain for the Lifehacker crowd (“joining a Facebook group about creative productivity is like buying a chair about jogging“), Lifehacker’s shotgun-survey method of productivity tools dredged up a winning suggestion: The Now Habit.

The thesis of The Now Habit is that procrastination is not a problem, it’s a symptom. The problem is anxiety, which is treatable. Entrenched procrastination, divorced from the underlying condition, is not treatable. It’s the only productivity book I’ve read which feels like it addresses problems I actually have instead of ones I’d like to. If you feel like “schedule time to do your weekly review” is a vaguely humorous existential joke the book might interest you.

Essentially The Now Habit, a very quick read, boils down to a powerful change in point of view: that workaholism makes workaholism necessary (entrenched procrastinators can easily be end-of-cycle workaholics), that procrastination is incurable because it’s not the problem, and that creating, identifying, and defending lots of downtime is an essential productivity skill. It moves procrastination away from Puritan morality (“work harder”) and towards positive psychology (“think different”).

If Getting Things Done seems like too much work then check out The Now Habit. First, the systems are compatible. Second, TNH requires very little effort, most of it fun: plan your time off before you plan your work; orient your thinking towards the well-deserved break and away from dreading the task; work in little chunks and follow them with outsized rewards.

FWIW I’m having an absolute ball in Ontario. Toronto is awesome. Ottawa is great. Gatineau is sweet*. Stratford is beautiful. My program is fun, and London is reasonable**.

The London Arts Council is apparently handing out free money, I just emailed the Ministry of Culture and got to the executive assistant to the Deputy Minister, and the archivists I’m working with for my mental health film are diligent, helpful, and friendly.

In short: it feels like the kind of place a Canadian can both have fun and get things DONE. There’s no, “I’m sorry, Toronto is closed for the day. Please call back during business hours,” like you always get in BC.

But, unfortunately, a tsunami*** of microconservatives is sweeping my political beaches (which are all topless here). Via Ben-the-Jared-of-Toronto, Bob Ford got elected mayor, and another Tea-Party-esque lunatic, Joe Fontana, got into the London mayoral suite.

Désolé! Quick, liberals: file your grant applications and take your public transportation now. They’re coming for all of it!****

This is all probably my fault. I sat out the election because I didn’t understand the issues, and all of the candidates I would have voted against won. My bad.*****

* Whoops, that’s Quebec — yeah, guys: I’VE BEEN TO QUEBEC NOW!!!
** j/k, London is pretty good too.
*** Too soon?
**** For reals. Bob Ford will probably privatize the TTC.
***** Not that I had any say in the Bob Ford fiasco. That’s on you, Tdot. Here he is on bike lanes:

I am notoriously disorganized.

One morning when Ryley and Jared came over to pick me up for a camping trip we’d been talking about for weeks I was completely unprepared. I shoved some clothes in my backpack and walked out, completely unprepared for the weather we encountered.

I didn’t pack for my last European vacation until midnight the day before our early morning flight. I finished just in time.

I just moved to London and finished packing, again, moments before my ride to the airport showed up. I went over the allowable weight at baggage check and ended up forgetting some important cables, costing me a couple of decabux.

My todo lists, historically, go unreviewed. I find them almost useless as daily carryovers build up causing anxiety and eventually I just give up and deal with high-priority emergencies.

But no more. I have too much going on. Packing luggage is one thing, but too many sheer tasks go into getting even small film projects done. Something as simple as renting equipment requires a shuttle-launch-style checklist: batteries, lights, tripods, damage, settings, cables, mics, screens, gels, monitors, communication gear, etc. All backed up by potentially hefty financial penalties.

Already I’ve learned: if you don’t check it, plan for it to fail.

I am also poor, so the iPhone is out. I walked into Rogers and got their dirt-cheapest student phone, the Nokia Surge 6790, and it’s been effing amazing. First, let me say that this is my first new phone in ages and I’m surprised at how the state of the norm has advanced.

It’s a slide phone which I haven’t had before. It’s candybar-style, but with a screen (that rotates digitally) which slides back to reveal a full, physical keyboard. I got an unlimited texting program and have been greatly enjoying the lack of T9 and ease of double-thumbed texting. I’ve been tweeting like crazy from it.

It plays MP3s, with MP3 ringtones. I’ve loaded it up with rap and Zevon and I can set per-contact ringtone-songs: East Coast rappers for my Ontariommies and West Coast gangsta shxt for those back home. It has a speaker that blasts tunes about as well as my laptop and rocks hands-free calls.

The phone has a 2MP camera that shoots video with some fun on-camera photo editing options (borders, color inversion, different toning options, some more advanced stuff). I have an SLR and shoot in HD-or-better for school, but this is good for messing around and making stylish photos of people to go with their contacts.

I have timers set on it to go to a slideshow of my photos after ten seconds of inactivity and then go into powersaver and lock the keypad after one minute. Those seem to be fun — I like putting the phone on a desk, catching a couple of good pics, and then having it shut down.

Best, I just figured out my first-ever use of Bluetooth: I can wirelessly sync it with my Mac through iSync, and transfer files (music, photos). I always have my MacBook with me (paper notes are 90s-style) so: assignments and class and shooting schedules go into iCal, phone pulls them down and pings me when I have to go do something.

I’m very close to my ideal of being bossed around by a device I find fun, I trust, and that I control to my satisfaction. An electronic friend I can chat with, who’s always helpfully on top of my schedule: *ping* time for Editing, *ping* time to return the camera to avoid fines, *ping* time for yoga, *ping* take your meds!

It’s one downfall is that, insanely, it takes a 2.5mm headphone jack (chances are that what you think of as a “headphone jack” is the 3.5mm kind). Out of the five or so sets of phones I have around here it’s only compatible with those with which it shipped. Longer-term this means I need a 2.5mm -> 3.5mm adapter, as I don’t want to carry multiple sets of phones around (need good over-the-ear ones for school).

All-in I’m pretty happy with my new little friend. I think he cost just over $30 with a three-year contract. Oh, and it came with a game called Marble Cannon — Zuma meets Breakout meets pinball — and I’m fully addicted.

I just finished a very promising sales call. Roughly:

Me: So send me a design brief and I’ll fire you off a quote.
Contact: Oh, we uh, don’t have one of those yet…
Me: Oh, well, let’s talk online and I’ll help you guys figure out what you want.

My goal in this interaction is to get them excited (possibly with prototypes) to the point where they say, “look, could you just do it? We want it ASAP and you already know what we’re looking for.”

Fingers crossed — here’s to tracking the work I do “for free” as a tax deduction.

On a more basic HOWTO level, when I make a business call I like to write the person’s name, number, and company at the top of a piece of paper, sketch out some answers to their likely questions, then take notes on what they’re saying during the conversation. The sheet goes in my permanent records when I’m done.

I have a pretty good case of telephone anxiety and a ridiculous amount of planning helps. I find having The Beatles’ Abbey Road medley playing quietly helps too.

Re: Making calls — Tony Robbins sez you should just plan to make one call, an easy one, then call that a success for the day. In the worst cases I send a brief spurt of short personal emails and then try to slip the business communication in while I’m on a roll. Once you see that first call go well you’ll be motivated to keep going — the first one is the problem.

I use the same basic idea, combined with some productivity ideas from my homies in the biz and in grad school, to get the coding ball rolling. Another trick there is to not stress about slacking — just acknowledge it and start with the smallest doable next-task to get the ball rolling again (mixing Robbins, GTD, and a little Buddhist meditation).

Generally I try to organize my task list by “closest time to most money”, which is a finnicky metric you have to figure out for yourself.

Books on writing praxis suggest an old-fashioned way of bookmarking things for future reference. Basically: boxes.

When mystery writers come across interesting gyrations of the news, stories that contain an inherent “what if”, they file them away. When Woody Allen wrote humor something would pop into his head and he’d dash it down on whatever came to hand and chuck it in a box. Recording ideas as-they-occur is key.

“Save it and put it in a box” is a common theme. Eventually the clippings and jokes generate their own internal heat, mulch down, and then one day you sift through and find a story idea glistening in the peat.

Typically I’m too disorganized to go through these things once I’ve collected them. I’ve never been good at the “review” stage of pack rat projects, which is why GTD doesn’t work for me. But now I’ve found something that works.

A few months ago I saw this video of Adam Savage’s (MythBusters) obsessive Model Dodo/Maltese Falcon project:

Notice his rapid-fire clicking through the slides, which seems to work for him. Notice his “CREATIVE PROJECTS” folder, which replicates the “save it in a shoebox” system digitally. Apparently he’s done it on a massive, automated scale. I imagine he has it rigged up to automatically save pix off the nets matching keyword-rules he enters in some byzantine RSS image-grabber. I’m not that teched out, I build my card houses low to the ground.

I’m happy with drag-n-drop — when I see something neat I drop into the trusty old Finder something I’ve dragged from Fox or ‘Fari. I don’t use the bookmarks bar because “out of sight, out of mind” is a self-truth I’ve become comfortable with. I take salad drawers out of fridges and I don’t “bookmark this page”, both to avoid rot. Putting the virtual shoe boxes visibly into the file system keeps me in constant contact with them. I keep my tomatoes on the shelf.

One of my box stories is the recent murder of William Sparkman. My fantastically elaborated narrative is this (the investigation is ongoing and it might be hyped out of proportion; I’m just waiting out the truth before adding iambs):

Bill Sparkman headed into the Deep South as a US Census worker, into the Kentucky backwoods, rural Clay County, a place whose largest exports are moonshine, marijuana, and meth.

One sweltering afternoon he came upon a group of Southern Gothic inbrednecks out of Gummo or Deliverance picking banjo out on the stoop of their kudzu-choked clapboard.

“Hi there fellas, I’m from the Federal Government.”

Visions of a Black President and Ruby Ridge course through moonshine-addled brains tweaking on the latest batch of Cousin Jimbo’s crystal.

“What an ugly thing to come out of such a pretty mouth.”

When Billy didn’t show up at work for two days a search was organized. They found him just outside a cemetery in a remote part of Daniel Boone National Forest, bound to a tree by his neck. Not hung, but tied so tightly he’d asphyxiated, gagged, with the word “FED” carved into his chest.

There are no suspects.

It’s very fashionable right now to identify your values and live according to your values. Promoting “good values” is what the religious right says they’re doing. Corporations are writing values instead of mission statements (for example, the BC Public Service). It’s big in self-help literature from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (see habit #2: “begin with the end in mind”). Values are a major research focus in positive psychology.

I’m interested in identifying my values for three reasons:

• To better understand why values are fashionable and what the effects of that are
• I’ve read that talking about your values is a good way to create rapport with people, which is something I’m working on.
• Measuring your actions against your values is a way to determine if you live with grace. However, David Allen observes in Getting Things Done that living according to your values usually creates extra work: “it raises the bar of our standards, making us notice that much more that needs changing”.

I’ve been running a GTD system in my personal life for a few months now. Little things used to just slip through the cracks and then I’d feel guilty about forgetting about them. I used to feel bad doing frivolous activities because I had a vague sense that there was something else I should be doing. It feels great to finish things and see my task list shrink.

GTD is supposed to make you always aware of “what you’re not doing” so that you can choose not to do things without the sinking feeling that you’re forgetting something. One of the biggest problems in my life right now is that when I know everything I could be doing, I try to do as much of it as possible:

• I schedule outings to hit a bunch of non-@home tasks
• When I get home I try to crank through as many @homes as I can
• I resent things that distract me from cranking through tasks like people who always want to chat online
• When my task list starts to build up, I cancel frivolous activities to spend more time completing tasks
• I don’t get to bed on time

I feel like my life is focused on fighting entropy. Instead of having fun and living with the consequences later, I’m doing Right Action more often. But is it better to be responsible or become comfortable with being irresponsible?