I’ll have more on my timeblocking adventures next week on The Sweet Setup, but I figured I’d tease this time-saving shortcut for timeblocking my weekdays.

Straight up, my weekday routine is very, well, routine. Most days are the same. (Which is totally fine of course — I’m having a blast doing what I do right now.)

This makes timeblocking each day sort of tedious. Recurring time blocks aren’t ideal, as they’ll result in blocks on holidays or long weekends. And having to add the same thing each day takes some time.

So I created a quick and easy shortcut to handle standard weekday routines.

In Shortcuts, I simply created a shortcut that adds five events to the current date’s calendar:

• Wake, prep, and arrive — For getting ready and driving to work. The time spent between this block and the next block is either visiting with colleagues, prepping my day at the office, or catching up on the morning news before the markets open.
• Deep work — My first productive streak of the day from 9:00AM to 11:30AM. I’ve always found these 2.5 hours to be the most productive time of my mornings, no matter how many times I’ve tried to start earlier or push it longer. The timeframe between deep work periods is most often used for lunch, but there are times where other errands float into this block or the previous deep work period leaks over.
• Deep work — My second productive streak of the day from 1:00PM to 4:00PM. This block is slightly longer, as I’ve historically noted my most productive time of each day is from 2:30PM to 4:00PM. This is my serious money-making time of the day. Always has been, for some reason. The first 1.5 hours of this block can be less productive as long as I crush it in the back half of the block.
• Family time and supper — For non-tax season days, this time is spent with family, eating supper (the most important family meal of each day), and fun family activities before the kids go down for the night.
• Free time — Usually this includes writing time, riding the bike, and cleaning up around the house. Cleaning up after a long day should be its own block. Seriously.

The result is a quick and easy way to add a generic weekday routine to my calendar. If the blocks require tweaking, it’s easy enough to change times in Fantastical. I also want to see if I can move my fitness routine to the timeframe before “Wake, prep, and arrive”. We’ll see — I hate working out in the morning.

And I don’t have a shortcut for weekend routines — at this point, each weekend day is so valuable, there’s no way I’m saddling it with a generic schedule.

Let’s go with it — I’m smitten with Glass, the new, subscription-based photography social network. (What else would I be smitten with?) The app is beautiful, simple, ad-free, and full of the most amazing photography I have seen in a long, long time.

I imagine this is because everyone has returned to their “Favourites” Lightroom or Photos album and scrolled to the photo with five stars for early sharing. (That’s what I did. Riomaggiore! What else?)

I’m not complaining one bit. Given how many photographs we all shoot these days, I bet there are more than a few five star photographs in everyone’s libraries. It’ll take some time to work through those.

Perhaps Glass’s design is the reason for why these photos stand out so well. Photos are huge and front and center for everyone to see. There are no words anywhere. No likes, no comments, no hearts or faves. Just photos. You can slide a photo to the right to reveal the photographer’s caption, or you can slide the photo to the left to report a photo.

I get why Glass doesn’t have likes. It really forces you to hone in on a thoughtful comment. But man — sometimes I just want to tell someone I enjoyed their artistry without having to articulate some sort of poem. For those times, I’ve found leaving a heart emoji has worked. I hope that doesn’t insult anyone.

Glass is subscription-based. You’re either going to love that or you’re going to hate it. Subscriptions are a death by a thousand cuts and it takes every bone in my body not to subscribe to all the apps. At $6/month CAD or $37/year CAD, it’s not the most expensive subscription ever. And honestly, that $37 subscription may well save you from impulse-buying some garbage product you discovered via an Instagram advertisement.

Look at the $37 as some sort of personal finance investment.

Finally, I love the inclusion of metadata for each photo. This screams “Photog”, for sure. But it’s less about the camera and more about the focal length, the aperture, the ISO, and the shutter speed. By studying a photo’s composition and metadata, you can better understand how the photographer captured the moment. Simple.

All in all, Glass is my favourite new iPhone app in a long, long time. It’s super “slow” right now — not “slow”, as in the app sucks, but “slow” as in it doesn’t algorithmically provide new content for you every time you open the app. Instead, one new photo seems to pop up every hour or two, ensuring a slow, calm experience.

Now, if only they’d do an iPad app. With the heavy focus on metadata and photography, the iPad feels like a natural way to share photos on Glass.

Maybe Instagram would take the hint. (Ha! Get out of town.)

(I’m @josh-ginter if you want to check it out. And if you need an invite, I still have a couple.)