Surely enough, before long I found myself spending little bits of time doodling and sketching in my Field Notes. I did it whenever I was bored in class or waiting in line, I did it to feel a little better about my day if I hadn’t done anything else creative, and soon the hobby began morphing into other tasks that I’d do in my little book. I was writing down half-formulated thoughts, outlining blog posts, or just visually mapping concepts that I had floating around in my head. It had become a thinking resource for me.
I’ve been using a sort of “Hybrid Journal” method to record, log, journal, and document my daily life for the last year. In that time, I’ve slowly adapted the system to something that works pretty well for me.
The coolest thing about these workflows is how malleable they are – what works for me may not work for anyone else, while someone else’s workflow may not suit me. Mike has come up with his own system and I’m so glad pen and paper are at the forefront of his thought process.
Lastly, if you need any other incentive to head over and check out Mike’s piece, you’ll be pleasantly amazed with Mike’s photography. Quite frankly, his hero image is going to give me a run for my money. Every photograph in this piece is simply stunning.
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I worked hard this month to simplify things. I don’t use Microsoft Excel on the iPhone as much as the iPad, so Excel has been fitted to my second homescreen. Also gone are Octopage and Music.app. Again, I became tired of these apps clogging my homescreen.
Most notably absent are Vesper and Drafts. I still think Vesper is the most beautiful notetaking app on the market, and I’m still very curious about the workflow Vesper for Mac will introduce. However, for the time being, my main use for Vesper has been replicated by Checkmark 2, so I’ll put Vesper on the sideline until the time comes to call an audible.
And Drafts? It’s a great app, but I just don’t have any use for it on the iPhone.
It may be odd to say Checkmark 2 replaces Vesper on my homescreen. Vesper became a home for all my running lists as time passed by, so when I redownloaded Checkmark 2 for fun, I realized I could eliminate Vesper and pick up an app that handled my lists and my random daily to-dos.
Checkmark 2 is a brilliant app and I’m enamoured by its design. I have a bunch of projects on the go right now, so project management and major recurring tasks find a place in Omnifocus, while my daily to-dos and random reminders find a home in Checkmark 2. Overall, I like the workflow and I’m interested to see if it sticks for the foreseeable future.
Lastly, I’ve been floored by Microsoft Outlook. It’s the email client I’ve always yearned for and I’m disappointed to learn that it’s been within reach this entire time. I now house all my email accounts in one single app. That app takes the best of Mailbox (swiping, scheduling) and the best of Mail.app to create the single best email client for me on the iPhone. Lots of people swear by Dispatch, but I never appreciated Dispatch’s design or its lack of push notifications. Outlook is the perfect email app and I’ve literally been checking my email for the sake of using the app.
Almost nothing has changed on the iPad this month save for the removal of Drafts and the addition of Outlook.1
As an addition to my schpeel about Outlook above, I think Outlook is best on the iPad.
Foremost, I am in love with the “Files” tab. I deal with hundreds of email attachments every week and this is the most painless way I have found to deal with the multitude of attachments.
I have absolutely no use for the built-in calendar in Outlook, as it appears to be a blatant rip off of Fantastical 2. I’ve been testing a new calendar app that may have both Fantastical 2 and Outlook beat, so we’ll see where that goes in the next little while.
Lastly, Ben Brooks has mentioned a few times that the deal breaker for Outlook in his book is the fact that Outlook routes your mail through their own servers to handle email scheduling and other features. Ben is entirely correct in pointing out this security flaw and some people may want to keep this in mind. I, however, have had Mailbox running on every device I own in the background because I really like Mailbox’s auto-swiping features. As a result, since my email is already routed through Mailbox’s servers, I would be a hypocrite to denounce Outlook’s process. I’ve already jumped off the security cliff, so I may as well make the best of the situation and use the best email app I can find.
All in all, that’s it for another month. I’m hoping this is the month that we will see Tweetbot 3 for the iPad. I won’t hold my breath, but it seems like a great time for a new Twitter client.
Having said that, I have eclipsed level 26 in SimCity BuildIt and my population has soared to over 220,000. If you’re curious, the key to making money is to create the biggest population possible. And in order to create the biggest population, you need to spend the time earning Golden Keys to create education, gambling, transportation, and landmark services for your population. There you go — free, game-winning advice for one of the best games on the App Store. ↩
Oddly, despite the fascinating weather happening across the continent, we in Southern Manitoba — who are generally accustomed to hard, dry, cold winters — were hit with an unbelievably warm snap over the last few weeks. Temperatures hovered around 0 Celsius for almost two weeks and we even saw most of our snow melt away. This is very odd for our geographical region, so you can colour me keenly aware about what Mother Nature may have in store for us in the future.
Normally these weekend reads are best suited beside a warm cup of coffee and a blanket. If, like us, you’re finding it plenty warm already, I recommend skipping the blanket and reading these fine links. I’d recommend skipping the coffee, but we all know that’s insanity.
The Upper Middle Class is Ruining America — (Slate)
