Silver Clipboard

Instant, Ubiquitous Capture

A notepad in your back pocket will change your life.

If you get an idea, write it down now. Not five minutes from now, but right now. This is called ubiquitous capture: having some device on you at all times, to record your thoughts.

Many people who are creative depend on ubiquitous capture for a living. For example, the writer of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David, uses this method to gather ideas for his show from moments in his life. He keeps a notepad in his pocket for writing down funny ideas that occur to him or situations that happen to him. Jonathan Coulton, the king of geeky music, uses the voice record function of his mobile phone to instantly capture song ideas

Instant is the key word because you cannot trust yourself for a moment to keep that idea in your head. If you think ‘I’ll just finish what I’m doing then I’ll write that thought down’ it will be gone in twenty seconds.

Once you get in the habit of having the notebook on yourself all the time, you’ll develop lots of uses for it and wonder how you ever got by before. One of my favorite uses of ubiquitous capture is for book recommendations. Often people mention in conversation some good book they’ve recently read, but when I get to the library, it’s nearly impossible to remember what the book is when looking for something new to read. But not with ubiquitous capture. Now I jot the title down in my notebook and later transfer it to my books-to-read list.

As a side effect of using ubiquitous capture, others assume you are a more serious person. When people mention something and you immediately write it down, it sends a message that you respect the other person’s opinion or that you can be trusted to get the job done.

Get a notepad and change your life.

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Original header photograph by michale.

The Greatest Time-saving tool ever: Textexpander

Textexpander is the rare productivity tool that actually saves time and increases output.

For OS X only, textexpander allows you to expand short strings of text into longer strings. For example, when I type ‘wg.net’ textexpander automatically changes it to ‘http://www.WellingtonGrey.net/’. Rather than typing my email address in full, I just type ‘greyat’ and out pops ‘Grey1618@Googlemail.com’. The great thing about textexpander is it works in every application. You don’t have to manually start it or press command keys to explode the text, it doesn’t interrupt your train of thought, so you can keep typing.

It is particularly useful for eliminating typing clumsy formating in markup languages or in programming. For example, I write my journals using LaTeX. While LaTeX is a system well-designed for typesetting books, the syntax is ugly and awkward. With textexpander, instead of reaching for uncomfortable commands like \emph{ } I have simpler snippets in textexpander to create them.

Aside from saving time, textexpander has also helped reduce my RSI.

Textexpander costs $30 and is well worth it for the amount of time you’ll save. Download textexpander here.

On My Desk

After linking to On My Desk earlier in the week, I thought I’d add my own workspace to the collection.

The focus of the desk is my MacBook. This sits atop a laptop stand which raises the screen to almost eye level, making it more comfortable to use. The strange-looking joystick is a 3M Ergonomic Mouse. I credit that piece of machinery with saving my hand from RSI.

The lava lamp is perfect for ambient lighting while reading in the bed next to the desk. The lamp’s soft light is also useful for when I get up early in the morning so that I’m less likely to disturb my new wife. The instructions told me not to shake the lava lamp, but I failed to resist temptation. It hasn’t been the same since.

A small sushi tray serves as a candle holder. The little flames both keep the room smelling nice, and fire gazing is a useful way to zone out for a few moments without getting more permanently distracted.

All mail and other paper messages get dumped into the metal inbox to be dealt with once a week. Its metalness makes it feel much more serious and so keeps me from using it as a poor filing cabinet.

The stack of index cards and the holder are for Seinfeld-style chains. I also take a blank card to the gym to record my exercise times.

The metal clipboard is the command center from which I make decisions about what I need to do. Few things are as satisfying as a well-made clipboard. My love for metal organizational tools is strong.

Sturdy hole punch. Curse England and its two-hole paper culture! If you’re an American living in the UK, you know what I’m talking about.

On the right I use the top of a shoebox as a landing strip to dump the stuff in my pockets into when I get home. It makes preparing in the morning easier as well. This way I don’t have to hunt for my wallet, keys, ipod, oyster card and notebook all over the house. A few other miscellaneous desk items live in here as well, since there really isn’t any other place to store them that isn’t inconvenient.

Below the desk are multiple external hard drives. If you are a paranoid data freak like myself, you can never have enough backups. The scanner/printer is cheap but gets the job done.

I made the mistake of buying a cheap paper shredder before, which was small and only handled one sheet. Bad idea. Buy a quality one so that shredding documents is as easy as throwing them out.

My poor substitute for a filing cabinet is also under the desk. The arch leaver file holds my financial records and the white accordion file is an A-Z alphabetical general reference. I long for a proper filing cabinet but, alas, there isn’t space in my small London flat.

On Other Peoples’ Desks

Ah, the pleasures of voyeuristic productivity porn. The blog, On My Desk, lets you look into the organizational lives of other people. Focusing mainly on creative types such as painters and writers, there are numerous photos of desks, organizers and specialized tools all with detailed descriptions of exactly how they’re used. It’s hours of slightly seedy feeling pleasure.

Visit On My Desk

The Worst of Both Worlds: Recreating Needless Clutter on the Computer

There is something to be said for designing computers the way people want to use them rather than the way programmers think people should use them. However, this example is too much:

This system is the worst of both worlds: all the complexity and non-obvious control of a computer combined with the limited space and clutter of a meatspace desk.