The Trouble with Due Dates - OmniFocus

For the longest time, I used to assign Due dates all over the show in OmniFocus. Almost every task would have a Due date assigned, yet I didn't realize at the time that I was throttling the effectiveness of both the application itself and my GTD system. I used to assign a Due date to signify when I would have liked to have the task completed by, as opposed to when the task was, indeed, due. If there were actions needed by a certain date, these would slip through the cracks. 

That's why I have now adopted Defer Dates, Flags, and Due Dates in equal measure because each plays an important role in how I prioritize my tasks for the day. 

Defer Dates

I ignored defer dates for a long time. Now, they are one of the most important attributes that I assign to a task. I have many projects in my OmniFocus database and were I presented with next actions for all of them, I'd be shutting down pretty quickly and heading off to waste some time on the Xbox - no question! I don't deal with overwhelm. 

So defer dates come to the rescue here. I push projects or actions into the future by telling OmniFocus when I would like to see them again as an available action item. If I know I don't need to be working on that research project until next month, I can set an appropriate defer date. It will disappear from my available actions until that date appears, like a tickler system.

Part of my morning routine (sometimes my evening one too - it's flexible) involves scanning through my available actions in OmniFocus and setting these defer dates. I have a context named Clear (thanks to MacSparky for the advice here) which shows an unfiltered list of all available actions. I push out anything which doesn't need to be on my daily list, yet it helps me ensure it's still on my radar. 

Flags

When I set an action/project with a flag, I'm telling OmniFocus that this is something I would like to complete in the near future. I have a perspective called Dashboard that shows only Flagged/Due Soon actions. As I work my way through the Clearperspective I mentioned earlier, I can assign Flags to individual items, marking them as actions I would like to do. Simple, but highly effective. 

It's vital to note that I'm fairly tight on the use of Flags in any given session. I always try to assign less than I feel I can complete. This allows for padding in my day, to deal with any fires that inevitably come up without the inevitable guilt that comes with incomplete tasks at the end of the day which you have deemed as important. 

I also assign flags to projects as part of my weekly review. There are generally, as a rule of thumb, two projects that I have defined as my primary projects for the week. Actions related to these should sit at the top of my list. I achieve this by moving these projects to the top of my projects list in the sidebar and adding a flag. This places their actions at the top of the Dashboard perspective, meaning I don't need to think about which order to process the actions in, I can run from top to bottom in comfort. 

Due Dates

By leveraging defer dates and flags in the manner above, due dates can now serve their purpose. If an action truly must be completed by a certain date, I can enter this date, safe in the knowledge I will have it presented to me at the right time and I will be able to take action. This helps ensure that OmniFocus is my trusted system. 

Do you use Defer dates in your workflow? What issues have you found in implementing them? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Currency Conversion with Alfred

Introduction

I have to send a reasonable number of invoices overseas and this always results in me needing to covert currencies - whether it’s USD, EUR or any other, it’s shady to have a workflow to make this as simple as possible. 

Enter Alfred. 

I wanted the ability to invoke Alfred and get the currency conversion I needed with just a few taps. So here is how to do that:

Steps Required

1 - Download this amazing Alfred workflow from sqren

2 - Double click the downloaded file. This will add it to your Alfred workflows section (if you are a Powerpack user of course)

3 - Select a category to add this workflow to from the dropdown bar. I generally use Tools (1) for this kind of utility and click Import (2)

4 - Next, you need to double click on the Script Filter

5 - On the resulting popup window, there are two potential actions to take. The first is to decide on the keyword that will be used to invoke the currency converter workflow. By default, it’s c (1) but you can change this. 

Next, you need to define the default currency - so your base currency that you will generally always have a constant as being converted to. Enter the three-digit code for this (2) and click Save.

6 - You are done! Invoke Alfred with your hotkey and type c followed by an amount and currency, say 30USD - and you will see the output and, if you press Enter, this will be copied to your clipboard.

Quick, simple. 

I’ve prepped a quick YouTube video below so you can see this in action.

Universal Actions with Alfred 4.5

At the beginning of this month, the popular launch utility for macOS, Alfred released a significant feature addition with their update to version 4.5 - Universal Actions

Universal Actions allow you to carry out specific actions on data that you select - so this could be some text on a web page you are reading or capturing a URL. Maybe you’ve returned a file from a search with Alfred and want to carry out some specific actions on it? With over 60 actions available by default, there is the scope to make some significant improvements to workflows on macOS. 

How Does It Work?

When you’ve installed the update, open Alfred Preferences and you’ll see a new section within Features - and that’s Universal Actions. 

Here, there are two distinct sections - General and Actions. 

General essentially runs through how to access the Universal Actions. 

1 - Show Actions - when you return a result through Alfred from a standard search, this determines which key can be pressed to bring up a list of actions you can perform. 

2 - Selection Hotkey - If you were to select some text on a webpage, or within a document, for example, this is the hotkey that will bring up the Universal Action menu. I’ve shown the default hotkey in the image below however it clashes with my default 1Password hotkey, so you may need to modify this. 

3 - Action Ordering - there is a default order to the displayed actions, however ticking this will sort them in the order that they are mostly used. 

The Actions section covers exactly what can be accessed from within Universal Actions and there are a lot. An awful lot. 

In the left window, you can see the default ones and you can check/uncheck these as required. These are all text, file and URL based and will only ever appear in that context. So below, I’ve got two images. The left one shows me invoking the Universal Actions menu on a file - whereas the left, shows it when highlighting this text. Very distinct options are available.

In the right-hand sidebar here, you can add some more actions, So Workflow File and Universal Actions will be shown (if applicable) within Universal Actions, as well as Custom and Web Searches. You can see, in fact, on the right-hand image that I have an option there to search for the text within ScreenCasts Online. This is because I created a custom web search within Alfred and, with this check box marked, I can carry out the search via Universal Actions. 

Over the course of the coming months, I know I”m going to be using this more and I’ll certain chart my progress with it. My next stage is to see how it works with Workflows. 

For now, it saves some time and keystrokes and I”m always happy about that.

Slicing and Dicing with the Pomodoro Technique

When I first decided that I wanted to improve my levels of productivity, I became inundated with advice, both from colleagues and online articles. Some of the advice wasn’t so great - at least, not for me. Productivity is a very personal thing and what works for some, may not necessarily work for all. 

One productivity style that has worked for me is the Pomodoro Technique. It first hit me because of the name (I’m the only person in my house that loves tomatoes, so what?!) and when I delved further into it, I realised it could answer a lot of my problems. I had difficulty maintaining focus and the Pomodoro Technique certainly helped me overcome this weakness. 

Overview

Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique in the late 1980s and involves six key steps:

• Decide on a task to be completed

• Using a timer (the original timer looked like a tomato, hence the name) allocate 25 minutes to focus on a particular task.

• Work solidly on the task until the timer goes off

• When the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper, or text document (this is optional, I don't do this myself).

• If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a 5-minute break. We refer to the thirty-minute period as a single Pomodoro

• Repeat the process. When you have four pomodoros, take a longer break, up to 30 minutes

How I Use It

I largely follow the steps above directly, however, there are some slight deviations, so let me give a brief overview as to how I use the Pomodoro Technique.

Firstly, I use it predominantly when I'm working from home or in a coffee shop/office space. If I'm working in a busy office with a lot of people around, vying for my attention, I find that despite my best intentions the Pomodoro Technique can suffer. Even if I have my largest size headphones on which silently scream to people "I'm busy, don't talk to me", someone will interrupt and the benefits of solid, focused attention disappear. Thankfully, those times where I’m working in a congested environment are far fewer than in previous years, which means I get to use this technique a lot more. 

Next, I set up my environment accordingly. I'm sure to have a full glass of water or fresh coffee depending on the time of day. My devices are in Do Not Disturb mode and I'm sure to have only the applications open that I need. 

Lastly (and this is the part most people miss) - I make sure that the task(s) I intend to work on is broken down into the smallest possible chunks!

That's where the title for this post comes from. I slice and dice my tasks to ensure there is little thinking to do about the task itself. I won't spend 5 minutes of the Pomodoro trying to work out what I need to do. There won't be those agonising moments where I look at the task and think "Hmmm, OK, I can't do that at the moment because I need to do this other part first"

Let's take this blog post as an example. I could easily have a task in my task manager that said "Publish Blog Post on using the Pomodoro Technique" however that would only lead to friction. If I set the timer and looked at that as my task, I'd wonder where on earth I would start. Firstly, I need an outline - how should I construct the post so that it's easy to read, what information should it contain? Once I have an outline, there may be different sections to the piece (depending on its length). Do I have an image that I can use with the title? What about proofing?

As you can see, you can slice and dice a task into several sub-tasks.

• Create an outline for the blog post

• Draft the Intro and Overview

• Draft How I Use It

• Edit the post with proofing tools (I use Grammarly at the moment but there are lots of options out there)

• Upload and Schedule the post

• Archive the post in my blog post archive

• Schedule the next post in my Task Manager

Now that I’ve broken the task down into these subtasks, I will start my Pomodoro Timer application. Now I use an application called Session which I use as part of my Setapp subscription. Now I cannot recommend this application enough, it’s so versatile. 

What follows is where I may deviate from the default Pomodoro steps mentioned in the overview. The outline would be completed in the first Pomodoro and perhaps part of the intro. If my timer goes off and I find myself in a sense of flow with a particular task, then I will double the length of my Pomodoro. Instead of twenty-five minutes of focused work, I will make it fifty minutes instead. This helps to eradicate the effect of losing focus on a task during my break and then regaining it again. There is an attention cost there that I will always try to avoid. Remember, all these techniques form part of a framework. You don’t have to religiously stick to them because an article says so, you work in the best way for yourself. 

Breaking down the tasks in this manner will also allow you to make greater use of working with contexts as opposed to projects. Contexts refer to the materials, locations, people, applications, energy levels required to complete certain tasks. One example is that you may have an application such as Excel open. You may wish to spend one Pomodoro just working on a list of outstanding tasks that need completing within Excel. Or perhaps you could spend a Pomodoro solely making phone calls. It's pliable to your own needs and work strategies.

I love the Pomodoro technique in certain situations. It helps manage my focus and, with that, my energy levels and output.

Do you use it? How has it improved your ability to produce? I'd love to hear from you.

TextExpander - Adjusting When a Snippet Expands

For those of you who don’t know, TextExpander is a great utility from Smile Software that allows you to type small pieces of text or snippets as they are known in TextExpander parlance - and expand them into larger sentences. Or paragraphs, pages, weblinks, images - you get the picture!

It’s a highly customisable product and one of the elements you can configure is at what point the snippet that you key in, transforms or expands into the new text. By default, the expansion will take place when you enter the last character of the snippet. So one of my most-used snippets is a date/time stamp that activates when I type xds - so as soon as I press the s key, the expansion occurs. 

If you want to change this behaviour, then open up Preferences in TextExpander either by clicking on the Preferences button in the toolbar, or by pressing Shift and ,. 

In there you have a series of tabs and the option you need is under Expansion

When the checkbox next to Expand abbreviations is checked, click the drop-down and you will see the following options:

Immediately when typed - this is the default behaviour. Key in the last character and the expansion takes place. 

At Delimiter (keep delimiter) - you may want TextExpander to wait until you type in the delimiter before it expands the abbreviation and then, keep the delimiter afterwards. So If I wanted to use my example of xds earlier but keep a comma after it, I can select this and when I press the comma key, that is when the text will expand. I use this often if using space as a delimiter. 

At Delimiter (abandon delimiter) - this is the same as the previous option, but instead of keeping the comma in that example, it will remove it. If you use punctuation rather than white space as a delimiter, this may be the option for you. 

If you want to set your delimiters then there is a button next to the drop-down called Set Delimiters and you can click this to set the characters you would like to use