About the iPad Mini's lack of retina display

I really don't see what all the fuss is about.

True, the screen is not mind boggling beautiful as the retina iPad or, for that matter, the retina MacBook Pro. That is not the point. The point is the following.

It. Does not. Matter.

Unless you are a visual professional doing most of your creative work on the iPad mini, you will not need a retina iPad Mini.

As a mobile professional, like me, you will especially not need a retina iPad Mini if the trade off is weight or battery longevity. And let's be clear: barring a major technological breakthrough in either displays (Sharp?) or batteries, it will be either heavier or have a limited battery life.

I'm writing this on a train on its way into Brussels. I'm writing it on an iPad with LTE and no retina display. It just works.

This morning, I read my daily RSS newspaper on a retina iPad. And at work, I will be looking at my non retina MacBook Air docked to Samsung 21 inch monitor.

Since when has the discussion become one of specifications, rather than one of relevant features and benefits that do make a difference?

On Apple versus Microsoft - A user perspective

An IT department's consistent preference for Microsoft Windows over Apple's OS X and, as a result, of any PC over a Mac is to me, the ultimate illustration of their lack of understanding of their users.

I've recently played around with Windows 8, and was a Windows 7 user. This is the key difference, to me:

• An IT department want features, control and access to the system to tweak and play around with. Technology is central to their objectives. Windows offers this level of control to them;

• users just want tools that function out of the box and allow them to do a better job in the same or less time. Technology should be unobtrusive and get out of the way of production. Mac OS X offers this to them.

Making an abstraction of the differences, with all respect for each side which has his or her arguments all lined up, business should ask themselves the question: are we an IT business or are we a user business?

Are we about achieving results or about being a fertile playing ground for IT?

Improving your 'next action' and 'project' descriptions

As GTD-ers, we are intimately aware of the challenge posed in consistently formulating well defined next actions and project descriptions. Making sure a next action is actually actionable or writing a project definition you still understand two days after, when you are processing your inbox, requires diligence and attention.

Like most of us, I presume,I find myself falling into the trap of non-executable next actions or not adequately defined projects over and over again. Luckily, by no real creative work of my own, using what Merlin Mann wrote on 43Folders combined with a text expansion snippet based on the work of Chris Holscher, I found a way to "force" me to consider the quality of the inputs in my action lists. Here goes ...

Project and action verbs according to Merlin Mann and GTD

Merlin Mann's post I link to below is the key starting point. In this excellent blog post over on his 43Folders blog, he describes the difference between project verbs and action verbs. It is of course based on canonical GTD, but it is highly accessible.

It's a great explanation and a very usable list of verbs I found myself coming back to again and again ... and again and again and again.

For experienced GTD-ers, the tool switch issue inherent in needing to look away from an activity to consult a blog article is apparent.

It costs time and effort that is better spent elsewhere. Every time I wanted to create a good next action or a well defined project, I went back to the blog post just to consult the list. Yes, I had it captured in my reference files (for which I use Evernote). But still I failed to either learn the list by heart or create some kind of mnemotechnic technique to remember ... And this is where the magic of text expansion comes in.

Note that what I am about to describe is specific to Mac. However, I am quite convinced this is easily replicable on a Windows machine as well. I am just not familiar with Windows software.

Something borrowed ...

I borrowed the Textexpander snippet Chris Holscher described in this post and adapted it for my purposes ... I now have two Textexpander snippets which I invoke with either ';pr' or ';nxa' to indicate my intent to Textexpander to formulate either a project or a next action. You can find screenshots of both snippets below, but the basic idea is this:

I use the text expansion software to offer me a dropdown list of next action or project verbs as well as a fill-in form to document the rest of the next action or the project description. My text expansion software shows me a dialog box where I can select the project or next action verb (depending on the snippet invoked, of course).

I consistently use this when I am generating my next actions or projects. I can pretty much generate them anywhere, as I will describe below, but the idea is that I only allow myself to input in my 'to do'-list (in my case, my Omnifocus inbox) using this approach where available.

Mac specific basic entry and extra credit

Now, I usually invoke this Textexpander snippet when I am in the quick entry dialog of Omnifocus, which is a very easy way to work. That's just basic operation.

For extra credit, when I am writing in a text editor(for Windows people: Word is not a text editor), I will invoke the snippet in the editor and after I have defined the project or the next action, I will move it to Omnifocus using Popclip and the Omnifocus Popclip extension.

How relevant is this?

Now, if you look at it from a distance it is only a snippet invoked from a text expansion software. However, if you consistently apply this approach when entering new next actions or new project descriptions, you force yourself into a constrained situation in terms of input requirements and you find that you actively start thinking about what it actually is that you will be tasking yourself to do in the future. It eliminates unclear next actions and unclear projects to a significant extent.

May I suggest you try it?

Next action snippet

Project formulation snippet

Tools I use – Drafts for simultanuous input capture

My simultanuous capture use case

As the head of a small internal audit shop, I deal with a lot of inputs. These can be operational, such as notes of interviews or testing remarks. They can also be administrative in nature, such as meeting notes or notes I take during training. All in all, quite a few different inputs.

How I used to manage these inputs

Pen and paper. Really, I've always liked the feel of a pen on a piece of paper. For some purposes, such as writing longer articles, I still pretend to do just that, with my bamboo stylus. If you are interested in that workflow, read this article.

However, turnaround on other inputs became too long. I wrote, then I wrote the notes on my computer ... because in a small audit shop, you don't have the luxury of handing your notes off to a secretary. You do it yourself.

The intermediate scenario

There are a lot of text editors out there, both on Mac ans iOS. I tried quite a few of them, but they never were truly ubiquitous like pen and paper can be. I was too involved in the tool to be fully engaged in the content I was trying to capture. That, of course, is a problem.

What I needed was a tool that allowed me to capture without thinking about layout and other aspects, and with an easy way to export to any of my other tools.

I ended up with a combination of a language and a tool.

My solution: Drafts and Markdown

Agile Tortoise has developed an iOS app called Drafts. It has become my go-to application on my iOS devices for taking notes on anything and everything I'm hearing and thinking about. Let me illustrate:

Last week, I was attending an IIA course in Brussels (the IIA, for non auditors, is the Institute for Internal Auditors, a brother- and sisterhood of internal auditors. We even have jokes.) on auditing project management. The course was taught by two excellent teachers. As always, I was working at a couple of levels. I was listening and taking notes on the content of the course. I was at the same time listening and taking notes on the impact of what was said on an audit we are currently executing ... and I was on occasion thinking about to do's which had nothing to do with the class.

Now, let's take a couple of steps backwards. There I am sitting, thinking about multiple things at the same time. I believe I'm not an outlier. Thinking multiple thoughts, following multiple threads in our heads at the same time is rather human.

However, I used to let a good deal of this thinking go to waste. I thought good, sometimes even great thoughts, I tried to remember to remember them ... and I lost them. When I started noting stuff down on paper, I lost the papers. When I started using Moleskines, I was afraid to write in them, because of the cost and because of the nice-ness, and when I started using iOS tools I could not combine and note taking on a training or an interview with note taking on other thoughts and putting to do's on my to do list.

Enter Drafts

Drafts is a note taking tool which allows me to send notes to multiple applications on my iOS device. Its export facilities are amazing, and growing with every release. Luckily, you can reduce the number of export possibilities visible, to configure the app to work just as you like it. If you look at the screenshot below, you will see I can 'share', export to Twitter or app.net, put something in my agenda, write an SMS, write a formatted email ... and this is a curated list, adapted to my specific needs.

Drafts' most important export functions to me are however, its possibility to append text to a running file on dropbox called Journal.txt and its export facility to Omnifocus, my task management software. Let's visit my use case again:

I'm in the course, listening to what is being told by the lecturer. I follow the slide presentation on the handouts. I started my note taking session by entering the Textexpander Touch shortcuts for date and time, so the running file I'll be exporting to on dropbox has a record of when I started entering information. Whenever I feel I have finished a thought, I send the text to the file in dropbox it's appended from. Journal.txt, which resides in my Dropbox Drafts folder, which resides under the App folder, holds a record of all the thoughts I feel I still need to put somewhere. They are 'stuff', but 'stuff' in the GTD manner of speaking, which is already somewhere where I will visit it later.

All of a sudden, I think of something I need to discuss with my team. I enter the thought and send it to Omnifocus. In 2 seconds the quick entry box is filled with the idea I wrote down in Drafts, with the second and third line of my entry filling in the notes section. This sits in my Omnifocus inbox, waiting for me to process it.

Then, based on what the lecturer said, I suddenly think of a test to add to the workprogram we are developing. I start writing out the thought in Drafts, I use Draft's extended iOS keyboard to put (Workprogram) between brackets, and send it to the Journal.txt document. I could have sent it to another application I have installed, such as Byword, but that would open Byword and I don't have the time to write a full set of workprogram instructions right now.

Using Markdown

Drafts supports Markdown, providing you with one of the best extended iOS keyboards I've seen for this purpose. This allows me to write formatted documents as well, for example if I want to write an email with some formatting. It also allows me to send texts with basic markdown formats to the journal.txt file from where I can go and find it to work on it in Sublime Text.

Conclusion

If capturing multiple inputs at the same time is your challenge, and you are interested in working with plain text applications or are capable of working in Markdown, Drafts is the best solution available to you today.

Drafts export options

The responsibility of living on the edge of the abyss

Umair Haque got me thinking. Again. It's getting to be very disconcerting.

I seriously need to either stop reading his stuff or start writing more in response to his articles. I'm not out of the woods on that one yet. The trigger article this time? His article on how to fix your soul. It dates from May 2011 but I had failed to read it before.

Read it here. Then come back, if you'd be so kind. You and I, we need to talk about our obligations.

The end of the affair

As some of you know, I am quite a positive thinker. So let's try a little thought experiment. Here goes:

Imagine the world being hit by an asteroid today. A real extinction level event. Earth gone, or at least all of humanity gone. Everything you cared about, anyone ever cared about, gone.

Care to consider how important that would be?

The relevance of our irrelevance

In the whole of the universe, it would be as important and as relevant as the bursting of one little tiny air bubble in the enormity of Niagara Falls. Not just Niagara Falls right at this moment. No, Niagara Falls over its entire existence.

We are irrelevant. We are nothing. We don't matter at all. All the beauty we have ever created, all the knowledge we have discovered does not mean a thing. It does not matter. Not really. Or does it?

The humanity of the taxi driver

On occasion, I get to go to Paris. To attend a meeting at the OECD. I usually get a taxi to go there. It's quite probably the slowest means of transport available in Paris, but I like to talk to the taxi drivers. They ground you. They are like most people. They are really like you and me.

Every day, most people struggle to make something, to create something. It may be because they want to leave something behind. It may be because they have to, to feed their loved ones. It may be because they cannot but create, sing, dance, act, write, ... We do care, despite its ultimate irrelevance.

A taxi driver takes pride in what his children have achieved, or are achieving. A daughter going to medical school. A son in the armed forces. A wife dearly loved, achieving greatness every single day, either at home or in a menial job. Struggling but alive, working towards something. Working for something.

I admire the enormous strength it takes to do this everyday simple yet essential act of creation, despite the realization it only matters for a very short time. That is courage.

The betrayal of our inheritance

Most of us are taxi drivers, or are at most two or three generations away from being a taxi driver. My grandfather was a blue collar public servant. My grandmother ironed shirts for a living. Both of them did their work with enormous pride. They achieved sustainability for their grandchildren.

The consumerist generation has betrayed that inheritance. They choose opulence instead of eudaimonia, as Haque refers to it.

I despise the acts of selfless egoism of some people, most often those who deem themselves better than others, because of their skin, their beliefs or lack thereof, their sexual orientation,the amount of money on their bank account ...

Their acts are not acts of intentional creation. Their acts are acts of destruction. They do not respect their ancestors.

A duty to oppose opulence

Even if in the end their betrayal is as irrelevant as the quiet acts of heroism we see around us every day, it should be part of our duty, our obligation to fight them. Every. single. day.

Because if we do not fight them, we are no better than they are. A failure to fight intentional, short sighted destruction is a refusal to create long term identity, lasting value ...it is as if on the road to oblivion, we are no longer bound by what makes us human and humane. Our values.

Redemption

If there is any redemption to be found for a race that is to die, all alone, far from any other intelligence and unbeknownst to them, on the outskirts of a lesser Milky Way, it is that we took the opportunity to create on the edge of the abyss, filled with endless depths of nothingness.

It should be the testament of our generation and those that come after us that we looked into the abyss, saw the monsters, recognized them as some of our own, yet never became monsters ourselves.

Umair Haque believes we are on our way to just that. I want to believe him, and deep in my heart I know we are heading there. Because sometimes, as Steven Johnson put it in his book "Future Perfect", all of a sudden people moving together in the same direction will become a wave.