Month: October 2019

Going Out Of Our Way To Vote

A few weeks back, my wife and I were preparing for a then-upcoming vacation.  Our voting cards had recently come by mail and I was listing off the voting information (location, date, etc.) when she realized that election day was happening while we were out of the country.  This was the first time I would be physically unable to vote on the day, so we started looking into what one does when this happens.  I had heard in the past about early voting, though never needed it.

Turns out, the early voting days would start the day after we departed for our trip (of course).

In cases like this, you need to contact your local elections office to request a special voting kit that would allow you to send in your votes early.  Thankfully the elections offices are open during the week until 9pm, so we were able to go in person to fill out the paperwork to pick up our kits and vote.  It required us to write out our candidate of choice on a blank ballot, then seal those votes in an envelope, which was then sealed in a separate envelope to track that we had voted but not track who received our votes.

I’m glad these kinds of provisions are in place to allow us to exercise our civic duties.  While we know our votes would not be missed if we had skipped this election, and even though we had to go out of our way to vote, my wife and I nevertheless feel it’s important that we do our part to show up and participate in the process.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

On The Bus – Hello and Thanks!

It’s been some time since I’ve had to commute on the bus.  As a student, the bus was my main mode of getting around town (and the occasional trip home), but in my post-student days, I’ve been privledged to have a vehicle of my own to commute in.

A few weeks back, I carpooled to Hamilton with my wife so that I could attend an ethics workshop at McMaster University.  After my business was done on campus, I took the bus from campus to her place of work.

I greeted the driver as I embarked the bus, paid my fare, and took a seat.  Instead of getting lost in whatever was on my phone, I took the opportunity to watch the streets as we drove by and listen to the sounds of the bus.

I was startled when I realized that I had forgotten that regular bus-riders always thank the driver when disembarking.    It was something I did back in my student days, and I was glad to see that not much had changed in the 5-7 years since I regularly rode the bus.

Given that I had forgotten this little gesture of appreciation and kindness, I wanted to take a moment in this otherwise dull blog to commit it to memory and share the sentiment.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Five* Digital Tools I Use

Last week I shouted from the rooftops about reaching zero unread messages in my inbox.  This feels like a good opportunity to geek out a bit on some cool digital tools I use for my process flow.  Below are a handful of applications and services I use to keep on top of things, which supplement any physical systems I use to stay organized (like my notebook, for example).  None of the referenced products below are sponsors and I have no business ties with them.

Boomerang (Paid)

I was introduced to Boomerang for Gmail a few years back and made use of their free tier for quite some time.  However, last year I made the jump to unlock some additional functionality and allow me to boomerang more messages per month.

Seamlessly integrated into Gmail, Boomerang allows me to kick messages out of my inbox and set to return at a predetermined time.  You may have noted in a caption that I mentioned “boomeranged messages;” this is what I was referencing.  If I have messages that I want to come back to, but I don’t want them to clutter my inbox, I use Boomerang to remove them temporarily without me forgetting about it.  Boomerang has other features, such as being able to append notes to myself or asking a message to return if no one responds within a certain time frame.  All in all, a great little service that doesn’t cost much for the year.

Evernote/OneNote

I use both Evernote (free) and OneNote (Enterprise).  I don’t really have a preference one way or the other at the moment, but I tend to use Evernote for personal items (saving notes, planning blog posts, etc.) where I use OneNote for Board work and my main job.  I was urged to go paperless by my boss, so I slowly adopted the services and moved away from extra notebooks and loose papers on my desk.  Especially within OneNote, I can use the attach document feature to put “print outs” of documents within a notebook page, then use my tablet’s stylus to annotate the document with handwritten notes.

Scanbot

Speaking of embedding print outs, I started using Scanbot for Android to capture paper documents and port them into my digital notes.  I like Scanbot over the regular camera because the AI recognizes the page and will use algorithms to digitally morph distortions of the page.  Instead of requiring perfect lighting and standing perfectly over the page, I can capture documents on camera and Scanbot flattens out and crops the image for me.  I’ve also found it handy for taking pictures of overhead presentation slides, and whiteboard writing.

Pushbullet

Pushbullet has a lot of features for pushing documents across devices, but I mostly use it as a way of preventing myself from always looking at my phone.  Instead, I can avoid temptation and quickly reply to text messages from my wife before jumping back into my task.  I know myself well enough that picking up my phone is inviting a trip down the rabbit hole of distraction, so Pushbullet really helps keep my monkey brain in check.  (Note: if you’re wondering about how I avoid distractions on my computer, I use the StayFocusd extension to block website during certain hours of the day)

Trello

Month over month, I will have lots of To Do items that are left incomplete.  I used to copy them over manually to the next notebook, but over time the list grew.  Out of laziness, I started porting those tasks over to Trello for longer term storage.  Yes, I should either discard those items I’m not doing or clearing my plate by completing the tasks.  However, there are items that are not urgent and not important enough to do at the time.  Instead, I’ve set up a kanban board that allows me to move tasks from a pool to an active list, then to a complete, abandon, or hold list, depending on the status of the task.  It’s a handy way of keeping on top of tasks that are not immediately pressing and allows me to use my notebook for day-to-day pressing concerns.

There are a few other tools I’m trying out, such as Toggl, RescueTime, Microsoft Teams, and Notion, but I’ll save those for a future post.

The five-ish tools above are a few things that makes it easy for me to keep on top of several process flows for work, my personal projects, and my volunteer work.  Without them, I would be drowning in trying to keep everything fresh in my mind.  Let me know what kind of tools you use (digital or analogue) in the comments below.  I’m always interested in learning what different people have set up for themselves.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

First “Inbox Zero” In A Long Time

For as much as I read about productivity and “tactics,” I’m not all that organized, in my opinion.  I am forced to keep track of a lot of threads in my projects by necessity of having too much on my plate, so I make use of notebooks and applications to sort, categorize, and remind myself of things.  This includes my email inboxes – if something is unread, it means I haven’t tended to it yet and need to circle back.

From time to time I hack away at my unread messages, but items will sit there for long stretches during peak deadline times.

Last week, however, I hit inbox zero for my main account for the first time in a loooooong time.

inbox zero
Let’s ignore any messages currently in Boomerang limbo…

I honestly don’t remember the last time I hit zero messages in my inbox.  It’s been a long slow process of setting up filters on messages to get rid of promotions cluttering my inbox (which I started setting up in January).  I was tired of having to constantly decide whether I wanted to open promotional messages or auto-delete.  I didn’t want to block or unsubscribe from them all since I still used the promotions on occasion, but the constant, daily deluge of 30+ messages was draining.

I don’t really subscribe to the inbox zero system per se, but when I finally cleared the last message kicking around, I stared at my empty inbox in confusion.  It was weird to see.  And I feel a slight motivation to keep on top of clearing emails.  When a number pops up in the tab, an itching anxiety kicks in to get rid of it as soon as possible.

1 message

0 message
Demon be gone!

I feel odd celebrating something like this.  I know rationally that clearing emails isn’t really a marker of productivity.  Nevertheless, I think it’s important to celebrate those times when you feel a modicum of control over your life and work (even if it’s an illusion set up by my capitalist overlords… /s).

Knowledge workers, unite!

Stay Awesome,

Ryan