In our first “Workflows” episode we talk with Merlin Mann, or as David calls him, the “Hero of Nerds.” Merlin discussed how he uses his Mac for his work and the applications he uses to be more productive. This extra long episode is packed with geeky goodness.
This is a new type of episode for us so we appreciate your feedback.
Links of note
Word Processing
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg
Task Management
Getting Things Done – David Allen
Calendar:
Information Management
AmberV talks File Naming – post 1 – post 2
iPhone Apps
RSS
Productivity
Merlin Mann
Interview with Seth Godin (lizard brain video)
Special thanks to our sponsor:Smile (Formerly SmileOnMyMac)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (46.9MB)
Well worth a listen to. i picked up quite a few gems from this one.
I vote that you do more of these Workflow episodes. Quite an excellent addition for your show with loads of info.
I’m one of those people who hesitates before clicking through to videos that last longer than a few minutes. Other than a handful of favorite NPR programs, I rarely listen to podcasts.
I listened to this in one sitting. I’m a huge Merlin Man fan, and a huge Mac productivity fan, so that’s why I was drawn in.
Hell, I may even listen to it again. So much great stuff here! I pride myself in clever/efficient uses of various tools. For better or worse, I have days worth of stuff to look into here. Love it. Hate it.
[well, hell. I was 10 minutes from the end of the podcast, submitting this comment cut it off, and my only option seems to be to start over. There's got to be a better way]
[and... got repeated errors when submitting using Chrome. This attempt via Firefox]
wow – fantastic and v helpful. I love MM especially his kung fu grippe (although, confessionally, I get about half of what he’s up to). We have so little opportunity to learn from the masters at this level… Keep it coming. and Thanks.
I’m curious to know how Merlin uses the Griffin PowerMate and why it warranted a mention in the list above.
Well done and intelligently handled. You gave Merlin the chance to run the table with an overview of great workflow tools and he delivered. I found myself clicking on most of the links and re-playing parts of the audio. It took me 3 hours to get to the end of the podcast! I have completely ignored BusyCal in the past but I completely get it now. Why isn’t this Apple’s default calendar app? Merlin’s mention of Pastebot got me to thinking what a workflow with Dragon voice recognition and Pastebot could do. Thanks for the ideas.
lots of great ideas. I have a simple process using my Mac
I use spaces to have different work spaces.
My dashboard space has Things, Mail and BusyCal. Most of my communication come in via email, it either goes into Things (drag and drop the actual email), into the Calendar as an appt then filed.
I use an IMAP Gmail account and am always able to find anything pretty quickly.
I use ‘Socialite” to follow my Social Media and RSS feeds.
Mac journal and Blogo for Blogs
I am playing with “Otherinbox” to tame the email beast.
PostBox is a possible option to AppleMail, but still needs some work.
On the road, I have Wifi wherever I go, so Ipod touch with Simple note, Palm Pre has great calendar and email.
This system has kept me in the game for a few months now
This show made my heart hurt, but in a good way. Lots of things to chew on, go back to, and rethink. To steal a line from Ken Ray, YOU ROCK!
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Just a quick note that Notational Velocity is open-source and can be modified. Merlin mentioned using the Markdown format. At the site below, you can download a SPLIT-Fork (modified) version of Notational Velocity that shows Markdown in a separate panel/column. Let me know what you think.
ttp://github.com/panicsteve/nv/downloads
Enjoyed the show! Big fan of Merlin Mann.
Hazel seems to be a very interesting app that keeps showing up on my radar screen.
Any thoughts as to whether or not I could set up Hazel to send files via ftp to a folder on my website and, in turn, delete those older than a certain date?
Thanks for this — I wasn’t able to go to Macworld and listen to Merlin’s talk about OmniFocus, so this was a good alternative.
I’m very intrigued by the discussion on filename conventions. MM made reference to AmberV’s posting on the Scrivener forum, but I haven’t been able to nail down what he was referring to. Anybody have any luck?
Merlin mentions a utility in connection with the Griffin PowerMate, the name of which escapes him for awhile. Finally he says “Proxy! That’s the name of the app.” But Google as I might, I can’t find an app called Proxy anywhere. Link?
Thanks for a fantastic podcast. Really inspired me.
Merlin mentioned something called this service or disservice – had a search online and I can’t find anything on it. From what I gathered, it was about creating custom services in OS X and there was a web site with lots of scripts users had written and uploaded to share. Has anyone got a link?
Thanks all for your comments. Here are a few follow-ups:
Tom- Merlin was talking about Services in Snow Leopard. We did an entire episode on this subject. It’s episode 11, and you can find the link and all the shownotes with links here: http://macpowerusers.com/2009/09/mpu-011-services-and-macworld-2010/
Kevin- I looked all over for the Proxi application, it appears that it is no longer available, sorry.
Tom- Go over to the Scrivener website (link in shownotes) and click on their forums. You can then search through for AmberV. I looked for a way to link directly to her posts but apparently you cannot do so until you’ve subscribed to the forums.
Julie- You instead of listening to the show in the video player you can download it to your computer or, better yet, subscribe in iTunes. Then you can pause and start and stop as you please.
Thanks for the reply, Katie. Downloading the podcast right now.
Once again, thanks guys. Really enjoyed this, look forward to what you’ve got in the next podcast.
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Your best show ever! Thanks a bunch for all the input.
Hey Katie,
I know this isn’t the right place for this, but I just listened to your guest spot on ThinkMac’s review podcast on the cell phone booster.
In it, you mentioned the AT&T MicroCell. I am luckily in one of the markets for it, and I got one last week. I’m a college student who spends 95% of my time at school. However, at home, I’m in the middle of a 50-mile-wide dead zone (the coverage maps say that, too). I got a MicroCell so that I can have service at home, at least in my house, instead of having to rely on Google Voice while I’m home.
Since I got it, everything has changed. It is AWESOME! We have a simple DSL connection at home, and the call quality is equal to or even better than it is in the middle of 3G coverage area (Chapel Hill, NC). The 3G data speeds are also quick, too, faster than in a general 3G area, though they are dependent on the speed of your internet connection.
In terms of pricing, it was $150, and there’s no monthly fee. It uses your original iPhone minutes and data plan, so it’s the perfect device, as far as I’m concerned.
Great show guys Merlin rocks. You should interview a guy by the name of Ed Dale @ed_dale he has converted 1,000s of PC people over to Mac and has some really great work flows for Mac and Iphone. Would love to hear you guys interview him.
Keep up the cool shows.
Hi Tom,
I am not sure this is what he mentioned, but I found thru google.
http://dougist.com/2009/08/file-system-infobase-manager/
In it, see just above “How’s it work?”. two links to AmberV’s posts there.
Great podcast. As some noted above, it is nice to have a real ‘under-the-skin’ interview for a change rather than a 5 minute re-work of old material.
Keep up the good work!
Rich
This episode may one day reside in the Mac podcasting Hall of Fame if ever such a place is created. Great work, guys.
Someone should start compiling Merlin Mann quotes. The one about tasks being ducks you should shoot instead of ducks you should raise is priceless.
Also, I’m loving MultiMarkdown after hearing Merlin mention it. I’m already composing in it. I’m sure he could write a book just on getting back to the text editor way of doing things. Great “fu for thought” for us productivity zealots who love trying new apps.
@Eddie and others…
What is the relationship with, or how to you integrate, MultiMarkdown and Notational Velocity? I hear Merlin talked about both, but don’t seem to fully understand how you would utilize both. What am I missing?
Thanks!
@Ronn
I’m a MultiMarkdown newbie, and honestly I haven’t used Notational Velocity, but I’m very interested in it after seeing Merlin’s qqq method.
For me, MultiMarkdown is a promising way to write in a simple text editor so that I can get out of other more distracting interfaces. I’ve never been a fan of composing in web-based blog editors like WP, but I’ve done it anyway because it takes too much effort to convert to html. MultiMarkdown is the ultimate solution for that.
I’ve also started using Scrivener much more in the last few months, and I’m looking forward to its compatibility with MultiMarkdown.
Can someone give me some keywords for the AmberV posting that I can use to refine my search within the Scrivener forum? She/he has a dozen posts and I would like to see which one Merlin was referring to. Thanks.
@Eddie – I am starting to dabble with Markdown/MultiMarkdown and have been using (or trying to use) NV for a couple of weeks now. I get the impression, although I cannot prove it, that Merlin is using TextMate/MultiMarkdown with NV and I am trying to figure out what he is doing. I can see the value of TextMate and MultiMarkdown, as well as NV. I just can’t seem to get my head around how he is combining them.
I did find, however, that there is a ‘version’ of NV that accepts MarkDown. It shows a rendering of the MD in a screen below the note.
@Ronn – Maybe David and Katie would be so kind as to do a show on Markdown at some point in the future. I believe David said that he uses it as well. I know I for one would love to hear more about how it can be used with NV and other applications.
Proxi is indeed still downloadable:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21297/proxi
Great tips from Merlin, though I have to call him out for websearching for that app while pretending to still be paying attention to the hosts
@Eddie – Sounds like a wonderful idea to me. Now to just convince David and Katie of it…
Loved this new format. Love Merlin. Learned a lot. Keep the workflow series coming. Can’t wait to see who’s next.
Katie, Proxi isn’t anywhere on Griffin’s web site anymore. However, they hadn’t updated it in quite a while and the Mail plug-in stopped working when Snow Leopard came out.
As other people have mentioned the version of NV that adds Markdown display support is what people should consider using if they use Markdown. It was done by Steven Frank of Panic. His version can be found at
http://github.com/panicsteve/nv/downloads
Ronn, NV has an option to pull from a list of text files instead of a database. So, put all your text files in one directory and you can edit them with TextMate or with NV.
Why does Merlin hate Apple’s Mail? I don’t understand why Google’s Gmail (or MailPlane) is more convenient. Does anyone?
@ T.J. – Excellent. Thanks for passing that on.
This was the first podcast I ever listened to of your show. It was super great. A bit overwhelming. But great.
@durbrow For me, Mail.app is too old fashioned compared to Gmail. IMO, Gmail truly revolutionized email handling because of its ability to bundle conversations automatically. So let’s say since the last time I entered my inbox, there have been 5 conversations, each with 10 replies/forwards. In Mail.app’s inbox, I’ll see 50 items. In Gmail, I’ll see 5.
Also, Gmail’s tagging (labeling) ability is second to none. The keyboard shortcut support for tagging is also supreme.
I haven’t used Mailplane, but I’m thinking about downloading it. I just can’t get away from Gmail, but anything that enhances it further is worth a shot. If Merlin gives it his blessing, you have to at least consider it.
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Great show. I still haven’t listened to the end, but have listened to the first half or so twice. Don’t know how much time Merlin has, but it would be great if you could schedule a follow-up show sometime in which you go into greater depth on the things people have questions/comments about.
One from me: I’d to hear in detail what Merlin thinks about Snow Leopard.
I just LOVE your podcasts. I cannot get enough of them. I have tried to subscribe via iTunes a few times without any luck.
Anyway, it is amazing how you keep the shows fresh and intelligent. I never stop learning which will certainly keep me coming back for more!
I thank you!
Eddie, have you ever tried turning on threads in Mail.app? Not sure how what you’re describing in Gmail is any different…
After listening to this podcast, I had to go back and catch up on a bunch of others. I’ve now got back to this one in the series and am listening to it again.
This certainly was a flagship episode, and I think it would be great to have a ‘interview on productivity’ about every 6 episodes or so. Although you really have a hard time coming up with an encore to Merlin.
@Ignobilitor Thanks for suggesting that. I actually just saw a post on that recently on another Mac blog. I didn’t know that option was available. I need to check it out.
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Thank you for all the links in the show notes!
Thanks for such great show notes. I finally got around to listening to this on my bus ride to work and kept thinking “I’m never going to remember all of these THINGS!”… and new I wasn’t going to re-listen to an hour and a half podcast (even w/ Merlin in it) at a computer to take notes. Oh, and my inner Unix geek was so pleased to hear him talking about grepping.
Whoa, that’s a LOT of comments.
It’s amazingly cool that folks enjoyed this eppy as much as I loved doing it. Aren’t D&K swell hosts? Love this format.
FWIW, if there’s stuff I mentioned that didn’t make sense, that you can’t find, or if anything just got lost or contorted in my ridiculous machine gun delivery, I’m happy to follow-up with any needed clarifications or pointers.
Not to make work for our talented and busy hosts, but if Katie or David wanted to collect any loose ends that were unclear to people, I’d be happy to answer any questions here or elsewhere.
Plus, I hope it goes without saying that I’d be honored to be back on this august program any time. Like I’d said, while I’ve had my own reasons for shifting overt focus away from how-tos and implementation, that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s super-useful when done well by people. As is very much the case here.
In fact I think my two fave things about the ep were
1. the DEEPLY nerdy depth of some of the discussion, and
2. the fact that for almost everything we talked about, there was a sensible basis in _how_ or _why_ we think this option is a good choice. Not just THAT we think you should do it. (to me? the former is art and science; the latter is politics and religion)
Anyhow. Long comment (as usual). But I did want to definitely express my gratitude to everyone for their kind words. I sincerely hope you all have lots of good luck converting your ninja skills and newly found time into making the work you care most about.
Excelsior!
Great podcast and incredible links! I am going to spend tomorrow organizing my life using the information I leaned here today. Thank you so much for sharing this goldmine with us. I feel very blessed to have found you.
Veronica Hay
I come from a Windows background and find it a bit hard to understand that even the smallest applications cost 24€/$. And now there’s a list of 30 productivity boosting applications which all sound great
Is for example Hazel going to save me the twenty-something dollars?
Merlin Mann is great and this session was so beneficial. OmniFocus was a game changer for me. I concur with Merlin’s obserations about Mac Mail and iCal but my enthusiasm stops dead at GMail- there is no way I could use this as my email solution.
I sort of agree with Brian. I deplore having to use web based apps that I always have to log into to use. So, despite liking the Gmail interface I download my gmail into Mail.app. I also don’t understand why no one has mentioned Safari as a RSS reader. Why would I, again, want to take the time to log into Goggle to use a reader?
It’s just lots of hassle to me to use apps that sit behind a login when I can use items in my dock to go right to what I want and in some cases (mail.app) work offline with that content.
Aloha Sparky and Katie,
I am a frequent listener of MPU and I have gotta say it’s awesome.
I was wondering you you or any of the readers have any input of weather to sync using files or database, and weather to use NV default folder, Dropbox or Both.
I understand there is some issues when using a single DB and DropBox i can see where that may go a bit haywire, but is this still the case if one uses ABOTF “A Bunch Of Text Files”.
I hope someone out there can help me,
Mahalo,
Aloha,
Doc
This was a great episode.
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Just learning about the Mac. Was refered here from Ed Dale, to learn about “Workflows” from Merlin. I am finding it easy to follow with allot of interesting goodies.
I was using Evernote for a project when my internet connection got fried by lightening. It’s been about 10 days & I’m still off line as I’m on a LAN & repair is out of my control. Having your notes right on your Mac is very handy. I think one can arrange to have that with Evernote so I’d recommend that.
I’m in ed’s challenge, too. this looks very cool. is there anything similar available for us “pc power users”?
thanks,
Mtn Jim
Jim,
Thanks for stopping by we’re always welcoming new visitors. Can’t recommend any PC podcasts because that’s not our thing. You may want to consider looking at Episode 28 where we discuss using a Mac in a Windows World.
Did Merlin mention what he uses for CONTACTS?
Just switched to Mac, yayyy!
(MCP 13″)
Just put all my 2800 Outlook contacts into Google Contacts.
Now am wondering how to sync them with my iPhone.
(And, how I could have them offline as well, if possible.)
Is there a way to have all 3 locations going (Google Contacts, iPhone & locally on Mac, even when offline) and this all smoothly auto-synching?
Thanks in advance,
Falk
PS: Let me add: THANK YOU for such a great Podcast!
Ok, sorry one more thought/question here:
I used MS ONENOTE quite happily on my former PC to store all kinds of info on many different subjects.
YOUR FAVORITE MAC EQUIVALENT? ^_^
The Merlin show was great. One of his best. Glad he’s still a Quicksilver supporter! Talking about workflow and fiddling is way way cooler than actually working, of course. I’m glad I realized a while back that Omnifocus would be the end for me. Pen and paper all the way. I love his idea that the “knowledge worker” has to define what it is they’re doing every moment. Weird times we live in indeed. I’ve only caught a couple of episodes, but I’m liken the podcast. Would love to see a whole show on file naming.
I just listened to this episode again in January 2011 because I remembered the impact it had on me when it came out last March. Wow. Just as good the second time, and I got more (and deeper) things out of it. I’m going to put this on my list of podcast episodes to keep forever and listen to once a year. (Love the part about having a “dashboard of verbs for the next two weeks”.)
I am a new subscriber to your podcast and absolutely love it. I came over from the windows dark side a little under 2 years ago and am still on that steep mac learning curve. Every episode I listen to adds something new to my knowledge base and this one in particular added loads more. Keep up the good work and I look forward to future editions of your show. Thanks to you both and I’ll be adding a comment into iTunes although I no longer subscribe there – I use Podcaster on my iPhone.
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