It’s been a year since I adopted Craft as my primary research and note-taking app. I shared my impressions of Craft early on, but I thought I would provide an update on how I’m using the software and why, with all the other choices available in the personal knowledge management (PKM) space, I’m still all-in with Craft. …
The Craft App —A Year of Magical Linking Read More »
I’m a long-time subscriber of Grammarly, the subscription-based grammar checking and proofreading service. I’m the kind of writer that needs grammar and style checking. No matter how many times I review a draft, the round trip through Grammarly finds some sort of error. It’s tough to proofread your own writing, and incorporating this final check in my process has saved me from some otherwise mortifying bloopers. The cost of a premium Grammarly subscription feels low when compared to publishing articles with these dumb writing errors. …
Grammarly, Ulysses and Lost Links Read More »
I spend a lot of time with my nose in a book. Last year, I read 61 books, and I’m on track to read that many again in 2021. Yet, as fast as I read, I can’t seem to make a dent in my To-Be-Read pile. So many books, so little time. Sometimes it feels like I’m running on a treadmill with an ever-increasing speed.
Lately, I’ve been questioning whether this strategy of gulping down so many books is wise after all. When I scan down the list of the books I’ve read so far this year, a few stand out, but many are already a blur. I hover over a few on the list — wait, did I actually read that? …
For the past ten years, I have been on a mission to eradicate paper from my work and home life. I can now access information more quickly and from anywhere, whether at sea or at the Apple Store where I need to produce the invoice for a dead MacBook Pro. And yet, one hold-out refuses to go gently into that dark night of paper annihilation: my Field Notes notebooks. These pint-sized memo books with their quirky designs and durable paper still travel with me just about everywhere. I sometimes wonder at the irony of using a $1,000 iPad Pro as a lap desk to scribble in a $4 notebook.
With everything else in my life so digitally focused, why do I still fill one of these 48-page Field Notes every three or four weeks? …
Writing Things Down in a Paperless World Read More »
In my office, I keep an old photograph of the Buckaroo Tavern in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont. The photo truly captured the character of the place: two chrome-festooned Harley Davidson motorcycles parked up on the sidewalk out front, bright orbs from the lights hung over the pool tables, and an outstretched arm and pool cue of a patron poised in mid-shot. I spent many nights at this dive bar as a young man. My eyes burned from the cigarette smoke, and the rough-looking biker crowd that congregated at the bar would often chuckle over their beers at this clean-cut accountant toting a pool cue case, but I loved the place. I had the photograph framed when we first moved to Vashon Island. It hangs between a picture of Mark Twain standing before a pool table considering his next shot and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey in his famous boxing stance. But, it’s the tavern picture that has caught my attention lately as I think back on that long ago life before kids. …
Organizing the Tool Shed Read More »