I can't has cheezburger

Now I’m no Merlin Mann in terms of my expertise in productivity but being a double major in college and working a number of busy jobs will make you better at managing your time and tasks if you’re going to succeed at it.

When I was younger and in school, it was enough for me to just remember my assignments given to me or other things I had to do. I could just keep track of them in my head and I would have this general sense of what I had left to do and I’d feel at ease once I got everything done.  Moving into college, this became non-feasible and I had to track my assignments somewhere but I wasn’t yet totally clear on the best way to do this. But it was clear that I’d never again have this clear mind of having all my things done because I was just being given too many things to do. I would always have something on my to-do list (maybe it’ll empty out after I retire). 

I believe it was after my junior year in college that I discovered the OmniFocus app. I watched a video on how it made your life easier and I immediately fell in love with it. By always being available with a keyboard shortcut it allows for ubiquitous capture of information (which is important if you don’t want to fall back into the habit of reaching for a piece of paper), and it’s designed in such a way that it’s very easy to clip things from pretty much anywhere on your computer and turn them into actionable tasks with context. 

This is what it looks like on OS X:

(I would have posted one of my own but it’s got some confidential info in it)

Some to-do list apps are ridiculously simple (like Clear), in that you just put things into it and then they’re in there until you cross them off your list. However, if your list is full of things you can’t or don’t need to be worried about right now, it’s that much more useless to you because it’s cluttered.

With OmniFocus, you’re expected to use a GTD-style workflow.  If you just need to capture a to-do item, put it into your inbox for quick entry. Later, you will go back to your inbox and review the items in it, set up due dates as appropriate and optionally assign a context and/or project to the task. You may have a context for the office, perhaps one for home, perhaps even one for the phone if you have phone calls. The idea here is that if you’re at home you don’t need to be focusing on tasks that are for at the office. I also have a shopping context that I keep a rudimentary shopping list in.

Projects are used to take big things you want to accomplish and break them up into actionable chunks. You can have projects that are one thing you do (get in shape, or maybe build that new product) and then you’re done with it, or you can have projects that are just a bucket of single ad-hoc tasks that are related in some way (or maybe they’re not, like the default Miscellaneous project). I have a good mix of both. 

At first it can (and will) be a little bit nerve-racking to know that you put a to-do item into OmniFocus and not see it in the view you happen to be in. If something doesn’t need to be on your radar until 3 weeks from now, set the start date for then and OmniFocus will hide it from you and sure enough, three weeks later it will appear, just when you need it. For some having that item hidden from view is nauseating (and for me it was a bit unnerving as well), but I strongly recommend that you learn to trust OmniFocus. 

And one of my favorite things about OmniFocus is the fact that you can clip things into it. My favorite thing to clip into OmniFocus are emails. Just install the Mail Clip-O-Tron 3000 into Mail and you can select any message and press ⌘⏎ to bring it into OmniFocus (or whatever other keyboard shortcut you use, I don’t judge). This creates a task in OmniFocus that contains a link back to the original message. An important tenet of the GTD principle is that your contextual information is right there available alongside the tasks at hand. Since I use GitHub issues for issue/bug tracking at work, I also have a handy bookmarklet installed in Chrome which also handily embeds a link back to the page I clipped a task from.

Having a task management system reduces my stress levels because I know that all my tasks are accounted for. Having a good task management system means that I have one that I spend very little time in. I throw information in, then I check back occasionally to organize it into the right contexts and projects, and then I find the next thing I need to do, do it, then I check it off. I’m more productive because I don’t have to spend my time wondering if there are things I’m forgetting. I’m not forgetting anything; the only thing I truly am forgetting is the thing I forgot to capture into OmniFocus; as long as I do that, I’m safe. Having OmniFocus doesn’t necessarily add time to my day, but it makes me accountable for all the things I do have to do. And in line with my paperless style, no matter what device I’m using I can fire up OmniFocus and have all my tasks at hand, so I’m never without my to-do list.

OmniFocus is available for OS X and iOS (both iPhone and iPad versions are available). The apps are quite pricey ($79.99, $19.99 and $39.99 respectively) but these are not your standard shitty little cereal box apps. I don’t want to pick favorites here or anything, but Omni Group makes probably the best apps for the Mac platform, and they’re doing quite well on iOS as well.

If you started using Evernote, it probably didn’t take long for you to feel like Evernote’s starting to cramp your style. You can only be so creative if your tools are basically what you can make with a rich text editor.  To make matters worse, Evernote has remarkably little interest in adding new, more flexible tools to what you can do with the note editor.

But it’s hard to fault Evernote for that. If you wanted to add a single new feature to the note editor as Evernote, you’d have to figure out how to represent it in Evernote’s HTML-like format. You’d have to develop tools in the native Evernote apps (which there are quite a few of), and every time you launch this new tool on one of the platforms, some asshole (usually I’m this asshole) is tweeting you saying how worthless you are that you haven’t brought feature parity to all your platforms.

So with that challenge in mind, don’t expect much from Evernote on this front. But if you find yourself wanting Evernote to have diagramming, advanced drawing, or outlining tools, you might need to approach what Evernote is to you with a new perspective.

Evernote is rigid in what you can edit in its native editor, but beyond that, it’s incredibly flexible. You can attach files of any type to your Evernote notes (even free users can do this now). If you want them to be searchable from Evernote, send a PDF of the file to Evernote and you’re golden.  This gives you the best feature of Evernote: the universal accessibility of a variety of document types.

Don’t sit here waiting for Evernote to get a set of tools as good as OmniGraffle’s, or OmniOutliner’s.  Evernote can’t and shouldn’t try to emulate these apps.  Save your files as PDFs an apps, then send those PDFs to Evernote.  In iOS, Evernote is registered as an app that can open PDFs so you’re golden. And bug your app developers to add support for sending to Evernote (it isn’t that hard).  Ideally I’d like to see some notetaking apps (like Taposé) gain true Evernote integration in which I natively was touching Evernote notes when I was taking notes in the app, but that’s quite an undertaking (though it didn’t stop HTC from making such an app for one of their tablets).

To quote Merlin Mann, don’t fault your hammer for not being a ham sandwich.

Here’s the fun part in which we get into the meat of a paperless lifestyle.

You don’t have to use Evernote as your note & snippet repository. It’ll make this article less relevant, but there do exist some direct Evernote competitors. Springpad is a notable one. OneNote is great. Maybe Yojimbo is more your thing. DevonThink is quite respectable as well. Perhaps you prefer Circus Ponies NoteBook. Or, maybe you’re old school and you want to manage them all in files and folders manually.

I chose Evernote some time ago because it has a really good balance of all the things I need. It won’t let me scribble things super free form all over a note and record with a note and sync what I wrote to the recording (OneNote, Circus Ponies NoteBook do). It’s not really good at being a good example of a Mac app (Yojimbo is better at that). It doesn’t automatically parse my notes and present me relevant information for specific things inline (Springpad does).

But it does have a version available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (unofficial), web, WebOS, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry, iOS and Android (there doesn’t exist another note-taking solution compatible with this many platforms). Not only is Evernote available for each of these platforms, Evernote is written totally natively for each platform, so it fits very well into your phone’s OS or computer’s OS. If you’ve ever used an app that was originally written for another platform and lazily ported over to yours, you’ll appreciate that extra effort. If you add content that is an image, Evernote will make the text in it searchable, even handwritten content (I think it’s the only one in my list that does that). It allows you to easily clip content from the web and it offers this through native extensions for the three major browsers (Firefox, Safari and Chrome) I use. And it’s designed to be very flexible, and doesn’t require you to manage files in any way. It’s synced to a web based account automatically (Springpad does this, but that’s because it has no native OS X client). Evernote treats your notes in a very abstract manner, letting you organize your snippets of information into notebooks and tags (each note lives in a single notebook and can have zero or more tags), and each note can have a number of attributes that help you have context for when you wrote your note. Much of it is implicit. If you write a note on your smartphone, your location is automatically embedded into the note. The date and time you created and last modified the note is right in there. If you clipped a note from the web, Evernote automatically includes the source URL in the note’s metadata, making research super easy. In short, Evernote is designed to make a plethora of information available to you wherever you may happen to be, and they are focused on making it super easy to get that information into it. This is totally in line with what I expect out of a system for enabling me to be paperless.

To get started, get Evernote installed on all of your devices which support it, and log in with your Evernote account. Start off with a free account and upgrade to a paid account when you need it. On your computers, install the Evernote browser extension on all web browsers you use.

Now, when do you use it? Here are a few ideas:

With the exception of the restaurant menu idea, you’ll notice that none of these things are necessarily making your more paperless than you were before, unless perhaps you put things like this on a lot of post-it notes. This is part of the habit forming experience. You want to reach a point where entering things into a computer or other device is the way you put information away to remember. When that becomes second nature to you, you’re well on your way to being paperless, and that habit is going to push you to start doing things proactively to get the paper out of your life (which I will write about later).

Evernote’s got a fair number of ways you can catalog and manage your information. If you are itching to use that functionality, go for it, but don’t push yourself to do this in a way that puts you at risk for falling out of the habit of using Evernote. Start using tags and extended note attributes only when you really feel the need for them. Otherwise, you could be forcing yourself to take more time to make Evernote notes than it otherwise would have taken you. That’s no good.

Next up I’ll be discussing some stylistic choices you have to make when using Evernote, and some of the ways you can use Evernote to keep all your notes within close reach.

“Why don’t you just wipe your ass with your iPad? –Allison Mitchell

Once you have the tools you wish to use to adopt a paperless life, it becomes time to start using the tools. This is by far the most difficult part of the process, because it requires making real, meaningful changes to how you organize your stuff and how you deal with information as you get it. More importantly, you have to change your instincts when you find that you are in need of some piece of information.

When you first start putting stuff into a digital repository, it’s hard to get into the habit of continuing to do it because you haven’t yet benefitted from having the information stored like this (since there’s not yet much information in your digital repository). However, once you do encounter that situation where you need something and you realize “oh, I have it right here in Evernote, let me just grab it!” it’s at that point that you are on track to be in the habit.

Let’s start with the easiest habit to change: saving your files into Dropbox. It’s straightforward enough to do. First, move your existing documents into Dropbox. If you have a Documents (OS X, Windows Vista and up) or a My Documents (Windows XP) folder, make one in your Dropbox, move the contents of your old Documents folder into it, and then start saving your stuff in the new Documents folder instead. If you are using OS X or Vista or Windows 7, it’s a good idea to remove the sidebar shortcut to the old Documents folder and replace it with the new one.

If putting these documents into Dropbox puts strain on the free space you’re allocated, just buy more Dropbox space (or switch to an .edu account and refer lots of people). Don’t ever put yourself into a situation where you have to decide what’s worth keeping in Dropbox, because you’ll inevitably some day be in an airport needing a document you never thought you’d need again. 50 gigabytes of Dropbox space can be had for as little as $100 a year, and unless you’re a video editor or someone whose job involves incredibly large files, it goes a long way.

Having your files Dropboxed gives you some peace of mind. For one thing, for each computer you have Dropbox installed on (if you’re doing it right that is all of them), you have a redundant local backup of all of your files that automatically propagates instantly. You can walk from one computer to another (like a BOSS) and pick up on documents right where you left off. Did a catastrophic storm happen, destroying one of your computers and leaving you without an internet connection? Fear not, the files are right there for you to use on your other machine.

What’s that? You accidentally deleted a file and now it’s deleted on all your computers because Dropbox propagates changes like that? No problem. Go to Dropbox’s web app, log in, and browse to your folder and click “Show Deleted Files.” Bam.

But what if you didn’t delete a file, but instead you drunkenly made some egregious modifications to one of your files? Not to worry. Dropbox has you covered there as well.

At a friend’s house and you didn’t bring a computer with you but you need a document? Again, no problem. Just log into the Dropbox web app and you can see all your files and download the one you want to work with it. You don’t have to worry about installing some software on your friend’s computer.

It gets cooler, though. Dropbox’s mobile app gives you handy access to all of your files. Sitting on a beach and your friend wants that PDF of the eBook you have a (perfectly legal) copy of? It’s surprisingly easy to email your friend a link to the file. And in situations where access to an important file is even more critical, you’ll appreciate having that safety net that much more.

Again, Dropbox isn’t exactly an integral part of a paperless life since those documents were already not on paper, but it’s a habit worth getting into.

I’ve decided to begin a new series on the joys of living a life devoid of dead trees. It’s an area I have intense passion about and it’s one that I happen to be somewhat on the cutting edge of, which I find surprising given the number of nerds I live around.

Paper is so straightforward for people, and that makes it incredibly difficult to want to give up. Paper is so simple. If you’re one of the (many) people who needs convincing that it’s worth going paperless, I can’t help you. Perhaps through reading my examples you’ll see how it will improve your life, but it’s nigh impossible for me to lay out in a concrete fashion the advantages of going paperless. It’s a liberating experience, but it’s not exactly something I can make a bullet list of. It’s a bit like an Apple product in that sense.

It’ll be another decade or so before I can be living a life where I’m not given things on paper whatsoever, but some time ago I did realize that I can take control of what I do with the paper I have, and I’ve decided that I’m going to get rid of it when at all possible. This can’t be done with quite everything (my original car title is probably one of those documents that’s a keeper) but it can be done with enough that I make a meaningful dent in the junk paper documents I keep around.

If you want to get a start on a paperless life, there are a few things you need:

• A computer
• Some portable device that you’re likely to always have with you (a laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc.)
• A scanner (not needed, but it helps) (I use Doxie myself, but it’s not mind blowing, so shop around)

You need some software things as well. There are two pieces of software/web services that I find indispensable to my paperless workflow, Dropbox and Evernote. I sure have had my share of complaints about Evernote, but on the whole it’s the only note and snippet management system that meets all of my needs well.

Other things you’ll want to have are an email service with a capacity that doesn’t require you to ever worry about deleting things. Gmail’s good but most email providers do a good job of this too. One of my tenets of being paperless is to never delete anything. You’ll also want a reliable internet connection and preferably a 3G internet connection that you take with you at all times. If you’re out talking to a colleague and they ask if you have that document you promised you’d give them, it’s awkward to not be able to give it to him just because you have no connection to your documents.

Dropbox isn’t a necessary tool in adopting a paperless life, but using it goes hand in hand with a paperless lifestyle. You want to be living in a mode where you can leave the house with just your phone or iPad or laptop or whatever and be confident that if you are stopped on the street and asked for some random document, you’ve got it. Being paperless means you always have all your documents with you at all times because you never have to make the choice of which ones to put in your bag.

Given the above tools you can begin your new life, liberated from the tyranny of paper. These are far from being the only tools out there and you may find that a whole different set of software and hardware tools works better for you. It’s all highly personal, but I can only speak from my own experience and what works for me. Get these tools and try them out (all the software stuff can be tried for free). See how they might fit into your life. In the next post, I’ll begin discussing how to actually form the habits you need to form to make being paperless a natural part of your life.

Peace out. Namaste.