This is the first chapter in a series about the landscape of my digital setup.

Productivity is very important to me; over time I’ve developed a system that fits my needs. Although different people require different methods, I thought I’d share different components of my GTD system and how they work – so I can.

Desktop

I’m a firm believer in keeping a clean, minimalistic desktop, both physically and virtually. The only icons present are hard drive partitions and a link to my Dropbox folder. I do use GeekTool to monitor the ps command, as well as a live feed of /var/log/system.log, but apart from that – nothing. If it’s on the desktop, it hasn’t been dealt with (the same concept as a full inbox). Plus, I find wallpapers to be much more visually appealing without the clutter of icons.

Dock

Across all of my machines, the dock looks exactly the same. More than anything else, this is just a result of my compulsive habits, akin to never having anything in the Trash. Yet there’s a deliberate workflow in the order of applications:

1. Finder & Dashboard. Basic OS X functionality.
2. Safari & NetNewsWire. Information and aggregation. Serves as a base for everything else.
3. Mail.app, iChat, Skype, & Tweetie. Communication. Allows for expansion and distribution of information.
4. Pandora. Music. I almost always have music playing while I’m working. I see Pandora as a buffer between the fundamental apps of information/communication and task management.
5. Things. Task management. Everything else in the dock points to Things.
6. Terminal, Activity Monitor, & System Preferences. Backend and configuration apps; appropriately placed in the back of the dock.
7. Currently running apps. Other applications that don’t permanently reside in the dock.

Obviously the dock has its share of shortcomings. Quicksilver’s a much more effective way to open apps without leaving the keyboard, although I still use the dock to help with the order of open applications.

Spaces

I don’t know what I would do without Spaces. I was disappointed that Windows 7 did not include a native virtual desktop solution, although that makes me appreciate Spaces all the more.

If you scan across the top two spaces, you’ll see windows open in the same order as they appear in the dock (NetNewsWire, Mail.app, iChat, Skype, Tweetie, Pandora, and Things). Regardless of what I’m working on, these apps always stay open and in the same position. The 6 spaces below are temporarily delegated depending on what tasks I have going at the time (this blog post is currently in space A2). Some projects, such as coding, will usually take up multiple spaces (one for SSH/FTP, one for HTML/CSS, one for WebKit, etc.). At the peak of a good workday, I’ll have everything filled up with different tasks. When they’re finished, they get closed out and checked off in Things.

Applications

NetNewsWire

Until a month ago, I was a staunch user of the Google Reader webapp, but NetNewsWire’s switch to exclusively sync with GReader turned me on to a desktop app. I’ve never been against a local feed reader, but the availability of a webapp was more important to me. Now I can have both.

I subscribe to 26 feeds sorted into 6 folders.

1. Tech News
2. ATL Startup
3. Entrepreneurship
4. Web Design
5. Misc
6. Media

The first thing I do when I wake up every morning is catch up on feeds. On average, I get about 200 each day, although I don’t necessarily read every word – just enough to get what’s going on. Due to the distracting, anti-productive nature of RSS, I usually close out of NetNewsWire after the early morning, and don’t open it again until late at night.

Mail.app

Unlike RSS, I handle email as soon as it comes in. Since most of my emails are closely related to productivity (Google Group alerts, Goplan notifications, etc.), it wouldn’t make much sense to block myself from email while working. I’ve even gotten to the point where I’ll be asleep, hear the Mail.app bling, and wake up to check my inbox.

I try to practice inbox zero as much as possible. When an email comes in, I either deal with it immediately if it’s a quick fix/reply, or file it into the appropriate folder and add it to Things. Nobody likes an overflowing inbox.

Tweetie

Classification of Twitter as productivity might be a far stretch; I’ll let it slide with the justification of a networking tool. I’m a former Seesmic Desktop user – I liked the ability to scale it full screen with columns of tweets, @replies, and DMs. After a while, I just got tired of dealing with Adobe AIR’s resource usage, plus, Seesmic’s UI was a bit clunky. There’s not many Twitter clients that don’t run on AIR; two that come to mind immediately are Nambu and Tweetie. I’ve been extremely satisfied with Tweetie on the iPhone, so I figured I’d give it a shot on the desktop. I still don’t hate Seesmic, but every day with Tweetie makes it increasingly difficult to go back.

Things

I can’t stress enough how large of a role Things plays in my GTD system. It’s by far the best task management solution I’ve come across – with a syncing iPhone app to boot. By default, tasks are divided into:

1. Today
2. Next
3. Scheduled
4. Someday
5. Projects

I’ve added a few projects ranging from web design to my grocery list. Projects are simply larger items that consist of many tasks.

Below that, I have 10 “areas of responsibility” that differ slightly from projects. They don’t get checked off – it’s more of a grouping/tagging feature. I classify remaining tasks as:

1. Personal. Not directly related to traditional work – items such as getting a haircut, filling up gas, or going to the store.
2. Entrepreneurship. Career-oriented work, like updating my resume or shooting off an email.
3. Blog Posts. A list of ideas that I’d eventually like to turn into full-fledged blog posts, frequently paired with notes or links.
4. Purchases. A list of stuff I’d like to buy. This is the one category that’s never empty.
5. Social Media. Mostly related to this blog without being straight-up ideas for posts. Includes tweaks ranging from adding plugins to reformatting permalinks.
6. Matt-4. Netbook. (Matt 1-4 are the names of my computers. Usually these categories don’t get clogged up; although if I need to install some software or, as of now, install Snow Leopard, it goes in the appropriate computer’s area of responsibility.)
7. Matt-3. Media Center PC.
8. Matt-2. MacBook.
9. Matt-1. Main machine.
10. General Computing. Anything that doesn’t specifically fall into Matt 1-4. Right now the only task in this area is some troubleshooting that I need to do with my router.

It’s taken a while to get a definite system set in stone, but I’m satisfied with my current workflow. I haven’t felt the need to change anything over the past few months, although I’ll reevaluate everything roughly twice a year to see if there’s a more efficient way to work. Comments and suggestions are welcome ; I’m always looking for ways to increase productivity.

boxee is an incredible media center application.

Over the past few weeks, there’s been a fair amount of discussion surrounding the situation between media center application boxee and video streaming service Hulu. When boxee first disclosed that Hulu’s “content providers” requested to be removed from boxee, I was disappointed from a viewer’s standpoint, although I can understand both sides. The networks backing Hulu do still depend on a demand for cable, and as boxee has gained popularity, there’s been a number of movements suggesting that people ditch their cable service.

But it’s still relatively easy to view Hulu on the big screen. Just connect a computer to an HDTV, open up Hulu in a browser, and enter full screen. boxee merely simplifies that process by a few steps – and what’s to say that boxee will always be used in a home theater context? Plus, Hulu is also accessible in another media center application, Plex. If the content providers are so concerned about Hulu’s usage, why have they not targeted Plex?

Hulu's return to boxee.

A couple days ago, boxee announced that Hulu would return via RSS feeds. Soon after that announcement, Hulu proceeded to block access and display a “Content Unavailable” message. It’s shaping out to be a back-and-forth effort between the two – Hulu status notifications are now integrated in boxee, and the team has opened a new Twitter account, @ishuluonboxee.

I’m definitely pulling for boxee on this one. I admire their dedication to the user; they’re not just backing down in fear of a lawsuit.

Avner, you guys rock. Keep doing what you’re doing, and best of luck.

One of my desktop wallpapers is centered around a quote from Jeffrey Zeldman: “To Hell With Bad Browsers”. I couldn’t agree more; a good browser is the first line of defense against a negative online experience. In the past year, we’ve been faced with a number of browsers to validate – Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and a few others like Lunascape and Flock.

Notice that I didn’t include Internet Explorer in that list.

Browser Benchmarks

Upon Tuesday’s beta release of Safari 4, I was excited to see what Apple had to bring to the table. On the performance side, I couldn’t be happier with the result. It was benchmarked by CNET, and was found to be the the top performer against Minefield, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer. Like its predecessor, it also passed Acid3 testing. I could really feel the speed difference when browsing – there was virtually no wait time to load a page, even over WiFi. Doesn’t get much better than that.

The aesthetics are nice, but I don't see myself using Top Sites too often.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the UI changes, though. From your average end-user’s perspective, Top Sites and Cover Flow does accomplish its aim: a simple, graphical representation of web activity. But as a power user, I’m all about functionality. I don’t really need to see a 3-D panorama of the sites I visit most; I know what sites do it for me. Although, looking at Apple’s Safari page does make me consider reverting my opinion, because, yes – it does look cool.

But the two biggest issues with the UI lie in tabs and the address bar.

Tabs on Top isn’t an awful concept, but the implementation is somewhat lacking. The furthermost left tab doesn’t blend well with the rest of the window and looks very rough. Note that Apple does not show this left tab on their site.

Not an overly clean look.

I’d also like to see the return of the classic “address/loading bar in one”. While Apple’s angle might be that Safari doesn’t have a long enough loading time to justify a progress indicator, Cupertino can’t control every individual’s connection, and therefore the experience will differ.

The good news is that there’s some fixes for those of us who want to tweak the settings a bit. For Mac OS X, you can install a ZIP from this site and configure features directly from Safari’s application menu. On Windows, just open up com.apple.Safari.plist (located in C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Apple Computer\Preferences), and change the YES or NO located next to these strings:

DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop

DebugSafari4IncludeToolbarRedesign

DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest

DebugSafari4IncludeFancyURLCompletionList

DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites

DebugSafari4LoadProgressStyle

DebugSafari4IncludeFlowViewInBookmarksView

Despite a few quirks, I was quite pleased with Safari 4. Keep in mind that this is still a beta, and that revisions are forthcoming.  I’ll be interested to see the final release; hopefully the small things that hold it back from perfection will be resolved.