2020

It seems Seth was listening in on our Zoom call this morning, in which we decided to dedicate the month of January to review our processes and systems. When will you sharpen the saw? In any given moment, an urgency that feels like an emergency gives us the permission to abandon our systems and simply dive in and fix it, as only we can. And this permission is precisely why we get stuck, precisely why the next urgency is likely to appear tomorrow.

There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

It really bothers me when services with a well working web app oblige me to install their app to access their service from my phone. Usually I prefer native apps, but not for something I only need very occasionally.

Entiendo la popularidad de iVoox para escuchar a podcast. Pero desde el punto de vista de los productores de podcast es un servicio nefasta. No entiendo porqué duplican el feed original eliminando metadatos como, por ejemplo, los enlaces en las notas del programa.

Over the last days, my todo list slowly morphed into a Tetris puzzle with too many dependencies. When I’m that time restrained I feel I can’t trust OmniFocus anymore and am afraid that I’m overcommitting. So, I moved all my tasks to SchedPal and let my limited time available determine what to focus on.

I’m seriously wondering why I’m not posting more often when there really is no friction to write down and publish a message.

I agree with all these observations: Let’s talk video conferencing

El Canasto cumple 14 🎂

Hace 14 años hizo algo que me ha cambiado la vida: publiqué el primer post en mi blog El Canasto. No me podía imaginar que este pequeño proyecto se convertiría en mi pasión y mi profesión. Quiero dar las gracias a todos y a todas que me han seguido en alguna forma en algún momento en estos años.

Why isn’t the Notes app available in the share sheet of an  Music song?

Nicholas Bate is the master of list posts. I always like to read them, but somehow today’s post struck something deep inside me. Though there is nothing shockingly new on the list with Standards in a Covid World, there are several pieced of advice I really, really need to implement.

As a productivity nerd, whenever I encounter an in-depth interview about personal organization and decision making with high performers such as Marc Andreessen, I instantly subscribe.

Nice to have been part of the TemPredict study that used biometric data from the Oura ring to detect COVID-19 days before symptoms appear. Early results look promising!

We need to be careful to not optimize everything to be efficient. Efficiency is for robots, humans are inefficient. Discovery, adventure, every single thing that we really value as humans is terribly inefficient. David Perell https://perell.com/podcast/kevin-kelly-seeing-the-future/

En la última entrega de Causas y Azares descubrí Todos tus libros, una interesante alternativa a Amazon para comprar tus libros en pequeñas librerías en toda España. No sé si tendrá éxito, pero les deseo mucho suerte. Yo leo mis libros en digital, pero para regalar un libro en papel, siempre compro en las pequeñas librerías.

This is my current iPad home Screen: Widgets Calendar Siri suggestions OmniFocus Forecast perspective Dock Safari OmniFocus Basecamp Mail Roam Research Notes Files Paste Home screen Books Byword Day One Instapaper Micro.blog Mindnode Photos Reeder Shortcuts Sonos You Need A Budget Zotero

After having used an iPad for eight years, today was the first time I connected a Bluetooth keyboard. This changes everything!

Since last summer, we are in the market for a new iMac 🖥 to replace a 7-year old MacBook Air 💻. The MacBook served us well for occasional work, but in the era of remote work we really need a bigger screen. We prefer not to buy an Intel computer on the verge of a new architecture launch so we postponed the buying decision to today. In the unlikely event that Apple announces a new iMac with  Silicon, we will purchase it right away.

I did not know this: the bridges on the € banknotes are fictitious, but an architect in the Dutch town of Spijkenisse recreated them. (via Patrick Loonstra)

23 years of blogging

23 years ago, I decided to add a page to my website where I explain what has been going on in my life. A few years later I learned that there was a name for such a page: a web log. A lot has changed since then. I have changed the blogging engine several times. The first page was made in Microsoft FrontPage, followed by hand-crafted Server Side Includes (SSI), the NewsPro CGI script and Movable Type, my favorite blogging engine of all times.

The more a play around in Tribe.so, the more I like it as a tool for creating a community.

Dear MailChimp, I am having an issue upgrading a free account to a paid account. I would like to talk to someone from your support department, but you tell me that I first have to upgrade my free account to a paid account. 🤯

Though this looks like a joke, the message is absolutely necessary. At almost 5 kg, the elgato Weighted Base for the Multi Mount System is deceptively heavy for its size. The only issue is that this message is printed on the inner box and not on the outer box, so the delivery guy had no idea…

Waiting on the the  Silicon computers. I really, really need to buy a new iMac 🖥, but don’t want to buy Intel right before the switch.

This graph by @ton is very inspiring: This week I’m quite busy, but I feel the urge to map out my complete personal knowledge management / effectiveness system in a similar way.

Why didn’t  include a Timer and Stopwatch widget in iOS 14?

Misschien wordt ik oud of ben ik sinds in in het buitenland woon conservatiever geworden, maar ik erger me steeds meer aan het gebruik van Engelse woorden als er prima Nederlandse alternatieven bestaan.

To start the day, I gave my personal blog a little love, with an updated Now page, some retouches to the About page and removal of the unused Bigfoot plug-in.

Nicholas Bate shares 14 Things to Learn and got me searching for that speech by Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar.

📷 City limits

I don’t understand why some people have a blog (a periodic publication) without offering a feed or newsletter to subscribe to. You really expect me to come back every day to check whether you have published anything new?

📷 Lleida, Spain | 2020-10-14 12:09 To relax my eyes after staring for too long at my screen, I simply turn my chair and observe city life though my office window. Nothing special is happening, yet a lot is happening at the same time. #adayinthelife, a micro.blog challenge

Work-life balance 2020 style Just so I'm being honest. #SciMomJourneys pic.twitter.com/4yZMKtVxwP — Gretchen Goldman, PhD (@GretchenTG) September 15, 2020

Today was the first day I had to put the heater (just half an hour) to get comfortable at home. You know what that means: winter is coming!

Exploring Baztan 🥾📷

The busier I am, the more time I find for (micro)blogging

I followed @ton’s example and deleted my Slideshare account. I still have local copies of all documents I had uploaded and I haven’t logged into Slideshare in ages, so this was a no-brained.

With the rollout of iOS 14 and Safari 14, most web sites are going to see some significant shifts in their statistics.

After four hours, I guess it’s time to stop procrastinating and do something productive…

This is what the outside world sees… 🎞 … and this is what’s really happening… 🎬

It is clear that today wil not be a good day to record new videos.

Thanks to a mention in the latest edition of the newsletter by @rahego I went into a deep dive in old 43 Folders posts. Still great content after all these years…

Is this turned on?: Or is this turned on?: IFTTT should improve their usability a little bit.

Back to nature 🚶‍♂️⛰

Wise words from James Clear in his newsletter: Avoid calendar debt. Don’t spend (free) time you haven’t earned. A meeting is like a loan: it is time you haven’t earned yet. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since sometimes the inversion is worth it. Just be aware of this fact whenever you make a time-commitment.

More than ever before, we’re using technology to connect with the outside world. And with so many of us now working from home, we’re relying on our phones to stay updated with colleagues and clients. However, when you’re receiving endless Zoom calls and emails, pings on Slack, and notifications from everywhere else, it begins to hinder productivity and focus. Aytekin Tank https://www.fastcompany.com/90548204/the-unexpected-consequence-of-too-much-communication-at-work Unexpected? Only if you’re not used to mindful communication.

I followed Roel’s instructions to personalize the colors on this site a little bit.

As usual, also on micro.blog I somehow ended up following way more men than women. Therefore I call upon my community: which female microbloggers do you recommend me? My main interests: Personal effectiveness ✅ Hiking 🥾 Technology (, web services) Rock music 🤘 Personal development 📈 Beer 🍺

This is powerful advice: Shout-out to @RyanHVaughn for posting some of the most useful advice I’ve seen on r/startupshttps://t.co/DNW1mqI3a1 pic.twitter.com/FmJKUWyEeI — Brian Wang (@brianmwang) September 5, 2020 Have → Do → Be or Be → Do → Have?

Oura now supports Sleep Sharing! Therefore, simply because I can (and not because it is of interest to you) this is how my last night went:

Frank Meeuwsen is de laatste dagen Hypothesis aan het testen. Ik volg zijn bevindingen met interesse, want ik geloof dat er toekomst zit in social notetaking. In deze post schrijft Frank dat de RSS feed nog geen link naar de originele pagina bevat. Als lezer van Franks blog, mis ik ook de mogelijkheid om naar de originele pagina te gaan vanaf de Hypothesis notes pagina, bijvoorbeeld om deze op mijn eigen blog te delen.

@rahego: ¿Y tú qué mides? Una de las razones por que me gusta micro.blog es que puedes ver cuántos seguidores tienes.

A new home 🏠

In all the years of its existence, I have used several tools to maintain this site. From the top of my head: Microsoft FrontPage NewsPro Movable Type WordPress Today marks the start of a new era, since I now officially joined the IndieWeb movement and migrated my 23-year old personal blog to micro.blog. The import went flawless, and it was easy to set-up. My only gripe is that I am still waiting for HTTPS to be activated, since appears to be done manually by the staff.

In preparation of the migration of this site from WordPress to micro.blog, today I finished reviewing all post I published here since 1996.

Lost in translation:

Seth on dates: One of the most expensive things a service business or freelancer can do is promise that work will be done by a certain day. Which is something we need to do, of course, but we should charge appropriately. “It’ll be done soon,” should be way cheaper than, “It’ll be done at exactly 11 am on Tuesday.” And one of the most important things we can do to focus our energy and commitment is be prepared to promise a date certain.

Seth nailed the essence of a Zoom meeting: The purpose of a meeting is not to fill the allocated slot on the Google calendar invite. The purpose is to communicate an idea and the emotions that go with it, and to find out what’s missing via engaged conversation. Seths Godin https://seths.blog/2020/08/toward-a-zoom-agreement/

Twenty years after the introduction of the €, I still receive invoices mentioning the equivalent amount in Pesetas.

Today I deleted all collections from my Zotero database. I find that most interesting studies are at the intersection of different fields and therefore, by definition, difficult to classify. One more place where a single body of information works way better than a more structured system.

New mobility metrics in iOS 14

This morning I was checking my data in the health app, when I noticed two new sections: Symptoms and Mobility. Both could be useful, but as a walking enthusiast, the Mobility metrics caught my eye: Four of the new mobility types, Step Length, Walking Asymmetry, Walking Speed, and Double Support Time have a paragraph similar to the screenshot above. That means that no external device is needed to collect this data, as long a I carry my iPhone in my pocket, which I always do.

This is what I’m working on now.

I just read an old post on this blog describing the tools I used fourteen years ago. What a great trip through memory lane! A lot have changed since then and none of those tools have lasted that long. Even sadder is that many of them don’t exist anymore.

A few weeks back I made de jump back from Zettlr to Roam Research for my notes, and today I noticed it pays off. This morning I added over 30 new notes to my system with very little effort.

Messier is better. For meetings, I have a yellow legal pad and a .5mm rollerball. I used to roll with a .38mm, but the .5 feels way more messy and therefore better. K.Q. Dreger https://audacious.blog/2020/wfh/

Influencers make us feel that productivity is important, and yet they rarely define the term, let alone helpfully. For example, David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) book, which became very popular in software circles, uses the term productivity very loosely. Many of the core examples in the GTD method relate to general activities such as cleaning one’s garage as opposed to working with knowledge. And the GTD principles have no reference to cognitive science, even though cognitive science is the modern interdisciplinary science of understanding the information processing we do in our brains, with or without the aid of technology.

don’t just talk - do some work! Write. Curate. Connect. Architect. Build on other peoples’ ideas. Share. Ask. Reflect. Show your work. Accept feedback gracefully. Lee Bryant

Professionals don’t need fake deadlines and don’t respect them. Instead, we have the chance to build in appropriate slack, get our priorities straight and keep our promises. Seth Godin https://seths.blog/2020/07/fake-deadlines/

Is it a coincidence that WFH looks very similar to WTF?

In the world of the compass, direction is important. Where are we going? Why excatly are we once again on a Monday morning feeling out of control? In the world of the compass we are concerned less about ‘getting stuff done’ and more about getting the right things done. Do those and we invariably have to get less stuff done tomorrow. Nicholas Bate https://blog.strategicedge.co.uk/2020/07/in-the-world-of-the-clock-time-races-a-glance-at-the-time-on-our-phone-a-flick-of-the-wrist-to-see-how-much-of-the-hour-ha.html Change your clock for a compass.

mmhmm

I just noticed that I haven’t updated my Now page since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis. Of course, the idea of a ‘Now’ page is that it actually isn’t about right now, but more about describing my preoccupation and activities in the current ‘period’. Anyway, you can see what I’m up to on the updates Now page.

Tweet: A message written by someone with nothing to say to be read by someone with nothing to do.

I thank Michael Wade for pointing me to Sippican Cottage. What a great writer!

Reorganising my RSS feeds

Last week I started writing up my Personal Knowledge Management Workflow as part of that workflow. You know, the best notes are about note taking, just like the most popular blogs are about blogging and the most popular YouTube videos are about creating YouTube videos. Back to my notes. When describing the concept of garbage in = garbage out I realised that it had been ages since I pruned the RSS feeds I consult each day during breakfast.

Google Knows What You Are Doing… What Are You Going To Do About It?

Now that is a deception, especially since there is no recent iMac available for purchase right now.

Having a clear purpose is the key for a happy life. Even when researchers compared lonely people with purpose to social butterflies without it, purpose came out on top. In other words, it’s possible when we’re doing things to better our society, the body assumes there’s a society there to better. We’re technically alone, but it doesn’t feel that way. Alex Morris https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/coronavirus-isolation-negative-effects-health-loneliness-1016478/ Via Jason Kottke

I closed my Facebook and Instagram accounts over a year ago and have not missed it for a single day. I am still dreaming of leaving WhatsApp as well, but that proves to be more difficult. Since then, not a single month have gone by without news coming out about Facebook’s blatant disrespect of its users, privacy and ethics. I have made my choice, and I encourage you to make yours.

This is important: Patrick Rhone has seen it.

Ready for a productive day.

That dark, wet spot over there is bad news

My stomach tells me that eating the whole bag of M&Ms was not a good idea.

Nicholas Bate is the master of helpful advise in bite sized lists. I’m already waiting for the second part of the list Covid–19, 101, 1–10m 8. Your business will continue to be a blend of high-tech and high-touch. The former must be fast, easy and responsive. The latter must be fast, easy and attentive. […] A phone call without visual distraction can be surprisingly productive. Try it. Nicholas Bate https://blog.strategicedge.co.uk/2020/05/covid-19-101-1-20.html/

For his 68th birthday, the amazing Kevin Kelly shares 68 bits of unsolicited advice. There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with. Kevin Kelly https://kk.org/thetechnium/68-bits-of-unsolicited-advice/

So true: Autonomy demands accountability

The Onion: Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive

Usually when organizations talk about a VUCA environment, they are simply covering up bad planning, collaboration and organizational practices. If you apply the growth mindset to organizations, you should stop talking about VUCA.

You can’t control the future: When the future doesn’t cooperate, we spend even more time trying to change the next bit of future so that it ends up more closely matching the future we were hoping for. What if, instead, just for a little while, we simply did our best? Seth Godin https://seths.blog/2020/04/on-predicting-the-future/

I am too busy now, but when I have the opportunity (probably this summer) I would like to migrate this blog from Wordpress to micro.blog.

What I believe in: While there are many benefits to using software tools, there are many hidden costs as well. Consider all the time you’ve spent researching, learning, evaluating, upgrading, and maintaining various software tools. Are you getting a good payoff for your investment when you consider the total time you’ve had to invest? Now add the additional time you may have lost from digital distractions when you use software tools, especially on an Internet connected device.

40 years of experience working from home compressed into 10 pieces of solid advice: While there are many benefits to using software tools, there are many hidden costs as well. Consider all the time you’ve spent researching, learning, evaluating, upgrading, and maintaining various software tools. Are you getting a good payoff for your investment when you consider the total time you’ve had to invest? Now add the additional time you may have lost from digital distractions when you use software tools, especially on an Internet connected device.

These days, give yourself permission to be human. Stop Trying to Be Productive × Taylor Lorenz

I was born in 1971, so you can imagine my interest in the site WTF happened in 1971.

6 tools that are more powerful than to-do lists for productivity × Stephanie Vozza

How to Stay Productive with Children At Home

I am worried about my fellow Dutch citizens. The general idea in the Netherlands is that they have the coronavirus under control, but they have not. The death numbers are following Italy’s numbers and today arrived at the point in which Italy went on lock down (which was already rather late). Furthermore, the Netherlands are a small country. This amount of deaths has placed them at the 5th position on the ranking of deaths per 100.

My advice for businesses: dump Zoom as soon as possible. For most use cases (small team meetings) I recommend Whereby as an alternative.

New circumstances make for new routines. One of the new routines in our family is taking some time after dinner to listen to the song of the day created by these three guys. Featured in The New Yorker: The Group Making Beautiful Quarantine Songs on a Barcelona Rooftop.

Surely I’m old school, but I still think that Twitter threads are a horrible and user-unfriendly hack. Why don’t you just publish your thoughts on a place that supports long-form copy and link to it on Twitter?

Will Zoom’s free tier limits finally achieve that business meetings will be limited to 40 minutes?

I always published under my real name, but the concept of pseudonyms interests me Over time, doing things under your real name on the internet will be a bit like putting your social security number out there. It won’t commonly be done. Instead, people will earn and speak under different pseudonyms. Balaji Srinivasan https://perell.com/essay/why-you-should-write-pseudonymously/

Many professionals found out last week that work is no longer a place, it it a mode.

I have updated my Now page

What a great trip through memory lane: Old CSS, new CSS by Eevee. I have used most of the techniques on this very site until 2013, when I stopped caring about the hassle of coding my designs by hand. Nowadays my opinion is that site owners should not be bothered by CSS, that’s something the CMS should handle.

This is hilarious: I work from home by Colin Nissan

Spring on the balcony

Another walk in the orchards

A great list of dumb questions by Michael Wade

I find it surprising that many knowledge workers create task management systems, but never think about knowledge management systems.

Found a branch while walking through the orchards.

Is the search for meaningful work a trap?

How about if we replace mission statements with invitation statements instead? Invitations are much more agreeable. Invite people to participate in your vision to create a better future, but don’t push your vision on the whole world because people will fight you on that. If you force your mission onto people without consent, so much of your otherwise creative energy will be wasted on defending yourselves eventually, and you’ll deserve that kind of response.

This is so sad. Why are intelligent people stuck in short-term thinking about their own wellbeing?

That moment when you’re recording a video and the school in front of your house decides to let all children play on the yard while blaring “Baby shark” through the sound system…

In the realm of leadership there’s a big difference between being accessible and available and the example of the leader who has an open-door policy but is never around to answer it explains the difference.

This is brilliantly done: Game: Can You Defeat the Privacy Chicken? Of course, I was too chicken to win this game…

When I grow up I wanna be an influencer. Inspiring other people to take action is the only way to create legacy.

💬All human evil comes from this: our inability to sit still in a chair for half an hour. Blaise Pascal

When it comes to personal effectiveness, the tools are never the issue. I say all this to suggest that, perhaps, email is not “broken” but the way we are using it is. Perhaps there is a solution that could make things better for you that doesn’t involve a new app or service. Perhaps, if you hate it, in changing the way you approach it you’ll find a way to love it again.

Today I went on a deeeep dive into the rabbit hole of Zettelkasten and the Roam app.

Why did WordPress decide that it’s a good idea to suddenly activate the block editor in their apps? This should be opt-in! If users don’t use your new feature, it may simply not be compelling enough.

Thiss sentence contains threee errors.

I don’t have a favorite season, I love them all. But what I love most of al is the change of season. On a side note, for me seasons do not start on their ‘official’ dates, but rather when nature starts behaving stereotypical for the next season. So spring started yesterday, the first day I walked out in the fields in my T-shirt and observed the first blossoming tree.

Yesterday I discovered the first blossom on an almond tree. Spring is coming!

This is insane.

I brought a little bit of spring in house.

If you have time to Tweet (or to Gram), you have time to blog.

To all those companies bragging about their state-of-the-art use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: why don’t you start with creating something useful such as an actually working spam filter for my email?

Meetings need objectives × Nicholas Bate

💬 Wise words found on a trail in Costa Rica:

If I’m not blogging, I’m probably in a rabbit hole…

💬The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. Dolly Parton

The tiniest flower can make me happy.

A company or person exclaiming they are the first, the only or the best in the market is usually a sign of ignorance and lack of knowledge about the market.

Once again, I have updated the Now page.

ZeFrank does it again 🤣: From a distance the mating dance of the male ostrich can look unusual the bit like a millennial at an outdoor music festival that just ate a brownie he bought from a man that calls himself Magic Joe. However if we travel inside of the mind of the male ostrich it goes something like this, ‘oh my god, oh my god…’

Whenever I stumble upon an interesting Instagram account (such as Dog with Sign) I always wonder why they don’t publish those pictures on their own site. #IndieWeb

💬Métodos puede haber un millón y alguno más, pero principios hay pocos. El hombre capaz de captar principios puede luego escoger sus propios métodos. El que aplica métodos ignorando los principios con seguridad encontrará problemas. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A charming place

We live in a world that values action and where back to back meetings are a badge of productivity. Quarterly targets mean that we tend to be focused on the next thing on our to-do-list rather than looking back to evaluate how the last thing we’ve just completed could be improved. Few of us routinely take time out to reflect on past events. However, by missing out on opportunities for reflection you may be making yourself less effective than you could be.