On the Breaking Perfectionist Blocks episode of Nested Folders, Rosemary Orchard and I spitballed an idea to quickly generate a random list of three OmniFocus actions meeting a specific criteria (in our case, a tag).

Here is an iOS Shortcut that accomplishes exactly that. Enjoy!

On episode 12 of the Nested Folders podcast, Actions vs. Reference, I mentioned a shortcut to create projects in both Agenda and OmniFocus. This is awesome, because it allows me to have complementary and align organizational structures for both action/task management and reference material.

Here is the proof of concept Shortcut, Project Maker, which creates a project in OmniFocus and task to review and add to the project (which links to Agenda), as well as a project in Agenda with a note that links back to OmniFocus.

Certainly, this could be expanded by tying in input from your workflow as the project, defining more tasks/note content, and specifying folders/categories for projects to be placed in.

How might you improve this Shortcut?

In an upcoming post, I will share my current folder/category structure as a way of documenting how I decide what projects go where. I’m looking forward to it!

On lucky episode 7 of the Nested Folders Podcast, Rose Orchard and I discussed how we “do productivity” with others who might or might not, and a lot of this really has to do with communication.

One thing Rose brought up was the importance of meeting notes and sharing them, so I thought I’d post about how I do this with Shortcuts and Ulysses.

I have two Shortcuts that I use. The first (aptly called Start Meeting) sets me up with a Ulysses sheet that guides me to take notes, capture actions, and record agreements.

The second (reasonably called End Meeting, and run by sharing markdown text from the Ulysses sheet) takes those notes and sends them to the attendees, ensuring everyone has access to my perspective of what just happened, and might also share theirs.

I'd love feedback or improvement ideas for these Shortcuts and this workflow!

On this week's episode of the Nested Folders podcast, Rosemary Orchard and I discussed automation as a solution, and when it should be employed.

We didn't really answer the question, but I think we shared a lot that one could think about when considering the prospect of automation. Also, I wanted to share the couple of Shortcuts I have that take care of my favourite annoyances.

1. Strip Formatting: this shortcut takes the clipboard, gets the text (only) form the input, then copies that text back to the clipboard, thereby removing any formatting.
2. Telescrum: my team at work works in agile, and we sometimes conduct our daily scrum via Slack if there are conflicting events or only few of us around. This shortcut grabs my calendar for the previous work day and today and creates a list on my clipboard that I can paste in to our channel (no direct Shortcuts to Slack integration yet). This probably needs some editing to work for you, but is hopefully inspirational.
   

I'm looking forward to sharing some more Shortcuts soon, just as soon as soon as a few app updates ship publicly. 😉

On this week's episode of the Nested Folders podcast, Rosemary Orchard and I discussed our approaches to reflection and review of our productivity systems.

One of my keys here has been taking the traditional Getting Things Done weekly review checklist, and splitting it in to two parts:

1. Reflection Friday: doing the Getting Clear portion in its entirety, and then doing the calendar review parts of Getting Current to ensure all things I might capture in my system are well-inventoried. The goal is to make sure I have a current capture of all the things.
2. Executive Monday: inspired by David Kadavy's Prefrontal Mondays, this part of my review completes Getting Current and Getting Creative and Courageous by taking a more executive-level view of lists, projects, and actions to decide what I do about all the things I've captured. This is 100% decision-makign time about what I focus on, defer, delegate, delete, rename, adjust, etc.
   

This has been hugely helpful for me - what are your practices?

I also want to quickly give a shoutout to James Dempsy and Jean MacDonald and their The Weekly Review Podcast, which not only gave this an anthem (I hear the song every time I say the words), but also a lot of awesome and robust thinking on this topic. Great stuff!

On this week’s Nested Folders podcast episode, Rose and I talked about when not to be productive. In thinking about this even more, there’s a second quote from the Merlin Mann interview with David Allen that I really like, which is to have a great list of things to have in order to procrastinate with. That is, stuff you can do to “safely” avoid doing other things.

This is where some of my favourite lists come in. I thought I’d share them here, along with how I use them:

• Books to Read: I always include the reason why this is on my list (where I saw it, or who recommended it), and why I thought it would be a good go-to. This keeps better context about why it's on my list, and who to thank/blame later.
• Curiosities: Articles of interest, YouTube videos, or other bits of media that I think would be of interest or good to learn from in a time-killing kind of situation.
• Ping: A group of recurring actions to remind me to reach out to people I don't interact with regularly to keep our connections going. Catching up with friends is a great way to be unproductive.

Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure of working with Tim Stringer of Learn OmniFocus to present my workflows and OmniFocus set up.

It was an amazing experience, and I wanted to re-share it for everyone’s consumption. As always, I’d love to hear feedback, as I love learning from all the other contributors to Learn OmniFocus and the OmniFocus community writ large.

Note that the links I've used to Learn OmniFocus are affiliate links. My session was done before I was an affiliate, though, and I'd happily promote this either way. They're awesome and absolutely worth checking out.

Interested in hearing more?

I have partnered with the wonderful and talented Rosemary Orchard to co-produce the Nested Folders Podcast!

We share our thoughts on productivity topics, hope it's helpful to listeners, and would love everyone's feedback!

After several months of discussion, planning, preparation, and writing, I am so proud to announce that I have partnered with the wonderful and talented Rosemary Orchard to co-produce the Nested Folders Podcast!

We’ll discuss all manners of productivity topics, mostly centres around philosophies, techniques, and approaches, so that listeners can benefit from our experiences, regardless of apps or systems they might use.

We’re just starting out, and no doubt we’ll iterate and improve, but I am very excited to share and learn through this new podcast, and would love to hear any and all feedback from everyone!

Also, a huge thanks and shout out to Josh Hughes for the amazing cover art. Love this!