• Deleting My Mail App From my Phone

    I was listening to the latest episode of Cortex, where Grey is helping Myke through the question of how to handle email on his phone. There was a 60 second segment that sent me on a roller coaster ride of emotions. It went something like this:

    Myke: “I’m thinking of turning off email notifications on my phone.”

    Me: Oh my god — why would you even have them on at all?!

    Myke: “…but I’m worried that’s just going to make me check the email app more.”

    Me: Oh. That’s exactly what I do.

    In-fact, since deleting social media apps off my phone, Spark — my email app of choice — felt like what I opened the most (though the data below tells a different story).

    While quick checks can seem innocuous, email is probably the communication that can derail my time the most. Slack isn’t on my phone, and I generally keep all of my work-related communications to email.

    So if I absent-mindedly check my email with my kids and I get an email that bothers me (or something I’m excited to tend to), it will continue to eat up my mental energy until I deal with it.

    I hate that. So, I’ve decided to delete Spark from my phone. It’s been a few days, and so far so good.

    There are a few caveats.

    First, I’m keeping the Mail app on my phone for any 2-factor authentication (2FA) or login codes I might need. However, I truly hate using the Mail app, so I expect I won’t be tempted to check mail there.

    Plus, you can turn off app suggestions!

    How to turn off Siri Suggestions for an app
    How to turn off Siri Suggestions for an app

    I also considered keeping the Gmail app, since Google insists on 2FA by clicking a button in the app, but I’m almost certain this is any of Google’s apps, so I’ve deleted that too.

    I’m very keen to see what this does to my Pickups and Screen Time.

    Now, when you delete an app, it removed the Screen Time data on the device where you deleted it. But luckily that info is synced with iCloud. So I offer some initial stats from last week — with the note that I deleted the app on Saturday at some point:

    I’ll keep you posted to see if Screen Time and Pickups go down!

    What’s an app you think YOU should delete from your phone? Let me know in the comments!

  • Playing with the Apple Classical Music App

    I’ve been listening to a lot more classical music lately. My wife said recently, “The older I get, the less interested I am in lyrics.”

    I wouldn’t go that far, but it is nice to have beautiful, lyric-less music on while you work or read.

    The Apple Classical Music app dropped today and I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’m impressed with it.

    I like how it breaks the music down by genre (sub-genre I guess), composer, and mood.

    They also have “The Story of Classical,” a 9-part series where you can learn all about the genre. I’m excited to dig into that.

    One strange note1 is that it’s only available on the iPhone right now, with an Android app coming soon.

    Apple Music’s disjointed experiences continue to be a puzzler, especially when you consider how good Spotify’s overall cross-device, cross-app experience is.

    If you want a good first-look review, check out this one on Six Colors.

    1. GET IT!? ?
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    Trying Out Due for Important Reminders

    I’m experimenting with the Due app for iOS. What makes it interesting is the persistent reminders — which will repeat until you mark the task complete.

    I started using it for crucial medications for my kids (usually amoxicillin, the miracle drug that apparently cures most common kid ailments), and decided to expand it to things I want to make sure I do.

    I want to try to use it judiciously. Right now I have 3 task managers:

    1. Things 3 for projects and most business related tasks
    2. Reminders for most home/family relates tasks, shopping lists, and anything my wife and I need to share
    3. And now Due for nagging reminders.

    We’ll see how it goes. If it works well for a limited set of tasks, I can see myself use it for forcing certain habits, like working out, writing, journaling, or anything else I really want to make sure I do.

  • Sticking with Fantastical

    A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was Considering a Different Calendar App. After testing BusyCal, Cron, and Calendar 366, while also looking at several others, nothing comes close to Fantastical.

    BusyCal comes closest but I kind of hate the way you input new events, especially time selection. Cron doesn’t support Apple Calendar, and none of them have an XL widget, which I use on my iPad.

    I will keep testing Cron but the Apple Calendar integration is a must. I have local calendars for bills and kid events that I want to see in my calendar app.

    I think it’s safe to say that the amount of time I’ve put into trying other apps has justified the $60/year cost for Fantastical. It’s still easily the best calendar app for power users.

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    Is it Time for me to Ditch Ulysses?

    Over the last week or so I’ve been experimenting with Craft for writing. Scripts, Twitter threads, podcast episodes, and blog posts have all made their way into a new space I created explicitly for writing.

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    Should You Really Write in the WordPress Editor?

    Earlier this week, my friend Justin Ferriman wrote a great post called Matt’s Page Builder, where he talks about the block editor trying to be two things: a place to write, and a page builder…and it’s more like the latter.

    I’m in agreement. WordPress has considerably shifted from a simple blogging platform. Matt himself has said he wants it to be the, “operating system of the web,” which means a richer feature set, especially around creating and laying out content…but not necessarily writing.

    But I’d argue that the WordPress editor has never really been the best place to write.

  • 3 Things I’m Grateful for (August 13, 2021)

    3 things I’m grateful for, this second week of August, 2021:

    CleanShot X: This handy little app is a fantastic way to take screenshots, mark them up and then easily share them. But the killer feature for me is the ability to make gifs out of screencasts. It’s $29 (once) OR it comes with Setapp.

    Nice Pens: I will generally celebrate a big launch with a new pen (or some other related hobby thing). Since mid-July I’ve launched 3 courses, so I picked up a new Leonardo Momento Zero Magico. I’m excited for this to arrive because I LOVE my first Leonardo pen.

    Being Candid: It’s very rare that my candor has failed me. I generally try to be straight with people and they tend to appreciate that. It served me well a couple of times this week and I’m grateful for my parents and other influences in my life who taught me that being candid wasn’t a bad thing!

    That’s it for this week! What are you grateful for? Let me know in the comments!