Sam Iles's Blog

1) Bookmarking tools
2) Email clients
3) Calendar software
4) To-do lists trackers
5) Music managers

I write a lot. In fact, typing is what I do all day long. I write code, I write a lot of blog posts for a few different places, I write emails, I write novels amongst other things.

First of all, if you’re a writer, what software you write in is the least important thing. People who moan that they can’t write until they find the perfect distraction free writing software aren’t writers.

Nether the less, there are two places I write.

(We’ll discount coding right off the bat for now, as I’ll cover this in a later Workflows post.)

Bottom line: I write in text edit. Yeah, the Mac’s built in, default text editor. And, I write in plain text. I save everything in .txt files.

For something like blog posts which will ultimately end up on the web, I write in markdown, not HTML or anything else. For those who don’t know, markdown is a markup ‘language’ created by the John Gruber, which is super simple and super easy to write. I use markdown for its simplicity. To make text italics, you use single underscores or single stars (as you’ve most likely seen me do on the Twitter) like so: _italics_. To make something bold, you use double underscores (or double stars, which is more common) like so: **bold**. A new paragraph is a double line return, code is indented, lists are made with indents and stars and so on and so on. It’s so simple. *italics* instead of <i>italics long</i>.

I paste this markdown right into Wordpress when I’ve written it and Wordpress (with the help of a plugin, although some blogging platforms like Squarespace support it out of the box) converts it to valid HTML.

I then save my posts with a timestamp and title right into a ‘Posts’ folder on my Mac. Simples.

I also keep a folder full of text files for different purposes.

For example, I have something called ‘running files’, which are mostly lists. I have one for domain names I want to register, one for books I want to read, one for blog posts I want to write, etc. I save them as ‘rfx books to read’, where rfx stands for ‘running file’ with the x to make it greppable.

I name blog posts ‘bpx TITLE’ and so on with all the types of things I need to write. This super simple method of keeping everything in text files and making it nice and searchable works super well for me.

In seconds, I hit alt+space, type “o rfx bo” and hit return and I’m in my list of books to read all without having to move the mouse or fire up a big app. Neat, huh?

Any long form writing I have to do happens in plain text (usually with markdown). If, by some unhappy circumstance, I need to send someone a word file, I’ll send them a PDF. If they want to edit it, I’ll send them .txt files even if they ask for Word docs (yeah, I’m that guy). I save all these files with a timestamp and short name.

Also in my txt files, I use a few odd phrases. QQQ means it’s unfinished and needs work. PPP means it needs to be posted/emailed/actioned somehow. And so on. Why? Well, such phrases only appear when I’ve typed them for this reason and are super greppable. Now, that, is a pro tip.

What about order? Yeah, I do write novels and sometimes you need order. So, I use Scrivener. Scrivener is amazing at ordering text. If you’re writing a novel or dissertation or screenplay or whatever in Word, you’re nuts. You need to be able to organise chapters and characters and plans separately and drag and drop and reorder and etc. So, I still write most text in text edit, then I copy it to Scrivener when needs be.

(Oh, and all my txt files are synced in the cloud through Dropbox so they’re on my iPad/iPhone/Ubuntu machine/Mac Mini/whatever when I need them. I’ll talk about that process in a further Workflows post.)

So there you have it. Copious amounts of text and I avoid Pages and Word like the plague. Plain text, timestamps, super grepable nonsense, markdown and Scrivener when I must.

This works for me. It might not for you. I like simplicity and calm and hate toolbars and formatting. Use it if you like – I hope it helps a little.

1. write
2. more
3. lists
4. of
5. five

Without a doubt one of my favourite Pixar shorts. So well thought out and executed perfectly:

First off, let’s zoom through everything basic. I use a Mac, predominately. I’ll talk about that.

First things first: I don’t like software (yes, I know I’m a software developer, but whatever). I like to use as little of it as possible. Unless there’s a compelling reason to use a new piece of software, I keep it off my Mac. I’ve installed eight or nine applications on my Mac, which is a pretty tiny number for someone like me. There are a few things which don’t fall into any other category I plan to have in the workflows posts, so I’ll go over them here.

I keep my dock hidden and on the left hand side. I have it hidden because I like everything to be full screen and I don’t really know why I have it on the left. Just always have done so.

I have my desktop near empty. The Mac HDD icon (which I’m not even sure if you can get rid off), my external drive icon and a folder called “All Files,” in which I keep, well, all files. And that’s it. I’ll explain more about my file storage methods in a later workflows post.

I use the Terminal a lot. I much prefer to type commands than use my mouse because it takes one step (and I type fast), rather than five steps and a whole lot of moving my mouse which is slow and laborious. Type, type type. Clicking is bad, bad, bad.

I use and love and depend on Alfred. If Alfred went away tomorrow, everything I do would break (in fact, Alfred is the only thing keeping me on the Mac). You can read more about it when I picked it on the Deverous blog, although I hadn’t been using it for long then. Alfred too will be a topic for my blog later in the series, so watch out for me getting hysterical about it in that post.

I name my files like a mad man. It has to be perfect, or I break. (Another topic for a later post…)

For backup, I use Carbonite (with my own encryption key, of course). It’s well worth it. If you don’t have off site backup, well, get it now. Like, right now. You shouldn’t even be using a computer if you don’t have off site backup. I also use Time Machine as a quicker way to get file versions when I need them. (Well, I actually use git for that (yes, I git normal files…), but I’ll talk about that later.)

Most importantly, I think I should tell you where I do all this. Well that would be my desk. I like to keep my desk clean and simple. You’ll see that all I have is:

• MacBook.
• External Hard Drive (500Gb, I think).
• iPad and iPad Dock (nice to switch to if I want to hammer out some text or something).
• Galileo thermometer (I love that thing).
• Whiteboard pen and eraser (for penning and erasing).
• Hair wax. (I don’t really know why this is on my desk, other than it’s close to the mirror I guess.)
• Moleskine notebook. (This is always there.)
• Index cards, bunched together. (This is always there too, and makes up a big part of my workflow. I’ll blog about it later.)
• Trays. (I keep blank paper and tech tools on the bottom one, filled paper and letters and to-do materials on the top.)

I think that pretty much sums it up for now. Expect a lot more crazy detail soon.

Update: Somebody asked what that sheet of paper on the wall is. It’s this paragraph, printed nicely.

I was listening to Back to Work, as I always do and heard Merlin talking about a rather cool website called “750 Words“.

The site is very simple, very clean, very beautiful and does nothing but let you write 750 words (about three pages) onto a webpage. The trick is to get you used to writing. It’s essentially a digital way to do the Morning Pages technique, where you write three pages of anything, every morning.

It doesn’t matter what you write. Whether it’s a blog post, screenplay, what you’ve done or chapters from your book. Hell, write instructions on how to make a cup of tea. It is purely a tool to get you writing. Just start and don’t stop.

The site has a few nifty features, such as keeping history and stats and awarding points for sticking to it. It also features a challenge to write 750 words each day for a month.

I have committed to doing just that for the month of August 2011. So, every day, I shall write 750 words. I’ll blog about it at the end to let you know if I stick to it. I expect I will though.

But, if you enjoy writing in any way, or want to get better at writing, or want to write a novel, I strongly suggest you try the site out. I also suggest you tack the challenge in August. Hey, we can do it together!

Check it out.

I haven’t done a series of posts for a while, so here’s new one for you. I imagine it’ll stretch to ten or so.

I am pretty productive. I like things that help me be productive. I have my computing processes so finely tuned it’s nuts. I might as well share that with you.

Over these posts, I’ll take you through how my computer is set up to deal with coding, email, text, video, photos, etc and how I do everything I do. I spend a lot of time getting everything set up so it can make me work faster and better. As a result, I am convinced I’ve saved literally hours of work each week.

However, this is just how I do stuff. It’s fine for me and might not be fine for you. Don’t go all nuts over it and throw away everything you do so you can copy me. It’s just ideas for you to think about.

Anyway, enjoy the productivity porn…

It’s all very well and good writing software and doing stuff, but you really do need an idea to get started. And, for many people, that’s the hardest part. Here are my tips to make it as simple as possible:

Stop trying to think of an idea
In my opinion, brainstorming or sitting around thinking of what to do are poison for ideas. By their very nature, you’re forcing out ideas and they will probably end up being to “over-thought” and pretty much just bad.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to say “don’t think of ideas” when you need to think of an idea, but hear me out.

Let it happen…
All the ideas for everything I’ve made (with one exception) have happened because I needed or wanted to use a product which didn’t exist or, if it did exist, wasn’t good enough or wasn’t what I wanted. I am certain that they are the best ideas.

Take Deverous. That idea came about because I decided that any of the existing solutions for software project management weren’t good enough. The few that did exist were just bug trackers, and project management software was horribly unsuitable for software projects. So, I thought a hybrid of the two would be good and I set about making it.

Think of the difference: if you come up with a software project while staring into the sky chances are it will be useless; if you come up with a software project while desperately trying to find one that does what you need, then at least one person needs it.

Don’t try to make money
I think that focusing on making money from software when building it is nearly always bad. Of course, you may make an app thinking “I’ll sell this for ninety-nine cents on the App Store”, and that’s fine. The problem comes when money is your goal and the reason you’re making something. If you aren’t writing software because you want to write software and something people will loose, you’re app won’t be any good. You’ll always be thinking about how decisions will affect the money you’re making rather than the users.

You’ll just end up failing quicker and not making money anyway.

Failure is fine
When I’m writing software, I never expect millions or even hundreds of people to be using it. I write software mostly for me and then tend to make it public. It just so happens that I make money from all that. It never matters to me if the product sucks or is never seen by anyone, because I’ll still have done it, enjoyed making it and be using it myself.

All that learning, all that fun, all that use really can’t be failure anyway…

Filter
You may be at the other end of the scale – too many ideas.

Over the last few years, I’ve filled many notebooks and such with software ideas. Just turning my head to my whiteboard, I have two ideas I’ve put up in the last few days. All in all, I must’ve come up with around 100 ideas for apps and websites I could have made. Some are good, some are not so good. Some I decide I want to make right away (Deverous), some I think about for months (Rejuncture) and the other 95 stay tucked away in the notebook. Who knows, maybe the next Facebook is one of those unmade ideas…

If I tries to do them all – or even a few – of them, I would be totally spreading myself too thin and I’d never get anything done. You really need to learn to filter well if you want to get anything done.