Why I Love - CleanShot X

I’ve been a big fan of the built-in screenshot capabilities of macOS for a while now and never really felt the need to look at any kind of third party utility. I then heard about an application called CleanShot X and after giving it a very brief trial, I was hooked and knew I couldn’t go back to the stock options. 

Have you ever had an application that comes with bells and whistles you just didn’t know you needed until you tried them?! That’s CleanShot X and I’ll run through some of my favourite features now. 

Scrolling Screenshots

There will be times where you need to capture information that requires an element of scrolling. In my past life, I would take one screenshot - then scroll some of the text before taking a second one. After a bit of stitching together, I’d have something resembling what I was originally after, usually with a fat line separating the two images though. CleanShot X allows you to take one, simple scrolling image. 

• Click on Scrolling Capture from the menu bar utility

Next, you need to highlight the area that contains the canvas that will be scrolled. This should not include the scroll bars, just the canvas

• You’ll be prompted to start the capture. Scroll slowly until you reach the bottom of the desired area.

• As if by magic, you have a clean capture of the scrolling window

Wallpaper 

When you capture a window, you can have your current wallpaper stitched in as a border around the window edge. Not only this, but you can elect to have a custom image, or indeed any plain colour instead. 

This makes it really simple to create images that fit in with the documentation, or web page, they will be used within. 

There are also options for creating a transparent border around the capture, adjusting the padding as well as the shadow. I didn’t know I needed those options, however, it appears I do.

Without Wallpaper

With Wallpaper

Hiding Desktop Icons

I don’t suffer as much as others with the habit of keeping icons on my desktop, however, I can occasionally be caught out if I have a dmg file that is still mapped when I come to screenshot. Clicking the option below in the General section of the preferences will hide your icons every time you take a screenshot.

You can also use the menu bar icon to quickly hide them irrespective of whether you are taking a screenshot or not. Nifty. 

Easy to use Annotation tools

CleanShot X includes a tool that I’ve missed since the days of Evernote Skitch - and that’s numbered annotations. 

If you look at the image below, you can see a screenshot that I took that clearly shows the annotation toolbar at the top and the options that are there and, thanks to the counter, I can place little numbers on the image which can be referred to in this text - so for example:

1 - Move

2 - Rectangle

3 - Filled Rectangle

And so we go on. Other great features here include Blur, Spotlight which I’ve demonstrated below. It’s just enough to avoid using a third-party tool to annotate images (unless you have some serious stuff you need to do - in which case more power to you)

Just some of the great tools available within CleanShot X and great news for you Setapp subscribers is that CleanShot X Is also available as part of the Setapp subscription. 

Happy screen-shotting!

Hook Part 3 - Searching

Intro

As your database of hooked links grows, Hook offers a slight alternative in the use case. 

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we looked at the primary use case - copying links to resources and hooking them to one another, eliminating the need to switch context when you are deep in focus and need to open a related article. Simply invoke Hook, select the link to your hooked resource and press Enter. 

The larger the database, however, the greater Hook becomes as a Search tool in its own right for those resources you use most often. 

If you’ve gone to the trouble of hooking one resource to another, then it is reasonable to assume you are dealing with a resource that holds a degree of importance - otherwise, you wouldn’t have bothered in the first place. So your Hook database could very well equate to being a database of your most important ‘stuff’. 

When you search within Hook, you are not only searching for files. It will search for anything that it has been involved with - so web pages, e-mails and all manner of resources from any linked apps. 

How To Search

Searching within Hook is every bit as easy as it needs to be. 

• Invoke Hook

• Either press Command and F or Click on the Search icon (magnifying glass)

• Type in your search criteria and hit the Return key

Here you will be presented with a list of your results. As you can see from my screenshot, there are 49 resources that, somewhere, contain the word Hook. This is quite lucky because I believe that, at this point in time, the search results are limited to 50 results!

Just like other tools, like Alfred, you can key in a shortcut to quickly open one of the results. In the example above, I could press ⌘0 to open an Apple Note called My Hook Notes, or ⌘4 to open an OmniOutliner file that somewhere, within the title or URL, contains the word Hook. 

Alternatively, I can use the arrow keys or mouse/trackpad to select the result I would like and open that resource. 

The developers at CogSci Apps have sweated the details when it comes to searching for your stuff and whilst above I have outlined the simplest way to use the search functionality, this page on the Hook Productivity website goes into a lot more depth on the types of searches that can be carried out, including information on Boolean Operators, Tokenised Search, Using Launchers and much more. Check it out

Slicing and Dicing with the Pomodoro Technique

When I first decided that I wanted to improve my levels of productivity, I became inundated with advice, both from colleagues and online articles. Some of the advice wasn’t so great - at least, not for me. Productivity is a very personal thing and what works for some, may not necessarily work for all. 

One productivity style that has worked for me is the Pomodoro Technique. It first hit me because of the name (I’m the only person in my house that loves tomatoes, so what?!) and when I delved further into it, I realised it could answer a lot of my problems. I had difficulty maintaining focus and the Pomodoro Technique certainly helped me overcome this weakness. 

Overview

Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique in the late 1980s and involves six key steps:

• Decide on a task to be completed

• Using a timer (the original timer looked like a tomato, hence the name) allocate 25 minutes to focus on a particular task.

• Work solidly on the task until the timer goes off

• When the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper, or text document (this is optional, I don't do this myself).

• If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a 5-minute break. We refer to the thirty-minute period as a single Pomodoro

• Repeat the process. When you have four pomodoros, take a longer break, up to 30 minutes

How I Use It

I largely follow the steps above directly, however, there are some slight deviations, so let me give a brief overview as to how I use the Pomodoro Technique.

Firstly, I use it predominantly when I'm working from home or in a coffee shop/office space. If I'm working in a busy office with a lot of people around, vying for my attention, I find that despite my best intentions the Pomodoro Technique can suffer. Even if I have my largest size headphones on which silently scream to people "I'm busy, don't talk to me", someone will interrupt and the benefits of solid, focused attention disappear. Thankfully, those times where I’m working in a congested environment are far fewer than in previous years, which means I get to use this technique a lot more. 

Next, I set up my environment accordingly. I'm sure to have a full glass of water or fresh coffee depending on the time of day. My devices are in Do Not Disturb mode and I'm sure to have only the applications open that I need. 

Lastly (and this is the part most people miss) - I make sure that the task(s) I intend to work on is broken down into the smallest possible chunks!

That's where the title for this post comes from. I slice and dice my tasks to ensure there is little thinking to do about the task itself. I won't spend 5 minutes of the Pomodoro trying to work out what I need to do. There won't be those agonising moments where I look at the task and think "Hmmm, OK, I can't do that at the moment because I need to do this other part first"

Let's take this blog post as an example. I could easily have a task in my task manager that said "Publish Blog Post on using the Pomodoro Technique" however that would only lead to friction. If I set the timer and looked at that as my task, I'd wonder where on earth I would start. Firstly, I need an outline - how should I construct the post so that it's easy to read, what information should it contain? Once I have an outline, there may be different sections to the piece (depending on its length). Do I have an image that I can use with the title? What about proofing?

As you can see, you can slice and dice a task into several sub-tasks.

• Create an outline for the blog post

• Draft the Intro and Overview

• Draft How I Use It

• Edit the post with proofing tools (I use Grammarly at the moment but there are lots of options out there)

• Upload and Schedule the post

• Archive the post in my blog post archive

• Schedule the next post in my Task Manager

Now that I’ve broken the task down into these subtasks, I will start my Pomodoro Timer application. Now I use an application called Session which I use as part of my Setapp subscription. Now I cannot recommend this application enough, it’s so versatile. 

What follows is where I may deviate from the default Pomodoro steps mentioned in the overview. The outline would be completed in the first Pomodoro and perhaps part of the intro. If my timer goes off and I find myself in a sense of flow with a particular task, then I will double the length of my Pomodoro. Instead of twenty-five minutes of focused work, I will make it fifty minutes instead. This helps to eradicate the effect of losing focus on a task during my break and then regaining it again. There is an attention cost there that I will always try to avoid. Remember, all these techniques form part of a framework. You don’t have to religiously stick to them because an article says so, you work in the best way for yourself. 

Breaking down the tasks in this manner will also allow you to make greater use of working with contexts as opposed to projects. Contexts refer to the materials, locations, people, applications, energy levels required to complete certain tasks. One example is that you may have an application such as Excel open. You may wish to spend one Pomodoro just working on a list of outstanding tasks that need completing within Excel. Or perhaps you could spend a Pomodoro solely making phone calls. It's pliable to your own needs and work strategies.

I love the Pomodoro technique in certain situations. It helps manage my focus and, with that, my energy levels and output.

Do you use it? How has it improved your ability to produce? I'd love to hear from you.

Why I Love - Session

As a firm advocate of the Pomodoro Technique for allowing me to manage my focus and energy during the working day, it’s no surprise that I’m going to spend some time telling you about an application I use to help me utilise this great productivity system. 

Session is an application that forms part of the Setapp subscription and it’s actually one of my most used weapons. As I write this, I’m fairly surprised because it’s not one of your big hitters, like DEVONthink, Todoist, TextExpander and the like - in fact, many of you will be reading this and discovering it for the first time. However it’s always running, and if I’m having a successful day, it’s invariably because I’ve got Session guiding me in the background. 

How Does it Work?

When you’re ready to start some focused work, you can configure and start the Session timer. If you are using the Pomodoro Technique to the letter, then you’ll set the timer for twenty-five minutes. Session will then recommend you take a couple of deep breaths, and the countdown begins. 

You can elect to have this timer on the screen, in the menu bar or hidden - I like to have it hidden in all honesty as I find visible countdown timers distracting. I can then work solidly, knowing that in twenty-five minutes a timer will go off and I can take a short break. 

So what can you do when you configure this timer? Well, a key element is noting down an intention for the session. If you spend the first five minutes trying to work out what it is you will be doing, you’re not going to get the full benefit as twenty-five minutes is the optimum amount of time that the brain can concentrate on one task. 

You can also change the timer. Whilst twenty-five minutes is optimal, it’s not always practical and we are all different. Quite often, I’ll find myself feeling extremely sharp and if there is a task I know will take longer, then I’ll set a longer timer - although never longer than an hour. My mind and back would not forgive me for this.

When the main timer goes off, a window appears that allows you to carry on this particular focused period of work - which is very useful if you are almost at the end, just not quite and don’t want to lose momentum. You also have an option to start your break and if accepted, the countdown timer starts for this - by default, it’s five minutes.

You can also offer a review as to how the session went - were you distracted at all, or were you in the zone? This is great for self-reflection and ensuring you have the environment necessary to focus on your work. Or perhaps there is something on your mind that needs to be dealt with before you continue?

You rinse and repeat this process for each session of work. It’s recommended that after your fourth period of work, you take a much longer break - perhaps fifteen-thirty minutes. Again, everyone is different, every day is different so I find myself mixing and matching depending on my mood and priorities. 

Platforms

Session is available as both a macOS and iOS application which means that if I’m working on my iPad as opposed to being my Mac, I can still make use of it and my statistics sync between devices via iCloud - and as Session provides some great analytics, this is an important thing for me. 

Extra Configuration Options

I can’t lie, everything I’ve documented above is reason enough for me to use the app and I’m grateful for it being a part of the Setapp bundle. There is, however, a lot more under the hood that you can do

Keyboard Shortcuts - with shortcuts available for starting and stopping sessions and breaks, this offers some scope for using automation applications like Keyboard Maestro to activate some of these as part of longer macro-based workflows.

Calendar - it may be in beta mode at the time of writing, but as well as showing your calendar within the Session application, you can also send Session information back out to your Calendar, giving you a ready view from your calendar application of the sessions completed in a given day. 

Website and App Blocker - to help maintain focus, Session can block specified websites and applications whenever a session is running. I used to use third-party apps to carry out this functionality and whilst they may be more detailed than the built-in abilities with Session, I find Session to be more than enough for 

AppleScript Automation - Session automation will allow you to use AppleScript to execute some cool things. You may want to have Do Not Disturb enabled whenever you start your session and then stop when you’re complete. 

Perhaps you want to kick off a particular playlist in Apple Music or Spotify that plays some calming tunes whilst you work? This can be done with Session. 

Finally, you can look at statistical data that tracks your historic sessions. This is great if you want to look for any kind of patterns that may help you improve your focus. Are there days in the week where you perform better than others? I tend to check these out as part of my Weekly Review so that I can look for any potential improvements that can be made. Marginal gains. 

If you are a Setapp subscriber then I strongly recommend you take Session for a spin. You may just find that you achieve more, in a shorter space of time because you work smarter as opposed to harder and longer.

Hook Part 2 - Copying and Pasting Links

Introduction

In my last article on Hook, I looked at what the application is and why it’s such an important part of my workflow. Today, I want to touch on some of the core functionality and how I use it day to day to keep my brain a little less frazzled, knowing that everything I need for a given project is the touch of a button away. 

Universal Copying of Links

The first - and I dare say primary - use I have for Hook comes with the copying of links. Anyone that uses a Mac finds themselves utilising resources from a variety of different sources. They may be web pages, image files, project plans, calendar items, notes, spreadsheets. I’m no different from any of my readers in that respect. Having the ability to copy raw links to these resources using one global command helps:

• build muscle memory for utilising just one command to achieve a common result no matter the application or resource

• Reduce friction when trying to recall where a given resource is - you can click on the copied link and be taken there straight away.

In this example, I’ve opened up a help page at Hookproductivity.com that contains some great information on how to copy a link with Hook (including a video from yours truly that helps you visualise). This is going to be a useful resource to me as I compose this article, so to copy this link I’m going to:

• Invoke Hook with my keyboard shortcut (the default is ⬆⌘Space however using BetterTouchTool I’ve modified my shortcut to Caps Lock and H)

• Press Command C to copy (you can use the inbuilt menu within Hook to find this as well, as shown below)

This link is then able to be pasted elsewhere, using the standard Command V for pasting. 

Now some of you may be thinking ‘Lee - come on - I can do the above by using Command and L to get to the address bar, and then Command and C to copy’ - at which, I’d say you are bang right! Of course, you can. Yet those are Safari specific commands, and you need to learn the Command L/Command C combination to execute this. Invoking Hook and pressing Command C to copy will work in any application, no matter where you are within it, as long as it is supported by Hook and the list of supported applications is growing at a steady rate. 

You’re not just limited to pasting the link elsewhere. Far from it. The best use for the link you have copied comes with the Hook to Copied Link command. 

Hook to Copied Link

This is where Hook shows its teeth and the whole premise of contextual computing starts to take shape. Taking the URL that I have copied earlier - and is now sitting in my clipboard, I’m going to open up MindNode which I use for mind-mapping ideas and outlines. This is where things germinate, ready to grow. 

With the document I need open, I’m going to:

• Invoke Hook with my keyboard shortcut

• Press Command V to hook the copied link to this document. Once more, I can do this from the title menu within Hook and I’ve shown this in the screenshot below

Now, this does something that if I didn’t have such a scientific mind, I’d swear was just a little bit magical. It creates a bi-directional link between the two resources which can be utilised by invoking Hook once more. So if I have my mind map open and I want to get to that Copy Link webpage, I can simply invoke Hook and press Enter on the link below

I said this was bi-directional - and I was right, because if I was reading the Copy Link webpage and wanted to go straight back across to my mind map, I can invoke Hook and switch back

This is, of course, a very simplified use case for linking resources together with Hook. If you start to think bigger, you’ll realise that the possibilities are almost exponential:

Academics can use this for creating lesson and lecture plans and gathering all of the resource materials they need using one, easy to learn command

Developers can hook applications like Xcode and Quiver together with web resources to minimise the friction that comes with switching between applications and help keep their brains in the zone for the magic they create

Project Managers have all initiation, process, planning, financial and web resources linked together - which when asked about something during a particularly intense board meeting (this is my raw experience), makes it easy and somewhat impressive to give an immediate answer. 

Plus so much more besides. 

In upcoming articles, we’re going to dive into some of the deeper functionality of Hook. I’m hoping these first two articles sow the seeds. however, in why you need the app and how easy it is to get started.