Hook Now Supports Photos

Those of you who have been using the Hook from the team at CogSci Apps will already know about the time that can be saved when you use this application. I’ve written before about how you can use it to bring the art of contextual computing to your workflows. 

Hook supports a lot of applications yet recently, it was able to crack the case of Photos, meaning there is now an easy method for users to reference photos in their library from any application. 

By invoking Hook over the photo you wish to reference

Then pasting it into the document that you wish to reference from

It’s easy to now create a simple reference to the contents of your image library without having to carry out a series of fiddly export/copy/paste actions. It may seem simple, but this is something that we have been missing for the longest time and the team at CogSci Apps have slipstreamed this feature in with the minimum of fanfare. 

It is not possible to share the links with Shared Albums - so creating that Christmas List, and sending it to loved ones with links to photos you’ve taken whilst out and about shopping is not supported. This is because Apple Photos lacks any kind of automation for this to take place. 

However the latest version of Hook allows for the links to work across Macs for the same iCloud account. I’ve tested this on my Mac mini and MacBook Pro and it works like a charm. 

That’s good enough for an update and a feature set that allows you to take control of the links to your photos, however it goers one step photo. Those of you who use Hook regularly will know it’s benefits stretch beyond the ability to link content together. Bookmarking items you have previously hooked means that you have a whole list of bookmarked photos at your disposal. All you need to do is:

  • Invoke Hook

  • Press ⌘F

  • Type in url:photos

And if you haven’t renamed the image file in Photos (which - let’s be honest, you probably won’t have done) - then use the Rename in Hook option to make this subset of photos that are most important to you even easier to identify. 

Being able to copy deep-links to your photos library has the potential to be a game-changer. I’m using the feature already when creating articles and researching. I need to occasionally get quick access to an iOS screenshot which now happens in less than seconds.

Linking Drafts and Craft.Do together

Recently, I thought I’d go all-in on Craft.do for my day to day notes. I’m pretty fussy with my notes but the clincher was how well it works on both my iPhone and iPad as well as being able to share thoughts and ideas easily with private link sharing.

One thing I NEED my notes infrastructure to do is append information on the fly through Drafts. Drafts is my capture tool on iOS, every piece of text goes in there first so when I have an idea for something I need to add to a Craft document, I need Drafts to have a link to it.

Thanks to the efforts of @FloHyO in the Drafts community, there is an action already there that just needs a little bit of configuration once it’s been downloaded and installed.

Rather than spell the steps out here, I decided a video would be best - because I love making them as you know.

So see below and enjoy.

Why You Need Labels in Todoist

As the number of projects and tasks that you have in Todoist - or any task manager for that matter - grows, you need a way of being able to get those actions that are relevant, at the time they are relevant. 

Let’s paint a picture. It’s 11 am - you’ve been working well for an hour, building up a solid sense of momentum. Your brain is in the zone, the minutes are flying by and you check your to-do list to see what can be done. 

You see a task named File Invoices for September. Pretty menial in nature and certainly doesn’t make the most of the energy levels that you currently have. Yet it’s the next task on the list, so you complete it. 

That’s a shame. 

In an hours time, you’re starting to feel that pre-lunch slowdown. The brain is a little tired now, you’ve been working for a while, and you look at the next task. Mind Map Ideas For a New Marketing Strategy

The lizard part of your brain automatically starts to resist this, because you’re a little tired. Such a shame you didn’t look at this an hour ago when you could have attacked it with a sense of purpose. Now, one of two things will happen. You may start it, and make a pretty weak attempt at it, or it will get deferred until a later date - stained with the fact that you’ve already turned it down once. 

This is just one example where the assignment of labels to your Todoist tasks can help filter out the stuff you can’t do, with the stuff you can, or should. 

If energy-based labels were assigned to those tasks, a filter could be created that just shows you what is available to you if you have either high or low energy levels - which both makes your time incredibly efficient and helps to avoid the overwhelm and disappointment that comes with looking at tasks you just cannot physically do.

Labels TD 1.png

Being able to slice and dice your Todoist projects with these labels can really help you go to the next level with your productivity. Below are some more examples that you can use - but there is no limit or right/wrong method for using labels. Like all things productivity-related, it’s incredibly personal and you should use whatever labels work for you

Location Labels

If you are at home, is there any point whatsoever in looking at tasks that can only be done at the office? No. Unless you are planning out tasks for another day or carrying out either a daily or weekly review, these tasks will only distract you and take your mind away from the actions that you can carry out. 

Location labels are great for any physical location, so could be different shops or stores, sites that you visit for work, anywhere that you run errands, even different locations in your house if you have a very regimented cleaning regime!

Also, if you are either still commuting or getting back into the commuting lifestyle, you may want to have the bus or train as a label - really useful if you have headphones on and can actually sit and focus, without being disturbed by colleagues. 

Tech Labels

Lots of tasks can be done on multiple platforms, however, I like to assign labels based on which device is best and most appropriate for the task at hand. I could send invoices on either my Mac, iPad OR iPhone - but it’s clunky on the phone and takes me longer on the iPad, so I will only assign it a label of Mac. 

Conversely, I can check all of my social media contacts on any of those devices - however when I’m sitting at my Mac, I feel like I should be doing something far more productive, so I assign that task two labels - iPad or iPhone because it’s fine on both. 

Tech labels can stretch further than hardware - what about software as well? If you are in Slack or Teams for example and have a list of actions you need to carry out whilst you are in these apps, wouldn’t it be great to pull up a list in Todoist that itemises these for you? No reason why you can’t. Just do it. There will be job-specific applications that are a lot more bespoke to your role that you may want to include in this as well. 

Lots of options for tech labels

People Labels

We all have those people in our day to day lives, both personal and professional, that we are reliant on. Sometimes, we need information from them, other times, we are waiting on tasks and actions. 

Having people labels in your Todoist list is great during meetings as one example. It can be difficult to get hold of people when we are working remotely, so tapping someone’s label in Todoist will present you with a list of things you want to ask, or follow up on, and believe me, this makes you look hyper-efficient!

At home, I have labels for my wife and daughters. They mean the world to me and when I’m at home, I don’t want to miss out on anything important. My wife’s label forms part of a filter that I have to look at every day and there are always things I need to do for the girls to keep them happy and healthy. 

Agenda and Waiting For Labels

I love these. Generally, they go hand-in-hand with the people labels specified earlier because you can assign more than one label to a task, however, if you create Filters that combine a Waiting For a label with the label for an individual, you will only see items that you need to specifically follow up on, rather than just stuff you want to ask. This method of fine-tuning your labels and filters will have a great effect. 

The Agenda label is very similar however as well as pairing it with a person’s label, you could use it to identify things that need to be discussed at a particular upcoming meeting. You may have a recurring meeting that is set up as a project in Todoist. Using the Agenda label means that you can assign it to tasks within that project to form your agenda. Or you may wish to go further and create agenda labels for separate meetings - like agenda agmagenda daily huddle or agenda weekly meeting

Time Labels

So tasks take longer than others, naturally. If you have 15 minutes to spare and pull up Todoist to look at what you can check off, is there any point in looking at tasks that will take longer than half an hour? 

Why not have labels like @15mins@5mins@30mins and so on? Then you can make the most of those small gaps in the day that you get. Conversely, if you know you are sitting at your desk for 90 minutes, you can look at a longer form task and make the most of the time you are there. 

Do remember though, if you are looking at tasks that have a long period of time, you should think about breaking them down. If I have something that’s looking like it will take longer than an hour, I know I need to finesse it to make it more manageable. 

Priority Labels

Whilst Todoist has four great priority flags, this may not be enough for some people. It all depends on how you have your Todoist infrastructure set up because you may use those flags for a different reason altogether. 

If you were working on a methodology like the Eisenhower Matrix then you want to have labels for Important and Urgent rather than using the built-in flags. 

These are just a few of the labels that you can have with Todoist but there are so many options out there for you. Try not to go too mad with them - if you flood your tasks with labels, they may lose their effectiveness. It’s important to start slow and build yourself up to a level that is manageable. 

Feel free to check out my Taster course on Todoist that will get you started in 30 minutes. 

The full course is available here and is updated with new content monthly!

If you would like to join the MyProductiveMac-ademy, then sign up here and you’ll be notified as new content is rolled out.

Session now has Detailed Reports

As many of you now, I’m an absolute advocate of the Pomodoro Technique when it comes to executing my work. Splitting my time into smaller, focused blocks really does work and it allows me to even have shorter work days on occasion and spend more time taxi-ing the kids around - which seems to form much of my existence currently. 

My app of choice on both Mac and iOS to help me manage these timers is Session. The main reasons for this are the ease of use and the level of detail that the developer goes to in order to keep the customers happy. It’s clearly a passion project and the latest update just goes to underline that. Session has always had a report functionality that allows you to look back at previous sessions and look for trends. This is down to the ability to rate your sessions when you are complete - were you completely focused or a little distracted? If so, you can make notes to go into more detail as to the reasons why. 

monthly-view.png

These reports just got some love because there is now more detail available. You can look analyse the dates and times that you are most productive based on how you score your sessions. This is great - I mean just think. If you have some work to do that involves some real heavy-lifting of the brain, you don’t want to try and do this when, historically, your attention can easily wander. It needs to be done when you are mentally ‘on-it’. Session can help you track when these times of the day/week are and you can schedule accordingly. I think this is an awesome addition and I’m already spotting some surprising trends.

 
weekly-view.png
detailed.png

As you can adjust the time spent focusing, from the default 25 minutes, you can now also track how much these change at different times of the day? Am I spending more time focusing this month than last? 

In essence, you can now easily use data to determine whether you are being overloaded so that you can course-correct as appropriate. 

Well played Phillip