Matthew Lang

As promised to one of my App.net followers, here's a quick run down of the setup I use for writing in Markdown.

I stopped using Sublime Text as my preferred code editor a couple of months ago, but there's something that I still use it for every day and that's for writing my blog. As a result I've removed a lot of packages from Sublime Text and managed to whittle it down to just the essentials. Here's a run down of everything I use for writing in Markdown with Sublime Text.

Theme and Colour Scheme

After a number of years of trying different themes on Sublime Text, I've now resorted back to the excellent Soda theme. It's stable and easy on the eye. There are a number of great themes out there but in my experience, they're not as solid as Soda.

As for the colour scheme I'm sticking with Solarized but instead of using the dark variation for coding, I use the light variation. It's makes a nice context switch trigger when I'm moving from code to writing.

Packages

I don't use a lot of packages for writing in Markdown, but there are a few that definitely help.

• MarkdownEditing - A Markdown plugin for Sublime Text that provides good syntax highlighting and editing features.
• Origami - The default pane layouts and keyboards shortcuts can be infuriating. Origami solves by letting you splits panes easily.
• WordCount - Nice way of seeing your word count. Always handy if you like keeping an eye on that sort of thing.
• Marked App Menu - Opens Marked and Marked 2 from the document that you are working on.

External Tools

A special mention goes to Brett Terpstra's fantastic Marked app which is great for previewing and reviewing your Markdown documents. Simply open your Markdown document in Marked and watch it update your Markdown document in a theme of your choosing while you type. Not only that, but Marked also has a ton of features that allow you to review your writing. If you're a Mac owner, I strongly suggest you check this out.

Keep It Light!

My setup for Markdown writing is rather light, but it's supposed to be light. When I am writing I'm not thinking about keyboard shortcuts I could use to type faster or neat plugins to use. Most of the packages I use are there because I can just install them and that's it. There's little configuration or maintenance to do and that's the way it should be.

I've been writing for so long with Markdown that the mark up is becoming automatic as I type so I don't need to worry too much about using shortcut keys for things. I just keep typing, peppering my words with little bits of mark up as I go.

Free services are the most popular way to attract users, but what are you compromising on for this to happen?

The word 'free' is still a popular way for many online services to gain the users they need in order to start becoming more than just another blip on the Internet radar. With that enticing offer of being free, most people sign up, use the service and then decide if they want to keep using it or not. The pull of being free can be a powerful thing and like so many things people like it when they get something for free.

In the beginning users of the service are happy. They can't believe their luck that this service is free and they can use it on a daily basis. They love the new service and sing its praises to their friends who in turn sign up as well. It is free after all. The trend continues and if the service is a hit it can eventually scale to becoming the next big thing.

After a few years, the service owners wants to start making some money, but they don't want to charge their loyal users for the privilage of using their service. That would be a terrible idea. Instead the service owners decide to change some things about the way the service works. Maybe they limit the API, change a well liked feature to what the service owners think is better (for them anyway) or even just start throwing some ads in. That last one always works right?

Alas the loyal users of the service start to feel like they have been cheated and throw their arms up in the air in objection to the new changes the service are implementing. Just because they have been loyal to the service since its early days, it's wrongly assumed that the service owners are going to listen to their users. Sadly they don't. And then an amazing thing happens. Despite the drawbacks to using the service with the new changes they don't approve of, the users decide to keep using the service. It's not about free anymore though, it's about the people your connected to using this service. How will you ever connect to these people without this service?

Clearly I'm taking a few examples from social networks like Twitter and Facebook, but the rules apply to any service that starts out being free and refuses to entertain the idea of a paid account or subscription. The rule is that in order to gain the user base you need to become a smash hit, you need to make your service free for everyone. You need to make it instantly attractive for people to use and that starts with giving it away for free.

It's a plan that has been played out with many services now and while there have been successful exceptions to this (well done Trello), many free services stick to being free and then try to generate revenue by using brand advertising and promotion or selling data as a product to others.

It's at this point where the idea of a free account is nothing more than a compromise. In exchange for using the service in question, you must be prepared to accept the changes to the service and continue using it as best as you can. You might not like the changes that the service are implementing but the decision to continue using it or leave the service is down to you. You're the user after all.

This is the cost of many free services now. If they don't require something back from you in return now, chances are they will in the future. It's just a matter of deciding how much you're willing to compromise on to continue using the service.

I would love to have one of these Weston phone pouches sitting on the shoulder strap of my Gulper.

via PEDAL Consumption

I watched DHH's keynote from RailsConf 2014 and it re-iterated a few things for me but what stood out was the similarities between writers and programmers.

There's been a lot of talk in the Rails community about architectures, design patterns and testing recently. DHH touched on this in his keynote but one thing I wanted to mention here was the idea of drafts.

When it comes to writing code, your first attempt is never your last. Unless you have all the knowledge and time under the sun to get it right first time, there's always going to be scope to improve that code you just wrote.

I tell my clients when I think that a section of code could be improved by re-writing it. I'll pick the smaller sections of code to re-write as they offer the greater awards for the smallest investment in time. This suits my clients as they usually want features over improved code, but if I can improve the code base in anyway, then I'll aim for those bits of code that can be improved with just a small amount of time.

The same goes for writing. Your first draft is never your final piece. It might just flow from your pen but reading it back it might not sound as good as you first thought. Unfortunately re-writing my blog posts is something that I don't usually do. I'm just so busy at the moment that the most I can do is a first draft, a read through to correct mistakes, a quick couple of improvements and then publish it. It's hardly the process that I should be working towards.

Rather than worrying about the re-writing of these blog posts though, I'm looking at larger bits of writing that I have done. I have a first draft of my grass roots productivity series that I have compiled together for an e-book. I should make some time to go through this and re-write it. It's been a while since I looked at it and perhaps the unfamiliarity of it might reveal the places where I could improve it.

I know now though that regardless of whether it's source code for an application or words for a book, the first draft should never be your final attempt. Maybe there is more in common between writers and programmers than I first thought.

via PEDAL Consumption

It's taken me a long time to find a habitual way of reading books that works for me. I call it the daily reading ritual.

When I first started my career in programming there was one titbit of advice that I had seen repeated over and over again.

Read a programming book every month.

I don't know how many of you have read a programming book, but for those that don't know they can be difficult to read. The trouble with programming books is that they are better used as reference books. Lookup material for when you're stuck.

I tried the one book a month goal and I failed miserably. For the next few years I kept on trying but no matter what book it was I would either give up on it or still be reading it at the end of the month.

So how do you digest a programming book without it becoming a monotonous chore?

What I've found that works really well for me is that I take five non-fiction books (programming or otherwise) that I want to read and I read a chapter of each book on a specific weekday. At the moment Monday is a freelance and marketing book, Tuesday is a sketch noting book an so on. What this gives you is variety. Every day is different. It's breaks the monotony barrier.

What about fiction books though?

Fiction books are easy to read because you usually have no idea what's going to happen and it's the authors job to send you to a place that's not your usual environment. It's a form of escapism.

I don't set a time limit for these as it takes the enjoyment away from the book. Instead I try and read these books as often as I can. It's usually at night when the kids are sleeping.

Since starting this ritual I've found it much easier to make progress on the books I've wanted to read. Not only that but I've also managed to set aside a few minutes in the morning for the non-fiction books and then at night I can plough through whatever fiction book I'm reading.

Todoist has been my choice of task management app for almost a year now. In that time I've learned a thing or two about it. Here are ten tips to help you get the most from it.

It worth noting that most of these tips can only be used with a premium subscription to Todoist. At just $29 (US) per year for a subscription to Todoist Premium, that's less than the cost of a cup of coffee a month. Bargain if you ask me.

1. Archive Projects For Better Focus

While you might like to be organized by amassing a collection of tasks in a number of different projects, you probably won't be able to work on all these projects at the same time. Not a problem. Simply create your project with its tasks and then archive it to work on it later. Archiving the project keeps it out of active tasks but also keeps it out of your focus.

The archive command can be found in the menu that appears when you hover over a project with your mouse and click the ellipsis on the right hand side of the highlighted section. At the bottom of the menu that appears you'll find the archive command.

2. Create Linkable Tasks

Sometimes we would like to reference something online in a task. It might be support material for the task or a product relating to the task. How nice would it be to include that URL in your task? Well you can! Todoist uses the following syntax to include URLs in a task:

[matthewlang.co.uk](http://matthewlang.co.uk) (Must hire this guy!)

This will create a nice clickable link in your task and will also hide that nasty long URL.

Bonus tip: As well has hyperlinks you can also include bold or italic text in your task!

3. Capture Tasks With Email

Todoist is available on lots of different devices and platforms. If you have a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone then there's a Todoist client made for it. What if you're using a public computer to check your email and you'd rather not sign in to Todoist on it?

Tasks can easily be added to your projects and inbox by emailing the task to Todoist. For each inbox and project, there is a seperate email address that allows you to email tasks in. Simply send an email to the correct address that can be found in the tools section of the inbox or project, and use the subject as the name of your task. Hit send an it will be added to your list of tasks on Todoist.

To find out the email address for your inbox and projects, click on the tasks actions icon at the top right hand side of the list. On this menu you'll find the Email tasks to this project command where it will show you the email address you should send your tasks too.

4. Location Based Reminders

Reminders are great for when we do things at a set time or date, but what if you're running late? Instead of setting a reminder for a time or date, why not set a reminder for the general area that a task or project relates to?

Got a meeting with a client downtown at your favourite coffee place?. Set a reminder when you arrive at this location to get the coffees in before your client arrives. A nice way to start the meeting on a positive note!

Location based reminders can be found when you edit a task and hit the reminders icon. Simply flip the reminder from a date and time to a location and you'll be able to the reminder for a location.

5. Backups for Accidents

Deleted a project by accident that contained a list of tasks you entered the day before? Don't worry. Todoist's premium plan backups up your entire to do list every day. Just download the latest backup of your list from Todoist and re-import that project to save yourself the time of creating it all over again.

Backups can be found in the settings section of Todoist under the Backups tab. A list of recent backups is always kept here.

6. Group similar labels by colour

Labels in Todoist are a great way to group tasks, but Todoist only offer so many colours to choose from. What if you run out of colours? Easy, group similar labels by a single colour so that not only do they give you more choice of colours, each label has a contextual colour that is easy to recognise.

7. Recurring Tasks Save Time

At the end of every month I invoice a single client for the work I did for the month. I've been doing this for over a year. Recently though I got fed up re-creating the same task in Todoist. Using Todoist's ability to create recurring tasks, you can have the same task repeat at times that you need. No more re-creating the same task over and over again!

8. Start Projects Quickly with Templates

Starting a new project can involve setting the same tasks up as previous projects. Why bother creating the same tasks though? Templates are plain text files that contain tasks that you can import into a project as a template.

Templates can be created from existing projects or by creating them yourself in a plain text file.

9. Learn the Keyboard Shortcuts

Using the keyboard is a great time saver when you know the right keys to press. It's the reason why us developers are the most productive people on the planet. Right, that's not 100% true, but pressing keys can still be quicker than figeting with a mouse.

10. Reviews Projects and Labels with the Visualiser

When you view your Karma score there's a link to viewing all the completed tasks you have done. When you click this you can analyse how many tasks you have completed over a period of time for a project or label. This is great to use for reviewing your progress on a project.

There we have it. Ten tips for Todoist. Now go forth and be productive!

Compromise doesn't always need to mean settling for second best. When working with clients, compromise can mean everyone taking away something of value.

Compromise is often a word used in a negative way to indicate when you settle for second best. In my time as a freelancer though I've come to find it to mean a positive result.

I speak to my clients alot when it comes to starting new projects. Last week I had a meeting regarding some technical decisions that the client and myself wanted to make before starting a new project. We couldn't decide on which course of action to take. The client wanted to go one way, I wanted to go the other way. It should never be this way though. Allowing one side to completely dictate the decisions is bad for the relationship with your client.

When either side tries to remain in control, the other side invariably suffers. Not giving the client any control of their project can mean that they don't get what they had in mind and will reflect on working with you as a bad experience. On the flip side, if the client is always in control, you end up doing work that isn't enjoyable, challenging or in your best interests.

It's About Balance

Your client has an objective, you have the knowledge to get your client to the objective, there must be a happy medium where the two of you can meet. This happy medium is called compromise. In the example of my client meeting, I discussed the options available to the client and we came to a decision that was a compromise on both sides but one the will benefit any long term work we do together. By compromising we came to a result that benefited both of us.

Not all meetings will go this way though and you might wonder if this is only achieveable through some utopian freelancing world where all clients pay on time, attend all meetings and respect you for the work you deliver. It's not, the decision to work with clients is a decision you have to make as a freelancer. I don't need to tell you that clients that compromise are better than clients that don't yield control at all.

With compromise, both you and your client walk away with a positive result. It might not be what your client wants or what you want, but is it not better to walk away with a healthy working relationship with your client than to walk away with no client at all?

Continuing with the book, Book Yourself Solid, I've identified what my ideal client is, but what's my target market?

18 months ago if you asked me who my target market is then I would have to answer, "I haven't a clue". Fast forward to today and the answer is still pretty much the same. The reason for this is that I have two types of clients. My major clients are clients I work with in what I see as my target market, the healthcare sector, they're organisations and businesses that require deliver software for the NHS, GP's and other healthcare organisations in the UK. The minor clients are clients I do work for on a rare occasion. I might have provided a website or application for them and they never require much work to either fix or upgrade what they have. They usually require a single week's work every six months or so.

I'll be honest, I still don't know for definite what my target market should be. I'm still getting a feel for the kind of work I want to do and whether there's a long term future for me in that market. Ideally I would like to do consulting work for healthcare software providers or even straight to the healthcare businesses themselves, providing myself as a development consultant and resource, but I don't want to do this forever. There's two options I see ahead.

The first is looking into another target market. I have a few in mind but nothing concrete. The reason I am exploring other options is that while I have firm background in healthcare I also have some experience in other sectors. One area of work I did that was interesting was risk management solutions. I certainly wouldn't be adverse to working in this market again.

The second is building a revenue stream from a number of products that will provide a steady income over the next few years. It has to be years as anything short lived like a book or a screencast is only going to generate so much revenue over a short time frame. If I went down this road I would need to continue releasing books or screencasts every six months and I'm not sure that this plan is for me. Something more long term like a software product or service would definitely be something worth looking at however, getting the right product is a challenge to begin with.

I know what my target market should be and maybe that's enough for me to be going on with for the next few years. There's no rules to say I have to stay with that market. If it doesn't work out then I can always change.

Nicholas Bate's seven step planning list for the new term.

Wonderful idea for organising your notebook.

I've got a thing for black fixies. I think they just look better. And this Bombtrack Needle is no exception.

via PEDAL Consumption

With anything we create we take a risk of getting a bad review of comment. Dealing with this is just about facing a simple truth. There's no pleasing everyone.

If you're in the industry of creating content, products or services for people then chances are you've been faced with the dread that is a negative review. As creators we want to our little ideas grow and flourish and eventually make the world a better place for people. It doesn't always happen that way and along the road to success you will encounter bad reviews and negative comments.

If you're under the illusion that there's no way you could have created something that anyone is going to think ill of then you're wrong. With the billions of people on the planet now being more connected than ever before, we've created a soap box where anyone can join in. Unfortunately that means that anyone can share their views and opinions on anything, including your little bud of creation.

I recently had the unfortunate experience of reading about some negative comments about Journalong. I only happened to stumble on them after doing some research for other online markdown journals. The author of the comments was entitled to share his views on Journalong and unfortunately for me, he found Journalong not to his liking.

It was hard to read the comments. My little journaling application has been a side project for two years now, and while it hasn't been a success financially, it has been an experience for me and I'll continue working on it for as long as I keep journaling with it. Journalong hasn't been high on the priority list for the last few months due to freelancing being a priority, but I know that it is far from perfect and there are definitely places where it could be improved. It's a labour of love and it will continue to be.

Comments like this can be a confidence knock and it was for a few hours. That is until I realised that pleasing everyone wasn't the goal of my creation. It was to create something for me to use. It was something that I wanted to use. I don't have paying customers or a market to please and I think that's why I let the comments slide. If Journalong was a product that generated revenue then yes, I would have paid more attention to the comments and perhaps even scheduled in immediate development time to rectify those issues.

With anything that we create, we take a risk of creating something that not everyone is going to find favourable. Even if we have tested the idea with a select group of people, it's still nothing compared to the number of people that will see our idea across the world when it comes to releasing it into the wild. There's definitely no pleasing everyone.

Last week we looked at labels in Todoist and how they provide context to your tasks. This week we're going to look at how I use Todoist's filter feature.

Before we talk about filters, let's just recap how we can already group tasks in Todoist. The first is by assigning tasks to a project. This is ideal for tasks we know that belong in a specific place. The second is by using labels which are more of a form of tagging in Todoist. You can label tasks across different projects thereby bringing similar tasks together.

Filters in Todoist are similar to labels but they can bring together more tasks depending on your filter. A filter in Todoist is a search term that matches tasks and can then be saved for future use. The benefit here is that filters allow you to bring similar tasks together rather than focusing on tasks from a single project or label. Combining dates, labels and some boolean logic allows us to filter for specific tasks and labels to give us a list of tasks that are suitable to our location and environment.

Here's a few ideas for filters that I am using at the moment:

Low Hanging Fruit

Filter: "(@Low & @5mins) !@Errands"

I use this all tasks labelled with these and complete when I'm stuck for something to do.

Errands & Emails

Filter: "@Errands | (@Email & @Low)"

I sometimes opt for public transport when I need to head into town to run some errands. It's good, as it gives me a chance to walk to the bus stop and get some air, but also there's 10 minutes on the bus where I can carry out some email tasks before getting into town to do some errands. This filter is great for those tasks when you're out and about.

Upcoming Posts

Filter: "14days & @writing"

I've started scheduling blog posts into specific days so that I'm keeping my writing varied. Rather than using a calendar though I find it easier to put due dates against the tasks in my writing list and then tag them with @writing. Combining this with the 14 days term and I can get a list of blog posts I've got scheduled for the next two weeks. If there's any gaps I can pull an idea in and schedule it with a date.

Filters are one feature that set Todoist apart from other to do list applications. Using filters you can build custom lists that are more than just a single project or label. You can build lists that can be done in certain locations or at specific parts of the day, thereby making yourself a little bit more productive. It's worth noting that filters using a boolean operator is only included in Todoist's premium subscription.

That's it then for Todoist. This is the final post in this series. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it. If you've any questions about Todoist then I suggest you check out their help and support sites which are full of help and advice.

Do you vet your clients for suitablility before working with them? Maybe you should for happier freelance career.

I've started reading Book Yourself Solid as part of my daily reading. It's time I started taking my career more seriously and invest some of my time in marketing and promoting myself. At first I didn't know where to start but seeing as Curtis McHale has mentioned this book so often and his career is flying then it must be a good indication of its impact.

The first section of the book is about laying down the foundations to build upon. The first chapter is about trimming your clients down to only the clients that you want to work with. While my client list is fine at the moment, there may come a point in the future where I have a client that isn't a good fit for me. Rather than letting myself be saddled with difficult or problematic clients in the future, I need to perfect my red velvet rope policy which is mentioned in the book. Your red velvet policy is a guideline to the ideal clients you want to work with. Before accepting any work from a new client I need to decide if they are the ideal client for me.

In Book Yourself Solid, Michael suggests you identify the types of clients that you don't want. In doing this you end up with a list of traits of clients you do want. This is my ideal client in the three simplest terms that I could think of. They don't cover all aspects of a great client but it's a start.

My ideal client has interesting projects to work on

During those first few meetings between yourself and a prospective client you should get as much details on the type of work you would be doing with the client. It's here that you can get a good sense of what projects they have. As a web developer it might be tempting to always take greenfield projects on but these don't necessarily mean that they are great projects to work on. In the early days of any greenfield project there can be technical issues with untested technology such as programming languages and frameworks, dependency issues with hardware and even implementation problems if you are expected to lead a team of developers who have never used this particular technology before.

In Chad Fowler's book, The Passionate Programmer he mentions the legacy technologist who is familiar with ageing frameworks and languages and is able to work with legacy projects without a problem. These people are essential as they can nurse projects through their final years before the software is upgraded or replaced. I know many developers who would quickly sidestep projects like this but having seen the importance of technology specialists in this field from my ERP days, it's not only work that is essential but also interesting.

Legacy have their problems but what's so interesting about them is the chances that are available to refactor them or gradually migrate them over to other applications. In my days as an ERP developer I not only maintained a number of legacy ERP systems I also has the chance to provide and support and knowledge on these legacy systems to clients. It was rewarding work helping out people with their problems and fine tuning the system so that the same problem couldn't be replicated in the future or at least improved slightly.

My ideal client communicates often

Having worked on a number of projects with different clients, one of the best pieces of advice that I have had is that you should communicate with your client often. For me it's every day. Not a day goes by where I don't ask a question, drop them an IM, an email or even schedule a phone call to discuss something about the project. I used to hesistate in the past about doing this on a daily basis, but now I see it as acceptable behaviour. If I'm continually communicating with the client to clarify requirements on the project then I'm doing both of us a big favour. We're making sure that both of us don't get the end of the project and then think, "That's not what we wanted.".

However, the same goes the other way. Just like I communicate with my client frequently, I expect the same from them. If they have a question they should drop me a message or an email. If they want me to sit on a meeting, then tell me the date and time. If they want me to discuss further options then they should ask me too. I'm not a mind reader but I do try and pre-empt what the client wants. For the rest of the time I expect the client to ask questions when they need to, send me updates to the project and anything else that keeps me in the loop.

My ideal client pays on time

An obvious one for many freelancers but it's one of the key points in ensuring you enjoy your career. I've wrestled with this in the past and I've had clients that have paid on time and clients that have paid late. It's can be frustrating.

Lately though, more clients have come round to paying invoices on time. It's such a boost to your confidence and productivity knowing that your work is valued and that you will be paid for it when you expect it.

I haven't got to the stage where I have parted ways with a client over late invoices but it is something at the back of my mind that I do think about. I'm happy to report though that my client list all pay on time.

These are just three basic guidelines to the kind of clients that I want to work with. Ideally I would like to narrow this further by a specific market, but that's for another day.

We've all been there. We've made a mistake in our career that has had serious repurcusions. We might have hit the wrong key, flicked the wrong switch, cut the wrong cable, sent the wrong document or even just looked the wrong way. Despite all the damage control there's still going to be a degree of fallout from the mistake and it's a mistake can be far reaching for lots of people to see.

I remember two such mistakes in my career. The first was when I was doing work experience at a local brewery and distillery for a large drinks manufacturer. On this particular day I was working in the IT department helping to organise some cables. I mistakenly pulled the wrong plug from the wall that was providing the power for over 10 workstations. As a result a lot of people were unhappy that morning. I put my hand to the mistake. There was no getting anyone work back who hadn't saved it.

The second involved deleting data from a production database. While I was working on an application with my own local copy of the database, I was asked to connect to the production database to run a report. Forgetting that I hasn't disconnected from the production database I ran a delete command on a table thinking it was my own development environment. It wasn't. Before I released the key to execute the command, I realised my mistake. I called my team manager over right away and they arranged a back up of the production database to be made while I was still holding the key down. Once I let the keyboard go the data was deleted but promptly brough back using the backup we had taken minutes before.

These are two examples of the biggest mistakes that I have made during my career, thankfully on the scale of things it doesn't get much bigger than that. Some mistakes though end up becoming local or even national news. I've been on the end of a few wrong electricity cables being cut by builders and such but thankfully nothing more serious than that.

Having recently seen a similar mistake being made, it's easy for me to see now how people can let these mistakes worry them. However, it's not the scale of the mistake in terms of visibility that should be the main concern. It's the risk from the mistake. Will this mistake endanger anyone? Am I putting anyone's life at risk? Unless you're working in an already high risk environment then chances are your mistake won't put anyone at risk. When you make a mistake you should remember this.

We all make minor mistakes on a frequent basis. We chide ourselves for them and then move on. It's when the mistakes become grander in scale that we start to worry about their repurcusions. Over my career I've slowly learned that I'll never make a mistake that puts anyone's life at risk. At most, I'll have lost some data which is why I now have back up strategies for my own data and all the applications that I work on.

In each of these cases I unecessarily worried for a few days about the making the mistake and the effort required to get back to normal by people affected by the mistake, but after a few days the worry was gone. Worry is a wasted energy when mistakes happen. Mistakes do happen and for the majority of us, the best thing to do is to take ownership and rectify the mistake as best you can.

Here's a good place to start.

We should re-read some of our favorite books from childhood because adult life also has trolls, knights, and the occasional pirate.

— Random Thoughts by Execupundit

... and more from Michael Wade.

via PEDAL Consumption

A festive idea for your kids or those just pretending to be kids.

I'm exploring alternative user interfaces to the standard web form for Journalong. In the quest for something simple, there's an obvious answer.

The simplest user interface is no user interface was a common theme in web design about a year ago. It's misleading right away because without any user interface how are we supposed to interact with our product? There's a problem with this statement because there's always a user interface, it can just take many forms. In building Journalong I've tried to keep to a simple user interface but what would be even simpler than this is a user interface that already exists elsewhere.

One of the most popular user interfaces has to be email. Lots of products and services provide interaction through email and it can be effective. All devices provide some form of email client and it's easy to regardless of your experience with technology. When using to interact with other products and services you just need to know what information goes where in your email. With just a subject and a body this can be easy to remember.

This simpler interface is something I'm keen to explore using Journalong. Being able to write journal entries should be easy for anyone to do but the web user interface for it is something I find distracting. I've built a few forms around different ideas but nothing so far has offered the simplest method of using an alternative user interface like email.

Maybe I'm wrong and the best user interface to use isn't email. There's only way to find out and that's trying it out for a few weeks with some users. The option to use a form will still be available, but I'm keen to see how people will choose between using email or the form. Either way, I'm off to brew some coffee and crack open my text editor. I've got some code to write.

I've already mentioned how I use projects in Todoist. Well this time it's the turn of the humble label.

The label. This is Todoist's context tag that can be applied to any task if you need to organise them by more than just their priority. Let's get something clear before we start. Colour coded labels are a premium feature in Todoist. If you're using the free plan on Todoist, you can still use the labels suggested below but not the label colours.

Having decided that tagging tasks with labels would give me more flexibility I started tagging everything in my list with labels. It quickly turned into a nightmare with inconsistent labels, labels with typos and even obscure labels that didn't end up making sense to have. I needed a strategy, so I took the advice of Mike Vardy and started using labels in a more structured manner.

Looking at the range of colours available I started to setup label groups by colour. First off I created six labels for my six personal compass points giving each compass point its own colour. This is the basic categorisation of labels regardless of where they are in Todoist. Almost all tasks get labelled with a compass point.

Next I took the groups that Mike Vardy suggested. Using the colours for these labels I grouped them under time, event, person, location and energy. What I eventually ended up with was a wide range of labels for different contexts as well as having a couple of free colours left over that allowed me to have labels that could be used for general purposes.

Labels are also useful with Todoist's email feature. As well as emailing tasks to your inbox, you can append labels in the subject or the body of the email and they will be added to your task when Todoist receives it.

So what's the point of labelling everything then?

Well, aside from the fact that it provides some meta-information on the task, it also allows you to search for related tasks. Do you want some low hanging fruit to pick in the morning? Search for the @5mins and @low labels. Kids birthday coming up and you remember taking a note of their preference for a Minecraft book. Search for @birthdays and your kids owns tag using their initials.

You can search for individual tags, combination of tags, tags in a project, tags due on a specific day. There are lots of possibilites to using this and Todoist keeps a nice count of how many times each label has been used so that you can weed out the ones that are unused or break down a label if it's being overused.

All this now means that I can quickly filter and sort my master list according to labels that provide context. This leads on to next week's post about filters. Be sure to check back for this and see how you can utilise labels to group tasks together using filters.

We've not had a Kagero for a while.

via PEDAL Consumption

Effective communication isn't about how your message gets to your audience, it's about the message itself.

I rely on an business to keep me up to date with events and updates happening within that business. I pay this business for services that I use on a monthly basis. I'd rather not name and shame them as that doesn't benefit anyone, so if you don't mind I'll leave them as anonymous. They have a website that supports both an email newsletter and a RSS feed. They also have accounts with both Twitter and Facebook. You would think that with all these outlets there would be a steady stream of information being sent out. Well, there isn't. I don't have the exact reason why this business isn't using these more frequently, but what I do know is that they're ignoring a chance to communicate effectively with their customers and potential customers.

Effective communication means communicating clearly and frequently. It's such a simple rule to follow but is ignored in a lot of cases.

Be Clear

Effective communication means communicating clearly. It's not hard to do. Don't use 50 words when 25 will do, avoid technical jargon and business speak and outline summaries using lists. These are just some of the things you can do for long form communication. For shorter forms of communication it can be more difficult. Twitter only allows 140 characters in each tweet, so even if it something quick you want to say, you need to be sure that what you want to say can be conveyed using this limit. It just takes time, but keeping it simple is the first step, and if you follow this then you're already winning.

Be Frequent

When communicating, being frequent with your messages is the best way to keep your audience up to date and informed. It's not rocket science. Agile software methodologies promote frequent communication between customers and programmers. The reason this is encouraged is because when we programmers keep our customers in the loop, we are keeping them involved and they can see what's happening from day to day. This limits the chances of the programmers going in the wrong direction building an application that the customer doesn't want or need.

The same goes for communicating. When we communicate frequently we keep our recipients informed and up to date. If we maintain this we foster interest from our audience and then we can expect a decent return of interest and participation from this audience when events or meetings are announced.

The Mistake

A common mistake for many businesses today is that they have more than one outlet for their outgoing messages and therefore think they already are communicating effectively. Unless you frequently use these different outlets though, you're not going to reach anyone. Having a website with an email based newsletter that is sent out regularly can be just as effective as a website that has multiple social network accounts. In order to be effective we just need to ensure that we are communicating clearly and frequently.

All the social networks under the sun aren't going to get your message across to your audience unless you're clear about your message and those messages get sent out on a regular basis.

This business in question might not be aware of it, but they're already lagging behind other competing businesses in the area who are doing a much better job of keeping their customers involved and up to date. As a paying customer my loyalty is waning. I just want to be kept up informed. Is that too much to ask?