Feels like I’m drowning in the digital landscape these days. I need to simplify my digital footprint.
The never-ending cycle of trying out apps and what I am doing about it
Everytime I try a new app or service out, it feels like I’m simply putting something else on my radar that I need to check.
A couple of weeks ago I installed an app to remind me to keep moving through the day and keep my water intake going. I deleted it this moring in favour of simply adding a few events to my calendar with reminders. Stupidly simple I know, so why didn’t I think of doing this first before wasting my time with another app?
There’s a flurry of apps that focus on one thing and do that thing really well, but the problem with this is that I end up needing an handful of apps each geared towards their own way of meeting my requirements. These single responsibility apps might be good at what they do, but they suck at everything else.
I’ve got a core set of apps that I use daily. These apps can be adapted to handle most of the things that these single responsbility apps do. They might not do them as well or with less eye-candy, but the result is often still the same.
My core apps at the moment are the following:
- Bear - For notes and capturing
- Fantastical - For time management and reminders
- Pocket - For long-term bookmarking and reading list
- Trello - Project management for client work
I should learn to use my core apps for everything I do now and adapt them to what I need them to in the future before installing another app to try out.
Influential media
Posts like Buffer’s “How to Share Posts From the Instagram Feed to Stories” are becoming less about how everyone can use a feature of social media and more about how companies, brands, and organisations can use social media. Buffer’s post even has a section for this.
Gone are the days when social media was all about people who just wanted to share something of themselves. A photograph, a thought, a revelation.
Nowadays social media has been replaced by algorithms that decided what posts you should see and ads. Now there’s going to be a new type of post on Instagram where brands are promoted through influencers.
It’s not about being social now. It’s about influence.
It’s not about people now. It’s about branding and marketing.
If this is what passes for social media these days on Instagram, maybe I am better off not being on Instagram.
Sad to see great Twitter clients being eroded away.
An interesting post about science backed advice for parents who want to bring up well-rounded kids.
There’s already a few of these in place in our home.
I’m increasingly wary of podcasts where the end of episode “picks” by the hosts and guests are the products and services of fellow hosts of the very same podcast. If that’s the extent of the picks for that episode, then I start to wonder where the value is in listening.
Finally after weeks of waiting, these little beauties arrived in the mail.
Spent the afternoon getting the garden into order today. There’s something to be said for a little bit of grafting.
Started using Aloe Bud to remind myself to take breaks through the day.
Particularly important for me as I tend to forget to get up and move about for a bit, which doesn’t do my back any favours.
I’m pretty much all in with Firefox these days as my main browser. I’m using it for both browsing and work and I’m also using it on my iPad and iPhone.
Speed isn’t the major driver behind this decision. I just prefer the extensibility of Firefox as well as it’s test pilot betas.