Matthew Lang

via FGGT (photo by Eroica Cicli)

One tool that I have yet to fully embrace in my day to day work is a text expander. Back in my days as a .NET developer, AutoHotKey was my preferred choice of text expander but since moving to the Mac, I haven't invested too much time in searching for a text expander tool. Now though I'm starting to find that it would be of benefit to me if I was able to automate a few keystrokes here and there.

My email is the first place I would start. For a while now I've been unproductive when it comes to emails. Sometimes I find myself sending the same email a few times a week to different clients. Rather than searching for the previous email and copying and pasting the body I would like to store the body of the email in a text expander and just have it show in the email when I type in the snippet code. Another place I would like to automate things is legal documents for clients. I could store the template of a contract in a snippet.

There lots of other places as well I could be using a text expander like inserting the header of my blog posts, code snippets for my programming and of course the humble email signature. I know that all these examples could be solved by other means but each case requires a different way of setting it up and retrieving it. Having shortcut keys on hand to do this would be so much easier to implement and remember. Also, all my snippets would be in one place.

I started today with a trial of TextExpander for my MacBook. The reason I picked this is that it's name keeps coming up when I'm browsing the preferences of the apps I'm using. I'm going to be using it over the next few weeks. We'll see how I get on.

... from Michael Wade.

If you do not have a stack of unread books at home then there is no hope for you. I have known brave soldiers who are intellectuals but I'd never want a university faculty to cover my back. Every day should begin with a good look at the sky.

— Random Thoughts by Michael Wade

Many of you will know through my posts that I'm a big App.net fan. It's my goto place when I want to drop in on conversations, strike up news ones with others and also just as a place to post what I am doing. It's also the one public social network that I participate in.

I've never been interested in creating a Facebook account as I simply seeing as being too much of an overhead to maintain. I also deleted my Twitter account this year. It was coincidental that the timing of this action happened at the same time as Twitter were enforcing new rules on the use of their API. I just felt that I wasn't getting anything back from Twitter in terms of value.

Since switching to a single public social network, I've noticed a number of positive things that have occurred as a result of my limiting action.

No more drowning in micro-information

The first thing I immediately noticed was that I was no longer constantly checking my Twitter timeline. Looking back I wonder now why I even had an account there in the first place. It's a social network for micro-updates that only offers limited information in each post. I did find it interesting hearing what other people were working on, but Twitter's post limit of 140 characters seriously limits the amount of context you can put on a post.

Less apps and services to use

With just one social network to my name, I have less apps on all my devices. It's a minor thing but having less apps on my devices means less time updating them, searching for new ones and of course less time checking them. I also work with a 'one in, one out rule'. As much as possible I will try and keep the number of products and services I use down to a minimum. That means that more often than not, I will replace older apps with new apps rather than running two at the same time.

Less of a digital footprint

I like keeping a small digital footprint. Nothing to do with trying to stay under the radar in terms of the government spying on you, but more to do with my own data and it's safety. As soon as I stop using a product or service I try and delete the account I had with that product or service. I do this because I don't want my login details lying around on another companies database when it doesn't need to.

It's not for everyone

Limiting yourself isn't for everyone, but it was amazing to see how little I depended on Twitter after just a couple of weeks of deleting my account. I used to think of social networks as places to find more information on topics, but the truth is that I find everything I need in the form of blogs, newsletters and podcasts.

I now see social networks as more of a place for conversation. Fortunately App.net does this aspect of interaction very well and I'm happy to remain a paying subscriber to it.

Being a new frame builder in the UK, I just had to link to this amazing restored 1970's track bike by No Quarter.

via CycleEXIF

As an American football fan, I thought this was such a refreshing take on the game. Given that this level of football has fewer risks when adopting such a strategy, it would still be great to see this approach in the NFL.

Slow plays, always punting on the 4th down and running the clock down are making the game safer for the teams. Safer for the winning team, but a drab to watch as a fan.

via Grantland

I'm always reviewing the tools I'm using on a daily basis, and last week I wondered what tools I was using that I used the most on a daily basis. This wasn't compiled from a list of measured interactions with all my tools, but simply an informed guess at the tools that I use daily.

Safari

The web browser. Every web developers main application for running and testing their applications. For me as well though, it's a window to the Internet. Having previously ditched Chrome, I used Firefox for about six months. As web browsers go I couldn't complain about it's speed, features and developer tools.

I tried Safari for a week just as an experiment about a month ago and found that there was nothing in Safari I couldn't do in Firefox. Since then it's been Safari all the way.

One good thing to come out of it was that I also dropped my Instapaper account in favour of Safari's built in reading list that also syncs to my iPhone. Not only am I always looking for new services to use and try, I also like to keep the number of applications and services I'm using down to a minimum. By using Safari I was able to delete Firefox and also my Instapaper account.

Mail

Apple's Mail client isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the way I see it is that if it does everything for me that I need it to do then why not? It supports multiple accounts, interacts with my contacts list and works well with FastMail.

Trello

Project management tools are a rare thing for web developers that practice agile methods like stand ups. Agile methodologies like Extreme Programming and Kanban will rely on index cards and boards as the main point of interaction for a team with a project. Until Trello was launched, applications that tried to replicate this in code didn't always get it right.

Working on my own means that communicating with others on the project remotely is more important than practices such as stand ups. Every day I enjoy using Trello for the needs of my clients and for the needs of my own projects. It's flexible layout means that it can be tailored to lots of different workflows.

Evernote

I've only been using Evernote for a week now but it has become a growing part of my day to day work flow. With a tool like this I now have a place that I can put information that I might need at a later date. I've found so many uses for it in the last few days.

First there's interaction. There's just so many ways of interacting with Evernote such as the web clipper, by email and of course there are a number of other apps in the Evernote marketplace that make getting information you have from one app to Evernote easy.

Then there's accessibility. With apps for the desktop, phone and tablet, I can access my Evernote stuff from anywhere. My iPad has now become more of a day to day writing tool again thanks to the access I have to Evernote on it.

Evernote fills the gap of a knowledge management tool for me nicely now. All the information I need is now in one place and easy to access and search.

iTerm 2

iTerm2 is my terminal of choice. Having used it for a few years now, I'm familiar with most of the keyboard shortcuts and it just works.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text has worked well for me over the last few years. I'm still discovering some of the keyboard shortcuts and I'm have to admit that I am not using all of it's features on a day to day basis, but for writing code it serves me well.

Notebook

A list of daily tools wouldn't be complete without a notebook or two. I have two on the go at the moment.

The first notebook was initially used for tracking client work, but this has evolved into a task journal for all my work using the dash plus system. Where as Trello is used for mostly tracking progress on projects, my task journal is for tasks that come from features in Trello, ad-hoc client tasks or tasks from my own master list.

The second notebook is mostly for the initial capture of ideas, thoughts, posts and sketches. I use it maybe once or twice a week, but it's always sitting on my desk within easy reach. When I'm tired of sitting at my desk, I'll move to a more comfortable chair and review my capture notebook or simply do some writing straight into it.

As brilliant as technology is, sometimes you can think better with just pen and paper.

Settling for Defaults

One thing that's clear from my list is that if there's a default tool on my MacBook that is adequate for the job then I will use it. I dislike having my MacBook cluttered with different tools and applications that serve the same purpose.

The one exception here is my choice of terminal. Apple's default application Terminal still doesn't allow vertical split panes whereas iTerm2 does. A small feature, but given that I always have two panes open side by side, it makes sense to use iTerm2 over Terminal.

Skipping the Support Apps

A few of might be wondering about apps such as Alfred, PopClip or even Fantastical. Well, while I use these as well on a daily basis, I tend to view them as support applications to my seven above. They're still bloody useful tools to have but sitting in the background there's always open and frequently support the seven tools that I have listed above.

There we have it, my seven essential daily tools. I put forth the question to you now. What's your seven essential daily tools and how do they make you work better?