Matthew Lang

It’s been 24 hours since I installed iOS 16. The update process took quite some time to complete on my iPhone 12, but it still took longer on my wife’s iPhone XR. That aside, the update process was straightforward.

Being able to edit a message and undo the sending of a message is new to the Messages app. Undo the sending of a message? I don’t think I’ve ever had to undo the sending of a message; however, I don’t live in my messages app. Many other iPhone users have sent a message they wished they could un-send.

Being able to edit a message, though, that’s a nice feature. Most of the messages I can see myself editing will result from typos. Even with the auto-correct, I still manage to make some typos when sending messages.

Aside from all the other features new to iOS 16, the most significant change is what you first see on your iPhone when you pick it up. The Lock Screen.

There are several new features here that I’ve enjoyed messing about with. You can now create more than one Lock Screen and Home Screen pairing and switch between these throughout the day. I’ve got several screens set up now, but I’ve yet to examine how changing your focus affects these screens. However, using the different focuses is something I plan on doing to try and curb the number of times I reach for my phone throughout the day. The widgets on Lock Screens are also a nice touch, and hopefully, we’ll see more of these added in the future.

Overall the iOS 16 update is pretty good so far.

Essential viewing.

I won’t lie, I’ve been watching a lot of the television coverage following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Tonight, I watched some of the events from today including the service at Westminster and the Scottish Parliament’s motion of condolence at Holyrood. I also watched the Vigil of the Princes where members of the royal family stand guard during a lying in state of relation. This tradition started with the death of King George V in 1936 and was continued in 2002 for the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It was a lovely moment to see the Queen’s children together standing guard.

I love Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. Such a quirky film and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc character is great to watch. Looking forward to the sequel, Glass Onion.

I’m posting a short post tonight as I’ve been spending the evening setting up a Hatchbox account and migrating the first of a handful of Rails applications to it. The setup was straightforward, and after 45 minutes of tinkering, I got my Writeabout app running on it. I’ll try to move a couple more applications over tomorrow.

After reading Nicholas Bate’s latest powerful productivity post, I thought I would share a few of the people and apps that have influenced me.

• Patrick Rhone - Patrick’s dash/plus system has been part of my own processes since I read about it.
• Nicholas Bate - I’ve been reading Nicholas Bate’s blog for over 15 years. I’ve been using his master list idea for some time.
• Ryder Caroll - Creator of bullet journaling, the only productive process that I have stuck with recently. It also works for me because of it plays nice with Patrick’s dash/plus system and Nicholas Bate’s master list. The fact that it’s also analog is a huge benefit to me. I spend enough times on screens. The last thing I need is another app just to stay organised.
• 37 Signals - Over the years I’ve long been a fan of the way the 37 Signals company work. All of their books are recommended, but the real changers for me were Rework and Remote are great books that really do make you question the traditional methods of working. Short, sharp and straight to the point.
• Trello - Although I use pen and paper most days, there is times when you need a digital tool to manage a project. I’ve flip-flopped between Things, Todoist and Trello over the years. While freelancing I used Trello for managing client projects, but when I returned to full-time employment I started using Todoist and Things to manage projects. I’m back to using Trello now. It’s the visual aspect of the app that really helps me.

I could have probably added another dozen or so people and apps that have influenced how I work over the years, but these five are the ones the I keep going back to.

Who influences your productivity?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been re-writing a small product that I spent sometime building before lockdown.

The product has been gathering dust since the start of lockdown. It does have a handful of customers and generally good feedback from those customers, but I wasn’t happy with my first pass at it. There were so many things that I would do differently if I could start it over again. So I decided to have another go at it.

I’ve made pretty good progress so far and will be able to launch it again in a few months.