Delegation

Never do anything that someone else can or will do when there is so much of importance to be done which others cannot or will not do.

Michael Hyatt discussed The Fine Art of Delegation in a recent episode of his podcast and dropped this great quote from Dawson Trotman, the founder of The Navigators.

February 26, 2013






Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Bookmarklets in Chrome

A while ago I posted about using Safari’s native keyboard shortcut for quick access to the bookmarks in your Bookmarks Bar. Unfortunately, Chrome doesn’t assign keyboard shortcuts to bookmarks natively. That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t be done. First, go to System Preferences > Keyboard and click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Click on Application Shortcuts—it should be an option on the left–hand side of the window.

Screen Shot 2013-02-23 at 3.00.35 PM

Screen Shot 2013–02–23 at 3.00.35 PM

Now click on the + to add a shortcut. Another dialogue box will pop up with three fields: Application, Menu Title, and Keyboard Shortcut. Here’s what you need to do in each of those three fields:

Application: Choose the appropriate application. In this case Google Chrome.

Menu Title: Type the name of the bookmark or bookmarklet, exactly as it appears in Chrome. For example, in the photo below, I would type bitly Sidebar” if I wanted to assign a keyboard shortcut to that bookmark. For Pinboard I would type—yep, you guessed it—“Pinboard.”

Chrome Bookmarks Bar

Chrome Bookmarks Bar

Keyboard Shortcut: Assign your keyboard shortcut[1]. For easy reference, I assign 1, 2, ^3, etc. to the bookmarks in my Bookmarks Bar, moving from left to right.

Of course, you aren’t restricted to assigning keyboard shortcuts to the bookmarks in the Bookmarks Bar only. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to any bookmark you have saved. My most used bookmarks and bookmarklets tend to be located there, however, so they are the ones that are assigned shortcuts.

Now, if I want to send a blog post to Instapaper for later reading, I simply press ^1. Need to create a shortened bitly link for the page I’m currently on? ^5.

Slick.

This is easy to remember and can save you a lot of time over the long haul.

If you are a Chrome user on an Apple machine, then this is well worth your time to set up. Give it a try.

What are your favorite time–saving browser keyboard shortcuts or tips?



  1. You’ll want to make sure you don’t choose a shortcut that is already in use. Since Chrome uses ⌘1, ⌘2, ⌘3 as keyboard shortcuts to jump to open tabs, I use the Control key instead.  ↩

February 25, 2013






Better Listening

The hardest step in better listening is the first one: do it on purpose. Make the effort to actually be good at it.

Seth Godin – How to listen

February 19, 2013






The History of Valentine’s Day

Where did Valentine’s Day come from? Is it a holiday invented by the greeting card industry to get into my pocket book? Justin Holcomb and The Resurgence shed a some light on the subject:

No one is quite sure where Valentine’s Day comes from. While any specific theory of its origins must be held at arm’s length, most people do agree that the holiday, as we know it today, contains a blend of practices inherited from a pagan Roman festival, fifth-century Christianity, and the Middle Ages.

Along with a helpful and interesting history lesson, Holcomb offers a healthy challenge for Christians celebrating Valentine’s Day today:

Whereas a holiday like Halloween is still quite contentious among some Christians because of its history and the pagan symbolism tied up with its contemporary practice, Valentine’s Day today is almost completely disconnected from its pagan origins and has evolved into a completely different holiday. Few Christians would argue that participating in Valentine’s Day in 2013 means immersing oneself in pagan practices, yet the question still remains: How can Christians celebrate the holiday in a way that does justice to the deep Christian concept of love and doesn’t turn into a trite piece of consumerist memorabilia?

If you find yourself rushing around today to buy last–minute cards, teddy bears, flowers, and chocolates, then it might be worthwhile to spend a little time giving this question some thought. The clock is ticking—you only have 365 days left to plan for Valentine’s Day 2014.

February 14, 2013






Waiting for OmniFocus 2

Version 2 of OmniFocus, my task management application of choice, debuted late last week at Macworld. I can’t wait to give it a try! Unfortunately, there is work yet to be done and it isn’t quite ready to ship to the public. From the Omni Group blog:

We use an iterative development process at Omni, so our next step is to ship a private test release so we can get feedback from customers on how well it’s working in practice. Based on that feedback, we’ll update our design and ship another private test release (and invite more people into the test pool), and the cycle begins again. How many times we repeat that cycle depends on how long it takes for us to feel like we’ve achieved our goals for the release.

Once we finish those rounds of private testing, we’ll post a wide-open public test release for anyone to download from our website, and finish up some of the other hard work of writing documentation, translating the app and documentation to other languages, and submitting the app to Apple for App Store review. Usually this final stage takes 4–6 weeks—at that time, it should be much easier to accurately project a ship date.

Yesterday Ken Case, Omni Group CEO, gave a bit more information regarding the release timeline, explaining that the private test likely won’t start before March.

There’s no need for me to discuss what’s new in OmniFocus 2 here, since this has already been done elsewhere. If you’re interested in learning more, you should begin by visiting the Omni Group blog.

After than, read what others have to say. In no particular order:

Preview of OmniFocus 2 for Mac | Sven Fechner
Looking Forward To OmniFocus 2 | Michael Schechter
The Omni Group’s Ken Case On OmniFocus 2, OmniOutliner 4, And More | MacStories
Omni Group’s Ken Case on OmniFocus 2 and the origins of the app | TUAW
First Look at OmniFocus 2 | Shawn Blanc
First Thoughts on OmniFocus 2 | Aaron Hockley

Also, sign up to test the pre–release version of OmniFocus 2.

Not an OmniFocus user? Omni offers a 14–day free trial period. Give it a look. If you decide to buy you’ll receive a free upgrade to OmniFocus 2 once it ships.

February 4, 2013






Revisiting My Evernote Organizational Scheme

Notebook Mess

Jamie Rubin, Evernote Evangelist for Paperless Living, posted today about how he organizes his notes in Evernote. In this helpful and detailed post about his organizational scheme, he explains the importance of having a clear set of goals for Evernote before you create or tweak your own organization system:

One things I’ve learned is that there can be as many organizational schemes as there are people using Evernote. There is no wrong or right way to do it. What I describe below works for me because it meets the goals I set out from the very start. And while the organizational scheme you choose may look entirely different, it should be based on a clear set of goals. You should be asking yourself: why are you trying to organize your notes in the first place?

A clear set of goals is something I was missing when I began using Evernote in 2008. The result is an organizational scheme” that flirts daily with chaos. I’m still able to find notes and information when I need them, but it takes much longer than it should. I have too many notebooks and an absurd number of tags. I mean an absurd number of tags.

Early in the game, my philosophy was to tag liberally. So I did. Unfortunately, this renders my tags much less useful than they should be and causes friction every time I create a note and need to decide how to tag it. Further, I have countless tags which are being used on only one or two notes. Some tags aren’t being used on any!

Needless to say, my Evernote account needs some serious TLC. It’s a great tool and I still depend on it heavily as a part of my daily workflow. It would serve me well to invest a bit of time to do some housekeeping.

Step #1: Set some concrete goals.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

(Photo Credit: .pst)

January 29, 2013