Starting Off with DEVONthink: Using Groups to Organize Information

DEVONthink is great MacOS app for warehousing massive amounts of information and yet giving you easy access when you need it. This “bestness” comes at a price however – a user interface that is a little hard to figure out at first. Groups are most obvious way to organize documents in DEVONthink. Groups appear in

Notre Dame and the Center of Life in Paris

We spent an afternoon at the cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, in 2014 and it was delightful and amazing as you might expect. My favorite memory is the little girl in the picture above, so happy to feed the sparrows that gather in the courtyard. It will probably be a while before we know what

Mushroom Magic Keeps You Mentally Sharp in Old Age

Science Daily reports that just two servings a week of mushrooms can reduce the chance of cognitive decline in your senior years. The magic ingredient, found in all types of mushrooms that you’d find in the grocery store, is likely to be ergothioneine, an anti-inflammatory antioxidant that humans can’t synthesize. Low levels of ergothioneine have

Cardhop is a Simple, Yet Powerful, Address Book for iOS

The iOS platform has been hurting for a good address book app and now with Cardhop it finally has one. I’ve posted before about the lack of usable contact management apps for iOS. To some extent you were stuck between Apple’s underwhelming Contacts app or FullContact. FullContact is a very nice contact management app with

Excercise Slows Osteoarthritis Progression

The orthopedist who diagnosed my osteoarthritis told me that he couldn’t recommend a physical therapy treatment because, in his experience, it was just as likely to make my condition worse. I got an opinion from a second orthopedist who didn’t have the same hesitation. This week two studies provide more evidence that vigorous exercise can

Using Tinderbox to Make Sense of Random Bits of Information

I want to write faster. I want to write better. But I struggle with research in a way that’s more like hoarding than sense-making. The zettelkasten method of note-taking has given me a simple way to organize my research and bring a lot more clarity to the information I’ve collected. But I still get bogged

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Backslash Hashtag – How to Set Up Tags for Better Searches

I’ve never been very disciplined about tagging notes or documents. But as I’m working on improving my zettelkasten knowledge base I decided to give tagging another go. So I quickly came up with a list of logical keywords and added an octothorp (#) to make them into hashtags because…why not? Every major social media platform

Zettelkasten: It’s Like GTD for Writing and Here’s Why You Should Consider It

Photo by Pete Birkinshaw from Manchester, UK – Data Storage Device, CC BY 2.0, Link I stumbled across the zettelkasten note taking process while watching Beck Tench’s helpful Tinderbox series. Beck uses Tinderbox software to create a hyper-organized system of notes for her Ph.D. studies in contemplative practice and information science. Her method of managing these

Latest Cheese Study is Full of Holes

A recent study published by the European Society of Cardiology and cited by NBC News has people looking at toasted brie as if it might be the next fountain of youth. People are especially excited about this passage from the NBC report: “But most other dairy products, especially cheese and yogurt, were found to protect

Happy New Year! (Introducing the 12 Week Year)

In my earlier post I mentioned that I recently took a personal productivity retreat, inspired by a podcast featuring Mike Schimitz. One of the things Mike talked about was organizing his time around a “12 week year.” This idea immediately clicked with me. A year is a timeframe that I use to view my accomplishments

Three Questions that Could Change Your Life

Last weekend I took some time away from my to-do list to contemplate a series of questions that had the potential to rock my world. I learned about the “Three Questions Spirit Quest” on a recent episode of the Free Agents podcast with David Sparks and Mike Schmitz. Mike shared how he periodically clears his

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Architecture Against Humanity

When I think of architecture and urban design I think of people who are working together to create pleasing spaces that promote all kinds of social interaction.  Tongva Park in Santa Monica is a fairly  small piece of land that feels expansive because of the way its interconnected walkways hide and reveal new areas to

The Best Address Book for the Mac

It’s easy to neglect your personal contacts on your Mac. For starters your phone is probably where you are most likely to reach out to people – make calls, write text messages, set appointments, even fire off an email. This is why I said in a previous post that it’s important to keep your iPhone’s