Tools

I suppose that I’m tech-promiscuous, or addicted to what Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) calls productivity pr0n. Locking down to one set of tools is an interesting discipline.

Macbook Pro – The MacOS platform is a 2021 M1 Pro Macbook Pro. Can’t say enough good things about it.

M1 iPad Pro 12.9 – WiFi, 512GB. I can do almost everything that I have to do with it, especially when traveling. One day, I may try to live entirely on it for a week or so. Adding an external keyboard makes it an almost perfect typing station.

iPhone 14 Pro Max – Nothing too special here; just the purple AT&T 1TB model. Always in a case, although which one varies as the mood strikes.

Omnifocus – When I’d been teaching for a couple years, the academic trinity of teaching, research, and service started to overwhelm my memory. I had to get a system going, and I wound up with the Getting Things Done system. This is the perfect software instrument for it; the thing that makes it for me is the date support for to-do items. I can mark something with a start date (with or without an end date) and not have to think about it until then. It also syncs seamlessly between iPhone, iPad, and Mac versions. That’s a key feature for me, and all these software tools have it in common.

Bear – Best text editor with universal sync that I’ve seen, distinguished also by its support for the Markdown and Multimarkdown markup languages. I’ve been writing in plaintext more and more because of it.

Scrivener – Swiss Army knife for long-form writing; too complicated to explain here, and it comes with a learning curve, but I’ve never encountered anything so useful. It’s a writing, outlining, organizing, and research tool all in one.

David Williams @drfluellen