• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Notepod

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

  • About
  • All Posts
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Book Notes

Like yesterday, but on an iPad

February 21, 2020

Yesterday I wrote about creating a digital environment on my MacBook that reminds me to finish. I want to focus on finishing things. There’s a chapter in Work Clean about finishing actions that chefs take. A dish that’s 90% done may as well be 0% done.

I can get things from 0% to 30% consistently. Then I start something else. And another thing. Just a ton of outlines. So I’m going to practice those finishing moves. One element of that is having environments that encourage finishing.

Here’s the current view on my iPad:

Which I’ll try to get into more with the following workflow in Shortcuts.

Here’s the iPad Shortcut I’m using right now. Turns on some noise, turns on some music, and gets me writing in the editor.

I use a few shortcuts just about daily.

I’ve been reading High Output Management by Andy Grove. He opens with a description of making breakfast then expands it to making many of the same breakfast and automating different parts of it. Now you have a system. Things go in. An edible meal comes out. It can be looked at as a black box.

In general, we can represent any activity that resembles a production process in a simple fashion as a black box.

Over the past couple weeks, it could look like I get stuck on the couch, tap twice, and then get unstuck.

Let’s cut a hole in the black box and peek inside.

I initially tried this as a goof in Shortcuts to see if a daily automation would run automatically. (You need to confirm. I think this is because it involves payment. Which is good.) Then I found myself actually just using the shortcut. And now, as a black box, it’s been a way to get unstuck.

It might take a few minutes, but at some point I’ll usually be aware that I’m stuck on the couch in the morning. (The couch’s magnetism is so high first thing in the morning.) With the shortcut, I can get unstuck in about as many taps as it takes to find the next interesting video. (Similar to One-click ordering make it as easy to buy something as it is to leave the product page.)

Anyway, I’ve been looking for more places where I can use Shortcuts. Right now I have three that have been really useful.

Get unstuck — Actually just ordering coffee.

Generate ideas — Opens a series of prompts to create an outline

Start finishing — Music, a timer, and a nudge to write directly in the editor.

Those things together have, at the very least, helped me get off the couch and finish this post.

  • Weblog
Follow @activerecall

Primary Sidebar

Follow @activerecall

Subscribe to the newsletter

✍️ Recent Posts

Elon Musk: Monkey playing Pong with Neuralink | Note: Full Send podcast

Elon Musk: Early Life on Mars | Note: Full Send podcast

Does Elon Musk believe in ghosts? | Note: Full Send podcast

John Carmack: What’s the meaning of life? | Note: Lex Fridman podcast

John Carmack: 1 pizza, 9 diet cokes every day | Note: Lex Fridman Podcast

🎧 Recent Episodes

116: What I read in May 2022 — “The Nineties”, “Fat, Crazy, and Tired”, “Plays Well With Others” , “Building a Second Brain”

Super Bowl, “The Nineties”, “NITRO”, “The Daily Laws”

Podcast: #28: Info Diet Recap (January 2022) | Now You See It, Four Thousand Weeks, How the Internet Happened, How to Read a Book

Popular Posts

  • Book Notes – “Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality” by Anthony de Mello
  • Lightning Round Questions
  • Kobe Bryant: Every day math
  • Journal: The first 8 weeks of Active Recall
  • How to succeed as a writer (What I’ve learned by reading Bill Simmons)

By Francis Cortez

  • About
  • YouTube Channel
  • Instagram (@activerecall)
  • Twitter (@activerecall)

Categories

  • iPad Pro
  • Podcast
  • Book Notes
  • Podcast Notes
  • Weblog
  • Videos
  • Fitness
  • Creative Pages
  • iPad
Back to homepage • By Francis Cortez (@activerecall)