Gruber on Apple vs. MS

★ Memoranda: "Apple and Microsoft, as ever, offer a study in contrasts. Take, for example, two recent company-wide memos from CEOs Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer."

(Via Daring Fireball.)

My Hipster & Process

I've become a big fan of my Hipster PDA. I had the original Palm Pilot, back when there was only one model and so no choice. Over the years, Palms died and I bought new ones. I went through five. When the last one died, I stopped and thought about what I used my Palm for. I realized that a 40¢ pack of 3x5 index cards and a binder clip could do the same job. Not long after, I ran across the Hipster PDA on 43folders. I started using the DIY Hipster with 3x5 cards. It's been fantastic. Eventually, I added Fiendish Master Plan (fmp) to my arsenal, along with a Quicksilver trigger for adding tasks to fiend.txt. Then, I wanted an easy way to print my fiendish contexts as 3x5 cards, so I wrote carder. Now, I use the Quicksilver trigger to add lines like this:

^agenda chainsaw @Mike
^agenda gloves @Mike
^agenda Return Megaforce @Bill
^agenda rope @Mike
^agenda plastic sheeting @Mike

The first tag (^agenda) gets used by fmp to move the task into the right context file (agenda.txt). The task itself is "Return Megaforce." And the last tag (@Bill) is used by carder to categorize items on the context card that prints. This ends up with a card that looks like this:

                          2008-07-23 Agenda
===========================================
-------------------------------------- Bill
[] Return Megaforce
-------------------------------------- Mike
[] chainsaw
[] gloves
[] rope
[] plastic sheeting 
[] ________________________________________
[] ________________________________________
[] ________________________________________
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Hipster Organization

I have four sections in my Hipster PDA: context lists, later lists, blank preprints, and true blanks.

Context Lists

My current contexts are: home, call, errand, office, web, macbook, and imac. I use different kinds of category tags in different contexts. In the agenda context, the category is the person I need to be with for the agenda to apply. It used to be that I had contexts per person for these tasks, but that resulted in a dozen cards with one or two items each. Compiling them under an agenda context with the person as the category has been a huge improvement. For the errand context, the categories are specific store names (or unfiled/no category if it doesn't really matter where I get it). The web context usually has categories for music, sites, specific work projects, and personal. The macbook and imac contexts are transient. There are a couple of things I need to do on those specific machines, not just any computer, so I have those two contexts with two tasks each. When I finally do those things, the contexts will be dropped.

Later Lists

These are lists that seem similar to the context lists, and in fact are managed with carder and fmp just like the context lists. But their contexts are more vague: basement, someday-maybe, to-read, wishlist-audio, wishlist-print, wishlist-video, and a card of phone numbers I need but don't rate adding to my phone such as the contractor working on the new roof. The big difference between these and the context cards is that these lists tend to remain static for long periods of time. There will be a trickle of additions, but things tend to come off the lists only once in great while. Wish lists tend to shrink around birthdays and Christmas. To-read shrinks as I get around to reading that book I've always meant to. Basement shrinks as I complete elements of the basement remodeling. Someday-maybe will shrink when I finally start working on that novel I said I'd write in high school. And I'll take the contractor's number off the list when he finishes the roof. It's the time-scale that makes these fundamentally different from the first set of lists, which change many times a day. These are access much less frequently, and so I've finally moved them into a separate section, thereby keeping them from getting mixed in with the fast crowd.

Blank Preprints

I have about five copies of the DIY Hipster to-do list here. I can pull one out to add a context to the first section if I need to add one when I'm not in a position to do it through fmp, say when I'm at my daughter's softball game.

True Blanks

These are just plain blank 3x5 cards. Sometimes lined, sometimes unlined. Usually a mix depending on what I picked up last time I was at the store. Usually five to ten cards here. A year from now I'll probably be doing this differently. In the past, my hipster has included many other preprinted cards, such as yearly, monthly, and weekly calendars. I found I didn't use them enough to justify carrying them around. YMMV.