A few weeks ago Lifehacker wrote up a list of their five favorite to do list managers. I was initially very excited about these apps and websites because of their new bells and whistles, but after trying a few I remembered why I love my low-tech, plain text solution so much. Here's what my to do list looks like:

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Memo for Mark on moving more of our content from website to Facebook
% Edit CMS
% Edit for The World
% Update Social Flow settings for Twitter
Update Social Flow settings for Facebook
% Clear email

Friday, July 20, 2012

% Edit CMS
% Prepare social media posts for weekend
% Edit Movie Date
% Call Kristen
% Check in on audio uploading changes

Saturday, July 21, 2012

% Submit grocery shopping order

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Edit CMS

This is just copied and pasted from a plain-text editor I use called Notational Velocity. It automatically syncs all my plain text files, including this one, to my home and work computers and my phone. The to do list works just like it would on pen and paper. Each day gets a new line, and the tasks that need to be done that day are listed below. When I complete a task it gets a percentage sign next to it, and once the day is over I delete everything I've finished and copy and paste anything I haven't to tomorrow or another day in the future. Nothing gets forgotten.

The point of a system so simple is that I think there should be no barrier at all between creating and looking at to do items. I don't want to have to log into a web app, or look at my phone all the time (unless that's all I have with me). I just want to be able to open a text document, type in what needs to get done, look at what I need to do, and be done with it. It serves the same purpose of a paper to do list, except with the added benefit of being backed up and always with me.

One of my first exposures to productivity systems was David Allen's Getting Things Done. A big part of that system is keeping a to do list so that you're not wasting energy trying to remember what needs to be done. I like this idea, but it has two major problems: One, the to do list becomes one more thing to do, and two, you end up remembering to do stuff that probably could've been forgotten (because it's not worth your time, not really your responsibility, etc.). In other words, this system denies our innate ability to remember and prioritize the things that actually need to get done. (I avoid recurring tasks for the same reason — very few things actually need to happen on a perfectly regular basis. Better to look around and see what's necessary. Take out the trash when it's full, cut your hair when it starts to drive you nuts, etc.)

I generally don't use my to do list to remember to do things. Instead, it's more of a task list, a plan for the day that shows what to do next. Whenever I'm working and finish one task, I check the to do list to see what's next. I'm going to go check it now.

I spent last Saturday at WGBH brainstorming how to improve The World with the rest of the World's staff. Much of the conversation centered around what the medium of radio will look like two years from now, and five years from now. The central question, of course, is this: When will terrestrial radio, as a medium, cease to exist? The question immediately adjacent to the central question is whether or not we, as producers and editors and reports and hosts, will be ready for it. Were newspapers ready for the internet? Of course not.

I don't have the answer. I don't know what radio is going to look like, or what the web is going to look like, or how they'll work together. What I do know is that I cannot remember the last time I listened to the radio. This isn't something I think about a lot, but every once in a while the secret will get out that I'm a radio professional who never listens to the radio. A colleague will ask where I listen to the radio, when I listen, or whether or not I flip it on at the top of the hour to find out what's going on in the world. The answers, for the last few years, have been: never, nowhere, and nope.

Of course, I still listen to public radio. I just do it differently. Here's what it looks like:

Each morning an app called Doggcatcher downloads about four hours of audio from a handful of podcasts to my T-Mobile G2 smartphone. These are the ones I listen to:

• The Writer's Almanac
• The Takeaway
• Radiolab
• Planet Money
• On the Media
• This American Life
• Fresh Air
• The Moth
• Onion Radio News
• The World
• How Sound
• Too Much Information
• NPR's Story of the Day
• Movie Date from The Takeaway
• Lexicon Valley
• This Developer's Life
• Freakonomics Radio
• 99 Percent Invisible

Now that I've written out this list, I realize that it's an excellent representation of my interests: Writing, poetry, news, science, economics, media, storytelling, long form interviews, comedy, internationalism, radio production, technology criticism, film, grammar, and coding.

Anyway, all of this audio hits my phone each day and I listen to it while I'm eating breakfast, while I'm walking to work, while I'm eating lunch, while I'm walking home, while I'm cooking dinner, and while I'm cleaning up. That's the day to day, but I also listen whenever I'm doing something with my hands that doesn't require a lot of thought, like juggling or working on my bicycles. The key to this sort of day-to-day listening are these goofy-looking, but exceptional, bluetooth headphones.

The point is that I listen to what I want, when I want. I hit pause when I want, I skip what I want. While there's certainly something to be said for stumbling upon stuff you wouldn't have come across otherwise, my system has made me a completely empowered listener. I don't write this under the presumption that I am exceptional, or that I have something figured out that no one else does. I only mean to make a case for what the future looks like. It used to be the case that the big dogs were being broadcast on terrestrial radio while the small ones were only podcasts. Now the distinction is much less visible.

Last September, I wrote a post about how Joseph Campbell's theory of the Hero's Journey could be applied to radio interviews. The Hero's Journey, as identified by Campbell, is structure used in countless myths, epics, religious stories, etc. It has several steps, but they can be summed up like this: Hero leaves home, is challenged, and returns home having changed. A classic example of this is Frodo in Lord of the Rings, though I suppose you could argue that he doesn't really return home. Anyway, three months in Boston have me thinking a lot about the Hero's Journey. Not because I'm anyone's hero, of course, but because I've found myself on a challenging path in pursuit of a goal.

When I was still in Portland and kicking around the idea of dropping (almost) everything and moving to Boston for a job, one of the ways I justified it was by telling myself that I had become to comfortable in Portland and that it was time to shake things up. So there are the first two steps: Comfort (Portland) followed by a desire for change (deciding to take this job in Boston).

So now I'm in an unfamiliar situation. New city, new job, new people, new peanut butter. The degree to which I'm adapting to it is the big question, of course. I like to think I'm adapting, but I suppose we all like to think that.

I do most of my news, pleasure, and personal reading on my Kindle, but it used to be a pain in the ass to get documents there. I’d have to copy the text into a text document, save it, attach it to an email, send it, and wait. There were just enough steps that I would never, ever do it.

So I figured out an easier way using Dropbox and Wappwolf (set up accounts on those sites if you don’t have them already). Follow these steps and soon you’ll be able to send any text to your Kindle simply by right-clicking on some highlighted text and selecting Send to Kindle. Here’s how to do it:

We’ll start by setting up Dropbox and Wappwolf. These two websites will handle the transfer of text from computer to Kindle.

1. Go to Wappwolf and follow the directions there to connect it to your Dropbox account. These two websites will handle the transfer of text from computer to Kindle.
2. Go to this page on Wappwolf to set up a new service.
3. Create a new folder named “Kindle” using the button at the bottom of the screen. It’ll be a container for our Wappwolf service.
4. Once you’ve created that folder, select it with the button to its left.
5. Scroll to the top of the screen and click Automate Kindle. This will bring up some new options at the bottom of the page.
6. Fill in the Kindle and personal email fields following the directions on the page.
7. Choose whether documents will be delivered via wifi or 3G.
8. Leave Convert to Kindle format checked and click Add Action.

Now whenever you add a rich text document (extension .rtf) to that folder in Dropbox, it’ll automatically be converted and emailed to your Kindle. In my experience it takes about five minutes for documents to show up.

That’s pretty slick, but let’s take it a step further and create the highlight and Send to Kindle functionality. This part only works in OS X.

1. Open Automator and double-click Service.
2. Leave the options at the top of the window as they are. It should say “Service receives text in any application”
3. Type New Text File into the search bar in the left column.
4. Drag the result (New Text File) into the window on the right.
5. File Format should be Rich text.
6. Leave Save as as Untitled.rtf.
7. Where should be the Kindle folder inside your Dropbox folder. Navigate to it by clicking Desktop and then navigating to it using Other….
8. Leave Replacing existing files unchecked.
9. Leave Encoding as Western.
10. Under Options check Show this action when the workflow runs and Show only the selected items. This will highlight the boxes above. Check the Save as box.
11. Now Save the service and name it Send to Kindle.

That’s it. To use the script, simply highlight any text on a webpage or in a document, right-click, and select Send to Kindle from the dropdown menu. There’s a chance you’ll have to click on Services from the dropdown menu before you can get to Send to Kindle.

Once you click that button, a rich text document will be created and saved to the Kindle folder in your Dropbox. Wappwolf will see that document and email it to your Kindle. It should show up in about five minutes.

Here’s a two minute video showing each step. Like I said, pretty simple:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffnkAldCYOQ]

If you found this helpful or not helpful at all, let me know in the comments.

This really simple thing took me a little while to figure out, so hopefully step by step instructions here can help others who have the same issues. I wanted to update my Tweet Nest website automatically instead of having to manually run a script each time I wanted to back up my tweets from Twitter (that’s the idea behind Tweet Nest — an off-Twitter archive of your tweets). Here’s how it works with Dreamhost:

After setting up Tweet Nest, run the loadtweets.php script.

At the bottom of the screen that runs the script you’ll find some code that looks like this: php /home/USERNAME/TWEETNESTURL/maintenance/loadtweets.php

Copy it. Obviously instead of USERNAME it’ll have your username and instead of TWEETNESTURL it’ll have the URL where Tweet Nest lives.

Navigate to Goodies, then Cron Jobs in the Dreamhost panel.

Create a new Cron Job with the following settings (also see photo below):

The user has to match the the username from the code you copied from Tweet Nest’s loadtweets.php page.

Give it a title (I called mine Tweet Nest Update) and an email address to mail output to.

Set Status to Enabled.

For Command to run, paste the following (replacing USERNAME and TWEETNESTURL as above:

/usr/local/php5/bin/php
/home/USERNAME/TWEETNESTURL/maintenance/loadtweets.php
/usr/local/php5/bin/php
/home/USERNAME/TWEETNESTURL/maintenance/loaduser.php

The /usr/local/php5/bin/php part tells the cron job to use PHP, then the address tells it what script to run.

Leave “Locking” checked and set a frequency. I run mine every hour.

Click edit to save. In an hour (or sooner or later depending on the frequency you set) you’ll get an email telling you whether the script ran or not. If it worked, you’ll get input similar to the input you get when you run the scripts from your browser.

I’ve been in Boston for a little over ten days now but I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. When I first arrived I had a suitcase and was renting a room from a fellow WGBH employee. For the first week I ventured no further than from the apartment to WGBH, which is only a block and a half away. Part of this was because I got sick when I first arrived, but fear was a big part of it too. I felt so disoriented and insecure that to try anything new was unthinkable. Better to just get comfortable in my tiny corner of the world and then figure things out from there.

I took my first trip out of Brighton (the neighborhood where I was staying) last Friday. It wasn’t much, really, I just walked to the T (Boston’s above ground subway) and rode it to a place called Faneuil Hall in downtown. I walked around a bit, took a few pictures, ate some macaroni and cheese for dinner, and then got back on the T and rode home. Like I said, not much to it.

I spent the next day, Saturday, searching for a bicycle and moving into my new place in Brighton. You can see the bike above. It’s a single speed from Specialized and I’m really happy with it. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but it has a basket on the front, matching green fenders, and a decent leather saddle. So far I’ve ridden it home from the bicycle shop, to the grocery store ($100 worth of groceries seems to be it’s maximum capacity though I could fit more with another basket), and to MIT to deposit checks. I can’t say how much happier I am with a bike. I have no intention of using a car here, and I don’t like planning my life around public transit schedules, so the bike is what makes me feel like I’m not trapped wherever I am. Walking is fine, but riding a bike puts wind in your hair, and it’s a helluva lot more fun.

The room you see in that photograph is my new bedroom. It’s in two family house in Brighton. It’s about a ten minute walk from WGBH, which makes a big difference for livability. My roommate works as a private pilot for a businessman. We get along really well. The only two downsides to the house are that a family with three (sometimes noisy) kids lives upstairs, and I’ve yet to find a good way to get my bike in and out of the house.

I’ve now completed my first week at WGBH. I’m not integrating myself there as much as I should, but it’s difficult when my mind is constantly in New York on the show I work on down there. It’s funny, I moved to Boston so that I could work on a show in New York. Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on me.

I spent the rest of my week in New York meeting with important people associated with my new radio show, The Takeaway. There’s universal buy-in that they want to dramatically change their web presence, and this was the pie in the sky ideas part of the job. Propose anything and everything, basically, but don’t think about feasibility or cost. Those things will enforce themselves in short order, anyway. Just dream big.

I had no problem with that, because more than anything else, I want to be proud of what I create. I want to be proud of what The Takeaway is doing online, so I that’s where I set my bar. For lack of a better word, I want us to be awesome.

When I wasn’t working, I went out with a couple old friends and made one new one. My partner, Rachael, went to high school with a guy who now lives in New York. She hasn’t seen him for a long time but thought we’d get along. She was right. We went out for a drink one night and then had breakfast together at a little place called Amelia’s in SoHo the day that I left.

Perhaps the most important thing I did while in New York was go out for drinks with my new teammates at a bar near WNYC. The original plan was to start drinking at 11 a.m. (I’m not joking — that’s just when the early shift starts their weekend), but we postponed it to a more reasonable 2:30 p.m. so Tory (my co-worker in Boston) and I could leave right from the bar for Penn Station where we’d catch a train up to Boston.

The bar was dark with a lot of wood and metal. It reminded me of an old pub. We did one round of drinks and then another. Once I was warmed up and enjoying myself it was time to catch a cab for Penn Station.

We were probably a few minutes later than we should’ve been which made our cab hailing all the more dramatic. When we did find one and speed off, I immediately got the nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something at the bar. Two blocks later I realized it was my phone, so I asked the cab driver to pull over while Tory called for it. I didn’t feel it or hear it, and within a couple rings our boss, Sitara, picked up. As soon as I heard her voice I jumped out of the cab and sprinted down the street toward the pub. I must’ve looked like I was robbing someone or being robbed. Full out sprint through Manhattan weaving in and out of people and cars. Sitara was doing the same thing coming the other direction.  We met in the middle of a crosswalk, she put the phone in my hand, I said something along the lines of “thanksforeverythingbebacksoon” and turned around and sprinted back toward the cab.

When I got on the train I was sweaty and a winded and disoriented and happy. I played around on Twitter and caught up on emails for the three and half hour trip. When we arrived at the station in Boston (Back Bay, apparently), I met my Boston supervisor (I have one in New York and one in Boston) to get the keys to a temporary apartment I’ll be staying in till Saturday. I took a cab to the apartment (which is between Allston and Brighton) and one of those very surreal moments where you realize you’ve finally arrived in the situation you’d been preparing yourself for. I’ll take it as a good omen that the cab driver was listening to NPR.