After pulling an all-nighter Sunday night into Monday morning, I finally completed my appellate brief to the Supreme Court. And fortunately for me, I encountered no problems during my hour long drive down to Charleston to deliver it in my sleep deprived condition. I felt like I was back in my first year of law school having to turn in an end of semester writing assignment.
As stated in my last blog entry, during the writing of this brief was the first time that I’d used Scrivener, and I was impressed with its ability to keep you focused on the structure of your writing as you write, as well as being a database for all your source material related to the project. Now having completed the writing assignment I was working on, I have a few additional thoughts.
The most difficult part of using Scrivener for me was when “compiling” my draft into a format for final editing. It took me a few tries to get it just the way I wanted, but if you google a query asking about compiling in Scrivener, there are several helpful articles.
Also, sometimes, you just have play around with a new piece of software to find out which variable is the one that’s causing you problem. After compiling my draft on the third try, I pretty much had what I wanted for final editing. The problem with the compile feature is simply that there is a plethora of options ranging from e-book format to standard manuscript and so on and so forth. I simply wanted something that’d look good in Microsoft Word, so I stuck with the Original format.
I was working on a pretty tight deadline, since I was compiling my draft at 1:00 a.m. in the morning and the finished product was due by the close of business that day. But an additional benefit to Scrivener that I found at this stage was that I realized that up to this point, for the most part, all I had been concerned with was content creation. I know if I had written my draft in Microsoft Word, I would have spent the whole time fiddling with formatting and other technical issues. When I'm writing in Word, I can’t help but think about the finished product, but while working in Scrivener, aside from counting up the words in the separate parts of my draft to give myself an idea of how many double-spaced pages I was getting close to (I ended up have 24 pages), I mostly just stayed focused on getting my thoughts in print.
But once I transferred the draft to Word, then my entire focus was formatting. Everything was transferred in single space, so I simply started from the top and went to the bottom formatting along the way. The biggest changes I had to make was changing the style to my headings so they would be recognized by Word's table of contents feature and formatting my block quotations. But other than that, pretty simple stuff, such as spacing and fixing tab stops.
Then it took me quite a few times to get the Table of Contents the way I wanted it (unfortunately, I didn’t notice until after reviewing the filed copy of my brief that it left out one of the entries, ugh!). And after that, I spent a great deal of time on the Table of Authorities. In the course of working on this brief, I was reviewing the last Supreme Court brief I had done, which would have been the last time I had bothered with a table of contents or a table of authorities, and I found that it had been almost exactly a year. Using the Table of Authorities feature in Word for Mac 2011 was a very cumbersome process, but oh well, its required so I had to do it. And of course, it was a heck of a lot easier than trying to manually type in the nearly 50 or so authorities I had cited in my brief and pray that the pagination not change. So…by 3:30 a.m., I had finally put everything in the final form and it was ready for the final proofread, which I did after getting a few hours of shut-eye that morning. After reviewing the finished product, I am quite pleased with it, despite a few errors that I'm sure I missed. And completing the writing project gave me an additional reason for why scrivener is great: task batching.
Task batching is a productivity concept that basically says its a lot easier to do a lot of the same tasks at once than to switch from one kind of task to another kind of task and so on. So if I’m at the office and I finished making a phone call, and I know I have two more people I need to call today, I might as well call those people right now and get it out of the way while I’m in my phone-talking frame of mind.
As this relates to writing in Scrivener, as I said above, Scrivener keeps you focused on one thing and one thing only: content creation. Then when you’ve created all the content you desire, you can transfer the draft to whatever application you like and work on formatting and other technical aspects of turning your draft into a final draft. This way, you don’t overload your brain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that taking the few seconds it takes to turn a paragraph into a single spaced blocked quotation is going to kill you. But when you have to do that several times, you are taking yourself out of your creative frame of mind and going into your technical frame of mind. This may stymie the creative process.
Another aspect of Scrivener I’ve found that I like is that once I get those creative juices flowing, I am really surprised how many words I’ve typed up with I look down at the word count. I don’t know if this is mainly due to the fact that I’m not dividing my time between writing and editing or more because Scrivener breaks up your sections into its separate parts, giving each its own text file, and the act of breaking the separate parts up, really lets you focus on each to the fullest extent possible. Whatever the reason, I simply found that with this last writing project, my flow just seemed a lot better than the last complex writing project I did. Maybe this was a fluke or maybe Scrivener deserves the credit, but I will have to use the program a few more times to be sure.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Friday, November 28, 2014
Scrivener Review
Much of what I know about writing processes I learned from Bryan Garner in his great book, “Legal Writing in Plain English.” In that book, Garner states that there are four stages to good writing: (1) mad man; (2) architect; (3) construction worker; and (4) judge.
The mad man stage is about putting ideas on paper in a non-linear fashion. This is where mind mapping (inter-connected thought bubbles that look like a spider web) comes in handy. After mad man is the architect stage, where all those connected ideas are put into a linear outline. Then comes the construction worker, who must follow the architect’s outline by filling in the gaps and making the first draft. Then in the judge phase the writer proofreads the draft.
Garner does an excellent job of showing the writer how to apply a systematic method to writing. Garner posits that what writers often experience as writer’s block is a result of the mind shutting down by being overloaded with the task of having to complete all four of these stages simultaneously. Nevertheless, many times knowledge is not enough to our success, regardless of the endeavor. We must try to draw a line between what we know and what we actually do. Many of us feel an obsessive need to just get it out on paper. Until we see it on paper, we feel an irrational fear that we’ll never get started and, of course, never finish our writing projects.
As a person who takes pride in his writing, I always felt a pang of indignation whenever an old boss of mine would request that I just “rough it out.” Still, many times, especially when working on complex projects, I feel a need to just put pen to paper and start writing; mad man and architect stages be damned! Of course, many times I begin legal writing by doing exhaustive research, which usually gets those “mad man” juices flowing despite my neglecting to do a mind map.
For my lastest legal brief, I used the Scrivener program by Literature and Latte, and I must say that I really like it. When using Scrivener, all research material as well as the draft is kept in a single file and in the binder, which is simply a table of contents in the file’s left margin. For each section of the document, there is a new entry in the table of contents and for each entry, there is a plain text file in the main window. The benefit here is that you can move these separate bits of text simply by clicking and dragging the entry in the table of contents to where you want it.
The end result is basically that you can break down your writing project into its separate and discrete parts. And you can very easily move the different parts to change the structure of your draft as you see fit. When you’re finished, you can “compose” the separate text files into a single document and export it in whatever format you like.
You can also keep your research in the binder, so you can access your source material easily while you write and its kept altogether with your draft. This might seem to not be anything groundbreaking. And it's not really. But at the same time, Scrivener seems to strike the perfect balance between maintaining flexibility in your writing while giving the writer the ability to satify the urge to just “get it down on paper.”
As Garner states, the real danger in jumping ahead to the construction worker stage before going through the mad man and architect steps is that you become wedded to the structure you adopt for a piece of writing once you start putting it in linear order, even though that structure may not be the most effective one for getting your points across. By putting text in separate files and giving the writer the flexibility to easily change the structure (even more easily than cutting a paragraph at the bottom of a document and pasting it at the top in Microsoft Word), Scrivener may help the writer from becoming too wedded to a linear order before picking the most effective one.
Moreover, Scrivener’s emphasis on putting down your structure first in the binder section into a table of contents gets you thinking about structure from the start. It also gets the writer in the good (and often under-used) technique of using headings to break the text in your document down into as small of parts as possible.
In today’s fast-paced environment where everyone is “multi-tasking” by checking email, Facebook feeds, and news articles at the same time, the writer no longer has the luxury of writing never-ending blocks of prose. If the modern writer has any chance of getting the message across as a whole, he or she now must break down every thought into digestable bits of information. If not, today’s reader will just give up.
The mad man stage is about putting ideas on paper in a non-linear fashion. This is where mind mapping (inter-connected thought bubbles that look like a spider web) comes in handy. After mad man is the architect stage, where all those connected ideas are put into a linear outline. Then comes the construction worker, who must follow the architect’s outline by filling in the gaps and making the first draft. Then in the judge phase the writer proofreads the draft.
Garner does an excellent job of showing the writer how to apply a systematic method to writing. Garner posits that what writers often experience as writer’s block is a result of the mind shutting down by being overloaded with the task of having to complete all four of these stages simultaneously. Nevertheless, many times knowledge is not enough to our success, regardless of the endeavor. We must try to draw a line between what we know and what we actually do. Many of us feel an obsessive need to just get it out on paper. Until we see it on paper, we feel an irrational fear that we’ll never get started and, of course, never finish our writing projects.
As a person who takes pride in his writing, I always felt a pang of indignation whenever an old boss of mine would request that I just “rough it out.” Still, many times, especially when working on complex projects, I feel a need to just put pen to paper and start writing; mad man and architect stages be damned! Of course, many times I begin legal writing by doing exhaustive research, which usually gets those “mad man” juices flowing despite my neglecting to do a mind map.
For my lastest legal brief, I used the Scrivener program by Literature and Latte, and I must say that I really like it. When using Scrivener, all research material as well as the draft is kept in a single file and in the binder, which is simply a table of contents in the file’s left margin. For each section of the document, there is a new entry in the table of contents and for each entry, there is a plain text file in the main window. The benefit here is that you can move these separate bits of text simply by clicking and dragging the entry in the table of contents to where you want it.
The end result is basically that you can break down your writing project into its separate and discrete parts. And you can very easily move the different parts to change the structure of your draft as you see fit. When you’re finished, you can “compose” the separate text files into a single document and export it in whatever format you like.
You can also keep your research in the binder, so you can access your source material easily while you write and its kept altogether with your draft. This might seem to not be anything groundbreaking. And it's not really. But at the same time, Scrivener seems to strike the perfect balance between maintaining flexibility in your writing while giving the writer the ability to satify the urge to just “get it down on paper.”
As Garner states, the real danger in jumping ahead to the construction worker stage before going through the mad man and architect steps is that you become wedded to the structure you adopt for a piece of writing once you start putting it in linear order, even though that structure may not be the most effective one for getting your points across. By putting text in separate files and giving the writer the flexibility to easily change the structure (even more easily than cutting a paragraph at the bottom of a document and pasting it at the top in Microsoft Word), Scrivener may help the writer from becoming too wedded to a linear order before picking the most effective one.
Moreover, Scrivener’s emphasis on putting down your structure first in the binder section into a table of contents gets you thinking about structure from the start. It also gets the writer in the good (and often under-used) technique of using headings to break the text in your document down into as small of parts as possible.
In today’s fast-paced environment where everyone is “multi-tasking” by checking email, Facebook feeds, and news articles at the same time, the writer no longer has the luxury of writing never-ending blocks of prose. If the modern writer has any chance of getting the message across as a whole, he or she now must break down every thought into digestable bits of information. If not, today’s reader will just give up.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
The thorny issue of the iOS-ification of OS X and vice versa
I just installed OS X Yosemite and the iOS-ification of OS X is apparent in this version. Of course, through the invention of hand off, you can now pick up from something your were working on in iOS and begin working on it in OS X. Unfortunately, because my Macbook Pro is Mid–2010, I cannot use hand off due to not having Bluetooth 4.0. But it appears that I can use the rest of the continuity package in Yosemite, specifically those relating to the use of my phone’s calling and text functions on Mac.
I was happy to see that SMS text messages are now listed in the messages app of my Mac. But where OS X Yosemite is really similar to iOS is the design. The buttons have a very similar with a flat design. The similarities between iOS and OS X apps are particularly apparent when comparing the iTunes app in OS X to iOS.
Another way that Apple seems to be trying to bridge the gap between OS X and iOS is iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive took overnight to load and I am not impressed with the speed of syncing. Maybe it's just because this is the first weekend after Yosemite’s release and a lot of people are syncing at the same time, overloading Apple servers. But Apple seems to have missed the boat on this one. Third party developers like Dropbox saw a need for this syncing capability and filled it years ago. As long as Dropbox and Google Drive continue to meet my needs, I doubt that i’ll begin using iCloud drive very much. The need for iCloud drive will also appear to decrease over time now that Apple is finally permitting the use of extensions in iOS 8. As third party apps are given greater access to interact with each other, syncing between apps using iCloud and third party cloud apps will become less necessary to individual workflows.
As Graham Spencer stated in his article on MacStories, the biggest problem in working with iCloud Drive on OS X and iOS is the lack of Finder on iOS and Apple’s aversion to adding folders to iOS. This really goes to the heart of the matter. Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 has made the operating system for PC and tablet one and the same. My understanding is that from a design aspect this has proved problematic. Because I don’t have a PC or Surface, I wouldn’t know. But this is going to continue to be the thorniest problem for Apple.
Apple’s latest release of the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 shows that the development of the iPad is basically floundering. These updates are evoluntionary, not revolutionary, which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that iPhones sell like hotcakes year after year and iPads don’t. Adding a gold color option and Touch ID doesn’t give anyone a sufficient reason to upgrade, except for people who have too much disposable scratch. I have an iPad mini and even though I’d love to buy an iPad Air, these updates are not compelling to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love touch ID on my iPhone 6, but that feature alone wouldn’t get me to open my wallet.
Until Apple really finds a way to boost iPad’s productivity potential, money will be left on the table. And simply making the iPad bigger is not going to solve the problem. Many have written about rumors of a 12 inch “iPad Pro” that can have multi-tasking and split screen capabilities. Such a productivity-centered device, I think ,would persuade a lot of people to upgrade, especially since many will likely opt out this year. However, Apple’s software team is really going to have to come up with a feature rich device to pull this off. A frustration of mine is when I begin working on something on the Mac and can’t edit my work on the iPad. But this trade off is acceptable to me because I need the portability of the iPad when I’m walking around the courtroom and need to quickly reference documents in a trial.
Simply making OS X and iOS one and the same is probably not the answer, but unless Apple comes up with some great software features with the “iPad Pro,” I will probably just keep my iPad Mini until it dies and buy a Macbook Air instead. Of course, what I think would solve all my problems would be if Apple would turn the Macbook Air into a hybrid with a detachable keyboard that could go from OS X to iOS when you are using it as a tablet. I’m not a software engineer, so maybe this is asking too much. Of course, even if its possible and it would result in massive sales, the consensus seems to be that there’s no way that Apple is going to do this. In any case, it’ll be another year before we see the next iPad update. Until then, I am looking forward to see if the Macbook Air update in the new year will be a simple refresh or if we might see some major design changes.
In any case, OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 working together seems to be a step in the right direction for Apple. Hopefully, Apple will keep heading in this direction and get it right for the most part along the way.
I was happy to see that SMS text messages are now listed in the messages app of my Mac. But where OS X Yosemite is really similar to iOS is the design. The buttons have a very similar with a flat design. The similarities between iOS and OS X apps are particularly apparent when comparing the iTunes app in OS X to iOS.
Another way that Apple seems to be trying to bridge the gap between OS X and iOS is iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive took overnight to load and I am not impressed with the speed of syncing. Maybe it's just because this is the first weekend after Yosemite’s release and a lot of people are syncing at the same time, overloading Apple servers. But Apple seems to have missed the boat on this one. Third party developers like Dropbox saw a need for this syncing capability and filled it years ago. As long as Dropbox and Google Drive continue to meet my needs, I doubt that i’ll begin using iCloud drive very much. The need for iCloud drive will also appear to decrease over time now that Apple is finally permitting the use of extensions in iOS 8. As third party apps are given greater access to interact with each other, syncing between apps using iCloud and third party cloud apps will become less necessary to individual workflows.
As Graham Spencer stated in his article on MacStories, the biggest problem in working with iCloud Drive on OS X and iOS is the lack of Finder on iOS and Apple’s aversion to adding folders to iOS. This really goes to the heart of the matter. Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 has made the operating system for PC and tablet one and the same. My understanding is that from a design aspect this has proved problematic. Because I don’t have a PC or Surface, I wouldn’t know. But this is going to continue to be the thorniest problem for Apple.
Apple’s latest release of the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 shows that the development of the iPad is basically floundering. These updates are evoluntionary, not revolutionary, which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that iPhones sell like hotcakes year after year and iPads don’t. Adding a gold color option and Touch ID doesn’t give anyone a sufficient reason to upgrade, except for people who have too much disposable scratch. I have an iPad mini and even though I’d love to buy an iPad Air, these updates are not compelling to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love touch ID on my iPhone 6, but that feature alone wouldn’t get me to open my wallet.
Until Apple really finds a way to boost iPad’s productivity potential, money will be left on the table. And simply making the iPad bigger is not going to solve the problem. Many have written about rumors of a 12 inch “iPad Pro” that can have multi-tasking and split screen capabilities. Such a productivity-centered device, I think ,would persuade a lot of people to upgrade, especially since many will likely opt out this year. However, Apple’s software team is really going to have to come up with a feature rich device to pull this off. A frustration of mine is when I begin working on something on the Mac and can’t edit my work on the iPad. But this trade off is acceptable to me because I need the portability of the iPad when I’m walking around the courtroom and need to quickly reference documents in a trial.
Simply making OS X and iOS one and the same is probably not the answer, but unless Apple comes up with some great software features with the “iPad Pro,” I will probably just keep my iPad Mini until it dies and buy a Macbook Air instead. Of course, what I think would solve all my problems would be if Apple would turn the Macbook Air into a hybrid with a detachable keyboard that could go from OS X to iOS when you are using it as a tablet. I’m not a software engineer, so maybe this is asking too much. Of course, even if its possible and it would result in massive sales, the consensus seems to be that there’s no way that Apple is going to do this. In any case, it’ll be another year before we see the next iPad update. Until then, I am looking forward to see if the Macbook Air update in the new year will be a simple refresh or if we might see some major design changes.
In any case, OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 working together seems to be a step in the right direction for Apple. Hopefully, Apple will keep heading in this direction and get it right for the most part along the way.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Better have a backup plan!
I have recently been doing a lot of work on my backup plan. No, I don't mean my plan to work as a barista after giving up on the legal profession. I am instead referring to backing up my hard drive.
I only started getting serious about backing up about six months ago, during the same time that I read David Sparks's Magnum Opus on going paperless. Because I wanted to adopt the paperless workflow, I had to get serious about backup. As a result, I purchased two Seagate Backup Plus for Mac 1 TB hard external hard drives (my main computer is a mid-2010 Macbook Pro). I specifically purchased two so that I could keep one at home and one at the office. My apartment is only a few miles from my office, which, of course, means that if there was a major disaster in this immediate area, it could result in both backups being lost forever. But, if that were to happen, I think I would probably have much bigger concerns than whether my backups are okay. The main concern I have is my apartment or office getting broken into, in which case, the burglar may very well take my hard drive in addition to my laptop (though I doubt he'd know what to do with it).
Since purchasing my two hard drives, I have solely used them for Time Machine backups. Although I had read about Super Duper, I was a little intimidated by the program and didn't know how to fit it in with Time Machine. But recently, I took another look at Super Duper, which is a $30 program. The main difference between Time Machine and Super Duper is that Super Duper can actually be used as a start up drive. This makes all the difference in a situation where time is of the essence.
So let's say your hard drive crashed and all you had done was create TM backups. What would you have to do to get back up and running? Well, my understanding (I'm not an expert) is that you'd probably have to get a new computer, reinstall OSX and then restore to your last TM backup. That doesn't seem too bad, since you'll probably be buying a new computer if your hard drive is fried anyways. But what if you have an important meeting today and all the files for the meeting were on the hard drive that crashed? Well, then you're pretty much SOL.
But if you had backed up with Super Duper, then you can actually plug in the external hard drive with the super duper back up to another Mac and get your files directly from the drive. In fact, if your computer is still working after the hard drive crashed, then you can press down on the option key on startup and actually select the super duper drive as your start up disk, which would enable you to get on with your day using your laptop with the fried disk as if nothing had happened. This could also come in handy in the situation in which you have to send your mac off to Apple for several weeks. If all you had were your time machine backups, then you'd just have to live without your files for several weeks while your computer is getting repaired.
Super Duper is definitely well worth the $30 price tag for adherent's to Murphy's law. When disaster strikes, it will likely happen at the worst possible time. At least with Super Duper, you know you can get to your files when you need them.
One perplexing aspect to doing both Super Duper and Time Machine backups is how to most effectively use my limited hard drive space for both. This required me to finally learn how to partition my external hard drives. With disk utility on Mac, you can pretty easily partition your hard drive. The most important things to know is that the format to use is OS extended (journaled) and to select GUID partition under options, which is required for using the Super Duper partition as a startup disk. Basically, I have partitioned both of my external hard drives and am using half of each hard drive as a Time Machine backup and the other half as a Super Duper backup. The hard drive on my Macbook Pro is only 250 GB, so I think that 500 GB is sufficient for the Time Machine backups.
I believe that 500 GB for Time Machine backups would probably permit me to have TM backups for at least a year or more, which is really more than enough for my purposes. I can't imagine why I would want to restore my system to farther back than last week, let alone last year. Of course, the most obvious reason to most end users like myself that you'd want to be able to restore to a previous restore point is that if you've downloaded a virus or some other program that is wreaking havoc on your computer. This would seem to me to be obvious in most instances immediately upon downloading the program and you would not need to go very far back to get rid of it. The only bad thing about partitioning in my case is that I now have to do the initial Time Machine backup all over due to all previous backups being erased. This, of course, is very time consuming and takes several hours. But the upside is that it gave me an opportunity to note how easy it is to encrypt your backups on TM. All you have to do is check the box when selecting a new disk.
By doing both TM and Super Duper backups on two different disks, I feel that my information is safe and secure. The major benefit in my mind to backing up this way is that you know that content is stored locally instead of being the property of the cloud. Don't get me wrong, I am a regular user of Dropbox and Drive, but another thing I have done recently is move as much content out of those folders and back on my hard drive. The main reason for the doing this was because I was getting very confused by the many duplicate files I had across the various platforms. By putting it all back on my hard drive, I've hopefully made things more organized. But I also have security concerns about some of the files that I kept in the cloud. I trust that most of my content is safe in the cloud. but for some files, I'd just rather not take the risk (e.g., tax and other financial documents). I also have an independent obligation as an attorney to make sure that my client's files are secure. By storing their confidential information locally, I feel that I am doing all that I can reasonably do to protect their information.
Happy Holidays.
I only started getting serious about backing up about six months ago, during the same time that I read David Sparks's Magnum Opus on going paperless. Because I wanted to adopt the paperless workflow, I had to get serious about backup. As a result, I purchased two Seagate Backup Plus for Mac 1 TB hard external hard drives (my main computer is a mid-2010 Macbook Pro). I specifically purchased two so that I could keep one at home and one at the office. My apartment is only a few miles from my office, which, of course, means that if there was a major disaster in this immediate area, it could result in both backups being lost forever. But, if that were to happen, I think I would probably have much bigger concerns than whether my backups are okay. The main concern I have is my apartment or office getting broken into, in which case, the burglar may very well take my hard drive in addition to my laptop (though I doubt he'd know what to do with it).
Since purchasing my two hard drives, I have solely used them for Time Machine backups. Although I had read about Super Duper, I was a little intimidated by the program and didn't know how to fit it in with Time Machine. But recently, I took another look at Super Duper, which is a $30 program. The main difference between Time Machine and Super Duper is that Super Duper can actually be used as a start up drive. This makes all the difference in a situation where time is of the essence.
So let's say your hard drive crashed and all you had done was create TM backups. What would you have to do to get back up and running? Well, my understanding (I'm not an expert) is that you'd probably have to get a new computer, reinstall OSX and then restore to your last TM backup. That doesn't seem too bad, since you'll probably be buying a new computer if your hard drive is fried anyways. But what if you have an important meeting today and all the files for the meeting were on the hard drive that crashed? Well, then you're pretty much SOL.
But if you had backed up with Super Duper, then you can actually plug in the external hard drive with the super duper back up to another Mac and get your files directly from the drive. In fact, if your computer is still working after the hard drive crashed, then you can press down on the option key on startup and actually select the super duper drive as your start up disk, which would enable you to get on with your day using your laptop with the fried disk as if nothing had happened. This could also come in handy in the situation in which you have to send your mac off to Apple for several weeks. If all you had were your time machine backups, then you'd just have to live without your files for several weeks while your computer is getting repaired.
Super Duper is definitely well worth the $30 price tag for adherent's to Murphy's law. When disaster strikes, it will likely happen at the worst possible time. At least with Super Duper, you know you can get to your files when you need them.
One perplexing aspect to doing both Super Duper and Time Machine backups is how to most effectively use my limited hard drive space for both. This required me to finally learn how to partition my external hard drives. With disk utility on Mac, you can pretty easily partition your hard drive. The most important things to know is that the format to use is OS extended (journaled) and to select GUID partition under options, which is required for using the Super Duper partition as a startup disk. Basically, I have partitioned both of my external hard drives and am using half of each hard drive as a Time Machine backup and the other half as a Super Duper backup. The hard drive on my Macbook Pro is only 250 GB, so I think that 500 GB is sufficient for the Time Machine backups.
I believe that 500 GB for Time Machine backups would probably permit me to have TM backups for at least a year or more, which is really more than enough for my purposes. I can't imagine why I would want to restore my system to farther back than last week, let alone last year. Of course, the most obvious reason to most end users like myself that you'd want to be able to restore to a previous restore point is that if you've downloaded a virus or some other program that is wreaking havoc on your computer. This would seem to me to be obvious in most instances immediately upon downloading the program and you would not need to go very far back to get rid of it. The only bad thing about partitioning in my case is that I now have to do the initial Time Machine backup all over due to all previous backups being erased. This, of course, is very time consuming and takes several hours. But the upside is that it gave me an opportunity to note how easy it is to encrypt your backups on TM. All you have to do is check the box when selecting a new disk.
By doing both TM and Super Duper backups on two different disks, I feel that my information is safe and secure. The major benefit in my mind to backing up this way is that you know that content is stored locally instead of being the property of the cloud. Don't get me wrong, I am a regular user of Dropbox and Drive, but another thing I have done recently is move as much content out of those folders and back on my hard drive. The main reason for the doing this was because I was getting very confused by the many duplicate files I had across the various platforms. By putting it all back on my hard drive, I've hopefully made things more organized. But I also have security concerns about some of the files that I kept in the cloud. I trust that most of my content is safe in the cloud. but for some files, I'd just rather not take the risk (e.g., tax and other financial documents). I also have an independent obligation as an attorney to make sure that my client's files are secure. By storing their confidential information locally, I feel that I am doing all that I can reasonably do to protect their information.
Happy Holidays.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
The Paperless Professional
When I first purchased my iPad mini, I knew that it could be a useful productivity device as well as a device for consuming content. But it was not until I read the Apple iBook "Paperless" by David Sparks that I really understood the productivity power of the iPad. For me, it truly was a "paradigm shift." In short, Mr. Sparks explains how to capture and process all things paper into a digital system. As Mr. Sparks explains it, our reliance on paper as a society is largely a psychological dependency that can--and should--be broken. Through the use of Mr. Sparks system, you cannot only archive reams of paper in a digital format, but also save them in a manner that creates a usable system ensuring that you can find those documents when you need them (isn't that what keeping all that paper is all about???) Mr. Sparks's system accomplishes this in large part by saving files by using a format of date - document description, which operates largely as a tagging system. Then by typing a few search terms in your Mac's spotlight (shortcut: Command + Spacebar), you can summon, seemingly by magic, those documents that you need. If that's not cool enough for you, Mr. Sparks also shows you how to use a program called Hazel, which can name your documents for you and move them to pre-selected folders, completely automating the process.
But before you can start putting Mr. Sparks paperless system into practice, you have to select a method for "capturing" all those paper documents and transferring them into digital form. This is where the Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 comes in. The Fujitsu Scansnap is a high capacity scanner. It can scan 25 pages per minute. It also automatically scans double sided and automatically skips blank pages. Most importantly, it creates searchable PDF documents. If you're a PC user, you'll also be glad to know that a free copy of Adobe Acrobat (which only works with PCs) is included. At $400, the Fujitsu Scansnap is a great deal.
As a practicing attorney, I will tell you that keeping track of paper has been the bane of my existence for the past five years. But now that I have the capability to scan my files, and just as important, can index them by creating outlines, which are tables of contents that you can access no matter where you are in the file, I am now in command of my files. As Mr. Sparks, who is also an attorney, puts it, the ability to locate documents with lightning speed "strikes fear in the hearts of my enemies." Knowledge is power, especially in the courtroom or professional setting. And the ability to locate information the second you need it can make all the difference in a high pressured situation.
Of course, I'm sure that some people fear putting sometimes highly sensitive and private information into digital form. The purpose of this post is not to argue with the naysayers. Every person has to determine to what degree he or she is comfortable with disseminating information once its put in digital form. But it is very much possible to protect digital information. The biggest aspect of the debate is over cloud computing. I'm personally not knowledgeable enough and would not feel comfortable saying 100% of that sensitive information put in Dropbox or Google Drive is completely safe. Another concern for attorneys and other professionals who owe a duty of confidentiality to their clients is the ownership of the files once they are put in the cloud. In a recent legal ethics opinion here in West Virginia, attorneys were advised that they can ethically store client information electronically, but have a duty to protect the client's information nonetheless. One suggestion in the opinion was that attorneys inform their clients of their electronic retention policies in the fee agreement, which I have adopted by placing a provision in my agreements stating that the client understands and agrees that I have the right to maintain the file in electronic form.
An important point that Mr. Sparks makes in Paperless is that cloud computing websites like Google Drive and Dropbox are for syncing, not backup (of course, there are now online backup websites, such as Carbonite). But I do my backup the old fashioned way, I have two Seagate backup plus external hard drives. This way, sensitive material is kept locally and not subjected to potential cloud hackers. I keep one at my apartment and one at my office. That way, should either place burn down or be burglarized, I still have a backup at the other. I have been advised that encryption on the Mac is extremely easy, but I have not yet attempted it. I probably should do this to get the most security possible. Of course, external hard drives, like the hard drive on your computer, will not last forever, which is another reason why its advisable to keep at least two external hard drives. I use Time Machine with both of these hard drives.
External hard drives are very affordable nowadays. The two external hard drives described above are one terabyte and cost in the $80 range. As time goes on, hard drive space will continue to become cheaper and cheaper, so storage space isn't really a concern for taking a comprehensive approach to digitalizing your paper documents.
I have a third external hard drive, the Seagate Wireless backup plus, which I do not use with Time Machine. The reason I do not use this hard drive with Time Machine is that Time Machine is a versioned backup, which means that if I delete something from my computer, Time Machine will eventually back up to the point that its back up will not contain what I deleted. I have several movies on my computer that were taking up hard drive space, so I decided to buy this third hard drive for the purpose of keeping these movies saved to it and delete them off my hard drive. I may at some point partition this drive to use half of the space for an additional Time Machine backup. An added bonus is that because it is a wireless hard drive, I can stream movies from the hard drive to my iPad and no longer have to download movies to my iPad whenever I want to watch them. The hard drive is really in all respects the same as the other two hard drives described above, but the wireless ability of this hard drive drives the price up 100% to the $175 range. But having a hard drive that works with your iPad is worth it in my humble opinion.
As with any system for the archiving and retention of documents, going paperless certainly has an array of issues for any working professional who desires to institute such a system. But when I think about all the man hours wasted by keeping paper documents, I think that all organizations who deal in vast streams of paper will eventually see the light.
But before you can start putting Mr. Sparks paperless system into practice, you have to select a method for "capturing" all those paper documents and transferring them into digital form. This is where the Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 comes in. The Fujitsu Scansnap is a high capacity scanner. It can scan 25 pages per minute. It also automatically scans double sided and automatically skips blank pages. Most importantly, it creates searchable PDF documents. If you're a PC user, you'll also be glad to know that a free copy of Adobe Acrobat (which only works with PCs) is included. At $400, the Fujitsu Scansnap is a great deal.
As a practicing attorney, I will tell you that keeping track of paper has been the bane of my existence for the past five years. But now that I have the capability to scan my files, and just as important, can index them by creating outlines, which are tables of contents that you can access no matter where you are in the file, I am now in command of my files. As Mr. Sparks, who is also an attorney, puts it, the ability to locate documents with lightning speed "strikes fear in the hearts of my enemies." Knowledge is power, especially in the courtroom or professional setting. And the ability to locate information the second you need it can make all the difference in a high pressured situation.
Of course, I'm sure that some people fear putting sometimes highly sensitive and private information into digital form. The purpose of this post is not to argue with the naysayers. Every person has to determine to what degree he or she is comfortable with disseminating information once its put in digital form. But it is very much possible to protect digital information. The biggest aspect of the debate is over cloud computing. I'm personally not knowledgeable enough and would not feel comfortable saying 100% of that sensitive information put in Dropbox or Google Drive is completely safe. Another concern for attorneys and other professionals who owe a duty of confidentiality to their clients is the ownership of the files once they are put in the cloud. In a recent legal ethics opinion here in West Virginia, attorneys were advised that they can ethically store client information electronically, but have a duty to protect the client's information nonetheless. One suggestion in the opinion was that attorneys inform their clients of their electronic retention policies in the fee agreement, which I have adopted by placing a provision in my agreements stating that the client understands and agrees that I have the right to maintain the file in electronic form.
An important point that Mr. Sparks makes in Paperless is that cloud computing websites like Google Drive and Dropbox are for syncing, not backup (of course, there are now online backup websites, such as Carbonite). But I do my backup the old fashioned way, I have two Seagate backup plus external hard drives. This way, sensitive material is kept locally and not subjected to potential cloud hackers. I keep one at my apartment and one at my office. That way, should either place burn down or be burglarized, I still have a backup at the other. I have been advised that encryption on the Mac is extremely easy, but I have not yet attempted it. I probably should do this to get the most security possible. Of course, external hard drives, like the hard drive on your computer, will not last forever, which is another reason why its advisable to keep at least two external hard drives. I use Time Machine with both of these hard drives.
External hard drives are very affordable nowadays. The two external hard drives described above are one terabyte and cost in the $80 range. As time goes on, hard drive space will continue to become cheaper and cheaper, so storage space isn't really a concern for taking a comprehensive approach to digitalizing your paper documents.
I have a third external hard drive, the Seagate Wireless backup plus, which I do not use with Time Machine. The reason I do not use this hard drive with Time Machine is that Time Machine is a versioned backup, which means that if I delete something from my computer, Time Machine will eventually back up to the point that its back up will not contain what I deleted. I have several movies on my computer that were taking up hard drive space, so I decided to buy this third hard drive for the purpose of keeping these movies saved to it and delete them off my hard drive. I may at some point partition this drive to use half of the space for an additional Time Machine backup. An added bonus is that because it is a wireless hard drive, I can stream movies from the hard drive to my iPad and no longer have to download movies to my iPad whenever I want to watch them. The hard drive is really in all respects the same as the other two hard drives described above, but the wireless ability of this hard drive drives the price up 100% to the $175 range. But having a hard drive that works with your iPad is worth it in my humble opinion.
As with any system for the archiving and retention of documents, going paperless certainly has an array of issues for any working professional who desires to institute such a system. But when I think about all the man hours wasted by keeping paper documents, I think that all organizations who deal in vast streams of paper will eventually see the light.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
How the GTD system has changed my life so far.
Welcome to my first blogpost: 11/09/13
Since deactivating my Facebook account (for reasons I will not go into here), I have found the need for an outlet to pontificate on a wide variety of subjects that arouse my interests but few others. Hence, this blog. One such topic of personal interest is the use of technology to increase productivity. But of course, such technology does diddly squat for us without the perspective and context for how to use it. Haven't we all had the experience of downloading some new productivity software and seeing a bunch of cool example pictures showing it populated with user content only to draw a blank when actually trying to put that software to personal use.
That is where, in my humble opinion, David Allen's GTD system can make all the difference. For those of you not in the know, GTD stands for "Getting Things Done" (pretty catchy and to the point, huh?). And Mr. Allen's seminal work elucidating this system of task management is "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity," which can be found at http://amzn.com/B000WH7PKY
It would be a waste of time for me to go into a lengthy discussion of the GTD system, as several have done this and the book itself is quite an easy read. Instead, I want to discuss how the GTD system has personally affected my mindset for work and life.
I think that one of the things that I never thought about before reading the book is the simple fact of how what Allen (quoting Peter Drucker) calls "knowledge work" is inherently different from the industrialized assembly line factory work most prevalent in the 20th century. Simply put, unlike the assembly line worker whose work consists of performing a series of repetitive tasks, the knowledge worker has the sometimes overwhelming job of having to determine and define just what is his or her job in the first place. We are usually given an overarching objective, but not given a step-by-step account of how to achieve that objective. That is partly due to the fact that in the world of knowledge work there is rarely a "one best way" in any case and opinions often differ. Of course, this gives knowledge workers a great deal of empowerment, independence and opportunities for creative thinking, which is precisely why knowledge workers are often passionate about their professional lives and are willing to invest much time and effort to achieve their professional goals. But all of this is for naught if the knowledge worker can't answer one simple question that is the mantra of the GTD system, "What's the next action?"
It is around this one query that Allen developed an entire system for answering it. As Allen so aptly puts it, many of us only do work "when it shows up or when it blows up." The major goal of the GTD system is to prevent the latter so that we aren't constantly finding ourselves in crisis mode, but instead have the ability to do tasks when we are in our best mindset for doing them. In a nutshell, the key is to corral all those little things we need to do, which persistently nag our psyches, into a system that we can regularly review. This way, you are always current on what has to get done now as opposed to what you may wish to put off to another day. This allows you to do tasks when you are in the best possible mindset for them and without being worried that you're letting something get by you. This is important because some days you may just not have the mental strength or desire to make that difficult phone call, deal with that difficult person or sort through a complex task. But if you've broken down all your big tasks, into smaller bites, you might find a few low energy or busy work type of tasks to get you through the end of the day. This is what true productivity is all about, getting the most out every minute while doing so on your terms. But you can only do this with a clear conscience if you know that that thing that you're putting off today isn't a ticking time bomb that's going to blow up on you when you walk through the door tomorrow morning.
This all may seem to be obvious, but, of course, there's a big difference between knowing that you need to do something and putting it into practice (just ask all those people who make New Year's resolutions how it's coming along on January 31st). I've gotten pretty good at recording tasks as they come to me, but I still struggle with the essential weekly review that keeps you current. Without them, your lists grow stale, lose their meaning and, perhaps most importantly, you can easily lose track of those ticking time bombs.
But I have also noticed some fundamental differences in my approach to work and thinking about work. One such difference is that I don't like wasting time on having the same thought twice, which is my primary motivation for recording all tasks from the mundane to the consequential. Of course, there's the risk that you might not have the thought again and lose out on a great idea. But another reason is that it's just a great waste of mental energy to have to keep reminding myself about things when I can put them in a trusted system that I regularly review instead. This probably, more than anything else, keeps me going forward in trying to master the GTD principles in my work and personal life.
My goal is to get myself to the point that I never find myself pondering over the question, "what's the next action," but instead am able to smoothly transition from one task to another with the firm knowledge that what I'm doing in the moment is what I should be doing, especially when that thing is taking a well deserved lunch break.
Since deactivating my Facebook account (for reasons I will not go into here), I have found the need for an outlet to pontificate on a wide variety of subjects that arouse my interests but few others. Hence, this blog. One such topic of personal interest is the use of technology to increase productivity. But of course, such technology does diddly squat for us without the perspective and context for how to use it. Haven't we all had the experience of downloading some new productivity software and seeing a bunch of cool example pictures showing it populated with user content only to draw a blank when actually trying to put that software to personal use.
That is where, in my humble opinion, David Allen's GTD system can make all the difference. For those of you not in the know, GTD stands for "Getting Things Done" (pretty catchy and to the point, huh?). And Mr. Allen's seminal work elucidating this system of task management is "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity," which can be found at http://amzn.com/B000WH7PKY
It would be a waste of time for me to go into a lengthy discussion of the GTD system, as several have done this and the book itself is quite an easy read. Instead, I want to discuss how the GTD system has personally affected my mindset for work and life.
I think that one of the things that I never thought about before reading the book is the simple fact of how what Allen (quoting Peter Drucker) calls "knowledge work" is inherently different from the industrialized assembly line factory work most prevalent in the 20th century. Simply put, unlike the assembly line worker whose work consists of performing a series of repetitive tasks, the knowledge worker has the sometimes overwhelming job of having to determine and define just what is his or her job in the first place. We are usually given an overarching objective, but not given a step-by-step account of how to achieve that objective. That is partly due to the fact that in the world of knowledge work there is rarely a "one best way" in any case and opinions often differ. Of course, this gives knowledge workers a great deal of empowerment, independence and opportunities for creative thinking, which is precisely why knowledge workers are often passionate about their professional lives and are willing to invest much time and effort to achieve their professional goals. But all of this is for naught if the knowledge worker can't answer one simple question that is the mantra of the GTD system, "What's the next action?"
It is around this one query that Allen developed an entire system for answering it. As Allen so aptly puts it, many of us only do work "when it shows up or when it blows up." The major goal of the GTD system is to prevent the latter so that we aren't constantly finding ourselves in crisis mode, but instead have the ability to do tasks when we are in our best mindset for doing them. In a nutshell, the key is to corral all those little things we need to do, which persistently nag our psyches, into a system that we can regularly review. This way, you are always current on what has to get done now as opposed to what you may wish to put off to another day. This allows you to do tasks when you are in the best possible mindset for them and without being worried that you're letting something get by you. This is important because some days you may just not have the mental strength or desire to make that difficult phone call, deal with that difficult person or sort through a complex task. But if you've broken down all your big tasks, into smaller bites, you might find a few low energy or busy work type of tasks to get you through the end of the day. This is what true productivity is all about, getting the most out every minute while doing so on your terms. But you can only do this with a clear conscience if you know that that thing that you're putting off today isn't a ticking time bomb that's going to blow up on you when you walk through the door tomorrow morning.
This all may seem to be obvious, but, of course, there's a big difference between knowing that you need to do something and putting it into practice (just ask all those people who make New Year's resolutions how it's coming along on January 31st). I've gotten pretty good at recording tasks as they come to me, but I still struggle with the essential weekly review that keeps you current. Without them, your lists grow stale, lose their meaning and, perhaps most importantly, you can easily lose track of those ticking time bombs.
But I have also noticed some fundamental differences in my approach to work and thinking about work. One such difference is that I don't like wasting time on having the same thought twice, which is my primary motivation for recording all tasks from the mundane to the consequential. Of course, there's the risk that you might not have the thought again and lose out on a great idea. But another reason is that it's just a great waste of mental energy to have to keep reminding myself about things when I can put them in a trusted system that I regularly review instead. This probably, more than anything else, keeps me going forward in trying to master the GTD principles in my work and personal life.
My goal is to get myself to the point that I never find myself pondering over the question, "what's the next action," but instead am able to smoothly transition from one task to another with the firm knowledge that what I'm doing in the moment is what I should be doing, especially when that thing is taking a well deserved lunch break.
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