This is one posting in a series of blog postings, under the common heading of Apple Mac Productivity, that are aimed at helping people be more productive and effective in their use of the Mac. Anyone who can add useful feedback to any of these postings is invited to do so.
As regards PC users, the ideas recorded here may be useful too. Sometimes PC users will react with a “so what” when you explain how you can do stuff on the Mac. They are probably right to do so, in the sense that many things that make the Mac a productive environment can be done on the PC too. In those instances what usually makes the Mac different is that it’s a lot less trouble to do and it is likely there’s nothing going to stop it working. Most of the stuff I do for productivity on the Mac I tried to do on the PC but eventually gave up because it was never practical.
The Desktop
We’ve been used to calling the “naked PC screen” a desktop for well over a decade, which is strange because we never use it as a desktop. Imho, we should and on the Mac we can. By this, I mean using the desktop as a place where we carry out work and put the work-in-progress files.
Take a look at the screenshot on the right here. It’s the top right hand corner of my desktop in a clean state – which is what it usually looks like at the start of day or end of day. There are just three items on the desktop; a link to a Journler folder, an Images folder and a Projects folder. They are all folders and these folders have their own icons so that there’s no likelihood of me confusing them with any other folders that might appear on the desktop.
Let me explain how I work with these folders. The first thing to understand is the problem I’m trying to solve, because that determines exactly how you’ll structure the desktop if you imitate what I’m doing. The problem I’m trying to solve is:
I want all my files stored in an organized way.
Because I don’t work on sound or music files at all, I don’t ever have any work-in-progress sound files on the desktop, so I don’t need a sound files folder. The same is true for me of video, at the moment. I do work on image files in many contexts, but mostly for the web. So what I have on the desktop is; two folders for work-in-progress files, one for images and one (called projects) for text files and documents and also, a link to Journler which is my “archive store”
Journler
Journler may not be the only application, which can provide what I needed, but I tried quite a few, including Curio, Notebook and Voodoo Pad, to achieve what I wanted. Eventually I dumped each one, until I found Journler. Basically, Journler manages the store of all the documents I’ve written, all the projects I’ve worked on in the past 10 years, all the research papers I’ve saved and every document I’ve got that has ever been of the least importance in my work or personal life.
One of the great advantages of the Mac is that all Mac applications can create PDF files, because every application can print to PDF. All files that I want only as a record, such as Powerpoints or Diagrams, I save as PDFs and I can find them in Journler and display them. Journler stores files in a folder hierarchy, but allows files to appear in multiple places. It’s actually a great deal more powerful than I’m describing here, but I’ll do a separate review of it some other time. Right now all you need to understand is that it forms “my repository of record” and it’s simple to find information in it. T0 add a file to it, you just drop it into the Journ folder.
Journler means that: I do not need to use the normal file system as a means of storing files (or objects) that I want to keep. Journler is the file system for my files.
Rules For The Desktop
Here they are:
- Files that I work with are always saved to the desktop. I set all configuration options for where to store files in all applications to the desktop (except for backup options). All downloads come to the desktop. I save all mail attachments to the desktop.
- Apart from these three folders no other folders or files of any other kind, that are not work in progress files, are allowed on the desktop. No application links, no file links and none of the trash that you normally find littering the desktop on a brand new Windows PC. This means that I know that all files on the desktop are work in progress files.
- The Projects folder is divided into subfolders for work-in-progress files for each project I’m working on. This means that, for any project, all the associated files are either in the Projects folder or on the desktop.
- The Images folder is exactly the same, except that it is only for “image projects”. Some image files (such as diagrams for reports I write) will be kept in the Projects folder, because they belong in with documents. The images I keep in the image folder mainly relate to web work because there’s a very definite workflow associated with them.
- If I want to see what’s in either the Projects or Images folder I just double click on it and Finder comes up with the details.
- I delete files from the desktop or move them into the projects or images folder throughout the day. At the end of the day I clear the desktop either by deleting files or moving them into one of the three folders.
This scheme is actually very simple, but proves to be very productive because files don’t get lost and there’s a searchable archive for all files not being worked on. For any file I create and work on, it can only be in one of three places; the desktop, one of the desktop folders or my archive store. It’s easy to find.
All of this sounds simple and obvious, as I write it, but it isn’t at all simple and easy to create an environment like this.
Backup and Working On The Road
Right now, when I go on the road I just copy the Journler files and the Projects and Images folders to my laptop and I have my complete record of everything in its last used state. At the moment, the Journler files occupy 4.5 gigabytes and take 3 minutes to copy. It will fit on a memory stick, if I need it to but that takes longer to copy to.
Journler is not my file system of record for photographs and images. I use Apple’s Aperture for that. Neither is it my file system for music. I use iTunes. As far as backup is concerned I use Apple’s Time Machine for everything except photos. For photos I use Aperture’s vault capability. Because of Time Machine, at worst, I can lose the last hour’s work.
There is the probelm of applications that don’t want to let you save to the desktop and keep trying to make you save elsewhere. I’ll deal with how to handle that in the next posting on this topic.
Click on this link: PDQ Mac to see a list of other postings on Apple Mac productivity.
