In the Things app, you have a sidebar on macOS and iPadOS; or the start screen on iOS (why the fuck isn’t that one renamed back to iPhoneOS?).

You have a clean section of fixed items, and then all your areas, projects etc.

There are a bunch of things not available in it. Like for example Tomorrow something one can show by searching for it. Plus there are a lot of more complex things one can search for especially if you do it with a Shortcuts.

I don’t really want a full on OmniFocus perspective thing here. But I would really like to be able add things like that to the side bar. So I don’t have to run a shortcut to do it.

I always find myself going between Things and OmniFocus.

In general I prefer Things, but there are things about OmniFocus that is way better.

Like with Things you don’t have much choice in terms of structure of your data or how things looks. But I do think it in general is a much better designed app. And their Shortcut automation story is far better.

OmniFocus on the other hand, let you nest folders however you want, and same with tasks. And while their Shortcut integration is kind of meh, their built in Taskpaper support and native scripting stuff is beyond powerful.

At the moment I’m using Things, and I’m happy with it.

What I see is that I go against OmniFocus when shit gets complicated. But when I decide to move back to things I do a much better job of simplifying those complexities.

Like instead of deep task and folder structures I make small flatter projects that kind of are intended to be done in a series instead.

When I’m dealing with my task management system I always want to see things at different detail levels.

When I’m planning I think about things at detail levels that are very high level.

Like when I look at what I want to get done this month or quarter it is very high level. Usually more about what areas of my life I want to have my focus at.

When I get to weeks it is usually more about sub-sections of those areas. Higher than how I do projects. For days it is all about projects. And when I’m doing things it is all about small tasks and projects that is easy to complete and move on to the next one.

I find it very useful to have a place outside of my task manager to keep track of this stuff that is beyond the day to day overview.

This is why I do a lot of this stuff on paper. With different pages for different detail levels. To think it through and have a plan. And to look at that plan when I plan the stuff below it.

Like looking at the quarter / year overview when I plan a month, and on the month when I plan a week etc.

Makes it all work way better than just this very high level thing that never move or all of these endless projects and todo’s that never seem to disappear.

When we get to May I’ve been actively working on my weight and general fitness for 4 years. From the highest to lowest I’ve lost around 40kg. And my general fitness and health can’t really be compared to back then.

Here are some thoughts I have about it and my experience doing it

• There is a lot of value to logging calories even without using it to limit intake. You get a much greater insight into the relation how many calories various food and amounts actually are
• The only way to improve things in the long term is to change habits etc.
• It takes time.
• You can’t and won’t do it perfect every or even most days.
• Doing something is always better than none
• Start with goals and routines you can keep up and tighten as you move on
• Evaluate and change as you go to identify things that don’t work for you.
• Small meals is great if you get hangry
• Fasting is great if you prefer bigger to smaller meals or if always snacking is a problem

Some of my conclusions on all of this is that loosing weight and getting fitter requires you to be willing to not do the things that do the opposite. I could have been a lot thinner and fitter if I was willing to do some diet and habit changes that I’m not willing to do.

I’ve landed at going to the gym almost every day, and intermittent fasting as a way where I can eat whatever I feel like and mostly stay within my weight target range.

So, I have goals I’m working towards.

Some of them I enjoy working against, others, I only enjoy getting closer to the goals. It is called discipline.

When people get surprised by me not liking or enjoying most of what I spend my time doing, I just shrug and ignore them.

Some of what I do is because I enjoy it. But not everything. I’d rather put in the work and fail than being one of those who die with regrets about not trying.

But this is the important thing. I don’t care if it is perfect today or any day. I just care that when I look at weeks and months I move closer to where I want to get to.

I’m the kind of person a lot of neurotypical people struggle a lot with. Because unless it is the intent, as in a joke or whatever, I don’t speak or write in a way where you get anything useful from reading between the lines.

Especially when it is in writing.

Plus I will typically sensor myself a lot either because of clarity or avoid getting into trouble. If I don’t it either means I’m impulsive or more likely that I trust the people present.

Anyways.

Here is a thing that always drive me nuts that so many people get mixed up: the difference between referring to a person versus something a person did.

If I say something you did was dumb, does not mean I think you are dumb.

I have no idea why I keep playing around with it.

Probably because of how stupid fast it is. But I don’t love how it looks; especially the tabs.

It have been a on and off project for years at this point to look at it. Unlike most other non iTerm terminals I haven’t dropped it yet.

I love this app, and use it all the time when I heard something I want to checkout on a podcast but it isn’t in the show notes and the podcast don’t provide their own transcript.

It lets you transcribe from audio on device. Can be slow as fuck though.

There are a lot of clever UX ideas that drive me up the fucking wall.

Like for example, when some validation error or auto correct are triggered while I am filling it out — especially when it is a multi-field value like an address or date time field.

2 minutes ago it was one of the iOS apps that “fixed” it when I tried to set the time “something happened” in the future, and reset it because that is invalid but I just happened to change the time before I changed the date.