Check-In Round
“What has your attention right now?”
I have to play in an 11:00 PM hockey game tonight. Yikes.
An acorn hat from my parents' backyard.
Recapping last week's experiment
As a reminder, the experiment was to challenge myself to only use my iOS devices (my iPhone and my iPad) to live my life and do all my work for the week of 9/29 through 10/5.
I ended up picking a good week for it because I was on the road a lot. On Tuesday I traveled from Washington D.C. to Orlando to co-present an all day workshop on Wednesday. We almost ran into a really terrible situation with needing to get a very large PDF off our iPads and onto a client computer without access to the WiFi or any other way to transfer a large file. I luckily packed my dongle bag (every Apple device owner’s best friend) effectively and ended up having what I needed to drive the deck we used during the workshop directly from my iPad via HDMI. Up to that point the iPad was all I needed to put some finishing touches on the deck, prepare a simple facilitator’s guide for my partner and I, and to handle email/Slack while I was killing time in the airport. Flew home to DC super late Wednesday night, went to the client’s office for an important meeting super early Thursday morning (where my I used my iPad to handwrite notes during the meeting) and then ended up unexpectedly flying back to Michigan for a family emergency later that morning.
Lessons learned
Quite simply, I feel even more certain that going iPad only while traveling is completely possible. It’s mostly possible to do all my work, even from home, with just my iPad, too. The new level of capability unlocked by the desktop-class Safari on the iPad (new in iPadOS this year) lets me do a few tasks that used to be nearly impossible. There were two things I ended up not having to do due to the unexpected travel that I was anticipating not even trying to do from my iPad -- recording a podcast and leading an important Zoom call while sharing my screen. Both are possible, I think but it didn’t seem worth the hassle to do it.
As much as I like working from iOS when I’m on the road, it’s hard to beat the ergonomic setup of having an external monitor and a keyboard when I’m working from home. I suppose I could try using the monitor with my iPad — which may be an experiment worth doing at a later time. As a mostly remote worker, I think it’s important that my audio and video be as high quality as possible when I’m on a video call with colleagues or clients. With my laptop, I can use an external mic and a better camera than I can if I’m working from my iPad. Between that and the ergonomic setback of working from a touchscreen all the time I’m pretty sure my optimal setup is some kind of desktop computer when I’m at home and my iPad for when I’m on the road.
When I was initially describing the experiment in the last issue of The Deliberate I mentioned relaxing the “default apps only” experiment I had been kind of unofficially running because I didn’t want to feel hamstrung in what tools I had available during this already inherently limiting experiment. Turns out, I didn’t really need to relax that restriction. Nearly everything I do as a consultant and writer can be done with Apple’s default apps — which is a pretty cool feeling.
The last lesson, which isn’t really anything about the experiment itself, is that I need to have a reminder in Day One show up on my phone in addition to my iPad. I thought I’d be more likely to write a daily reflection if I did it from my iPad but what I failed to account for was the fact that I’m rarely in front of my iPad in the evening. That means I usually didn’t see the notification that I had setup to prompt myself to answer a couple questions about how the experiment was going each night.
In summary:
iOS-only when traveling is very easy to do and will probably be my setup going forward.
macOS at home has some key advantages (namely higher quality audio/video and ergonomics) than working from iOS.
I can get nearly all my work done with default Apple apps — so any time spent fiddling with neato third party apps is probably a huge distraction.
I can’t have my only notification to reflect on how the experiment has gone show up on my iPad because I’m not likely to see it.
Next week's experiment: Lift (almost) every day
The past two weeks have been kind of rough with traveling for work, then traveling home to see my dying grandfather, then traveling back to DC, then traveling back to MI for the funeral. When I travel a lot I don’t eat particularly well or consistently workout. Add to that the emotional turmoil of losing a loved one and it’s safe to say I haven’t been taking care of myself particularly well for the last few weeks. I think I want to do something this week to help push myself into being a bit healthier. I was recently reminded about how much I enjoy lifting weights and prior to this week’s tumult I had been going somewhat consistently. I’d like to get back to that. Therefore:
This week I’m going to lift weights Sunday through Thursday, take Friday off (it’s a travel day to Michigan for the first inaugural Spurlin Brother’s Trip anyway) and then try to go for at least one walk or hike on Saturday or Sunday.
I'm anxious to show myself that I can get back on the bandwagon of doing some kind of meaningful exercise every day (even if it's just an active recovery day). I'm also curious to see whether this feeling of, "Oh yeah, I used to love lifting weights," is actually that or just a feeling of novelty.
What has my attention
This week was heavy on experiment self-reflection and exploration, so I'm going to skip my planned commentary on these articles. I don't think I want to do that in every issue going forward. I think I may end up alternating between experiment heavy issues and link commentary heavy issues. We'll see...
Closing Round
Working: Spending lots of time facilitating and teaching teams how to run this type of meeting.
Watching: Hockey season is back! The Good Place is back! Bob’s Burgers is back! Everything is back!
Listening: I stumbled across The Early November’s new album, Lilac, and rather liked it on the first listen. Very different from what they sounded like back when I was listening to them in high school but still has a certain consistency that brings me back to driving the streets of Auburn Hills in my 1989 Plymouth Reliant.
Reading: Just finished Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. Mostly good. A little trite in places. Easy to snap off a chapter in a couple minutes. I think this is one I’ll be coming back to many times in the future.
Until next time!
Your friend,
Sam