I’m working on integrating an iPad (back) into my workflow as a developer.

I used an iPad 2 (c. 2011) while I was completing my MBA. I mainly used it for taking notes and saving money on hard copy textbooks. But after it got old and painfully slow, I stopped using it. It was a nice to have, but I never felt the need to replace it with a newer model.

Lately, however, I have been hearing from a number of developer friends that an iPad – along with an Apple Pencil – is simply invaluable for people, like me, who are constantly reviewing, signing and marking up documents and drawings. So I have decided to reevaluate how I work.

I am still getting set up, but I can already see how it is going to dramatically streamline some of my workflows (for one, there will be much less scanning).

I am currently on the hunt for apps that can help with floor plan designs – something that will work like trace paper but with dimensions. We spend a lot time working to make these perfect. It’s the core product, after all. So far I’ve found TracePro by morpholio. Maybe you all know of something better.

Outside of the office, I also think I’ll be able to replace my laptop when it comes to writing this blog and editing photos on the road. There’s Lightroom for iPad and all you need is an SD card reader to download all of your photos to it. (Too bad it isn’t possible to connect my Fujifilm directly.)

I’ll let you know how all of this goes. But if any of you have already gone paperless, please feel free to leave your tips in the comment section below.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

In addition to email, phone, and text, we live in a world where you can also easily and directly connect with people on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Swarm, WhatsApp, Slack, as well as on many other platforms.

As much as I love tech, I personally find this exhausting and far too distracting. So early last year I turned off all social media and messaging notifications – on both mobile and desktop – other than on the two platforms that I most commonly use. (Facebook and LinkedIn are not on this shortlist.)

The result is that I am now missing (and consequently ignoring) a ton of direct messages. But as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as too much information, just poor filters. If you really want to reach me, I am not hard to find. You’re reading my public and daily journal right now.

Zooming out from social media DMs, I am reminded of one of my all-time favorite Seth Godin posts where he talks about the value in saying no – which is, of course, just another kind of filter:

No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.

And nobody should feel bad for saying no. A friend of mine likes to remind me that no is the second best answer. Yes is obviously the best, but a firm no is far better than an indecisive maybe that leaves everyone wondering what to do next.

I should probably say no more often than I do. But I am working on it. Every now and then I remind myself that there’s huge value in saying no. Today’s post is that reminder and maybe it will be yours too.

Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

Lately I’ve been finding that I need to divide my time between multitasking and blocks of uninterrupted time. The multitasking phase is doing calls, responding to emails in 3 seconds, going from meeting to meeting, and so on. It’s a mode that many of us probably exist in virtually all of the time.

But I can’t stay in this mode all of the time. I think of it as short attention span mode. There are times when I need blocks of uninterrupted time so that I can “go deep.” One example would be to review drawings. I really need to focus so that I can think of all of the externalities associated with the decisions being made.

This is related to my post about managers and makers, but it’s also the focus of a recent book by Cal Newport called, Deep Work: The Secret to Achieving Peak Productivity. You can read more about the book here at Knowledge@Wharton, but I wanted to highlight two concepts. The first is this equation:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus).

Obviously the argument here is that if you want to maximize your output, you need to increase the intensity of your focus. Minimize distractions. Ratchet up the intensity. There’s only so much time in the day.

Newport gives the example of Adam Grant. He is a New York Times bestselling author and the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

He is so committed to intensity of focus that he batches all of this teaching into the fall semester, allowing him to truly focus on the students. He’s the highest rated teacher at Wharton. At the same time, this lets him focus on research and writing during the spring and summer semesters. He’s also known to regularly use auto-of-office responders when he’s in the office, but needs to focus.

The second concept is that of “attention residue.” The idea here is that when we switch from some Task A to some other Task B, our attention doesn’t immediately snap over. A portion of our attention remains on the original task and distracts us from fully focusing. There’s residue.

An example of this would be when you’re working on something and you see an email come in. As soon as you turn your attention to that notification, your attention gets divided. And even if you don’t immediately respond to that email, a portion of your attention now remains with that uncompleted task. It lingers in the mind.

The above probably makes intuitive sense to a lot of you, but in many ways our work culture today does not encourage intensity of focus.

Thanks for reading today. There’s lots of evidence to suggest that the best way to learn new things is to not simply read about it, but to share it with others. That’s one of the reasons I blog and hopefully you find that valuable.