Transcription
Today, I now manage two YouTube channels on top of a busy life filled with projects and hobbies. So, in this video, I'm going to talk about how I manage all of this, utilizing strictly Apple software, split across my main three devices, which are my Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Now, full disclosure, for my YouTube channels only, there are a few more apps I like to use, like Things and Notion, but it's more out of the interest of science and being able to share new content here. Everything in this video will be 100% geared to Apple hardware and software. But if other productivity apps interest you, hit subscribe and expect more soon. So, let's get into it.
When breaking down my system, I look at it as three main categories, which are capture, organize, and take action. If I can do all three efficiently and seamlessly, I know I have a good system that works for me. In all honesty, one of the biggest pros of using Apple's first-party apps is that they save you a lot of time. And the reason is because of the ease of use, and that they are so low maintenance from a user perspective. I don't need to think about app companies being sold or disbanded, about extra subscriptions, or compatibility issues between all my various devices.
But before we get into the first step, which is capture, let me break down my hardware first, and how each is being utilized as a tool in my workflow. Always with me is my iPhone 15 Pro, which is my second brain in my pocket. This device allows immediate action, whether adding a new task and reminders, or checking something off as I'm out and about, or while working on a project. For me, it is an instant resource for anything I need to look up, which I'm sure any of us could relate to. Lastly, it is the device that is getting probably 95% of my Siri commands. Now, sometimes I may use my Apple Watch Ultra 2 in a pinch, but I give the iPhone the edge in reliability for all the requests I put at it, and I enjoy the faster, more intuitive confirmation that Siri has actually done what I described.
Second on the mobile front is my iPad Pro, which is the second generation 11-inch version. If I'm not mistaken, this is a 2020 model, and while I have major FOMO of the latest M-series iPad Pros, this thing has been absolutely solid day in and day out for me. The iPad sort of serves as my daily planner. It's the first thing I check when I get up for to-dos and calendars, and it's the last thing I am on before bed. There, I'm usually tidying up my to-do list, cranking out any last notes for the day, doing research, and so forth. As I no longer have a laptop, it is my mobile machine, and I will do things like edit photos in Lightroom, work on thumbnails, or whatever when I'm on the go.
The beast that serves as sort of the hub for all of this is my M1 Max Studio. It has 32 gigs of RAM and a 2 terabyte hard drive, and this thing ensures that everything is centrally backed up in conjunction with iCloud and my NAS. The jump to the M-series chips from my Intel machine was a huge leap and has been worth every penny for things like video editing for this channel. I cannot give it enough praise for the intensive and deep work I put it through.
So now that you know the tools of the trade, we start with capture. Capturing info or to-dos can happen in many ways. My main app of choice is Apple Reminders. Here, I have my list for the day automatically available based on assigned dates. If there is a specific activity to get ready for, such as a weekend camping trip, I'll utilize a shared list between my wife and I that we can use throughout the week to make sure we are covered. If a friend tells me about a new place to visit or a movie to watch, I also have dedicated lists to capture those thoughts all in one place, so when the moment is right, I have that list at hand.
Now, Reminders also has some of this extra muscle that it didn't have earlier on. For example, if I didn't want to manually organize my reminders in a different list, I could do more with hashtags and smart lists. Let's say you use Reminders for work and your personal life, you could add the tag "work" to any work-related task, and those could all be housed in a single list. Another neat feature of Reminders is viewing your list and its various sections in a column view. I find this view really helpful if items in my list or the project itself has a few different steps or phases. And recently, I saw a friend use it in a really useful way to see activities in each separate day of a vacation. I myself do go back and forth with using this feature.
With Reminders, you can also create templates, which I'm starting to use more and more. Let's say you have the same series of to-dos you want to use over and over, maybe for tuning up your yard equipment every spring. In Reminders, you can make a template so that at any time, you can have a fresh to-do list to work off of those tasks.
The Notes app, in comparison to the Reminders app, is certainly the ideal choice for longer-form content, whether you want to capture articles, recipes, guides, and more. With Notes, you can also do things like document scanning by tapping the camera icon within a note and tapping "Scan Documents." This way, if you wanted to add pages of a manual or something from your taxes to a note, you can take a photo and import the pages in a very streamlined way. To really speed this up, you can hold your finger on the Notes icon and click "Scan Document" to capture something without actually having to go into the app.
The last thing I want to mention on capturing notes is the ability to do quick notes. If I need to capture something really quick that I want to organize later, I've added this quick note icon to my control panel, which I can access by swiping down. If I create a quick note, all of them are put into their own category called, you guess it, "QuickNotes," at the top of my Notes app for easy discovery. Often, I will go into my quick notes and clean up what appears there by deleting them or moving them to my main notes folder after I've made any necessary additions or edits. Almost think of it as a simple inbox.
For a bonus hack, if you create a quick note while reading an email or visiting a web page, you can easily add the email or web link to your quick note for easy reference later. All I do is swipe again into the control panel and start a quick note while on, let's say, the specific web page. This is just another example of where Apple's first-party apps can really shine.
My last example for capturing information has to do with continuity features built into the operating systems of my devices. If I am browsing a website on mobile but I need to give the page a little extra love and attention, I can easily click the browser icon on my Mac dock to continue what's at hand. In a similar fashion, if I have copied text on one device, I can paste it on a different device in the blink of an eye. Kids, when I was your age, we had to email stuff to ourselves to do things just like that, seriously.
Now we move on to organize. Now, if I have somewhat responsibly captured information with my devices in the correct areas and with the correct details, the organized portion should be easier. But there are a few ways to make things even better. In the Notes app, I will pin things to the top for easy access if they are very important in order to speed up my workflow. For example, I keep my ongoing journey journal of thoughts for this channel, as well as other safe passwords and details I need in life, as a private note, all pinned to the top of the app.
Similarly, you can do the same within the Reminders app with different lists. For me, I have all default notes go to a list I've created called "Inbox," which is pinned to the top of my app. In Notes, I can continue to use hashtags or tag things for easy access later, just as I showed earlier with Reminders. But there are also other tricks up Notes' sleeve for organizing information. One of those is by being able to link to different notes. For example, if I was finishing my basement, I could have a master note that links to other notes dealing with details on plumbing, electricians, tasks I'm going to DIY, furniture that needs to be bought, and more. So that, in a way, I've almost made my own wiki where I can easily jump to appropriate notes in my collection.
The last thing I will mention for organizing is what I do in calendars. For my wife and I, having a calendar that we both automatically see without having to invite the other person for each entry as an extra step is crucial. Furthermore, we'll break out our life in extra color-coded calendars revolving around things like our camping calendar, or things for the kids, like Cub Scouts or sports, so we can easily plan for our weeks.
The final step of the journey, where the rubber meets the road, is taking action. The first thing I'll cover is simply getting in the zone. If I need to get something done and avoid distractions, I'll enable a Focus mode, which will silence notifications while I work. As part of this, I can also change things like which apps show on my home screen during a Focus mode, if, let's say, I only want my work apps to show while I'm at work.
Once I've turned off distractions, I often use the Pomodoro Technique and set a timer with the goal of complete focus until that timer goes off. For those of you that are not familiar with this concept, it literally is the practice of doing work in short sprints and setting a timer, and when the timer goes off, you take a small five to one-minute break before starting the next sprint. So when my timer goes off, I make sure I take a break to stretch, stretch, get some water, and whatever else fits the mood before I dive back in. The simplest way for me is just to pick up my watch or phone and tell Siri to set a timer from anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour.
If I want a little more background noise, but that isn't too distracting, I may also listen to a rainy white noise track or some movie score that has a set length, such as a half hour, and work until the music stops. Switching topics, I find that having widgets on my devices can be a big help. My favorite one currently around productivity is my Reminders widget that utilizes a smart list. When you create the Reminders widget, you have the option for it to show one list and one list only. The problem I had with this is not only did I want to see my inbox, because that's usually the latest and greatest things I wanted to tackle that are on my mind, but I also wanted to be sure to see my "Today" list in case there was anything scheduled on that specific day that I needed to take care of. My solution to this was to go into the Reminders app and create a smart list called "Today/Inbox." Basically, it's one list that I've edited to automatically include both my inbox and the "Today" list. Once that was created, I could edit my widget to utilize my new smart list in order to see exactly what I want on my home screen.
My final hack for taking action continues to revolve around these smart themes and just taking things like reminders or calendar items one step further. An example of this is asking Siri to remind me about something when I get to a certain location, like home, or having a reminder automatically display the next time I send a text to a specific person. If you've never dived into some of these features, I highly recommend giving them a shot. For calendars, it could be as simple as setting an alert prior to the start time of an event in order to give me time for traveling or getting things ready. For me, I cannot trust my lizard brain to do it all on its own.
So, I honestly feel like I could create a video on this topic at least three times in length, as there's so much more to unpack. But I hope this provided some useful tips or inspiration for your ways of getting things done within the Apple ecosystem. With a little luck, hopefully this further exposes the beauty of cloud-based apps and to use a buzzword, exposes the synergies of using hardware all within a single ecosystem. If you enjoyed the video, please hit the like button. Subscribe if you want more videos like this, and I will see you on the next one.