frozen octopus

Some call it runway and 10,000 feet. Some call it earth and stars. Some call it trees and forest. It goes by many names, but they are all ways of symbolizing perspective.

Coming up with the theme is the fun part. Actually taking the time to do the perspective work is the hard part. I use the GTD system, which has around five horizons of focus that I am supposed to review.

I have them dutifully set up in my tasks app, which I dutifully skip every time they come up. Then I feel guilty about not taking stock and planning ahead. I think the hurdle for me is actually asking myself the questions. I love reviewing, thinking, and planning. But being the interviewer and also the interviewee at the same time is too much for my brain.

I've been messing around with Claude Cowork lately. So I decided to build a skill for maintaining my horizons of focus (perspective). I'm have it scheduled out to ask me the questions I need to answer to figure out my horizons of focus. It then records my answers to a simple text file that is the source of truth for my perspective.

It has instructions to always read that text file before helping me plan my day. The results so far are when I get my daily briefing, it is adding notes to the tasks I need to do with things like "this task aligns well with something you mentioned in Horizon 3: Goals and objectives".

Being reminded of the horizons like that is giving me a little boost to get that one done or going. This is a work in progress, but it is fun slowly building this robo-friend.

A while back, I made a shortcut using Apple Script that opens up all the folders in Finder where stuff collects. When I run it, an obnoxious amount of folders pop up. I am forced to close them all one by one, which is really annoying. But while I am in each folder, tasks and ideas are getting into my flow a lot more. My folder structure is getting a lot flatter. A lot of images are getting converted into text and put into where they should actually be.

Weekly might be a lot more sane for a folder cleaning task like this. I do think daily is making doing this a little less anxiety-producing though. Making decisions on a couple of files a day is a lot less mental stress than a week’s worth of stuff.

As a bonus, processing image files is breaking me of the habit of taking a screenshot to remember something. It is quick to take one, but it is just kicking things down the line for future me.

Always be learning, right? The current thing I am getting my head around is how to use Claude Cowork as a personal assistant. I signed up for a workshop and I am slowly and intentionally getting things happening.

My end goal with the workshop is to have the robot assistant help me with all the band business stuff. Something like I add shows to a show spreadsheet and merch stock levels to a merch spreadsheet. The robot assistant would check them for changes or levels and then create tasks for me.

Getting merch, shows, and podcast minutiae more automated would help me so much. We'll see how it goes.

Tag files with keyboard on Mac OS

1. Select file with arrow keys
2. Click command-I
3. Click Tab twice
4. Type the Tag

Tagging is how magic happens on my laptop. I have the Hazel app watching my Downloads and other folders, like a hawk. When I tag a file with a context (e.g. work), Hazel moves it to a Work folder. That folder also has a bunch of rules that automatically organize the file where it needs to go.

So if I tag a file in Downloads with the "work" tag plus a client tag, Hazel moves the file to the work folder, then moves it to the correct client folder in a folder with the date as a name.

I had a keyboard shortcut set up to make the tagging so easy. I would select the files, hit my keyboard shortcut, tag the files, and Hazel kicks in. It is truly magical when you tag a bunch of files and folders in Downloads and they start flying around to the spots they need to be in.

That keyboard shortcut stopped working in Tahoe though. I have tried everything to get that shortcut working, but no dice. Nothing fixed the issue. When I relaunch Finder, the shortcut works for a bit and then just quits working. Even tagging in the Finder preview window isn't working 100% for me.

Then I remembered you can click Command-I and tag a file there too. Those tags are working 100% like before the Tahoe update. Then I started noticing that it is actually just as fast tagging this way as my old shortcut was. I hit Command-I, tab, and type the tag.

Why was I so hung up on getting my shortcut working for so long? This route is the same level smooth for me. Files get tagged without touching the trackpad. It also reminds me to quit being so hardheaded trying to use this laptop. 

Every morning I respect my brain/mind by making an Americano, putting on a jazz record, and writing 200 words of free writing. It is a really nice way to fade into a day instead of reading some dire news or sitting down and laboring right away on tasks.

So morning is pleasant. But evening not so much. I really need to get a night version of that happening. Some sort of fade out to match the morning fade in.

Reading seems like a good evening bookend for morning writing. Music writing also seems like a good thing to schedule. Like making the equivalent of 200 words in sound somehow.

Don't know yet but this is a thing that is brewing. It took a bit to become muscle memory but the 200-word morning writing took for me. Seems reproducible at other times of the day for sure.