Kinkless Desktop 5: Cruelty can be kind

Great series of screencasts! Another rule that might be helpful: move all files on desktop to inbox except for inbox/outbox/pending (after the skip aliases and saved searches). This will force you to keep that desktop clean.

I added a ten minute delay to the “Delete empty folder” rules, because often I like to package up assorted files that belong together, and then drag the whole folder off to the archive or pending areas. I found that the default rules supplied would delete the empty folder even as I was selecting items to drop in to it. I figure 10 minutes is enough time to get thing pre-organised, but not so long that clutter becomes a factor.

Then, I added some colouring to the Pending folder. I used blue to mark when something has not been touched in a week. I have a two-layered approaching to things that are in progress. I like the idea of having immediate projects right on the desktop, and Pending is perfect for that, but there are some projects which take a long time to complete (perhaps even many months, or years in the case of books), that shouldn’t be in Pending. So I have another directory in my Home called Working. I could just use Archive, but I want to have a good solid line between things I’m doing and things I have completed (or things which I have collected as research, as the case may be). If I ever need to “promote” a project back to active status, then I can drag it back into Working (or Pending). Marking week old projects in Pending is a good way to remind myself that it should probably now go to Working, unless I intend to finish it within a few days. That keeps Pending clean for just the things that I am immediately working on, without risking losing them in Archive.

Another good use of the Working/Archive dichotomy is in tracking project versions. Periodically, a project will come to the point where I want to save a milestone. Moving a copy from Working to Archive is a clear signal that one is older than the other. With diligent naming conventions, I can easily make a Smart Folder within Working projects which automatically collects these older version from Archive, for quick reference.

Incidentally: Is anyone else having trouble posting from Firefox? I simply cannot get past the captcha validation. I had to load up Safari to post this.

I saw in your excellent screencast that you had some DevonThink Pro databases, Yojimbo, plus a seemly well structured Archive folder.

There’s quite a bit of overlap in what those three systems can do. How do you separate them? How do those storage apps fit into your trusted system? I have all those apps too (plus more like VoodooPad), and I have to admit that I’m floundering between them.

This Kinkless Desktop has been great for explaining a structured system and how to make it work. Hopefully we can get another showing your workflow with those other apps too.

Thanks!

Thanks for this series Ethan, its all good stuff.

I have a lot to owe kinkless; If it wasn’t for kGTD I probably wouldn’t have seen the light and purchased my shiny mac laptop. kinkless changed my life #! But really, thanks for this, I really can’t wait to see what else you have for us.

Something I would’ve loved to see more of in this series is how to actually use the folders; and I guess OS X in general.

I love the idea, and I’m already having benefits of not using the desktop as a crap-pile. But it’s like.. ok, so I have a project coming up. It gets a folder in the Archive.. an alias of which goes into Pending. Files coming in go to Inbox.. Which I work with in the Inbox, and later sort into the project folder if it’s useful. Or is this where quicksilver and metadata comes in - tag files related to a project wherever they are, and move on files wherever they stand periodically.

I think I’d just like to watch Ethan use his desktop. Just to do what he does.

Infact, I would love a web app that is people contributing screencasts of them doing what they do.. people can ask questions and give hints for better ways to do.. things. shrug

You implied in the screencast that you use OmniFocus to track all your tasks. Does that mean, even as an alpha, you’ve found it stable enough to trust? I’m one of the lucky ones with access, and I’m wondering if I should just pull the trigger and import my kinkless document. :)

Jonathan Cisco had a great comment above that I was wondering about as well. I, too, would love to hear more about these apps and how they work into your workflow. I’ve been testing both Devonthink and EagleFiler, and I haven’t settled yet on which app to use. What advantage, if any, have you found with using Yojimbo? I’ll second the motion for a screencast on this!

Thanks

great stuff, Ethan. And thanks to you, I’ve recently purchased licenses for CandyBar, Pixadex and Hazel. I’m enjoying working with them. The icon stuff doesn’t improve productivity but does improve the aesthetic quality of the computing experience, something I think many of us tend to underestimate.

I’ll add my comments to those above whom are curious about the presence of both DevonThink Pro and Yojimbo. I’m an avid DT Pro user, love it and use it as my information repository. Just makes a perfect archival tool for me but I can’t imagine why I’d also use anything like Yojimbo or EagleFiler at the same time.

Also curious about why you use so many different DT databases, what the rationale there is. I tried that and found that for me it defeated the idea of an archive, one place to dump everything and then use the tool to find it. And still not really sure why you have the DT db files in your archive folder. Is it just because conceptually it makes sense to have them there or do you somehow need them for ready access for some reason?

a couple of other thoughts…

I’d tried the ‘sweep items off desktop into inbox’ rule and got the same result, it moved EVERYTHING.

So it’s not the most elegant approach, but I just created separate folders/rules for each of the folders on my desktop (only have four of em: Action, Archive, Inbox, Read) and used the same ‘label if meets this date criteria’ rules. Then deleted the other rules for desktop and created the one that simply sweeps items off the desktop and into inbox if it’s not named the same as one of my folders, and date modified is older than 5 minutes. So far so good.

And final question: what software do you use to make these videos? You’ve probably mentioned this previously but I missed it.

Wow! I was waiting to play with hazel and waiting to buy it until I thought of a good reason. Now I have one. This is most excellent.

Ethan,

I also use PathFinder, so I’m very interested in screencasts that focus on workflow, taxonomy, and general organizational and usage patterns within PathFinder. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to ikemstar’s question.

One clarification:

Do you not user PathFinder’s desktop or was it simply hidden/deactivated for this screencast series? (I seem to recall a conflict with PathFinder not showing Finder’s Smart Folders.)

I also am interested in a screencast addressing/comparing Yojimbo, DevonThink, EagleFiler, KIT, etc. (especially the notion of proprietary vs. open formats, always being to get one’s data out if needed).

Thank you in advance and for all of your work and contributions.

-John

Ethan,

Great series! I’ve really enjoyed this, as my desktop has always been one area I’ve had trouble keeping organized. I do have one question though. What is that red suitcasey looking thing with the large mouth in your dock between Yojimbo and DevonThink? Just curious :)

Ethan,

Also interested in your opinion of Contactizer. Membranophonist’s Ramplings has, as always, some constructive feedback.

http://blog.wilsonet.com/feed/atom/

-John

It’s a bad kink, too.

Sadly, there is an issue with Path Finder that means with custom icons installed over the top of Path Finder’s, our Inboxes and various others are never “empty”. See the Cocoatech forum here:

http://www.cocoatech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2539

Path Finder counts certain invisible directories associated with custom icons as items - even if our desktop folders are clearly empty. I think this is an issue with Apple with-holding certain API’s, etc, etc.

Bad news, eh? The Finder is so ugly, after all. So it’s:

1. Use the Finder, be happy (pass the sickbag)
2. Use Path Finder, sans pretty-fied icon goodness
3. Use Path Finder, use pretty-fied icons, live with your new “never-completed” workflow. Scheisse.

This series was so great, that I followed all of the recommendations including Hazel. I’m not usually so cavalier about beta software—my loss!! A little background: I am not a programmer, but I understand sequential logic and years ago did quite a bit of AppleScripting—so I’m not clueless. Unfortunately, I have had some BIG problems with Hazel’s inconsistency.

SETUP I keep my archive in a handful of folders that are on my desktop for easy access: My Company, Clients, Skills (development), Topics, and Personal. Within these folders were dozens of subfolders containing a few thousand documents. This week I added the INBOX, OUTBOX, TO SORT (not-quite-no-mercy) and a TODAY smart folder.

On Friday, I ran the first batch of Hazel rules. Pretty cool, it seemed to add colored labels throughout all of my archive folders and INBOX. Before the discussion came up about a rule to clear the desktop, I tried it myself. Because I had seen the explicit rule “Run rules on folder subcontents” in Ethan’s Desktop set, I created a new rule (I added an additional Desktop set first) to move Kind=Document to the Inbox. BIG MISTAKE. I did check the preview, but only saw the files on the desktop, I did not realize that the subfolders could possibly be affected since I did not add that rule. BUT, within a few moments I looked in my Inbox to discover that thousands of diligently sorted documents from all of my archives were now unsorted, loose and red-labeled in my INBOX. Oddly, a handful of remaining documents are sprinkled throughout my archive.

I could have cried. But instead I left town for the (U.S.) holiday weekend. I returned to work today, Tuesday, to try to understand how this happened. I tried out some harmless labeling. But it simply WILL NOT apply labeling to files within subfolders, unless I have the “Run rules on folder subcontents” rule included. Now, I will have to spend a dozen or more hours re-sorting these files. Big lesson learned.

Furthermore, I cannot get Hazel to clear the red and yellow labels that it applied to many but not all subfolders in my archives. At first, I attempted to use Ethan’s complete Desktop rules, but change all of the labels to none (‘x’). This works on documents but not on folders. For some reason, NOW Hazel considers that “Run rules on folder subcontents” takes precedence and it does not run the following rule to change the label. She was willing to label them on Friday, why not today?

UPDATE Paul Kim contacted me personally to let me know that he has addressed these concerns and that his response will show up on this site (as soon as Ethan has a chance to verify that it is not spam). I really appreciate a developer that is this responsive—and will consequently give Hazel another chance.

Nice one, Mr. Hazel ;-) We love your sexy, essential little program. It’s the mark of any great work that: a) You think: “Why didn’t I think of that?”, and b) You wonder how you ever managed without it. Excellent.

Will be interesting to see how you handle the Path Finder issue, Ethan - sorry for duplicating your post earlier. The whole psychology of “Inbox Zero” is really important, but hey, we would have no problems if the Finder wasn’t so wrecked. Or different ones.

Don’t we get any love for Tinderbox on this board? In so many ways, I love DevonThink. I wrestled with it for a couple of years before going with Tinderbox, which (for me) is just more flexible and extensible. And here’s the killer: it’s lightweight. And DevonThink is just not that.

Here’s my workflow: 1. Capture: Yojimbo (it’s brainless). This gets moved to: 2. Inbox (can this be scripted?), where it gets processed. Reference materials are moved to: 3. Tinderbox. Reminders are placed into OmniFocus on a “for-review” basis.

I scan all my bills etc as hardcopy as PDFs into Yep (killer app!) which may seem to break the workflow somewhat, but there is some interoperability as I can link any document in it’s database through it’s file path to any Tinderbox note. And Yep is peerless for PDFs. Tagging. You’ll never know how useful their implementation is unless you try it.

Are they doing that in DevonThink, yet? ;-)

I have set up according to instructions with Inbox etc. I have implemented the Hazel script and it works nearly 100%. It works so far with files I have dropped in the Inbox.

I tried to use it for e-mail drops from Entourage but the colour coding does not seem to work. I am sure it is due to the very nature of the e-mail drop from Entourage. E-mail messages can be action items as well no matter whetheer they contain attachments or not.

One of the big challenges with improvement in management of information is that there are different facilities for information management. E-mail obviously is one of them - it has its own Inbox etc. and now Ethan is proposing a very simple and effective idea for the desktop. I enjoy the simplicity and the functionality but certainly also the beautiful icons. Thanks Ethan!

We need to be able to create some convergence for these separate facilities.

I am sue there is an easy answer to my question

I found that the “Delete empty folders” rules were a tad too aggressive for me - they kept trashing folders just after I created them (to have a little order in my outbox mostly). I appended “Date added - is not in the last - 1 Hour” to both rules to deal with that.

Apart from that, thank you so much for this series. I meant to impose some structure on my desktop, now I finally could!

Well, just a quick note : Ethan, you really rocks. I mean, first of all I am a mac user for ages, developer for years, and I felt like I had nothing to learn for basic usage of the system. Obviously I was wrong, and I must thank you for this lesson. Thanks for the time you spent on screencasting and publishing your work on the subject, I rarely see such good writings on such simple things, now I feel much more comfortable with my desktop and I owe you that.

I’ve fully implemented Kinkless Desktop and it (combined with using Omnifocus beta) is doing a lot to help straighten out my chaotic work life. Big thanks !

I just created the four folders as in your screencast, moved some files around, installed Hazel, and installed your three sets of rules. It has turned the labels of the four folders green—including the “Archives” alias even though the “skip aliases and saved searches” rule was activated. It shouldn’t act on the folders themselves, should it? Just the contents, no?

I use a lot of supporting documents in my design work, photoshop brushes, actions, gigs of vector artwork that I’ve created over the years and reuse… fonts..

Any recommendations as to how one can manage a good collection of stock materials?

Ethan,

I figured out what I was doing wrong. I had the option to show file extensions enabled in the Finder preferences.

Wow, what a great series of screencasts! Thank you ever so much for helping me get a grip on my desktop chaos. Kind regards from Berlin, jan

Thanks for a great Hazel intro which made me buy Hazel instantly - and I really like it.

I’m using a system very close to the one in the screencast. So I get a clear, visual indication on how long stuff has been sitting on my desktop.

But often the right thing to do about a color-coded file is just to move it - but the color-code (of course) stays although it just makes sense in a desktop/download folder-context.

Does anyone know of a clever way to achieve this with Hazel, alternatively Automator?

I could decide to just get Hazel to remove any grren/yellow/red colros from any files outside the two folders mentioned above, but I’m hoping something more elegant is possible.

Hope I didn’t miss anything in the many comments.

Great series! Very useful for me (particularly the custom icons), and hopefully helpful to my wife if I can get her to watch :)

I was wondering, what did you use to create the screencasts? I need to create some screencasts myself and these look great. Thanks!