I’ve left todoist.

I’m not sure why I was on todoist recently but probably because I wanted a task manager on a windows PC. That’s my usually reason for choosing todoist.

But now I’m working in an Apple only environment and I’m free to choose.

While todoist has some nice aspects such as its flexibility, boards, web based automation and generous free plan, I wish it was more opinionated and native to the Apple platform. By trying to work with many task management systems, it doesn’t really encourage any system and requires hacks for a gtd style approach.

picking a new app

But what should I choose?

Well, I’ve been playing around with reminders, things 3 and OmniFocus on mobile (as I own all three) and I think I’m ready to pick.

So stay tuned for a post detailing my migration and how I set up my new system.

I've Joined PomPom as a Marketing Executive

Back in 2013 I started a small podcast to promote our English School in Badajoz, Spain.

We shared our thoughts on Spanish life and made some materials based on the topics we discussed. Our students loved it! The content was intimately relevant for them, and they got free lessons each week.

To our surprise, we ended up in the top 50 language podcasts in iTunes.

By that time I was already a major podcast fan having discovered them after graduating from university in 2008 and working scanning documents while searching for a more permanent job. The work was boring, but it let me listen to whatever I wanted while I worked.

Today, I am taking the next step of my podcast journey

I'm moving beyond just listening and creating a podcast but joining Pompom— a podcast studio application native to the Apple platform.

After speaking to the team a few months back and bonding over our loves of all things Apple, great podcasts and getting excited about their vision for the app, I knew I wanted to join. Fortunately for me, my ideas for how we could promote pompom made them want me to join as well.

I'm sure I'll share more in the future but if you're looking for a simple podcast editing app with time saving features to help you product podcasts faster, you should definitely check out Pompom on the Mac and iOS app stores.

I’m starting a new job on Monday so this is perfect moment for me to consider changing task management systems.

After all, I have a string of out of tasks for my old work that no longer matter. And this would be a great way to mark the end of my work there and a fresh start.

Losing tasks in the migration would be a feature, not a bug.

I’ve been “using” Todoist recently but I’m mighty tempted by things and omnifocus. The cost of upgrading to get the mac version would be about the same for me but I know omnifocus 4 is on the horizon so that’s another expense.

so maybe I should just push reminders as far as I can stretch it!

I just published issue 50 of my newsletter! (It’s actually a few extra which I didn’t import).

It’s gone through about four iterations during that time but the sketchnote roundup format really seams to have worked for me.

• I was sharing this content without the newsletter
• It’s simple enough that I can produce it every week
• I’ve had some really nice comments as well.

It’s certainly not perfect and I wish I had managed to get a few more subscribers it a bit more, but I enjoy making it so that’s enough for me.

I spent ages debating whether or not I should call my site Learn Create Share or keep SketchnoteClassroom or do something else.

In the end I changed to Learn Create Share as I wanted an impulse to make sketchnotes about other topics rather than just make sketchnotes on sketchnoting.

That was a fantastic personal decision.

It completely changed my approach and I am really pleased with the sketchnotes I’ve made since then.

At the same time, I’ve basically stopped making any sales of the courses I made since then!

So it was a great personal decision, but terrible “business” or brand decision. And I’m totally happy with that.

I’ve asked some friends for advice on managing a team and a lot of people respond with things on “leadership”.

I find that jump interesting. Of course there’s a lot of crossover between the two but I don’t view them as the same.

Leadership involves setting the vision and prioritise for a team. It’s about knowing where you should go and communicating that vision.

Management is about getting the most out of the people who report to you. Leadership and vision help with that, but it’s not the end of the discussion.

You can set and communicate a great vision with everyone bought in, but there can still be management issues (conflicts between team members, under performance from a team member, one team member needs a different approach, someone isn’t doing their best work) and when the vision is less than perfect, more problems can be added on.

I’m not saying that I’m a perfect leader, but I believe that my management issues aren’t related to my leadership but to my management. It’s even possible that my focus on setting a vision might be interfering with helping my team members. What I mean is I can be so focused on the goal that we should be going towards, that I miss the issues that are preventing team members from reaching that goal.

I suspect that I’m being tough on myself here (as I often am) and overthinking this, but it’s certainly an interesting area for me as I’m in the process of changing my mind on this subject.

Perhaps I’ll share more soon.

Today I realised that since I became a manager, I have a lot less “flow” time. Instead of the long, multiple hours of focus on one thing, I now have a lot more jumping from one thing to another. Part of it could be changed (by myself and others in the company) but part of it seems to be a natural part of the job. It’s a bit depressing really. Flow tasks feel incredibly rewarding and are often high value. All this jumping feels more stressful and less important work.