In my quest to turn my MacBook into an environment most conducive to writing and staying on top of all the shit I gotta keep track of as a working mom, I’ve stumbled upon a lot of articles and posts about individual workflows. Being that I belong to a jillion What’s In Your Bag? and What’s On Your Desk? -type pools, it was really no surprise to me that I’d become obsessed with people’s workflows and app lists.
I’m still fine-tuning my stuff and I love testing out applications (trial periods, as well as MacHeist, are SO CRUCIAL), but I think I’ve found a pretty good system of keeping track of it all so far. Since I spend a fair amount of online time also on my company-issued Windows machine, I try to stick with cross-platform solutions, or at least solutions I can access with my iPhone. So I’ll break it down in a few parts:
Blogging/Online Stuff
- The WordPress Dashboard. I know this seems like such a no-brainer, but I really touted MarsEdit for a minute as a one-stop shop for all of my blogging needs until I realized that some of the basic WordPress functions weren’t available from within the app (MarsEdit is certainly useful, though, if you run numerous blogs on different platforms). I still wish there was a WordPress-branded desktop app to use for offline editing, but on the blogging front, the Dashboard is an unbeatable editor. Plus, it’s accessible from any machine that has an internet connection.
- muCommander. THE BEST file manager/FTP utility I’ve ever used in my life, hands down. Easy to use, cross-platform, and best of all, FREE!
- Flickr Uploadr. Self-explanatory. If you use Flickr (and who doesn’t, these days?), this is a must.
- Tweetie (iPhone App). I honestly haven’t found any use for Twitter desktop clients, as I could easily pull up Twitter, iGoogle, or Ping.fm and tweet from there, but Twitter in Mobile Safari is kind of ugly, and Tweetie is a lightweight, fast, one stop shop. Gives me everything I need on my iPhone.
Other Writing
- Curio. Keeping ideas in my own head hasn’t been doing me well lately, so I’ve gotten more and more into the practice of mind-mapping. Curio is a bit on the pricey side at $100 for the standard version and $150 for pro, but it’s packed with tons of functions. From what I know, it has at least the basic functions of programs like MindManager and Microsoft Visio for project planning and chart-making purposes. But it can also integrate all sorts of files and links, thus acting like a digital version of an inspiration board. And the function that I was sold on: it can pull from your Evernote account, which is so clutch, since I use the Evernote iPhone app and web app to record stuff while I’m out and about or in the office. Seriously, just the Sample Gallery alone proves that the possibilities are endless with this thing.
- Scrivener. Outside of work I’ve never been an MS Office power user, so I find iWork functional enough for those types of programs — and to be truthful, you don’t need a whole lot of bells and whistles to write (Shakespeare only needed a pen and paper). But Scrivener is more than a word processor; it’s a writer’s toolbox. There are outlining and corkboard functions to keep all of your ideas right in front of you, templates for different types of writing you might be doing (novel vs. short story vs. screenplay, for example) and it’ll immediately export your writing to a submittable format. And when paired with Curio, you’d never have to decipher your own messy scribbles ever again.
- Think. So basic, and yet so necessary. While Scrivener and Pages have fullscreen views that remove all distractions (including buttons, toolbars and rulers) from your blank page, Think basically blacks out everything but the application you’re working from so you can better concentrate. Helpful when using Curio or Garage Band or whatever you might use to do your thing. Free download.
Side note: I’m still trying to figure out how DEVONthink would fit in, since I got a free license, but I’m worried this might take me down a path of more info management apps that I don’t really need.
Organization
The big caveat, of course, is that iCal/MobileMe is not the best way to keep a family in sync (read my original rant here). But it’s the only way I think I can trust BF to stay updating (rather than making him start a Google account for gCal), so it’s the system we’re stuck with. Though I did have an inkling that Apple would eventually work this into the MobileMe design, and I was right — it’ll be available with iPhone 3.0.
- OmniFocus (for iPhone and Mac). This is pretty much the only program I could possibly need for task management and to-do lists. The big complaint people seem to have is that it’s too feature-rich, but I think the fact that it’s feature-rich makes the program easier to bend to a system that works for you. There’s iCal integration, and the sync between desktop and iPhone makes it infinitely easier to stay on top of it all. Outside of iCal, this is the only program I need.
Hope some of you found this helpful. I’m always on the lookout for other people’s suggestions and new apps to try out, so hit me up in the comments!
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