George Santayana noted that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is so true it hurts. It may apply to political leaders, but it actually applies to all of us. It’s a piece of wisdom that follows naturally from a psychological truth. The psychological truth is this:
If you do not observe how you do something then there is little chance of you improving it.
You could be forgiven for believing that computers are deliberately designed so that you will be productive in your use of them. After all, the whole IT industry keeps blaring on and on about automation and the huge business benefit it delivers; saving millions here and creating gargantuan opportunities there and generally saving the world from all sorts of terrible perils.
That isn’t what really happens. What really happens is that various companies come up with ideas that they then productize and market the hell out of. The modern personal computer was born in Xerox PARC, plagiarized by Apple and then replagiarized by Microsoft. Productivity took a severe hit when Microsoft became the dominant PC company, because improving user productivity was never a part of Microsoft’s business model. Microsoft talked the talk, but it didn’t walk the walk.
Apple does care to some degree about productivity, but that doesn’t mean that the Mac is dramatically more productive for most users. It isn’t. Most new users of the Mac are not first time computer users. They bring their unproductive Windows PC habits with them. You hear quite a few Mac converts declare that “the Mac isn’t that much better than the PC.”
The problem is not with the Mac, chum.
The Inherent Productiveness of the Mac
Nevertheless, as far as most apps are concerned, they are not far wrong. The Mac’s iLife (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, etc.) is better than the PC equivalent, and the native management apps are a little better, but they’re nothing to write poetry about. But, as far as productivity itself is concerned, they are dead wrong. You can think of the Mac as an object-base GUI resting on top of a full implementation of Unix sitting over the Mach kernel. Very few people have paid tribute to this, but it is this that has put Windows completely in the shade.
- Because of the Mach kernel, applications can fail but the OS doesn’t fail (except in really abnormal circumstances). That’s productivity-positive by the way.
- Because of Unix (Free BSD) you have a complete heavy-weight OS running the show – and it’s all very scriptable at that layer. That’s productivity-positive by the way.
- Because of the GUI (taken from NeXT computer) you can treat applications as a set of objects and integrate them (if you have the software talent). That’s productivity positive too.
The point here is that the OS is not broken and unpredictable, it’s well designed and coherent (just like Linux) and you can make it work for you. You can make the rules.
In the series of Mac productivity articles I’m writing here, I’ve been recommending a number of things, particularly the use of hotkeys to initiate as many “events” as possible – because it’s faster to work that way. I would not be advocating this if it were not for the fact that you can have complete control over all the hotkey mappings. In fact, the truth is that you can make the Mac work the way that you want it to work. This is a wonderful defense against Apple when it comes out with goofy ideas like the dashboard, but it’s also great when Apple adds truly great ideas like Spaces, because you can just include them in. And it just works.
The Productive Life
Unfortunately there’s a component in the whole Mac setup that neither Apple, nor any software capability can do much about. That’s you.
If you want to be productive, you have to really want it, because it involves work. The fact that the Mac is so well-designed helps, but the truth is that if you put a lousy driver in a Rolls Royce, he’s still a lousy driver. The average PC user is a lousy driver; untrained, unthinking and inept. And that’s great. The average level of interface skill is so low that even by improving a little bit, you will suddenly stand-out from the crowd.
Here’s what you have to do:
- Read the whole of this series on productivity. Particularly read The Principles of Personal Productivity (on the Mac). You need to know how to be productive or else you’ll not know which of your habits to change.
- Observe the way you do things on the Mac. Particularly observe how you do the things you do frequently. For example; How do you use the browser? How do you search using Google? The things you do frequently are the low hanging fruit. If you can improve them, you win more.
- Don’t be confined by the areas I’ve focused on. There may be other important aspects of the environment that could be improved. How do I sit? Where do I put the mouse? etc.
- Focus first on mouse v keyboard. This is a big area where you can make a difference. Whenever you use the mouse, just check that there was no way of using the keyboard.
- Be aware of the whole screen area and how you make use of it. Get into the habit of of removing noise (i.e distractions) and amplifying signal.
- Be aware of how you manage files. If you spend time looking for files, it’s because you lost them. Losing files is usually a consequence of having a poor filing strategy. think about how to imporve the filing strategy.
- Be curious. Find out what all the commands you don’t use in an application do. They’re either useless or they’re there for some reason. Pay particular attention to Preferences. What are the choices and what do they mean?
- More haste, less speed. This is not about becoming more productive as fast as possible, it’s about changing the way you use the Mac gradually, and improving all the time. If you become obsessed and start implementing a vast hotkey scheme that covers everything, you’ll spend all day, or all week or even all month on it. And that’s not productive. Just include improving your productivity in your regular activities, but don’t go crazy about it.
Please do this.
Click on this link for other postings on Apple Mac Productivity.
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