Rhoneisms

For someone who is a Mac Consultant by trade and curator of a Mac centric website by labor of love, nothing is more prone to clutter then my Applications folder. Whether it is downloading and installing software to replicate a client’s setup or something to write about here to report to you, it is one of those things I am obligated to do that flies clearly in the face of everything I believe in and espouse here.

Because of this, every couple of weeks or so, I find myself going through my Applications folder and cleaning house. I throw out anything I have installed that does not meet a specific personal need and, while there, taking the time to question everything else as well. The internal dialog usually goes something like this…

Me: Do I really still need Firefox even though I have switched to Safari?
Me Too: Well, I do some web development for clients so I need it for testing.
Me: But can’t I just delete it and download and install it again when I need it?
Me Too: Sure I could but that takes time. What is more valuable, my time or that disk space?

I think you see where this is going. My point being that every need is different and can be apparent and fluid all at the same time. As I have said before, if you need two browsers to get the job done (or three, or four) then it makes sense to have them – but never be afraid to question that decision. In fact, do so as often as it makes sense. For me, and the amount of apps I install on a regular basis, that is once or twice a month. For most, I argue that should be at the very least once a year.

Do it now. Go through your Applications folder. Anything that came with your Mac, leave pretty much without question. For everything else, have this internal Q&A with yourself as you look at every other application you have installed:

Do I need this? When was the last time I launched it? Why? Is there another app that can do the same thing? If I delete it, would it be easy to install again should I need it?

There are no right answers here – unless it is an application you no longer use and have no plans to use again. In which case, the answer should be obvious.

On day one of this series, we cleaned up your Desktop and had you organize your files into the already built in groupings on your Mac. The main goal was to get them off of your Desktop and into manageable bunches. Today, let’s take the time to put some of those items where they ideally belong. Once again, I wish to preface that this series may seem rudimentary to some of you “pros” but hang in there with the rest of the folks (Who knows? You may even learn a thing or two).

Just as Apple has created ready made folders in your “Home” directory to sort like items into, they have made applications to help you further organize and enjoy those files. Photos and Music are two obvious examples (iPhoto and iTunes). Here is how to handle these:

Photos

If you moved any photos into the Pictures folder of your Home directory on day one, consider adding those to iPhoto (Choose Import to Library… in the File menu). This is really where photos belong. Once they are in iPhoto you can safely delete the originals from your Pictures folder.

There may be some images you wish not to have in iPhoto. For instance, lots of people I know who do design work keep ious images for ideas and inspiration. There are a number of 3rd party tools for that very thing that I won’t cover here, but I will challenge you to add those to iPhoto instead.

If you don’t want certain photos mixed in with the family photos, no problem. After adding these, select them and choose “Hide Photo” from the Photo menu. Then, create a new Smart Album (File: New Smart Album) and set the criteria to “Photo is Hidden”. Now, these photos will only show up when you click on the Smart Album. This tip is also good for all of those other photos you grabbed off the net that you don’t want to show up when showing off your new puppy… Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.

My point is this, there is nothing that should stop you from storing any photo you wish to keep in iPhoto and not keep any stray ones around elsewhere.

Oh, and here is an iPhoto pro-tip: You do know that photos you “delete” in iPhoto don’t really delete but get moved into iPhoto’s own special Trash, right? Well, now you do. Go to the iPhoto menu and choose “Empty iPhoto Trash” and get back a bit of disk space. You’re welcome.

Music

Similar deal here. That Radiohead album that you downloaded, unzipped, and added to iTunes. Yep, that one. Are you still holding onto the downloaded copy? Even the zip file? Why? Once it is in iTunes, trash the original. If you are worried about having a “backup” have a real backup of everything on your hard drive – one onsite and one off. That really cool mixtape.mp3, that audio interview with the productivity guru, that ringtone of your buddy’s pet bunny sniffing into a mic – stick that stuff in iTunes (File: Add to Library) and then delete it.

Also, just like iPhoto, Smart Playlists are your clutterphobic best friend. Create a new Smart Playlist where the criteria is “Playcount is less than 1”. These are all the things in your library you have never listened to. As I see it, you have two choices here – Hit the play button or hit the delete key. Perhaps you might even find some things where you hit the delete key moments after hitting the play button.

Next up…

Tomorrow, we will do a little “getting real” with your Applications folder.

Here is my list of Modest Goals for the coming year. This time, I discovered a theme had kind of grown around the initial list of things I have been jotting down the last few weeks. The theme of doing things “well”, which, when used as an adverb, Merriam-Webster defines as “in a good or proper manner”. This is what I wish to focus on for this year, doing everything in a good or proper manner:
* Eat Well – Continuing the theme of my post of a couple of weeks back (I’ll save you the drumbeating – go read the post), I have committed myself to eating in a manner that is consistent with humane, sustainable, and low-impact practices as much as possible. I am sure I will have my failings at this. For instance, I enjoyed every bit of the baked potato, smothered with nebulous foodstuff ingredients from questionable sources, I had at a suburban restaurant last night – at least while I was eating it. Today, I wish I had made a better choice that was more consistent with who I would like to be going forward. The way to get there is simply one meal at a time.
* Live Well – As part of the above, I want to take better care of my body in general and be more active. I now have the Fitbit to help track my progress. What’s a Fitbit? Merlin Mann provides a pretty good bulleted overview. What I think I like is the idea of having a practically hands off way to get real data metrics on your activities and using that data to set realistic exercise/activity/sleep goals. I have such great shops and restaurants all around me where we live. This is a very walkable neighborhood, more so then even other parts of the city. I plan to navigate it on foot as much as possible. I also want to put the practically new, but barely used, bike I own to greater use.
* Observe Well – We were walking through the warehouse section of our local IKEA the other day, when Beatrix took the time to stop, look directly up, point and yell “Fan!” with the glee only a two year old can muster. Above us was, in fact, a giant ceiling fan – I’d guess at least 20 feet in diameter. As we stood there, heads craned in wonder, looking a little closer, I noticed something even more surprising. The brand name on the fan was Big Ass Fan. That’s right, it’s a real company that makes, well, big ass fans. Despite the near endless chuckle this discovery gave me, it taught me something else more important – Take the time to notice. Delight in the small details that are revealed and, when you think you have seen all there is too see – look a little closer. I plan to do this more from now on.
* Give Well – I want to be more active in the giving of my time, resources, talent, and, of course, money to the projects and people I care about. That means a lot of things, from charity to volunteering to more posting here and the other projects I craft to guest posting on other blogs. I also want to be mindful of my consumption by acknowledging that for everything we take, someone else has to give.

In day one of this series, we cleaned up your Desktop and had you organize your files into the already built in groupings in the Home directory on your Mac. Today, I’m going to focus on two other areas on your Mac that are easily cluttered, and near impossible to ignore – the Dock and the Menubar. Here are some suggestions for how to deal with those:

The Dock

The Dock is a very useful feature of your Mac and it’s purpose is to allow you to launch frequently accessed programs quickly. Frequency is the key here. Certain programs you probably launch everyday, many times a day, or pretty much run constantly from the moment you log in to your Mac. Those are the sorts of items that belong in the Dock.

There are many applications that automatically place icons in your Dock upon installation for programs you may use only infrequently, if at all. Microsoft Office is one example (the 2008 version puts 7 icons in your Dock). Even Apple is guilty of this with the iLife and iWork suites. In addition, many people still keep an icon in the Dock long after they have stopped using the application. I argue that such items have no place in the Dock.

Take the time to look at each icon in your Dock and evaluate with honesty which ones fall into which of the above criteria. Any that fall into the later, click-hold and drag those directly up then release them and breathe a sigh of relief with every saucy little poof.

The Menubar

Like your Dock, there are many applications that put an icon in your menubar upon installation. In increasingly more cases, the menubar icon is the application. And don’t even get me started on the applications that put an icon in your Dock and your Menubar on installation even if in prior versions of that aplication you have told it you prefer one over the other (Droplr, you know I am looking at you right?).

There are some other scenarios I can think of where a Menubar icon may exist for a service that is rarely used. I have seen many people with desktop Macs that are networked via ethernet that, despite not being used, have the Airport Menubar item active. Or Bluetooth when no such devices are being used. Just because Apple put them there does not mean you need to keep them.

Therefore, just like your Dock, it can be a slippery and fast path to a lot of icons for applications and utilities that you rarely use. If you use a Menubar icon for a service or application, keep it in there. If an application has both a Dock icon and a Menubar item that perform essentially the same functions, choose one over the other.

If neither of these is true, why have a Menubar item at all. With many of them, command-clicking and dragging out of the Dock will remove it. Others have it in a preference panel or pane. Still others you simply must quit the application to make it go away.

Coming soon

Tomorrow, we will look at how to deal with some of that stuff you cleaned up off your Desktop on day one. Stay tuned…

Inspired by, and shamelessly riffing on, the wonderful Unclutter Your Life in One Week, the next 5 days will show you how you can apply some quick and simple steps to get your Mac into ship-shape.

We are going to start with cleaning up your Desktop (and keeping it that way). A computer desktop can get cluttered very quickly with files and folders. After all, it is intended to operate just like a real world desktop – a place to hold items you are working on. But, just like the real world, that spot operates best when it is being used to hold only the items you are working on. Luckily, the Mac makes it easy to file and organize these items into fairly logical grouping which will make them easy to find should you need them again. Much of this may seem rudimentary to you but, trust me, there are many that can benefit from this info.

1. In the Finder, go to the “View” menu, click on “Arrange by” and choose “Kind.” This will group items based on the type of file they are.
2. Open a Finder window and navigate to your “Home” folder. One of the nice things about the Mac is that it actually encourages you to organize into some logical groupings. Documents, Pictures, Music… It is all right there ready for you to get your org-fu on.
3. Take the files on your Desktop, now grouped by kind, and organize them into these folders. Place Documents into Documents, Pictures into Pictures, etc. Don’t worry about their final resting place (iTunes, iPhoto, etc.) right now. The goal here is simply to get your Desktop cleaned up.
4. While doing this, think about the things you don’t need to keep and can go straight to the Trash. This includes .DMG files for applications you have already installed. .ZIP files for archives you have already unzipped, etc. If you don’t need it there is no reason to file it anywhere but that circular file in your Dock.
5. A clean Desktop is easy to keep that way. Commit to taking a few seconds at the end of every day to file away items no longer needed at the ready using the steps above. The fewer the items, the less time it will take.

Last year, instead of standard resolutions for the new year, I committed to some small, achievable, and meaningful modest goals instead. I did not want the stress of big and perhaps unachievable missions for the year. I simply wanted to make a commitment to doing a few things a little bit better. Before I publicly lay out what my modest goals are for the coming year (see future post), I will revisit this past year and provide an update as to my successes or failures:
* “I will learn and use keyboard shortcuts more and use the mouse and/or trackpad less.”_ – I have been working really hard at this and would call this largely a success. It is not perfect but I use key commands far more than before, especially in apps I use on a daily basis. I have made a conscious decision to learn the shortcut for any command I find myself doing more than once a day. Also, hiding toolbars and their associated buttons in certain apps has helped because I am then forced to pause a sec before trying to use them and think of the corresponding key command instead.
* “I plan to be much more mindful of the signal to noise ratio of my online life.”_ – Success here as well. I think my RSS feeds are better organized and more regularly trimmed and evaluated for usefulness than before. I have worked really hard to keep Twitter at a manageable level (I am very picky about my follows and regularly tuck and trim that list). Recently, I have been making a real effort to try to meet people in real life wherever possible. I have met some amazing people and had unbelievable opportunities through social networking. Certainly, the signal currently outweighs the noise.
* “Of course, the signal and noise argument cuts both ways. For this reason I will continue to post here according to the following criteria and schedule – Only when I think I have something of real and original value to add to the greater internet conversation.”_ – Yep. And I hope I added even more real and original value at The Random Post and Minimal Mac as well. Same plan for next year.
* “In addition, I will be adding regular and more reliably scheduled content over at my other project, work.life.creativity.”_ – If I had any failure for the year it was this one. I am actually rather perplexed by why it was not quite working on my part. I’m not sure if it was my general discontent with the idea of talking about things like creativity and productivity instead of simply “doing” or “making”. The other founders and I have had some conversation about the project in general and can’t seem to come to terms on where to go or what to do next to breathe life back into it. I sure would hate to see it just die but I’m not sure quite where to start with the CPR.
* “I will continue to seek ways to grow my consulting business into something that can reliably sustain me and mine.”_ – Machine Methods is continuing to grow and I have done a lot of things I am proud of to help that. The majority of my business comes through word of mouth and I have been doing everything I can think of to maximize that while at the same time testing new marketing methods.
* “As is the case with many a couple, Princess Bethany’s resolutions and goals are, by proxy, mine as well. Towards that end, I also will work towards a better appreciation for our home.”_ – Not everything we had hoped is done but many things are and my appreciation has grown. Our new library sure is a nice place to spend time.
In a while, I will post the modest goals I have set forth for this coming year. Stay tuned…