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2019 reflection question
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Posted by thouqht
Jan 3, 2020 at 12:53 AM
To follow up -
I’ve also basically stopped perusing this site since I was no longer looking for new software. And to be honest, I’m happier for it.
Looking back, while CRIMPing was definitely fun for a period and getting that dopamine spike of some new software was cool - but on the whole, CRIMPing for me was not something that actually made me feel good.
It was mostly done from a place of avoiding doing actual work and not feeling like my current setup was good enough.
In many ways my CRIMPing was an unwillingness to be humble and disciplined enough to do good things with what I had.
Not sure if this resonates with anyone, but if so, my recommendation is to find a way to settle with yourself on a set of tools that are “good enough” and then get to work.
If you’ve got enough free time that you are happy to let CRIMPing be a hobby, then have at it. But if you know it does you more harm than good, take the plunge and cut it out.
Wishing you all the best in 2020!
Posted by satis
Jan 3, 2020 at 02:24 AM
I (re)discovered that what I should prioritize for myself is cross-platform apps that are privacy-related, such that local files sync (with encryption) in the cloud to Mac/iOS, instead of using apps/services with files in a cloud that serve them back to me. That decision helped me focus and eliminate a number of apps I’d been considering, though it has kept me with some files on my desktop for the time being.
Despite loving the text/font/color customization of Ulysses, I found myself drifting back to black-on-white text processing in IA Writer.
I’ve given up hope that Gingko will progress - it seems permanently stalled with a web-service and a separate, incompatible desktop app, with an overworked, overburdened (and mostly absent) dev in charge.
I’ve realized I’m fine with subscriptions for the right apps, but that there are many free/cheap alternatives that get me maybe 80% of what I get from several of my subscriptions, which has me thinking about dropping some.
Posted by Amontillado
Jan 3, 2020 at 01:14 PM
I do most of my crimping vicariously, and wish this site were more active.
New products are good to hear about, because looking at a new answer to an old question helps find better ways to work, even if I keep using the same software.
How others use software similar to mine is helpful, too. It’s only in the last 18 months or so that I’ve come to appreciate the power of tags. i just didn’t get it, before. Now I can’t get along without them.
Reading posts about using tags here is what got me started with them.
Regards to all!
thouqht wrote:
To follow up -
>
>I’ve also basically stopped perusing this site since I was no longer
>looking for new software. And to be honest, I’m happier for it.
>
Posted by jaslar
Jan 3, 2020 at 04:18 PM
Thanks, all, for your thoughts. So this is basically a support group for CRIMPers!
Like others, I have narrowed down my tool set. At this point, mostly because of a greater reliance on a Chromebook (light, portable, a good fit for my lifestyle) I have migrated almost exclusively to Dynalist and Google Suite. I do share the privacy concerns some have expressed here. I haven’t put in the time to build a private network and live in org-mode, although I fantasize about it.
For me, the discovery of the year was that it really matters for me to have a streamlined, unified app that lets me see annual goals (professional and personal), track a handful of projects (the left pane of Dynalist holds active projects, which move to an archive folder when done), and keep something like a bullet journal, with tags. The discipline of maintaining those files keeps me more focused and mindful. That said, the categories of my life seem a little clearer, repeating from year to year. I’m not nearly as complicated as I used to think.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 4, 2020 at 02:45 PM
jaslar wrote:
>what new thing did you discover in 2019 through USING that
>tool?
After having discovered the “Distraction Free Mode” Chrome extension for Google Docs, I started experimenting with using Google Docs to edit and rewrite manuscripts imported from MS Word, thus being able to keep all the rich text formatting and images, while being able to work in a WriteMonkey-like distraction-free dark theme environment.
Another advantage of doing this setup is that Google Docs saves changes automatically and also keeps track of the history of changes, so one can revert easily.
While I was editing, I also needed to remove sentences and paragraphs but keep these snippets in an organised manner, should I need to refer to them or reinsert them later.
This is where the sliding-in Google Keep side-bar comes into the picture. If you create a Keep note from within Google Doc, it inserts a link automatically into the Keep note back to that given Google Doc, so when in Keep, you can always find the original source of that Keep note.
Numbering these notes and pinning them in Google Keep also displays them in a reverse chronological order in a list, so I can see the order in which these changes were made. You could also give them a colour code in Keep to give them their own identity as a group of notes.
My next experiment is going to be trialling Paperpile, a reference manager for Google Doc. Currently all my refererences and linked PDFs are in EndNote and on my Windows laptop, and it is one of the reasons Windows is still my main OS for writing. But I wish I could move at least some of these processes to Google Drive, so I could do more of my writing on Chromebooks.