Calendars for 2019

I’m a big fan of the Don’t Break the Chain method of achieving my goals. For each day that I accomplish the 3 main tasks that I set out to complete, I mark a day off the calendar. It’s a great way to visually map progress.

Usually, I buy Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist calendar. Sadly, this year there was no 2019 version. However, I highly recommend turning them into framed art. You can still purchase the 2017 and 2018 versions on Amazon.

I consider calendars to be a form of art. They inspire me both to keep working towards my goals and the artists publishing their work through the medium.

This year, I had to find a new calendar to buy. And me being me, I looked through all 100 search results pages on Amazon — so you don’t have to. With that being said, enjoy this curated list of calendars from artists I admire.

Exploding Kittens

This was my choice for 2019. I’ve always been a fan of The Oatmeal, Matthew Inman, so it was nice to support an artist that I admire.

Take it Cheesy

The Art of David Olenick in calendar form! I’ve purchased a few of his greeting card designs over the years and enjoy his lighthearted humor.

Charley Harper

Visually I love the style of his work. This edition of his calendar includes cute stickers to personalize with.

Heart & Brain

From the Awkward Yeti ( Nick Seluk ) is the totally relatable yet cute calendar, Heart & Brain.

Vader’s Little Princess

Cute Star Wars calendar from Jeffrey Brown. He also has Vader’s Little Princess and Darth Vader and Son as a book.

Bob Ross

The legend. This has also been displayed in my household. It’s nice to see with every new year, they add different paintings than the year before.

In a Nutshell 12,019

From my favorite science Youtube channel, Kurzgesagt: In a Nutshell. This was the calendar I most wanted for 2019 but unfortunately it was sold out.

SaneBox – One Inbox, Clutter Free

In continuing with the theme of decision fatigue, I wanted to share a tool that I’ve been using recently that I have greatly enjoyed. In an effort to be more productive, it is suggested one should check email only a few times a day. Personally, I have to keep an eye on work email periodically.

However, I noticed that I was checking personal email on my iPhone habitually. To the point where it was becoming a distraction. Majority of my emails were not from actual people but newsletters, notifications from services online, and other forms of bacn. ( love the term, hate the connotation )

Sanebox is an amazing service. It connects to your email, any provider, and process your inbox into folders. Majority of the bacn goes into a “@sanelater” folder.

It has been super accurate and learns even more as time goes by. The service builds custom rules for you based on whom you send email to most frequently and other set rules that you can establish. If it does happen to misfile something simply drag the email to the correct folder which will “teach” the service what to do next time.

Having your email sorted automatically frees you to establish a set time, perhaps once a week, to “process” email instead of constantly deleting bacn throughout the day. This excited me so much that I had to share. Give it a try.

My Top Apps of 2017

These are short reviews of the apps that I used the most in 2017. I’ll make note of the apps that have been replaced by another app in the same category, apps that I’m using less, apps that I no longer use, and apps that I’m starting to use more.

This year, and in the coming year, I’m focused on consolidating apps. For example, instead of using 3 note apps like I was previously, I’m only using one now.

Apps that I use the most

• Fantastical – Calendar app of choice on iPhone for 3+ years now. Use it a ton on my Mac.
• Outlook – For the day job, the email app that I use for quick notifications and work calendar events. Keeps it sandboxed from the rest of my phone.
• Camera – the built in iOS app.
• Simple – best bank there is. I’m trying out Seed for business banking too.
• Wallet – including Apple Pay via iMessage, the virtual Apple Pay debit card, and using it for companies’ reward programs. Built in iOS app.
• Audible – favorite way to read. Using this daily.
• Instagram – posting more again.
• Inbox – still use this daily. I use classic gmail on Desktop and this app for all my mobile devices.
• Facebook + Messenger
• Swarm – checking in. Helps build my minimal journal.
• Safari
• Slack
• Twitterrific – Really loving the true black theme for iPhone X. It really blends in with the device. In order to be consistent, I’m using Twitterrific for Mac too.
• Way of Life – routines app.
• Paprika – collect and organize my favorite recipes.
• Lose It! – health app, used since 2009.
• Spotify – the only service that I use for Music streaming.
• Headspace – guided meditation for mindfulness.
• Todoist – todo lists, project management, etc. Replaced Trello for me, so far.
• Bear – the best note app I’ve used so far. It has simple tagging, great search, a beautiful UI, and syncs effortlessly between all my devices.

Tag Icons in Bear 1.4: The Tags Edition

Can’t figure out which tag produces an icon in Bear? I was able to dig through the application files and find references to them. I’ve put together this post as a quick cheat sheet or reference guide, which will help us find those elusive bear tag icons.

For a bit of background, the excellent notes app Bear released version 1.4 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. With that update came a new feature, TagCons, that assigns a small icon to represent over 100 tags. Unfortunately, there is no official documentation for what the supported tags are.

From their blog:

Once you get a decent tag collection going, it can get harder to find the right one in your Sidebar. To help you do less scrolling and more finding in Bear 1.4, we added over 100 TagCons — small icons for some of the most popular tags we could find.

Universal

With a bit of digging. I was able to find the following:

[code]
#android
#apple
#apple watch#
#bear
#comics
* saitama
* one punch man
* one-punch man
* one punch-man
* onepunch-man
#chef
* cooking
#dev
* development
* it
* itc
#dog
* doggos
#doctor who#
#ebooks
* book
* epub(s)
* ibook
* book
* kindle
#espresso
* coffee
#facebook
#furry
#geek
* nerd
* nerds
* nerdy
#TV
* TV
* hulu
* netflix
#instagram
#ipad
* iPad Pro
#iPhone
* iphone
* iphone 7
* iphone 7+
* iphone 8
* iphone 8+
* iphone x
* iphone7
* iphone7+
* iphone8
* iphone8+
#linux
* debian
* suse
* ubuntu
#lmao
* lmao
* fun
* meme
* rotfl
#math
#mac
* macos
#mario#
* mario kart
* mario odissey — misspelled odyssey
* mario world
* super mario
* super mario brothers
#password
* passwords
#sport
* mlb
* nba
* nfl
* nhl
#nintendo
* nes
* nintendo 64
* snes
* supernes
* wii
* wiiu
#nsfw
* porn
#playstation
* ps1
* ps2
* ps3
* ps4
* ps4 pro
#reddit
* subreddit
* subreddits
#shiny frog#
* shinyfrog
#swag
* fashion
#switch
* nintendo switch
#tumblr
#ui
* design
* ux
#windows
* windows 8
* windows vista
* windows xp
* windows8
* windowsxp
#xbox
* xboxone
#youtube
* youtubers
* youtuber
#zelda
[/code]

Be sure and bookmark this as a reference. I’ll be adding more to the post as I find them.

Jolt

Book Review

Justin Jackson’s book Jolt: Marketing Tactics for Programmers, Designers, Freelancers, Makers, and Entrepreneurs was a great way to start off the year.

It really does give you a Jolt of inspiration.

This book is a great resource for marketing your new product, software, idea, book, or any project that you want to promote. It teaches you to, “Be different, break out of the mold, and surprise folks”.

Justin provides case studies, examples of websites and services using data that you might not known before.

Show Up First

One of the stories he provides is about being first to the party:

There is a first mover advantage that you get on any new platform. In the early days of Twitter, people who grabbed a foothold there were able to amass a big number of followers, even though they might not have been famous elsewhere.

I joined Twitter in May 2007 and can attest to this. Those of us that were there at the beginning ended up with much more engagement with early adopters, forged friendships, and benefited from the platform. Whale is an upcoming platform that I’m seeing the same pattern emerge as I did then.

He goes on to say:

You can set yourself up to create [luck]. Quantity is what gets you to quality. Start placing little bets; try a bunch of things. One of them might work and become big.

This is great. Validate your ideas. Try to see what works, evaluate the data, and keep iterating on what does work. That’s the key. Look back at what you’ve done, revise, and keep pushing forward.