Productivity

It will come as no surprise that I really like Obsidian. Those who have followed my work the last couple of years know that I absolutely adore this app. The more I use it, the more I love it.

But it’s not an easy app to get started with. In fact, when I downloaded and launched it for the first time, I immediately closed it and wrote it off as not for me. It took a couple of people showing me the ways that it could improve my workflows for it to really click for me.

I’ve seen other people struggle with the same thing when I introduce them to Obsidian for the first time. So, I’ve started a side project to help people who are struggling getting their feet under them in Obsidian gain some traction.

The project is called Daily Obsidian Tips, and I share what I’ve learned about Obsidian via an email sequence in short, digestible chunks. I try to cover a broad range of tips from beginner to advanced that I’ve found practical and demonstrate how they work. The goal is to deliver a single quick tip every day and show how it can be useful so that you can then go implement it without a huge time investment if it resonates.

If you’re interested, it’s available for free at dailyobsidiantips.com. There are currently 52 daily tips, and I plan to keep adding new tips over time (I currently have an outline for 50 more).

(For transparency, I’m an Apple nerd. So all of the tips are from a macOS or iOS perspective. Just so all you Windows user don’t feel duped.)

In an upcoming episode of Focused, David & I talked about how our environment affects our ability to focus and how we’ve set up our workspaces. Here’s a brief walkthrough of my current studio setup (I’ll post a more detailed write-up later).

Desk Setup

My desk is a bit of a mess, but everything has a purpose. On the left is a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4K that is permanently attached to a teleprompter. This doubles as my webcam as well as my recording setup for course videos. The lights are Elgato Key Light Airs, and are controlled by an Elgato Stream Deck. This means that if I ever want to record a video, it takes me about 15 seconds to get into recording mode. There’s another camera which is an older DSLR that I sometimes use as a webcam, and 2 microphones so that my wife & I can both record at the same for The Intentional Family podcast.

The other thing worth calling out here is the keyboard, which is a Keychron Q1 with 2048 Extended keycaps.

On the wall next to my desk, I have a few Fracture prints of my active projects as well my guitar (a 2005 Eric Clapton Signature Series Strat) and my Focused NeuYear calendar.

I also have a funky desk chair that I love, the Capisco by Fully. It was really expensive, but it’s really comfy and my back doesn’t hurt when I sit at my desk anymore.

The Rest

In the corner away from the desk, I have a CordaRoy’s beanbag chair that I use as my thinking chair. What’s cool about this chair is that in addition to being really comfy, the whole thing can be unfolded into a surprisingly comfortable queen-size mattress. We don’t have a guest bedroom, but this allows us to turn my studio into a comfy place to sleep if we ever needed the space.

I also have a large leather couch that was gifted to me by my parents that functions as a sitting area.

Much of the art on the wall my wife made (she’s very artistic), and the coffee table (and the desk top) were made by a friend who’s a woodworker.

The other thing worth calling out is that I actively try to avoid calling my space an office. I prefer the term studio, and have a sign on my door at the bottom of the basement stairs to reinforce that.

This may seem trivial, but I like how the word studio infers that I’m going to be creating. I believe it helps me be more creative and reduces friction. No one wants to go to an office to work, and going to studio to create sounds a lot more appealing.

I had a challenge from David in Focused #114 to map out my input workflow. Here’s the result, made in GoodNotes:

The personal inputs are all listed at the top in the red box. As they come in, they tend to fall into one of 3 categories:

• Ideas – things I want to brew on and save for later.
• Information – things I don’t need to do anything with, but I want to hang on to.
• Tasks – things I have to do, but not right now.

Eventually, everything finds its way into Roam Research (or Notion, for TSS-related tasks and projects). From there, it gets scheduled using time blocking in my fancy notebook.

I’ve been collecting quotes for awhile. Here’s a quick video on how I manage them in Roam Research.

There’s a couple things that make this work:

• I use a query that displays everything that has the tag #Quotebook
• I set up a separate page for each author with the tag and a link to the book page (if appropriate)
• I put the quotes as blocks on the author’s page and use block embeds everywhere else.

It’s not too tricky, but the result is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

In celebration of Fountain Pen Day, I decided to collect a few links about related to one of my favorite subjects: fountain pens. I personally never saw myself getting into fountain pens (even though Joe Buhlig & David Sparks have been trying to get me hooked for years). I’m a tech guy, and fountain pens were inefficient. Not only that, they’re messy and require maintenance.

To say I had no interest in fountain pens is overstating it a ton. I could not understand why would anyone choose to use an expensive pen with so many compromises when you can get most of the benefits of handwritten notes (plus the storage and ability to search provided by digital tools) using an app like GoodNotes on the iPad.

But then I saw the light.

My Intro to Fountain Pens

Last August I had the privilege of taking part in the Relay FM 5th Anniversary Live Show in San Francisco. All of the Relay hosts that could make it were split into teams and we played Family Feud, hosted by Jason Snell. It was a ton of fun, and I met a bunch of really cool people.

One of those people was Brad Dowdy, host of The Pen Addict podcast (which is hosted on Relay FM).

I was waiting the lobby of the hotel to get a ride to the venue for the event, and Brad & I were making small talk. The kind of thing that happens when you meet someone for the first time. My recollection of the interaction goes something like this:

BRAD: Hey, I’m Brad Dowdy.

ME: Hey, I’m Mike Schmitz. Nice to meet you.

BRAD: Where you from, Mike?

ME: Some town in Wisconsin that you’ve probably never heard of called Appleton.

BRAD: Oh yeah, Anderson Pens! Brian & Lisa are awesome.

I decided right then that when I got back I would have to go check out what the fuss was about. I walked out with my first fountain pen, and haven’t looked back. Over the last several months, I’ve dialed in my preferences and ended up with a pen and paper system that I thoroughly enjoy.

Honestly, I can’t see myself ever going back to a purely digital productivity system. Yes, using pen and paper is more inefficient. But that’s offset by an increase in intentionality. I don’t need to manage 100,000 tasks – I simply need to make sure that I work on the right thing at the right time. And for me, my fancy notebook and fountain pen are essential kit for making that happen.

If you’re interested in hearing more about my descent into the depths of fountain pen obsessiveness, here are a couple of links from my journey:

• Focused #102: Analog Productivity with Brad Dowdy – Brad and David are very much responsible for my entry into the fountain pen world. Brad is basically THE guy for this, and it was a blast to have him on the Focused podcast to talk about how he gets work done.
• Building My Bullet-Journal-Based Hybrid Productivity System  – When the pandemic hit in March, I rethought my entire productivity system. This article details how I reconstructed everything around my fountain pens and fancy paper, and I still follow this system every single day.
• Pen & Paper Webinar on AnalogJoe.com – I am 100% responsible for my Bookworm co-host Joe Buhlig purchasing this domain. Fortunately, he had me on for a webinar to talk about my hybrid system and the use of my analog tools.
• Bookworm #102: The Bullet Journal Method – This is where I first started entertaining the idea of using a hybrid productivity system. While I can’t honestly call what I do a true bullet journal, this is where things really started picking up steam.
• Focused #107: The Bullet Journal Method, with Ryder Carroll – Speaking of the Bullet Journal Method, David & I got to talk to the creator on the Focused podcast awhile back. While we didn’t get into the system much, it was a great conversation about intentionality and focus.

Some Fountain Pen Resources

If you want to learn more about fountain pens yourself, here’s a couple of great resources:

• The Pen Addict (podcast) – Hosted by Brad Dowdy and Myke Hurley, this podcast has cost me quite a bit of money over the last 12 months. Always entertaining, this one is firmly entrenched in my regular podcast rotation. I’ve learned a lot from listening to this podcast.
• The Pen Addict (blog) – Brad Dowdy also run a blog at penaddict.com, though there are several people that contribute (including Jeff Abbott, who helps us with edits over at The Sweet Setup).
• Tokyo Inklings podcast – Japan is home to some of the best fountain pen makers in the world (Sailor, Pilot, and Platinum, to name a few). This podcast is hosted by a couple of “Tokyoites” who really know their stuff.

If you’re looking to purchase a fountain pen, here’s a couple of places I’d recommend:

• Anderson Pens – I may be biased, but this is actually a pretty incredible physical store if you’re into this stuff. It’s also pretty amazing that it happens to be a block from my coworking space. They carry some of the best stuff in the world, and they do a lot of internet orders too.
• Pen Chalet – I first heard about Pen Chalet as a sponsor on The Pen Addict podcast. They frequently have the best prices available, and you can find some pretty cool stuff in the Special section of their website.
• Goulet Pens – Another standard online pen store, but they will occasionally have exclusive special items and their YouTube videos are very well done. If you’re brand new to fountain pens, I recommend the Fountain Pen 101 series.
• Franklin-Christoph – Franklin-Christoph has been around producing beautiful fountain pens for a very long time. They have an in-house nib master (Michael Masuyama) if you want a specialty grind, and they frequently do special editions that they sell at pen shows. With COVID-19 shutting down pen shows this year, they’ve done a couple of online pen shows with limited numbers of small batch special editions.

Speaking of specialty grinds, there are two other places I would point you if you want a grind done:

• Nib Grinder – The Nib Grinder is Mark Bacas, an incredibly nice guy who does a phenomenal job with nib grinds. I have a hybrid grind from Mark, which is an Architect grind which writes as an XXF when you turn the pen over (write upside down). At some point, I will get a Blade grind from Mark as well. I actually have a pile of pens that I hope to send to Mark in the near future.
• The Nibsmith – My first custom grind was from The Nibsmith – an Architect grind on a Platinum 3776 Carnelian. The cool thing about ordering from The Nibsmith is that the custom grind is actually included for free on more expensive pens.

If you want to dip your toe into the fountain pen waters but aren’t sure where to start, I recommend you look at this post on The Pen Addict blog. Brad does a great job recommending different pens and inks in different categories and price points. He’s way more knowledgable about this stuff then I am. But if you were really going to press me to give you a first pen recommendation, I’d go with either a TWSBI 580AL or a TWSBI ECO. They both come in a variety of colors and are piston-fillers, so you’ll need a bottle of ink to go with it.

I’m thrilled to announce that the NeuYear Focused calendar is back for 2021! I recently received mine in the mail, and it looks fantastic.

I’ve been using these calendars for years, and was thrilled to partner with them last year to make a Focused-branded one. The calendar itself allows you to see the entire year at a glance, but also breaks the year into four quarters, with background shading that gives you a quick and visual indication of when one quarter ends and another one begins. This allows you to set your goals for each quarter and track them visually, and also gives you built-in reset periods if things don’t go exactly according to plan (#2020). Buffer weeks are even built-in, giving you space to think through what worked and what didn’t, celebrate your successes, and make the small adjustments necessary to get back on track.

There’s also a key on the bottom of the calendar that you can use to make your own color-coded system, which is perfect for tracking the habits that will be required to achieve your goals. Once you identify your big goals for the quarter and put the important dates and milestones on your calendar, you can document your progress by identifying the habits you’ll need to create in order to achieve them and tracking them visually using different colors or symbols.

The biggest change this year is that the calendar is now dry erase. We had a lot of requests for this last year, but it just wasn’t feasible since we weren’t sure how many we could sell (David & I didn’t want to be on the hook for a bunch of left over calendars, so we took the safe route). But we were able to make it work this year, and it turned out great.

If you want to get your own, they are $24 USD and available directly from NeuYear: https://www.neuyear.net/products/focused

So if you’re starting to plan for next year, check it out. You get an awesome calendar to help you make the most of 2021, plus you’ll show some love for the Focused podcast.

When I work, I like to listen to music. Most of it is instrumental as I find it easier to focus when listening to music without words. Here’s a list of some of my favorites, with embedded Apple Music players so you can try them for yourself.

The Olympians (Self-Titled)

An instrumental retro-soul band with a good flow. This is my current favorite, and my go-to album when I really need to write.

Imagine Gold by Frameworks

A great synth-driven electronic downtempo album. A handful of lyrics with this one, but I love the feel of this one. Another go-to album when I need to write.

Night Drive (Instrumental Edition) by Timecop1983

Full disclosure: I’ve never listened to the real version of this. But the instrumental version is another great synth-driven electronic album that I’ve listened to hundreds of times and never gets old.

Awake by Tycho

I love Tycho. This is my favorite non-work album and is usually the the thing I go to when the family is hanging out and we just want some background music.

Monument Valley Soundtrack

Video game soundtracks make pretty great focus music. And the Monument Valley soundtrack is the best of the best IMHO.

Friday Night Lights Soundtrack

Never really cared for the movie, but the soundtrack has been a regular part of writing rotation for years.

Anything Else by Explosions in the Sky

The instrumental indie rock artist that did the majority of the Friday Night Lights soundtrack above has produced a ton of other music. I have yet to find something by Explosions in the Sky that I don’t like. My current favorite is The Wilderness, embedded below.

Anything by Utah

“Siri, shuffle Utah.” I like everything this electronic duo makes, but they tend to release a bunch of shorter EP-style albums so this is how my office writing sessions have started for quite a while. They released their first full-length album Long Play this year, embedded below.

Dreamer on the Run by U137

This one is kinda weird. The album is named after a Soviet submarine that ran aground on Swedish shores, but is pretty positive and airy. Another staple album in my writing rotation for years.

Astronomy, Vol. 1 by Sleeping at Last

A new instrumental album that I’m digging. Very atmospheric, opens with a sort of angel chorus and keeps a pretty chill vibe throughout.

Additional Resources

There’s a bunch of other great stuff out there. Here’s a couple other things to consider:

• Focus@Will – Personalized focus music to help you get stuff done. I’ve used this in the past, and I like it a lot. They also sponsored the Focused podcast, so you can get 60% off with the code FOCUSED at checkout.
• Brain.fm – Another focus music service I’ve used in the past. I’ve used this in the past over Focus@Will simply because the app was better, but it’s not such a big deal anymore.
• Pure Focus Playlist – A huge playlist with a ton of great stuff on it. If you are an Apple Music subscriber already and want a simple solution, go here first.

But ultimately, you just need to find what works for you. So take a look at the stuff I’ve got here, and let me know if there’s anything you think I should add!