We’ve asked several of our favorite writers and productivity hounds how they work, from the software and web sites they use daily to the PDA/personal organizer/system they use to keep organized. We’ll be posting their answers all week in a series we’re calling, “How I work,” and we’re starting with MetaFilter founder and terrific Lifehacker guest editor Matt Haughey.
LH: What desktop software do you use every day?
Matt: It pretty much boils down to 4-5 apps. Communication through Mail.app and iChat, web browsing with Firefox, coding with Dreamweaver (only because I’ve never found a mac equivalent to my favorite text editor on earth, Homesite, so I stick to code view of Dreamweaver to try and mimic Homesite), and design/photo work in Photoshop CS2. Those apps cover 95%+ of what I do everyday.
LH: What web sites do you use every day?
Matt: First and foremost, I’m on all the metafilter.com sites pretty much from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, since that’s the bulk of my job now. Aside from that I use reBlog to track RSS feeds (including Lifehacker’s), and then I hit a trio of “contributions from your friends” pages including flickr, livejournal, and a secret alpha app. Whenever I have a spare moment I hit one of those three to see what my close friends are up to.
LH: What PDA/personal organizer/system do you use to keep organized?
Matt: This is really embarrassing because people tell me I have a zillion projects and that I’ve done a lot of online things, but actually I have no PDA, no organizer, and I don’t have any formal system. I try everything that comes out, but nothing ever sticks. I have a discarded Palm device. I have a moleskine gathering dust. I haven’t gotten past the introduction of Getting Things Done. Somewhere in my house a stack of unused 3x5 cards bound by a clip is weeping from loneliness.
I basically spin plates in my head, keeping the 3-4 most pressing things in my imaginary to-do list and I try to finish those every few days for the next 3-4 urgent items I need to complete. Nothing is written down and as a result, I tend to forget things like calling my parents once in a while or finishing projects on time. The only time
I use anything remotely covered on LH before is when I’m finishing a large project. I’ll draw up a punchlist of last minute things I need to finish to complete the project and put that in a text file. Then I’ll mark them off one by one until I am done.
I must say that Google Calendar is the first thing that might actually stick. Since I use the custom Google page as my browser’s start page, Google Calendar might be the first calendar app I accidentally see everyday and get reminded of appointments. I’m terrible about iCal, because I always forget to launch it and hate having it minimized all the time, but Google Calendar just might be it.