Fifteen years ago yesterday, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone and had a really good day. Granted back then the “figure out what Apple is making next” business wasn’t nearly so sophisticated, but he was truly able to pull a revolution out of his pocket.
Watching the Keynote again just reminds me how Steve was at the top of his game that day. The voice infections and the use of pauses and questions to create tension and then the release of that tension are all worthy of study if you speak in front of groups.
Sometimes the news can make you feel old. The iMac G4 turning 20 is one of those things for me. It does not seem that long ago to me that Apple came out with that cute little flat-screened flower-looking computer. Stephen Hackett made a great video celebrating the G4 iMac and today is the day you should watch it.
This year, I bought HyperPlan from WinterFest. It’s an interesting visual planning tool that lets me use a graphic model to connect ideas. This is just the kind of thing I can get excited about.
All of the software in WinterFest comes from long-time, respected Mac software developers that are all about making great software. Even though everything is discounted you’ll get full versions with complete support and upgrade privileges. Go check it out before the sale ends.
Shawn Blanc and his excellent team are about to start up the Focus Academy again. As someone who makes a podcast on the topic of Focus, you can understand why I think it is important. I went through this collaborative training a few times and I think it is an excellent way to help get yourself on track. I’ll be giving one of the sessions in this upcoming cohort all about startup and shutdown routines. Enrollment is open through Monday January 10.
I’ve been using a laptop + monitor setup for a while now, and I like it more than I expected. The last time I tried this, I had lots of problems getting the Mac and monitor to talk to each other when I’d plug it in. I prefer to keep the laptop closed when doing this (often called “clamshell” mode), and for years macOS did not like that.
Maybe it is the Apple silicon switchover or improvements to macOS, but that’s no longer a problem. I plug it in and start typing.
However, another friction point is disconnecting. I have a Time Machine and external storage drive connected to my Mac when attached to the monitor. It’s important that I properly dismount those drives before unplugging. (Just yanking a drive out of your Mac is a terrible idea.)
So … dismounting. There are several ways to pull it off. You could go in the Finder and eject the drive under “Locations” in the Sidebar. There is a handy little Eject button next to each removable drive. (In my case, Dagobah is my Time Machine Drive, and Batuu is my extra storage.) This solution works but is tedious.
There are also some excellent apps to solve this problem. My favorite is EjectBar. This is a menu bar app that, once you click it, lets you eject from the menu bar, saving you a trip to the Finder. A power tip with EjectBar is to Command-Click the menu bar icon, and it automatically ejects all connected drives.
I wanted, however, something more automated. So I made a simple AppleScript that ejects all external drives. Here’s the script:
trytellapplication "Finder"
ejectthedisks
display dialog “Successfully ejected disks.” buttons {“Close”} default button “Close”
end tellon error
display dialog “Unable to eject all disks.” buttons {“Close”} default button “Close”
end try
As AppleScripts go, this one is pretty basic.
I run this script as part of a Keyboard Maestro Macro. First, it quits all applications. I do this because I have very particular screen setups when I connect to the big monitor. I prefer to close everything out when disconnecting. (I have separate scripts for setting up screens on the laptop screen or the monitor when I plug back in.) Then I eject the drives by running the above AppleScript. I use the Hyper Key plus Q to activate it (⇧⌃⌥⌘Q). I’ve also mapped it to a button on my Stream Deck, which is how I usually activate it. This is the method that has stuck with me. When I’m ready to take the laptop, I push the button, wait a moment, and then unplug and head out. It really isn’t much trouble at all.
Here’s a download link to the Keyboard Maestro Macro.
If you’d like to get better at Keyboard Maestro, I’m putting up a $5 discount code on the Keyboard Maestro Field Guide for one week. Use code KMLAPTOPWARRIOR. 🙂
Just yesterday I was working on something and received a call from an old friend. I forgot to turn on my Focus Mode so the call came through. At that point, I had two good options and one bad one. I could have politely asked to reschedule the call or stepped away from my computer and just talked to my friend. I also could have decided to multitask. I chose poorly. I said to myself, “Self, you can totally talk to this friend and continue this work. You got this.” So off I went for a while, multitasking.
Then I hung up and thought about the advice I gave my friend, that wasn’t as good as it could have been … because I was multitasking. Then today I discovered that the work I was doing at the same time had some errors in it … because I was multitasking.
I think the next time I catch myself multitasking, I’m going to slap myself.
I had so much great feedback on my big announcement yesterday. I just wanted to thank everyone for the kind words. You all sent me many lovely emails, tweets, comments, and other feedback. I’m trying to reply to it all of it, but I’m still working my way through. There were a few things that came up in the feedback that I wanted to follow up on here at the blog:
On Making Big Life Changes
I heard from many folks who have already navigated one of these significant life changes or are thinking about something similar. I wasn’t sure if yesterday’s post with all the tedious details about how I went through this process was too much. I’m sure for some people it was, but I am delighted to find that for a lot of people, it was a help.
On the MacSparky Labs Content vs. MacSparky Free Content
Don’t worry if you’re not interested in joining the MacSparky Labs. I am not abandoning free content. My point was that with no more client obligations, I’m putting out more free content AND a ton of new MacSparky Labs content. Another benefit is that I’ll be able to do monthly free webinars. (Save the date on January 21. More info coming soon.)
In other words, more content across the board.
MacSparky Labs Account Upgrades
Some folks signed up at one level and now want to upgrade. Everything is in place, so the system will prorate your cost if you purchase an upgraded account while logged in. Also, we have a MacSparky Labs support email if you have any problems. labssupport@macsparky.com
Lastly, Thanks Again
I spent three months getting rid of all of my legal clients that I spent nearly three decades building. I was counting on some support from the MacSparky Labs to help offset that lost income. I had no idea if anyone would sign up for it. A lot of you did, and that means everything to me. Thank you!
The title says it all, but first a little background…
Project Blue Sky
In January 2021 I started a new project and gave it an exciting name: Project Blue Sky. Specifically, I started the year tired of what I call “running downhill.” Do you remember when we were kids, and we’d start running downhill? It was exhilarating but also terrifying. It just took one slight stumble to end up flat on your face.
Simultaneously running MacSparky and the law practice has felt like running downhill too often, and I’ve been doing it now for 15 years. The idea behind Project Blue Sky was to find a way to create more balance between these two careers so I could have more margin. I felt like a fraud going on the Focused podcast and telling people how important it is to get focused while struggling to hold it together myself. I was fortunate to have two things that I enjoyed and could earn a living at. At the same time, I wasn’t getting the most out of either of them because of the existence of both of them. This is not a new problem to me.
I hadn’t gone over the precipice, but I could feel it approaching. The warning signs were there. I broke a few promises to law clients and MacSparky partners. I kept getting delayed on essential projects because something from “the other side” intervened. Most importantly, I felt I had no time to step back and breathe.
So for the past year, Project Blue Sky has been part of my life. It’s led to me hiring some additional people and making some changes for the better. It’s led to me saying “no” to some big client projects and interesting MacSparky projects—all in the hopes that I would be running downhill less and have more blue sky.
Make no mistake. This has been a serious effort on my behalf. I see Project Blue Sky nearly every time I open Obsidian and OmniFocus. Sometimes, however, it felt like trying to stop a blazing inferno with a squirt gun. I had some limited success with these steps, but as I got to the fourth quarter of 2021, it was evident that I was still running downhill a lot, and Project Blue Sky was going to take longer.
The Creator’s Guild
There’s another influence that I haven’t mentioned before. A few years ago, I started having a weekly meeting with a group of friends that make things for the Internet. We call ourselves “The Creator’s Guild,” and we spend an hour together every week, critiquing and propping one another up as we all try to make our way in this world of online teaching.
My running downhill problem came up during one of our meetings after the DEVONthink Field Guide was released. Specifically, I was lamenting that the Field Guides are the most important thing I make, and I was only going to release one in 2021, despite my Project Blue Sky efforts. So my friends challenged me to come back the following week with a solid plan to make more time to make the things I love.
I remember ending that call and thinking to myself how I already had the answer. I decided I’d scale the law practice down by 25%. I looked at it as another dent in Project Blue Sky and a way to report progress to my friends. But I promised more than an answer to my friends. I also promised I’d go through the process of thinking it through. If I’m being entirely honest, I just wanted to go through the motions so I could assure my friends that I’d done so. I felt I’d already reached a safe conclusion. Twenty-five percent less legal work felt like one more fair compromise.
Showing My Work
So I blocked aside some time and sat down to show my work.
A few months ago, I wrote about a good book,“Ikigai”. one of my takeaways from that was that some very old, very happy people in Japan all had one thing in common, a sense of purpose, their Ikigai. The book explained how their actual purpose evolved during their lifetimes for many of these folks, yet they still did each have a strong sense of purpose. So I started with a simple question.
“What is my purpose? What am I here to do?”
Simple question, right? Simple, but also not easy to answer. Rather than get lost in the big question, I moved on to consider the law practice and MacSparky.
My father was actually against me becoming a lawyer. He thought it would compromise me morally. But at the time, I was pretty sharp, pretty good at debate, and I wanted to do it. Looking back, I think I was also hung up on the trappings of being a lawyer. Before me and my sisters came along, no one in the prior generations of my family went to college. I grew up very much blue-collar.
Once I got into the career, however, I found I was pretty good at it, and I was able to practice on my terms and do some good. What I like most about being a lawyer, after seven years of training and 28 years in practice, is helping people with their problems.
Considering my law practice, I also realized that being a lawyer had become a comfortable part of my identity. Perhaps too comfortable. My recent post about being and doing did not arise from a vacuum. Moreover, being a lawyer for me is safe. I’ve got an excellent group of clients that take my advice and pay their bills. I could easily practice law for the rest of my life with little risk of not being able to make a living. Being a lawyer also comes with costs, including worry of making a mistake, getting paid, and the remarkably dreadful people you must sometimes confront.
Being a lawyer is not easy work, and you do carry the weight of your clients’ problems constantly. Even after practicing for 28 years, I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “how am I going to get client X out of that sticky problem?” The pandemic only put an exclamation point on that. I spent so many hours fighting for clients through the pandemic.
Where I became a lawyer with years of training and intentionality, I became MacSparky by mistake. I felt like I had something to share, so I started sharing it. There was no long game or master plan. Things came to me one step at a time. A few articles became a podcast appearance. A few podcast appearances became speaking gigs. It took me six months to commit to Katie before we started producing the Mac Power Users. The growth of my MacSparky business has all been a series of fortuitous and delightful accidents.
So with no planning, I find myself in this place where I get to help people and make a living at it at the same time. When I stop to think about what my life would be like if I hadn’t stumbled into becoming MacSparky, I shudder.
Concerning money, the law is the sure thing, and MacSparky is more of a bet. Continuing to make a living as MacSparky requires me to continue to make outstanding products that people want. Walt Disney once said, “We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies.” When it comes to the stuff I release as MacSparky, that’s me in a nutshell.
What stands out to me most when I consider my life as MacSparky is how much more I have left to do. I have so many ideas and so much more that I’d like to explore and share. I’ve been talking for the last year about contextual computing. I think this can change people’s lives, but I never seem to be able to get enough time to put enough attention on it. I’ve got other ideas that I would like to share and teach.
This sense of unfinished business stood out for me as I considered my two careers and started thinking about how I would report back to my friends in the Creator’s Guild about what I would do.
At one point, I asked myself if I got hit by a bus and was lying on the side of the street, where would I want more time: as MacSparky or as a lawyer? The answer was clear and immediate. I have so much that I want to still do as MacSparky. I’m good at being a lawyer, but I don’t feel like I have anything left to prove.
That led me back to the question I wrote when I first started this process, “What is my purpose in life?”
The answer to that question is different for everyone. But it is clear to me that my purpose in life right now is to produce MacSparky content. Helping people find a way to use technology to their advantage and, in turn, help them with their purpose (their Ikigai) makes me jump out of bed in the morning. There was a time in my life I would have answered that question differently, but when I’m honest with myself, these days, I am here to do MacSparky work.
It was liberating admitting that to myself. I knew it at some level, but I hadn’t done the work of really figuring it out. With this in mind, I went back to my options.
New Options
For example, what if instead of getting rid of 25% of my clients, I got rid of 50%? What if I cut the law practice in half? What could I do as MacSparky then? The interesting thing about pulling these questions apart is the answers they return that are surprising at the moment but utterly predictable in hindsight.
Being a lawyer has certain costs associated with it. It’s expensive. You have to pay license fees, education fees, rent, insurance, and other expenses to run a practice. It also requires a lot of time. Whether you represent one client or five hundred clients, you need to keep up with changes in the law and be on top of the ever-changing legal climate. You also need to be available whenever a problem arises. Finally, it comes with an emotional cost. I don’t wake up worried about Field Guides. I do wake up worried about clients.
Once I’d thought about going from a 25% to a 50% reduction, it was only a matter of time before I asked myself what it’d be like if I reduced the law practice by 100%? What if I hung up my fancy leather briefcase and gave everything to MacSparky?
The Surprise Ending
You probably saw this coming, but I assure you I did not. Just for a moment, put yourself in my shoes. I spent 35 years in pursuit of and the practice of law. If you had asked me when I sat down to begin this exercise (that I considered a formality at the start) if I ever contemplated ending my law practice, my answer would have been an immediate, “No!”. I’d never really permitted myself even to consider something so crazy. Nonetheless, in very little time, I found myself seriously contemplating and ultimately deciding that the proper path for me was not to get better at riding two horses but instead to ride just one.
Why am I here? I am here to make MacSparky content.
As I write these words, I am no longer a lawyer. I am just … well … a MacSparky.
I’ve spent the last few months shutting down my legal practice. I’ve made arrangements for my clients to get to other lawyers that can take care of them. I’ve spoken personally to all of my clients to explain why I can no longer be their lawyer. I’ve spent a lot of time on this transition, but I wanted to end this phase of my life in the right way.
Having now had to explain myself to clients, friends, and family members, I’ve faced a variety of responses. Some are incredibly supportive. Others are worried about me. Some are skeptical of my ability. Even a few are angry at me. Maybe a few years ago I would have cared more about what these people think, but I find that none of it has made a difference in my thinking.
I fully understand I could crash spectacularly (and publicly). I am okay with that. I’m no longer interested in compromise. I would rather pursue MacSparky as my only thing and fail than not attempt at all. Not taking the shot would hurt way more than taking the shot and missing.
So here goes. No longer do I split my time between two careers. For the first time since 1992, I will have complete control of my schedule. No longer will a client emergency force me to set aside the work that has become my calling. I’m all in, and I have big plans.
To begin with, I’m turning up two dials on my MacSparky work: quality and quantity. With me able to give this my sole focus, the content is going to get better, and there will be more of it on this blog, in the podcasts, in the Field Guides, and in everything else I ship as MacSparky. I can’t wait to get started.
If you’d like to support my work, I’m also opening up a membership program, The MacSparky Labs. One thing about my MacSparky work is that I’m constantly trying out new apps and workflows. Much of that never gets published. Historically I couldn’t share it because I have so much confidential client data. My data is no longer full of confidential client matters, so now I can let you behind the curtain a lot more. In other words, I can let you into the MacSparky labs with a bunch of exclusive content and early access to what I’m up to, planning, and experimenting on. You can learn about it at MacSparky.com/join/. Regardless, I appreciate your support.
If I were to break my life into three parts, I’m now at the age where I’m about to begin the third act. I wouldn’t be able to take this journey without you. Thank you!
