The Focused 2023 Calendar

It’s that time again. Mike and I are proud to announce the release of the 2023 Focused Wall Calendar. This wall calendar works great when you hang it within sight of your desk. It’s that big thing you can look at before taking on a new commitment to make sure you aren’t already in over your head. That’s how I use mine, at least.

I also like this calendar because it easily lets me plan out the big rock projects of my year. For instance, I’m spending lots of time working on the Obsidian Field Guide over the next few months. I need to look no further than my wall for confirmation of that fact.

This is the fourth year we’ve sold these calendars, and we’ve received so much positive feedback from folks putting them on their walls. Moreover, the calendars get better every year. Here are a few of the features we’ve got built into the 2023 iteration:

  • It’s big: 25″ x 36″, so you can read it across the room.
  • Dry erase: Of course.
  • Daily tracking bubbles for building habits.
  • Weeks start on Mondays because we are not animals.
  • No Gaps! No space between months, so you can keep on track.
  • Double Sided: Landscape on one side, portrait on the other.
  • Includes major U.S. Holidays because I keep trying to set meetings on Thanksgiving.

In addition to all of the above, this year, we’re also giving you a digital download for Today’s Action Plan. It’s a digital file you can write on with your iPad or your Remarkable to plan your day with your tablet. This is an excellent combination with the Focused calendar. I’ve been using the Daily Action Plan over the past month as we’ve been perfecting it for you, and I love it. (Power tip: export the action plan to Day One!)

You can get it all now for just $30 plus shipping. Get yours today.

Backblaze Q3 Drive Stats

Backblaze, the online backup service I use, buys many spinning disk hard drives. And by a lot, I mean over 230,000 drives. They also keep data on which drives last and which fail. That’s pretty important when you are buying on their scale.

The good news for the rest of us is that they routinely share that data. Here’s the most recent data on their drives. A few things that stood out to me:

Drive Size Increases

4TB used to be the standard drive size. Now they are buying 16TB drives. These days you can put a lot of storage on a spinning disk.

Older Drives Still Fail

Even though manufacturers are better than ever at making reliable spinning disk drives, older ones still fail at an accelerating rate over time. If you use a spinning disk in your backup routine, you need to replace them occasionally. This is obvious, but seeing the data helps send that point home.

I had some four-year-old drives last year (the last two spinning drives in my fleet). I rotate the two drives locally and offsite as a last-line-of-defense backup. They hadn’t started failing, yet I knew they didn’t have much gas left in the tank, so I replaced them. The good news is that because spinning drives are getting so cheap, the cost to replace them is only going down, and spinning drives are just fine for these backup/archive-type jobs for most people.

Check out the Backblaze statistics if you’d like to get a better idea of who’s making the best spinning drives today.

FOD Interview with William Gallagher (MacSparky Labs)

In this Friends of Dave (FOD) interview, screenwriter and Mac nerd Willliam Gallagher joins me to talk about Stage Manager, Apple Mail, and Task Managers. William also shares some of his secrets on how he makes time to write… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Tier 2 (Backstage) and Tier 3 (Early Access) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?