Blogging With An iPhone, An iPad And iAdd

(Every once in a while I have this urge to write a shiny, picture-rich blog post. The following post is one of those.)

The other day, after the storm passed away, I surprised myself thinking at how my digital nomad life has changed completely the way I work. I don’t have an office anymore – and I do enjoy this every minute, after more than 10 years of working for my own company, in my own office – and that means I work pretty much everywhere. The distinction between work and regular life slowly faded away. It’s not like I’m working anymore. I spend quality time in a coffee shop for a few hours, but at the same time (and in the same place) I do write blog posts, write code or do consulting.

Although it may seem like a very comfortable way of living, it’s not even remotely like this. It’s very easy to get distracted and stop creating value. As you may imagine, is very important to keep things under control.

So, how I manage to actually run a fairly popular blog, do consulting on a regular basis, create iPhone apps and self-publish my ebooks? The short answer: I keep myslef organized. The long answer: you just started to read it . What follows is a very accurate reconstruction of what it takes for me to write a blog post, from idea to publishing. Sepcifically, this very blog post.

On the technical side, it involves and iPhone, and iPad and iAdd. Of course, a Mac is necessary for publishing too. As you may know, I am the creater of iAdd, so I am definitely biased here. It’s not like you can’t use something else, it’s just that iAdd really works for me.

Capturing Blog Post Ideas

Being on the run pretty much anytime, I started to capture my ideas using my iPhone. In the beginning I used a mind-mapping software, but now I use iAdd. iAdd let me save in it 4 types of information: tasks, projects, ideas and events. Every time I have a blog post idea, I fire up iAdd and quickly jot the title of the post:

A blog post is more likely to be created as a project. After I added the project, I start to add short tasks to it. They are more like the building blocks of the entire blog writing process, not only paragraph sketches or ideas.

Once I feel I’m ok with it, I sync my app to Dropbox. The newly added project will be safe and, more than that, it will be available next time when I sync with my iPad too.

Managing The Actual Process

Now, suppose I’m back to a more comfortable place and I have a little bit of time. I take my iPad, fire up iAdd and do a sync. After the sync, my project from iPhone will be magically available on iPad. (Just click on the following screenshots to enlarge them).

The first thing I do once the project is available on my iPad is re-ordering tasks (I can reorder tasks on the iPhone too, but usually I don’t have time for this, plus, on the iPad is more space).

After reordering, I quickly peruse the tasks and if I feel the need to enhance or complete any one of them, i do it.

Of course, now it’s time to add more details, so on the iPad I add the more complex tasks to the project.

At some point, the blog post project will be finished. From this point, it takes two different routes. First of all, the entire project gets sent by email (you can do that from inside iAdd). Like that, I will have all the ideas on my Mac too. I usually copy and paste the email message in my blogging setup.

But moving the work completely on the iMac will undermine the power of iAdd. So, the second route the project takes is to be sent to Decide. This is how it looks when it’s sent to Decide.

As I already told you, not all the tasks are involving writing. Some of them are atomic actions which can be performed anytime. For instance, in this specific project, I have to make screenshots. This can be done anytime. It’s an atomic task that can be performed any time I have 15 minutes free. So, I start to add contexts to all the tasks in the project.

And also I add due dates to each task.

After I finished, all the tasks are ordered ascending by time, giving me quite a clear idea about what I have to do.

One more thing. I may keep the project in Decide for as long as I want. And usually I do. I don’t write all the blog posts at once. I have other projects too. But once I’m committed to a project, I move it to Do. All the tasks that have been added in Assess, completed with contexts and due dates in Decide, will show up in my time based views in Do. Meaning that if one of the tasks is due Today, I will have it under my Today tab in iAdd. Along with the project title too. Once done, the task can be crossed off.

But if I feel a little bit lost, I can also look at the entire project in Do. I can see all the remaining tasks, and, if I want to edit their due dates, I send the entire project back to Decide.

Well, that’s pretty much it. Expected more? Sorry to tell you that I like things simple and effective

Conclusions

So, I capture all the ideas on my iPhone, I manage the entire project on my iPad and then I publish on my Mac. If I add together all the tasks involved in creating a blog post, I think I am somewhere between 1 and 3 hours for any of the blog posts I manage like this. It doesn’t happen in one chunk, as I told you, because my work time is unusually fractured, but the good thing is that it does happen in a consistent way.

7 Things To Do When The Shit Hits The Fan

I know you’ve been through this, we’ve all been. Minding your own business, peacefully, things going on smoothly and then, out of nothing, something incredibly bad happens. The shit hits the fan. Of course, I’m not talking about the physical phenomenon (nor do I advise you to try to replicate that exact setup). I’m talking about “unpredictable” crisis. Situations that turns really bad without any perceivable warning. We’ll see later on that the “unpredictable” factor is not so unpredictable.

Well, since I’ve been through something that may qualify as a shit storm during the last week, I thought it would be useful to share some of my experiences, as well as some of the ways in which I eventually coped with the disaster.

The Story

One of things I really enjoy doing is writing iPhone apps. And lately, writing iPad apps. During the last 3 months I developed an iPad version of one of my iPhone apps, iAdd. I will skip the details about what iAdd does, just follow the link if you want to know more. I will just let you know that iAdd is a universal app, which means you download it only once but it will work on both your iPhone and your iPad (with a different interface, of course).

It was a really slow and daunting process. I think I changed the workflow at least 5 or 6 times. Writing a few days., then realizing it’s not going to work and starting over. Writing user interfaces is kinda difficult, you know. To make a long story short, after countless hours of getting my fingers dirty in the hidden intricacies of Objective C and iPad user interface elements, I finally came up with something I liked.

In this process, the iPhone app had to be touched a few times. A few navigation patterns had to be modified. And  adding a little bit of this here and taking out a little bit of that from there. Fact is that after 100 days of development, the initial app, the one that was currently on sale on AppStore, was completely modified.

Feeling under the pressure of making it happen, without proper testing and with an incredible feeling of faith that everything is going to be just fine, I finally submitted the app. Version 1.3, which was supposed to be most glorious one to date. I really like the iPad interface I came up with, seriously.

The review process took about 4-5 days. I finally received the email stating that my app “is in review” and then, about 10 hours later, the email stating that my app is live on the AppStore. I think it was 3:30 AM last Friday. I felt a fantastic relief that my app was finally live and went to sleep as usual. Only half an hour later, I heard another email (I keep my iPhone close when I sleep, to hear the morning alarm, and when I get an email from certain important sources, the iPhone rings). Sleepy but relaxed, I looked at the email.

The next second, my relaxation went away. And also my sleep. It was an email from an unhappy customer, who just bought my app and who was experiencing a crash. A crash means the app is just going away when it isn supposed to. A crash is a bad thing. Scratch that. A crash is the worst thing that may happen to your app. In just a few minutes I received another email from another customer, who was experiencing a similar problem.

In just a few hours I was about to find out that my app was practically unusable.

What happened?

Well, a mix of bad luck, tiredness and just plain strange stuff. The app submitted was simply not working and it took me a few hours to find out why. Some parts were not properly tested, while others were just left away, not included in the latest build, because… Well, I don’t know why. I simply can’t explain how the app was submitted in that form, but that was the blunt reality.

In other words, the shit was on the fan already.

To make things really sad, you gotta know that you can’t fix things in the AppStore the moment you realize something is wrong. It takes days for your app to be reviewed again.

What About Now?

As I already told you, that happened last Friday, in the morning. It’s Wednesday now and for the last 4-5 days, I was under an incredible amount of pressure. As of today, the first fix of iAdd was approved and it’s live on the AppStore, iAdd version 1.3.1. But meanwhile I discovered another round of crashes which are fixed in the next version, namely 1.3.2. Which was just submitted to the AppStore, a couple of hours ago.

Hopefully, iAdd 1.3.2 will be the last version to see crashes. But, based on my recent experience, anything can happen. Seriously, I do hope there won’t be any more crashes starting from 1.3.2.

What follows is an attempt to formalize my experience in fighting an “unpredictable” situation of crisis, just like the one I just left behind.

1. Assess, Don’t Stress

It’s very easy to give in to panic when something goes wrong. Instead, I focused on what exactly happened. And what happened proved to be a little less worrying than I thought. For starters, there were a few additions that were still working, That was a good thing. Next, I already knew how to fix the crashes. Yes, I had a number of unhappy customers. And they were perfectly right.

But as I dived into the analysis process, something very interesting happened. The adrenaline rush was not directed to a “fight or flight” situation anymore. When you’re facing a crisis, your reactions are following only two patterns: fight (or try to prove that my customers were wrong, in my case) or flight (leave things as they were, cutting out the iPhone business for ever from my business stream).

Either way, we’re talking about stress. And stress, as dangerous as it may be, it does have this incredible access to energy. It can literally release (or block) tons of energy. Well, this stress energy, this adrenaline rush was transformed into working energy. In just a few hours I was able to fix the most annoying crashes and do a resubmit. And, luckily for me, it took only 3 days for Apple to approve it.

2. Decide So It Won’t Collide

Moments after I realized what went wrong, I started to plan. What needs to be done ASAP? What can I do now? What is the time frame available? After I gathered all the data, I started to play with decisions. Some of the things I knew I have to fix weren’t so visible (they weren’t producing crashes, anyway). I decided to leave them for the next version and focus on what I could do to fix the crashes.

Our ability to identify and follow up decisions during a crisis is drastically affected. But despite that, it’s vital to step back and choose. Even in a very dangerous situation we have many more options than the “fight or flight”. There is this urge to run away from the place of the crisis, hoping that a change in context will also change the facts. Unless a building is crashing on you, running away is never the best option.

Avoidance won’t work either. It takes a while to turn your face to the fan and take all the shit upfront. But it’s the only viable solution. Only if you identify the direction you can start to prepare the escape. If you don’t stay there, if you don’t face the crisis and its causes, you won’t be able to stop it. You may get away for a while if you run away, but each time you’ll get back to that place, there may be a different day, but you’ll be facing the same old shit.

3. Communicate

Nothing is happening just by itself. And there isn’t such a thing like a “black box” of our life events, something completely unaccessible. Information is there, reach to it. Each time you face a crisis, try to communicate. The moment I got the first emails from my unhappy customers, I started to answer. Acknowledging the situation, apologizing, but… at the same time trying to get as much intel as I could.

As I following up to the angry emails I realized something very interesting. Yes, the app was behaving badly. Yes, there were a lot of frustration. But at the same time I realized that… my customers were actually relaying on my app for their daily activity (iAdd is time and task planner, to put it mildly). So, my app was important. Not to mention that my immediate answers were gaining big time on the “support” size of the whole experience. People were actually appreciating the fact that I was answering instantly and that was somehow lowering their frustration. Or so they said to me .

Every crisis can reveal something about you (or the others) that you weren’t aware of. As long as you stay on track and communicate. Don’t isolate in a “I know better” pattern. If there are other persons involved in your crisis, try to understand their point of view too.

4. Rebuild Carefully

After I finished the first 3 steps, I started to write code. This time, in a completely different manner than before. The worse had already happened. So why worry now? I just sat carefully, testing each feature 3-4 times with different data, until somehow, the whole app started to get a different consistence.

The emphasis here is on “carefully” not so much on “rebuild”. You gotta rebuild anyway, but just do it very carefully. It’s very important to realize that you did as much harm as you could already. No need to augment on that. Just pay close attention to what you’re doing and things will start to straighten up.

Again, when we’re under pressure, we have this huge urge to speed up. Well, speed up, if you have to, but do it carefully. You don’t want to make another mistake and then another one and then another one. Accept the current disaster and focus on avoiding the next potential one.

5. Leverage

After I realized I’m facing a real customer crisis, I started to look around. I started to manage the process. And I’m not talking about assessing, deciding and writing code. I also started to write blog posts on the iAdd official blog, explaining what’s going on. It wasn’t only about fixing some bugs. It was also about informing other people.

After I wrote the blog posts, the number of messages decreased. People were visiting the blog, were reading the posts and apparently they were getting the answers they were looking for. They were not into bullying me, the author, they were just trying to understand what’s going on.

Using as many tools as you can get a hold of is incredibly useful in time of crisis. If a wheel on the car explodes, try to stay on track with the remaining three, don’t stop. Leveraging means reaching out to whatever you have, own or can use in order to smooth the crisis. And that stands true for any type of crisis.

6. Keep Your Fingers Crossed

I bet you didn’t see that coming. Well, neither do I. But after I did everything that was to be done, after I submitted the app, responded to customers and wrote blog posts, I realized that’s it. I did all I could do. Everything more would have been a waste of energy.

So I just sat back and tried to relax. And kept my fingers crossed. Fact is you never know if something is going to work or not. You can only hope. Keeping your fingers crossed is a way of “giving yourself in”. I did everything, now let’s see what happens.

In any crisis, there is so much you can do. Anything over that level simply won’t matter.

7.  Learn

Write down what happened. Well, not necessarily in the form of 7 items list blog post, like I did, but do write it down. See where was the glitch. And then repeat it. Rewind in your mind all the phases of this unfortunate crisis. That’s how you can prevent it later on. That’s where the “unpredictable” I was talking about in the beginning of this post is turning into “obvious”.

We learn from mistakes, not from successes. We remember the dangerous and hurtful events much better than the happy events. I guess it’s wired into our survivals patterns. We do this in order to avoid a similarly dangerous situation.

Or at least that’s how you can cope better with it next time the shit hits the fan again.

iAdd version 1.3 Live In AppStore

After only 5 days of waiting, iAdd version 1.3 is live in AppStore. As I already wrote, this version features a complete redesign of the iPad version and a lot of small usability improvements, as well as numerous bug fixes. If you don’t know what iAdd is, I will briefly tell you that it’s my iOS implementation of my own Assess – Decide – Do framework. If you want to know more about the framework, feel free to visit its (brand new) homepage at Assess-Decide-Do. And if you want to know more about iAdd, the app, of course, there’s a site for that too, iAdd.

They say an image is worth a thousand words, so, as I planned to write a few thousands words blog post today, I will only share a few screenshots.

Oh, and one more thing: the book that started all is now available on Kindle. That means you can read it on your iPhone, on your iPad, on your Mac, or even on your Android powered device. In short, pretty much everywhere. And, to make things even spicier, the Kindle version is only 9.99 USD, compared with the regular price of 27 USD. Here’s a screenshot of what the ebook looks like on my iPad, using the Kindle app for iPad.

You can get the Kindle version of Natural Productivity: Assess, Decide, Do for your Kindle by clicking here.

7 Life Lessons From A Self-Taught Programmer

I always had a thing with languages. For some reason, I always found it easy to learn them, and had a great time using them. Surprisingly enough, I followed a tech high-school, majoring with a diploma as a programmer in… FORTRAN. After that, I went to the University of Letters in Bucharest, where I studied Romanian and French literature. And in the last 10 years I had my own online publishing company, where I wrote more than 70% of the source code for the underlying software platform.

Why I’m telling you all this? Not to show you that my career life was a roller-coaster, if you read my blog for some time you already know that. But because there’s a link between spoken languages and programming languages. At a certain level, they’re both a vocabulary over a grammar. A programming language can be learned and applied just like learning French or Japanese.

Reality Is Created With Words

If you ever learned a foreign language you remember that special feeling of expansion, both inward and outward. It’s like space is growing around you. And that’s because every time you learn to describe the world in a new language, you actually redefine it, you reinvent it and enjoy it as a completely new reality. L’amour en Francais it’s a completely different thing from love in English, or from dragoste in Romanian. They’re actually new realities. Learning a new language is a beautiful travel.

Now, a programming language is almost the same. It enlarges your mind and gives you access to areas in your life that you didn’t even know they exist. It puts you in uncomfortable situations and forces you to solve complicated problems. Every new app that you start coding is like a trip to Thailand with only a pocket Thai dictionary. When you start the app, you barely know how to say sawasdee, but at the end of it, not only you know how to have a conversation with the locals, but nobody will be able to tell that you have an accent.

7 Life Lessons From A Self-Taught Programmer

I recently finished a very dear project to me, an iPhone / iPad app based on my own life management framework, Assess – Decide – Do. The app is available on the App Store, by the way, and it’s only 3.99. It took me 30 days to put together the first version, but around 90 days in total to have a solid, mature and feature packed app. During this trip, I had an incredible time, learned tremendously and thoroughly enjoyed every breakthrough. What follows is a collection of life lessons learned as a self-taught programmers, mainly while I was coding iAdd.

1. Bugs Are On You

Always. Don’t blame the compiler, the lack of documentation, or the horoscope. You made a mistake somewhere. At some point, something happened in one of your Assess – Decide – Do cycles (yes, you have those cycles even if you’re not aware of them) and you screwed something. I spent countless hours trying to find a flaw in some class or API, basically banging my head against the wall by not accepting that I was the source of that mistake. A typo, a bad copy/paste, or whatever: every bug was in fact my own responsibility.

It’s the same thing in life. If there’s something wrong, check your own history. Don’t blame somebody else. It’s not the universal compiler’s fault (if there would be such a thing like a Universal Compiler, anyway). There’s no glitch in the Matrix. There’s no failure in the Universe. It’s in you. Look in the mirror and try to find out what you did wrong. And then solve it.

2. You Have To Face The Problem, Detours Are Not An Option

Even if you don’t like it, in programming you have to take the most “difficult” path simply because there are no other options. Workarounds are fragile. They may solve the problem for the time being but their fragility will show up the moment you’d want to expand your app. Do it the right way, fix the problem for good. Or, if you settle for workarounds, expect things to blow in your face the moment you’re expecting this the least.

It’s like in life: you can’t live in a continuous status-quo. You gotta take responsibility for your choices, climb the mountain you have to climb, because the solution is always on top of that mountain. You can’t take a detour. Or if you choose a detour instead of facing the problem upfront, you may overcome some temporary difficulties, but you won’t find the real answer. The real answer is always on top of the mountain.

3. Today’s Problem Is Tomorrow’s Laughter

If you learn constantly, what seems difficult now, tomorrow will seem like a joke. Not only once I hit “impossible” situations in my coding, but staying with them long enough made them fade away. I remember the feeling of frustration and powerlessness every time I had to learn something new. Every time some new class showed up, some new algorithms appeared and I felt like I will never finish. But I did. And I laughed at my own frustration afterwards.

If you really take the time to look back at your life, you’d be amazed how far you’ve already gone. Just try to remember how was your life 5 years ago. How much was changed in your financial life? In your personal life? In your career? If you did your homework well, as in the number two above, the answer will amaze you. But if your answer will fill you up with sadness and frustration, go back to number two above and climb your mountain.

4. Good Focus Builds Good Things

The temptation of having something running out as fast you can, publishing it on the AppStore and waiting for the cash to pour in is big. Tens of thousands of programmers are hitting this road just like the gold rush in Wild Wild West. But if you look at the top 10 apps they’re all solid, verified, tested and really polished apps. Hurrying up is not a good solution. Especially in a highly competitive ecosystem like the App Store.

They say “all good things come to those who wait” for a reason, you know? You can’t expect to go on with quick fixes for ever. And yet, the perspective of waiting will frighten you up. So bad, that you’ll just run with something that works for the moment and lose sight of the big picture. Doing things incessantly, just for the sake of coping with your day to day challenges won’t take you far. Take some time to think things over.

5. If You Feel It, Do It

Many times you won’t have the tools to query your user base about the features they’d want in your app. You’re either an indie developer (like me), or the company doesn’t have a budget for creating focus groups or there’s nobody watching the forums, etc. Fact is you’ll have to rely most of the time on your own intuition when it comes to adding or eliminating features from your app. So, if you feel like something new will fit in, just go for it.

Of course, there will be times when you’ll be hit by the “feature diarrhea” but that’s a risk you’ll have to take. In time, you’ll develop a fine sense of what’s appropriate and what’s not. And you’ll grow that sense by practice, by direct interaction, by doing stuff.

That’s exactly with life decisions. When you feel it, go for it. Don’t delay, don’t ask for permission. You know better.

6. Be Neat

If you ever wrote a project with more than 5 source code files, you know that managing those source code files can be a nightmare. At this point, iAdd has almost 200 source code files. It would have been impossible to manage them without being organized and neat. By the way, iAdd was developed from the idea stage to the final implementation stage using Assess – Decide – Do, my life management framework. Without a formalized methodology in place, the project simply wouldn’t have been finished. Never.

If you have unfinished things, unspoken sentences or forgotten promises, uncover, speak out or fulfill. Don’t leave things floating around, hoping that someone else will come over and take care of them for you. Nobody will. It’s only you and your life. Keep it in order. Even if you did a mistake, a neat mistake is far easier to be repaired than a complicated one.

7. There’s More Than One Way To Skin A Cat

And perhaps more than 10 ways to implement an algorithm. In my early days as a programmer, I always was afraid there isn’t any way to do it. Now I’m afraid that I won’t choose the right way to do it. You always have more choices than you think you have. The same algorithm can be implemented in dozens of ways and a problem can be solved in thousands of ways.

That’s the same in life. If in the beginning you’ll be afraid that you won’t reach your goal, as you advance and learn, you’ll be afraid that you didn’t chose the most simple and effective way to do it. The subtle lesson here is that there are always solutions. Abundant, flowing and ready to be used. Embracing risks and daring to be different will teach you that nothing is impossible.

Nothing.

Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity

More than a year ago, I was traveling to Thailand. It was my first trip to South-East Asia. I clearly remember the colors, the smells, the images and the overall excitement mixed with curiosity. I had an incredible time during that trip. I don’t know if it was the visual shock or the cultural difference, the jetlag or my raw food diet (at that time) fact is, at some point during that trip, I had a sort of a revelation. It came in the form of three words: Assess – Decide – Do.

During the trip, those words repeatedly came into my mind until I realized they were my unconscious response to a lot of questions. How do you get up in the morning? How do I get to that place I want to visit? How do I get to the airport? How do I manage to write the blog posts I planned to write on this trip? All those questions stacked up somewhere in a darker corner of my mind, until they got a sudden and unexpected response. Assess, Decide, Do. While my conscious mind was busy absorbing all the fresh experiences, my unconscious mind had to come up with an answer to all those questions.

During that trip, I started to follow that short sequence of activities more and more, hour after hour, each and every day. I started to calm down and assess what I want to do, then decide if, when and where I want to do that, and then do it. I practically started to slice up my reaction to outside stimuli following this pattern. First assess, then decide, then do. Somehow, it seemed to work. The events were flowing down easily, I was focusing exactly on what I wanted to focus, while still maintaining a high degree of awareness. As I told you, I still remember the colors, the smells and even the noises.

After I got home, I put those words apart. There were things that needed to be done, bills to pay, meetings to attend to and so on. But somehow, the words kept popping out in my head. And somehow, I started to apply that sequence to other parts of my life. I started with work. In a matter of days, I started to experience a smooth flow and a surprising increase in my productivity. I said surprising because I’m not a lazy person. And then tried to apply it in my personal life. And then in my relationships. The more I practiced it, the better I became at. Eventually, I took this to a whole new and bigger level. After a few months of trials and errors, I was sure that I was into something really good. And by lack of any other name, I named this a “life management framework”.

What’s This Ebook About?

After I realized that I finally discovered something, I started to write about it. There were a few articles on the blog, all of them very well received. I started to incorporate feedback from my readers in it and also started to share these ideas with my friends. Basically, everybody who was exposed to the ideas seemed to “click” with the approach. At some point, when all the structure of the framework was clear, I started to build an app for it. Exactly, an iPhone app. There must be an app for everything, right?

During the app building process, I applied the same framework rules: I assessed, I decided than I did what seemed to be necessary to move the app forward. It took me roughly 30 days to build that app, without any prior knowledge of Objective C. It took me roughly 30 days to build that app, without any prior knowledge of Objective C. (No, this was not a mistake, I deliberately wrote that twice. Just to get it right.)

Now, the app is in the AppStore for more than 2 months, the latest version syncs your data with Dropbox, there is also an iPad version and so on. It may look like I started a business on this idea and to a certain degree, that’s right. But this perception of business will have to stop at the level of employees, though, because I don’t have any. I did everything by myself. Everything. The app, the blog, the promotion. Everything. Oh, and in the process, I had to handle the reconnection with my 13 year old son, I had to take care of my 4 year old daughter and also manage the separation details from my ex-wife. Just in case you’re thinking I had nothing else to do than to write on the blog, on the ebook or write Objective C code.

And still, every morning when I look in the mirror I see a healthy man, doing what he loves to do and enjoying a life of balance and fulfillment. This is what this ebook is about.

Let’s Get Practical Here

Now, if you made it till here, you must need some real life data, not some motivational stories. You’re right. I have what you need.

The ebook is structured in 3 levels: the conceptual one, the practical exercises and the tutorial for the iPhone/iPad app.

You start by learning from a very high perspective what Assess, Decide, Do means, how your being is acting on each realm and how you can identify your life imbalances using only the 3 aforementioned realms This will sound more like what I write on my blog on a regular basis. Many chapters are sharing large parts with the articles already published.

Then, in the second part, you take the framework to a real life ride. You start to apply it to relationships, to personal crisis management or to strategies for dealing with interruptions. This is the practical stuff. Once you have the concepts clear, you start to apply them to various areas of your day to day life.

And finally, in the 3rd part, you actually see, screenshot by screenshot, how to use iAdd for iPhone. This is the “tutorial” part of the ebook. I felt like a practical section was not enough. I needed something very “in your face”. Step by step. That’s what the third part is.

That’s it. This is the ebook.

I said it before, I will say it again: I suck at writing long, boring and deceiving sales pages. I simply can’t afford to insult your intelligence with all kind of cheap incentives, when I know that you know better than me if you need this ebook.

What Others Are Saying About It

As you may already know, the ebook was on pre-order for 48 hours on my blog. Since I wanted to have some feed-back, I kindly asked some of the people who read it to give me some impressions. These are real people, with real blogs and real lives. And, to my surprise (well, not quite ) they gave me feedback for both the ebook and the app.

Ian Peatey – QuantumLearning.pl

You will like the book if you:

• want to know how Dragos is so damn productive
• want a method to help you get productive yourself
• want to know how Dragos is so damn laid back AND productive at the same time.

You will be wasting your money if you:

• hate Dragos and wish him to live in poverty for the rest of his days
• are perfectly content with both your productivity and level of laid-back-ness.

Lyman Reed – LymanReed.com (iTunes feedback)

iAdd is an excellent app if you want to get out of the “add things to a list and then cross them off” world of productivity. It incorporates much from the GTD world (such as Contexts), but really shines in the area where GTD leaves off – where we assess what’s important to us and make decisions based on what we want to do.

The app is based on Dragos Roua’s Assess-Decide-Do framework – without an understanding of this framework, it could easily be mistaken for just another to do list with what seem like some extra useless steps. I strongly suggest that the user takes the time to learn the framework (links are in the app) to get the most from it.

It’s now my go-to iPhone app for productivity, especially when it comes to using the Assess realm for idea collection. It may even have convinced me that purchasing an iPad would be worth it – unless of course Dragos is planning on creating a version for Windows.  Or even better, a Google Chrome extension (hint, hint…)

Eric – EdenJournal.com

Assess Decide Do is a revolutionary way of approaching Life Management.  It’s more than managing productivity, it’s a framework to underlie day to day decision management.  Assess Decide Do clearly organizes the pre-decision, the decision, and the post decision (or doing.)   Decision making can be a challenge, but Dragos makes it easier by creating a process that allows for all the information gathering to happen first, and then the decision follows a simple go/no-go format.  I have struggled with many forms of organization, and I despise task lists.  Assess Decide Do is a great alternative to the task list, and is really a much more comprehensive solution to organize my life.  It really is a Life Management Framework.

Ruben Berenguel MostlyMaths.net

When I read about the ADD framework in Dragos’ blog, or about the iADD application, I wasn’t impressed. Maybe it was not the correct time, or I just didn’t get it at the moment. Then, I was offered to review the ebook, and reading chapter 3 opened my eyes. I definitely needed to buy that app: it was my workflow. Said and done, I bought it a few hours ago and can’t stop thinking about how much attention to usefulness Dragos put in it. If you have found other to-do apps useless, this is for you.

Pat Flynn – SmartPassiveIncome.com (iTunes feedback)

I agree with one of the other commenters. This really helps take the GTD mindset to a whole new productivity level. Understanding which tasks are most important to us is key, and I’m really glad I have an app to help me with this now, because I often lose my way throughout the day. Thank you!

***

The ebook is only 27 USD and you can buy it by clicking here.

I do hope it will give you at least a fraction of the benefits I had from creating it.

iAdd For iPhone / iPad Now Syncs With Dropbox

It has been a very exciting time for me in the last few weeks. Not only I finished another ebook, one that is very close to me, called “Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity” but I also finished a brand new version of iAdd, my iPhone / iPad implementation for the ADD framework. As a matter of fact, I’m still in the “eye of the hurricane” as we speak. The ebook is currently on pre-order now (for the next 20 hours and something) which means you can still get it at a discounted price and the latest version of iAdd for iPhone / iPad, 1.2,  is live on the AppStore. So, I’m right in the middle of action, knowing that the actual launch of the ebook will happen only after a few hours.

Yes, We Run On iPad Too

Noticed how I silently added the iPad suffix too? Well, that’s because iAdd is now natively working on the iPad too. The good news is that you don’t have to pay extra bucks for it. iAdd is a Universal app. You pay only once (and you pay 3.99 USD, for a limited period of time) and you get 2 apps. If we take into account the iPod users, well, you get 3 apps in only one.

That’s one of the most important features of the latest version of iAdd. It’s not an app running in compatibility mode, it’s specifically designed for iPad. You will notice that all the main interface elements have been designed specifically for iPad, and the data enter workflow has been completely rewritten (click to see full size).

Look, I’m A Landscape!

Another new feature of the version 1.2 will be autorotation. Any data input app should have this, especially on smaller devices like the iPhone. It’s much more comfortable to type, or even to read your tasks while your device is on landscape. As many of you noticed this was an important oversight of the first version of iAdd. Well, it’s fixed now.

Send Anything By Email

Another common suggestion from iAdd customer was a way to make the data accessible in many ways. Everybody agreed that the app is easy to use, but not having a way to share your data outside the device was perceived like an important limitation. Well, starting with version 1.2 you can send any information via email. You can send tasks, you can send events, you can send even projects or ideas and all the contained tasks / details within the projects or ideas will be automatically added. All you have to do is to add an email address and hit send.

Cloud Syncing Is The New Black

As useful as it may be, email is kinda obsolete. I mean it’s a very good back-up solution, but the nicest thing of all is to have cloud syncing. Well, you asked for it, you got it. iAdd version 1.2 sync your data completely with Dropbox via Edge, #g or WiFi. You can now have access to all your tasks, projects or ideas from anywhere. Dropbox released an API for interacting with its widely popular cloud storage service only a few weeks ago but when I saw the press release, I knew I had to work with it.

The API is really fresh, so there might be some inconsistencies. I took all the measures I could think of to ensure a proper backup and syncing of your data, but as always, bad things may happen. Please use the support page listed in iTunes to give me a very thorough description of what wen bad. I’ll fix it.

The most common use case for syncing is when you have 2 devices: an iPhone that goes with you everywhere and an iPad which is more static. You can also have any combination of iPod, iPhone and iPad, of course. That’s one of the main reasons we have an iPad version too. You can use iAdd on any device, with its local database and once you hit sync, your information will be updated. As in most common syncing algorithms, I used the “most recent wins” approach. There are many ways in which you can sync your data, but for a sequential use case (not a concurrent access) this one seemed the most appropriate.

Workflow Improvements And Bug Fixes

There are also tons of bugfixes in this release and I won’t stop to mention each and every one of them. Maybe the most important one is the date selection mechanism which has been drastically improved. There are also a lot of new workflow enhancements and here is just a short list of what are the most important ones:

• a new context based view in the Decide realm
• now you can send a task back to Decide even before you finished it
• a task can be detached from a project, becoming a single task
• a task can be assigned to another idea
• a single task can be promoted to a project

You can see a full list of what’s new in the iTunes listing page.

It’s All Part Of The Framework

But the biggest competitive advantage of all would be of course the fact that iAdd implements the Assess-Decide-Do framework in a very handy and easy to use application. It’s part of the bigger framework, one that could allegedly be used not only for life management, but also for simpler and more mundane tasks like blogging or shopping. That’s right, you can use iAdd to plan your next blog post, or your next shopping session. There are even 2 sample chapters in the ebook which are talking specifically about that: how to use iAdd for blogging and for shopping. Not to mention that one third of the ebook is a very comprehensive manual of iAdd.

So, if you like iAdd, I strongly recommend getting the ebook “Assess – Decide – Do: Natural Productivity” which is, as I already said, on pre-order until tomorrow at 7 AM, Bucharest time. The price is 27 USD, but you can get it at 20 USD while on pre-order. Not to mention that I’ve also thrown in 30 promo codes for the new version of iAdd (of which I have less than 10 now, so you should really hurry up).

You get both the ebook and the app on a very good deal. The bad part of the deal is that will expire in less than 24 hours.

Assess – Decide – Do In Under 2 Minutes

Well, since things are going on just well with my iPhone app, which, by the way, is called iAdd, and can be seen directly in iTunes here, I thought it would be about time to make a short video explaining what’s the thing with this Assess – Decide – Do framework.

Without further ado, go on and watch this (very) short video. I suggest you see it in full screen, since I fiddled a little with the app, and it would be a little difficult to see all the things in just one tiny window.

Now, you know. Hopefully.

As you can see, it’s not very difficult. And I never claimed ADD would be something difficult, on the contrary, it’s simplicity at its best.

I did this video after I started to receive the first round of feed-back form my very first customers. Without exception, all were attracted by the “clean” interface and the apparent lack of complexity in the app. While the lack of complexity is a deliberate act, the clean interface is just the result of enforcing the Assess – Decide – Do framework. The information is the same in every productivity methodology, it’s how you look at it that differs. And, for what matters, what really makes a difference.

One more thing. Before posting the video on my blog, I shared it on twitter and facebook. Apparently, people loved it. So, I think I’m not too far from the truth when I’m saying that I will do more of these in the very near future. I already got some ideas about some very, very short tutorials, under 1 minute, which will fit great in this video scaffold.

Until then, remember that iAdd is still in its very first stage, in what I call MPD, or Minimum Product Demo. In this state, the app is only enforcing the framework, making you the obey some simple rules, like

• you cannot edit a piece of information if you’re not in Assess
• you don’t have to “sign the contract”, to actually commit for a task, unless you really send it to Do. The task can stay in the Decide realm for as long as you want, and you can select different contexts or deadlines for it as you see fit
• on the Do realm you’re only doing, there’s nothing more to distract your focus from that. You can only see the tasks from whatever perspective you want: time (today, soon or overdue) or space (meaning the contexts you assign in Decide).
• you can only add information in the Assess realm, in Decide and Do, you are performing completely different. Some clients suggested that I should add the possibility to add tasks from Decide or Do. That is very unlikely to happen.

Well, that’s it. If you have the app, just let me know in the comments and also feel free to give suggestions, critiques or any type of feedback you want. If you didn’t buy the app yet, you can do it by clicking here, for just 2.99 USD.

Or, at least, you can start assessing the possibility.

Inhale. Exhale

For the last 40 days my work routine was completely messed up. Some of you noticed it by the number of guest posts on the blog, which was really high lately (and for that I am thankful to all my dear friends and contributors here). Some of you noticed it by my (highly unusual) low presence on social media, on twitter and facebook. And some of you noticed it when I kindly asked you a small favor: helping me test one of the most interesting things I done lately: an iPhone app based on my Assess – Decide – Do life management framework.

Why iPhone Programming?

I can hear you, guys. Loud and clear: “what are you trying to prove with this iPhone stuff? I mean this is hundreds of miles away from being a blogger. I’m confused: what are you? What do you do?“ Well, I can understand your confusion. It may sound a little bit off the track, but it isn’t. This whole 40 days trial had very serious reasons. Here they are:

1. I Love To Make My Ideas Real

Number one reason is: making my ideas come true is one of my biggest sources of fulfillment. I live for this. I don’t have any other satisfaction bigger than that. I mean we all have brilliant ideas. I know some people who can have at least 6 brilliant ideas before breakfast (that would be a hook to a very interesting book, let me know in the comments if you guessed what’s the book I’m hinting at). But an idea is just an idea, an exercise of the brain. Putting all the pieces together, making it all work in the real life, just in front of your eyes, here’s from where the real satisfaction comes.

2. Self-Improvement Is Not About Writing A Self-Improvement Blog

Self-Improvement is about getting better and better at what you choose to do. Writing a blog about it can make a you a very respected blogger but it won’t automatically make you a better person. There are certain skills required to create and maintain a successful blog, I agree, but that has little to do with self-improvement. It’s just a blog. Self-improvement means challenging yourself into more and more difficult ventures, and overcome all the obstacles. This is where the real fun is.

3. I Truly Believe in My Life Management Framework

It’s been almost a year since the first draft of my ADD life management framework. A lot of stuff happened since them. I wrote 4 ebooks (all of them with printed versions published on Amazon too) and started 2 live workshops, one on online business and the other one in professional blogging. None of this could happen if I didn’t consciously apply all the rules in my life management framework. In other words: this just works. It made me far more productive than I was even when I had my online publishing company (and I was somehow forced to be productive). So, knowing that the system has been tested for almost a year on my self, I had no reason NOT to make it available to a wider audience.

The Whole Picture

But wait, there’s more. Yes, of course if is The iPhone app is just a part. The product I’ve been working on includes much more than that. I already have an ebook describing the ADD life management framework in a very advanced stage. I hope it will be ready by the end of this month. Think at the ebook as of a companion for the iPhone app (there will be a whole chapter dedicated to it anyway). And there will also be a series of podcasts on how to use this life management framework, along with the iPhone app (or even separately, if you want, ADD is a very flexible framework, it downs’t tie you down to a certain setup).

So, please keep in mind there will be some buzz again on this blog and make sure you subscribe, because in the next few weeks I’ll be writing far more than usual. Or at least in a different manner than you’re used to.

But until then, here are a few screenshots of the iPhone app. The interface may change a little bit in the near future, but basically this is how it looks:

The Growing Process

After 40 days of totally immersing in a completely new area, I feel incredibly fresh. Yes, there were a lot of roadblocks and frustrations along the way. At some points I felt lost. I also felt like I was going nowhere: what am I doing here in the middle of the night trying to understand a stupid thing like a UIPickerDateDelegate? Why am I doing this instead of sleeping or staying in the backyard listening to some music or just going out to some party?

Well, I did it because this is what I usually do: I try to get better at stuff. I try to overcome my own limitations. I try to discover new things. And I enjoy this far more than sitting outside in the backyard doing nothing or banging my head at some dull party. I love to be challenged. And learning Objective C from scratch in one month looked like one hell of a challenge.

Now, don’t get too excited. Learning Objective C in one month if you’ve never been exposed to programming might be almost impossible. I don’t claim I did this. I am a seasoned programmer (I think I wrote more than 100.000 lines of PHP code back while I had my online publishing company).

And I also did something to soften a potential crash: a dry run using a low effort project, just to get a glimpse of what should I expect. It was what I call “calibration”: do something small just to see exactly what steps do you have to take. So, three months ago I created a small game using a third party SDK, Corona, which allows you to build iPhone, iPad and Android apps. It didn’t took me more than a week. The game, called iFlipEm Lite, was written in lua, a very easy to learn programming language. iFlipEm Lite ( iTunes link) is in the AppStore for more than 2 months now and it had around 1000 downloads. Not to mention the Android version which had around 100 installations.

Once I understood the whole process of app submission and logistic requirements for deploying an iPhone app at a more professional level, I totally immersed into it. I started to daily log my progress (or, for what it matters, my frustrations) and I committed to it totally. I plan to write a very detailed post on how to tackle such a job so for those of you keen on technical details maybe there will be something more.

Now, this whole adventure backfired at me in a number of ways. First of all, the blog suffered a little bit. I didn’t wrote as much as I usually do and I didn’t promote it (or engage in cross-promotions) as often as I usually do. I ran much more guest posts than usual. The subscribers number remained basically the same but the in the blog business, if you don’t grow, you don’t exist. Just being there means nothing, you gotta move. So, my blog was stalled for a little while.

But while my blog was stalled, something else was growing: my personal experience in implementing an iPhone app, based on my own ideas. And even if this wasn’t very obvious (or at least very public) it counts. And it counts a lot. Maybe some of my readers got a little bit confused by the fact I didn’t wrote as often as I usually do. They shouldn’t. It’s normal. I’m not a writing machine, nor do I intend to become one. I’m enjoying the process as much (if not more) as I enjoy the destination. So every detour on my road is part of the journey. And I enjoy it a lot.

Now, since everybody knows now what I was doing lately, a short explanation of the title.

Inhale. Exhale

Every time we’re immersing in something new, we’re inhaling. We’re incorporating skills, information, knowledge, experience. We’re totally immersed in this process. And this is how it should be, anyway. And every time we’re sharing or applying what we learned, we’re exhaling. We’re pushing away our know-how, enriched with our personal experience.

Our entire life process is unfolding like this. There is this game of pushing back and forth that makes the journey worthwhile.

If we’re too much into inhaling (acquiring skills, knowledge or money) we’re going to implode, sooner or later. If we’re too much into exhaling (sharing skills or knowledge) we’re going to dry ourselves out: we’re going to run out of experiences to share.

So, the growth process is nothing more than this simple, fundamental process of respiration.

Inhale. Exhale.