Relearning How To Work

This week I’m relearning how to work.

My company is implementing significant new restrictions and policies on our machine and, as a result, I find that the way I would normally work, using Apple’s built-in Notes, Reminders and other tools, simply will no longer work.

I need to access, at a minimum, those notes and reminders (as well as Slack and email) from my phone. Given Apple’s poor identity management, and my company’s removal of me being able to sync those via iCloud, I can’t do this anymore necessitating a significant change to how I work.

I have a couple of options, I could use Google Keep and Tasks but we’re planning a move away from Google at work as well so that doesn’t seem like the best net-new tool. We already have Notion at work and it seems like something it could do so… it’s worth a try.

Instead of my daily notes in, well, Notes I’ve set them up in Notion. It’s already a hassle. We use Notion for so many things that swapping between windows is driving me crazy. For Reminders I’ve also setup a new Notion database. It’s also not great, but as long as I can remember tasks that’s all that really matters.

As part of this I’m also losing Safari’s iCloud sync. Add to that the issues Apple Mail has had since March or so and I’ve just given up with Apple tools at work in general. At the moment I’m just staying in Chrome, which is already installed and required for a few apps anyway. For mail, I’ll just stick to native Gmail for a while and see how that goes.

Yes, this all significantly hurts my productivity (and that of quite a few others) but no one really cares. For me, I’ll figure this out and make sure that even less data syncs to my personal phone. When we move to MS365 I’ll revisit my setup and see where I can go from there.

It’s amazing how much our daily tools matter. For me the simplicity of Apple’s tools (Notes, Reminders, Mail, etc) has proven to be the best for the way I work for years. Losing that is never fun. This was one of my issues even when I was on Linux.

If I could do all my work from a single machine it wouldn’t matter, but that’s just not the case. Without the ability to easily move between my laptop, tablet and phone, all depending on where I am at the moment), I wind up losing a lot of context throughout my day. This is why, for all its faults, Apple has been the best for me. Removing that will require that I keep my work laptop with me 24/7 going forward and, so be it.