Jorge Quinteros
Blogger, web enthusiast & avid photographer based in Brooklyn.

26th July 2009

Simplistic Approach

There’s nothing more that Patrick Rhone loves than a clean, uncluttered and distraction free computing experience and for that reason he recently launch an online project entitled Minimal Mac where he features, reviews and catalogs anything Minimalists and it got me thinking of how my computer experience falls in line with the whole simplistic approach.

One of the biggest lessons in simplicity I’ve learned in the past couple months is that you don’t have to have everything in front of you to know that you own it as long as you were systematic in caching it for when you need it. The challenging on a framework like this is not just committing to it but evaluating whether it fits into your personal organization system.

Everyone is different in how they organize their stuff and I would insist that simplicity is about being content with less and when it comes to my desktop, seeing less makes me feel I have even more control in the applications, folders or documents that I need quick access to.

The Desktop

As it pertains to my non-tech oriented friends, there’s always a sense of confusion when they catch a glimpse of my desktop because I think the norm is to treat it as a dumping ground for everything you’re working on or have downloaded. Perhaps not so much with Mac users but certainly with a PC.

My desktop is a clean vacant space that has nothing but the conventional HD icons mounted. My general rule with it is that if you can store what’s on it elsewhere, then do it and the same premise extends to my dock which hardly sees any use anyway.

The Software

As the keyboard shortcut whore that I am, Quicksilver takes charge of any application launching and to compensate for the absence of folders on my desktop, I’ve recently been using Overflow for managing them. The developers describe the application’s sole purpose:

Anything you want can be added to the Overflow interface, making it accessible through a few simple mouse clicks or keystrokes. The interface is resizable, and fully customizable.

Canadian developer Dan Messing say “It’s not enough to create an application that gets the job done, it has to feel “right” to me. Right being Mac-like, and having an interface that doesn’t get in your way.”

Half the time I don’t realize the application is even running but when I need it, it gracefully comes into focus displaying a palette of documents that I’m currently working on. If having nothing scattered around but knowing where everything is located is not the ultimate simplistic approach, I don’t know what is.

The idea really is to keep the tools simple so as to allow to focus on what’s really important without feeling inundated by superfluous stuff.

18th November 2008

How I Remember Stuff

I have a weird way of remembering things. Some rely heavily on planners to stay abreast upcoming events or simple reminders with the intent to refer to them later but I’ve gone through enough abandoned Moleskines and various other forms of convenient to carry notebooks to inform me that this process is not for me when it comes to getting things done.

I take pleasure in the whole process of writing and I get quite envious when I see people have a fully active notebook inscribed with ideas or list of things because I can’t keep up with something like that. The mere act of writing good notes down, is well enough that I rarely end up having to look at those notes again. In a psychological study on the subject, Dustin best describes this interesting fact:

…before we write, although indistinguishably so — we are putting some degree of thought into evaluating and ordering the information that we are receiving. That process, and not the notes themselves, is what helps fix ideas more firmly in our minds, leading to greater recall down the line.