I’ve decided that from now until the end of the year I’m going to spend at least 1 week per month unplugged except for essentials (read: going to work).

The rules:

During detox week:

• Limit TV watching to 1 show per week (I call this the Glee Clause)
• Limit computer / internet usage to business hours M-F. No computer / internet on Saturday / Sunday.
• No internet-connected tasks while walking. (no email, checking twitter, facebook, etc. Basically I’m allowing myself to use instapaper and a Kindle) (and yes, I read and walk. I haven’t run into anyone yet.)
• Post-work computer use is limited to billable freelance hours and quantifiable Accompl.sh tasks. (read: if the site goes down, I can fix it)
• Text messages and phone calls are acceptable, but are to be used in moderation.

I tried things like this in the past, but usually along the lines of complete detox (a la my last vacation) or an attempt to unplug once/week. I think that 24 hours is too short to really feel the effect, so we’ll see how a week goes!

All that remains is to figure out which weeks to subject myself to these restrictions. I’m trying to come up with a way to choose weeks so that it ideally causes minimal interference (read: I want to be able to use the internet to plan my birthday!) Doing something like “the third weekend of every month” means I’ll likely forget to count the weeks so I think I’m going to go with something like the 15th – 21st of every month. It might hurt my Christmas shopping, but it’ll give me a reason to get ahead of the game I suppose!

So that’s the plan! What do you think? Did I miss any rules?

I’m trying to make it a point to clear my queue at the end of every day either by ditching or reading the articles I’ve thrown in there, but personally, I like to have an idea of the number of articles I have ahead of me (mostly to decide if I should plop on the couch and dive in or if it’s something I can finish off on my phone on the bus). No where on Instapaper does it tell you how many articles you’ve saved! Definitely an interesting design choice!

Anyway. After looking at my queue tonight I realized that it had gotten a bit out of control. I wanted to know how many articles I had ahead of me. So I wrote a little JS snippet and ran it in firebug. Bam! I had my answer (427 if you’re curious).

Then I realized I’d probably want to do this again, so I made a browser bookmarklet out of it. I thought others might be as obsessive about unread counts as I, so I thought I’d stick the bookmarklet up here for anyone so inclined.

Just drag and drop this link into your bookmarks bar. If you click it while you’re viewing your list (on instapaper.com/u), it’ll give you a nice old fashioned pop up alert. Dead simple, but useful! Enjoy!

Instapaper Unread

1. Evernote

I started to use Evernote soon after I began my term as photography editor at The Cornell Daily Sun. I was searching for something that would let me collect my thoughts and internet findings and organize them for future retrieval. While I do use delicious for bookmarking, I wanted something where I could store screen grabs, some notes, and just random things. Eventually it evolved into a storage system for everything from my grocery lists (when paired with Quicksilver it becomes especially easy) to design inspiration for various websites I’ve worked on. More recently it’s become a repository for cool features I come across on sites I like so that down the line when I’m looking to design a form, for example, I can just open up Evernote and search for my form tag.

One of the best features of Evernote is that it parses the text in images and makes them searchable. I’ve paired this with the iPhone app and made a great little wishlist system. If I’m browsing around Barnes & Noble and find a book I like, I take a photo of it and then when I get back home I add it to my list of books to get from the library.

Evernote is free for up to 40MB of syncing (did I mention you can also access your stuff from their website? It just keeps getting better!) It does limit the file types you can upload to images, audio, ink, and PDF, but if you’re willing to shell out $5/month or $45/year that limitation is removed. I have yet to find the need to upgrade, which is another tick in the Pro column!

2. Precipitate

I’ve been a huge fan of Google Docs for a long time now and have all but eliminated MS Office from my workflow. One of the tools that lets me use gDocs so seamlessly is Precipitate. I can’t remember how I found it, but I installed it a few years ago and haven’t looked back since.

Precipitate indexes your gDocs and allows you to search for and access them straight from Spotlight (obviously, for Mac users only). You can also access them via Google Desktop for Mac, but I prefer the quick Spotlight interface.

It’s this simple: You hit the keyboard shortcut to open Spotlight, type in the first few characters of your gDoc, and when you select it from the results, it opens up the Doc in your browser for you to edit right away. There were points where I had gDocs opened all day long and Precipitate was a lifesaver. It definitely lowers the barrier to entry for using gDocs by bringing it closer to your fingertips. Give it a shot!

3. Skitch

Skitch is almost too obvious to put on here, but considering that I use it at least a dozen times a day on a quiet day, this list wouldn’t be complete without it.

Skitch is super-simple, but really powerful screen grab application. With a quick keyboard trigger, you can either grab an entire window or just part of the screen. While you can do this with OS X’s native Grab application, Skitch is soooo much better. Once you’ve grabbed what you need, the Skitch window opens up where you can then draw on, crop, and resize the image. When you’re satisfied with that, you can click the webpost button which can be configured to upload to your Skitch page (which is private unless you give out the URL), your flickr stream, MobileMe, or anywhere you have FTP access. In addition to that you can just drag the image into the app of your choosing or right onto the desktop for later use. As I mentioned earlier, Skitch is a great app to pair with Evernote. They’re like peanut butter and jelly. They’re just better together.

Here’s a quick example to show you the wonder of Skitch. Let’s say I wanted to show a friend tomorrow’s forecast for San Francisco. I hit my little keyboard shortcut, select the area on weather.com, and let Skitch open up. I grab the arrow tool and point out lunch time with a quick bit of text. I could change the colors, but I’m going for the quick-and-painless route. Once I’m done adding my text I hit the webpost button down at the bottom where I already have it configured to upload to a certain directory on my web server. When it’s done uploading a few seconds later I can click the button again to have the URL copied to my clipboard and then I shoot it off in an IM to my friend. That took all of 45 seconds. If I didn’t want to add text or arrows it would be even quicker. It’s one step closer to actually being able to communicate as if you were sitting in the same room looking at the same things.

4. Fluid.app

Fluid.app is my site-specific browser (SSB) of choice. I only recently started using it when I rearranged my email filtering system and wanted to keep it running in the browser at all times. I use Spaces pretty liberally, but running jMail (it’s my jennvargas.com email account) in Safari with the rest of what I was working on was getting clunky and I kept opening it when I didn’t want to. I realized that if I could pull jMail out of my regular browser I could separate it into a specific Space and therefore save myself some time and sanity.

I’d tried SSBs before but could never really find the value in them. I was sort of fitting something into a SSB just because I wanted to use one rather than the other way around. Fluid.app makes it really simple – you download it, enter the site you’d like to run in the browser and you’re basically done. If you want to get picky about it (which I did) you can set a custom dock icon for that particular window. Check out Chris Ivarson’s icons if you like to keep your dock looking pretty.

I should also mention that you can run more than one SSB at a time. It basically installs a mini-app for each SSB you want. This is where the dock icons come in handy. Going back to #2 on my list, I could also keep gDocs in an SSB, or maybe facebook or Google Reader or maybe the NY Times if that’s more your style. It’s really handy for sites that you frequent often over the course of a single day. It pulls them out of your regular tabs saving you clicks and time.

The Others

I really could go on for hours about the little things you could do to maximize your workflow but I think I’m going to cut it off here for this edition. After all, you should be spending more time being productive rather than reading about productivity, right?

In the last edition of Things I Love, Alex recommended RescueTime which I actually installed this afternoon to take for a test drive. I’m a bit of a data and statistics geek, so it’s right up my alley. I’m always looking for ways to fine-tune my workflow, so if you have any suggestions/tips, I’d love to hear them! Let me know down in the comments!

Until next time…

1. Foursquare

I hadn’t had the opportunity to use foursquare until I got to SF earlier this week, but boy has it proven to be a lifesaver. Since I’m pretty much new to this area, it’s been great to just fire up the iPhone app, let it find my location, and then show me a list of places nearby. It’s been most useful when I’m just sitting in my apartment looking for something to do. I fire it up and pick something that’s within a few blocks. Even more useful has been the actual website where I’ve been using the to-do list feature to organize things that I want to see and try in San Francisco. This way, while I’m out and about, I can just use the iPhone app, find my location, and see if any of my To-Do items are nearby. It’s a great way to get acquainted with a new city.

2. I Will Teach You To Be Rich

I’ve been reading Ramit’s blog for a while now and when the book came out, I scooped it right up. As a recent college grad, it’s been incredibly useful. I’ve had to pay bills and all that before, but I’ve never really put much thought or effort into managing my money. As an “adult” now, I think it’s time to start caring about my spending habits and how I save for the future. Ramit shows you how to get started and leaves aside all of the stuffy holier-than-thou attitudes you’re used to seeing from financial help “gurus.” I especially love the Money Diaries series. I highly recommend that you take a look at the blog and even the book. Especially if you’re under the age of 30.

3. Mint.com

Along the lines of getting better at the whole money thing comes Mint. I joined Mint back, back, back in the day as an experiment to see if it would help me save/not spend so carelessly. It was still a bit too raw back then, but they have been adding features almost non-stop and now I can’t imagine my bank accounts without it. Not only do you get to keep track of every transaction, but as of earlier this week, you can now make really neat budgets (I know, bad word, but really, read Ramit’s blog) and have a one-stop shop for all of your money matters. This includes student loans, which, if you’re like me, is a major part of your financial woes. Even Gina Trapani, Lifehacker extraordinaire loves Mint. You should too.

4. Footnotes of Mad Men

This one probably seems completely out of left field. And it is. But I find it so interesting that I just had to post it here. If you’re a fan of Man Men, you’ll love this blog. It links to some really cool stuff explaining the various references in Man Men (see the one about the Ant Farm from the season premiere). Maybe I’m just a huge nerd, but I can’t get enough of this site! (hat tip to kottke.org for introducing it into my life!)

5. Caffeine

No, not that kind. This one is a bit of a hidden gem. It will change your life. Caffeine is an an app for your menu bar (that’s if you’re a Mac user!) and with the click of a button you can disable your screensaver and sleep mode. It’s wonderful for when you’re streaming video from hulu, netflix, abc.com or even when you’re using the DVD Player app. No more running across the room to wiggle the mouse because your screen went to sleep right at the good part! And, best of all, it’s free!

So that’s it. I think I might do a few more of these in the future, but this is what I’ve been using in the last few weeks and I hope it’s at least somewhat useful. If you have any suggestions for Things I’ll Love, leave me a note in the comments!