anthony galvin

In the rush and push of the working week it’s easy to forget the tools and tricks that hold things together. Recently a colleague asked about a little workflow trick I’d been using and I realised I’ve never jotted down and shared a list of my day-to-day toolset, so I’ve posted the list below.

This doesn’t include the pure developer tools I use such as Sublime Text or Vagrant but hopefully the more general ones that might be more generally useful (I’ll post a geek tools list another time).

Workflowy
The reason I find Workflowy so useful is that in many ways it mirrors the way that I think. Infinite lists of bullets, searchable, taggable and sortable. And also shareable, so that you can turn a list into a collaborative workspace.

Twitter + IFTTT + Instapaper
This isn’t a single tool, but a neat little workflow trick. When I’m pushed for time or on my daily commute where I can’t always get a good data connection I often see interesting and useful articles on Twitter. When I tap the ‘favourite’ icon in Twitter, IFFT jumps into actions and pushes that article into Instapaper for me to read later.  

Google Drive
It’s not the elegant toolset of the drive apps that make it essential (though simplicity helps), but the simple power of cloud based functionality. It’s on all my devices, I don’t have to back it up, it’s pretty secure (with 2 factor authentication enabled), doesn’t run out of space (for a small fee) and I can quickly turn some private thoughts into a shared workspace. Remind me again why I want files on a local hard drive?

Tweetdeck
Some people “don’t do social media” and I respect them for it, they must be really smart. For me Twitter is often where I get lots of professional tips, articles and background info. In short it makes me look smart, arming me with facts and figures. Tweetdeck is my way of filtering and making sense of the thousands of tiny fragments of information that are flying through my feed every hour.

Slack / Skype / Hangouts
This could be called “not email”. I’m not loyal when it comes to the ever more commoditised world of realtime chat. If you’re on Skype, prefer Google Hangouts or Facetime then jumping on call is good with me. In a world where it’s about working with the best people, no matter where they are, video calls are unavoidable - but they’re not the only answer. Recently we’ve been using Slack on some global projects and the power of asynchronous group chat and file sharing on projects that run across multiple locations and timezones is invaluable. HipChat is pretty good in this space, but if you’re not tied to the Atlassian stack then Slack is probably an answer.

Pop App
Need to test an app idea really quickly or show someone ‘how it might work’. Then draw a few screens on a piece of paper and then fire up Pop App and in few minutes you’ve got a tappable, sharable prototype.

OmmWriter
Even the cut down writing interface of documents in Google Drive can be distracting - especially mid-afternoon when my notifications are firing at a terrifying rate. OmmWriter cuts the notifications and keeps it simple, perfect for focussing on getting the words just right.

Trello
In many ways Trello is the same as Workflowy (above), it’s a fancy, collaborative, list environment. But it’s the interactions and card like system make it different and a great way to create Kanban style boards to keep you (and your team) organised.