First things first: this piece is not intended to be prescriptive. Nor does it subtly criticise other people who love their workflows and automate as many things as possible as frequently as possible by using the appropriate technological tools. But in recent times there has been a lot of talk about ‘workflows’ and software solutions that help you automatise processes in the quest for the holy grail of frictionless-ness. And I’ve tried to jump on this bandwagon in an attempt to achieve more efficiency and productivity, but generally speaking my experience so far has turned out to be a waste of time.
The fault doesn’t really lie in the tools themselves; perhaps it’s the way I work, or my needs, or certain habits I’ve developed over time that simply make me largely ‘incompatible’ with automatisation. By watching how other tech-savvy people work, or by reading about their workflows when they discuss them on their blogs, I’ve deduced that the simpler and the more stable one’s device setup is, the easier is to come up with smooth workflows and automated solutions. When you only (!) have one computer, one smartphone and maybe also a tablet, configuring and perfecting workflows (especially across devices) still takes some work, but it’s certainly easier than working on a bunch of different computers and devices. This is a perfect example of how minimalism really helps on the road to Frictionless Land.
My setup is the opposite of minimalism. My setup is… baroque, for lack of a better word. In my Home Office, I use the most recent and most powerful machine I own, a 15-inch (non-Retina) MacBook Pro with the latest version of Mac OS X installed. At its side, the faithful Power Mac G4 Cube, which I use as a sort of extended desktop to monitor RSS feeds and other information, thanks to its huge 22-inch Cinema Display. When I’m out and about, I may carry with me one of many different vintage Mac PowerPC laptops, from a clamshell iBook G3/466 with Mac OS X Tiger, to a 17-inch PowerBook G4 with Mac OS X Leopard. (You can have a look at my different ‘mobile office’ configurations on my VSCO Grid, to have an idea.) In short, I use two different architectures, three different OS X versions (not to mention Mac OS 9 and earlier, when I fire up some of my pre-OS X vintage Macs, like the Power Mac 9500), and an array of tools which may be available on just one of these Macs, either because they’re architecture-specific (Intel-only or PPC-only), or because their most updated version only runs under Tiger or under Leopard. To use a popular expression, my setup tends to show signs of fragmentation.
And if this weren’t enough, consider that the Macs I use have also different keyboard layouts (US, Italian and Spanish), so even common keyboard shortcuts have to be carefully planned if I don’t want to perform the wrong action on the wrong Mac.
I’m pretty sure that a setup like this would drive a few nerds crazy. I’m sure some of my readers are wondering why I don’t simplify my setup, and why I keep using so many different (and old) machines, especially since my activities are limited to document and text management, image editing, photo retouching/management, a bit of graphic and type design, and a touch of audio editing.
I keep using a bunch of different Macs because I like to keep things spatially arranged. If my work and my files are a city, each Mac represents a sector, a district of that city. When I need to unearth and examine old Word files created/received during the 1990s and the early 2000s, I work with the iBook G3 because I can use Office 98 in the Classic Environment to open those files without losing the original formatting, and, if need be, I can re-save them in a more modern format that can be picked up by more modern software. When I need to work with PDFs in deeper ways than just opening and reading them, I still use an older version of Acrobat Professional (which cost me an interesting amount of money when I purchased it, and I have no need or money to upgrade to an Intel version of the same software), and since I usually need a generous screen estate, I either use the Cube or the 17-inch PowerBook G4. When I need Photoshop, I still rely on version 7.0 on the Titanium PowerBook G4, or the CS1 version on the 12-inch PowerBook G4.
These are just very simple examples. Without leaving the city metaphor just yet, what are the ‘roads’ connecting all those different ‘districts’? Two synchronisation tools which luckily still work under Mac OS X Tiger and the PowerPC architecture: Dropbox and Notational Velocity. They represent the only bit of automatisation in my baroque setup.
I don’t mean to say that I like to manually take care of boring tasks my Macs should perform and are quite able to do so. That would be silly. If I have to batch-convert 300 JPEG files into PNG files, I certainly won’t do that by hand, one file at a time. A simple and tedious task like that is what computers do best, and I’m happy to leave it to them. But I’m not a fan of complex scripts which, after being invoked by a certain keyboard shortcut, start opening files in one application, import them into another, do another dozen actions, to finally send something in a pre-packaged email as a ZIP attachment. Just pressing the key combination by mistake could lead to potential disaster. When I tried to rely on such scripts or services, I ended up wasting more time afterwards because I couldn’t refrain from checking whether the automated workflow did everything correctly.
As I said, some may find this extended and elaborate setup maddening, and even limiting — like working with mutually incompatible tools. Some may object that I don’t rely on fixed workflows and automated processes simply because I can’t. Again, maybe I’m just accustomed to working like this, so I end up being efficient and productive in spite of all the added friction. The truth is: I feel less dependent on specific tools, processes and workflows. This, in turn, makes it easier for me to adjust to new tools, to adapt when a particular configuration, operating system or setup changes. Friction makes me stop and think about what I’m doing, inspires me to look for alternative ways to achieve something, keeps my mind alert and not asleep while the vehicle is on autopilot, so to speak.