I started this blog in the summer, and since then I have published 30 posts, including this one. As far as output goes, I have met my goal, and I am happy with that.

Most popular posts

In the spirit of publishing year-end best-of lists, here are my top five most popular posts from 2017:

  1. Ulysses, a peerless writing tool, a short essay about my favorite writing software. I love good software, and think way too much about what makes productivity software, well, more productive.
  2. Choosing an iPad Pro Keyboard, in which I compare three of the main keyboards iPad users like me might be considering.
  3. Comparing todo.txt and TaskPaper formats, which are two plaintext task list formats. I love plaintext, love productivity software, and love not having lock-in with proprietary software vendors. I have been using both formats for different planning and task management tasks at work all year.
  4. Three ways to create nested projects in todo.txt, which addresses a common problem with the todo.txt format.
  5. Contexts in Getting Things Done, in which I describe the challenges I faced dealing with contexts in the GTD system.

These posts reflect some of my main interests: productivity software and systems, and Apple hardware. I have also written a little bit about Android, the Essential Phone, and parts of the free and open web that interest me.

Thoughts on the writing process

One thing that I have learned this year, from writing regularly again, is how much work it can be to complete a blog post. I have a half-dozen incomplete blog post drafts in my Ulysses library at any given moment. Shaping them into something worth reading is a lot of work—work that I don’t often complete as quickly as I would like. Even a simple 500-word post has to be written and re-written three or four times before I think it is worth publishing.

The writing process is valuable to me, though. Writing is a lot different than analyzing data (my day job) or writing code (my nighttime hobby). Writing, re-writing, and revising help me think and help me focus in ways that my more mathematically-focused activities do not. Plus, it feels good to communicate to the world, and to own all the content I produce and publish it on my own platform, under my own name.

The future

I plan to blog regularly in 2018, both on this site and on mjdescy.micro.blog. I have even set up regularly scheduled reminders (Apple Reminders, naturally) to help keep me on track. Thanks for reading.