There’s a monotony that comes with working at home. Same room, same desk, every day. No one in the house ever puts things in my office without me knowing. There’s no coworkers who ever stop by to torpedo my day. I can listen to whatever I want. I can do whatever I want.
My office is mine, and mine alone.
This is good. This is great.
A small standing desk, that’s really all I need.
So up went that small desk in the corner of our bedroom, and there I worked for a good 6 months. It wasn’t big enough though, and I often found myself working on the bed or the floor. I needed a bigger desk.
I really hate packing pants, because they are bulky and they always seem to get wrinkled — the only worse thing to pack is a cotton dress shirt. What makes pants doubly annoying is that you typically only need one pair — the pair you wear when you leave. However, then there’s the fear of a spill, or a rip, or of them not being flexible enough to cover the range of activities and situations you have planned. Can they go on that short hike and still to the five star restaurant for dinner? To the business meeting, but also everything else in between?
When I started down the path of looking at travel friendly pants I knew there were two things I really wanted to avoid: cargo pants and pants that look more like hiking pants than “regular” pants. If they have “zip-off” anything, no thanks. If they focus more on hidden pockets and insect repellent, no thanks.
You need far fewer electronic devices than you think. All I carry is my iPhone and my iPad Pro. Done. My rule here is very simple: take a phone and one other device. Unless you have a major reason why you need three devices, take only two. For me the second device is my iPad Pro, and before that it was my MacBook. If you need a Mac, take a Mac and use your phone for anything else. But decide if you even need that second device — I take mine strictly because if I can squeeze in writing time, it is worth having the iPad Pro. But I could do it all with my iPhone if I wanted.
There’s lots of ways to talk yourself into taking one more device, but I’ve always found that when I travel with three devices, one will always go unused. There’s nothing more frustrating than lugging something around you don’t use.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
Wrinkles and stains. For me those are the two largest concerns I have when I know I need a dress shirt, or “button down” shirt on a trip. (This is also the standard shirt I wear, so I can’t recall any time when I didn’t pack one or more.) Will it wrinkle? Will it clean easily if I spill my Tex-Mex all over it? Will it still look good after a couple days in a plane or a suitcase?
I haven't held a membership drive in quite some time, so here we go. As most readers know, there are two funding sources for this site: affiliate revenue, and membership revenue. On an average month I make about 70% of the money for this site from memberships.
Reviewing things not only takes me considerable time (even just finding things which might be good to review), but it also costs considerable money. I only receive items in exchange for a review about 30% of the time — the remainder of the time I am left spending my own money on these items.
I’ve never been a hoodie kind of a guy, but working from home lends itself to wearing a hoodie quite well. So I knew I wanted to get a decent one — something built to last — and I ended up with a Flint and Tinder 10-year Hoodie, in black.
I tried to ignore this podcasting hubbub, but I failed. Marco Arment writes about Apple’s position with podcasts:
The biggest player app: Apple’s built-in iOS Podcasts app is the biggest podcast player in the world by a wide margin, holding roughly 60–70% marketshare.
The biggest podcast directory: The iTunes Store’s Podcasts directory is the only one that matters, and being listed there is essential for podcasts to be easily found when searching in most apps.
In other words: podcasters are so worried about what Apple might do, because anything Apple does with podcasts will essentially become the defacto standard for podcasts given Apple’s actual role in podcasts being too important to podcasting. Apple holds the best keys to discovery, and the largest market share for podcasting apps.
Or: if your podcast isn’t listed in iTunes, then do you really have a podcast?
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
I’ve previously spent a lot of time, and money, trying to find the best undershirt you can wear. And while I stand by my assessment that Underfit shirts are the best ones you can buy, travel undershirts are a different breed. Whereas with my daily wear undershirts I just need something which is comfortable and looks good under my shirts, with travel undershirts I need them to also be:
Once you start down this path you end up looking at two types of shirts: Merino wool, or synthetic. I personally felt that synthetic must be the way to go, however after a lot of research it seemed very clear to me Merino wool was the way to go. Which sucks, because those shirts are very pricey.
I recently wrote, on Medium, how all of my news is sourced through three iOS apps: Reeder, Economist Espresso, and Medium. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with these apps as they offer the perfect way to consume news:
Add to this list now, the New Yorker Today app and the Quartz News app. The New Yorker has always been very hit and miss for me over the years — often what they write is too long and dense on a topic which doesn’t hold enough interest for me to want to read it. But 2-3 times a month, they hit the nail on the head. The hard part: finding that stuff.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
I only ever take two jackets (if any) when I travel: a rain jacket, and/or a thin down type jacket. ((The only exception here is if I need a suit, then of course I take an appropriate jacket as needed.)) If it is cold, I take the down and the rain jacket, if it is forecast to be warm then I take the rain jacket. The only time I won’t take a rain jacket is if the weather will be over 80° the entirety of my stay, as even if it rains then, my clothes will dry fast enough and it will be warm enough, I won’t need a jacket (usually).
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
There are two things I hate when it comes to trying to pack toiletries light: travel toothbrushes and the idea that you can buy what you need, where you are going. Travel toothbrushes, which are too small to hold comfortably, and fold in half and thus are never great to begin with.
Just use a regular toothbrush for crying out loud.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
This might be the shortest of all these posts: I don’t buy special socks for travel. There are tons of great options out there which are Merino wool and thus fast drying, anti-stink, and more. They are good socks, and the socks I certainly should be traveling with, but I don’t.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
Packing cubes, packing rolls, field pockets, stuff sacks — every where you turn there’s no shortage of people offering smaller bags to put inside of your larger bags. The promises range from the mundane of being more organized, to the comical of offering ways to keep your clothing wrinkle free. I’ve been fortunate(?) enough to try most of these, and after that testing there’s only a handful of them I would recommend.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
Another excuse to talk about bags, most excellent. While backpacks rule the roost for me, I want to cover four different bags.
Editor’s Note: I’m going to be writing some posts about how I travel light. I’ll pull them all back together at the end with one larger post and hopefully a video. I am not a super minimalist packer, I am however a light packer. This will also be very geared to men, sorry to all the women — I just have no way of writing about that.
One pair per day, right? Gone five days? Then five pairs of underwear are needed. At least that’s how I used to pack. Travel underwear? No thanks.
For the longest time now I’ve been very against most cases — especially on an iPad where thinner and lighter is better — but with the iPad Pro (12.9″) the silicone case is a must have purchase. It makes the iPad Pro better in every way, and my only regret is not buying it sooner.
Alternative title: “A Disturbance in the Force Touch”
John Gruber on a debate about 3D Touch which has arisen:
A force touch should just be a shortcut to a long press.
This strikes me as short sighted. 3D Touch is too new to judge and this sentiment (shared by many) seems more like a lack of being open minded to the new technology, than it does a problem with the technology.
Since the iPad came out in 2010 I have been alternating between working at a Mac, iPad, and iPhone throughout the day. I used my Mac 45% of the time, my iPhone 30%, and my iPad the remaining 25%. Some days those numbers shift around, but on average those percentages are a fair assessment of where these devices fell.
Steven Levy, in an article titled “How Bill Gates Predicted the iPad Pro“, writes:
The unresolved question is the one where Gates and Jobs diverged on their answers. Gates argued that tablets would become the norm, replacing the laptop. Jobs found success by creating a media delivery system that could, in a pinch, do some work. The serious stuff, you could do on a Mac.
Levy comes so close to hitting the key difference between Jobs and Gates, but fails to close that loop. Did Gates predict where the iPad is now heading when he thought up the Microsoft Tablet? Yes. Did Jobs also see that? I don’t know, but likely yes.