Distraction Free Writing Setup, A Top Podcast & A Fun YouTube Train

9th Dec Post | Distraction Free Writing Setup, A Top Podcast & A Fun YouTube Train

We’re back! Here’s what I’ve found cool this week!

CCP Grey

Grey is back! In a tremendous surprise to everyone who follows him, Grey has released multiple videos in rapid succession! His recent videos cover interesting American quirks, and his past theme was death, including an excellent retelling of Bostoms famous dragon paper.

Well worth a watch - he has an impressive ability to make dull things interesting.

The problem with not knowing about Grey is that there’s a high risk you’ll loose hours to binging through his back catalogue.

...Sorry!

Cortex

While I’m on the topic of Grey, I should also mention one of my favourite podcasts, Cortex. It’s co-hosted by him and Myke Hurley. Overall it’s a shared work diary of two fairly interesting people. Past episodes have been more focused on productivity, including some legendary deep dives into time tracking, but I’ll admit that future episodes have been a little less focused - more of interest to people who already know them both.

I’d probably start off with December & January 2017.

iPad Stands

This is a bit of a strange one. You might have seen me Lens my writing setup recently. I’ve been experimenting with something that’s decently clean looking and ergonomic.

I love writing on my iPad Pro. I’m using the 2018 model, but you don’t need that at all, and most of the benefits can be had from the base model, which is excellent.

My iPad has ZERO social media. Notification are killed for most applications. It’s a far less distracting environment than a full desktop, and I have found that iOS split view is really quite lovely to work in. I’ll often have split screen going between my script and my notes, or between my nodes and Safari for research.

So far I’ve experimented with a few stands from amazon. The easiest to use are the basic ones that you just rest your iPad on. There’s a great stand called the Tabetha that’s wonderful for ergonomics, as it can raise the iPad such that the top of the screen is in line with your eye level. That’s a lot better than hunching! I don’t actually have it though - I instead purchased a pretty cheap one from amazon that’s of a similar style. It gets the job done, but I’ll probably upgrade.

I use this with either a wired keyboard (my Massdrop CTRL is a favourite) or a wireless one - the small Apple Magic Keyboard.