CULTURE – Page 4

A change of scenery

11 January 2023 By Bel

I spent today working from my new ‘office’.

I’ve signed up for a subscription that entitles me to several days a month working from my choice of beautiful office buildings in Amsterdam.

It’s a nice way to experience different work environments. This is one of the benefits of the hybrid work culture ushered in by the covid pandemic.

Some days I work from home. Other days I go to my company’s offices. And now, I have a third option – I take my pick from any number of well designed, unique, Amsterdam buildings.

Today, I worked in a building on one of Amsterdam’s most beautiful canals. I was shown to a nice, private office where I worked undisturbed for the whole day. The wifi was excellent, and so my video meetings went smoothly. There was a coffee machine close by, also stocked with decaf capsules. (A plus point in my book, as that is the only ‘coffee’ I drink.)

All told, a lovely day at work. Looking forward to many more.

In praise of Notion templates

10 January 2023 By Bel

Three cheers for whoever invented the software behind Notion templates, in particular the button that allows you to create your own templates.

I’m a massive fan of this feature. One way I use it is to create a weekly goals sheet, which sets out all the things I want to achieve in any particular week.

My goals sheet has different categories relating to my personal and work goals, and also shows how these tie into my quarterly goals. As this is a document I fill in every week, I have created a Notion template in the form of a questionnaire. At the start of every week, I simply click a link, and a brand new questionnaire automatically appears. I then fill this in with my goals for the week.

Without the ability to create a template, I’d have had to create this questionnaire from scratch every week. I’m glad I don’t have to do that, and can simply focus on filling in my goals for the week.

Notion is an amazingly versatile app, and the ability to create templates does wonders for creativity. Five golden stars for this incredible feature.

How I use my iPad

5 January 2023 By Bel

I use my iPad mainly as a consumption device (i.e. for consuming content). From time to time, I might write a few emails or short articles on it, but that’s not its main function. Also, because of the weird camera placement, I never do video calls on it.

Here are the main ways I use my iPad:

watching videos;
reading long-form articles;
reading sheet music while playing the piano;
as a “teleprompter” for my speeches and lectures;
playing music while exercising (the iPad Pro has amazing speakers).

In my experience, the iPad is great as a companion device, i.e. next to a laptop. I’m very much of the philosophy that an iPad should do “iPad things”, and a laptop should do “laptop things”.

Of course, if pushed, the iPad (and certainly the Pro models) could also do tasks that are best done on a laptop. However, if one had to do these laptop tasks on a regular basis, it would be more efficient to do them on a laptop. To coin a phrase, “give to the iPad the things that are the iPad’s, and, to the laptop, the things that are the laptop’s”.

Three cheers for GoodNotes 5

4 January 2023 By Bel

I’ve recently resumed reading long-form technical articles on my iPad.

Not quite sure why I had stopped reading this way, but it’s good to be back doing that.

GoodNotes 5 is an amazing app. I simply import my long-form PDFs into the app, and read them from there. It’s great because the app has amazing markup functionality – you can highlight, take handwritten notes (with the Apple Pencil), add links, add images and other elements, convert handwritten notes into text, search handwritten notes, and a whole lot more.

I really love reading this way. Three cheers for GoodNotes 5.