I’ve tried a lot of task management apps, but none of them seemed to stick. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit just comparing features, reading reviews, and testing out demos. While a lot of people have success with digital task apps, they all just felt like too much effort to incorporate into my workflow. I didn’t want to spend time categorizing, tagging, and organizing tasks, I just wanted to get stuff done.

I always seem to come back to good old fashioned pen and paper. It’s the most frictionless method and there are several keys things that make it work for me:

1. It’s always in front of me. One of the main problems I had with all of the task apps was having to switch between apps just to look at my to-do list. I keep my task list on a plain old memo pad placed below my monitor. It stares at me all day long and I can’t ignore it.

2. Crossing things off feels so good. Sure, you can digitally cross off tasks, but nothing beats taking a pen and scribbling out a task on the list.

3. I can easily jot down additional notes, sketches, or info for a particular task. For example, if I’m on the phone with a supplier and need to make some notes about production details, I can easily write it down right next to the task.

My Simple Method

1. My daily routine starts with looking at my whole list of projects on my paper to-do list and then writing the most urgent tasks on a small sticky note. This allows me to focus on the 4-8 things I want to accomplish that day. The small size of the sticky note limits me from trying to put too much on my plate for one day.

2. As I complete each item I simply cross it off. If items don’t get completed that day, they carry over to the next day’s sticky.

And that’s the extent of my GTD system. It’s not complicated or innovative, but it allows me to get stuff done without worrying about another app. My situation is probably a little different than most people since I handle most things myself and don’t need to manage a large team of people. I’m certainly not advocating this to be the best way for everyone to manage their tasks, but wanted to share what works best for me.

I received a lot of questions about this photo I posted of the monitor stand that I recently built. I thought I’d write a quick post and share the details of what I used and how insanely simple it is.

I wanted a way to raise my massive 27″ monitor to a better ergonomic eye-level as well as a way to clean up and organize my cluttered desk. Since I couldn’t find anything that was exactly what I was looking for I built my own solution with parts from IKEA. A lot of people have negative opinions about IKEA because they’ve had bad experiences with the quality of their products. I will agree that a lot of their products compromise on quality in order to give super affordable prices, but if you know how to shop the store, you can find some great items.

For the shelf I used the Ekby Tryggve ($7) which is essentially just a piece of untreated solid pine, and for the legs I used the 4″ Capita ($10). I treated the wood with a few coats of stain and polyurethane and then just screwed in the leg brackets when everything was dry. The whole thing only cost around $25 and a couple hours of labor. Not bad :)

Out of all of the cities I’ve been to, San Francisco is probably top on my list. There’s so much about this city that I enjoy. It seems like on every corner there is an awesome restaurant, cafe, shop, or park. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad meal out there. A few of my favorites from this past trip were: Tartine Bakery (which I wrote about here), the Grove, Greenburger’s, and Taqueria Can Cun.

I love passionate people, and SF is filled with them. Almost everyone you bump into in SF is either starting a company or working on a side project. It’s fun to be around so many other entrepreneurs, startups, and people who just love what they do. While I was out there, I was lucky enough to get a tour of both the Square and Twitter offices. I’m a big fan of both companies and what they’re doing with their products/services.

Square

We’ve been using Square at our recent events in Philly and Brooklyn and love it. Square is the easiest way to accept credit cards using a mobile device. Simply setup an account, download the app, and plug the card reader into the headphone jack of your smartphone and you’re ready to go.

Not only is the whole experience well-designed and thought out, but the technology just works. I really appreciate the vision of Jack Dorsey and the Square team and their attention to detail on every aspect of the product. More companies and apps need to take some pointers from Square.

Twitter

Twitter has also been huge in the growth of Ugmonk. Not only has it been a great way of keeping people updated with the latest releases and what I’m working on, but it’s also been an amazing networking tool. I’ve connected with so many awesome people through Twitter, many of which I’ve been able to meet in person in the various places I’ve traveled to.

While most of the general public still doesn’t quite understand the point of Twitter and why anyone would use it, it’s played a big part in building the Ugmonk community and where I am today. I love being able to instantly connect with customers, fans, or anyone that’s discovered the brand.

Here are some other random photos from my trip:

As you know, I like to share some of my design process to show you what goes into creating Ugmonk products. Rather than go into a lot of detail about my workflow (read more on that here) I thought I’d post a bunch of my original sketches for the new Do What You Love shirt.

This design was an interesting process. I actually did more sketches for this one that any other shirt so far, but ended up coming back to one of the simplest layouts. Funny how that works. The many hours that I spent sketching were definitely not a waste as it allowed me to explore lots of different styles until I found a solution that I was happy with. Some of the elements from these sketches may even show up in future designs.

For the final version I chose to keep it simple and echo the style of old letterpress wood type, tying it back to the origins of the craft. I spent some time researching old type and incorporated some of the characteristics and imperfections into the letter forms that I used. To add to the vintage feel, I added a subtle texture to the artwork and chose a heather shirt fabric to tie the whole vibe together. Click here to see the finished shirt.

When designing the new Premium Line, I wanted to create a symbol that could be used throughout the line on the various items and materials. While there are tons of beautiful ampersands from existing typefaces, I wanted to design a character that would be unique to Ugmonk so I broke out my pencil and sketchbook and came up with several original concepts. I thought it would be neat to give you guys a small peek into my process and show a timelapse of the ampersand from sketch to finished leather journal.

Here is my general workflow:

1. Sketch ideas
2. Scan sketch and open in Illustrator
3. Draw paths in Illustrator with pen tool
4. Refine overall shape and smooth out curves
5. More fine tweaking and adjustments
6. Offset path to create stroked shape 
7. Send to manufacturer to create leather stamp

(Having trouble viewing the animation? Click here)

I turned the big 25 a few days ago and to celebrate my wife made me this awesome cake. She knows me all too well :)

Designing Better Than I Deserve was an interesting process. For this shirt I knew I wanted the typography to be more raw and organic to reflect the meaning behind the design. While I can visualize some concepts fairly quickly, others go through many rounds of exploration before I arrive at a solution that I’m happy with.

Here are some of my initial thumbnail sketches and ideas. There were things that I’d like about some of these concepts but none of them seemed to hit the mark right away.

I first experimented with simple hand-drawn type and playing around some extreme width variation for each word. While I liked the simplicity, this composition was putting too much emphasis on the “I” which was not where I wanted the focus of the message to be.

I continued to push my ideas around a little more.

Next I tried a custom script. While there were some interesting things happening with this, the script just didn’t seem to fit this concept and I was struggling with the flow of the letters and overall balance.

The finished version is a actually combination of several of my original ideas. I kept the word “Better” in a simplified script style so that it would remain the focal point of the design. I still liked the idea of varying weights for each word so I used two different styles for “than I” and “deserve.” This created a solid base shape and anchored the composition.

Then I scanned all of the hand-drawn type and did some minor cleanup and adjustments in Photoshop. Rather than precisely trace the letters in Illustrator, I left small imperfections and irregularities to keep the organic hand-drawn qualities of the design.

Finally, I chose a color scheme and shirt material that I would also add to the organic “vintage” style of the design. Though the process took a bit longer on this one, I’m really happy with the finished result.

If you want to read more about my design process check out this post on how I created There’s More To Life.

We decided to have a little Ugmonk Christmas party this year to thank my family for all of their help and support and to celebrate how far Ugmonk has come in just over 2 years. My wife, parents, and brothers have all been integral parts of running the business and I can’t thank everyone enough for helping me grow Ugmonk to where it is today.

My wife had the awesome idea to make Ugmonk cupcakes for the party. We had a blast mixing up frosting colors and cutting out the letters and of course eating half of the frosting in the process. This was our first time doing this type of decorating but we were really happy with how everything turned out (I can’t take most of the credit). And yes, they tasted as good as they looked.

Hope you guys are enjoying your own holiday festivities!

As a follow up to my post on passion, I couldn’t help but post this short film about Tartine Bread. Not only do I have an obsession with good bread, but I also love people who are incredibly passionate about their craft. To most people bread is just bread, they don’t think much about it but to Chad Robertson, co-owner of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, bread is so much more. He spent over two decades apprenticing under the finest artisan bakers and continued to refine his recipe and process to create the perfect bread. My goal with Ugmonk is to apply that same attention to detail and passion into everything I do as I continue to learn my craft. And next time I’m in San Francisco I’m definitely going to be stopping by the Tartine Bakery.

Fall is in full swing here in PA and I’ve been enjoying everything that comes with this time of year: the cooler weather, the leaves turning, apple cider, apple pie, and of course pumpkin carving. I’m certainly no expert carver, but my wife and I had a lot of fun carving up some pumpkins this weekend. It was nice to get my hands dirty and sculpt with tactile materials after staring at a screen all week. If you’ve been reading the blog for any length of time you know I have a slight obsession with ampersands, and I just couldn’t resist carving one of them Ugmonk style.