Blog

It feels good to be remembered. It feels good to remember something you thought you might forget. Overall, remembering important things is pretty terrific. But we have a lot to remember. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Check the mail. Take out the trash. Call your mom. Text your friend. Finish that work project. Pay your bills. We live in a complex world, and our minds simply don’t have the capacity to efficiently and effectively remember all we need to do when we need to do it. ...

Jordan and Niki discuss developing habits, finding keystone habits in your life, and giving grace when we inevitably fall short. Chock-full of book recommendations and quotatious quotes. You’ll hear quotes like, “I didn’t grow up in the floss” and hear about the newly conceived Donut Willpower Theory. Check us out in iTunes here or visit our podcast website.

I’m unashamedly an app lover. My wife and I joke about who spends more money on their favorite things–me on apps or her on clothes. We’ve ruled it a toss up for now. To stretch my app budget as far as possible, I keep an eye on apps and snag them when they are on sale. The best way I’ve found to track apps and be alerted at discounts is through the app and website App Shopper. ...

If it was still 2007, I’d say, “Podcasts are the next big thing.” But, well, I kind of missed the prediction boat, so I’m going to hop on the podcasts-are-amazing bandwagon instead. One of my favorite things about our current world is that we have unlimited choices. I choose not to listen to terrestrial radio[footnote]I’ve noted on our podcast that I use the term “terrestrial radio” in a derogatory manner. That’s not the term’s original intent–it was used to differentiate between AM / FM and Satellite radio, but I prefer to use it as a diss.[/footnote]. I have no control over the song selection or content. The ads are rarely relevant. There are far more interesting things by lesser-known people who have more to say. ...

My favorite budgeting app is YNAB, which has an amazing desktop and iPhone version. The main idea behind YNAB is moving beyond paycheck-to-paycheck living, so they suggest spending last month’s salary this month so you can escape the rat race. This is enabled by subtracting any amount you went over by in any budgeted categories from your total salary for the next month. So, if you spend $50 more than you budgeted last month, this month you have $50 less dollars overall to budget. Pretty simple. ...

Coffee snobbery is easier than you think. This entire guide is basically brought to you by the fine folks at Sweet Maria’s, because they have a monopoly on teaching people how to cheaply roast their own coffee from home. You can check out their instructions for home roasting here. Also, you’ll be happy to know there’s a new episode of The Unpacked Podcast all about “Brewing Better Coffee” released today. Without further ado, here’s how you can get neck-deep in the fresh-coffee-roasting-at-home game. ...

The iPhone is my most frequently used computer. I use it dozens of times each day, and I’m a fan of the iOS 7 operating system. But, one huge step backwards was trying to discern whether the shift key is on (i.e. making the first letter a capital) or off. It was so bad, someone made a Twitter account mocking it. https://twitter.com/iOSShiftKey/status/444155263990657024 But, today I offer a solution for us all to know if shift is enabled or disabled. ...

I’ve been enjoying Wayne Grudem’s Politics – According to the Bible because I’m a generally unengaged and inactive political citizen in need of much reform. He discusses patriotism and how Christians should act in light of celebrating their nation–something I’ve wrestled with. Can I celebrate America while wanting to make disciples of all nations? I love America. I think it’s one of the greatest nations on the planet. We enjoy many freedoms, our enterprising nature has done boatloads of good for the world, we created the iPhone and we have the amazing convenience of Amazon Prime–and that’s just off the top of my head. ...

It’s easy to be overwhelmed the constant information churn on social networks. “Friends” and people we follow are continuously posting. Unfortunately, sometimes that content is worthless, but you don’t want to unfriend or unfollow someone for whatever reason. Here are 3 quick ways to clean up the clutter in your Twitter and Facebook timelines. 1. Turn off an individual user’s retweets on Twitter. Go to the users profile on Twitter.com, like <twitter.com/nshirkman> Click on the cog on the right side of their profile Click “Turn off Retweets” ...

If you’re not a Mac user, this post is unfortunately not for you. If you are, I’m sharing my favorite crop of new apps I’m using for your benefit and enjoyment. Bartender Even though I’m a P on the Myers-Briggs typology, [footnote]Which means I’m normally on the more chaotic end of the organizational spectrum[/footnote]I love having my digital world nicely organized. That’s where this one of a kind Mac app comes in. Bartender allows you to organize, move around, hide away, or push app icons in your menu bar. That’s it. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, right? Until you have 20+ apps open with all kinds of clutter in your menu bar. Especially on laptops, you bump up against the menus for the app you have open too. ...