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Hi!
How are you? Did you have a good day? This week, I thought I’d tell you about mine. It might illuminate some issues and compromises, as well as strengths, of using an iPad, foremost.
So, tag along for a day.
Morning
7:30am. I wake by myself, later than usual. It’s due to a long-weekend, normally I’ll wake up around 7am.
7:40am. I make breakfast for the family. They’re having toasts, and a bran crisp Helena favors this morning. Also, strawberries. Me, I stick with coffee. I read my feeds, the news, and glance at Reddit on my iPad mini. It’s my morning paper of choice.
8:00-8:30am. Getting the kid ready for preschool, as well as making things work with one bathroom across three people, takes some time.
8:40am. Checking to see if there’s something that needs rescheduling due to whatever crisis happened this particular morning. Nothing, fortunately. As for scheduling on the whole, it’s been set since last week, as usual. My schedule is split between calendar events, to-dos in Reminders, and the project management system we use at the agency. I typically sit down at the quietest place in the apartment, with my 11” iPad Pro, for this because mornings tend to be a bit messy.
9:00am. Dropping off the kid at preschool.
9:10am. It’s a gym day, so that’s where I’m going next. We try to hit the gym every other day, but it’s been a rough spring, work-wise, so it’s not been going too great.
10:00am. Back home for a shower, and then getting ready for work.
10:30am. Packing my go to the office-bag. The stars of the show are the 11” M1 iPad Pro, an Apple Pencil, and AirPods Max, in case I need to focus properly.
10:45am. Stepping into the D&C office. Deciding against making coffee because it tastes better after lunch. Minor tasks only before lunch, catching up on projects, speaking to freelancers, that sort of thing. This is done standing up, which is the way I prefer to work, using the iPad Pro. There’s a monitor, keyboard, and touchpad at my desk, but I don’t hook up my iPad just yet, so it sits in the Magic Keyboard, still.
11:30am. I’m hungry, so it’s an early lunch, a Huel shake. This one’s cinnamon flavored, not a favorite, but I had to try it. I’ll have my shake while working, something I’m generally against, eating by the desk, I mean. Fluids doesn’t count, though.
11:35am. Doing some Duolingo, checking my feeds again.
11:45am. We’ve got some admin tasks to take care of because it’s a new month, so we’ll do that now. The bookkeeping service we use is pretty bad on smaller screens, so I fire up the Mac mini and monitor. The iPad sits this one out, although it could definitely get the job done. In fact, the iPad could use an external screen’s full aspect and resolution, I’d have no inclination to turn to a Mac for this task.
Afternoon
1:00pm. Today’s first planned working session is just over an hour long, because of a meeting. I’m working on a tweak to a client site, and have decided to do it myself rather than outsource it to a freelancer, so I’m spending the hour setting things up. This, too, is a Mac task, so I turn on the monitor and Mac mini to get all the developer tools and servers synced and ready. While working on this task, my iPad is a second screen. I’ve set it in a stand I’m looking to review for the site soon, and I use Universal Control to interact with it. This is a pretty useful setup, for me, I like it, as I’ve mentioned previously.
2:15pm. Stopping work to prepare for the meeting. It’s a physical one, so we’re making coffee, and making sure that the office looks good. It does, so we have plenty of time to discuss the purpose of the meeting.
2:30-3:00pm. Meeting. I grab my 11” iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. My meeting notes go in GoodNotes, as usual. It’s a short meeting, and it goes without a hitch. I like the iPad Pro for meetings since I can just sketch on something and show people really quick. It’s not as much of a wall as a laptop is, at least not the way I use it.
3:15pm. We grab a coffee outside, in the sun, and talk over the meeting.
3:30pm. We go through what needs to get done, and create tasks where needed. Some things are a bit unclear, so we compare notes, and decide what the appropriate action is. It turns out it wasn’t a mystery at all, things are obvious enough that we won’t even send a recap to the client. All good, then.
3:40pm. Small tasks, checking in on email, doing some Duolingo to clear my mind. Meetings, and socializing overall, taxes me, so not jumping on the next thing right away is helpful.
4:00pm. Another working session with that client project. It goes well, and will hit its deadline, despite my brain starting to get a bit mushy.
5:00pm. Helena picks up the kid. I’ve got some more stuff to do, but decide to postpone to this evening instead, so I join her. We buy some groceries on the way.
Evening
6:00-8:00pm. Dinner, then family time. The kid’s enjoying some iPad time, he loves it, like all children seemingly do. I typically catch up on some saved links in GoodLinks at this time. We’re putting the kid to bed at 8:00pm. I’m reading a story to him on an iPad mini. He’s my beta reader, err, listener when it comes to children’s stories.
8:15pm. I sit down in front of my wall-mounted 12.9” M1 iPad Pro to get some writing done. This time it’s a freelance piece for a Swedish tech magazine that’ll run in print and online this summer. I almost regret agreeing to this, but the money’s decent, and I’ve learned a thing or two, so I hunker down. It’s the last stretch, just have to get it done. I’m writing this in Ulysses.
9:10pm. Done! I export the piece to DOCX, open it in Pages, and edit it a bit to make it easier on the editors. Then I export it to DOCX again, from Pages, and save it to a folder in Files. That’s where the screenshots for this piece are, too, so I create a ZIP archive with the images, and the DOCX, and email it to my editor. It’s celebratory whisky time!
9:15-10:45pm. We watch some shows, then Helena gets ready for bed. I’m on a slightly different clock, though.
10:45-11:30pm. I’m hooked on a graphic novel, so I’m reading it in Comixology on my 11” iPad Pro, sitting by myself in the living room. The 11” screen is great for this. It goes down well with another snifter of whisky.
11:45pm. Getting ready for bed. I read a chapter on my Kindle Paperwhite, in bed because e-ink is nicer on the eyes. I’ll be asleep around midnight or so.
That’s a day in my life, but it’s not every day, obviously. I split my time between living in Stockholm, and our country home an hour or so west of here. The kid’s only with us every other week, which also changes the pace somewhat. I also go through periods of focused writing (I write fiction), which means that my schedule is different. These past few months have been purely D&C agency work, though, which might be good money, but it’s also been rough. I envision things differently in the autumn.
Tell me about your day, and how you use your iPad! Either hit reply (if you’re reading this in your inbox), or tweet to @tdh. I’d love to hear it.