Joshua Patton

February 22, 2025

Why Tana?

Tana is the best tool I've used for bottom-up note-taking. With most objects being nodes, I don't have to worry about whether I should convert a note into a document or folder. This allows for a significantly more flexible structure that's great for supporting my thinking. This flexible structure doesn't stop at the inter-node level, a...

December 3, 2024

Review: 64 Audio U4s

Context The only two IEMs I own — the Tin T2s and the FiiO FH5s — also happen to be the only two IEMs I’ve heard. It wasn’t long after getting into the audiophile hobby (about six years ago) that I wanted a way to listen to music in the go that I would look forward to. That quest — in which I’ve lived with a few pairs of over-ear, Blue...

November 22, 2023

To Publish Is to Protect

I spend much of my time consuming content about the Creator Economy. Within that community, one of the generally considered must-reads is Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. The central premise of this book is — you guessed it — to show your work. While I like the spirit of this directive, I was concerned about the potential for others to ...

August 9, 2023

WYSIWYG Character Formatting Is Gross

I can’t stand “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) character formatting. For the uninitiated, let me first explain what this is. WYSIWYG character formatting is when stylings — such as bold and italics — are applied to characters without the use of any characters. These character stylings can be applied before and after typing char...

July 18, 2023

Why Lapidarius

If I had to come up with a personal brand name, it would be "Lapidarius." Lapidarius is a latin word meaning "stonecutter;" however, it's a word derived from this one, "lapidary," that would more accurately describe the two facets of the Lapidarius brand: conciseness and craftsmanship. Conciseness signifies efficiency. If there's one t...

July 18, 2023

What's in a (Last) Name?

Last names serve little use in regular conversation. In contrast, a personal brand name can go a long way towards informing people of my interests and how I think. If informing people of my first name informs them of how to address me and my personal brand name informs them of what I'm about, then what additional relevant information a...

July 18, 2023

The Role of Trust in Product Design

When a user decides to use a product, they initiate a relationship with said product. The most important component of any relationship is trust, including the one that exists between a product and a user of said product. Trust is reciprocal. A user communicates their trust in a product by using it, meaning that the onus lies upon the p...

July 18, 2023

The Concentric Circle Model of Iterative Design

Many products I've seen are developed in a "release first, fix later" sort of way. I prefer an approach where each iteration of a product feels complete, like a circle. With each successive iteration, a product should improve while managing to feel complete at each stage of development. This approach is the one I take when writing post...

July 18, 2023

Tasks Are Meant to Be Completed, Not Stored

Many task managers base their information architectures on hierarchical structures. To navigate to a task, a user must first select which folder to check. Folders are often referred to as areas in to-do list apps, so that is the term that will be used in lieu of folders for the purposes of this discussion. At face value, this approach ...

July 18, 2023

In Memoriam: Quartz Brief and Winno

Quartz Brief and Winno are two deprecated news apps that sought to limit their users' intake of news, albeit in different ways. I don't like to waste my time. One of the easiest ways to waste time in the Information Age is news. It seems like practically every news outlet has a quota to meet, resulting in a plethora of news stores gett...

July 18, 2023

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The way that my brain works, whatever is visible is what should be acted upon; conversely, whatever is invisible shouldn't be acted upon. This relationship with my surroundings influences many of the actions I perform, but is especially noticeable when I use to-do list apps. Practically all to-do list apps rely on a hierarchical struct...

July 18, 2023

Majoring in Self

Practically all of the influential adults in my life suggested that earning a college degree was akin to winning a voucher that could be exchanged for the career of my dreams. What they failed to mention is that not all degrees are created equal. I attended college assuming that by the time I graduated, I would be skilled enough in a f...

July 17, 2023

Intention: The Productivity Catalyst

If you know what you intend to do when commencing a work session for a task, the process of completing the task becomes much less arduous. To add, if you can identify a finite set of actions that you tend to perform for almost every task you complete, you now have something akin to a general productivity framework. Intention in the con...

July 17, 2023

Inboxes Are Overrated

The purpose of an Inbox in an app is to store data with which a user is not yet sure what to do. I don't take issue with the role of an Inbox, but rather its typical location. Practically all implementations of an Inbox dedicate an entire view to it. This architectural decision means that a user have to venture out of their way to chec...

July 17, 2023

Expand and Contract

Practically all endeavors fluctuate between two phases: expansion and contraction. In the former phase, the number of inputs associated with an endeavor increases. In the latter phase, unnecessary inputs are discarded. For example, consider the process of writing a research paper. The researcher first expands the scope of their project...

July 17, 2023

Death to the Hierarchy

A hierarchical means of organizing data is intuitive to most people because it is a method that allows data to be organized in a way that can be easily visualized and implemented in the physical world. Whenever I hear the word "hierarchy," I think of something being nested within something else. While this approach is valued for its si...

June 30, 2023

The Well-Trodden Path

Cohesion is one of the most important design considerations to me. I find the analogy of a well-trodden path to communicate what cohesion means to me in the context of user experience design. A well-trodden path in the context of UX design is a frequently user-executed workflow. By encouraging a user to regularly perform certain sequen...

June 18, 2023

Sort Stack's Statuses

Sort Stack has two kinds of statuses: unresolved statuses and resolved statuses. The unresolved statuses are as follows: Todo, Queue, In Progress, and Waiting. Most of these statuses are pretty self-explanatory, but I’d like to talk about the Queue status for a moment. At first glance, the Queue status might seem a bit pointless; I too...

June 2, 2023

Sort Stack’s Notifications

There are three kinds of notifications in Sort Stack: 1. Reminder notifications 2. Imminent Deadline (Deadlines less than 12 hours in the future) notifications 3. Overdue notifications Notifications have two distinguishing qualities: 1. Stickiness 2. Bundling Their stickiness actually came about by accident. I had originally intended e...