personal security audit cover image

Getting Hacked and Getting Hard

CLEARANCE SALE! VANS SHOES CHEAP! I was as surprised as anyone to hear that I’d pivoted from blogging to hawking knock-off footwear on Facebook. After pulling down the scam posts and changing my password, I checked my activity log. At least three interlopers had somehow managed to access my account, one of them several years ago. Creepy, but unimaginative: they didn’t lock me out, or steal my identity, or use my password to access other sites. As far as I know, my nudes are still between me and Zuckerberg.

Then there was the second incident: I changed my Google password, immediately forgot it, and couldn’t get back in. I filled in the account recovery forms over and over, and sat there silently panicking as each robotic form rejection destroyed a tiny piece of my soul. There was no way to get in touch with a human being. With one moment of carelessness, I was sure I’d lost all my work, and years of treasured memories.

On both occasions I got lucky: it could have been much, much worse. Screwing up for a third time was probably tempting fate, so I decided it was time to actually sit down and sort out my online security…

Roam Research for Getting Things Done (GTD) Cover Image

Roam Research for Getting Things Done (GTD)

This is a GTD guide I wrote for the Roam Research team. I’ve since developed a much smoother workflow, so I’ll update this guide soon. In the meantime, this should give you a decent intro to both GTD and Roam.

The central idea of GDT is to capture and close ‘open loops’—to get stray thoughts, to-dos, and concerns out of your head, and pin them to the page for future processing.

This frees up mental bandwidth so you’re not feeling guilty or overwhelmed, and means you don’t have to rely on the memory of your leaky meat-computer. As David Allen says: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”

There are dozens of approaches to implementing GTD, each tailored to a different set of tools and preferences. Here’s how you can set up a simple GTD-style system in Roam…