blog
say it right.
Have the Patience to Make a Point
I’m slowing down my writing. I’ve become addicted to cranking out posts too quickly to speak clearly. I’ve lost the patience to make a clear point.
Lately I’ve been writing a lot about my newly revised Evernote GTD system. All began solidly. But somewhere between parts 1 and 2 things got fuzzy. My system began changing, evolving, simplifying, but I didn’t stop to let it. Instead I modified the focus of the series so I could keep on writing. Now I’m not sure what I’m writing about.
What was my point?
Was I writing just to write? Do I like talking to myself? Was I trying to share something useful, something worth discussing? I think the latter, but maybe I’ve been spending too much time at sea.
So now I’m sitting in the harbor, learning to enjoy the view. I can pull into port whenever I’m ready; which is to say, I won’t publish anything until it feels truly finished and makes clear points. I’ll bide my time and learn how to breathe.
This is an oath, but I might just be talking to myself again.
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0cool
an Authentic
Brand
What if Big Brands Didn’t Think Logos & Branding Mattered?
Seriously. What if well-known companies didn’t take the time to build their message into their design decisions? What if they just created “cool” looking designs and just stuck a logo in it? Maybe logos can just be mixed and matched with competitors? Maybe the design of the website is more important than the brand? Let’s see.
Twitter as Facebook
Google as Microsoft
Pepsi as Coke
HTC As Apple
Bank of America as JP Morgan Chase
That’s not so bad…
Admittedly, some of these don’t look too bad, but they don’t look right, do they? You know something is wrong. The logos look stuck on – which is exactly what happens when you don’t design a website around a company brand.
Also do you want “not bad”? or do you want outstanding, amazing, competitive? You don’t get there by rushing out a “cool” design and sticking your logo in it. You need a clear idea of who you and your mission are and then embed them into everything you do.
By having a clear brand, you look like you know what you’re doing and inspire confidence. You send a clear message. Waver and you look unprofessional.
Oh… one last note about your logo
Want to look modern? Have a modern logo and build a brand that fits in today’s world. Convey modern in every word, in every design choice and make damn sure those are consistent and cohesive.
If you start with a weak logo and brand, you’ll have a weak site. Adding bandaids won’t heal the wound because buckets of paint do not solid make.
Related Posts:
0muri, and kaizen.
Simpler Evernote GTD
[Updated] New, Simpler Evernote GTD System, Part 3: Removing the Waste (Muri, Muda, Mura)
For Part 3 of this series, I intended to focus on the notebooks in my Evernote GTD system. However after reading a bit about muri, muda, and mura, I decided to take a fresh look to see how wasteful my system might be.
This led to all kinds of questions: how much value is there in anything I do? How wasteful is a design? A user experience? A conversation? A song?
Muri, muda, and mura are three traditional Japanese terms for wasteful activities. If you’re a Lean practitioner or familiar with Toyota’s praised just-in-time methodology, you’ve probably heard these terms before. For the sake of brevity, I recommend reading the summaries that Bob Hubbard has collected from Wikipedia on his blog.
For our purposes, muri, muda, and mura are things that are slowing productivity.
Muri, muda, and mura in my Evernote GTD system and beyond
The following are questions I asked myself as I worked at simplifying my system and analyzed how I’d been trying to get things done:
Muda of overproduction
Am I producing too much? I’d never considered that. I always want to do more. But how much value is there in my completed projects? Is doing so much getting me closer to reaching goals or just giving me short-term satisfaction? Perhaps a fresh 80/20 analysis is necessary.
Muda of waiting
Are my projects moving along smoothly or do they stop and start? Maybe I’m not processing things correctly or thoroughly enough? Is overproduction causing more important things to wait? Is simple procrastination a cause?
Muda of transportation
How far does an email have to travel before it’s in my system? How far do I have to reach to act on it? Could I reduce the distance between inbox and system, agenda and person, etc?
Muda of processing
Am I processing too much? For instance, how much of my daily or weekly reviews are needed, valuable? Am I over-organizing? With my project template for Evernote, I believe I was.
Muda of inventory
This concept was a little difficult to apply, but it got me thinking again about how much value there was in what I am producing. How is what I’m doing now – even this blog post – propelling my life and goals forward?
Muda of motion
How far am I having to move things within my system? How many moving parts are there? Could grouping differently be more efficient? Do I have to have notebooks that read like a how-to from a David Allen book in order to be applying GTD correctly?
My conclusion: what works, works. I don’t see much value in rethinking David Allen’s many years of trial and error so I stick with the principles, but I can name my notebooks anything and group my lists any way I choose.
Muda of rework
Bigger considerations here: how much quality is there in what I do? Am I rushing, cutting corners? Am I doing the same work several times instead of touching once?
Muri – overburdened
How difficult is my GTD system to maintain? Is there redundancy? (the answer was ‘yes’) Can we do more with less? (again the answer was ‘yes’)
Mura – unevenness
This exercise truly blew my mind. How much external need is there for my internal efforts? Am I meeting a demand that doesn’t exist? Where is the pull?
For instance with this blog, is there really such a demand for all these posts? Could a slow, more calculated pace produce better content, content that people are actually searching for? Should I be listening more and responding in kind?
While I’ve already taken steps to simplify my current Evernote + GTD system (see part 2), this is a matter of kaizen, “continuous improvement”. Small, calculated changes will give us the biggest results without slowing down the production line.
As I clear the way to put only those things I need along my path, I’m sure there will be further discoveries.
Further reading
- Mura, Muri, Muda
- What is Muda?
- Bob’s Lean Learning
- Practice your personal Kaizen (refers to GTD)
- Kaizen and Pareto working together with GTD
Updates
I’ve added some graphics to help make skimming the post easier. Too much text, not enough guideposts. I’ve also rewritten parts since my excitement to share was faster than clear writing.
Related Posts:
7Simpler Evernote GTD
New, Simpler Evernote GTD System, Part 2: Revised Structure and “Next” Notebook
For a few weeks now, I’ve been using Evernote as the main tool in my Getting Things Done system. Since my last post, I’ve simplified my system even further, so much so that I think I’ve got a final notebook arrangement. We’ll see by part 3.
The new notebook structure:
- Inbox – incoming items
- Next – Today, context lists, agendas
- Projects: Active - only those I’m truly working on right now
- Projects: Someday – maybe’s, too.
- Lists – checklists, ideas, etc.
- Horizons – goals, vision, etc.
- Motivation – personal inspiration
- Public – notes I’m sharing with everybody
- Reference – archived notes
If you compare this with the last arrangement, you can see that I’ve combined a few notebooks. Routines, Lists, and Ideas are all under Lists. The Next notebook holds my agenda for the day, plans for the week/month/year, context lists, and Agendas/Waiting for lists (named for individual people).
So far this is working great. With fewer notebooks to review, my scanning is more thorough and I have much less redundancy. I’m optimistic that this is an arrangement I can live with for a while.
In Part 3, I will give you a closer look at each of my notebooks and I how use them.
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4Virgin... everything
Keeping Lists by Richard Branson [Quote]
“I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists, and that sequence of calls propels me forward.”
Lists: so simple yet so potent. Thank you, Sir Richard, for your continued inspiration and contributions to Planet Earth and beyond!
Here are a few more sources of information on how Sir Richard Branson gets things done:
- Richard Branson And His Key To Success (with video)
- Ten Life Lessons from Richard Branson
- Richard Branson on Exercise and Productivity (with video)
- How to Gain Two Extra Productive Hours a Day
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0you productive
do something.
(but it helps)
GTD is Not Doing and the Future of Hanami Design
Hanami Design is about my work as a designer and what I’m doing to become better. Part of that is being organized and able to handle a heavy workload.
I’ve been a fan of the Getting Things Done system for a few years now and this system has made it possible for me to get a good grip on my day to day projects and long term goals. Only lately do I feel I’m beginning to see how much I can really do.
However for my design career, this isn’t enough.
GTD doesn’t make us better, we do. It’s a set of tools for getting free, not being free. All that time spent trying to get things organized the way the book says doesn’t equal doing anything. It’s a battle plan without a battle. You must act. You must design.
So a renewed emphasis on design and related skills is where I’ll be putting much of my blogging energy now. User interface design, usability, color theory – experiments and resources for these and more.
This is a head’s up for the future of my posts: just as much on productivity strategies for designers, but much more on actual design.
Related Posts:
2Simpler Evernote GTD
New, Simpler Evernote GTD System, Part 1: Structure & Agendas
Lots of activity on Hanami lately about my efforts with GTD, specifically with using Evernote. Been working on that and this is Part 1 of a short series on my revised Evernote GTD system (August 2011). Let’s jump right in with the basic structure and the Agendas notebook.
Please note: I lean heavily on my email inboxes and Google Calendar, but this series focuses just on the Evernote aspects of my personal Getting Things Done system.
Structure
Unlike previous arrangements that focused on making the notebooks look very GTD-like, I now arrange by frequency of use and convenience.
- Agendas. Today, @agendas, and related (more below).
- Projects. Active only.
- Lists. Context lists and more.
- Ideas. Just my thoughts, man.
- Someday/Maybe. Projects inactive and incubating.
- Horizons. Notes on why I’m doing and who I want to be.
- Routines. Checklists for things I do somewhat frequently (might eventually become part of Lists).
- Reviews. Weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly review lists.
- Motivation. Pictures and quotes for inspiration, self-encouragement.
- Public. Evernotes I’m sharing with you fine folks.
- Reference. My archives.
- Tags. Take a look at this post for my approach to Areas.
Agendas Notebook
Things that I regularly reach for on a daily basis and notes that frame what I’m doing now in terms of short-term goals. I don’t want to reach far for anything so whatever I need to do today should go here.
- 00. Today. In order, my tasks of the day. I often group these by @context.
- 01. Ticklers – Days/Months. Used mostly for tasks I need off my list today and into the future. Most ticklers go into my calendar.
- 02. Ticklers – No date. Things that are still more or less on my personal radar but aren’t date associated.
- 03. Scrum. Notes for the morning meetings at work. Split between two work areas, further divided by Today and Yesterday.
- 04. Daily Review. My daily GTD checklist I use this everyday.
- 05. Copy & Paste. Not everything I copy and paste frequently, just the daily stuff.
- 06. This Week. Helps to have my plan for the week with my plan for the day. Makes reviews easier.
- 07. This Month. Plan and goals for the month.
- 08. This Year. Plan and goals for the year.
- @Agendas. Unlike the above which are numbered, my @agendas are notes named for people I need to talk to and/or am waiting for. No need for a separate notebook when I’m likely talking to them about something I’m working on today or this week.
Plain Text
One other significant change I’ve made lately is to avoid formatting my notes in Evernote wherever possible. I’ve come to realize that I’ve been spending an exorbitant amount of time prettying up instead of actually doing something.
So now I try to keep things super freaking simple.
A bonus of that is I can better manage my notes on the Evernote on the iPhone, which doesn’t currently support rich text editing.
Next Posts
I’ll be going down the list as outlined above so next up should be Projects. Happy tasking!
Related Posts:
5Formtastic
= nested list
nightmare.
Getting Weird with IE7 List + Form Issues
If IE7 is great for anything, it’s revealing when markup is bad. It usually chokes. Sometimes by hiding content, sometimes by flickering, it all depends. Start mixing lists and forms and you can get all kinds of interesting behaviors.
Among IE7′s more interesting list/form quirks:
Peekaboo bug
Where did my drop-down go?
Now you see it, now you don’t – or maybe never at all. This classic bug can’t usually be solved with the standard position:relative solution where lists are concerned.
Check to see if you’ve got anything outside of the list itself, may hidden elements like inputs that somehow aren’t sitting with the li.
Unexpected indentation
Now this drove me nearly mad. In a Rails + Formtastic + HAML project and despite stripping out all padding and margins, I was still finding labels – and only the labels – indented. Wha-whaaaat?
Took two solutions:
list-item-position: outside. Sometimes the indent is the bullet hidden and inside- Making sure that the list items are actually within a
ulorol
That last item might seem crazy, but in a project with a lot of shared views and Formtastic requiring that every freaking thing be in a list, this can easily happen.
Know of other list bugs/problems/issues in IE7?
This list isn’t meant to be comprehensive, so leave a comment and we’ll find some solutions!
Related Posts:
0The Ship is Sinking – Let’s Add an Anchor!
Some product owners add and add and add and sit in wonder at how competitors with fewer features have bigger audiences. Drives me mad. Piling more garbage on top of a landfill won’t make it smell any better. Big menu at a bad restaurant – that’s the experience your audience may be getting.
People don’t need tools, they need the right tool at the right time. And they have to have experiences they’re willing to repeat.
You may be wondering: “what have you done that’s so great?”. Hopefully a lot, that’s not for me to say. But I’ve seen for myself that adding often equals taking away.
More options won’t make a car any more fun to drive.
Take for instance the original Strands Fitness mobile app. More features than anybody, but an interface that left many saying: “I don’t get it.” So many great ideas, so little focus on usability. But since January, our new team has been making big improvements.
By pulling out features, we’ve seen interaction increase dramatically. By simplifying, we’ve seen greater discovery. By working more closely with users, our app is now growing with our audience. We’re building loyalty and we’re just getting warmed up.
We wouldn’t be caring if we spoiled people with toys they’d use once and forget about, so we’re willing to empty the toy box a bit to give users a few that they’ll truly love.
The point, really, is that you can easily drown your audience with tons of features and waste a lot of money in the process. Make the best damn hammer you can before you try to fill the tool shed. Focus on what your audience needs, not what you or even they think they want – it’s probably too much.
More can equal less so work hard at being simple, reliable, and for your product’s sake, get out of the way!
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0Responsibility?
Not sure if
they are all
the same.
Using Tags for GTD Areas of Focus in Evernote
A few weeks ago I posted about an experiment that used a stack and a collection of notebooks in Evernote to organize my Areas of Focus (or Responsibility). I abandoned that approach for several reasons, mostly due to a recent urge to reduce the number of notebooks I was trying to juggle.
I went back to using a hierarchy of tags and simple set of rules.
Rules for Areas of Focus/Evernote tags
- Tags are used only for Areas.
- All notes must be tagged.
- If a note doesn’t fit in an area, throw it out.
To make things a little easier to quick sort, I place my areas into three super groups: Career, Personal, and Work. Arguably I could get by on just these, but I’ve found it helps me keep a clearer picture of who I am and want to be by having a second level to my hierarchy.
Related Posts:
6Areas of Focus?
My GTD Areas of Responsibility List for August 2011
I like seeing how other people keep themselves organized and have done my share of searches for lists of GTD Areas of Responsibility. Seems appropriate to share my own list as it stands in August 2011.
I have one rule that dictates how I name my areas. Excluding my three super groups (which I use for quick sorting in Evernote), they must complete the sentence: “I am a…” This way I can better relate my 20,000 foot items to my goals and objectives.
- Career
- Blogger
- Designer
- Musician
- Songwriter
- Writer
- Personal
- Family Man
- Friend
- Healthy Human
- Husband
- Minimalist
- Organized Human
- Pet Owner
- World Traveler
- Work
- Copy Writer
- Creative Director
- Email Designer
- Events Designer
- Fitness Designer
- Mobile Designer
- Technical Writer
- UX Designer
I’d love to talk about your Areas of Responsibility list, so please leave a comment or send one to me on Twitter!
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2for vector button
only.
Six Ways to Fix Fuzzy Button Edges in Photoshop
Photoshop’s primitive tools (rectangles, rounded rectangles, etc) are really handy for creating scalable buttons, but depending on their initial size, you might get a little fuzziness around the edges.
That left side looks a little fuzzy
What’s really weird is the size of the initial graphic seems to dictate whether the fuzziness will appear or not. I’ve seen fuzziness at 24 pixels tall but not at 30 and even then the width can make a difference – not seeing a pattern, yet. However, since projects might require buttons of any size, you can’t force a height or width, so here are a few ways to work around this issue:
- Masks
Cut out the bad parts, basically. Works good for straight edges. - Add an outside stroke
Requires a bit of planning to deal with the extra height and width, but sometimes you can simply cover up the fuzziness. - Turn down the volume with a light pencil and a mask
In rounded corners, this can make things look even smoother. Create a mask and switch your foreground color to black. Choose the pencil tool, but turn the opacity way down. Keep penciling the rough areas until the roundness is complete. Be cautious not to lose the color diversity or your round corners can look pixelated and generally worse. - Pencil in the fuzziness
Sometimes the blurry spots are on the inside of the graphic. Since the fuzziness seems to be consistently 1 pixel wide (or tall, depending on where it appears), try using the pencil tool to fill in the appropriate color. - Add an inner glow
For inner ghosting, an inner glow may do the trick. Also inner glows often add a nice real world feel. - Add an outer glow
If you have the room and it doesn’t clash with your aesthetic, play a bit with outer glows. Like inner glows and used cautiously, outer glows can also add a sense of realism to your buttons.
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6one primary principle:
Markup should
be beautiful.
Solved: Problem with Nesting Lists using HAML
This one goes out to front-end developers creating drop-down menus in Ruby projects that use HAML. Don’t make the same stupid mistake I did.
This throws a syntax error:
%li= link "Link 1", "#"
%ul
%li= link "Link 2", "#"
See that first line? Basically it says that all the content of the first list item is Link #1. Why? Because it’s on the same line. It’s now excluding the rest of the content.
The solution?
%li
= link "Link 1", "#"
%ul
%li= link "Link 2", "#"
Move the link to the same indented position as the rest of the content you’re trying to include within the li.
Related Posts:
0Method of Loci,
Roman City,
and mental walk.
Learn New Stuff Fast with the Roman Room Method
To truly learn something, you must make it your own. If you’re not connected – dare I say, emotionally – you won’t remember much of anything. The Roman Room (aka Method of Loci, Roman City, or mental walk) technique can help make strange things familiar by giving you creative power to associate them with things you already know.
The basics are simple: pick a place you’re intimately familiar with, a place in the real world. Creatively associate the objects of this place to the things you wish to learn. (Wikipedia has a more thorough explanation)
I’ve got to learn as much Hungarian as I can before the end of October so I’m using the Roman Room technique to connect new words with things I know at a local farmer’s market. I make my study more tactile by mapping out my fantasy world on paper then later redraw the map from memory to test myself. Making notes and goofy little sketches help refine my associations.
My latest personal quiz is in the graphic above.
The Roman Room method worked well for learning Japanese a few years back and I’m also looking to apply it to new design and coding skills. More on that later.
Here are a few more links that should help with learning about the Roman Room method.
- Mind Tools
- WikiHow
- Innovative Language
- Academic Tips
- Ask Women Net
- How Stuff Works
- Mind Expanding Techniques
Leave a comment or send one to me on Twitter
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0Simple Evernote GTD Projects with Next Action Preview
This quick change makes it easy to keep your project list ordered by due date, sortable by area of responsibility, and ready for scanning next actions:
- Create a notebook called Projects
- Title each project note using this pattern: Year + Month + Day + Verb + Title
- Make sure Evernote is ordering Notes by Title
- Create tags for your areas of responsibility and apply them to your notes
- Put your next actions first in your project notes
- Activate snippet view
Evernote should now look something like this:
Just by going to your Projects notebook you can see:
- Which projects are due
- When the projects were started (day the note was created)
- What areas the projects fall under
- Which actions are next
Leave a comment or send one to me on Twitter.
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6you use?
How Do You Name and Organize Your Image Files?
I’m interested in learning how other designers keep their assets sorted, be the methods special prefixes, directories, or whatever. How do you name and organize your images files?
I’ve used these prefixes regularly:
- an_ animated gifs
- bg_ backgrounds
- ic_ icons
For a while I also used btn_ for buttons, but since these are technically CSS backgrounds I’ve been considering using bg_btn_. Seems long, though.
As far as directories, I like:
- /animations
- /base (global assets)
- /backgrounds
- /buttons
- /icons
- /email (HTML emails only)
What works great for you?
Related Posts:
0GTD Digital + Paper
Roundup of Paper-Based GTD System Resources (mostly hacking Moleskine)
Back in November I’d taken the plunge and gone as close to paper-only as I could afford with my GTD system. I did a fair amount of research and ended up with a decent collection of links, many related to Moleskine (mol-a-skeen’-a) notebooks, which I thought I’d share today.
Even though I’m not currently using a paper system, I still love the ingenuity demonstrated in these posts.
- The Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
- Kody’s Moleskine iPod Hack
- Introducing the Hipster PDA
- Hipster PDA
- Yet Another Moleskine Hack
- A Paper Based GTD System
- Create a Moleskine PDA: A Student GTD Hack
- Moleskine GTD
- Getting Things Done with a Paper Based GTD System
- Implement GTD
- Getting/Staying Organized: My Moleskine PDA
- The Moleskine Multi-Tab Hack
- Hacking a GTD Moleskine
- mGTD2: GTD for Moleskine 2
- Hack Your Pocket Moleskine into a Wallet
- My Former GTD System and Why I Abandoned It
- The Turnipville Moleskine/GTD System
- How to Manage Your Moleskine
Know of some links I’m missing? Share them in the comments! (I know I’m missing a few)
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1prototyping tool
Review: App Sketcher – HTML/jQuery Prototype Creation Tool
A few weeks back I was asked by the folks at Appwork to give their new prototype creation tool, App Sketcher, a test drive and to share my thoughts. One of App Sketcher’s big features is the ability to export HTML and jQuery and since I’m such a big fan of creating prototypes with working code, how could I resist?
The conclusion: App Sketcher is solid, but I’m anxious to see what’s next.
To get to know App Sketcher, I decided to recreate – and slightly reinvent – two panels of the Add a Workout form on Strands Fitness. I know them well and since I’ve been itching to explore a few change ideas, this seemed like a good opportunity. Appwork says that their own prototype demo was done in 20 minutes (really?), so I thought I’d keep things quick and dirty, too. Bear in mind that I’d never used this before, so time would be needed to learn my way around.
Getting started was pretty easy. Drag, drop, and adjust the properties on the left. That got me most of the way through a form layout. The tabs container made creating my two panels a snap (no coding needed) and from there most of my time was spent playing.
Running in a browser and exporting the source were only single button clicks away. Source code is zipped by default – a thoughtful touch that makes shipping projects to other team members convenient.
Form options were more generous than I’d anticipated (slide and file upload were nice surprises), but I couldn’t help hoping there would be support for the jQuery UI library. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Appwork doesn’t see requests for an OmniGraffle type stencil option for jQuery UI components and custom themes so users can load their own styles. I also could have used a few standard effects like hide/show and a few more event types, but we mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking this is an IDE; App Sketcher is a prototyping tool and if you want a WYSIWYG editor, there are plenty out there.
While more positioning/spacing (OmniGraffle style guidelines, please?) and hot spot creation tools would be nice, App Sketcher always gave me enough of what I needed to get the job done. For a 1st generation app, it’s surprisingly stable – not one noticeable bug or crash the entire time I was using it – and I imagine future versions will be that much more robust.
Overall my experience with App Sketcher was good and I recommend it, especially for team members who aren’t inclined or are unable to work in code. For the regular price of $149, I would have found this a tough buy, admittedly, but for a limited time you can get App Sketcher for $79 with free updates for life. Hard to beat that.
You can try App Sketcher right now for free.
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1the old school.
Using IE6 and MS Word 2007 to Test HTML Emails in Outlook 2000-2010
Have a copy of MS Word and IE6? Good. These might be all you need to get HTML emails looking right in old versions of Outlook and Outlook Express.
Why?
Express displays HTML using the IE6 engine; Outlook uses the one from Word. Between the two I was able to get the new Strands Fitness Events newsletter looking 100% on all the target versions – of Outlook, that is.
Might need an old Windows machine for IE6 (unless you’re patient enough to get some rigged versions working on your Apple), but MS Word 2007 in Office for Mac worked just fine. It should also be noted we did final testing via Campaign Monitor which provided screenshots from Outlook 2000-2010.
Try using IE6 and MS Word for testing Outlook HTML emails and let me know how you fare. I’ll be nursing a font sized headache in the meantime.
Related Posts:
0Things to notes
in Evernote!
[Updated] Finally! Linking Things or Anything to Evernote
Thank you to David Torné for pointing me towards this holy grail moment: it is now possible to link Things (or probably any other productivity application) directly to notes in Evernote, desktop and iPhone.
In Evernote, right click over a note in the list view. Click Copy Note Link.
Open the Things Quick Entry window or go to Things and start a new task. Paste the link into the Notes area.
That’s it!
Naturally you can link just about any program to notes. Curious as to how this will work online… I suspect notes could probably have a unique URL already, which would likely make this pretty easy for programs like Toodledo, possibly Outlook.
At least now we can bring two amazing productivity tools together for the first time.
Update
Though it worked initially, later in the day copying the links only pasted text. To make sure they work, sometimes you have to paste the link into a note then copy the link you just pasted. Weird, but it works.
