I don’t have many end-of-year customs, but every December 31, without fail, I indulge in at least a few hours of self-pity as I think about all my unmet goals from the previous year, all the unfinished projects I promised myself would be behind me, and the enormous backlog of work I have confronting me on January 2. Although I don’t make resolutions as such, every year I plan to manage my schedule better so this doesn’t happen again. But despite my best efforts, every year I seem to fall further behind. I reflect on the things that went wrong—all the unexpected illnesses, glitches, and interruptions that cost me days or weeks of work—and feel as though the last 12 months have surely been the least productive ever.

As a partial antidote to this useless and self-defeating frame of mind, I decided two years ago to look back carefully and figure out exactly what I did manage to accomplish that year. It turned out that What I Did in 2009 was a lot more than I’d thought, and that made me feel a bit better. So I did the same thing last year, and sure enough, What I Did in 2010 was, if not everything I’d hoped for, more than enough to make me feel like I was a responsible citizen, worker, husband, and father. So I’ve decided to institutionalize this exercise and make it an annual event—at least until that hypothetical point in the future when I’m so completely caught up and together that it wouldn’t occur to me to feel my efforts had been lacking. As if!

Here, then, is what I remember accomplishing in 2011:

• Moved our family to a new apartment (an unexpectedly massive process, considering how many times I’ve done it in the past).

• Tweeted an entire ebook!

• Produced four brand-new Take Control ebooks:

  • Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac (210 pages; subsumes and replaces Take Control of Mac OS X Backups and Take Control of Easy Mac Backups)
  • Take Control of iCloud (143 pages)
  • Take Control of Speeding Up Your Mac (196 pages)
  • Take Control of Upgrading to Lion (pre-release version 1.0, 66 pages)

• Produced new editions of five Take Control ebooks:

  • Take Control of Mac OS X Backups (Fifth Edition, 228 pages; written in 2010)
  • Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch (Third Edition, 108 pages)
  • Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac (Fifth Edition, 178 pages)
  • Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac (Second Edition, 110 pages)
  • Take Control of Working with Your iPad (Second Edition, 133 pages; written in 2010)

  Also did most of the writing of Take Control of Getting Started with DEVONthink 2, Second Edition, which will be published in 2012. And, did preliminary work on a few other titles, details of which I can’t reveal yet.

• Produced minor updates to four Take Control ebooks:

  • Take Control of Easy Mac Backups (version 1.1, 118 pages)
  • Take Control of iCloud (version 1.0.1, 144 pages; version 1.1, 153 pages)
  • Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac (version 2.1, 103 pages)
  • Take Control of Upgrading to Lion (post-release version 1.1, 150 pages)

• Wrote 12 articles for Macworld:

  • “Getting Things Done: The best ways to edit Office documents and PDFs on the iPad” (March 2011 issue, pp. 34–42)
  • A dozen or so tips in “100 Things Every Mac User Should Know” (April 2011 issue, pp. 33–100)
  • How to Make Your Office Paperless (appeared in the August 2011 issue, pp. 52–53, as “Say Farewell to Paper”)
  • The Paperless (Post) Office
  • Presenting with the iPad
  • How to Edit Spreadsheets on an iPad
  • How to Back Up Your Gmail
  • How to Print from an iPad
  • Tame Lion’s Mail
  • How to Find Mail Messages in Lion
  • Solve Mail Search Problems
  • Macworld Buying Guide: Document Scanners

• Wrote six articles for TidBITS (and contributed to numerous others):

  • MozyHome Increases Pricing, Drops Unlimited Storage
  • Joe Kissell Shreds an Ebook into Twitter
  • The Ebook Shredder: A Recap
  • Nisus Writer Pro 2.0: The Review
  • Mac Virtualization Update: VMware, Parallels, and VirtualBox
  • CrashPlan Mobile Lets You Take Your Backups with You

  I also edited all the weekly TidBITS issues, participated in tons of staff discussions, and discharged sundry other editorial duties.

• Did 12 podcast interviews:

  • MacJury: Deliberations on the iPad 2 Announcement (March 2)
  • MacVoicesTV: Two Backups Books (March 15)
  • MacVoicesTV: Take Control of Speeding Up Your Mac (May 31)
  • MacVoicesTV: Take Control of Troubleshooting Your Mac, Second Edition (June 6)
  • MacVoicesTV: Take Control of Upgrading to Lion (July 20)
  • MacVoicesTV: Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac (October 3)
  • MacVoicesTV: Take Control of iCloud (October 21)
  • MacVoicesTV: Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, Third Edition (December 6)
  • Tech Night Owl Live: Take Control of Your Paperless Office (January 8)
  • Tech Night Owl Live: Tweeting an Ebook, Maintaining, and More (April 9)
  • Tech Night Owl Live: Take Control of Upgrading to Lion (July 16)
  • Tech Night Owl Live: Take Control of iCloud (October 22)

• Gave four remote video presentations to Mac user groups:

  • NMUG, Naples, FL—Working with Your iPad (January 5)
  • NEOAC, Strongsville, OH—MobileMe (January 22)
  • NEOAC, Strongsville, OH—iCloud (November 26)
  • HMAUS, Honolulu, Hawaii—iCloud (November 26)

• Served as technical reviewer for a book by Apress.

I also spent quite a bit of time doing non-work-related stuff:

• Traveled to Brussels and Bruges, Belgium; Heidelberg, Nuremberg, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany; and Strasbourg, France

• Read 24 books, not counting several I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • Anathem by Neal Stephenson
  • The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman
  • Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter
  • Desolation Island (Autómata) by Adolfo García Ortega
  • Foreign Tongue by Vanina Marsot
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest by Stieg Larsson
  • God, No! by Penn Jillette
  • The Good Among the Great by Donald Van de Mark
  • How to Repair Food by Marina and John Bear
  • The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
  • Memories of the Future—Volume 1 by Wil Wheaton
  • Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston
  • Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
  • The Prosperity Plan by Laura B. Fortgang
  • Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale
  • A Soldier Remembers by Linda Mudry
  • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
  • The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle
  • Virus on Orbis 1 by PJ Haarsma

• Watched a lot of TV:

  • 30 Rock, second half of Season 5
  • Burn Notice, Season 5 and first half of Season 6
  • Caprica, Season 1.5
  • Community, second half of Season 2 and first half of Season 3
  • Eureka, Season 1 and Season 2
  • Fringe, second half of Season 3 and first half of Season 4
  • House, second half of Season 7 and first half of Season 8
  • It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, second half of Season 6
  • Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Season 2
  • Lie to Me, second half of Season 3
  • Mad Men, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, and Season 4
  • The Office, second half of Season 7 and first half of Season 8
  • Pushing Daisies, Season 2
  • The Walking Dead, Season 1
  • Innumerable random viewings of the news—usually NBC Nightly News

• Watched a lot of movies too (52 in all, not counting older movies I re-watched; tally: 11 in theaters, 4 on DVD, 6 on Blu-ray, 29 via Netflix streaming, 1 via iTunes purchase, and 1 via iTunes streaming):

  • The Adjustment Bureau
  • Agora
  • Babies
  • Black Swan
  • Browncoats: Redemption
  • Capitalism: A Love Story
  • The Captains
  • Coraline
  • Cronos
  • The Crow
  • Death at a Funeral (US version)
  • Disgrace
  • Encounters at the End of the World
  • The Fantastic Mr. Fox
  • From Paris with Love
  • The Fighter
  • The Ghost Writer
  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (Swedish version)
  • The Girl Who Played with Fire (Swedish version)
  • Good
  • The Green Zone
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
  • Horrible Bosses
  • Hot Tub Time Machine
  • I Love You, Phillip Morris
  • The Interpreter
  • Jarhead
  • The King’s Speech
  • L’Arnacoeur (Heartbreaker)
  • Let Me In
  • Let the Right One In
  • Limitless
  • Mamma Mia!
  • Marwencol
  • The Merry Gentleman
  • Midnight in Paris
  • Morning Glory
  • Salt
  • A Serious Man
  • Seven Pounds
  • Shutter Island
  • Source Code
  • Staten Island
  • Thor
  • Timer
  • Toy Story 3
  • The Tree of Life
  • The Trip
  • True Grit
  • The Two Mr. Kissels
  • The Wind that Shakes the Barley
  • X-Men: First Class

• Ate dinner at Nomiya, lunch at Taillevent, and dinner at Spring.

• Volunteered for SOS Help.

• Ended the year with an empty inbox.

I even managed to keep my family fed, clothed, sheltered, and reasonably content—that’s probably the biggest feat of all!

I wouldn’t be so foolish as to make any proclamations about how much better 2012 is going to be. All I can say is, my hopes, plans, and goals remain as ambitious as always, and now I have yet another chance to make good on them. Here we go!

Happy New Year!

New review: Ray Bowler of MyMac.com reviewed Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac, with a 10 out of 10 score! (December 13, 2011)

New Macworld article: Macworld Buying Guide: Document Scanners (December 13, 2011)

New MacVoices interview: I appeared on MacVoicesTV (video) to discuss Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, Third Edition; also available as an audio podcast. (December 6, 2011)