Dave Stachowiak (Twitter) is the host of the Coaching for Leaders and Carnegie Coach podcasts. Dave is also Executive Vice President, Talent Development at Dale Carnegie of Southern Los Angeles. Dave, through his podcasts, manages to combine a love of technology with a bit of sanity towards being productive. So Dave, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

One of my go-to apps is Lift. This app helps me reach larger goals by keeping track of daily, important habits. I have seven daily habits right now, including things like “walk 12,000 steps” and “read a book for 30 minutes.” At the end of the day (or when I complete the habit), I mark it off and it keeps track of my progress over time with graphs and other cool stuff. I’ve interviewed co-founded Lift Tony Stubblebine and they’ve got great plans for the future of Lift.

My excuse for owning pretty much every podcast app out there is that it’s helpful for troubleshooting the occasional podcast feed issue for folks in my listening community. The real reason is that I was always searching for the perfect podcast app. That all changed with Overcast. Finally, I feel like I’ve found an app that balances great features with ease of use. The smart speed function is amazing. The rest of my podcast apps have been relegated to a podcast folder on the second screen.

I’ve tried several of the third-party calendar apps over the years, but always ended up back with the Apple Calendar app, since it seemed like meeting invites (I get a lot) never got handled correctly and the learning curves were steep. I have no idea why I was so stubborn about not trying Fantastical, since I’ve heard great things about it for years. Once I did, not only am I not going back to the Calendar app, but it now has a beloved spot in my dock.

Who doesn’t love Drafts? Thanks to Mac Power Users for getting me hooked. I definitely underutilize it…right now, just to capture thoughts as they come in, and twice a week I have an OmniFocus task set to go in and file/clear all my content ideas and random thoughts. It’s high on my list to learn lots of the new advanced sharing and power features in the new version.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Other than Starbucks, my guilty pleasure these days is the MailChimp app. I’m a big believer in slow, steady growth over time, so the MailChimp dashboard gives me a daily smile when I see people subscribing to my weekly updates. My wife Bonni is on the same account for her Teaching in Higher Ed platform so we get to cheer each other on. It’s a blast. There are worse things to be addicted too, yes?

What is the app you are still missing?

I already feel like I underutilize so many of my current apps. Writing this is reminding me that I need to carve out some time to learn the advanced features on a few of them. Every time I’ve done that in the past, the time investment always pays off in the long-run.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

The short answer? A lot. I work from home and almost all my work is virtual these days, so I choose to stay very connected. We have two children under the age of three, so there are days where a virtual office in my pocket is a life-saver.

That said, I’m intentional about staying off the phone with I’m with our kids or it’s family time. Over the summer, I found I was checking email too much when out and about with kids (Bonni and I aim to share equal time caring for them) so I took email off my phone completely for a month to break the habit. It worked - and today I keep the email app buried in a folder on the second screen. That helps and is a constant reminder to keep email to mostly scheduled work times.

I almost always leave my phone in my home office when work is done for the day and don’t pick it up again until well after kids are fast asleep. The only people I need to be instantly connected to in the evening are already in front of me.

What Today View widgets are you using and why?

I’ve never been much into widgets. I’ve tried (and like) the OmniFocus and calendar widgets on my iPhone 6, but in practice I always just go right to the app.

One related hack I’ve found helpful is keeping my iPhone, iPad, and Macs on the 24-hour clock. This resolves two mental obstacles I have. First, since I do a lot of work virtually, I feel like the mental addition/subtraction of time zones when booking calls is way easier with the 24-hour clock. Second, the number of times I’ve missed alarms I set for the morning because I forgot to slide the “PM” to “AM” when setting a clock alarm is embarrassing. Problem solved on the 24-hour clock (although whatever weirdness going on in my brain likely remains).

I have very few badge notifications active since I only want to be annoyed with things I actually need to take action on (overdue OmniFocus tasks, my Drafts inbox, unread RSS feeds). Probably I should just take badged off my Unread app too since I seem to be chronically behind on RSS reading (who isn’t?)

Any favorite iOS 8 extensions?

I did a Snoopy dance when Pushpin updated their app recently with an extension that allows me to save links right into Pinboard. I use Pinboard for both my reading queue and bookmarking archive. I’ve used both Pocket and Instapaper before (and like them too) but I find it’s way simpler just to have it all in one place.

I’m also loving the new 1Password extension for iOS8. Populating passwords in Safari with Touch ID still warms my heart every time. iOS 8 was worth it for that extension alone.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

When the iPhone got slim enough to fit comfortably in a pocket a few years ago, I dumped my wallet and starting using iPhone wallet cases from SenaCases. I was initially disappointed to see the iPhone 6 get taller, cause I’d gotten used to the small profile of the iPhone 5 and dislike anything taking up more pocket space.

In practice through, I haven’t noticed a pocket real estate issue with the iPhone 6 and I have to admit that after a day, I fell in love with the larger screen. I’m now using the Heritage Wallet Book from SenaCases for this phone and love it.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

Family sharing doesn’t seem to be all it was cracked up to be. It’s not making sense to have to pay for iTunes Match multiple times or in app purchases again for different IDs in the same house.

Between Bonni and I, we have something like four or five Apple IDs from various stages of Apple ecosystems over the years (.Mac, MobileMe, etc.) It doesn’t compute with me why Apple doesn’t have any option to merge purchase histories of Apple IDs and help people onto a single account. For now, we’re keeping all current/new app purchases on one family account.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

I’m pretty boring with wallpaper. The current one is an iOS default background. I pretty much always use one of the defaults on every device (the Macs I use already have the stock Yosemite photos on the desktops). I do have a photo of my son and I on my iPad lock screen, but that’s it. Probably there is something wrong with me.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I read all these home screen posts and love getting app ideas from others. Thanks to David for such a creative way for us all to learn from each other.

I feel like I’ve arrived now that I’ve been featured. It’s all downhill from here.

Thanks Dave.