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Workflow

Goals

Habits

Journaling

Learning

Prioritizing

Speed

  • 📺 The magic of Textexpander • 9 minute video by Marie Poulin showing how she uses Textexpander to quickly output text she repeatedly needs
  • Vimium/Vimari • navigate the web much more quickly via keyboard
    • f/F = open a link in same/new tab
    • b = search all bookmarks + bookmarklets (e.g. quick way to “Save to Feedbin”)
    • o = search bookmarkets, bookmarklets + history (or just type a url to open)
    • T = search open tabs
    • ge = edit url
    • x/X = close/reopen tab
    • ? = show all shortcuts
    • yy = copy current URL to clipboard
    • yf = copy the URL of a link on the page to the clipboard
    • customizable shortcuts for navigating open tabs, current tab’s history, etc
  • Rectangle:
    • ctrl-opt left/right/up/down = resize a window (and cycle through options)
    • ctrl-opt-cmd left/right = move a window to the next display
  • Slack:
    • cmd-shift-a = go to all unreads
    • cmd-shift-t = go to threads
    • cmd-shift-y = set a status
  • How To Get Started: The Cult of Done • An explanation of the Cult of Done Manifesto, which emphasizes learning by doing and moving on • No Boilerplate 📺

Tracking

  • 🧰 git-standup • Command line tool by kamranahmedse that reminds you what you did on the last working day

Notes

  • Take simpler notes!
  • For years, I used a sophisticated combination of three Notion databases to track all my research and writing. It was highly successful at collecting links to things I’d read. But had a negative impact on actually writing. I spent far more time organizing my notes and the relationships between them than actually new content, let alone publishing it.
  • I switched to an old school single folder of markdown files and my writing and publishing took off.
  • Post drafts and notes side-by-side in the same folder
  • Posts distinguished from notes by having a date property in their frontmatter
  • File names prefixed by topic (and any subtopics)
  • Copilot super helpful with inserting repeated patterns (e.g. inserting author names, emoji format indicators, etc)
  • Apple Notes vs Obsidian:
    • Pros:
      • can easily share a note with someone
      • device sync is built in
      • never any merge conflicts since not syncing via git
      • includes iOS widgets
    • Cons:
      • no vim, which makes typing experience on desktop pretty painful compared to what I’m used to in vs code + obsidian
      • no markdown, so locked into limited formatting options
        • e.g. no inline or block syntax highlighting
      • more limited organization options
      • can’t publish notes
  • How I refactor notes in Obsidian • Nicole van der Hoeven 📺
  • The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Plain Text • Makes a strong case for using nothing but Markdown files in GitHub repos (helped by GitHub features like Projects, PRs and Actions) for all documentation, project and task management • No Boilerplate 📺

Reading

  • Use an RSS reader to consume all blog and YouTube content in one place in the order and with the UI you prefer
  • Feedbin:
    • use tags to organize feeds by their general category (e.g. “news”, “fitness”, “coding”)
    • Use saved searches to curate more specific topics you’ll be interested in for a little while
    • Use manual searches to research topics you’re interested in one time
    • Star items it makes more sense to consume later (need more time, need to be able to play sound, want to take notes, currently busy, etc)
    • Use app email address to sign up for newsletters so they’ll go to your rss reader instead of your inbox
    • Saving current browser tab to Feedbin:
      • Add “Send to Feedbin” bookmarklet to browser
      • The bookmark doesn’t show up in Alfred’s browser bookmarks index, so…
    • Searching in Feedbin
      • prefer title.exact over title for more predictable searches
      • Search Syntax • Feedbin 📚
  • Reading with Reeder

Time Management

Problem Solving

Focusing

  • FOCUS – How to Achieve the Superpower of Laser Focus • August Bradley 📺
  • fantastic; rewatch and take better notes
  • Decide what matters most
  • Decide when I’ll do what matters most each day (and protect that time block)
  • Squeeze all other stuff around it in the remaining time (none of it is as urgent as it seems)
  • Decide what matters most ahead of time (the night before, before the week begins, etc)
  • Remove distractions (take an inventory of them and remove them)

Notion

Tasks

  • Things 3
    • Useful Things views you won’t see in the sidebar but can find by searching:
      • Deadlines
      • All Projects
      • Logged Projects
      • Repeating

Inbox