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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

  • Quick fixes: how to download an image from a Google Doc - The Verge

  • reading: feedbin/feedbin-api: Feedbin API Documentation

    • pull into obsidian?

  • Quick fixes: how to download an image from a Google Doc - The Verge

  • Hookmark – Links beat searching - add deep links to apps to any app in macos

  • PARA:

    • how to balance PARA notes in Obsidian + tasks in things? How should Things be organized? (I far prefer Things on mobile for quick task capture and sorting compared to Obsidian, which is slower to capture in, uglier to look at, and lacks a clear way to sort and calendar-block a day)
    • in things, how should work project + area tasks be represented? As separate projects that are separate in Today view? Separate projects that are mixable in Today view? One flat “Projects” area task list + “Areas” area task list?
    • I prefer capturing in Things on mobile but in Obsidian (via Alfred) on desktop; problem = if I’m capturing a note about something I just learned in Obsidian, which makes me think of something I want to do, should I be capturing the todo in Things? I don’t love the duplication and disorganization of the same idea recorded in two places… But if I just tag the idea as a todo in Obsidian, I don’t love the mobile “what should I work on right now” workflow Obsidian offers compared to Things…hmm

  • Things/Obsidian: list of possible quests, ranked by impact?

    • e.g. blogging workflow (both writing + publishing)
    • e.g. better vs code/vim/tmux/kitty configs
    • e.g. better aliases/terminal tool replacements
    • e.g. better git tools/workflows (like worktrees for easier pr reviewing while working on a feature branch)
    • e.g. playgrounds for trying new tech (e.g. new css features)

  • Search Syntax - When saving a search in feedbin, terms with special characters like punctuation need to go in an .exact search - Feedbin

  • Slackmojis - The Best Custom Slack Emojis

  • Slack: How do I get slack to remind me every fortnight from next Saturday - Stack Overflow - Slack /remind format for custom repetition windows starting at a custom future date - StackOverflow