Reading Time: < 1 minIt’s easy to sit back and wait for inspiration to strike. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I’d venture to say that most times it won’t. If you want inspiration to show up, then get to work and you may find that it randomly appears. As I’m writing this, my queue of blog posts was […]
Productivity
What are you not doing today?
Reading Time: < 1 minHaving a well manicured to-do list is a fantastic thing. Keeping tasks front of mind will help you to not miss anything as your day goes by. Taking it further, though, some people have “not to-do” lists as well. It could be to not turn on the television, or to not eat any snacks between […]
Outliner versus plain text note-taking systems
Reading Time: 2 minAs I’ve been digging more into the Tana note-taking app and talking to people about the pros and cons of it, a common dividing line seems to be coming up; is the app focused on outline-style notes, or plain text? I never really thought it mattered to me (and I didn’t even really see the […]
Moving from Obsidian to Tana?
Reading Time: 2 minWhen I moved my notes database from Roam Research to Obsidian earlier this year, I expected I’d stay there for quite a while. Obsidian is a great tool, and I spoke about the reasons for my move in that earlier post. Now, more quickly than I expected, I’m moving everything over to Tana. What is […]
It’s like vacation starts tomorrow
Reading Time: < 1 minOne of the best tips for getting things done is to always pretend like you’re leaving for vacation tomorrow and it’s your last day in the office for the next week. When people are preparing to leave the office for vacation, they tend to do a few things: Write out a plan for what needs […]
Some early thoughts on the Kindle Scribe
Reading Time: 3 minAmazon recently announced the Kindle Scribe, a new 10″ Kindle that comes with a pen. It’s very much like a Kindle meets a reMarkable, and I’m very excited about what that could mean. If you’ve not seen it, here is the official announcement video from Amazon: The video doesn’t show a lot of how it […]
Exploring versus exploiting
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen it comes to tools and systems, there are two areas you can lean on: exploring and exploiting. To put it another way, are you spending time exploring new tools and playing with the shiny toys, or are you actually exploiting (in a good way) the tools at your disposal? Admittedly, I fall a bit […]
Readwise is breathing new life into RSS
Reading Time: 4 minI’ve been using the Readwise Reader app for a few months now, and it’s quickly becoming an indispensable tool for me. You can learn about it on their site here, but for me it really just combines two things — the “read it later” functionality from tools like Pocket, and then the traditional RSS reading […]
Make your operating system irrelevant
Reading Time: < 1 minIt’s often easier said than done, but the more you can make your operating system irrelevant, the better. This came up while I was listening to a recent episode of the Cortex podcast, and the hosts were lamenting a problem in getting something to work between a Mac and a Windows machine. Their system relied […]
Pareto Principle
Reading Time: 2 minThis is another mental model that you’ve likely heard of before — the Pareto Principle, often known as the “80/20 rule”, where 20% of the effort can produce 80% of the results. A great example in my life is my big reading shortcut using Blinkist. I can “finish” a book in 20% of the time, […]