Core Tools

<aside> 📓

Functions as a second brain/long-term memory
My entire life is stored inside Notion. It's a little scary, but I love it
See my templates here: Jesse’s Notion Templates
Things I use it for include: this website, journaling, book lists, shopping lists, career planning, job applications, school assignments & classes (when I was in school), task management, relationships, and so much more…
- Relationship database - I keep track of people, their birthdays, when I last reached out to them, and what journal entries they were involved in. I have a linked database that shows people I haven’t reached out to recently
Why you might not want to use Notion
If you want my help using Notion, see: Notion for High Impact Orgs </aside>

<aside> 🖍️

Raycast, in its simplest form, is a spotlight replacement for Mac (and Windows ~~soon~~)
It has so many features that make my life on a Mac that much easier - Including a clipboard manager, file search, a better calculator, snippets, and keyboard shortcuts for any command, including the ones I just mentioned, switching between apps, etc.
You can also create custom scripts, which are just Python/bash/etc files that you can activate with Raycast. I have ~~two~~ many commands that I (by which I mean mostly Cursor) made that I am really happy with
Another feature I love is snippets. For ex: I type slc and it automatically transforms to take whatever I last copied and pastes it as <CONTEXT>\ntext I copied\n</CONTEXT>. Great for llms! </aside>

<aside> 📝

<aside> 🚀

Just started using it at Kairos
It is SO fast, the keyboard shortcuts are incredible useful, and the philosophy of marking things as done or setting a reminder and having an empty inbox is so good
I had no idea that an email client could be so much better than Gmail </aside>

<aside> 🌈

I love how you can save and organize tabs into spaces and folders, especially in the sidebar. Makes much more sense there, and having no top bar makes the screen feel so much bigger
I like the keyboard shortcuts. The split screen is nice
It is seeming like Arc is dying (not being developed anymore) :/ - I’ve heard Zen Browser is a good replacement, though arc is still working great for me, so I’m not switching yet
cmd + shift + c to copy the current url is so good
And my new favorite is a command to copy a markdown formatted link to the page. So on this page it results in Jesse’s Productivity Palace </aside>

<aside> 📅

It uses Google Calendar accounts, so it is a pretty small investment to try
Because it is connected to Notion, it can show Notion databases on the calendar
- This is especially useful for showing my tasks/to-do database
- I also use it to show people’s birthdays - from my relationships database
I’m a big fan of time blocking, including things like sleep, meals, etc.
I generally like the UI a lot more than gcal. Also more keyboard shortcuts, and nice availability sharing </aside>

<aside> 🤫

For audio dictation. Uses the OpenAI Whisper speech to text mode. Is SO much better than built-in Mac dictation
Has simple and elegant keyboard shortcuts that make inserting a piece of transcribed audio so painless. Makes computer-using experience much more pleasant and fast </aside>

<aside> ♻️

<aside> 🍎

iPhone, MacBook - I have hated on Apple products for a long time, but I think they are just much better. Also, Raycast being on Mac has a nontrivial effect on this decision. Being able to copy and paste between my computer phone saves me so much time </aside>

<aside> 📇

I enjoyed reading and making Anki cards out of Michael Nielsen's Augmenting Long-term Memory post, both to practice making cards, and to make sure I remember how to make good Anki cards. </aside>

Other Tools

If you have an intention of doing something, making sure you actually do it
- Remembering to do it
  - Having an extremely low bar for writing a task down
  - Similarly, having really low friction for writing a task down - make it as easy and painless as possible (see my Raycast/Notion set up)
- Getting your future self to do it even if your future self won’t want to (commitment mechanisms)
  - Offering to pay a friend $x if you don’t complete a certain task by a certain time
  - E.g. “If I don’t finish this application by tomorrow EOD I’ll Venmo you $20”
  - Schedule time to cowork with someone on it
- Time blocking
  - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbAYK4KQrso
  - Set a 5 minute timer to solve a bug (problem) if you encounter one
  - Focusmate - I’ve only tried it once, seems like it could be very useful for some people
A reflex/system to set aside time to think about how you can most effectively use the rest of your time, for various time intervals. For example:
Using randomness to make decisions you are uncertain about
Making SMART goals & making them process and outcome based
~ Just make a Notion page ~
Just doing things
Writing things your grateful for
All the healthy things
Not being addicted to your phone
To be continued…
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