š Skyrocket your productivity
10 tools and processes I use every day for a huge productivity boost
We work in tech. The least we can do is use tech in our favor.
Iām sure you already use Gihub Copilot, ChatGPT, and similar tools.
In this post, Iām sharing 10 other tools I use to boost my productivity, and Iām sure you donāt know about all of them.
1ļøā£Ā Capture knowledge
In the Zettelkasten method, there are 2 types of capture notes:
Fleeting notes ā Quick ideas or notes. Prioritize capturing them fast, despite not being in the nicest form
Literature notes ā Knowledge from books and courses. Itās hierarchical and scoped to that resource, but not interconnected with your existing knowledge from other sources.
For both of these, I use Notion.
I have an inbox database where I can quickly write an idea that comes to mind. I process them by the end of the week
I have a content database where I record any long-form content I consume.
2ļøā£Ā Process knowledge
I have always approached knowledge like they taught me as a kid in school: Making summaries of the hierarchical lessons of each subject. The exams were also hierarchical so there was no need to interconnect lessons or subjects.
But itās a waste that I canāt connect the explanation of replication techniques for databases from one book with a diagram I found in another book.
I process my knowledge in another Notion database. In the Zettelkasten world, this one is the Slipbox. I may reference the literature notes for depth in a particular topic.
These notes are not hierarchical, but interconnected ideas. The only source of hierarchy is creating entry points, called MOCs (Maps of Contents). These are the place to start looking if I donāt remember the name of a particular note.
If you want to learn more about the Zettelkasten method, let me know in the comments or check the book How to Take Smart Notes. The method was created by Niklas Luhmann, an inspiring figure for me because of his high throughput as a researcher.
Hereās an example of a MOC note from my Slipbox
Right now I consider Notion the best tool for it. I started using Obsidian, which is more oriented to the Zettelkasten method. But I decided to switch to Notion where I had a big chunk of my life.
Notion is like MacOS and Obsidian is like customizing your own Linux distro from scratch. You start very motivated and later itās a pain.
Other tools that you may like are Evernote or Roam Research. Iād rather have everything in one tool than 10 tools with scattered information.
Iām in the process of growing my Zettelkasten Slipbox in Notion, enough to pay for Notion Q&A and query a chatbot rather than organizing with MOCs.
3ļøā£Ā Lookup speed
Alfred (MacOS only) is my tool of choice. These functionalities form my productivity toolkit:
Clipboard history
Because I know I typed that email just yesterday and donāt want to find it again. And because instead of doing a sequence of copy + paste + copy + pasteā¦ (usually between different applications), I can copy 10 times and paste another 10 times, switching applications just once.
Browser bookmarks
I use this as project knowledge management. For any software project, we have some links that are always the same. Imagine for the project āCompact Viewā, I would have bookmarked:
āCV requirementsā
āCV tech designā
āCV runbookā
I just have this a couple of keystrokes away by opening the Alfred Spotlight search bar
Web Search
Most web applications receive parameters in url params. This makes the URL sharsearchese else.
It also makes the search much faster.
At work, we use the in-house task management system, and employees have their internal aliases. With Alfred, I have web searches for:
ltask alias
ā āLast task assigned to aliasā, which opens me new browser tab totheinternalsystem.amazon.com/search?asignee={alias}
ltaskr alias
ā āLast task requested by aliasā, which opens me new browser tab totheinternalsystem.amazon.com/search?requester={alias}
I have dozens like this. It makes it very easy to use those web applications, I can check the tasks from any employee quickly just by opening the Alfred search bar.
4ļøā£Ā Repeated communications
Iām not writing every email where I say that we are meeting to review X
document and the agenda is Y
minutes of reading and Z
minutes of discussion.
They are all the same.
I have my template and I just fill it with the correct data.
Other people would start typing every email and after some time they send emails without an agenda.
Templates are a forcing function for good-quality emails with proper structure
You could have a bunch of files that you have to find, copy, and paste into the email client.
I prefer using Alfred snippets, with a shortcut, and typing a few letters to identify my snippet I just paste it immediately. Zero friction.
5ļøā£Ā Your Keyboard
Have you noticed some small marks on your F and J keys on the keyboard?
Those are the keys where you should put your index fingers for proper typing. If you are moving your hand to your mouse, your hand to reach the Function keys or even the Backslash/Enter/Arrow keys, you are losing the position.
I remap my keyboard to keep my hands always in position.
Just check the image below. There are way too many responsibilities for my right-hand pinkie finger.
Letās start by using Alfred again as an App switcher instead of finding the app with your mouse.
Define a shortcut to switch your focus to a particular app (or open it if itās not open).
Thatās a huge productivity boost. I have seen people with 20 windows on the same MacOS virtual desktop, but thereās no way to find each. You canāt afford to take 5 seconds to switch from one app to another.
The downside is that most shortcuts are already taken in one app or another.
Thatās where Karabiner elements come into play.
I remapped my caps lock key as a āSUPER KEY
ā. Hitting it enables a new layer for the keyboard.
Then I map things like SUPER + A
to my browser in Alfred.
I also put closer to my hands the keys that I use more often.
Hereās what my extra layer looks like right now:
There are keyboards that you can remap in hardware. This ensures that it works on any computer you use. The downside is that you need to carry that keyboard.
I have my external keyboard but I donāt carry it to meeting rooms in the office. By using a software keyboard mapper I can have the same in my external keyboard as my laptopās keyboard
6ļøā£Ā Window manager
It's just some app where I can hit a few shortcuts and get the layouts I like between apps.
Some of my preferences are ātwo-halves left and rightā, āone-third and two-thirdsā, and ātwo-halves up and down:ā for terminal windows.
I use Rectangle for MacOS.
7ļøā£Ā Terminal customizations
I use iTerm2, I like it to switch fast between tabs and terminal windows
As a shell, I use ZSH, with OhMyZSH and powerlevel10k theme. I added some useful plugins like the git plugin, it has a lot of aliases that I donāt have to define myself.
At work, I have both my local laptop and a VM in the cloud. Iām not a VIM guy, updating the .zshrc file is a pain. Plus I want to keep both local and cloud with same aliases.
First, donāt have a single .zshrc
. Itās like writing all your code in a single Main.java
file. Enjoy this little snippet and create multiple files
for conf in "$HOME/.dotfiles/zsh/"*.zsh
do
echo "==$conf=="
source $conf
done
Second, I just edit in my local in VSCode and do an scp
to the cloud machine.
Sorry for letting you down if you expected me to be a hardcore VIM user. I have better uses of my time :)
8ļøā£Ā Utility Alfred workflows
There are a bunch. Some that I use every day
Browser tabs ā Switching fast to the browser application is not enough when you have 50 tabs open. Typing ā
t you
ā Iām already going to my YouTube tab thanks to this workflow.VSCodeDiff ā Iām not losing my eyesight anymore trying to find the difference between two code snippets. This workflow just opens a diff in VSCode from the last two clipboard entries in the history
Emoji Search ā The faster you are typing emojis, the more youāll use them, and the friendlier your messages will be.
9ļøā£Ā Browser blocker
If you are like any other human, whenever you are a bit bored you will quickly hit a new tab in your browser and go to Twitter, Reddit, or your social media of choice.
With the shortcuts on my keyboard, Iām even faster at procrastinating like this. Iām shooting my own foot.
I use ColdTurkey blocker to help me focus. I activate the blocker when I plan to do a work block and even if I try to quickly access those sites, a black screen appears in my browser.
I can always disable the blocker and go through it, but I never do. This is just enough friction for me to switch from autopilot procrastinator mode to conscious mode.
šĀ Good old calendar
In this post I have talked both about processes (like Zettelkasten) and tools like Alfred. Time-block planning is the best process for productivity and even pen and paper serve as a tool for it.
I assign blocks of time to a task.
I donāt assign the entire day and Iām flexible to move blocks around, just like youād move conflicting meetings.
This helps me be intentional with my time and close the feedback loop to know where my time is going.
Whenever you need to improve something, design a tight feedback loop to tell yourself the truth with data.
I use Google Calendar, I have a Chrome App I created from Google Chrome just for the sake of assigning a keyboard shortcut with Alfred :)
šÆĀ Conclusion
Iām a nerd, I enjoy doing all of this.
You donāt need it.
Focus on finding your bottlenecks and experimenting with new tools and processes.
Focus on something youāll actually use. Use it or lose it.
I donāt have everything under control either.
My Notion is undergoing a major revamp that Iām planning to do during this Christmas vacations
While writing this post I found some cool zsh functions I created a year ago and never used.
Just have curiosity and try some of these.
If you have read until here, please let me know which of these tools or processes youād like to learn more about. This post is just an overview of tools without going in-depth into any of them
P.S. If you are an Alfred user like me, let me know what your stats look like:
šļø Resources
Browser tabs workflow
VSCodeDiff workflow
Emoji Search workflow
I find repeated communication and keyboard shortcuts particularly useful. They save significant amount of time. Thank you for sharing these good thoughts, Fran!
Great tips!
I haven't been a Vim guy either, but starting this year, I switched to it (I used it earlier, so I didn't have to learn all the shortcuts from 0).
I put Vim on a different virtual desktop on Mac, go into fullscreen, start a Pomodoro timer in Toggl (fantastic tool, btw), and work uninterruptedly because I use only the keyboard and I can't un-maximize Vim without the mouse. Nowhere to run from coding. :)
p.s.: we use the same Keyboard!