<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
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
Also see Notion Wrapped, Cool/unexpected things you can do with Notion, Notion Page Gifts, and Jesse’s Notion Templates
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
It has so many features that make my life on a Mac that much easier
Clipboard manager - You just have to use a clipboard manager
Window manager - You also just have to use a window manager
Keyboard shortcuts for any command, including the ones I just mentioned, switching between apps, etc.
Custom scripts - these are Python/bash/etc files that you can activate with Raycast. Here are some commands I have. (Claude is really good at making these!)
A better calculator
Snippets
File search </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> 💌

The personalized AI newsletter, is an agent (often Opus 4.8) that runs automatically every morning, has instructions about what I personally am interested in hearing about, reads through a bunch of RSS feeds and webpages I like, does other research, and then writes and emails me a newsletter with a bunch of information, summaries, links to sources, etc. </aside>

<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
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 useful
And my new favorite is a command to copy a markdown formatted link to the page. </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
I also like Raycast 2.0’s built in dictation </aside>

<aside> ♻️

Auto mode is great - and mainly why I prefer to to Cursor
The desktop app is great
It is also really nice that it automatically has access to the same MCP tools that I use in the web version. </aside>

<aside> 🍎

iPhone, MacBook - I hated on Apple products for a long time, but I think they are just much better. Being able to copy and paste between my computer phone is so nice.
Mac specific improvements
iPhone specific improvements </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.
I have cards on </aside>

Other Tools

Important Habits

If you have an intention of doing something, making sure you actually do it
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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