🌱 Tools I like to use
The best camera is the one you use. The best sunscreen is the one you use. The best productivity tools are the ones you actually use.
Over-optimizing your workflow is largely a waste of time.
What has had real impact? Sticking to (mostly) simple, battle-tested tools over long periods of time.
That said, here's yet another list of productivity apps on the internet:
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Obsidian is my default writing app. I love that it's powerful but not complicated; the designers believe that "software is ephemeral", but files are long-lasting. I use its Daily Notes plugin to jot down random thoughts and ideas; each daily note also has a to-do list, which rolls over unfinished tasks from the previous day.
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Standard Notes is a neat but (very) simple tool. I'm not always at my computer to use Obsidian, so if I have an sudden idea or need to write something quickly, I use the mobile app. I also use it for things like grocery shopping.
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GoodNotes is what I use for note-taking on my iPad. I typically use it as a scratchpad, but I also project GoodNotes when teaching Data Science Club workshops. I also use it to annotate machine learning papers. To sync annotated papers with my laptop, I use a file server on my homelab.
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Apple Calendar is quite vanilla, but I have it sync to a Radicale server to give me full control over my data. I have separate calendars for classes, extracurricular activities, and other activities (such as climbing). If I need to do something at a specific time, I put it on my calendar by default.
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iTerm2, Vim, and VSCodium are the developer tools I use most often. I spend most of my development time in the terminal, but I open VSCodium when I need to work with Jupyter notebooks. I only use VSCode occasionally to utilize GitHub Copilot.
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Homebrew, Hammerspoon, SKHD, and Yabai are MacOS automation tools. Homebrew is my package manager, which installs and updates all applications on my computer. With Hammerspoon, I can write scripts in Lua that directly open any app with a hotkey. SKHD and Yabai, meanwhile, help me split and resize windows with just a few keypresses. Together, these tools help me avoid constantly reaching for the trackpad—which seems unnecessary but has helped me context-switch between applications effortlessly.