Boosting Productivity: Essential Tools and Approaches for Efficiency

welcome to syntax today we have a episode for you on productivity tools so these are both the apps but also the the

why and the how behind how Scott and I will tackle different things from password management to do Snippets mind

mapping writing little scripts email habits things like that Focus we've talked about this a few times over the

years but I'm constantly evolving my own and I know Scott you are as well just constant trying new things seeing what

sticks so I thought we'd go through what we're working on with with productivity tools and our approaches to things that

help us get a decent amount done I think I wouldn't say I'm the most productive person in the world but I uh I have four

kids and managed to get a job done so I I feel like I have something to say here yeah I would say productivity is one of

those things that slides on a scale for me day to day I do try to always be very productive I do take it

seriously and it's something that for me I maybe it's just because of how my brain works if I don't take it seriously

I end up just not accomplishing very much and when I do take it seriously I end up accomplishing a lot and and it's

not a means of like grind set getting things done but it's in a mindset of like being

accomplished and learning a lot and you know really feeling like you had something productive at the end of the

day I I think is a good life hack to feeling satisf with with your work and yeah if if you have those winds in life

then you feel good about yourself and it just kind of snowballs snowballs out from there right and honestly a lot of

the stuff on this list is just simply systems and tools that help me get through stuff I either don't want to do

or want to get through quicker because at the end of the day I just want to be coding and there's certainly lots of

productivity hacks in coding itself but the rest of life sometimes can can get in the way so if you can make that

easier on yourself then you're going to have a better time yeah and to me as you you'll probably hear in this episode I

think systems really matter a lot in this regard and like having systems that work for you because even let's say I'm

doing the dishes right which I've grown to love doing the dishes in some way I get to listen to my podcasts or more

recently I've been listening to audiobooks in fact I started listening to all the original James Bond audio

books and I started at the beginning of the series I don't listen to much fiction ever so for me this is like a

big task and I'm three books in now and I'm like oh this is a great little time I get a little uh fiction book time

while I'm doing the dishes and my system I don't want to spend very much time with it so my systems are all in place

so that I can finish that up as fast as possible you know clean the rest of the downstairs and whatever so that way I

can get on with my evening um because let's face it by the time the kids are down to bed and everything like that

your evenings are are short shorter and shorter these days but you know what else is shorter and shorter these days

Wes the list of issues we have in our Century yeah actually ours might not be it might be a little bit longer but at

least the time to solve those issues has gone down because uh we can solve those bugs with sentury we know exactly how

many people these issues are affecting you know what they are what devices we can even get like a a really nice

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reproduce this we don't need that we can see how it happened so that way we can we can solve these bugs faster than ever

so head on over to sentry.io sytax sign up and get two months for free with the coupon code at

Tasty treat this podcast is presented by [Music] Sentry hey San Francisco we're going to

be in town for GitHub Universe on October 28th and we're doing a syntax Meetup you don't have to be going to the

GitHub Universe conference to meet up with us but if you are in San Francisco come hang out from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

October 28th we're going to be at the bear bottle Beer Garden in Salesforce Park admission is free we're not going

to charge you but come hang out and you need to grab a ticket via Eventbrite so we put the link in our socials in the

news letter we'll put it in the show notes as well come check it out come hang out Scott's going to be there I'm

going to be there the whole team's going to be there it's going to be exciting see you

then Wes small update before we get into productivity things you remember how I was mentioning there was like that uh

dance battle that break dancing competition that I was doing um the Red Bull one yeah the Red Bull one so that

not only well one I didn't make it I didn't I didn't make it uh but into the the the West Coast finals which is a big

deal cuz they they had all these uh qualifiers throughout the us then they had the east and west coast finals then

they had the US finals the guy who did the graffiti on the syntax basketball kid Cruz not only did he win the Western

Finals he got all the way to the semi-finals of the US finals and he was all over the news here and stuff he he

just did such a great job so shout out to Kid Cruz a good friend of mine and uh yeah he did the uh graffiti on the

syntax basketball really cool guy so huge accomplishment for him wow that's awesome yeah all right so let's talk

password management first password management is one of those things that I cannot believe that people live without

a password manager simply just living life not knowing what your password is or sharing passwords or um you have like

three or four that you kind of cycle through first of all it's insecure but like second of all like where do you put

important stuff you know like I've got passport numbers and driver's license numbers and the VIN like one thing I

need all the time this morning I was I went to the dentist and dentist says what's your license plate I don't know

what my license plate is so just open one password and I got it I don't have to to walk out and figure out what my

license plate number is it's just little things like that where you're going to need it at some point and the amount of

times having of course having your password stored in something is good but also just like a secure place to store

all of your documents and all of your important numbers is absolutely key yeah yeah I know when I I see people not

using password bagers or even worse this is actually the a worse one W well maybe not worse I think not using a pass

manager the worst but Apple came out with their own password manager in the recent update and like sure if you're

not using anything else use that but like I would never in a billion years tie my password manager to my OS or my

like OS of choice because like what you get an Android phone you you're you're pooched or you get some other device

you're pooched everything's stuck in the Apple ecosystem that's just one more thing keeping you there and that's that

is personally why I use one password because one I think it's uh just an it's one of the

low-key hacks for getting up and running on any system really quickly is being able to the first thing you do is get

one PR password set up on that system that's like almost the first thing I do I get a new computer uh Linux computer

or anything you know I set up one password on it right away from there any login that I could ever need is there

for me I I one click install or whatever one click sign in and and for me that's like such a huge productivity boost that

I don't ever have to worry about it I don't have to think about it I don't have to do password reset and go to my

email but like you said I I do store all kinds of things in there whether it is API keys or or any of that stuff so that

way if I do lose it for some reason it's available to me in an easy enough way to get with like minimal effort and and

like you said driver's license any of that stuff how many times do you need that information uh you you need it

quite a bit so yeah one password is a super productivity hack for me in general and I like that it's like again

it's it's not tied TI your OS and it's good software I used to use what was it last pass and I always felt like that

software was barely holding on so I never feel that way with one password one password is awesome I know a lot of

people are say what about bit Warden whatever and I'm sure that's awesome um and yeah it's cool you can host it

yourself but honestly I I've been on one password for for many many years it just works great I'm a little bit worried

that apple is going to start stomping it cuz every now and then every now and then the like apple puts their own thing

where the like one password button is supposed to be and then like it doesn't doesn't work or like I don't know just

every now and then there's little spots where it's like ah this doesn't work or you can't fill credit cards

in recently they have announced you can fill credit cards in on Safari but I don't use Safari and like I want

extensions those are mostly just Apple qualms not one password qualms but a little bit worried that they're going to

stomp on it and make it less useful but I hope not that is classic apple in fact like was a recent thing of them doing

that them like removing the feature where you could control the volume of a smart speaker from within Spotify so

you're in Spotify you cast to like a chomecast before you could just hit volume up and it would change the volume

of the speaker Apple like Nicks that and you can't do that anymore and of course everybody goes to blame Spotify but

where can you do it of course you can still do it with apple music inste of speakers you know so it's like it it

always bugs me when they do stuff like that so I could certainly see that being a a you know a stomping on situation

which would be a bummer to- do applications so we've talked about to do applications maybe

we'll just talk about like to-do approach you know what's our what's our idea so for me my to-do application is a

spot where I can dump things that I want to do at some point so for me I I use it to collect ideas for videos that I'm

working on I'll have different projects in my to-do applications I use an app called things I like it a lot because a

I've had it for probably 12 13 years now but B it's 60 bucks you buy it once and that's it it's 10 bucks for the iPhone

app so sorry it's it's 50 bucks plus 10 for the iPhone app so 60 bucks you're done you're not going to be paying

monthly for for a to-do application and I find that it works really well because I can quickly just add something I can

add in reminders and then what I'll do is I'll go through my different projects and I will organize things into what I

want and then I will just drag them into my today and when I'm working on my today I will I call it bubbling I'll

just move them up and down into a list I usually try to put the one at the top which it which is causing me

the most like anxiety or making me like not want to do it because that will make me procrastinate

I don't I'm not going to start any of this CU I don't feel like dealing with that one thing that I'm doing this email

I have to write this like taxes thing I have to figure out so try to put that first and just do it and and get it

through I'm a big fan of that approach there's this book called getting things done um by David Allen it's if you have

never read that like I'm not a I'm not much of a book guy but if you if you can listen to it on audio book or something

like that it's a really good approach to if you have like a crazy head like I do where just things are going on all the

time and oh I shouldn't forget that I can't forget that or whatever and I hate paper so much I can't stand it this is

just such a great system for dumping everything into your inbox dragging things into today you can put tags on

them you can categorize them into different things it's just a a great way for me to organize my the chaos that is

going on in my brain yeah I am kind of a book guy and actually I was on um a podcast book overflow talking about all

of my favorite they supposed to be about developer books but most of mine ended up being like productivity and life

books so if you want to listen to that I post the link to it in the show notes where I I really go deep on all the

books that I read for this kind of stuff you might get even some more productivity tidbits for me out of that

but my my to-do strategy has really evolved from yeah it's evolved from getting things done but you know once

thing that I learned about myself is that if it's too fiddly the system breaks down if I if I've made my system

so intense or so like specific where I have to do like eight steps here and there whatever I I don't do it so it

needs to be as simple as possible so for me I've settled on tweak. Soo TW week.so is my favorite to-do app it's

it's dead simple it's basically just a a grid for the week to-dos of each day I pay for the uh the pro version which

just gives me the ability to um basically color them with labels or schedule them and stuff I don't even use

that I just use the coloring with labels I think it's alerts maybe it doesn't get you very much but the app is really

great so I don't mind paying for it and so the only bit of like real hard organization I do besides all of my

to-dos go on a specific day is that I label the ones for work for syntax I label those yellow and black just so

they stand out from like life stuff that's the only thing I really do as far as like I don't move them up and down in

terms of priority I don't shift them in terms of like what's most important or least important what I do is Monday

morning the first thing I do when I get into the office is I go through my email and I get to inbox zero if there's

anything in my email that requires it to be a task I put it in my to-do list on a day that I can do it so when it goes

into my to-do list and it goes into that day the assumption is is that I will be doing it that day you know it's not like

someday it's that day and so because of that I don't like to keep anything in my daily to-do list that won't be

accomplished that day and if a to-do doesn't get completed that day gets bumped to the next to the bump to the

next to bump to the next whatever right that way when the next Monday rolls around and I like like this Monday in

particular was Monday rolled around and I had like eight to-dos roll over from last week into this week and I saw that

and I was like something's a pro there's a problem here I either need to do all of these today or I need to figure out

if I'm actually going to do them or not and believe it or not I did all of them yesterday or redistributed uh some of

them here and there this week but for the most part I did all of them because they were just like little tiny things

that you're putting off right and you could only put a little tiny things off for so long before it turns into

something that you're you're never going to do so yeah Monday is my day to reassess the to-dos Monday morning that

way it sets me off for a week of where I know what to do every single day I know what I'm going to be doing what I have

time to do and if I don't do it it's because uh I'm being lazy or I goofed up or you know I missed an opportunity or

something came up you know so yeah I only add things to my daily to-do list if I'm going to do it if I have longer

term to-do lists I have separate lists for those this is in tweak and these things have no deadline necessarily A

lot of times there are ideas or things that need to happen at some point if they need to happen at a specific day I

will move it to that day but if it needs to happen at some point in the future then it goes into one of these lists I

have like a someday list a work list a honeydew list apps sick pics and like an onh hold for things that I know I'm

probably not going to get to anytime soon oh yeah I I even use it for just like grocery shopping I just went into

my my to-do list and was looking at what was logged and it says pineapple carrots mushrooms broccoli

and it's just for me like when my wife sends me a list of things to get via text message I always forget something

because I can't parse the like lines out there's something with my brain and I can't look at it so I'm just like I need

to be able to check it off and to see it go away and then I just go and and get the next one when we do that we've been

using Apple notes more now that we're a little bit more ingrained in the iOS ecosystem but we would keep a shared

keep list and my wife is super good about that if we're heading to Costco beforehand Courtney will go through and

add everything in the Costco list and that way we can split up divide and conquer I can take one of the kids she

can take one of the kids we can both Crush half the list and be done in half the time oh and it's like real time yeah

so you're just seeing stuff get checked off and and she'll start at one end of the store and I'll start at the other

end of the store go we're experienc enough costers that like you know the list is usually in the order in which

you're going to hit the stuff so I'll start at the bottom of the list she starts at the top of the list we'll meet

in the middle of the store yeah oh that's great I just I just go to Costco with the kids and try to burn as much

possible time as I can there we go get all the samples and try to try to move the day along we go on Sunday morning

it's a little like chaotic on Sunday mornings you know oh man it's my wife will not go to Costco with me on like a

on a busy day and like I'm like like a Toronto driver in Costco you know just flying out doing like like if you hear

the The Wheels on the car go it's cuz I'm like I'm doing one of those like uh burnout turns to the next aisle watch

out for me yeah that's a lot of fun man Costco we could have a whole episode on Costco productivity tips I am I I'm the

type of guy who'll be just throwing stuff in the cart and uh paying for it when you get to the front and you're

just like oh boy too much stuff bought too much stuff uh we we tend to go to Costco like once a month too so we'll

like load up like two cars yeah yeah we live super close to it so I'll often just I'll go like once a week or

whatever pi oh you are that person we see we see people there that got like three things in your cart like why are

you with like one one pie and like you I don't have that self-control I go for one pie but I'll come home with like

basketball net or something like that yeah so y yeah I hear you on that one to- do apps in code you have here do you

what do you use for that I simply just do a search yeah well I use to-do tree as an extension that will show you all

in the sidebar nice a lot of people hate to do I like to just drop them in low stakes if it's like a team project and

it's a real thing that the team needs to keep track of what it what I'll do is a GitHub issue right that makes sense

GitHub issue you have discussion on it people can uh you can attach it to a PR whatever but if I'm working on a feature

and I delete something or I want to come back to something later I'm just throwing todos left and right because

I will remove them before any PR yeah simply because they are just there as a reminder to me for hey don't forget this

[ __ ] before you push it up that's it for me yeah so um to-do tree I I use to-dos in my code but again nothing high stakes

all low Stak stuff yeah I I do the same thing as well when I'm like scaffolding it out so for example built the like the

new user submission form for the spookies and the potluck or whatever ever and I was like I'm just going to

get this thing working so I put a to-do in there say oh make sure you like add rate limiting and make sure you add um a

capture and like there's all this stuff that I needed to make sure that I added but I needed to do that later right I

needed to do it so I'll just throw it to-do in there and I also use this uh vs code extension called better comments

and that will highlight your to-do comments in different colors that's really helpful I like that as well yeah

to-dos for me I think they they do really they do really help I you know cuz I will forget a whole section of the

AL be like and then if I don't have a to-do there or something like that I could

forget a whole dang file that I modified and didn't fix or you know just by creating the file my brain says oh

that's done you know you finished that so yeah Snippets I'm a extremely heavy snippet user myself so I've switched

Snippets I was on TCH expander for many many years and I finally moved over to raycast once they supported almost

everything that I wanted and I I find them to be very helpful for for kind of two things

first things that you're writing all the time you know like we get a bazillion emails for people who are like like want

people to come on this podcast you know and it's almost all time it's like not like don't feel bad if you're asking

this podcast if you're actually a listener it's almost always just like some oh oh this person wrote AET uh book

14 years ago and like like they have a PR Company trying to to get them on or like this crypto BS is needs some needs

some pump and dump so let's bring them on podcast and like they are incessant about emailing and they just they follow

up it's all automated it's all garbage and it's so obnoxious so what I'll do is I'll just have like these little

Snippets of like hey or like the I have this one called USS so if I type colon USS it says hey I appreciate the email

you are great and this looks awesome I don't have any need from this please unsubscribe me and stop any future drip

sequences from following up thanks again having a good day because otherwise I would be a jerk when I'm mad um so I

need to have a very clear pointed way to say stop emailing me do not email me ever again and that's just like a a

quick one you can you can do in there so like customer service common replies that you have are are one of them and

then the other one is just things like my one of my pet peeves is using the wrong

X I always get mad at everybody for not using the multiplication X and they use the the letter X and it's not slanted

the right amount so I have little shortcuts for that I have little shortcuts for all of the arrows like the

Unicode arrows so I have a shortcut for a ghost space so if you're trying to using an sign on Twitter you're like oh

does anyone know how to use CSS Imports or media it'll like try to link that someone's name so I have a shortcut

called colon zwj which is a a zero width Joiner and it's basically just a ghost space and then it will it will break

that automatic highlighting that that is in there so I have tons of these little fancy little ones in there along with

the customer support one yeah and like addresses too sorry go ahead no yeah I wish I you know Snippets

are one of those things that I feel like I I don't categorize my myself like enough when I'm working to say oh I'm

doing this too many times I should make a snippet for it for some reason I I don't do that

enough but what I what I do do is I I have like one or two Snippets that I use insanely frequently you know like a

valid uh test credit card and stuff like that I know you have your whole flow for that but one of them was just my email

because my email is kind of long my name is kind of long um and having to type that out especially on my phone or on my

computer frequently is just a giant pain so like that's my most used snippet is s is my snippet and uh that NOS it's like

okay it's an email that I'm I'm writing Scott at so I use that very frequently I do use raycast for my snippet bits and I

do find them to be lovely I do the um colon X as well to give me the West boss x i I use the ERS ERS um and then you I

also set it up on iOS to give me my email because yeah I hate typing my email address it's it's brutal and my my

address as well when people need it and then I also have a whole bunch of like coding Snippets in raycast for things

like um box sizing border box is one I use a lot uh CSS reset I use a lot um and then like markdown back ticks so if

I do colon JS or colon TS it'll do that's so smart three back ticks JS and because I put those in raycast because

it's it doesn't make sense to put them in vs code because I'm writing those in notion in GitHub things I'm writing them

in code pens sometimes Discord you're writing them all over the place so if I'm writing a snippet I'll try to say hm

does it make sense to do it outside of vs code so I can use it everywhere yeah that's a good idea man yeah I I I

agree that that's my like barometer for whether or not I should be um creating a a snippet inside a vs code or outside

it's like where do I need to use this because like my felt Snippets that I use inv vs code that I wrote myself using

simple snippet in vs code it's like those are fine to stay in vs code I'm never writing those outside of uh my

text editor but yeah this this kind of stuff makes a lot of sense I find with cop highight I don't actually use coding

Snippets as much I still use EMT quite a bit for scaffolding out HTML very quickly and in in jsx but I don't use

the like too many custom Snippets in vs code anymore yeah yeah I it I know cursor has changed that for me as well

where I do feel like I'm just not I'm just yeah yeah yeah interesting mind mapping so mind

mapping is this idea where you when you have to plan out something like for me when I want to plan out a course or I

want to plan out a conference talk or whatever often it's simply just a brain dump of I need to include these things

or this is what my thoughts are and being able to move it into

a oh wait it's not a 3D space what would you call the the space that a mind map is you know it's kind of just AAL space

yeah yeah spatial space where you can drag and drop and reorder and bring things from one to another and and

rename and basically just sort of like get your ideas in order I find that to be extremely helpful when I'm trying to

when I'm in the early stages of planning something and I use one called Mind node I've been using it for many many years

it's a fantastic little application where you can just plan out a course or plan out a conference talk and uh it's

when it comes time to actually doing it I I I've always wanted something that is both note taking and mind mapping in one

um I have not hit that just yet I'll talk about some I tried in just a sec though yeah I don't know if I've ever

wanted that not taking I guess you know um obsidian can do c some of that stuff but you know for me I I use fig Jam

primarily to do my mind mapping I love the UI for it I think it's super smooth super easy I like that when you're doing

like a multiplayer fig Jam you can like throw stickers and drop you know stuff on there and react to it and recently

they said you can create slides from the Mind nodes too like if you want to do a presentation so I'm actually using the

figma slides to do my presentation for spelt Summit and I'm having a hard time going from code to a visual UI to do

slides I found it to be like way more tedious for some reason you think it'd be the other way around but I found it

to be so tedious to get it and I also found that the figma Mind nodes to slides did not work how I wanted it to

but I think it's an option if it yeah maybe it's just like how I was trying to use it there's not a lot of guidance I

think it's too new for that so there there's stuff here I I think uh a lot of these are interesting options but for me

yeah mind mapping fig Jam is really super great in fact uh we're using it right now on some cool stuff so I I

almost wish that notion had like built-in mind mapping I know you can like hack it and whatever but it's not

very good because the way that Scott and I put episodes together is we will kind of do that we'll dump a whole bunch of

high level topics and we'll dump a whole bunch of ideas and we'll we'll basically just do indentation of bullet points

which is kind of mind mapping but I think it would be kind of nice to have a bit more of a a visual look at it yeah I

agree yeah I know I I do my brain dysfunction largely in to-do list though or to do like indented list and outlines

now so next one is a big one it's is note taking you know everybody has their favorite not taking app uh some people

refer to this as like a second brain sometimes depending on how you set it up and you know I've used figma for or not

figma I've used notion for this in the past notion just feels a little too clunky for me for to be like my fullon

note taking app one reason it's proprietary it's being saved to a database whatever I like my notes to

potentially not be stuck in the software that I wrote it so my note taking app of choice is Obsidian which uses markdown

and you can write markdown and it's nice for the most part working in obsidian is like a hybrid between VSS code and

notion you get a lot of the great stuff from notion but it still feels a little bit more like a text edor a lot of the

vs code shortcuts still work like if I want to move a line up and down I can hold the option key and hit the arrow

keys like I can in vs code so I can be reasonably assured that my vs code uh shortcuts are going to work and for a

long time my big issue was like it just didn't feel UI enough but now the I don't know

when this changed probably not that recently at the start of each file if you do a three hyphens to do the front

matter it actually gives you like that exact same kind of notion UI where you have a property and value and whatever

and so like if I want to tag a specific file in the past I had to like write those tags and markdown but now I

actually get like a UI and I visually can see all the tags and all the tags I previously had and stuff and I'm adding

this metadata whether it's created at or um any of that stuff I'm adding all that via markdown at the top of my file in a

UI sort of way that I really enjoy and uh one thing that obsidian does really well is it has this massive Community

plugins uh Community plugins uh you know first party supported plugins and some of those are incredible like I have one

that creates a new let's say I open obsidian today Wes it automatically creates when I open it a notes file for

today that way if I open it I just have a file blank file labeled for today ready to go and I can just start typing

I can tag it I can link to other files really super easily I like that if I write a link to a file and that file

doesn't exist I hit command click on it and it creates that file in the location that I made the link for oh yeah is kind

of vs Cod that's nice there's just so many great things and the best part is it's a folder full of markdown so like

you can take that anywhere you can write blog posts in here I can move those blog posts to anything it's just a really

nice really nice little service and there's just so many there's so many edges to this thing that has more

functionality than you may expect so yeah obsidian is just it's the for me it's great man I I have tried obsidian a

few times over the years and I've always found myself going back to what I've been doing which is simply writing

markdown files in vs code and I always did that because I felt like oh this is not I don't this is not my vs code you

know like then you got to set all the shortcuts up and and then all the syntax highlighting is a little bit different

and I felt like um this is not as good as my vs code but I just opened it for the first time in a couple years it's

and and what you're saying I think I'm going to try it again because I've wanted it to make work so much i' I feel

like I've been trying to find a better note-taking app than simply just markdown files that's what I've been

using for probably 10 years I wrote a book in it I published something like 70 different JavaScript guides um I have

hundreds of blog posts all marked down all written in my code editor you know so I tried stash pad for quite a while

which I was pretty excited about um stash pad is kind of like markdown and and like a mind mapping allinone which

is what I've been saying I want for a long time but again it was like there was no there's no way to like move your

data out of it I let my trial expire and all my notes were locked in unless I upgraded to the paid one I was like all

right screw this you know like I'm not not paying $14 a month and then like H let them Jack the price up on me once

they the investors want their money back it was a cool product it didn't work as good as I wanted and uh oh stash pad

Scott just put a link in here stash pad is winding down operations oh interesting so like

September 30th so it's dunzo it's dunzo today September 30th oh well maybe my uh I did I think I did have some notes in

there so they're probably gone gone for good let that be a thing so I tried sash pad um a lot of people told me to try

observable HQ which is a kind of a hosted jupyter notebook I just I couldn't get into it I just want my my

vs code working on it and I also I think you pay for it yeah you got to pay for it 22 bucks a month that's not worth it

to me it's a cool it's a cool thing though yeah I don't use it but it's cool it's more for like data data people so

what I am trying to move to right now is Jupiter not notebooks which is what observable HQ is built on Jupiter

notebooks are huge in the python space because What it lets you do is you can write markdown and then you can inline

code and you can run that code right inside of the file and see the actual output which is as somebody who writes

lots of technical stuff that's kind of exactly what I want I want all of my typescript types and inference I want

all of that to work inside of my markdown like when I wrote my typescript course I would have to duck out to a

typescript file and and actually do the example because I wanted the full typescript inference but Jupiter

notebooks now has a dino engine so you can run not just python but you can now run JavaScript on it we talked about it

when Ryan Doll came on the podcast so I'm really hoping that I can make the move next time I start like a new

project I'm going to try to go all in Jupiter notebook I would like sincerely love uh for you to spend some time doing

that cuz I don't have the time to do it but I want to get a good report on what's yeah what's it like yeah it's so

I did try it for a while and I even posted like a little guide on Twitter on how to get it set up and uh it was it

worked pretty good you know like it's it's it's really cool that you can write code and then like I say all right uh

here's what we're going to do we're going to filter this array down for items that only have this type and then

you can click the button and run the code and see the output right underneath it and then you can also write adapters

for what the output looks like so if the output is simply just data you can just display the data but if the output is

HTML you can embed the HTML right below it yeah interesting yeah I'm I'm curious I just I'm a little bit worried it's

going to be one of those things where like you said you got to fuss with it too much and then it's you're spending

time being a notebook Enthusiast and not somebody who's actually getting work done well then you could get a course

out of it right you could start the that's true I like it yeah start the engines there next up is little scripts

and these are just scripts that you might have around on your computer to run various things I don't run any

scripts and I'm interested at like Snippets to know what you're running the one I run the most is to remove all node

modules folders recursively um you know those things they accumulate on your computer and next thing you know it's

taking up gigabytes worth of space depending on how many projects you have so for sometimes I'll just run a

recursive removeal node module script and get that stuff out of here uh for a directory or even like my entire sites

folder or any of that stuff yeah I'll often need to do things like um download all the images from a a folder so like

uh we have all these syntax background grunge and there's like 190 of them right so I just wrote a quick little

script to uh visit the web page scrape all the links download them and save them to dis you know just quick little

stuff where I could do this or like renaming files or making something consistent I could figure out how to do

this via the UI and I could click it here and there but it's much more enjoyable and sometimes even

faster to uh to write a little script for it so I just simply write scripts and then either run them via Dino bun or

TSX um but there's also John linkis has this little app called called Script kit which is is it's looks like raycast it's

not really the same area but it's just like resizing an image converting an SVG to a JPEG is another one that I have to

do all the time where it's like oh I try to drag an SVG into my video editing software and it it doesn't work you know

so having a little library of commonly done things stripping types from typescript is

another one uh scraping images off of a file downloading all of the sale items from Canadian Tires website you know I

have all these I probably have hundreds of these like little random scripts on my computer that I'll I'll dip into

every now and then I've never gotten into script kit but I feel like I should yeah it's the type of thing I wouldn't

mind just having like a directory of scripts around uh just on my own to to run whenever but I think as long as you

can read the scripts and that you know what you're doing doing writing little scripts in the era of chat GPT to me has

become so much more useful because I will suffer through doing something by hand instead of writing a script

sometimes just because I don't feel like opening it up and testing it and making sure it works but if I can get chat GPT

to spit me out a simple script I can go over it line by line by line confirm that everything is what I would have

done tweak it as needed and then run it that sometimes to me can be very fast like the other day I asked it while we

were at Denver script I asked it to go through the page of uh what was it meetup.com grab everybody's name who had

RSVP to be at the meetup.com and then enter them into the raffle that CJ had written and it took like seconds I I

just effortlessly fast so I think that can be a nice little boost if if you know what you're doing um next up is

email email is such a big thing I think a lot of people they do email kind of chaotically I tend to to do the opposite

of that I'm very invested in my email process in a way one I spend money on it which seems ridiculous let me tell you I

use I use superhuman which is like the email client of choice for all of the people who are you know super productive

CEO types right which it's ridiculous I when I saw the pricing for superhuman I was like there is not a chance in the

world I care about this enough to to spend money on this and man I got to say say I've been using superum now for like

a year and a half 2 years and even though I was able to get to inbox zero fairly regularly before nothing has made

me as productive at email as superhuman it you go down their feature list West and it looks like a thousand other email

clients I swear but something about it you can navigate the whole app through effortless keyboard shortcuts it's it's

local first in a way that every single email loads instantly there's no lag ever if I want to do anything I hit a

key hit a key hit a key Either unsubscribe or trash all or filter or snooze or whatever I'm so efficient with

it that I can get to inbox zero no in no time and then when you do get to inbox zero it gives you a fun little um video

of animals which so stupid but I love it I I'm I I talked so much trash about superhuman before actually using and

subscribing to it and now I'm like this is I've got to pay for this app so yeah I I've been hooked on it and sadly it's

um I'm paying for it for sure yeah sometimes those things are are worth it you know like I'm not I'm not the guy

that loves paying monthly for things but when something does take the pain out of your day which

is something that all of us hate which is doing email it's it's worth it right I I use missive um which is we've we've

had them on the show before it's fantastic application so missive is more for teams that need to be able to not

share email but like kind of assign it so I have multiple email addresses being piped into missive um and then you can

like if it's a customer support I can just write to the uh my assistant and say hey what's going on here or this

person is not seeing all of their courses when they log in maybe it's under or whatever and then I can just

assign it to somebody else and then they get it dumped into their missive inbox and it's a really nice way to sort of do

it I still am garbage at email because the the one thing I really want like my biggest problem is just like there's

just too much stuff that comes in and I find like even with all the filters and and tagging and all that under the world

I feel like I still just get way too much garbage coming in and I unsubscribe from absolutely everything but like even

like we get a poll request on the syntax we uh thing I get like 17 emails from GitHub about what's going on there and

it's just like H get this out of here you know and like that times a thousand different services and also I don't

really want to spend a lot of time sort of filtering through it the one thing I really do want though is I want the

ability to tag uh with AI so mive has the ability to reply with AI you put your little

open AI key in there and you can highlight something and say summarize this for me or reply nicely you can make

your own promps right but what I want is the opposite I want every email that comes in to be filtered through Ai and I

want to be able to say like does this look like somebody from a PR Company is trying to get somebody on our podcast if

so immediately reply to them or if so just tag it with whatever because I find like the actual important stuff is is

hard to find through all the cruft that that comes into my email inbox yeah on that note of superhuman in inbox Zer W I

found out that it gives you stats in the past year I have hit inbox zero 182 of the 365 days I have a 29 day

streak of inbox zero right now and like so I'm I'm legitimately able to do that and I have what three different email

addresses so yeah yeah what do you do about like transactional email like you get a like I'm just looking at my email

address right now so Cloud flare your invoice is available Cloud flare your domain is renewed your dentist you have

an appointment coming Google search console performance for the month Spotify upcoming premium subscription is

is being increased you know like that plus 40 other just this morning do you just delete them no there's a mark is

done you just hit the Marcus Dunkey um which is but like you don't you don't autof filter them or anything they don't

have any system for getting through all that crap um I I tend to treat the emails that come in as like stuff I need

to pay attention to and then I can see from the list view if it's something I need to open if it like I like to keep

that stuff but I don't need to action item it and since again superhuman is instant and it has keyboard shortcuts I

my my current one is highlighted I hit the e key next one highlighted e key e key e key

justy yeah you dwindle dwindle it down so fast and so for me I check email first thing in the morning when I get

into work I get into work I check my email I get it to inbox zero if it's something that I can't take care of

right now I put it in my to-do list and then I snooze the email for when I'm going to plan on doing it so that way it

does show back up and that way I can confirm I did it and then I check it again at the end of the day before I

leave work not even like the very end of the day like 3:00ish for me and then again I get down to inbox zero reason

being is like you never get overwhelmed that way and if you know if you treat everything like a to-do nothing just

sits in your inbox uh which I can't have and I unsubscribe for from everything religiously like crazy and and so I do

love that like any of these mail apps that build in like a new like this has a keyboard shortcut for unsubscribing so

like I do that on anything that I see that's great yeah the the snooze is also you absolutely have to have snooze

because what happens is when people are going through their email they hit something like I I have to do this but I

don't want to do it now I need to do it at some point and then they H whatever close the email app you know but if you

can snooze it you you keep on that roll you know the eeky roll that Scott stalking about here you're just I know I

know snooze to me is one of those must half things that I it's shocking that like every email client in the world

isn't like defaulted to that I first pick up snooze with Google inbox Google inbox to me was like the best in um yeah

yeah I do I certainly miss that but snoozing and and all those things I I got to have it get it out of there get

down to zero another thing I like about it that you know I'm just not going to go on about superhuman but when you

unsubscribe from something Wes it gives you an option to unsubscribe and Mark all as done or unsubscribe and trash all

so like let's say you've been on a an an been put on a newsletter subscription list that you do not care about you

never want to see again unsubscribe and trash all or what if it's like something that's coming in regularly that you kind

of want to still unsubscribe and Mark done so if you the type of person that has like a massive list of emails uh in

your inbox you could cut through that pretty quickly I think yeah one other thing I like about missive is if you get

like a lot like I get a lot from GitHub um I'll often just you you could click on the person who sending it to you and

you can say all from this person or all from this domain and just click on it and it'll immediately filter your entire

inbox for all of those and then I'll just command a uh command backspace and just blow them all out and that helps me

get down from you know you got 300 and you oh that brought it down to 125 all right we're doing a bit better now

totally yeah here's a here's a couple more before we get out of there I use my habit tracker there's a billion habit

trackers I find them to be very helpful my habit trackers is habit path. I check in with this thing every

day to make sure that I'm maintaining the positive habits that I want in my life even things like doing handstands

every day or making a to-do list or doing you know cardio or stretching the kind of stuff that just like you want to

make sure that you're staying on top of and so for me it's very gratifying to not just have streaks cuz I don't think

I think streaks can be a little discouraging sometimes but for me it's more or less about all right I have uh

things I would like to see and the more I see those things checked the better I am about it so it's a I'm I'm definitely

motivated by a habit tracker type of system it's allowed me to instill a lot of positive habits in my life another

one is focus apps I use hey focus.com to block all social media and stuff on my computer if I'm working I'm the classic

person who will close Twitter and then open it again in a second or Reddit and Reddit for me is the worst one I will

close Reddit and then like command W on Reddit command t start typing in Reddit like my brain is just so broken with

that stuff so I need something to step in there and stop it so hey focus.com is the app I use but another one I use for

notifications and turning off all that stuff is just the Apple Focus shared Focus modes yeah I use so shareed across

all my devices I have them set up really completely I have like my wife can text me at any time and there will be that

notification that will come through at least some sort of way but if anybody else does notifications other than that

I shut off notifications for most all apps like I don't ever have notifications on for email I will not

get a notification for an email no matter what it's pretty much just text messages for me that I get uh

notifications for yeah I have I have just email and texts and Twitter DMS but otherwise no

Twitter no no Tik Tok every time I open Tik Tok it's like hey turn on notifications like no chance no chance

I'm zero chance yeah I would rather um jump off a bridge I think have Twitter notifications on how often do you throw

this hey focus on because I haven't done it in a while but I I think I need it especially after I post a video I'll go

to like at like the seven websites that I posted a video to and then see what people are commenting and that's good

because I can reply but at a certain point I got to just get working on the next one yeah I I if I let's say I open

Reddit twice in the span of 15 minutes something will happen in my brain and I'll say Scott what are you doing man

like I feel like the moment I feel disappointed with myself for uh opening Reddit too many times I then turn it on

you know it' be nice to have it on on a schedule one thing that I had to tweak it because like I do a lot of work on

YouTube so I don't block YouTube but I also don't have the problem of mindlessly watching YouTube I I do

mindlessly watch YouTube just not when I'm at work for some reason I have no problem with that so all right so those

are our productivity tips and tricks and apps um let us know if you have any thoughts every time we do these I get

really good recommendations for people there was one I was trying to forget remember when I said I want my own like

personal Pinterest for logging things that I find you know it's not just bookmarks but just dumping

stuff into someone sent me a really good one and I totally forgot to check it out so if you know what that is send it to

me again I'd love to hear it I I started making a delicious clone for that really reason and then I got bored uh so I

stopped doing it but that feels like something that I would love to have too um maybe maybe once my um site kit is

done I can just fire up a delicious clone yeah beautiful all right uh let's go into sick picks you got a sick pick

for me today oh yeah yeah I had a um you know I like podcast I've been pod I've listen to podcast for a long time right

I like podcast yeah I like podcast yeah there's a a fun new podcast from um I think Jamie lus lus she does a lot of

podcast she's a fun kind of Internet personality but it's called The Legend of Sword Quest um let me read you the

trailer for this thing it's one of these limited run series it's from my heart so what started as a promotion for a new

Atari game would become one of the most controversial moments in 80s pop culture I I doubt that's the case because I

never heard of this before this um with a central mystery that's consumed fans for decades What happened to the sword

Quest prizes to unlock the biggest mystery and video game history I never heard of this basically there was like a

video game competition for a lot of money and you have it it's like a fun little documentary podcast the one thing

I like about it is a lot of times with these they'll they'll have like a big last time on the podcast and then like

10 minutes of information and then uh next time this is not that it's like actually just good interviews and the

people you know it's a bunch of video game players from the 80s and stuff talking so it's just fun um there's only

five episodes out as of right now but it's it's still coming out so if that sounds interesting to you it's a nice

little minies there um I've also been listening to a new podcast lately called the economics of everyday things and

it's for people who like like Planet Money or how I built this and it goes into just these areas of life and

explains how it works you know like how does the sushi fish supply chain work or like like where do truffles come from

how does money laundering work you know uh why do we need so many fire Fighters and it's all it's all just a really good

listen you know really interesting comes up some nice facts that you can share with your friends but also you learn a

thing or two yeah cool I like that I go to I got to check that out uh thanks for the suggestion all right thanks

everybody for tuning in we will catch you later peace peace