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A Quora user asked for the best productivity apps for Mac OS. Here’s my answer:
There are of course the big productivity suites like OmniFocus and Things but I want to focus on the small helpers that save me several hours per week.
My number one pick is BetterTouchTool. It’s a small, free application that lets you map actions to various forms of input. Some of the trackpad shortcuts I use all the time:
You can also define application specific shortcuts:
You see the pattern. The tab switching is something I add to every app I’m using on a regular basis. Similar to going back and forth in history (Finder, Spotify, …).
You can also trigger actions from the keyboard, a normal and a magic mouse, an apple remote, Leap and from the BTT iOS app.
Hazel is another tool I’m using on a daily basis. Well, I’m not actively using it. It’s running in the background doing its fantastic job.
Hazel asks you for folders to monitor. You can then define rules to apply on the files in this folder.
Some examples of my Hazel rules:
(This is the folder in which my ScanSnap document scanner dumps all the PDFs it creates.)
Alfred is a launcher that you invoke with a keyboard shortcut. It can do many helpful things like find files, eject volumes, quit programs. It also lets you define search engines so you don’t have to open/navigate to your browser to start your search.
You can define complex actions, called workflows, or download shared ones. My favorite one searches LEO (one of the best German English/French/Spanish/Chinese/… dictionaries) and shows the results in Alfred.
Death is always a surprise. No one expects it. Not even terminal patients think they are going to die in a day or two. In a week, maybe. But only when this particular week is the next week.
Ev Williams:
The job of leadership is to foster alignment and enthusiasm toward the right goal.
For some unknown reason (I was hungover) I decided to research how alcohol affects the body. I wanted to know exactly what happens from the moment you drink the alcohol to the moment (22 hours later) when the alcohol is gone.
I love airplanes. The closest I ever got to flying one was a simulator class in a DA42.
The former German star hopes to keep expectations low for the coming World Cup. For now, Klinsmann will take the long view when it comes to soccer success for the United States.
One year since The New York Times Magazine wrote about Klinsmann. I’m not a soccer person but it seems to be going well.
Excessive demands are leading to burnout everywhere.
We often ask senior leaders a simple question: If your employees feel more energized, valued, focused and purposeful, do they perform better? Not surprisingly, the answer is almost always “Yes.” Next we ask, “So how much do you invest in meeting those needs?” An uncomfortable silence typically ensues.
Marty Cagan knows what he’s talking about.
You could summarize: Good product teams care about the product, bad teams care about their paycheck.
Through the engineering of its fulfillment centers, Amazon has built the world’s most nimble infrastructure for the transfer of things. We step inside to see how the formidable system works.
This is your semi-regular reminder that CGI is at or beyond the point of absurdity, that everything on the Internet is fake, that there is no spoon, etc.