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Issue #266  (Context Switching Kills Productivity) 03/18/24

Tools & Apps

Numbr — A smart calculator combined with a notepad, usable as a web app or a Chrome extension, to provide a user-friendly way to do tasks like arithmetic operations and currency conversions while taking notes.

In Your Face — A Mac app to ensure you don't miss meetings by providing a full-screen reminder just in case you miss a notification for an important appointment.

Create The “Atomic Habits” You Need For Success — 6000+ ambitious professionals trust Sunsama to help plan, track, and streamline their work. With guided daily planning, AI-driven time estimates, auto-scheduling, and much more, Sunsama is the smarter way to achieve work-life balance.     sponsor  

Shortform — A platform that has a growing number of nonfiction book summaries searchable by 20+ categories, to help you glean the main points and ideas from popular nonfiction books. Has 1000+ summaries so far.

Stashit — A private cloud storage service that lets you easily store and organize your emails, attachments, images, and files securely and privately using collections instead of hard-to-use nested folders.

Struct — A real-time chat platform for teams, designed from the ground up around threads, feeds, and AI. Includes a knowledge base plus Slack and Discord plugins.

Inke — An AI-powered, web-based Markdown editor with translation and AI chat features, collaboration, and ability to export as PDF, image, Markdown, or JSON.
 

Articles & Resources

Context-Switching – One of the Worst Productivity Killers in the Engineering Industry — Not a rant, as the title implies, but a good set of suggestions for how to overcome distractions and interruptions (some necessary) while trying to stay focused for 6+ hours per day.

7 Life ‘Shortcuts’ Most People Rarely Consider That Actually Work — Not the list I was expecting. A few of these are common suggestions but at least four of them are tips you may not have considered.

Restore Your Youth — NativePath's Certified Grass-Fed Collagen Powder is made from grass-fed, pasture-raised cows and contains 18 grams of protein per suggested serving. Start incorporating it daily to support skin elasticity, joint health, bone strength, and muscle growth and maintenance.     sponsor  

10 Compelling Reasons to Reduce the Clutter In Your Life — I'm definitely guilty when it comes to too much clutter, but certainly not as bad as some. This is some good motivation to finally start to declutter your home, office, etc.

The Hidden Ways Sleep Deprivation Warps Your Reality — Research from Big Think and psychologist Dr. Jade Wu about the consequences of not sleeping enough, which is compared to being intoxicated.

You Should Be Playing with GPTs at Work — This is a really good introduction and deep-dive into using custom versions of ChatGPT to improve your work and productivity, with some initial data showing how things are trending in the direction of AI more and more.

Forget the 4-Day Workweek. We Should Be Talking About the 5-Day, 32-Hour Week Instead — I don't think I would choose this over a 4-day workweek, even if the hours were more in the 4-day, but it's something to consider depending on the industry and type of work.
 

Suggestions?

Have a suggestion for a productivity-related tool, article, or other resource? Send me a direct message via X (@LouisLazaris) and I’ll consider including it in a future issue.

Stay productive!

Louis
techproductivity.co
@LouisLazaris