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Tech Productivity

Issue #327  (How to Refocus a Wandering Mind) 05/19/25


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On Hacker News a reader asks: How do you store the knowledge gained in a day? That's an interesting question because if you haven't stored the information yet (either mentally or digitally), then is it really "gained"?

Nonetheless, it's useful to hear other peoples' thoughts on what works best for them. Results will vary from person to person, but some of the suggestions are worth looking into.
 
Gaining Information on a Computer

Some things mentioned in the thread:
  • Using ChatGPT as a dynamic repository
  • Use Obsidian (the popular note-taking app)
  • Don't save anything, it's just digital hoarding
  • Use a simple text file, open at all times
  • Use Readwise (the popular e-book and article highlighter)
There are lots of other suggestions, including some that are very hacker-oriented, so if you're tech savvy you can look into those.

Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!

 

 

Tools & Apps

NameQuick — A suite of AI-powered tools to manage files on your Mac, with features like meaningful AI renaming, local LLM support, real-time folder monitoring, multi-file renaming, and more.

SleepUps — A web app for helping with your sleep that includes a sleep calculator, designed to help you optimize your sleep schedule, along with some sleep-friendly sounds and music, to help you sleep better.

Rapyd.Cloud — An enterprise-grade infrastructure hosting solution that keeps your WordPress sites super-fast with no downtime, just seamless performance. Check out their new multi-site hosting accounts for WordPress.   sponsor  

Forage Mail — An AI inbox plugin for Gmail that helps prioritize your inbox by moving newsletters, promos, and notifications out of your inbox and into elegant email summaries.

time.fyi — A suite of web-based time-related tools that includes timezone conversion, a Pomodoro timer, a daily planner, a world clock, general time, and a stopwatch.

SketchFlow — A collaborative split-screen diagram and Markdown collaboration tool that enables you to create, share, and collaborate on visual projects with your team from anywhere.

Overbooked — An all-in one project and client management tool that allows you to manage tasks, deadlines, and clients, while tracking all your projects in milestone-driven dashboards.
 

Articles & Resources

Getting Things "Done" in Large Tech Companies"Programming large web applications is more like planting a tree than completing a mathematical proof. Once you write a service, you can keep working on it forever if you want to."

Thank You For Holding My Duck — This explains a variation of the 'rubber duck debugging' method and briefly goes into the history of the method and how it may have originated.

How To Take Ownership of Your Work (And Why You Should) — Melody Wilding, author of Managing Up, with a comprehensive piece on taking ownership of problems and opportunities in the workplace.

Decluttering Your To-do List: How to Simplify Your Work & Life in 30 Minutes — Some help for those who feel like the traditional to-do list is failing them and how yours can be overhauled for better results.

News and Content Tailored to Your Interests — Every day Refind analyzes thousands of articles and sends you only the best, according to the topics you select. Loved by 536,000+ curious minds.   sponsor  

Kill Your Feeds – Stop Letting Algorithms Dictate How You Think — Some motivation to take back control of how we think, not allowing social media algorithms to give us their never-ending ad-focused content feeds.

How to Refocus a Wandering Mind (15 Practical Solutions) — Originally published in 2021, this is the ultimate guide for fixing the habit of your mind wandering when you don't want it to.

Suggestions?

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

Stay productive!

Louis
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