In continuing with the theme of decision fatigue, I wanted to share a tool that I’ve been using recently that I have greatly enjoyed. In an effort to be more productive, it is suggested one should check email only a few times a day. Personally, I have to keep an eye on work email periodically.
However, I noticed that I was checking personal email on my iPhone habitually. To the point where it was becoming a distraction. Majority of my emails were not from actual people but newsletters, notifications from services online, and other forms of bacn. ( love the term, hate the connotation )
Sanebox is an amazing service. It connects to your email, any provider, and process your inbox into folders. Majority of the bacn goes into a “@sanelater” folder.
It has been super accurate and learns even more as time goes by. The service builds custom rules for you based on whom you send email to most frequently and other set rules that you can establish. If it does happen to misfile something simply drag the email to the correct folder which will “teach” the service what to do next time.
Having your email sorted automatically frees you to establish a set time, perhaps once a week, to “process” email instead of constantly deleting bacn throughout the day. This excited me so much that I had to share. Give it a try.
These are short reviews of the apps that I used the most in 2017. I’ll make note of the apps that have been replaced by another app in the same category, apps that I’m using less, apps that I no longer use, and apps that I’m starting to use more.
This year, and in the coming year, I’m focused on consolidating apps. For example, instead of using 3 note apps like I was previously, I’m only using one now.
Can’t figure out which tag produces an icon in Bear? I was able to dig through the application files and find references to them. I’ve put together this post as a quick cheat sheet or reference guide, which will help us find those elusive bear tag icons.
For a bit of background, the excellent notes app Bear released version 1.4 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. With that update came a new feature, TagCons, that assigns a small icon to represent over 100 tags. Unfortunately, there is no official documentation for what the supported tags are.
From their blog:
Once you get a decent tag collection going, it can get harder to find the right one in your Sidebar. To help you do less scrolling and more finding in Bear 1.4, we added over 100 TagCons — small icons for some of the most popular tags we could find.
With a bit of digging. I was able to find the following:
[code]
#android
#apple
#apple watch#
#bear
#comics
* saitama
* one punch man
* one-punch man
* one punch-man
* onepunch-man
#chef
* cooking
#dev
* development
* it
* itc
#dog
* doggos
#doctor who#
#ebooks
* book
* epub(s)
* ibook
* book
* kindle
#espresso
* coffee
#facebook
#furry
#geek
* nerd
* nerds
* nerdy
#TV
* TV
* hulu
* netflix
#instagram
#ipad
* iPad Pro
#iPhone
* iphone
* iphone 7
* iphone 7+
* iphone 8
* iphone 8+
* iphone x
* iphone7
* iphone7+
* iphone8
* iphone8+
#linux
* debian
* suse
* ubuntu
#lmao
* lmao
* fun
* meme
* rotfl
#math
#mac
* macos
#mario#
* mario kart
* mario odissey — misspelled odyssey
* mario world
* super mario
* super mario brothers
#password
* passwords
#sport
* mlb
* nba
* nfl
* nhl
#nintendo
* nes
* nintendo 64
* snes
* supernes
* wii
* wiiu
#nsfw
* porn
#playstation
* ps1
* ps2
* ps3
* ps4
* ps4 pro
#reddit
* subreddit
* subreddits
#shiny frog#
* shinyfrog
#swag
* fashion
#switch
* nintendo switch
#tumblr
#ui
* design
* ux
#windows
* windows 8
* windows vista
* windows xp
* windows8
* windowsxp
#xbox
* xboxone
#youtube
* youtubers
* youtuber
#zelda
[/code]
Be sure and bookmark this as a reference. I’ll be adding more to the post as I find them.
Justin Jackson’s book Jolt: Marketing Tactics for Programmers, Designers, Freelancers, Makers, and Entrepreneurs was a great way to start off the year.
It really does give you a Jolt of inspiration.
This book is a great resource for marketing your new product, software, idea, book, or any project that you want to promote. It teaches you to, “Be different, break out of the mold, and surprise folks”.
Justin provides case studies, examples of websites and services using data that you might not known before.
One of the stories he provides is about being first to the party:
There is a first mover advantage that you get on any new platform. In the early days of Twitter, people who grabbed a foothold there were able to amass a big number of followers, even though they might not have been famous elsewhere.
I joined Twitter in May 2007 and can attest to this. Those of us that were there at the beginning ended up with much more engagement with early adopters, forged friendships, and benefited from the platform. Whale is an upcoming platform that I’m seeing the same pattern emerge as I did then.
He goes on to say:
You can set yourself up to create [luck]. Quantity is what gets you to quality. Start placing little bets; try a bunch of things. One of them might work and become big.
This is great. Validate your ideas. Try to see what works, evaluate the data, and keep iterating on what does work. That’s the key. Look back at what you’ve done, revise, and keep pushing forward.
Alright, lets take a look at the apps that I used the most in 2016. I’ll also make note of the apps that have been replaced by another app in the same category.