I'm on the faculty at Boston University in the computer science department, where I teach software engineering, intro courses, and application architecture and development. Also a bit of a Deadhead.
I use several of these; I like the Getting Things Done methodology and practice email inbox-zero, and use Things to manage the GTD workflow. I lean pretty heavily on Siri to add items to my GTD inbox. I wear an Apple watch, so any time something pops into my head I can just say, "Hey Siri, remember to write an article on Little Snitch and VPN leakage," and it will automatically appear in my inbox in Things. It helps get tasks immediately out of my head and into my GTD system.
One small utility that I use constantly is PopClip, a contextual pop-up menu that's activated on selecting text. For example, I can highlight an address in a document and PopClip will bring up a tiny menu that lets me do things like open Endicia with the address so that I can print a mailing label. I use it so much that it's jarring when I'm on a Mac that doesn't have it installed.
One last tool that I use quite a bit is Dash docs (despite the dev's rocky history with Apple). It integrates with every major IDE; if I'm in Webstorm working on some JavaScript, a quick Cmd-Shift-D brings up the documentation for whatever object or method is under the cursor. It also integrates with StackOverflow for the desperate :)
Be careful not to get caught up in Productivity Porn...that's when you spend more time playing with productivity tools that doing actual work :)
I'm on the faculty at Boston University in the computer science department, where I teach software engineering, intro courses, and application architecture and development. Also a bit of a Deadhead.
I use several of these; I like the Getting Things Done methodology and practice email inbox-zero, and use Things to manage the GTD workflow. I lean pretty heavily on Siri to add items to my GTD inbox. I wear an Apple watch, so any time something pops into my head I can just say, "Hey Siri, remember to write an article on Little Snitch and VPN leakage," and it will automatically appear in my inbox in Things. It helps get tasks immediately out of my head and into my GTD system.
One small utility that I use constantly is PopClip, a contextual pop-up menu that's activated on selecting text. For example, I can highlight an address in a document and PopClip will bring up a tiny menu that lets me do things like open Endicia with the address so that I can print a mailing label. I use it so much that it's jarring when I'm on a Mac that doesn't have it installed.
One last tool that I use quite a bit is Dash docs (despite the dev's rocky history with Apple). It integrates with every major IDE; if I'm in Webstorm working on some JavaScript, a quick Cmd-Shift-D brings up the documentation for whatever object or method is under the cursor. It also integrates with StackOverflow for the desperate :)
Be careful not to get caught up in Productivity Porn...that's when you spend more time playing with productivity tools that doing actual work :)
Oh, wow I didn't know about PopClip. Could you give some more examples how you use it?
I think my top three uses are:
Open a URL in a browser (a URL that's just text, not a link).
1a. Open a URL in Chrome specifically.
Add selected text to Things inbox.
Copy selected item to clipboard.
There are well over 150 add-ons, and you can easily write your own. Here's the current list of PopClip add-ons.