Productivity Pitfalls, Shortcuts for Obsidian, and More

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Avoiding Productivity Pitfalls and Boosting Focus »

When it comes to productivity and focus, I have a secret weapon — a book that I never see anyone talking about.

Now, I know not everyone is a nerd about planning, scheduling, and setting goals, but there is a book by J.D. Meier that’s just fantastic.

It’s called Getting Results the Agile Way. (It’s free on KindleUnlimited, but since it’s more of a workbook I recommend getting the paperback.)

This book is jam-packed with ideas and practical systems for helping you manage your time and priorities. I first went through this book nearly five years ago, and it had a significant impact on the time management system I use today and on which I based The Focus Course.

Actions for Obsidian: An Obsidian Companion App That Adds Additional Shortcuts Support »

I love me some Obsidian, but one of Obsidian’s weak spots has always been it’s Shortcuts support (or lack thereof).

That’s where Actions for Obsidian comes in.

Actions for Obsidian serves as the bridge between Obsidian and Shortcuts on the Mac, resulting in almost native support for Shortcuts actions that allow you to do some pretty neat things with the text you send to Obsidian.

To call Actions for Obsidian an app is a bit of a stretch. It’s a macOS utility that serves as a graphic interface for adding over 30 additional actions to Shortcuts that Obsidian doesn’t support out of the box. It also includes a tutorial for setting up Obsidian to take advantage of them, and gives you a link to an Actions & Workflow Library where you can download some pre-made example Shortcuts workflows to download and use instantly.

When you first launch the “app” you get a window with three options: 1) link your Obsidian vault, 2) open the Shortcuts app to use the actions, and 3) visit the Actions & Workflow Library to download pre-made workflows.

How to Create Notion Buttons to Automate Your Workflow »

If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.

Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.

How We Created our Master Resource Database »

A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.

Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.

Mike Schmitz’s Must-Have Productivity Apps »

👋🏼 Hi, I’m Mike Schmitz, and I’m an independent creator.

Like Josh, Matt, and Jeff did previously, today I’m going to share a handful of my favorite productivity apps that are essential for how I work.

Jeff Abbott’s Must-Have Productivity Apps »

We’ve heard from Matt and Josh on which apps they consider irreplaceable for their workflows and productivity, and now it’s my turn to pull back the curtain. These days, a lot of my work happens on a work MacBook Pro that is fairly locked down. The IT-managed operating system presents some challenges when it comes to finding a good productivity balance, and these apps meet my needs on my work device and personal devices too.

Interesting Links From Our Friends and Around the Web »

• (Six Colors) 15-inch MacBook Air review: Sometimes bigger is better
• (512 Pixels) Introducing the 2024 Apple History Calendar
• (MacStories) Apple Vision Pro: A Watershed Moment for Personal Computing
• (Mac Power Users) #696: App Subscription Check-In
• (Christopher Lawley) A Day Working From the iPad