How do I choose apps
My workflow pales in comparison to other minority authors. I don’t have any unique computer skills, and I don’t have any secret apps. The apps I’ve heard of are basically through the minority’s pie review series. However, when I tried some apps, there were good and bad, and I spent a lot of money. Therefore, sometimes I want to open a column called “continuous tracking” to give feedback on the usage and thoughts of subsequent applications.
After I wrote the article on Xiaomi bitterly, I was very disgusted with those unstable and complex systems, and I also spent a lot of money, and tasted many applications with complicated functions and claims to achieve many kinds of effects. I don’t know when all-in-one started and when it became popular.
In the comment areas of some tool groups or related topics, when it comes to efficiency tools, most netizens will turn all in one into their beliefs in the existence of the “efficiency” label, and scoff at those tools that do not have all-in-one. This is exactly what has always been strange to me. Is All-in-one more than just tools? If it is limited to tools, is this a bit too instrumental? In my opinion, the all-in-one of tools weakens the user’s presence in favor of the tools. Mobile phones are a typical example.
In addition, from a behavioral point of view, a thing that only stimulates me is the most effective learning program. Here, I do not want to delve into the various complex and intricate concepts behind ethology, but just use two basic concepts: one is Thorndike’s stimulus-response theory (SR theory), that learning is stimuli-response-related outcomes. Simply put, it’s a habit.
Another is Skinner’s Discriminative stimuli, a stimulus that produces a specific response that is more rapid and not easily replaced and subsided. That’s why I hate all in one apps, because their stimuli can’t make me quickly form or produce corresponding stimuli. So, they greatly reduced my efficiency.
So, in order to save myself from wasting money in the future, I made three rules for productivity or efficiency software:
- Concise: not simple, beautiful
- Easy to use: It is not very complicated to use, easy to use
- smooth
After a year of tossing, I finally have my own workflow, and I no longer have to envy the big guys from the minority!
enter
Palm reading vs WeChat reading
I have used both platforms for a long time. Especially palm reading, I remember using it on the iPad 2 when I was in elementary school. So I still have a soft spot for it. However, it seems that Palm Reading has not developed with the development of the times, but has gradually fallen behind. Although there used to be the bottom of the kindle, but now the kindle has left the market, are you willing to become the bottom one?
Compared with WeChat reading, the opening speed of the palm reading app is slower; the navigation bar is not set around reading like WeChat reading, but “discovery” and “members” are added after the bookshelf. The so-called “discovery” is not as capable and concise as WeChat’s “reading”, but a place that gathers some unknown articles and comments. In Palm Reading, books seem to be the least important thing. On the other hand, the navigation bar “Reading”, “Bookshelf” and “Audiobook” of WeChat Reading. Everything revolves around books. I also finally understood why most of the people around me like WeChat reading so much.
In addition, the book synchronization function of Palm Reading is a big disadvantage. For some reason, they have not done the synchronization function well for so many years. Every time you download Palm Read on a new device, even if you log in to the original account, the books will not be automatically synced to the bookshelf, but you have to click on the sync cloud bookshelf in the settings to synchronize. At this point, something even more puzzling happened. Books that have been read on another device are displayed as “unread”. Is this meant to remind me to read it again? WeChat, on the other hand, does not have similar problems at all, and will automatically organize and collect the books I have read.
In short, WeChat reading is much easier to use than palm reading. Although the price of a one-year subscription is more than double that of palm reading, it is still worth it to a certain extent. But paradoxically, PalmRead’s e-readers do a pretty good job, and I especially like Ocean 2, which was well-received this year. So this is where I am confused. After I think about it, I will buy Ocean 2 after returning to China, and then install a WeChat to read, maybe it is a good way to do both hard and soft.
Kindle
I’ve always used my Kindle to read, although I keep him in a drawer most of the time. The advantage of Kindle for me is that the Unlimited service allows me to free many books by Japanese authors, such as Keigo Higashino, Junichi Watanabe, and Otichi I have read the longest. I can always borrow books they have just published.
Another great thing about the Kindle is that I can pre-order or buy new books outright. For example, “Speaking Brain” published in May 2022, I happened to see it when I was browsing the new book in June, and it only cost 19.99 yuan; although Palm Reading is free for members, it costs 5 yuan to purchase; and WeChat has not yet been put on the shelves. the book. The other half of the book “Instinct of Consciousness” published at the same time only costs 24.99 yuan for kindle; while palm reading and getting (free for members) are both 89.99 yuan, which is three times more expensive; WeChat has not yet been put on the shelves.
Although Kindle has many “disadvantages”, it is indeed the most stable and trustworthy platform. Far away overseas, whenever I want to read a new book, I feel sorry for Kindle’s withdrawal from the Chinese market, because I don’t know where to find such an e-book platform with extremely fast and cheap new books. I also don’t understand why other platforms dare to buy e-books so expensive, and if they want to be cheap, they must become members. This puzzles me. So, I still prefer the Kindle as a cheap, book-heavy software or closed system.
Record
To be honest, the todo app is where I spend the most money. Because some apps can’t use their unique features without spending money. I’m talking about two todo apps I’ve used. I’m just talking about my feelings here, because everyone’s behavior history is different, so their reactions are also different.
Vision
This is an app that focuses on OKRs. At that time, I bought it with the attitude of giving it a try, because when I was in a domestic bookstore, I could often see “Google OKR” in a prominent position, or I heard about ByteDance’s OKR in the podcast program Organization Evolution. But in reality, it is a more complex and time-consuming system than SMART. This software is very cumbersome when setting goals: you not only have to fill in the basic information, but also set the management results, as well as motivation and feasibility, and plan dates. If you write one less, there will always be annoying prompts after clicking “Done”.
All in all, it seems like one you have to sit there and think about and fill out each step provided.
Adding or modifying targets is also very cumbersome. Take, for example, one of my own writing goals. In order to become a minority senior author, I must have at least 10 first page recommendations, and I’ve accumulated four articles (pictured). However, if I want to add some tasks for today and the latter in the future, at this time, I must first click on “10 Homepage Recommendations” and then select “Create Task”. However, suppose I want to add a key result, such as “publish 10 articles in the minority by the end of the year”, then I can only add such a task by modifying the entire goal and again cumbersome settings in the key result column.
In general, maybe I don’t use OKRs. This software violated my second principle of “easy to use”, so after forcing myself to use it for a week, I regretted it. It was never used again.
target map
The second is the target map. There are also some problems with the operation logic of this software, even if I use it for some time, I still can’t get used to its logic. Nevertheless, its operation logic is much better than Vision. When I open the software, I see my short-term goals (summer vacation plan) and long-term goals (100 newsletters), and I can also see the deadline for the task. Click on the target to enter it to create a new task.
We can see the remaining days for the goal, goal progress, number of task completions, and goal timing. Swipe right on any task to time it. Although this is a task that I often forget to use, we can share the focus time beautifully, and you can also see the day, week, and year timing statistics in the summary. In my use, this function has almost replaced my other Pomodoro App. In addition to tasks with a fixed date, we can also create a recurring, or repeating, task. Of course, you can also see your “Goal Achieved” on the homepage. Therefore, the goal map can indeed help us achieve short-term or long-term goals to some extent. That’s why I like this app so much.
The reason I don’t use this software very often is that I really don’t have time to sit still and set goals this semester. So at this time, what I need is not a tool to help me achieve specific goals, but to help me sort out my daily tasks or sudden tasks, meetings, or some tasks for the next week.
As a result, Todoist is the software that best fits my daily learning status after screening. Minority bigwigs such as Tp and others have written detailed introduction and usage articles about related applications. So, I won’t go into details here. What confuses me, though, is that I can’t build a mission like “Monday to Wednesday, I’m going to do this”, which is nothing compared to the goal map. However, Todoist’s natural semantic recognition and fast new tasks make me feel almost no resistance and distortion when I create new tasks, which is a natural occurrence. Another feature is that I can create subsets or Sections under a large category to better categorize weekly reading and writing tasks and know what the task theme for that week is. In this way, you can better focus on the core idea (pictured).
memorandum
Frankly, at first I didn’t think Memo was a useful out-of-the-box app. Because when I first used it on the iPad, the title was large and the text font was small, including when I used the memo on the computer. So in my opinion, I have never thought that the memo is a good application for recording my thoughts. On Android phones, the most similar app I use is Hammer Notes. However, after I switched to the iPhone 13, when I opened the mobile version of the memo again, I suddenly became enlightened. He was able to create smart folders like Cubox to keep all the notes of the same tag together. Of course, you can also create your own filtering rules by files, mentioned people, etc. I myself are categorized by different platform tags according to different platform content: one is a minority, the other is my own Newsletter. Because I plan to exercise my ability to create immediately when I pick up my phone during fragmented time (such as commuting and toileting).
Before using Notes, flomo was my most used app. However, it gradually made me feel a sense of disgust, and I don’t think PARA is a very useful system that is worth imitating. There is another concept of group identity involved here, but I will not expand it here. One of flomo’s biggest strengths is its tag hierarchy, but this can be replaced by hashtags like #psychology #behavior. So, in just a few days of using the memo, I was sure it was going to be the only app I would use to collect ideas on my phone, and I wouldn’t have to download all kinds of other apps.
deal with
Bookmory: handles all reading notes highlighting and sharing
Bookmory is an amazing app I stumbled upon, and it was shared by a minority in one issue of Pie Review. First of all, it is a very beautiful application, and when used as a whole, each element is only connected. The search for books in both Chinese and English is very fast, and I haven’t come across a book that I can’t find yet. For example, the same book “May You Get What You Want” cannot be found in Dimo Study. Not only that, we can also set the overall color of the app, I chose a pink that matches the iPhone 13. After adding a book, go to the book details page.
We can find the edit book label, and click on the label to see other books associated with the label, from which we can jump directly to other books; we can also see the number of pages we read (paper books), percentage, Or a record of reading progress such as location; and the most important thing is that we can view all the excerpts of the book at the same time.
For book excerpts, it also provides several modes: tick, favorite, copy text, comment, generate excerpts that can be saved and share pictures. ☑︎ It is convenient to record the number of times of reviewing the content after reading this excerpt several times. You can see which excerpts are most useful to you; comments allow us to record our own reflections and opinions on this excerpt. As for sharing, we can choose from three different types of images for sharing book excerpts: solid color, gradient, and image.
Zotero & Liquid text: process all papers
I use Zotero’s official Chrome plugin to collect all the data I need and organize by creating subsets. For example, this semester will be writing a dissertation on career choices and personality, so I put all the Primary resources in the psychological “personality” subset and name it Project. In fact, I think PARA is the most suitable for use here, but I think about it, it is too troublesome. I’ve been looking at Liquidtext for a long time and didn’t buy it until the other day because it seemed like I could finally use what it has. Overall, this app gave me a huge surprise, one because it helped me save a lot of time in note-taking, and I could organize some highlights together, instead of rummaging through the content, and generate through them own understanding of this particular part of knowledge.
Matter & Cubox
Cubox is used to collect Chinese content. The analysis of Cubox is very good, and the highlight sharing is also very beautiful. Not only can I quickly forward and collect articles on the official account through the assistant, but also through exporting as md and importing into the article database of Notion related tags. English content and Newsletter, I choose to use Matter to collect. Matter is an English language that everyone is familiar with. In addition to the poor support of Chinese content, it has a very good resource In-Out synchronization function. Take synchronizing the highlighted content of articles to Notion as an example, the operation is very simple: follow the prompts, copy their templates to your notion database, and then connect to the account of the database. The whole process takes no more than 3 minutes.
Notion database
From time to time, I’ll organize some content into my Notion database. Notion has two purposes for me, one is to communicate with the outside world by building a homepage , as my own expandable digital business card; the other is to be used as a database to collect everything that can be collected as much as possible. My homepage showcases the works I have written, articles I have read in various fields, and political or psychological videos I have watched, etc.
Currently, Notion is my main processing software for collecting and organizing my notes. I have created a Psychological Repository where I plan to put all my Psychological related ebooks, notes, pdfs, etc. (pictured). I separate all the psychological content into different genres and then integrate them together through my own thinking skills.
output
Lamy 2000 & German Lighthouse or 80g A4 paper
Sometimes, I choose to do freelance writing in the form of paper, pen, and notebook. Because I can focus more on my own thoughts. For example, when writing my Xiaomi article of about 16,000 words, I write one piece of A4 paper (front and back) every day, and sometimes two A4 pieces of paper. The next day, you may continue to write later, or you may revise the content of the previous day (see your inspiration and mood for the day). I ended up writing 8 pieces of paper by hand. I chose the lighthouse book and 80g paper simply because in my past experience they don’t smear. In China, I often use KOKUYO’s book. The quality of German lighthouses is much better than Moleskine. Of course, sometimes I also use a pencil.
Heptabase
Heptabase is the pioneer of whiteboard applications. Regardless of the ideas and development prospects published on Ghost or Medium from the very beginning, the principal Alan seems to be unmatched by other Heptabase, or Heptabase-like (such as Scrintal) applications. Don’t get me wrong, other collaborative whiteboard apps like Miro are great. Here I just spit on the scrintal of Heptabase’s crappy parody.
Speaking of the application itself, it can both input and output. The advantage of output is that we can open many cards at the same time, and use it as a document for output writing and as a data for viewing. This semester I have a political philosophy class that I particularly like, a three-paragraph mini essay almost every two to three weeks, and a three- to five-page paper in November. At present, I have completed two high-quality small essays in this way. After that, I am looking forward to its real-time synchronization, mobile app, web version and other functions.
iA Writer
The cleanliness and tidyness of iA writer makes me not dissatisfied at all. It makes it easy for me to put content on Medium because I have a weekly Reflection for an Internet education class that I submit via Medium. In addition, its overall style design is more like a group of people who write traditionally, a group of guys who need to focus on writing. It is also suitable for academic writing, by setting the title and subtitle to the left, which is exactly the same format as my graduation thesis requires. Typewriter mode plus the default retro style is perfect for an old-school guy like me. In the latest version, the function of wiki link has also been added. However, I personally think it is too basic compared to other notes that feature the “double chain” function. I have never used it, just focus on writing. . The only downside is that iA Writer for iOS & iPad OS is the same price as Mac OS. If I bought them all, my wallet couldn’t afford it.
This article was written with iA Writer. This full-screen black text on a white background and a flashing blue cursor made me linger on it like a tour of the Peach Blossom Spring. After a long time in the minority watching the use and insights of different people on efficiency software, I finally have a deeper understanding of the software I use, and finally have my own way of processing information and content. Although I only listed these 14 softwares, for reading, I still have subscriptions to some traditional media such as Sanlian Life Weekly, Caixin and Southern Weekly; and traditional foreign media such as Atlantic. After gradually withdrawing from online information, I once again returned to the magazines or newspapers that I often browsed in elementary school.
The medium, McLuhan wrote, is an extension of man, just as a weapon is an extension of brotherhood. The important thing is the people themselves, not the tools themselves; the important thing is how we use these tools, not how the tools should be used; the important thing is that different people have different usages, not homogenization, standardized usage process and Skill. People are not defined, and so are tools. They should be your weapons for dismantling knowledge, not some deified symbol or some clustered label.
PS: I also bought the Kindle scribe, and I expect to see you in a week after it arrives. You can pay more attention to the minority or me.
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