productivity

All my posts about productivity.

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My Alfred workflows original

by Freek Van der Herten – 2 minute read

Alfred is a fantastic tool for macOS that allows you to be more productive. The app allows you to install workflows to make it more powerful. In this short blog post, I'd like to share the workflows that I have installed.

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Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

blog.nuclino.com

Personally, when I want to work on something I just turn off all notification on my Mac.

Probably reached for the phone. Turned off the alarm. Glanced at the time. Scrolled through the Slack notifications. Went through the emails. You will likely continue doing it throughout the day, approximately 2,617 more times, according to some studies. We all do it, and despite all the virtues of digital minimalism, completely giving up those habits is extreme and, arguably, unnecessary. Yet we live in a culture obsessed with productivity and these harmless distractions are wreaking havoc on it.

Read more [blog.nuclino.com]

We’re optimizing ourselves to death

medium.com

Zander Nethercutt provides some great insights in the mechanisms in play that can lead to burnout.

When we see long weekends and think “work before play,” when we see Friday nights and think “sleep before clubs,” when we see escalators as accelerators and not opportunities to “just take a second,” we’re nothing more than hyperrational prisoners making a decision that would be inaccurately characterized as a dilemma because the answer is obvious.

Read more [medium.com]

Configuring PhpStorms code generation original

by Freek Van der Herten – 4 minute read

I've been using PhpStorm for quite some time now, but never took the effort to fix a few minor annoyances I had with it. Getting rid of the default comment for new PHP files First up, when creating a new PHP file or class you PhpStorm will add this comment block like this by default: /** * Created…

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Unslacking Tideways Company

beberlei.de

Benjamin Eberlei wrote a post on why and how he got rid of Slack in his company.

We have moved away from Slack at Tideways over the last three months, because I found Slack is already annoying, even with just a four person team (plus the occasional freelancer). For me, it disrupts deep work phases and knowledge lost in the depth of chat history.

Read more [beberlei.de]

My current setup (2018 edition) original

by Freek Van der Herten – 8 minute read

After tweeting out a screenshot, it often get questions around which editor, font or color scheme I'm using. Instead of replying to those questions individually I've decided to just write down the settings and apps that I'm using. IDE I mainly program PHP. Mostly I develop in PhpStorm. Here's a…

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Replacing standard CLI tools with better ones

remysharp.com

Remy Sharp, a well known JavaScript developer, published a cool list of standard CLI tools replacements.

I'm not sure many web developers can get away without visiting the command line. As for me, I've been using the command line since 1997, first at university when I felt both super cool l33t-hacker and simultaneously utterly out of my depth. Over the years my command line habits have improved and I often search for smarter tools for the jobs I commonly do. With that said, here's my current list of improved CLI tools.

Read more [remysharp.com]

Doing less original

by Freek Van der Herten – 6 minute read

Last week I stumbled upon this article titled "GitLabbers share how to recognize burnout". It list these points to recognize burnout: You're constantly tired You no longer enjoy things Your job performance suffers Your relationships are strained (You have a hard time remembering…

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