In the last few years, I have read quite a few articles and listened to some podcasts in which people (not necessarily from the Data Science field) shared their favorite tools that boosted their productivity. I experimented with a good share of them, however, the majority just did not click and I abandoned them soon after starting. But after time, a few of them stuck and I am using them pretty much on a daily basis ever since.
Spoiler alert: Even though a good IDE can be a great productivity booster, I will not mention any in the list below, as there are many choices out there and everyone can have their personal preferences. For me, Jupyter Lab is the go-to tool for Notebooks (it has quite a few very handy features which the regular Notebooks do not have), while I use VS Code/PyCharm for scripts.
In this article, I wanted to share with you what my setup is and why I like it. Naturally, this is a very subjective topic and I am not saying this is the best one of all the infinite possibilities. That’s why I would really like to hear any tips or remarks about your experiences in the comments!
Note-taking – Bear
For quite some time I was using the default Notes app on a MacBook, however, it was lacking a few features that would be really helpful for my daily use. Personally, I use the notes app for much more than notes – I try to build a knowledge base of sorts (different pieces of information I want to keep for later and sorted by topics), I use it for task planning and to-do lists (I know there are a lot of great apps for this, but I like to keep it simple), drafting articles, keeping lists of books I want to read, etc.
That is when I found out about Bear and I’ve been using it ever since. In short, it’s a very simple (yet stylish) text editor for Markdown notes. But there are a few features which in my opinion stand out and are worth mentioning:
- elegant and intuitive design.
- allows for storing code snippets (including highlights) for quite a few programming languages. That’s why it’s a great tool for a knowledge base!
- following up on the knowledge base, the multi-level hashtag system is great for organizing your notes. For example, assume you want to write a draft of a Medium article and store it together with all the other drafts. Then you can just put
#medium/draftsin the note and Bear will handle the rest. And after you are done, moving it to the published directory is as simple as changing that line to#medium/published. To be honest, at first I was not convinced to this way of organizing notes, but after a brief period, it grew on me and is actually very intuitive and fast! - in-line support for images and photos – great for storing relevant screenshots.
- interactive tick boxes for to-do lists.
- the notes are stored in plain text and also are very easy to export to most of the common file formats.
- in-app focus mode hides pretty much anything aside from the blank note, so you can do deep work on whatever is on your mind.
Additionally, you can use most of the features of Bear for free. One of the features that might make you want to consider the premium option is the sync between all the devices. I was going to get the subscription as I was spending considerable amounts of time on the go (long commute times), however, this is not the case anymore in the pandemics period. But I will definitely give it a try after!
Content management – Pocket
Pocket is a browser extension/app developed by the Mozilla Corporation, which allows you to store any piece of online content (article, news, video, etc.) for later viewing. I frequently use it for storing articles or videos I find on the go and do not have time for viewing at that time. When you create an account, all your content is synced across all devices, so you can easily store an article for later on your phone and later easily pull it up on your desktop.
There are also a few other nice things about Pocket. First, you can use custom tags, which allow you to sort the content into categories of your own design. Another feature worth mentioning is the distraction- and often ad-free reader page within Pocket. If you wanted to read an article from a website with many distracting elements, Pocket allows you to read the extracted piece on a nice and clean page. Lastly, if you are looking for inspiration or want to catch up on current news, you can use the discover tab to see suggested content (also possible to tailor-make it to your preferences).
There is also a premium mode with other fancy features, however, for my use case, the free account is good enough.
Browser management – OneTab
You can probably relate to having multiple tabs open in your browser while researching some topic or working on a project, sometimes to the point where the text header is illegible. And when you want to take a break and open even more unrelated tabs, it gets even worse… That’s where OneTab comes to the rescue. It’s a free browser extension, which enables you to convert all the open tabs into a list, which is then stored in a separate tab. You can use that feature many times, each list then comes with its timestamp.
For example, a few weeks ago I was attending a webinar about hacking methods and was doing some reading on SQL injections. I did not finish going over all the articles I pulled up, so with one click I converted all the tabs into a list like in the following screenshot.
As you see, it is easy to restore/delete all the stored tabs with one clock. For me, OneTab is a great tool for calling it quits for some time and snapshotting the current state of the browser for future sessions. Also, for your privacy, the saved websites are only stored locally.
Pomodoro technique – Tomato-Timer
I’m not a die-hard pomodoro technique fan, who always completes 4 sets before taking a longer break. In my current position, it can be quite difficult to plan 2 hours of uninterrupted work, as there are the planned meetings with different teams, the unplanned meetings, and so on… However, I do find it useful even for shorter periods of time. One or two sprints of heavy focus on a task can already be quite helpful and for me, it’s easier not to succumb to any distractions when I know the timer is counting down.
Most of the time, I use the TomatoTimer — I just keep it open in one tab and wait for the chimes indicating the 25 mins are over. In general, any timer works just as well, be it a timer on your phone or the kitchen utensil.
Ultimate focus mode – SelfControl
Have you ever found yourself absentmindedly going to a website (be it Facebook, Twitter, other social media, etc.) and then "just a minute" turned into 10 or more minutes? If the answer is yes, SelfControl can be your new best friend! It’s a free app for macOS, in which you create a blocklist of websites that you want to avoid and then specify the time for which you want to block them. Once it’s done, there is no mercy or turning back. You can delete the app or restart the computer, but the block will stay in place. Quite hardcore, but very effective.
There are also alternative apps that you can use for focus mode, some of which enable blocking apps as well. From my quick research, this one is the most strict one, and – to be honest – I only had to block websites, so it suited my needs perfectly.
Wrap-up
That was it, the list of 5 tools that help me boost my Productivity. The first 4 I use on a daily basis and are deeply integrated into my workflow. I used to use SelfControl in the part more frequently, but with the passage of time I got more self-control (bad pun intended) and I do not need to use it that much anymore.
Sometime after writing this article, I finished reading Nir Eyal’s Indistractable and was pleasantly surprised to see that there is some overlap in the techniques that he suggests for being more productive. For example, he mentions using Pocket for storing the articles for distraction-less reading (or possibly listening to them while taking a walk) or using the SelfControl as the ultimate blocker of websites we want to avoid.
What are your favorite tools for boosting productivity? As mentioned in the intro, I would be very happy to read about your tips and experiences in the comments. You can reach out to me on Twitter.
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