Computer Apps I Recommend
Some tools I’ve found to be really helpful!
(For reference — I’m a mac user and a university student, and can afford to pay for a few subscriptions)
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Speechify
Just plop any websites you want to read into their link clipper and it’ll save an audio recording on your phone. I have around 45 min every day where I’m walking on campus, commuting, cooking, doing chores, etc. where I listen to stuff. This works as a sort of reading list, but one that I actually keep up on and gets added to roughly as quickly as it gets read! (it doesn’t usually build up)
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Text sniper
I find this to be extra helpful lately because it makes it super easy to copy anything into an LLM prompt! A surprising amount of web text / pdf text isn’t easy to highlight and copy.
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Fantastical
I’m considering moving to notion calendar, but other than that this is the best integration of a reminders app + calendar app that I’ve seen. It lets you drag reminders onto the calendar which is super awesome if you want to specify a time when you’re gonna work on a task and view it as part of your calendar events.
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Anki
I wish I found out about spaced repetition sooner! Especially if you’re in school and you actually care about remembering anything you learn in 5 years that you don’t plan on actively doing every day. If you’re gonna spend 4 years in university learning random stuff you may as well remember it. Not to mention, if you hear a nice story about your grandpa, just add a card for “what’s a good story about your grandpa?” and you’re guaranteed to remember it for as long as you’re using Anki. This is like a huge superpower imo. Cost: like 10 min / day, Benefit: the ability to remember anything you care about, forever!
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F.lux
This one is really great! It syncs the blue light coming out of your screen with the sun cycle at your location. There are a ton of reasons why getting blasted with blue light is bad for you, but it’s also just a much more pleasant experience when your computer syncs with the sun cycles like this.
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Dark Mode wallpaper
I like using a solid grey-white background during the day and solid black background when the sun goes down. This is a great free option for setting different wallpapers that trigger when the sun goes up / down.
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Fatebook chrome extension
Press command+shift+T to make a prediction! Get calibrated!
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Inbox when ready / Ochi
I noticed that a lot of the time, either when it’s time to switch my attention to whatever I’m working on next, or just get bored with my current task I’d catch myself impulsively pressing the key strokes: new tab, “gmai-“ without even thinking about it. Interestingly, if I remembered some embarrassing interaction or the midterm I just did bad on, I’d do the same. If it wasn’t gmail, it would be the built-in mail app, instagram, or twitter. If you’re like me and impulsively check your twitter / instagram you should get something like “SelfControl,” “Freedom,” “Ochi,” or one of the other apps that do this. I found Ochi to be the best for me because it’s cheaper than Freedom and has an option to set up times of the day where apps / websites are blocked. SelfControl seems cool too and it’s free. If your main issue is gmail, you should totally get “Inbox when ready.” It gives you a quick prompt that makes sure you really need to open the app and I found this to be super helpful.
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HiddenBar
Pretty essential if you’re a mac user imo. A lot of mac apps come with menu bar items that can’t be removed. Mac doesn’t have a built-in way to hide menu bar items so I use this to fight the clutter.
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Magnet
Also pretty essential if you’re a mac user imo. Lets you drag a window to the top of your screen to fully enlarge it and left / right for split-screen without having to “Enter Full Screen” or “Tile Window to Left/Right of Screen”.
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Arc
Pretty cool! I dunno. I’m not gonna push it too hard but I generally like arc.
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LLMs
If you were told 5 years ago that you can pay $20 a month and get access to a website that’ll literally answer graduate-level math / CS with a single prompt, I’m sure you’d pay like 4x the price. I pay for gpt, Claude, and Cursor.
Citing my sources: Thanks for all the reccomendations Dad :)