Scott & CJ’s Fave Productivity Apps & Web Apps

Welcome to Syntax. Today, we are talking about some of our favorite productivity apps and just generally apps that we use around our computer to get stuff done. I'm a big fan of this. And as you are about to hear, CJ has a different position.

It's going to be a lot of fun. I have a lot of cool stuff to share, and there's a brand new text editor, Node, whatever on the table that I have absolutely been loving that we will get deep into.

Now one thing that I hate is spending a lot of time trying to figure out why something went wrong.

There's a lot of reasons why it's hard to figure out. You get into situations where the error doesn't really lead you to exactly where the problem is. It gives you maybe some clues. Maybe it just gives you a bunch of junk, or maybe perhaps you don't even know the error JS happening because you just don't have that type of visibility. And this is where a tool like Sentry comes into play. Sentry is the best tool for finding bugs, fixing bugs, making sure that you're able to see what happens. And with their new SEER platform, you're able to really get to the core issue of anything that's going on regardless of what's happening. It has been fantastic to use, and, honestly, it's the thing I'm most stoked about in Century these days. Well, not not these days. I mean, there's a lot of stuff I'm still stoked about. Thank you to Century for bringing Syntax to you. So let's get into it. I have a bunch of different classifications of apps, things like note taking, or terminals, our, text editors, maybe some AI tools to do lists, all kinds of stuff, stuff that we're using, text to speech. So I am a big text to speech person on my phone.

I'm always using the Apple dictation, which isn't always great. It's kind of, not good, but any other solution is much harder to use. And there is I will talk about the what I'm using on the desktop here in just a second, but the version of this on the phone is much more difficult. I'm I've been using Super Whisper for this, and Wes talked about it a few shows back. And at the time, I hadn't really heard of it. I just been mostly using the Apple dictation, and I didn't really think there was something worth moving off of that for. But I found Super Whisper, and it's so good. I hold down the function key, and then I just talk into my microphone, which is always here. And it does a really great job of getting everything absolutely correct, and it should get the word Sanity correct, which Apple does not.

Yes. Look. It says century right there. Yeah. It actually got it. I was a little concerned about not seeing it type out as I spoke because that's the one thing that the Apple one does really well.

Yeah. But it gets it correct. It gets it. It's more accurate every single time. So I gotta love that. The reason why it got century correct is because I was able to have an auto change here from the word century to century, because that's always what it hears when you say it.

And you can add these kind of things anywhere like Tolinski. These things always screw up my last name, so I will add one for Talinsky.

And I gotta say, it's been so nice to use this thing. You can do push to to talk. You can toggle.

You can customize this thing really, really well.

As for pricing, though, it it isn't free necessarily.

It is like he says, I have twelve minutes of pro left. And after using this for it says only three minutes. That's total talk time because I've been using this a Scott, and it says I've only used three minutes. So I've done three minutes total of talk time.

For that, yeah, you can expect to pay $8 a month. Although, it is free for unlimited use of small voice models, so I don't think you have to pay for this.

This is a tool that I'm really liking enough that I feel like I want to pay for it, which JS an, a feeling that I get with, good software.

And I've tried a couple other voice to text out, and a lot of them are more expensive than this. So I found the pricing to be very reasonable.

I have really enjoyed using this. And as somebody who uses text to speech all the time, I've been really loving it. Especially, CJ, have you gotten into this to use text to speech in your AI coding sessions?

I have not. I'll talk on it after you finish with the tool, but I don't really use text to speech much at all. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta say, there's something really magical about using text to speech

with an agent, and you're talking to it because you can give it a lot more context, yeah, more easily than typing. And I'm a fast typist.

It's more or less like I'm able to I I'm a I'm a better talker. Talking is a skill of mine. So for me, it it feels really nice to be able to just talk at the thing and then hit go or whatever. So Super Whisperer JS my pick for text to speech.

Nice. Speech to text.

Yeah. I I guess I I've never came around to talking to my computer. I I I don't know if I'm just stuck in my old ways, but I just remember the models and the apps being so bad and getting things wrong. And I also, like, don't like talking in public, so I wouldn't talk to my phone in public. I realize at home, I'm just in my office, so I could do that. But, yeah, I am I'm kinda stuck in my ways. I don't really use text to speech much at all. But I have one of those Bluetooth, microphone guys Not at all. In a business suit talking really loud all the time? No. And I I actually don't like it when people are on the phone in public. I hate it. I hate it. And I guess I I now that I think about it, like, if you are doing this in public, people might just assume you're on the phone because people are just talking to themselves all the time. Yeah. I don't know. I think I need to spend a week trying out tools like this, and maybe I'll get around to it.

Because personally, I just I just type I just type my stuff. And for recording videos, sometimes I like to get, like, a semblance of a script or a semblance of what I wanna say out, and I have used Apple's text to speech for that. And and that works just fine, but I'm not using it all the time, so I haven't really found the scenarios where it it's not working.

I will say the idea of talking to an AI sounds really cool.

I tested out, the new Gemini voice model that came out a few months ago, and they had a whole flow where you basically just talk to it, and then you can choose the voice that it responds with. And so that was a pretty interesting experience. I haven't tried it again after that, but like you were saying, it's somewhat magical just to be able to it's like you're talking to someone, and they're giving you ideas and and, being able to play off of what you say. So I might I might give it a try. I might give it a try after, hearing how much you like Super Whisper.

Yeah. It's it's a nice experience. For me, I I just locked it as a hold the function key to talk, and it's really easy to get on and off.

And yeah. And I gotta tell you something about people being on the phone. We were at a fancy dinner recently on our vacation.

And first of all, I don't really know what was going on with this couple, but they were they were both a little rough in terms of manners or whatever. And this guy, the way he talked to the waiter was, like, really disturbing me Wes he'd be like, I'm gonna get the steak. Node way he he said it was so much more aggressive.

Like, oh, could I order the steak, or could I get the steak, or whatever? He's like, I'm a get the steak. Like, it it sounded so like Give me the steak.

Yeah. Give me the steak. Yeah. It was pretty much that's what it that's how it came across. But he was treating the waiter waiter really poorly the whole time. So that it was just, like, aggressive. But at one point, at this I I get fancy dress up restaurant, this man starts FaceTiming his buddy, who's also at a nice dinner date with his date at a different restaurant. And I can only assume that both of well, the the the woman he was with was, like, so checked out, and I can only assume the other date was also checked out at that ESLint. Because I was just like, who is just gonna and it was like a it would I would say it's a good ten minute FaceTime at dinner with his buddy at another dinner. And these were fancy dinners. So yeah. Woof. This sounds like a modern Seinfeld episode.

No kidding. Right? I had to sit next to this guy. Alright. Let's bring on to the next one, which is, Kiro.

Kiro, you may have seen at some point here, it was recently announced. It's a new Agentec IDE in the realm of something like Cursor or Windsurf.

It is Versus Node Bos, like all of these are, and it is from the folks at Amazon.

Just that little description might turn you off. Because I know for me, when I was like, okay. Everybody's got one of these now. It's just their version of of Cursor or Windsurf.

But Hero does quite a bit that's Node.

And what they have done is they kinda have set back and waited for all these other agents or or, like, even workflows that we've all discovered that are really necessary workflows for getting good things out of AI. And it's one of the reasons why people like Cloud Code because it does set you up with more of a plan. This is built into this app in a way that is just really lovely.

It is obviously Versus Node. Nothing too crazy there. And I think it has all the normal Versus Code stuff. I just have my sidebar turned off and all that. You know? I turn off all the unnecessary stuff. They have done enough customizing this thing to make it look decent. They have it a a vibe code more or a spec coding more. And this one really, really speaks to me. Being able to use the plan first, then build, create requirements, and design before coding starts. And all you have to do is you click to create a new spec, and then you tell it what your spec could be. I could even use my, text to speech here to say, create a theme mode for this to give us Yarn, light themes, but also maybe some fun themes too, like Christmas. This isn't the spec. So what I just told it isn't the spec. It's then going to use AI to create the spec for you, which is a detailed plan in markdown that explains exactly the feature. It even gives it in multiple steps, kind of says goes through exactly what Node to do. So it says this feature will implement a comprehensive theme system for for the SvelteKit application. I didn't even tell it's Svelte. Edge was able to, crew that on its own. Different themes and designs, Yarn Node, seasonal fun themes like Christmas.

The theme system should persist in user preferences. Sanity, like, was able to take my simple request and turn it into a deep document with requirements, including acceptance criteria. So, it gives it, a markdown where it has requirements, acceptance criteria, accept requirement number two. As a user, I want access to fun seasonal themes. Acceptance criteria. When the user selects a Christmas tree, then the application shall display with festive colors, decorations, and holiday theme styling. Like, awesome. Require number three, I want an intuitive theme selector interface, which I didn't say I needed, but this thing was able to infer that if you had themes, it would absolutely need that as well. And so it builds out this entire document.

You read through it, and you say, alright. This is exactly what I want this feature to look. So then you can click, like, move to design phase. And when you move to design phase, it creates the document. It reads your your things, and it starts to decide how exactly it's going to do the thing that you've asked it to do. So the the hero tab here now has a spec that says theme mode. So it's given this this spec that existed, and this spec is now creating exactly what it should be doing here. It's reading my files. It's checking everything out. It's reading the files. It now will create a comprehensive design document, and then it created a design document of which you can explore and read through it, which is so phenomenal because, like, really, what this is doing is it's creating all this deep planning for you. Because many people, the big thing they have with AI is they say it's veering too far off course or it's changing things it's not supposed to be doing, and a lot of those problems can be solved with these documents.

And in the past, I've had to create these documents by myself or try to get AI to create them, and AI is like, you want tailwind in this no. I don't have it in my my repo. You know everything about my repo.

I didn't ask for that. So this one JS reading your files and then creating that document. You can see exactly, like, what it's going to add. I can see the colors for the Christmas theme, etcetera, etcetera.

And then you can move to implementation plan. So this is like a very structured way to work with AI. And to me, this is such a killer feature for this app because there's nothing that you necessarily can't do in other coding flows here, but the interface, the structure of it all, the ease of it all, to me, it is very good, and I've been enjoying this. You this this is definitely going to take over, my cursor usage right now, just because in the short time that I've been using this thing, I gotta say it's fantastic. And, again, it's Versus Node Bos, so all your extensions, themes, whatever,

they move right over. Yeah. This is so anybody listening to the pod audio only, the the interface initially is kinda like three columns. You've got your typical chat window.

And I guess from what I what I understand now is, like, you go from very vague high level requirements to some very detailed specs and plans.

And then from there, it's kind of like your traditional Versus Node layout where you have, like, your file tree and then, like, the the documents that are opened up. But to me, it kind of seems like a a merge between Cursor and, Cloud Code, which I've I've just finished, learning about and using. Because that's one of the things I really liked about Cloud Code JS how well it sticks to the plan that it creates. Because with Cursor, you you already described, like, what I've tried to do before, like, create a plan dot m d and then, go through each phase of the plan. But for whatever reason, Cursor just keeps veering off the plan. It'll, like, go down rabbit holes or won't listen to, like, what you told it to do. But this seems like it's built in to keep it aligned. Probably Yarn of their system prompt or whatever else as you're as you're coding makes it make sure that it keeps checking back for that spec it generated and for those tasks. So, yeah, I I like this. I'll definitely gonna give it a try. Yeah. Yeah. This this kind of thing

people underestimate just how much of an impact this type of document has or these types of documents because it's created a task document. It's created a few different things.

These things really make a big difference, and you can then give it again, generate steering docs. Again, guide agent behavior and responses, automate repetitive automate repetitive tasks with smart triggers. And, there's even a connect external tools and data sources so you get a a UI for MCP servers that's more integrated. And you know what? They added rounded corners, folks, so it doesn't look like a Windows app anymore. And no. I I this is so stupid, but the rounded corners kinda get me. I I it's like the dumbest thing in the whole world. Yeah. I don't know. I fall for it. I'm

swooned by it. Yeah. I like I like their icon too. It's a little ghosty.

It's a little ghosty. The more icons I can have that have ghosts on them, the better. I have another tool with a ghost on it, which maybe would be good to get into next.

So what are you doing for editor experience right now, CJ?

Yeah. So like I mentioned, I'm really just using Cursor, and then I've dabbled into Cloud Code now. But I in using Cloud Code and seeing how good it was at constructing plans, I wanted that inside of Cursor. So I haven't used them yet, but I'm starting to do some research because people have actually built out MCP servers that can keep Cursor aligned with a plan and with, like, a checklist of to dos. Wes, essentially, the the m you set up the tool, the MCP server, and then it will keep checking back in with it after it finishes tasks very similar to what Cloud Code does. So I haven't done it yet, but I'm gonna see if I can get a similar experience inside of Cursor by using, like, a a planning and and task management, MCP server.

And I'd say, ultimately, like, adding MCP servers to Cursor really just make it that much better. So, like, adding the context seven MCP server, which gives you automatic documentation.

There's the playwright m p MCP server.

This is what I was using with Cloud Code, but you you can use it with Cursor too. It literally launches the web browser. It can click around on things and then read from the terminal and basically do developer testing like we do whenever we're building out the website. So, ultimately, my editing experience with Cursor is enhanced by all these MCP MCP tools. I'm excited to try Kiro, but I I don't know if they have something unique enough that can't necessarily just be added later in, Cursor with MCP's MCP tools.

But looking at Decuro, it is free to try right now. It's in preview, and so they don't have any pricing just yet. And you get to you you get a certain number of credits for Claude's sonnet. So that is a reason to potentially bounce between these editors as you get some free credits as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And, you know, ultimately, you're not trying to find the best editor. You're trying to find the best editor for you.

Yeah. And that very well may be just some sort of dumb shit editor that doesn't do anything.

You Node? Like, that could that could be your ideal workflow. I don't ever understand why people get so upset about other people's, choices in these regards. Like, why not change it with VIM? Because I don't want to.

It doesn't it doesn't speak to me. You know? I I can use VIM just fine. Don't wanna do it. I I like having more UI. I'm a UI guy. Like I said, I'm getting swooned by rounded corners. Do you think I have a, patience to use VIM? Yeah. If you get swooned by rounded corners, you're not gonna use VIM. That's for sure.

Okay.

Let's talk terminals.

Which terminal are you using currently, CJ? Yep. So I use iTerm two, and I have been using it for, like, at least ten years now. I haven't switched. ITerm two version three? Something like that. Yeah.

It's the, like, the alternative terminal for Mac, and it works just fine for me. Like, I I I will say this. I have used the, terminal feature inside of cursor because recently, I figured out that you you can actually prompt, and then it will come up with the CLI command. Like, it's really good for things like, I'm trying to come up with an FFmpeg command for converting a file. So I can describe it in plain English that passes it to an LLM, and then it comes back with the actual terminal command that you can use. So I will admit, that was nice inside of cursor, but I still just type out my commands by hand inside of iTerm two. I haven't, evolved into using anything like that. I will say iTerm two has AI integration. Like, you can add an OpenAI API key, and it can actually you can prompt it and and have it generate commands for you. But, yeah, I I keep it super simple. I'm not using any of the fancy new terminals. I've been using iTerm two for a long time, and I like it. Yeah. I gotta say,

I've been using iTerm two version three for a long time. I always thought that was very funny. The reason I'm I'm even make that joke is that Yeah. Instead of naming it iTerm three, it was like, here's version three of iTerm two, and it's got all these crazy new features. And I was just like, why don't I just call it iTerm three if it's that much more impressive? I have fallen into the world of using Ghostie. Ghostie, again, another cute ghost. What a world we live in. I used to work for a company, Ghostly International. Another cute ghost JS a logo. Ghosty is a fast feature rich cross platform terminal edit emulator that uses platform native UI and GPU acceleration. Basically, its main thing is just that it's a fast terminal. It looks nice. It's Scott, it's kind of like Node nonsense in terms of its additional features.

Like, oh, there's a color themes. You can add color themes. That's one of their listed features. Right? So it's it's what you're not getting is you're not getting something like warp.

I have been using Warp for a long time. That always really upsets people because it requires a login, and they're like, why do you need a login for a terminal? Sure. Fine. Why do you? But at the at the end of the day, it doesn't really affect me that much. I can, you know, sign up with some dummy email and whatever, and it's it's not like they're gonna, you know, come hunt me down or something.

But ghosty, here's my ghosty. I haven't really found my perfect theme for this yet. Hey. I I like ghosty.

It is, it's one of those ones that people, like, talk about as as being like, oh, this this hot new, fast terminal.

And what I like about it, it is it's relatively no nonsense. Like, kind of what I was getting irritated with with warp sometimes is like, oh, you have these blocks and these blocks. Now I'm not even in that same line, and it's selecting things weird. And there's all this there's all these great things about it. Like, you can use your mouse, which I occasionally like to do. It can kill me.

But having a no nonsense term like iTerm two version three or even just the Apple terminal terminal, it it's it's where I've always worked and thrived. So, coming back to this feels like more like a home than than anything else. Node nonsense.

What would you say it does better than iTerm two? Or what are some of the reasons you might use it over iTerm two? It's it's just it's it's more minimalist than iTerm two. There are less features.

What it does better is that it uses, I believe, GPU acceleration, which I don't think iTerm two does. I wanna see, though.

Sure. Starting in iTerm two version 3.2.

Okay.

Text may be drawn with GPU acceleration. So okay. Yeah. And I guess, what are some scenarios where you need that, like, when you're, like, looking at logs or, like, fast text scrolling across the screen, that kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah. And and sometimes, you know, your term is generating a lot of text.

Do I know Node know I Scott a fast computer, so does it does it really impact my life in any way? No. But it's got a cute ghost logo and then say Node nonsense, nice and easy terminal that I I tend to like. So Nice. Does it have AI features that you use as well? No. Okay.

Yep. Which is a plus for me. Because sometimes I'm like, with Warp, it's like trying to do AI when I didn't ask it to. Other times, it's nice when it when I, like, cannot remember that specific command that I don't use often. Like, man, I used to have all the tarball flags memorized by heart, used them, like, without thinking twice, and I haven't done a tarball in so long now that I've I've you know, Node c z. You know, I I I cannot remember the the exact, flags I always use for things. Yeah. And because of that, I would use that type of situation. I have never gotten into using the terminal inside of a text editor.

Same. I like separate. Yeah. I do too.

And I let and I'm okay with, like, window swapping or window switching.

But the cursor one somewhat entices me. I I the thing is I I haven't made it a habit yet, so I don't Node no don't always reach for it. Really, only if it's like, I'm starting if I go off to Google to figure out a command, I'm like, oh, yeah. AI could probably figure this Scott, so then I might use the one inside of cursor.

But, yeah, I like it as a separate app as well. Let's

talk about let's stay on the text note for a little bit. Let's talk about note taking.

How much note taking do you do these days?

A lot, I guess.

But like with all of these categories, I keep it very low tech. And I've been trying to think of better ways to do this for probably, like, three years now, but I keep going back to it. I use Sublime Text. Hell, yeah. Cool. And all what I what I'll do is if I need to take a new note, I'll open a new tab in Sublime Text.

I'll take that note, and then, I don't ever save this as files. I'm basically using the, like, in memory cache of Sublime Text. So anytime I need a new note interesting. If it's not categorized, I'll open a new tab, add it there. It's like a when I take care of that thing, I'll just delete the note. And then I also have, like, a long running tab of stuff that I need to keep track of for, like, longer. And so then if I if that's ever the case, then I'll move it from its own tab into that file or into that tab. So it's literally just text, and I use that exact same thing for my to do list. So I have a text list of things that I need to do.

And because it's text, I can literally move them around in that list if I Node to change their priority. And when they're done, I just delete them. And I have been doing that for years now.

I will say I, I combine that with calendar. Right? So if I need to definitely get a notification of something to happen, that's in my calendar. But if it's just, like, general unstructured things, that's literally just text for me. Yeah. I do love using,

scheduling things on the calendar and stuff. Mhmm. I'll talk a little bit about my to do in a setup. But, folks, you might be, realizing the CJ is pretty minimalist in this setup overall. He's got I never thought about it like this. It's just like Yeah. I don't I don't I use what works instead of Yeah. You don't like to use a lot of apps. And I understand that a lot of people would feel that way too because, oftentimes, people they're like, why are we installing so many apps? But, like, you know, I I kinda like I said, I'm a sucker for good UI. I got some crazy hair going on. It's sticking up. I got, like, a little alfalfa thing.

Sorry that my camera cleats keeps seeming to glitch, folks. Hopefully, our editor cuts around that if you, are noticing that. My apologies.

I use Obsidian. Obsidian is a really fantastic text editor of markdown files. It is a UI on top of markdown, and it uses markdown to do a whole bunch of stuff. There's a billion plug ins if you're the type of person. There's a lot of community themes. You can change everything.

And the only thing I I dislike about Obsidian is that there's no off the shelf easy multiplayer Node, or else I would really love to use this in place of something like Notion, which also Notion is is definitely has its database tech. It can feel slow sometimes. It's trying to shove features that you may not be using, and this is much more simplistic than that.

The, community plug ins are bountiful.

There's just an endless amount of them. They do all kinds of stuff from styling your code, linting your code. There's a day planner, just all kinds of stuff that if you wanted to, like, do a full time study of Obsidian, you could probably make a living off of, being some kind of Obsidian expert because it is very deep.

Another cool thing about Obsidian is that I have a feature set in here that makes a daily Node. So it automatically every time I open the app, it's automatically created a daily note for me. And you might you know, it's just markdown, but there is some UI here. Like, when you are entering front matter, if I do the three dashes for front matter, you can see that it gives me some very, a few different things here that I've created. Like, I created a tag system, and that tag system allows you to browse and find notes based on tags. So anytime we have meetings, I'm taking my own personal Node, I'm tagging it Sanity meeting or I'm tagging it, you know, CJ meeting or whatever, and I can take my notes in here that I can go back and look at. Even, like, give it a created add date, which is less important for these daily notes. I do love this system. You can even create tables with a plug in advanced tables toolbar.

Again, countless features. You can see things in a graph.

Again, today's daily note. There's a command palette. You can create templates and then reuse those things. I use this way more minimalist than I do installing a whole bunch of stuff. I pretty much mostly use this for adding notes, adding, like, notes to myself for later, or, if, like, there's a process that I want to remember, I will put it in here and then be able to look it up later. And the recipe here and there. And I just like it because it's markdown.

And, yeah, you can you can have your Obsidian vault with all of your settings and all those things. You could use their paid syncing platform of this thing. But, ultimately, I sync it with, the Apple files, and it's just markdown.

And then I could just take it with me. You could publish this as a blog if you want. You can publish you can write your whole blog in one folder of this thing and publish that. I mean, there there's a lot you can do with it because it is, again, just markdown. It outputs front matter.

And, you know, one of the things that people like about this is that it does allow you to create links between files. You just do double brackets here. And if this link doesn't exist,

I can click to create it and then start typing, and this will create that connected link for me. So cool. You can click around files and stuff. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. I I like that it's markdown based or markdown backed. I've tried Obsidian before. I think the the main reason I kept going back to Sublime Text is just how fast it launches. Like, it'll I can launch Sublime Text, like, in under a hundred milliseconds versus, like, if I try to load Versus Code or Obsidian or some of these other apps, it's a few seconds before they start up. Especially if you have a ton of files. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And but so I have tried Obsidian. I will mention, I also tried a a tool called Logseq, l o g s e q.

And it's very similar to Obsidian in that it's markdown backed, and it has, like, a community ecosystem of of plugins.

But it has that idea of a daily journal it calls it journals. So every time you open the app, it has a specific file for today's date. Again, I bounce between that and Sublime Text. I feel like if things need to be stored longer term, I'll I'll open up Logseq.

But most of my short term notes are just all inside of, Sublime Text. Yeah. I don't take many short I guess I I do take, like, note taking during meetings. Mhmm. But it's mostly things that I wanna reference later that I'm putting in here. Makes sense. Cool. As for to dos, I'm a big to do guy.

Big, big to do guy. I have really loved this app now for a little while, and I feel like it's flown under the radar. I feel like nobody talks about it but me. And it is tweak.so, tweek.so, and it puts your to dos inside of, like, what looks like kind of like a daily task list calendar kind of thing. And then there's a a sub one for someday, or you can make your own additional, like, if if this one isn't enough for you, you can keep adding additional, like, videos I want to do or something like that. Right? And it's very minimalist because it is just a list of things. If you click on any of these, you can add some extra notes if you add some extra notes. You can add subtasks.

I tend to not do that. I I tend to just use this JS, like, this is the thing I'm doing today. And then that way, I can see very clearly what I'm doing every day. If I can't do it today, I'll drag it to another day. And I'll I'll use colors for things like yellow color for if it's syntax or anything like that.

And, overall, as far as, like, apps go, it is fast. It does use, local data as its data source, so it loads instantly. I've, like, never had any issues with how fast it loads. It's just very nice.

And you can log in with anything. I do pay for this app because, again, I actually really enjoy supporting this app's progress and the developer here. And it's an app that saves my bacon. As somebody who's hyperactive, being able to have my list in front of me is an essential thing for me to get anything done in a focused manner. And this is the one the thing I hate about let me sorry. To do apps, the worst thing about them is they always start simple. They always start very simple, like height or to do list, and then they just start adding nonstop, unnecessary features that complicate the UI or, in general, like, are just trying to do too much. And in the case of height, they were like, you know what'd be great? If we tried to make linear, like, what if we just made linear? Well, linear already exists. Why you make it linear? Your your to do app was really good and minimalist. And then they Node linear, and then they had to close because they ESLint all this money building this linear clone when it's like, you're not gonna beat them at their own game. It's clearly, like, a great app. Yeah. I like this UI that you're showing me here. It it reminds me of those,

printed schedule journals that people used to use. It's, like, super minimal. It's got each day in a column.

Yeah. I like it. Yeah. It's it's Node, and it only gives you one week at a time.

So you're not seeing this endless amount of things. And and that is like a a thing for me JS when I set up systems, if I'm not maintaining and watering those systems, they rot really quickly. And the thing I like about tweak is that it doesn't let that happen necessarily.

You can probably get too into your system, have it be too much to maintain, and then have it Scott. But it is so simple that it tends to just be like, what am I doing today? What am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing this week? And I have a task, that I do, like, first thing on Mondays JS just, like, write out my to dos for the week. So that way, I kind of know what's going on. I know what I'm spending my time on. And then if I don't get to everything, I can honestly move things around, etcetera, etcetera.

So Tweak,

one of my favorite apps that I feel like people don't necessarily talk about. That seems great. That's another one I think I'll I'll give a try because I like the minimal layout. I mentioned it earlier, but I literally just have a text list for my to dos. I'll also mention that, like, I use Trello as well. So I have, like, a a for my personal life, I have a Trello of, like, work that needs to be done around the house or, like, all my side projects and stuff like that. The only thing is I don't check-in on it as often. I guess the stuff on there isn't important because I haven't opened it in, like, two months. But I I know it's there. So if I Yeah. If I need it, it's, like, my list of things to do, things in progress.

So, yeah, I I might reach for for Trello for things like that. But, again, I just have a list of text items, and, they don't I Wes, I don't think of in them in in terms of due dates. Right? I guess if something really needs to be due, I'll just put it on my Google Calendar because that syncs with my phone, and so that will alert me when things need to happen. But for anything that doesn't have a specific due date, it's literally just a a list of markdown text items. I totally get that. I totally understand that, because to me, that makes so much sense. I'd be curious. Have you looked for or seen extensions for Obsidian that give you, like, a to do ESLint? Or because I think one of the stuff like that. Yeah. Like, one of the things that I mean, you were even talking about it where, like, these to these to do apps, like, just get bloated with features. It feels like there's a lot of overlap, because I feel like a lot of people might actually use Notion for their to do lists or for note taking.

Yeah. And so, yeah, I guess I'm curious.

Have you seen things in these other apps, And, like, maybe why do you prefer a tweak over all of those?

Yeah. I tend to like apps that are singular focused on things, because, again, I I don't know. I I probably said this 1,000 times because I the my form of ADHD, makes it so, one, if there's too much going on, I get really, like I don't know where to look. And then that sounds so stupid if there's, like, all my Notion stuff and my to do list and whatever.

I I get so oddly overwhelmed. It's very odd. I I I Sanity it's like a paralysis or something. But then, also, like, for me, like, having a single source that all it is is the stuff I gotta do, if if it's way more easy for me to really utilize it. And I'm the type of person I I I kid you not. I'm like Ron Burgundy.

If it is in my calendar or if it's in my to do list, I will do it.

And if it's not, honestly, I won't even think about it. Like and so I know that if my my wife ever asks me to do anything, like, oh, hey. This, this got broken or something. Can can you, you know, see what you can do to fix it? I'll be like, yeah. And then, like, a week later, hey. Did you ever get around? No. Let me put it in my to do list right now because then I'll actually get it done. Yeah. Yeah. I do use I will say, I do use Notion Calendar, which is an app for calendar.

I like this app. I'm sad that it's Notion Calendar, because it used to be an app called Cron.

And Cron was really beautiful and a minimalist and very, very just nice in general. But now they're, like, integrating with Notion. I suppose that's fine. It is very Node y now.

They haven't really changed a massive amount about it, but there was something nice about it just being Cron. It was a nice free calendar app. So it's you know, no wonder Notion wanted to to buy it because they didn't have a full featured calendar app. I still use it as Notion calendar, and I tend to like it very much at least for the time being. So is it integrated into the Notion UI, or it is a separate app? It's a separate app. Yeah. They can't speak together, and I do not integrate it with Notion at all. Okay. Yeah. Even though I'm sure that would be useful, I'm sure there's a lot of things that would be Node, but, like, I just I just like it as a calendar.

Mhmm. Nice. And you said you use Google Calendar, but are you just using Google Calendar?

Exactly. Yeah. So I Yeah. Use Google Calendar on my personal Gmail and then Google Calendar at work.

Yeah. Works for what I need. I I like that it's integrated with email. So a lot of times, you'll get an email about an event you're attending or you buy tickets to something, and then Gmail just automatically adds it to the calendar, which is nice. Alright. Let's move to email then. Yeah. A lot of focus. I use, Superhuman. We just had them on the show. It's a fast app. It is a nice working app.

It was just purchased by somebody.

Oh, Grammarly.

Not a huge fan of that.

I've really liked you know, I as somebody who had a a beloved podcast that was purchased by a company and then they didn't, screw it up, they just, you know, helped us to make it better.

Yeah. You know, not every acquisition is gonna be a disaster. Our our acquisition went really, really well. But it's hard not to be pessimistic when it is a company like Grammarly that I feel like is fine, but I always thought their pricing was pretty predatory. And now granted, Superhuman's pricing is also pretty predatory, so maybe that's a match made in heaven. But the app is really great. So I use Superhuman. I get to Bos zero every single day no matter what. So it it helps me. And the way I stay on top of things is I snooze to the day that I can actually like, if I can't answer an email right now, I will snooze it to the day I can't answer it and, get rid of everything else. Nice. So I try to get to inbox zero too,

but not every day. It's like a a weird system, I guess, if I could describe it. Because Mhmm. And and the idea of inbox zero is, like, you try to have nothing visible in in your inbox. And with, with Gmail, you can do that via, like, archiving emails or deleting emails or snoozing them.

But I just use heavy I I I make heavy use of archiving or deleting.

And recently, I've gotten in the habit I probably started this about a year ago of deleting absolutely everything unless I'm gonna need it later because I was I was approaching my my storage limit on my Gmail account, and I just had thousands and thousands of unread emails. So I went through and just did searches for, like, password reset emails, which, like, you typically never delete. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's, like, thousands of them, or, like, new account notifications, or, Amazon shipping notifications, or all these things that fill up your inbox that you don't really need except for when you read them once. I went through and deleted all of that, and now I get in the habit of, if an email like that comes in, I just delete it immediately. It immediately goes to the trash. And then if there's something I wanna hang on to, I archive it.

And now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of use my inbox as a to do list as well. I do. Yes. Yeah. So instead of getting to full inbox zero, I'll have just the emails that I need to respond to or that I that actually need my attention, and those will just sit in my inbox so I know that that's stuff that needs to be taken care of. If it's something that is, like, a month away or whatever else, I will snooze it. But anything that is with needs to be taken care of within, like, the next week or so, I just leave it as unread in my Bos. Node. So I can see it once I've,

you know, deleted the things or archive the things that I don't need to worry about right now. Yeah. I I will say that for me, if it is in my inbox and it is visible, that says I have to do it right now. I see. And and the way I approach email is that I take care of every bit of email that exists first thing in the morning. I come into my office, unless I have, like, some crazy urgent meeting or something. The very first thing I do is get to inbox zero for all of my email addresses.

And the way I do it is I archive or, I guess, I should be deleting, but I archive anything that doesn't need to be taken care of. I take care of the things that can be taken care of right now, and then I snooze everything else to a time in which I can take care of it. And then that way, it gets me to inbox zero. And then I close my email, and I do not open again until tomorrow.

That's how I I take care of email once every morning. That's it. Nice. Because if people need to get a hold of me, Slack. We got team Slack. We got text messages.

So yeah. I actually hate talking over iMessage too. I I lose track of that stuff so fast. And then, one more thing is, the mobile app that I use for for email. So like I mentioned, I use Gmail. But if you're on Android or if you use Gmail at all, you might know that it literally inserts ads into Oh. Your, your inbox. So, like, you might be scrolling, and all of a sudden you see an ad in your inbox. So I hated that. And so I found an Android app. It's it's open source. It's called Fair Email, and it's it's super minimal, but it doesn't show you ads, and it can actually just integrate directly with the the Gmail SMTP servers. So on my Android phone, I just use Fair Email, And then on desktop, I will use the the Gmail app, but fair email works pretty well for me on Android. Yeah.

Let's talk about your dumb phone productivity. You'd mentioned to me that you are, like, going pretty minimalist on your phone. I I cannot get there. I am maximalist. I got all my video games and stuff like that on there. I got all kinds of stuff on my phone. And and by video games, I mean, risk. I play a lot of risk or sellers of Catan.

I like that. Multiplayer online with other people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. That's awesome. I do really enjoy risk. I'm a a big strategist in that regard. So what is your setup for your dumb phone?

Sure. So I'll I'll walk you through a It's not actually a dumb phone. You have a foldable phone. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. And so, like, if you if you've seen it's been a bit of a trend. Right? Like, if if you see, there's, like, YouTube videos people have made about it Wes they talk about how they're trying to, like, detox or trying to basically not be addicted to doom scrolling or not being addicted to, like, all these social apps anymore. So there are certain phones that are purposefully, like, dumbed down, where, like, they only support certain apps, or they may use e ink screens. So they're, like, super locked down, so you can basically just use them as a phone and maybe for sending messages.

I didn't wanna go that far, so I've just done everything I can to basically uninstall every app on my phone that I doom scroll in or that was getting my attention too much or that was, like, sending notifications.

I installed every single one of those apps, and then I installed a dumb launcher. So on Android, there's quite a few different, like, simple launchers you can look for. But one of the the one that I liked and I found is called olauncher, like, the letter o launcher.

And Yeah. It's super minimal. It's literally just text. So it's the text name of these apps. I think that's another thing that, like, our brain likes JS, like, colors and icons. And so when you open up your phone and you see those icons, you wanna click on them and, like, waste time on your phone. But now Wes I open my phone, it's literally just a list of text of the app the eight apps that I use the most.

And like I said, I already uninstalled, like, Reddit and Instagram and anything else that I could be scrolling all the time, so it's fairly minimal in that way, but I still get access to, like, my email client if I wanna handle things on the go, or Signal Messenger, which is what I use to keep in touch with people. So I can still use all those modern Android apps, but I keep my phone dumbed down. And then one more trick that I started doing, which has helped me use my phone less as well, is in Android settings, you can go into color correction, and you can turn your entire phone grayscale.

So, throughout the day, if I pick up my phone it's actually surprising how much less enticing it is to get lost in apps when everything is black and white. I think that's why some of these dumb phones that use, like, the e ink screens, like, that's why it helps some people. But this is something you can try on on Android if you already have it. Just go into settings, color correction, and then,

choose, like, black and white. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I was telling you, before we recorded, I had that set up in an automation schedule at some point, and I found it did really work. But then at some point, I turned it off, and I have not turned it back on. Excuse me.

Yeah. I I added a a quick setting, in the pull down settings on Android, so I can just, like, toggle it on and off. It makes it pretty pretty easy.

And then with the idea of, like, spending less time on my phone, but also if I am spending time on my phone trying to make it more quality time. So I have an ebook reader on there called Read Era, so I can find EPUBs of books and I can read them on my phone. But, yeah, like Scott mentioned, I do have the it's a pretty advanced phone for it to be dumb, because it Yeah. Opens up. It it's the most advanced dumb phone. Yes. Because, yeah, it it opens up and, it's a folding it's a folding phone. Yeah. But it's really great as an e reader because I can open it up. I can, use my, ebook app. And then, also, I get audiobooks, and I use an app called Smart Audiobook Reader. So Oh, nice. Yeah. I think, like, using my phone less or using it for more quality makes me more productive in other areas because I'm not, like, wasting my time on my phone or or whatever else. So Yeah. I do have an app to turn you on to if you like audiobooks.

I use a self hosted solution called Audio Bookshelf, and it's kind of like an MB or a Plex four, for ebooks. I host on my NAS, and then I just have all my ebooks on there.

I don't read books.

I I do listen to a massive amount of books, like, constantly.

So, having finding the software to be able to self host all my books instead of having to pay for Audible has been very nice.

Where I acquire said books, who knows? But I have a lot of them. So

Same.

One more, like, I don't even know if this is, like, a a life hack or whatever else, but what I've been doing is combining ebooks with audiobooks. Like so it it it helps with retention for me. So I'll turn the audiobook on, and I'll actually read along with the audiobook.

Yeah. Because I have ADHD too, but it helps with retention and, can also be a partner activity. So my my wife and I Oh, cool. Actually like, instead of watching TV in the evenings, we'll put on an audiobook, but then we both have the physical book or ebook that we're reading along to while the audiobook is on. So you're you're you're cutting out TV. Meanwhile Yeah. I just watched one episode of Love Island per night for the past month or whatever Oh, wow. Which is just about the trashiest TV, you can watch.

Yeah. We're we're out there setting up a projector in the backyard to watch Node trashy ass TV. It's fun, though. Oh, it is fun. I I think the my challenge is the dyslexia. It makes reading really tough.

Yeah. And and that just is a big challenge. My wife is the other way around Wes she's like, I don't wanna listen to a book. I'd rather just read it. I'm gonna retain more. And I was like, that sounds nice.

Yeah. I gotta have my headphones in. I gotta have phone around. Gotta have computer.

But, yeah, speaking of TV, though, one last thing is I disconnected my smart TV from the Internet as well. So, like Oh. Crazy. Like, it Yeah. Uninstalled all the streaming apps and everything. I I still have streaming service subscriptions, but it's there's a more there's a barrier to entry. I have to get out my computer, plug it into the HDMI if I actually wanna do it. Chromecasting or something. Okay. Because it's not online. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So basically out, CJ. Yeah. My advice here is, like, uninstall everything and make it harder for yourself to get lost in these in these apps.

Or or just completely embrace it and become, me Wes you're just unable to focus on anything, and you're just staring at apps and go.

You know?

Cool. Do you have anything else that you wanna hit before we get out of here? No. I think this is it. I I I honestly appreciated seeing the apps that you use. I'm gonna give some of these a try because I'm a little bit low tech in some of these areas, so I'm inspired to at least

explore some of these apps as well. Yeah. And if you're out there, you're listening on audio, I know you can't see any of this stuff. I Node I did a good job describing it at least, and CJ helped out when I wasn't. But if you wanna see some of these things, we were showing them on YouTube, youtube.com forward /@syntaxfm.

We would love you to subscribe because you know what? We're doing really fun things. If you're not subscribed on YouTube, you're actually missing more than just the podcast because every Friday, we have been releasing some really fun videos where we do things like snake drafting our stacks. So we're building a snack via a snake draft. They're a lot of fun. We do CSS battles, JavaScript competitions between the three of us. We are oh, the best one. We made, really annoying CAPTCHAs, which Yarn hilarious. I was in tears. I couldn't even, like, speak during Wes. So if any of that sounds fun to you, check us out on YouTube. We're out there. We're doing fun stuff on there that beyond just a video podcast, which we're doing as well. Well, that's all I got for you today, folks.

Wes will be back next week or so. He's on a vacation, and, we will catch you in the next one. Thanks, CJ, for joining me today. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Later.