Sometimes I feel a surge of creativity. It’s a shame not to use this state to create something remarkable. However, once I sit down to my desk trying to write some words or code, I realize that I should do this in a particular way. Why? Because it’s how I use to do these things. And you know what? The form may limit you.

I would like to confess a small lie that I told myself each time when I found something interesting on the Internet, but I didn’t have enough time to read it. It was Read later.

Create connections between notes is the essential part of the whole note-taking process, and for sure, it leads to discovering outstanding ideas in the future. However, it requires extra effort during writing: you have to find a proper note, copy the reference and paste it to the original memo. Some software has a built-in feature to handle it, but when it comes to plaintext notes, the implementation depends on the user.

In this article, I’ll show you how to create Alfred workflow that automates the process of finding and inserting a reference to other notes.

When I think about a new idea or my next goal in life, I usually think big. The goal has to be ambitious and attractive to me, otherwise, it’s not worth putting effort into it. However, big goals also overwhelm me, because I don’t know where I should start. So I prepare. And I think. And I prepare. And I think. And this loop goes on.

It changed. The endless loop of thinking about the best approach to achieve the goal or to do whatever you want means that you probably try to start with something big. To break it, just do the opposite – think big, but start small.

MacOS has a special shortcut I wish I have known them at the beginning of my journey with this system. The functionality is hidden in the menu in almost every app when you click on Help. I talk about this little search box.

The end of the year is presumably a good time for reflection and review. I don’t have any strict structure for annual reviews. I did them many times before, but I haven’t found any process that I stick to. I used to set goals and check if I accomplished them. However, this year I tried something different.

List of books. Inspiring food for thoughts. Things I’ve done today. Big ideas that can help the community I live with. That’s are examples of running notes – useful notes, that I update all the time.

This is one type of notes I use in my plaintext personal note-taking system. In this article, I’m going to show you, how to make use of them in an effective way – using tool called Alfred.

Each professional group has own specialized vocabulary. It consists of words often related to tools, technologies or processes. They make everyday communication smooth and effective. Yet, this way of communication is appropriate only for specific environments.

For most people, keeping notes and other stuff in text files is ridiculous – tons of services and apps could do it better. But what the better means?

Despite the availability and diversity of note-taking solutions on the market, I haven’t found any that would meet my expectations. I tried to stick to the one app but I had felt the internal resistance to settling in one specific, often a vendor-locked solution.

The breakthrough was when I ask myself – why I even want to note this information? I had started to look for my “why” and it turned out, that I don’t need a fancy app or service to storing notes but a directory called “notes”.

One of the problems during traveling in pair is to take photos of us together. Since we have enough photos “from hand” in our albums, I decided to buy a selfie stick.