Tips & tricks

Proposal, contract, and invoice templates: do it once, properly

Every proposal written from scratch is an hour of lost time. A template with marked spots to fill in cuts it to ten minutes.

The Friday admin block: invoicing, timesheets, mail

Ninety minutes on Friday for all your admin at once — instead of scattered nagging all week long.

Answer clients in windows, not on demand

A reply within 24 hours is the professional standard. A reply within 5 minutes is a bar you can never lower again.

Multi-cursor editing: edit ten lines at once

Ctrl+D

Ctrl+D in VS Code selects the next occurrence of a word — and you type in all of them at once. Small refactors without find and replace.

A developer's calendar: mornings with no meetings

Coding needs 2+ uninterrupted hours — one meeting in the middle kills the whole morning. Protect your blocks as a team.

Study 5 times for an hour, not once for 5 hours

The same amount of time spread over more days means you remember multiples more. Your calendar is the strongest study tool you have.

Pomodoro: 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of break

Studying in short blocks with breaks holds your attention longer than heroic three-hour marathons. And starting is easier — it's just 25 minutes.

Your own deadline: two days before the real one

Submit by your own D−2 deadline. You get a buffer for review, printer trouble, illness — and a calm night's sleep.

Close the book and recall: the most effective study technique

Re-reading your notes creates an illusion of knowledge. Closing the book and trying to recall the material from memory — that's learning that sticks.

No agenda, no meeting

One simple rule that erases half your meetings: whoever calls the meeting sends an agenda and expected outcome in advance.

1:1s with a standing document

A shared document both sides keep adding to between meetings. The meeting has structure, and the history is easy to find.

Delegate the outcome, not the process

A good assignment has four parts: what needs to exist, why, by when, and how you'll know it's done. Leave the process to the person doing it.

A written status instead of a status meeting

Three questions in a form on Friday: what went well, what's in progress, what's stuck. Suddenly the 45-minute status meeting is unnecessary.

Widgets: information without opening apps

Calendar, tasks, and weather on your home screen mean you open your phone, glance, and close it — instead of a tour through your apps.

One-handed keyboards and reachability

Big phones have one-handed typing modes — a compressed keyboard and pulling the screen down within thumb's reach.

Save articles for later — and read them in a batch

Instapaper, Pocket, or bookmarks: save an article in a second and read it later in peace, without twenty tabs open on your phone.

Office hours: availability with boundaries

Two hours a day when anyone can come to you with anything — and the rest of the day belongs to your own work. The team adjusts within a week.

Android: customize your Quick Settings tiles

Your Quick Settings panel can have exactly what you use — flashlight, screen recording, QR scanner. And in the order you want.

Set up swipe gestures in mail: archive with one flick

In mobile Gmail and Outlook, set swipe right to archive, swipe left to snooze. Clear your inbox while waiting in line for coffee.

Grayscale mode: a colorless phone is half as tempting

Grayscale turns your phone into a tool instead of a dopamine machine. Ideal for focus blocks.

A home screen with just your tools

Social media and entertainment off the home screen — leaving calendar, tasks, notes. What you don't see, you don't open without thinking.

App limits: 30 minutes of social media a day is plenty

iOS and Android can both lock an app once you've hit your daily limit. Extra friction that actually works.

iPhone search: swipe down to find anything

Swiping down on the home screen opens search — apps, contacts, messages, and calculations. Faster than hunting for icons.

Bedtime mode: your phone goes to sleep before you do

An hour before bed, your phone dims, quiets down, and stops tempting you. Set it once — and sleep better every night.

Dictate messages on the go

The microphone on your keyboard writes what you say — reliably. A reply on the move doesn't have to wait for the keyboard.

The scanner in iPhone Notes: PDFs with no extra apps

The Notes app can scan documents — straightened, cropped, multi-page PDF. No other app needed.

Type by swiping: a third faster

Gliding your finger across the keyboard looks odd and works great. After a week you won't remember why you tapped.

Android: two apps on screen at the same time

Notes next to your browser, or a calendar next to email — split screen is genuinely usable on bigger phones.

Batched notifications: a summary instead of a drip

iOS and Android can both hold non-urgent notifications and deliver them as a summary at times you choose. Your phone stops yanking at your attention.

Hold the space bar: your keyboard turns into a trackpad

Landing a finger right in the middle of a word is a lottery. Holding the space bar turns your keyboard into a touchpad for precise cursor movement.