Snippetter

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone ,”

Blaise Pascal. (French philosopher)

Have you heard of Circadian Rhythms or Ultradian Rhythms?

Ultradian Cycle

There is an energy cycle for every human that goes up burning all the energy and comes down to heal and go again. It doesn’t strictly have to be a 90-20 minute wave. But something closer to it and it differs for every human.

In Circadian Rhythm, the cycle goes between 16:8 hours Wake Sleep cycle.

It is clear that our body needs rest to get back to the previous energy-full state. It needs that to recover the lost energy. If you’re going to perform at high intensity, you’re going to lose a lot of energy.

If you need to perform at high intensity every time — you need to rest between them. I am talking about ‘mental rest’ than physical one.

Brief Switch Off You can’t exactly control your mind and switch it off at your whims. At least not everyone can. But we can give a similar experience to your brain.

Meditation looks like a super scam if you’re not trying it consistently for more than a month. But it works.

Meditate for 2 to 5 minutes. (This is a brief one to restore mental energy and it is not how you do proper meditation).

The point here is not to meditate. The point here is to switch your mind away from what’s currently concerning it. That is your current task at hand.

Staying away from what is bothering is just equivalent to rest. Giving the mind the feeling of rest, without shutting it.

Just try not to act or react to anything for a few minutes — even on your thoughts. Just watch them go in different directions. Watch your brain that thinks out of the box. Witness your brain mixing ideas with different areas.

You can now see the new energy barging in.

Distractions Switching off devices to avoid distraction is just a step, not the actual act of meditating. Avoid things that trigger your thoughts or lead them in undesired directions.

Switch off your mind. Offload your thoughts. Just stay away from the actual tasks that drained you.

Alternatives If you can’t meditate, just walk for 5 minutes away from the environment of work. Meditate while you walk.

Another alternative is to meditate actively by writing your thoughts. Just like Intermittent journaling, but writing things exactly irrelevant to the task. This will keep your mind away from stressful things for a bit to restore the energy lost.

Do it before switching to another task or project. A quick ’switch-off’ will cleanse your attention residue .

Do it before making decisions. You can’t pour your complete energy and mind into a decision that you don’t completely believe.

Confusion burns up a lot of energy, while clarity produces a lot.

The best way to see the clear water is not to disturb it until the dust settles down. That is exactly doing nothing about it. May look counterproductive — but it is not.

Don’t forget to take a break.

See you next time.

Magical is a Google Chrome-based text expander extension.

1. Simple Text Expanding Eg. Set <address as a trigger to type the long address in any place you want. (Works only inside Chrome).

Likewise, @@t expands my email ID. <work expands my workplace address.

Note: Prefixing special characters avoids unwanted triggers.

1. Expanding with variables.

The above screenshot, explains the setup. ;hi is the trigger for the shortcut and the content highlighted with green are variables. You can use standard variables like date and dynamic variables like Name, Title.

When applying the First Name, Job Title is replaced with the actual value of the person. For that to happen, all you need to do is open the person’s LinkedIn profile on another tab.

The below animation explains how it works in action.

Expanding with variables – Writing a mail

Extracting Data automatically – Filling Form

1. Data Collection Data Entry and Data Collection become easy. All you need to do is type double forward slash “//” to trigger the automatic data extraction to auto-fill the spreadsheet.

Works only with Google Spreadsheet.

Extracting and Collecting Data automatically.

1. AI Assist You can get (OpenAI) assistance to change the content each time instead of relying on one boring template.

I use Magical every day. One caveat is, it only works inside Chrome. It is free to use.

Link to Magical AI Text Expander and Auto-Fill

Save your friends and colleagues’ time by forwarding this to their email.

‘timing.is’ is a new iOS calendar app with a new design approach.

I love the app at first sight, especially its website design.

The caveat is, the app is still in beta. It is not a complete product yet. But it is all functional.

If you don’t mind trying new apps, this app is worth trying. This has the potential to grow its competitor like Fantastical out — but only in the long run.

Free for now. No Mac app yet. Integrates with all Calendars that can sync with the iOS stock Calendar app. No accounts are needed.

link to timing.is .

No need to slow down your typing flow to insert emojis. 

A picture speaks 1000 words. Won’t emojis? Emoji speaks emotions. 

1. Use Mac’s Emoji picker ⛏️ Keep the cursor at the point where you want to insert the emoji. 

Now, press Ctrl + Cmd + SpaceBar  at the same time to invoke the emoji selector. 

Search for the emoji. Just press enter to insert the selected emoji. 

Press “Ctrl + Cmd + Space” to invoke the emoji picker

1. Use “Rocket” – Type your emojis Rocket is an app to insert emojis while typing (like Slack, Notion style). 

Download 🚀 Rocket . (Free)

Install it on your Mac. 

Now start typing your emoji with the prefix “:” 

🎉

I just typed :tada  and pressed enter to insert the above emoji. 

Just start your emoji search by prefixing “:”

1. Use RayCast – A ‘Spotlight’ alternative This step is only for those using RayCast (in place of Apple’s Spotlight search). If not try it. 

Download RayCast . (Free)

Assuming RayCast is already installed on your Mac. 

Go to its ‘Preference ’

Go to ‘Extensions ’

Search for ‘emoji ’ and ✅ select it as shown in the above screenshot. 

Now the setup is ready to use. 

Wherever you want to insert the emoji, place the cursor there, then press the shortcut to invoke RayCast . In my case, it is Cmd + Space . (You can change the shortcut in RayCast Preference.)

Now type emoji  in the RayCast search box. Select the option ‘search emoji’. And then search for your emoji by typing it.

But the easiest way is to search with the prefix  : . 

Just invoke RayCast, Start typing your emoji name with “:” as a prefix. Eg.  :tada . Now press enter/return key to insert the selected emoji. 

That’s all easy. Feel free to put your comment and questions below.

See you next time.

Inside: 3 Conditions and 2 Tricks to keep you go steady.

The brain after a long sleep is cleansed of all stress hormones and residues. It only needs an hour or two to boot up and reach its full potential.

You’ll have significant mental energy and cognitive power at your disposal during these morning hours. Your brain is fresh and highly ready to do the most difficult cognitive tasks.

The term morning hours stands for the time that starts at least half an hour after your wake-up time and extends up to an hour or two. I don’t have an exact time span, as it differs from person to person.

Why there’s high mental energy in the morning? More scientific literature, books, and successful people discussed the philosophical and biological reasons for the presence of high cognitive energy during the morning. I like to point out other reasons here.

The morning hours are less distracting. At least, it is easy to choose to avoid distractions. You’re less likely to collaborate during this time with others. So the morning is a good time for your own focused work.

Your brain is a fresh slate. You can start any task of your choice. The failures and hiccups of the previous day are not going to pose a problem if you start fresh today.

No attention residues from the previous day’s tasks.

Why do you need to tap the morning energy? Most people who use these super-charged morning hours for focused work are doing wonders than those who hustle hard during the day to find the same focus energy.

This energy is common and available to everyone on the earth — But only a few use it to their advantage. Remaining dissipates it by doing insignificant tasks or ‘mental chores”.

Flow states are hard to get and difficult to sustain the high potential state of mind where you easily perform challenging tasks. Getting into this ‘flow state’ is easy and requires little effort during your morning hours. All you need to do is — just start. It is easy to guide your energy now than at a later time of the day.

How to effectively use your morning energy to your advantage? Spend your morning time doing your most important work that can produce the most significant outcome.

3 Conditions If you plan on tapping your morning hours’ high energy, then make sure you do the following 3.

1. Always have a plan before you wake up. To avoid juggling thoughts and spilling your precious energy by making fuzzy decisions and choosing the tasks from your plate, have a plan.

Having a plan = Clarity. Without clarity, you can’t commit to the task and focus. It is hard to put your brain on the right (desired) track at the beginning.

Don’t let the world decide the direction of your thoughts. This is not the time to consume the world. That is, reading your emails, checking social media, reading the news, etc.

This is the time for creation. Morning is the time for producing intellectual products.

So, plan your morning tasks the night before. Maybe during the previous day’s evening or just before getting into bed. I prefer deciding just before bed. Sleep on your plan.

Just start to work on the plan in the morning. Don’t clog up your mind with the process of choosing a task or by addressing your confusion.

1. Make sure the task you chose is an independent one. Make sure the task is independent of other tasks. The task you chose must not wait for input from other tasks or other people or anything that is out of your reach. Everything you need to complete the task should be within your hand’s reach.

Small switching (between tasks) and tiny hiccups are more than enough to break your flow.

Think of a task that you can do in a closed room where you have everything that is needed to complete the task. Cut off all communications. Don’t let anyone’s (good or bad) energy affect your flow.

1. Choose the one that compounds The type of task you choose to do in the morning should be more like a repeated process than a single-time task.

Writing an article every day is a process. Training to win the Olympics seems more like a training process rather than a single-day goal.

The task may change, but the type of the task may not. I don’t recommend choosing specific tasks with deadlines.

I choose the type of tasks that allows me to flow, that allows me to explore, and try different things to improve them over the course of time.

Remember, it is all about tapping your high cognitive function for a significant outcome. I would never recommend wasting this time on chore-type tasks that won’t contribute to your long-term goals.

Choose something long-term, that is not going to complete in near future. Choose the work whose outcomes can build over time into a big one. Like, writing a book. Remember, the compounding effect. Try to form a habit out of this.

2 Really working tricks to keep you go 1. Set up your bar low and start immediately. Reduce your expectations of the quality of the outcome. This reduces the fear, friction, and other psychological effects that stop you from entering and flowing with your work.

Remember, you’re just embracing the morning focus energy. You’re practicing tapping your high mental energy.

Focus on the process at the start. Make it effortless to sit in the morning and work on high-cognitive tasks. Make it your second nature. Make your body and mind cooperate in this process by doing it every morning. Eventually, you don’t need extra effort to wake up, sit and start to work on a big focus-demanding task.

Once you have mastered that, then you can start to improve the process for far quality outcomes.

1. Look at your streaks for motivation, not the results. Many people lose their motivation by witnessing the results of their work immediately after doing them for a few days.

I understand you need motivation. A gratification, a positive sign of progress to keep you on the path of progress.

I wrote every day in the morning, publish them online, then with high expectations I look for the viewer’s graph to move steeply. Most of the time it is always opposite to what I expected.

I found that the metrics are not motivating. They never fed my inner fire. (But the readers’ comments and emails surely are motivating and satisfying.)

What I found to be very motivating are my “Streaks”. Once you moved to 20 days, 30 days, and so on without breaking it, I found it very hard to break. My emotional side of the mind is now cooperating with my intellectual side of mind every day. It is now easy to kick off my laziness in the morning.

Looking back my published article list is far more motivating than seeing the analytics. Analytics serves as a tool to find where you can improve. What works and what doesn’t? It was never meant to act as a motivating trigger.

Change your mindset. Never allow yourself to get motivated by the outcomes. Get motivated by the process itself.

Never allow any external happenings to be your motivation factor. Find your intrinsic motivations. Tracking your streaks is one of them.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments. I am happy to clarify your queries.

When you switch from one task to another, a tiny portion of the information is left in your conscious for a little longer even after you put yourself into the new task.

The mindset you exercised for your previous task happens to dwell for some time during the start of a new task, exists, and slowly decays until you flow entirely into the new task at hand.

These residues cause little hiccups in your performance and consume a significant amount of your cognitive power (especially if you’re involved in any creative process).

It is true for all situations regardless of the value of the task or whether it is a productive one or a recreational one.

Solution:

Take a break between tasks.

Interstitial journaling.

Take a walk between two different types of tasks.

Never ever choose to multitask.

Make some obvious changes to aid your brain to notice the difference like changing the room, or changing the light color. Physical and environmental changes are more noticeable for a brain to pick up the signal.

Try meditating for a couple of minutes.

The brain after a long sleep is cleansed of all stress hormones and residues. 

It only needs an hour or two to boot up and reach its full potential. 

You’ll have significant mental energy and cognitive power at your disposal during the morning hours. 

Most people don’t use this time for focused work. Those who use it are producing wonders in the world, with less effort than those who hustle for the same.

Spend your morning time doing your most important work that can produce the most significant outcome.

Your task gets completed at any time duration you allocate. If you allocate too much time to it, you end up doing unnecessary tinkering & tweaking to the task (over-perfecting) until the time allocated gets over. On the other hand, regardless of how much shorter the time is allocated for a task, it gets over within that.

After hearing a word for the first time, you may hear the same word frequently in different places within a short interval. It may feel like it is happening to you like a coincidence. or because of some other mythical reasons. This phenomenon of frequently noticing the same thing again and again after noticing it for the first time is called “Frequency Illusion” or

The more you know and become aware of the knowledge around you, you’ll come to know how less you know.

You can’t learn everything in this given lifetime. So select a few domains, read/learn/write/work a lot in those domains.

This little set of domains you’re good at is your “circle of competence”. Make sure you’re strong in those areas. Then slowly expand it.