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00:01:34.680 | Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of All The Hacks, a show about
00:01:41.520 | upgrading your life, money, and travel.
00:01:43.800 | A few days ago, I had a conversation with Ali Abdaal, who's one of the creators I
00:01:48.480 | follow the most when it comes to learning about productivity hacks and different
00:01:52.520 | tools and systems that someone uses to make their life more efficient.
00:01:56.400 | And I had hoped maybe we'd get more time in the conversation to go through all of
00:02:01.760 | the apps we use, but we just didn't get there.
00:02:03.960 | However, I did think it would be worth sharing with all of you what I'm using to
00:02:09.080 | make my life more efficient, more optimal.
00:02:12.080 | I figured I'll talk about Chrome extensions, sending emails, scheduling,
00:02:16.680 | storing information, accessing stuff quickly on your computer.
00:02:21.000 | I might even jump into some other apps I use for different things to make life
00:02:24.920 | more efficient and some of the gear and hardware I use technology-wise just to
00:02:29.640 | make the whole house in our life function well.
00:02:32.680 | So I'm going to start with email because I think it's probably one of
00:02:37.200 | the things that we do the most.
00:02:38.720 | I've been a longtime Gmail user, and for many years, I was just using it all on
00:02:43.600 | Gmail.
00:02:44.120 | And so my tips for that are you've got to turn on your keyboard shortcuts.
00:02:49.640 | I think email is 10 times faster when you master the Gmail keyboard shortcuts.
00:02:54.680 | There's a few other things I use.
00:02:56.680 | I make sure to turn on in the advanced settings, auto-advance, because as soon
00:03:01.320 | as you finish an email, it jumps to the next one.
00:03:03.520 | I like the unread message icon because if you pin the tab for Chrome, it'll
00:03:08.520 | change the icon with a number of how many emails there are.
00:03:11.920 | So if you're one of those people that's like, I want to know if I have any
00:03:14.840 | emails, you could just check without having to go.
00:03:17.760 | I like compact view because it just lets you see more at once.
00:03:20.760 | And when I was using Gmail as the interface, I used a system that I'll link
00:03:26.640 | to in the show notes for organizing all of the emails I had into a handful of
00:03:31.240 | buckets that when you use split inbox and labels, you can kind of move things
00:03:36.000 | around.
00:03:36.560 | So I had everything that came in.
00:03:38.160 | I had things I was awaiting a reply for.
00:03:40.640 | I had really priority urgent things I needed to tackle, stuff that I could get
00:03:44.800 | to in the next week and just stuff I wanted to save for later.
00:03:48.160 | Now, ever since I switched to superhuman, I've stopped doing that.
00:03:52.400 | But the two other things I did with Gmail were it drove me crazy when everyone's
00:03:56.600 | email signature would just get stacked five, 10 signatures all the way at the
00:04:00.280 | bottom.
00:04:00.680 | So there's this setting that's like insert signature before quoted text and
00:04:04.800 | removing that dash before it.
00:04:06.360 | So I love that.
00:04:07.200 | And then I used undo send a lot.
00:04:09.520 | For some reason, I would fire off an email, send it and very regularly be like,
00:04:13.000 | Oh, I forgot something.
00:04:14.280 | So I love that.
00:04:15.040 | The only other big thing I use in Gmail is aliases.
00:04:19.280 | So I have chris@allthehacks.com, which I bring up in every show.
00:04:23.240 | I've got some personal email addresses.
00:04:25.160 | I forward all those emails to my core Gmail account and I use the aliases so
00:04:29.680 | that I can send from all those aliases.
00:04:31.560 | So I operate everything from one email account, even though there might be five
00:04:35.600 | or six email addresses out there.
00:04:37.480 | And for the last, I don't know, five, 10 years almost, I'd heard of this app
00:04:41.560 | superhuman.
00:04:42.680 | And for some reason, I'd never really brought myself to try it out because in
00:04:47.560 | my mind, paying for an email client on top of Gmail, which was free, seemed
00:04:52.280 | crazy.
00:04:52.920 | So I never used it.
00:04:54.520 | And I remember signing up for one of their onboarding sessions once, but I
00:04:57.680 | never ended up going.
00:04:58.800 | And then there was one feature in the past few months that I'd really wanted to
00:05:02.880 | try to get working in Gmail.
00:05:04.280 | And it didn't, and it was that I wanted to be able to see all the emails that
00:05:08.280 | have come from a person so that I kind of could go back quickly and get the
00:05:12.600 | context of all the conversations I've had.
00:05:14.640 | You know, I get emails from listeners all the time, you guys, and I want to make
00:05:18.280 | sure that I know that we've already talked about this thing and you know,
00:05:21.520 | there's just a lot of email.
00:05:22.680 | And so Gmail actually had a feature that made this possible, but it didn't work
00:05:27.160 | with aliases.
00:05:28.160 | So if someone emailed me at chris@allthehacks.com, it wouldn't find it
00:05:31.440 | because it was only looking at my core Gmail account.
00:05:33.800 | So when I saw superhuman had that feature, I was like, okay, let's just give
00:05:37.680 | it a try.
00:05:38.240 | And I can't believe I waited this long.
00:05:40.200 | It's really changed the way I use email.
00:05:42.320 | It's so fast.
00:05:43.480 | It's so efficient.
00:05:44.400 | The UI is great.
00:05:45.480 | I can't endorse it enough.
00:05:47.240 | A few of the things that I love.
00:05:48.960 | So you can use keyboard shortcuts for everything.
00:05:51.160 | So they have this great instant intro feature that I'd always wished I had
00:05:56.240 | with Gmail, which I could just in one keyboard shortcut, take the person who
00:05:59.920 | sent the email, put them to BCC, add text with their first name automatically
00:06:04.640 | that says, thanks bill to BCC and moves the person that was CC'd into the to
00:06:10.360 | field.
00:06:10.920 | And you can immediately respond to an introduction.
00:06:13.320 | When you use undo send, it delays sending emails, but they have a send
00:06:17.120 | instantly shortcut.
00:06:18.200 | So when you actually want to get it out there, maybe you're testing something
00:06:21.160 | and you want to check it on another email.
00:06:22.600 | You can do that.
00:06:23.360 | It also pulls up social profiles of everyone that you're emailing.
00:06:26.840 | So you can find them and learn a bit more about them, especially if it's an
00:06:30.160 | email from someone you don't know.
00:06:31.680 | There are snippets, so you can come up with these pre-programmed pieces of text
00:06:36.000 | that you can throw into an email.
00:06:37.440 | So I have one that is a common intro I make to people that I just pull up and
00:06:43.480 | it automatically fills in their name and the subject and the two and all that
00:06:47.240 | kind of stuff.
00:06:47.840 | And CC's everything.
00:06:49.120 | It's really great for sending outreach multiple times.
00:06:52.120 | You can also just program a set of recipients.
00:06:53.800 | So if there's like five people you email a lot, instead of typing in all five
00:06:57.280 | email addresses, you can just instantly have them all populate.
00:07:01.080 | The mobile apps, good reminders are good.
00:07:03.680 | I mean, like it is so good.
00:07:05.160 | I really think that you should check it out.
00:07:07.280 | You can get one month free at all the hacks.com/superhuman, but this is not a
00:07:11.320 | product I'm getting for free and telling you about that's awesome.
00:07:13.800 | I actually pay every month to use this product and I love it.
00:07:16.240 | You can also use superhuman to actually schedule events right in email.
00:07:19.920 | So if you say let's meet on Thursday, it pops up a little side calendar and shows
00:07:24.600 | you Thursday and you can go in and schedule an event and send the invite right away.
00:07:29.080 | You can even pull in all the people that are in the email thread and
00:07:32.040 | automatically add them.
00:07:33.240 | Like I can't, if you use Gmail and you want it to be more efficient, or I
00:07:36.880 | actually think it works with Outlook, it's definitely worth checking out.
00:07:39.920 | Like I said, one month free, all the hacks.com/superhuman.
00:07:43.480 | For scheduling, I love Calendly.
00:07:46.040 | I've used it for years.
00:07:47.440 | Nick Gray, who I had on to talk about cocktail parties actually has a post on
00:07:51.360 | his site that I loved that went into all the details of how he set up his Calendly
00:07:55.560 | to both be a little bit more friendly.
00:07:57.200 | I'll link to that in the show notes.
00:07:59.040 | And one thing I know there's a lot of talk about, it's like, Oh, just assume
00:08:02.240 | someone else has to put time on my calendar.
00:08:04.680 | So, you know, I do try to say, feel free to send some times that work for you.
00:08:08.360 | Or if it's easier, you can pick something on my calendar.
00:08:10.880 | I'm not just assuming that everyone needs to operate around my schedule, but
00:08:14.800 | that line of text of giving someone that option, that's a snippet I have in
00:08:18.800 | superhuman.
00:08:19.440 | So anytime I'm scheduling something, boom, click a keyboard shortcut and instantly
00:08:23.560 | that gets thrown into the email.
00:08:25.360 | Let's see what else as for where I store information.
00:08:28.480 | So I use the same things a lot of you use.
00:08:30.840 | For some reason I use Dropbox, Google drive and iCloud.
00:08:33.880 | I think because iCloud for me is where I put all my photos.
00:08:38.120 | I use the photos app on my phone.
00:08:39.720 | I use the photos app on my computer and I store lots of videos.
00:08:43.000 | I've even taken old VHS tapes of my childhood, converted them to videos on my
00:08:48.200 | computer and put them into my iCloud library.
00:08:51.080 | So everything's in there.
00:08:52.480 | I was approaching the cap of, you know, two terabytes at one point.
00:08:57.080 | So I was like, well, I'm not going to use that for everything else.
00:08:59.560 | So then Google drive is where I actually back things up.
00:09:03.120 | So stuff that's way bigger than that.
00:09:05.760 | So if I have some really big files that I need to back up that are really just
00:09:09.800 | random things or backups of old computers, I put that there.
00:09:13.800 | And then obviously I use Google docs for so much document writing.
00:09:17.040 | It's really replaced office for almost everything I do.
00:09:20.880 | I think I might from time to time use Excel just for like a local scratch pad,
00:09:25.680 | but I don't think I've used Word or PowerPoint for really a long time.
00:09:30.600 | And I use Dropbox for storing lots of files.
00:09:32.920 | For the most part, it's where I store everything for all the hacks,
00:09:35.480 | all the audio files from the interviews, the video files from the interviews,
00:09:38.960 | the photos from guests that I upload to be the cover art, all that stuff goes there.
00:09:43.600 | But I also use it for personal stuff.
00:09:45.520 | Amy and I have a shared folder and in there you can find everything from like
00:09:50.640 | our old credit card statements if we wanted to keep them somewhere to health
00:09:55.680 | records, dog records, things that are like PDFs that I want to put somewhere.
00:10:00.080 | Mortgage closing statements where there's tons and tons of documents there
00:10:03.760 | that you don't know if you'll need, but you want to put them somewhere.
00:10:05.720 | I just throw it in Dropbox.
00:10:07.040 | It's not the most organized, but for the most part, the reason I have Dropbox
00:10:10.800 | is that I use it for everything, all the hacks I could put clips for an episode
00:10:15.760 | that I can share to a guest and everything goes in there.
00:10:18.760 | But the big place that I'm storing almost everything these days is in Notion.
00:10:22.920 | So it's basically become my second brain for two big projects.
00:10:27.280 | One, my family, and one, the podcast.
00:10:30.760 | And so for the family, there's an entire Notion board for our family where Amy
00:10:35.880 | and I do everything from planning an upcoming trip, organizing tables of
00:10:39.880 | info, where we're looking for a dog walker, an au pair, and we create a table.
00:10:43.960 | And we put it there.
00:10:44.520 | We made a table of all the classes that our daughter could take dance
00:10:48.560 | classes or swim classes.
00:10:49.720 | Where are they?
00:10:50.360 | What are they?
00:10:50.920 | How much do they cost?
00:10:51.880 | We just organize it all in one place so we can share it.
00:10:54.560 | We can comment.
00:10:55.360 | We save resources there.
00:10:56.840 | So when we were starting out with solid foods for Quinn, we thought, okay, let's
00:11:01.680 | share some links to some great meal plans and guides on how to handle that
00:11:05.160 | circumstance.
00:11:05.960 | We even have a page where we write down all the questions to ask our pediatrician
00:11:10.320 | at the next appointment so that when we go to that appointment, we just know
00:11:13.440 | exactly where to pull up the list of questions.
00:11:15.440 | We put check boxes on them so we can run through them.
00:11:18.040 | It all works really easily.
00:11:19.560 | For all the hacks, I have so much information in Notion.
00:11:24.360 | It's like every episode, the plan for that episode, every guest, when they're
00:11:29.000 | going to appear, who are my partners and sponsors for the show?
00:11:32.800 | What episodes are they on?
00:11:34.320 | What topics do I want to write about in the newsletter?
00:11:36.800 | What shows do I want to do cross promotions with?
00:11:39.320 | Everything.
00:11:39.960 | I track all the income and the expenses for the show.
00:11:43.120 | Really everything is in here.
00:11:44.400 | When you guys share hacks with me, all these great listener hacks, I
00:11:47.280 | put those into Notion as well.
00:11:48.960 | It's really become like my second brain for any big, big thing.
00:11:52.640 | That's lots of information of different types, right?
00:11:55.360 | If it was just files, maybe I could put in Dropbox.
00:11:57.480 | If it just fits in a Google doc, it could just go there.
00:12:00.040 | But when it's a lot of stuff I want to connect and reference and jump between
00:12:03.400 | and put in tables and sort, Notion does some really cool stuff like a table of
00:12:08.080 | episodes that also references a table of partners or also references a table of
00:12:12.680 | guests, it's like a database, but in just a much more intuitive UI for the average.
00:12:18.480 | Getting the crew together.
00:12:21.640 | Isn't as easy as it used to be.
00:12:23.240 | I get it.
00:12:23.960 | Life comes at you fast, but trust me, your friends are probably
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00:13:29.520 | Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations.
00:13:32.880 | When it comes to just finding all of this stuff and just operating
00:13:36.800 | efficiently on my computer, I also love an app that I've talked
00:13:40.840 | about in the past called Alfred.
00:13:42.320 | So if you're a Mac user, you probably know that you can hit command space bar and
00:13:47.480 | pull up a place where you can just type and search for a file or go to a website.
00:13:51.640 | Well, Alfred is like that, but supercharged.
00:13:55.640 | So you can load all kinds of stuff into it.
00:13:58.720 | I have an emoji library, so I can keyboard shortcut my way to whatever emoji.
00:14:02.920 | I use it as a calculator.
00:14:04.360 | I use it to find files.
00:14:06.240 | I use it to create custom workflows.
00:14:08.240 | So if there's something I need to do where I'm, you know,
00:14:10.760 | I have a set of keyboard commands.
00:14:12.680 | For example, I want to like remove a signature and replace it with something.
00:14:17.320 | I can just create a workflow and run it with one shortcut.
00:14:20.680 | But the best feature that saves me so much time is that Alfred stores
00:14:25.000 | my entire clipboard history.
00:14:26.680 | Whether it's images that I've screen grabbed or whether it's just text
00:14:30.360 | I've copied so I can quickly go back.
00:14:32.480 | So sometimes I want to grab a few lines from one email and move it to another.
00:14:36.520 | I can copy each one individually, go into this next email and paste each
00:14:41.600 | one individually just by browsing the history all from my keyboard and not
00:14:45.680 | have to jump back and forth between the docks.
00:14:47.840 | I use Alfred at least a hundred times a day.
00:14:50.280 | It's got to be the most used app on my computer.
00:14:52.680 | I think it's fantastic.
00:14:54.320 | Another keyboard shortcut one is an app called Rectangle.
00:14:57.120 | It just moves stuff around the desktop.
00:15:00.320 | If I want to move things to the left side, to the right side, because
00:15:02.920 | I often have two windows going.
00:15:04.520 | If I want to jump it to full screen, if I want to just make it really small
00:15:08.200 | in the corner, like a website I want to monitor or just something to keep small.
00:15:11.880 | I can just do that.
00:15:13.240 | It makes it so easy to move stuff around quickly.
00:15:16.280 | I find that if you pause and you're dragging your mouse or your
00:15:18.640 | trackpad around, it just distracts me.
00:15:20.800 | So if I could just get it out of the way quickly, I love it.
00:15:23.400 | And then I'll talk a little bit about Chrome because as much as I know that
00:15:27.080 | Safari is supposed to be the fastest browser and I love efficiency, there
00:15:31.880 | are just a lot of extensions that make Chrome such a great browser
00:15:36.240 | that ends up being my primary.
00:15:38.120 | So a few of the things I use, I've talked about a couple of these in the past.
00:15:42.240 | One is called library extension.
00:15:44.280 | Anytime you're browsing Amazon, if there's a book available for free at
00:15:47.680 | your public library, it'll tell you another one.
00:15:49.840 | If you have a capital one card, which I love is their Eno extension.
00:15:53.800 | And it basically lets you create virtual cards for any retailers for free.
00:15:58.040 | So unlike privacy where you don't get points because you have to pay with
00:16:02.000 | your debit card or a bank ACH, this will let you generate unique card numbers
00:16:07.200 | that are one-time use or specific to a merchant with your venture or venture X
00:16:12.040 | card.
00:16:12.400 | So if you don't have a venture card or a venture X card, obviously I'd appreciate
00:16:16.320 | you using the links at allthehacks.com/cards.
00:16:18.880 | I love that card.
00:16:20.520 | And I love the fact that this can generate unique card numbers that you
00:16:24.680 | can turn off after you make a purchase.
00:16:26.760 | I love the Lucia extension.
00:16:28.560 | If I'm on LinkedIn and I'm trying to get someone's email, it'll just
00:16:31.640 | auto pull in an email for you.
00:16:33.480 | I also love tab to window pop-up.
00:16:36.680 | I know it's a little bit weird.
00:16:37.640 | I'm going to link to all these in the show notes, but basically if you're
00:16:40.280 | browsing around in Chrome, sometimes you want to look at two tabs at once.
00:16:43.840 | This extension lets you use a keyboard shortcut to take the tab out of the
00:16:47.280 | current window into a separate one, and then you can use rectangle to kind of
00:16:51.520 | make sure they're all organized the way you want.
00:16:53.440 | I also love don't fuck with paste.
00:16:55.280 | If you've ever been on one of those websites where they ask you to put in
00:16:58.640 | your bank routing number or something, and they don't allow paste on their
00:17:02.720 | website, this extension disables that and lets you paste into those fields.
00:17:07.560 | I know they're doing it so that you don't maybe copy and paste the
00:17:10.760 | wrong ACH or routing number.
00:17:12.680 | But for me, I actually think I'm much more likely to mess things up if I have
00:17:16.880 | to manually type the number.
00:17:18.040 | So I love that one.
00:17:19.080 | I also love the card pointers extension.
00:17:21.120 | I've mentioned card pointers in the past.
00:17:22.840 | It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards and makes it
00:17:25.720 | easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on everyday
00:17:29.480 | purchases.
00:17:30.280 | They also track all the credits and offers your cards eligible for.
00:17:33.840 | They do all this on their iOS and Android app, but the Chrome extension
00:17:37.040 | will let you know the best card to use, as well as whether there are any offers,
00:17:40.720 | deals, or credits you can use on whatever site you're browsing.
00:17:44.240 | And if you want to try Card Pointers Pro, you can get a free trial and 20% off at
00:17:48.520 | all the hacks.com/cardpointers.
00:17:50.600 | Right now, they're also offering a $100 savings card with a $96 lifetime
00:17:55.600 | membership, which makes it effectively free.
00:17:57.640 | The only other one I'll mention is Keepa and it tracks all the Amazon price history.
00:18:02.920 | So if I'm looking at a product on Amazon, I love being able to go see like, is this
00:18:06.360 | the lowest it's been in the last few months or is it the most expensive it's been?
00:18:09.800 | Oh, and actually there's one more one tab.
00:18:12.600 | If you're ever doing some kind of research and you pull up like 15 tabs to try to do
00:18:16.160 | something, and then you're not ready to do anything with it, one tab lets you click
00:18:20.040 | one button and it takes all those tabs and it just saves them.
00:18:23.320 | So later you can bring them back, but you don't have to keep them open.
00:18:26.280 | You don't have to keep them distracting you.
00:18:28.160 | I really like that extension too.
00:18:29.640 | A few other apps that I want to share, I think most of them are cross platform.
00:18:34.640 | So whether you're Mac or PC user.
00:18:36.440 | So once we had our first kid, we used a baby monitor called Nanit.
00:18:41.040 | And I was always frustrated that if I wanted to watch our daughter and see how
00:18:44.480 | things were going and see if she needed anything, I'd have to keep my phone open.
00:18:48.120 | And I really wanted to just be able to monitor the video feed on my computer,
00:18:52.120 | but they didn't have an app for the computer.
00:18:54.760 | They couldn't load the video on the web.
00:18:56.160 | And so I was really into this app called BlueStacks and it would let you basically
00:19:01.040 | run an Android emulator on your computer.
00:19:03.080 | So first off, if there's any mobile apps that you just wish you could run on your
00:19:06.360 | computer for whatever reason, they don't have a web app, BlueStacks was fantastic.
00:19:11.080 | And I could run all these Android apps and it was great.
00:19:13.280 | Then what happened was BlueStacks stopped supporting the M1 or M2 Apple processors.
00:19:18.840 | And I was like, ah, I need to find an answer.
00:19:20.200 | I need to find an answer.
00:19:21.040 | Well, what I didn't know, and maybe everyone listening knows, but I didn't.
00:19:24.560 | The M1 and M2 processors for Mac natively support iOS apps on the computer.
00:19:31.080 | So now instead of having to run some third party app, I actually just
00:19:34.720 | opened the app store, searched for Nanit, and I could open and install
00:19:38.520 | and run iPhone and iPad apps on my Mac.
00:19:41.800 | So now I can control the camera from my computer and a few other things.
00:19:45.920 | But if you don't have an M1 or an M2 Mac and you want to pull the Android app up,
00:19:50.800 | BlueStacks was great.
00:19:51.920 | There are a handful of other Android emulators you could also use, but that
00:19:55.520 | hack was really great for me back before I got a new computer.
00:19:58.840 | When it comes to managing food and recipes and groceries,
00:20:02.480 | I love the app Paprika.
00:20:04.280 | It's cross-platform.
00:20:05.600 | It's not cheap, but it's so good.
00:20:07.840 | And so every time I'm on the web and I want to clip a recipe, my wife
00:20:12.320 | and I, we both save it to Paprika.
00:20:14.200 | We use the app for organizing what we're going to cook this week.
00:20:17.440 | And then you can take all the things that you're going to cook this week
00:20:19.920 | and throw it into a grocery list.
00:20:21.360 | You can go through that grocery list when you're in the grocery store.
00:20:24.160 | It auto sorts it by kind of aisle, check things off.
00:20:27.600 | My wife can add them to the list from home, or if we're in the grocery
00:20:31.400 | store splitting up, as one of us check something off, the other one
00:20:34.360 | sees it checked off in real time.
00:20:36.080 | It's just a really simple, beautiful interface for managing recipes,
00:20:40.040 | meal planning, grocery shopping.
00:20:41.840 | I love it.
00:20:42.640 | And then last one's a one that I imagine most people use, but I think
00:20:47.240 | it's really great is 1Password.
00:20:49.200 | So we're going to do an episode in the near future about security and how
00:20:53.320 | to think about all of the things from identity theft to online protection
00:20:57.240 | to two-factor authentication, but 1Password is kind of the
00:21:00.840 | cornerstone of all of that for me.
00:21:03.280 | I put all my passwords there.
00:21:05.480 | I use it to make sure all my passwords are strong and unique.
00:21:08.680 | I use it in lieu of Google Authenticator.
00:21:11.840 | So I actually store my two-factor codes in 1Password.
00:21:15.520 | I use it to store secure things like my known traveler number and
00:21:19.200 | just stuff that I would need to grab.
00:21:20.960 | The browser extension makes it easy to grab at any time.
00:21:23.880 | It works on mobile.
00:21:25.040 | On iOS and Android, you can kind of set up a replacement keyboard so
00:21:28.160 | you can auto put in your passwords.
00:21:30.080 | I know Apple has their own kind of built-in thing, but I just
00:21:34.760 | think 1Password is better.
00:21:36.040 | And I know whatever the best deal that they're offering right now, you can
00:21:39.520 | get at allthehacks.com/1password.
00:21:42.120 | It's just a great app.
00:21:43.960 | And for something like security and passwords, it's not a place where
00:21:47.920 | I'm excited about trying to get the free thing instead of the better thing.
00:21:51.840 | I signed up for it for a family account, made sure my parents got on it, made
00:21:55.800 | sure everyone in the family was using it.
00:21:58.040 | And it's just been a really big lifesaver for all of us to be able
00:22:02.880 | to really efficiently manage things.
00:22:04.720 | My wife and I actually have a shared vault.
00:22:06.600 | So for a lot of things like passwords, we want to be able to log into each
00:22:10.160 | other's bank accounts or different things.
00:22:12.800 | We just keep them in a shared vault so we can each access them
00:22:15.760 | and we update things accordingly.
00:22:17.680 | So 1Password is another really awesome one that I love.
00:22:21.400 | I know there's LastPass.
00:22:22.480 | I know there's Dashlane.
00:22:23.560 | I know there are other password managers.
00:22:25.320 | I'm not saying 1Password is always for everyone the best thing.
00:22:28.360 | But for me, I love it.
00:22:29.880 | I've been using it for, it seems like at least a decade.
00:22:32.800 | And I think it's fantastic.
00:22:34.560 | So let's change gears a little bit.
00:22:36.040 | I think part of productivity in life and the things we use aren't always software.
00:22:40.680 | So I want to talk about some of the gear I use for the podcast, for my life, for
00:22:45.440 | using technology around the house, just to make life better.
00:22:48.760 | So I'll just start right now.
00:22:50.640 | I'm talking to you on a real microphone, not the one built into my computer.
00:22:55.480 | I have 2.
00:22:56.760 | The one I started with, and that I recommend almost anyone who's
00:22:59.800 | recording any audio really get, because it's not that expensive,
00:23:03.320 | is the Audio-Technica ATR2100X.
00:23:07.000 | It's about $100.
00:23:09.120 | It's a USB and XLR mic.
00:23:12.960 | So USB, you could just plug into your computer.
00:23:14.760 | XLR, you could actually use it with an audio interface and other
00:23:19.000 | circumstances if you're recording professionally, but the
00:23:22.200 | quality of the mic is so good.
00:23:23.960 | And I remember as soon as I first got it, I was joining meetings for work remote,
00:23:28.040 | as we are doing nowadays, and everyone was like, "God, your audio sounds so good.
00:23:33.320 | Oh man, I just want to hear you just say something."
00:23:35.600 | And so I thought it was so easy.
00:23:36.840 | In fact, a couple of my colleagues actually bought the microphone after
00:23:39.520 | hearing it because they're like, "Oh, I just want to sound good like that."
00:23:41.640 | I have since upgraded to a mic that, I don't know, I don't even
00:23:45.080 | know if it's noticeably better.
00:23:46.320 | You guys listening can tell me.
00:23:47.720 | I upgraded about six or seven months ago.
00:23:50.200 | So the first maybe 20 episodes are on the old mic to a Shure SM7B.
00:23:54.960 | I would say this is only if you really want to commit to audio because that
00:23:59.280 | mic routes through a device called a Cloudlifter, routes through a
00:24:02.160 | device called an audio interface.
00:24:03.880 | That plugs into my computer.
00:24:05.120 | It's a lot of work.
00:24:06.040 | I personally think the audio quality is a little bit better, but if
00:24:09.480 | you're not making a podcast, I wouldn't stress it too much.
00:24:11.960 | You could use the computer mic.
00:24:13.520 | Apple mics are pretty good, but I think the ATR2100X is a really good mic
00:24:18.040 | if you want to sound better, definitely check that out.
00:24:20.240 | For listening, I think the Apple AirPods might be one of the best
00:24:24.880 | products created in the last decade.
00:24:27.360 | My only knock on them is that if you use them a lot, the battery dies.
00:24:30.840 | And I now probably have three or four pairs of AirPods around the house.
00:24:34.640 | And most of them only have an hour or so battery life, but they're
00:24:38.160 | just good enough that I keep buying them because they make life so easy.
00:24:41.920 | They're not studio quality headphones.
00:24:43.760 | When I'm recording the podcast, I use Audio Technica M50Xs.
00:24:48.760 | I really think they're great headphones.
00:24:50.400 | I tried a bunch.
00:24:51.360 | So, you know, that was my take.
00:24:53.360 | I'm not an audio engineer though.
00:24:54.800 | I'm sure someone here listening is, and they have a better recommendation,
00:24:58.440 | but for me, those are my over ear headphones for just kind of working
00:25:02.800 | on the podcast, listening to high quality audio, everything else is
00:25:06.520 | AirPods, unless I'm on a long flight and I bring some over the ear noise
00:25:10.960 | canceling, Bose, quiet comfort headphones.
00:25:14.120 | Those are also fantastic for travel.
00:25:16.040 | I also think video is important.
00:25:18.080 | So honestly, just the Logitech C900 series cameras are great.
00:25:23.840 | I use it for almost everything except recording video for the podcast.
00:25:28.200 | I think I have a C920 and a C930.
00:25:30.600 | One is on Amy's computer.
00:25:32.160 | One's on mine.
00:25:32.920 | Lighting is really important.
00:25:34.400 | I bought an Elgato ring light, which is probably way overkill
00:25:38.360 | for the average use case, but it's so great that you can control the light,
00:25:43.400 | the brightness, the color, everything, the color temperature from your computer
00:25:47.520 | without having to go press buttons.
00:25:49.520 | If you're recording a podcast, great.
00:25:51.160 | If not, there are a ton of really, really affordable, cheap lights that I
00:25:55.280 | think boost the quality of video a lot.
00:25:57.920 | I had a Lume Cube before that, and I think it's great.
00:26:01.040 | I still use it when I'm traveling because I'm not going to bring
00:26:03.960 | this giant light with me anywhere.
00:26:06.680 | The other big upgrade I made, and this is really like if you're giving
00:26:10.000 | a ton of presentations, maybe it's worth it.
00:26:12.280 | I've had a few listeners reach out, so I'm going to share.
00:26:15.120 | But again, I think it's overkill for most people, but I actually bought a
00:26:19.160 | teleprompter for recording the podcast.
00:26:22.040 | And that might seem like overkill, but it actually turns out
00:26:25.840 | teleprompters are not that expensive.
00:26:27.440 | The one I bought was under a hundred dollars, and I put an iPad under it,
00:26:32.240 | which I already owned, and there's this great app called Duet Display.
00:26:36.560 | And with a lightning cable between your computer and your iPad, you can actually
00:26:40.160 | turn your iPad into a second screen.
00:26:41.960 | So on one hand, it's great if you just are someone who wants to have that
00:26:45.480 | second screen so you can work on two screens from a laptop and not need a
00:26:49.040 | monitor, but they can also mirror the screen.
00:26:51.800 | So I actually use the iPad with a teleprompter and I put the
00:26:55.160 | camera behind the teleprompter.
00:26:56.640 | So when I'm doing an interview with someone, I can have some notes and I
00:27:00.800 | can see their face while I'm looking right at the camera, it's not offset.
00:27:05.760 | Way overkill for most people, but because some people have emailed and asked, I
00:27:09.280 | thought I would share behind the teleprompter for me, I have my nice full
00:27:14.360 | frame Sony A7C, it's definitely overkill for a webcam, but it's really great.
00:27:20.520 | And I use that when we're traveling as well.
00:27:22.360 | So I get a dual benefit there and Elgato makes a product called the Cam Link 4K,
00:27:27.640 | which lets you take an external nice camera and turn it into a webcam.
00:27:32.960 | So that's my computer setup, but I think one thing that is important
00:27:37.160 | for anyone online is Wi-Fi reliability.
00:27:39.880 | I upgraded recently when we moved to a UniFi system.
00:27:44.000 | I used to have a Netgear Orbi Wi-Fi system around the house and it was pretty
00:27:48.720 | good, but when we moved, I took the time to really upgrade to something that I'd
00:27:53.440 | used in our office at my startup, that Wealthfront used in their office, and
00:27:57.680 | it's the UniFi Wi-Fi system and it's been incredible, I don't think I've had
00:28:02.920 | a reboot or router in the last 18 months.
00:28:05.200 | Everything's been super fast.
00:28:07.160 | It's not the cheapest platform, but it's also not crazy expensive.
00:28:11.480 | I think each access point, I bought about half of them used on Nextdoor
00:28:15.280 | and Facebook Marketplace, so you can go that route for a little bit less.
00:28:18.560 | And we put them around the house.
00:28:20.240 | I think each access point is less than a hundred dollars.
00:28:22.280 | And so we have a handful of those around the house.
00:28:24.120 | They all route to this device called a Dream Machine Pro.
00:28:27.360 | And we bought some UniFi cameras, which we use instead of Nest cameras or Ring
00:28:34.000 | cameras around the house, because I like that it's all local, so all the cameras
00:28:38.880 | get stored on a hard drive on the Dream Machine Pro, so I'm not constantly
00:28:43.000 | using my bandwidth to upload feeds from the cameras we have around our house.
00:28:47.560 | And by around our house, I mean outside our house.
00:28:49.360 | We don't keep any cameras inside the house.
00:28:51.160 | As for getting in and out of the house, I love August locks.
00:28:54.840 | They make things so easy.
00:28:55.960 | I don't think I've carried a key for our house around forever,
00:28:59.760 | like for the last five or seven years.
00:29:01.520 | I can't remember how long ago we first got August locks.
00:29:03.720 | I love those.
00:29:05.000 | We finally added a ring security system to this house.
00:29:08.200 | I used to try to use this hardware system.
00:29:11.280 | I can't even remember what it was called.
00:29:12.640 | And it was like the DIY process of wiring in your old wired alarm system
00:29:18.480 | to this circuit board that you can put into smart things and pay this service.
00:29:22.720 | And yes, I might have saved a few dollars, but it was just a mess
00:29:25.960 | of tinkering with stuff. Ring is great.
00:29:29.120 | It's super simple.
00:29:30.320 | If your house is already wired for something else, they have a version
00:29:33.040 | that you can just use the hardwired system you already have and bring it on ring.
00:29:36.480 | That's what we do for security.
00:29:38.840 | The only other two things I think I'd add, they're not going to be shockers, right?
00:29:42.240 | Like I love Sonos and we have Sonos around the house.
00:29:44.840 | I think that's not a surprise.
00:29:46.960 | And then the last piece of gear productivity tip trick
00:29:50.880 | that I'll share is I really love my aura ring.
00:29:53.760 | I wear my aura ring every day.
00:29:55.800 | I track my sleep with it.
00:29:57.280 | I track workouts with it.
00:29:58.640 | The Gen three ring tracks your heart rate variability
00:30:01.160 | and the oxygen levels in your blood.
00:30:02.800 | I think it's such a good product.
00:30:04.760 | Like I know I've said that, but like this whole episode is me sharing the things
00:30:07.560 | that I think are really good products.
00:30:08.800 | But I really love the aura ring.
00:30:10.960 | I can get a really good sense of how sleep is going.
00:30:13.720 | I can if I am drinking one night and I look the next morning, I'm like,
00:30:17.080 | oh, that makes sense, and it's actually led me to want to drink less
00:30:21.640 | because I really like waking up refreshed.
00:30:24.080 | I know some people don't love the anxiety of feeling rested
00:30:29.040 | and finding out they weren't.
00:30:30.160 | But for me, I love being able to try to see how different amounts of sleep,
00:30:34.840 | different bedtimes, different exercise routines, different foods
00:30:38.160 | kind of contribute to the quality of my sleep and try to really dial it in.
00:30:41.760 | So it's really high because I think in order to operate at a high level,
00:30:45.520 | you really need sleep and it's really important.
00:30:47.840 | So definitely check out the aura ring.
00:30:50.120 | You can go to all the hacks dot com slash aura.
00:30:52.720 | That's my kind of referral link.
00:30:54.720 | And I think you'll get $50 off also.
00:30:57.040 | All right. I think that's it.
00:30:59.840 | So thank you so much for listening to this bonus episode.
00:31:02.880 | I hope some of what I shared is helpful and can help you live
00:31:06.280 | a more productive, happier, easier, more efficient life.
00:31:10.240 | If you have questions or if you want to share any feedback or other apps
00:31:14.320 | or productivity tricks you use, please send them my way.
00:31:17.240 | Chris at all the hacks dot com and I would love to hear from you.
00:31:21.760 | So that's it. I will see you guys next week.
00:31:24.000 | [music]
00:31:31.000 | [music]
00:31:36.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]