Do you use keyboard shortcuts?

If you do, I’d love to know what your favorite app with keyboard shortcuts is...

How to beat Imposter Syndrome.

5 steps to have the career you want:

Have you ever felt like a fraud?

Like you haven’t earned your accomplishments?

You’re not alone.

Up to 82% of people suffer from Imposter Syndrome.

It’s the single greatest threat to your career (and reaching your potential).

Today I’ve going to break down WHY Imposter Syndrome happens

And a proven plan to overcome it.

Let’s get started.

So, why does Imposter Syndrome happen?

Credit goes to a quirky cognitive bias:

“Dunning-Kruger Effect”

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Novices experience overconfidence due to quick progression on the learning curve.

While experts’ confidence drops because they realize what they don’t yet know.

Paradoxically, the more you become an expert, the more you may feel like an imposter.

1/ Productivity tip: when I keep procrastinating on something I often trick myself by saying, "ok just work on it for the next 20 minutes" or some short period of time, "and then you can chill/relax guilt free" and give myself some treat (sugar, netflix, etc)

2/ Usually at the 20 minute mark (sometimes I set a timer) I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that I don't want want to stop and end up working on it for the next hour or two. But getting started seems to be the hardest part.

3/ Key to this: you have to actually be ok with stopping after 20 minutes and being guilt free if that's how you feel. So it's not a trick, i have the option every time, I just often don't want to use it once i'm in the zone.

You know how having too many open Chrome tabs bogs your computer down?

The same happens to your brain.

Unfinished tasks keep "running" in the background.

It's called the Zeigarnik Effect.

Here's how it works and what to do about it:

🧵

Quick History:

Named after Dr. Bluma Zeigarnik.

While sitting in a busy restaurant in Vienna, she noticed the waiters had better memories of unpaid orders vs. paid ones.

Once the bill was paid, they struggled to remember the exact details of the orders.

But why?

1/ Our brains are wired to remember unfinished tasks better than completed ones.

Like a to-do list, once we finish a task, our brain checks it off the list to free up mental bandwidth.

The more unfinished tasks, the more resources our brain dedicates to keeping track of them.

2/ Storytellers leverage the Zeigarnik Effect with cliffhangers.

We keep reading/watching to find out what happens next because our brains are driven to seek closure.

Once resolved, we can forget and move on.

Until then, we lean in with rapt attention.

3/ It's another reason blocking uninterrupted time for deep work is important.

What most call "multi-tasking" is actually task-switching.

The ZE is one reason we suck at it.

When we're doing something and get interrupted, our brain keeps that "tab" open—draining our CPU.

I increasingly believe that the only successful approach to productivity is treating yourself like an addict

If you want to stop drinking alcohol, don't keep it in the house 🙅

Here's how I keep myself productive:

1. Clean Out The Cupboards 📱

I use iOS Screen Time to block all social media, news, and yes, EMAIL, from my phone.

I also remove the ability to install new apps.

My wife set the code, so I don't have any easy way to get around it.

2. Add Guiderails 🚆

On my Mac, I have an automation that quits all apps each morning before I get to work and pulls up OmniFocus on the screen, so it's always the first thing I see when I open my computer and can't go down a rabbit trail.

3. Reduce Dopamine Hits 🥱

I use to spend my entire day in my inbox.

As I'd send emails, new ones would stream in constantly, and before I'd know it I'd spent 4-5 hours just responding to emails instead of moving important projects or individual work forward.

I setup @Mailman_HQ, a Gmail plug-in @mohitmamoria and I built, to only deliver email once in the morning and once in the early afternoon, and to automatically batch any emails from anyone I hadn't emailed with before at 7AM...

Reducing the Pain of Context-Switching 🔀

Context switching is a huge pain as both a dev & dev advocate and makes it hard to be creative!

Three things that help:

📥 Centralize your capture
🤔 Review regularly
🤖 Automate where you can

Let's dig into each of these!

📥 Centralize your capture

"Cognitive setup" is the big drain of context-switching. Try @fortelabs' "slow burns 🔥 vs heavy lifts 🏋️‍♂️".

Trade 1 big block of cognitive setup + creative work for short sessions that keep the project context fresh. More:

First "slow burn" strategy: centralize where you capture ideas, take notes, & track project status. You might gather:

- Links to relevant docs or websites
- Ideas
- Notes or caveats
- Dated status updates

You can put these in physical journals, 1 app, or multiple apps.

For me, no 1 app can do everything so I use:

- @NotionHQ for status updates
- @draftsapp for jotting down ideas/notes to categorize later (not having to think about where to put an idea as you're having it is 💯)
- @obsdmd for archives/notes/research ("knowledge management")

You can go really deep into knowledge management; just google "Zettelkasten" and you'll see what I mean. If you want to check out Obsidian for yourself, here's a great intro tutorial: