Lately I’ve been trying to note what I glean from the content I’m consuming. Here’s a mashup of some things I’ve learned/discovered last week (and some before).
Apps discovered
New apps
- Hemingway seems like a (writing) app worth trying. The idea of algorithmically enhancing prose readability is awesome (discovered via Techradar).
App features
This is a small collection of handy Google docs (and one Chrome) features discovered. They’re not all necessarily discovered this week; some are just worth the mention.
- Google docs outline. This was a pleasant discovery. It’s far more convenient and efficient to have an auto-updated outline than bookmarking and linking bookmarks in an index above — which is what I’ve been doing, as seen below, to track my learning in a google doc (which I still do keep, as an alternate quick view).
links to document’s bookmarks, a more arduous alternative to google docs outline 
the outline of this post when drafted in google docs
To add an outline heading; simply type a title, embolden it and make sure there’s a line break before it.
You can view the document’s outline via the Tools menu, as shown below.tools > document outline in google docs - Also in google docs, and apparently in medium (this seems to be common knowledge!), an asterisk ‘*’ followed by a space yields a dot bullet point. Come to think of it, I feel this is a rediscovery. In all cases, it’s good to know!
- In Chrome, you can sweep out unneeded tabs swiftly with this right-click menu option, seen below.
close tabs to the right option in chrome for quick tab clear-up - On the topic of less tabs, having a google doc always open listing all the tabs I may need has been very helpful to keep tab clutter to a minimum (not all the time though!).
Lessons from videos
TED
- Tristan Harris: How better tech could protect us from distraction: a 14:55 minute talk. If you ever felt something’s missing when measuring success by mere clicks, this TED is worth the watch. Harris shares insightful examples on how to minimize time waste and design interfaces that help users invest their time spent on apps, rather than waste it fruitlessly. The talk shares a problem-solving lens that helps us, designers or not, better capitalize on what we most prioritize.
CreativeLive
- Tara Gentile’s How to write and publish an e-book 5-day course. Books are not written from A-Z, well they shouldn’t be anyway. At least non-fiction books! A timely reminder to draft what’s on my mind even if it doesn’t flow in an orderly fashion.
YouTube
- How to track your energy levels, in pursuit of learning your prime time (to doing your best work most efficiently). I prefer directly updating a spreadsheet, but Thomas’s idea of using Google forms — in the video embedded — inspires other uses to the app beyond sharing surveys.
- I enjoy watching bullet journalists share their craft of artfully expressing their plans and ideas. If you haven’t heard of bullet journals, here is an introduction and I recommend Boho Berry for inspiration. Regarding the video embedded here, I’ve learned that if you want to get into the daily doodle habit, setting a monthly theme and clustering all the doodles together is a motivating idea, given the potential of the unexpected beauty that the accumulated art would reveal. Also, the video showcases how you can track progress beautifully, like how Rachel did with her categorized YouTube publishing checklist.
Those were some of the things I’ve happily discovered over the past few days. What were yours? Feel free to share your recent discoveries in the comments!