1% Improvements

Here’s a running list of tiny workflow tips that make my day-to-day noticeably smoother. Most of these are embarrassingly simple, but that’s the point! Habits that seem obvious to me might be totally new to someone else (and vice versa).

I will continually update this every ~month and try to only include things that I have kept up using for more than a month. Message me your favorites and I’ll include them!

I still use all of these as of August 29, 2025.

• Tmux
• Raycast
  • WINDOW MANAGEMENT: Go to Raycast Settings -> Extensions -> Search ‘Window Management’ and bind all the window management commands you commonly use. I’ve bound Cmd+Shift+j to left half, Cmd+Shift+k to right half, Cmd+Shift+b to maximize, Cmd+Shift+c for next display (great when you have multiple monitors). I use these commands 50+ times a day. This replaces Rectangle.
  • Clipboard history is great. When people first told me about it, I couldn’t think of situations I would use this, but intentionally thinking about it for a week I realized how wrong I was and use it every day now!
  • Snippets: I bound @@ and !@ to common emails since I unnecessarily type them out so often.
• ***On Mac, Cmd+Shift+Ctrl+4 allows you to screenshot a subset of your screen and copies it to clipboard. Please use this. I’ve met >10 people who only use Cmd+Shift+4 which DOESN’T save the image to clipboard but rather saves it to desktop and shows up on the bottom left corner. Then, they scramble to drag it to where they want to paste it before it disappears.
  • Taking it a step further, the default Cmd+Shift+Ctrl+4 takes two hands to press, but you can rebind this to Cmd+Shift+4 (which will only take your left hand) from System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts > Keyboard > Screenshots (credits to Will).
• Granola for recording meetings.
• Beeper. Have all your chats in one app. Have Instagram and Discord DM notifications available without the distracting bits.
• Youtube Playback Speed Control allows you to watch YouTube videos at 5x speed. It’s also nice to increase/decrease video speed arbitrarily with +/- buttons. Often, I want to go faster but am scared I’ll miss something if I use +5 seconds so I can go up to 4x and then slow back down which has a similar effect but is continuous so I don’t miss anything.
• Vim for Google Docs extension
• AltTab for Windows Alt+Tab on macOS. This is strictly superior to pure Cmd+Tab as that only allows you to switch between apps and not windows within the same app. However, tabbing through many windows can sometimes be annoying, so an alternative is only using non-maximize windows (it’s not a big difference) and using Cmd+Tab to go between apps and Cmd+` to get between windows of the same app. Since learning about these, I never swipe using four fingers on my Mac trackpad anymore and love it.
• If your LLM starts generating a response and you realize you missed something, edit your original message directly instead of sending a follow-up correction. It keeps the conversation cleaner.
• Add archive.is/[link] to view WSJ or other paywalled sites.
• Shift+select tabs and drag out to get a set of tabs to a new window.
• I bound Vim’s copy to clipboard command "+y to \. There are definitely a ton of vimrc shenanigans that I’m not abusing. Send me your favorite ones!
• Whenever I see somene with a cool personal website, I send a 10 second email telling them it’s nice :))
• (I don’t have one of these anymore since I transferred to Cornell because it’s too hill-y and snows too much, but I still think it’s great for most schools!) (mostly for college students) My scooter is one of the highest value things I’ve bought in the past year and I can’t imagine my life without one now. This one is at least a 5% improvement It saves me at least an hour a day and lowers the activation energy required to go anywhere on campus since everything is ~equidistant. I’ve also convinced at least 4 other friends to buy their own.
• Cmd+l to get to search bar
• Cmd+1, Cmd+2, ... to navigate between tabs
• Discord keybindings: Cmd+k to search for channel name, Cmd+Shift+u to upload file, Cmd+f for search
• Excalidraw is good for sketching.
• Dell 40 inch curved monitor.
• You can use your iPad as an extended display to your Mac without any setup! Discovering this inspired me to write this post (credits to Wanhan).
• A goddamn mouse. I use a random Logitech one and there are definitely better ones out there. Send me what you use!
• Source: If you’re single, a useful habit to build is that whenever you see someone that makes you curious, you go talk to them. I mean in the supermarket and stuff. Not in a pickup artist way, but just being open to the world.
• Obtain a full text version of a github repo: replace github.com/user/name_of_repo with uithub.com/user/name_of_repo. (doesn’t work for private repos)
• Binding next cell and previous cell in Google Colab since the Vim commands don’t work for navigating between cells.
• Tab+Enter to fill out forms without using your mouse. Tab+"<ANSWER>" where you type the answers out from a dropdown menu works too.
• For Apple Notes on Mac: There isn’t a default keybinding for strikethrough but you can bind it yourself through this.
• Make aliases for all your common terminal commands. ‘p’ for ‘python’, ‘ga’ for ‘git add’, … See my config file for all the ones I use.
• Go to System Settings -> Login Items and remove everything except Raycast, Rectangle so your Mac doesn’t open up 10 apps when you restart it.
• For 2+ years (?), the “hold down to repeat” on my mac wasn’t on but I didn’t bat an eye… sigh. I fixed this and added some customization which helps for vim navigation and other misc cases. Thanks to Gabriel for this one.
  • Run defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false to turn it on.
  • Run defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int X to tune how fast Mac spits out keys when you hold down. A smaller X is faster. The default is 6 (every 90ms) which is way to slow for me. I use X=2 but try out a few values and see what you like.
  • You have to Logout and log back in for this to reset and take into effect.