Vincent Cheng

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’ll keep updating this as I discover more. Many are specific to Mac + Chrome. Feel free to message me your favorites and I’ll include them!

  1. Cmd+l to get to search bar
  2. Cmd+1, Cmd+2, ... to navigate between tabs
  3. Cmd+ ` to get around windows of the same app without the slow Mac sliding animation. Your windows have to be non-maximized.
  4. Tab+Enter to fill out forms without using your mouse. Tab+"Answer" where you type the answers out from a dropdown menu works too.
  5. Cmd+Shift+m -> Arrow keys -> Enter to navigate between different Google accounts (not sure how much faster this is/if it is faster)
  6. Raycast
    • Clipboard history (I don’t use it that much)
    • Window management has never been so easy:
      • I bound Cmd+Shift+j/k to left/right half for window management.
      • I’m currently in the Raycast free trial since I wanted a custom window management command Cmd+Shift+n for largest non-maximized window (see 2). We’ll see if it’s worth it in two weeks.
    • Snippets: I bound @@ and !@ to common emails.
  7. A goddamn mouse. I use a random Logitech one and there are definitely better ones out there. Send me what you use!
  8. Dell 40 inch curved monitor.
  9. 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.
  10. I bound Vim’s copy to clipboard ("+y) \. There are definitely a ton of vimrc shenanigans that I’m not abusing. Send me your favorite ones!
  11. You can use your iPad as an extended display to your Mac without any setup! Discovering this inspired me to write this post.
  12. Shift+select tabs and drag out to get a set of tabs to a new window.
  13. 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.
  14. Whenever I see someone with a cool personal website, I send a one sentence email telling them it’s nice :))
  15. For Apple Notes on Mac: There isn’t a default keybinding for strikethrough but you can bind it yourself through this.
  16. On Mac, the default screenshot + save to clipboard is “Cmd+Shift+Ctrl+4” which usually takes two hands to press, but you can rebind this to to “Cmd+Shift+4” which from System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts > Keyboard > Screenshots (thanks Will).
  17. Add archive.is/[link] to view WSJ or other paywalled sites.
  18. Vim for Google Docs extension
  19. Anki generator extension
  20. https://substack.com/@henrikkarlsson/note/c-108623056