As I have explained before, I try to deal with stressful situations by planning ahead, most often through checklists or automations.
Deciding to keep my sick kid home from school and communicating with his teacher(s) and the staff quickly is just such a situation. I have created two Drafts accounts to help me in those times.
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Instead of using different apps for tracking habits or chores, I keep everything in my task manager. This made my task manager cluttered and require too much maintenance until I started automating the marking as complete of various action items via AppleScript.
I made a video explaining and demoing the process; this post also has various downloads and links to help you recreate my work.
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Read moreRecently I have been talking to many struggling teachers and education professionals. Rightfully so, pandemic teaching is a beast!
— Mike Burke (@hearmikeburke) May 9, 2022
I was overwhelmed with teaching long before the pandemic; a book saved my career.
The Checklist Manifesto by @Atul_Gawande
Read it, seriously.
I like magic tricks as much as the next person, but I usually find effective magic tricks to be frustrating.
I know there is a trick; some secret, technique, or special tool that lets the magician perform the trick. The trick is effective because I don’t know how it works, and it frustrates me that I can’t figure it out.
Sometime over the past two years, I figured out how to perform a magic trick on myself; and I am frustrated because I don’t know how it works, just that it does.
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If you work on a mac and you are trying to reduce the repetitive tasks in your life, improve the quality of your work, or just save time, Keyboard Maestro is the best $36 you can spend. But, it can be an intimidating app when you open it. Let me give you a head start!
This post has five one-step macros to get you started using Keyboard Maestro. You can build them yourself by watching the video or checking out the screenshots, or use the download buttons to get a copy of mine.
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