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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I trick my son (and myself) into putting away laundry by asking him to just put away his socks. Then we will come back in a minute and do his shirts. We repeat this cycle until all of his laundry is put away.
I find the same trick works on me. I want to make a new YouTube video, but that amorphous daunting task is challenging to start. I made this automation to help break up making a video into smaller tasks. This reduces the friction and makes producing videos much easier!
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Meetings are a massive part of knowledge work. So much so that being good at meetings can change the trajectory of your career. Worst case, it saves you time and reduces the number of meetings you need to attend. Best case, your preparedness and follow-through brings you higher quality opportunities and career growth. The only cost is the time you need to spend to prepare.
I made a video about a shortcut I use to automate my meeting preparation, reducing my time investment to seconds while also improving the quality of my work. Let me show you what I did.
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Almost all of my incoming tasks for work come via email. As much as I love an online collaborative task management tool, I just can’t get away from emailed tasks. So a few years ago, I decided to embrace the emailed task. I used some automation, and now, tasks I receive via email have the highest success rate of any work-related task.
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