We are halfway through 2024, and I can proudly say that this year has been one of my most productive ones so far.
Amidst some significant life changes, I have managed to keep my blog up and running, migrated my digital presence to a self-hosted infrastructure, read 8 books cover to cover, completed a bunch of LLM side projects and successfully navigated through some difficult challenges as an engineering manager.
Along the way, I have experimented with multiple new productivity tools. Some have done wonders. Others have failed miserably.
In this blog post I will introduce the 6 best productivity tools that have made 2024 a great year so far.
Let’s get started.
After experimenting with many different screen time apps, I have finally found the perfect one for my use cass — Opal.
With its stunning UI, intuitive features, and most importantly, great accuracy, Opal’s the sole reason for my reduced screen time this year.
Throughout the year, I have averaged around 1.5 to 2 hours of “screen on” time on my iPhone, and all credit goes to Opal.
Opal lets you set up “focus hour” windows where it blocks access too all apps that you mark as “distracting”. For me that’s — YouTube, Spark, Medium. Not only that, Opal also lets me block websites and whole domains at once.
Similar to iPhone, Opal also works on my browser and iPad.
I have a very simple Opal set up with 4 focus windows.
Morning Focus — 5AM to 8:30AM — let’s me pray, exercise and read without distraction.
Yelp Work — 9AM to 5PM — let’s me focus on my day job as an engineering manager.
Hustle — 6PM to 7:30PM — let’s me focus on my side projects (blog, youtube, etc).
Sleepy sleep — 8:30PM to 5AM — helps me reduce my screen usage before bedtime.
Along with restricting access to distracting apps, Opal also acts as a “guidepost” throughout my day. By using it’s iOS widgets and Apple Watch complications, at a glance I can tell what I should be doing during any given hour.
At $100/year, it’s been my best investment of 2024 so far.
I have never been a big user of common social media apps, such as, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok.
Instead, my biggest distraction has always been YouTube.
To be more specific, it has been going down YouTube rabbit holes, always starting from either the home feed, comment section or recommended vides curated by YouTube across their app and website.
Enter: Unhook.
Unhook is a browser extension that gives you full control over your YouTube experience in browser.
I use the following features:
Hide Home Feed
Hide Video Sidebar
Hide Comments
Hide Shorts
Disable Autoplay
Hide End Screen Cards
Hide End Screen Feeds
With these settings, whenever I type https://youtube.com, I am taken straight to my Subscriptions feed or Watch Later playlist.
That means my YouTube experience is much more intentional than the typical experience of algorithm-driven time wormholes.
Hands down one of my best purchase of the last 5 years has been my Sony XM4s that I bought in 2019 with my first paycheck.
Even though it’s been 5 years, not for once has it shown any signs of aging.
It still has one of the best noise cancellations in the market, still manages to be one of the most compact form factors making it a breeze to travel with, and, above all, it’s fantastic battery life makes it last for days without charging.
However, in spite of its impressive features set, it’s the symbolic meaning behind putting on these pairs of headphones that it deserves a place on this list.
Putting on these headphones is equivalent to athletes putting on their game faces after their coach’s pep talk.
It’s simple: my AirPods are for taking meetings or working out or going for a walk. On the other hand, my noise cancellation headphones are for travel or deep work.
It’s this distinction that can make the boundary between work and play much clearer.
Just this Prime Day, I have considered upgrading to newer headphones, but the sentimental value of it being the first purchase from my first paycheck is too strong for me to replace these.
I bet you didn’t see this one coming.
Proton Mail is a secure email that keeps your conversations privates and protects your privacy at all costs.
How did it make me more productive? No, privacy wasn’t the reason.
Once I transitioned most of my life to Proton Mail, it freed up my previous email accounts for other uses.
This is what I did:
Proton Mail — all important, time-sensitive communications
Google Emails — newsletters, unimportant communications, etc.
This split directly contributed to reducing my screen time.
Now, instead of every trip to my inbox being like entering a distractions minefield, my Proton Mail trips have become more streamlined.
Every morning I only check my Proton Mail inbox, and most days it’s empty. You would be surprised to see that only a very few emails actually require some kind of a timely action. Most are just FYIs, or worse, distractions.
I will wrap up with another Apple device — my smartwatch, Apple Watch SE 2.
At the beginning of the year I did a type of “smartwatch cleansing”.
I removed all apps on it, turned off all notifications, and did a clean set up all over again. To help turn my smartwatch from a distraction machine to an almost iPhone replacement, this is what I did:
Turn on Calendar notifications
Turn on TickTick (my task manager app of choice) notifications
Install Opal
Install Pray Watch (prayer app)
Install 2FA app of choice
Keep health apps such as Apple Fitness, Apple Health, Apple Workout, etc
Stop receiving calls and text messages
With these changes, my smartphone became a “proactive” device rather than a “reactive one”.
Instead of glancing at my watch every time I got a text, call, or notification on my phone, I only look at my watch for the following:
Tell the time (duh!)
Start or end a workout
Check my fitness rings
2FA prompts
Notifications about when it’s time to pray
Notifications about calendar events or tasks
Given most of my productive needs are already being met by my watch, my iPhone usage has drastically reduced.
I think the next natural step for me is to try out an Apple Watch with cellular. Who knows? Maybe that will be the day I move my iPhone to my closet.
Okay folks, that’s all for today.
If you have read it so far, thank you for your time. I hope you found it valuable.
If you want to stay connected, here are a few ways you can do so: follow me on Medium or subscribe to my website.