A lot of blogs that I follow have a colophon page describing their writing process, and they always provide me with a new way to reflect on how I work, so I’ve decided to join the club!

RSS

I am trying to cut down on the amount of content I consume that comes from social media algorithms. Even if you disregard how widely they are used for advertising, misinformation, and to manipulate you into just feeling bad, I find that when I am more intentional with what I choose to engage with, my whole day improves as a result.

What this means in practice is only using RSS feeds as much as possible.

• I’ve converted my YouTube subscriptions into feeds so that I don’t have to engage with the actual YouTube site. (Which you can do just by appending /rss to the end of the channel link)
• I subscribe to a few news sites (mostly tech focused)
• I converted any email newsletters into feeds using https://kill-the-newsletter.com
• Everything else comes from blogs I have discovered over the past few months

My RSS Reader of choice is NetNewsWire, which is pretty basic but has everything I really need.

Obsidian

Anything that I engage with that I think is of value to me goes into a note in Obsidian. Each note links to at least one tag which then makes it easier to both find the note later on and find links between ideas/notes. I don’t limit myself too much by what should constitute a note, it can be a quote from an article, a summary of an essay, a full guide to a subject, or simply a link to the resource with a small explainer for why I found it valuable.

Here is a little example for the nerds like me that are interested in this kind of thing:

Obsidian is also where I do all of my own writing and journalling, which means I can easily link to other notes that I take ideas from. I avoid using AI for any writing except straightforward tasks where nothing is lost through automation, I’m a big believer in just reading the prompt instead.

There are a few plugins that I can’t live without

• Local Backup — Very occasionally I’ll have an Issue with iCloud where a note I make suddenly disappears, and while it’s only happened a couple of times, this plugin means I don’t worry about it all that much
• Smart Typography — I just love all my little symbols → ← ≤
• Zotero Integration — A huge timesaver when doing a literature review
• Style Settings + AnuPpuccin — My theme of choice

Other Apps

LookAway — This app reminds me to sit up straight, blink normally, and actually blocks me from using my Mac on a Pomodoro schedule so that I actually have to get up and move around once in a while. Life-saving.

FocusDock — Removes all the fluff from my Mac dock when I’m working so I’m not tempted to open Discord every 5 seconds.

Publishing

This site was originally intended to just host a html version of my CV, which I did so using this guide by Michael Engen, but I enjoyed the simplicity of Eleventy so much that I decided to develop it into a full blog. I expect that the design of this site will change a lot over time, but I’m fairly happy with it for now.

I have tried to remove as much unecessary bloat as possible adn am trying to stay more vigilant about keeping my code small and tidy, as well as optimising any images that are used.