Thanks for the post! I love a lot of these, and haven't come across some :)
Google docs quick create. Shortcut key or single click to automatically create a new google document or spreadsheet. Saves a ton of time.
The URL doc.new or sheet.new also does this, and is pretty low friction (though not quite single click!) Works on any computer though
Quickcompose. You know how easy it is to get distracted by your inbox when you need to send an email? Quick compose makes it so that you can open up a window that’s just a compose window so you can’t get distracted by new emails.
I really like the extension Inbox When Ready - it hides your inbox by default, unless you click on the 'show inbox' button. This is enough to reduce 'compulsively open email and check things', as well as giving this functionality
Awesome recommendations, I really appreciated them (especially the one on game theory, that was a lot of fun to play through). I would like to also suggest Replacing Guilt series by Nate Soares for those who haven't seen it on his blog or on the EA forum, a fantastic series that I would highly recommend people to check out.
Replacing Guilt is also available as a paper book through Amazon.
There are times when I wanted to share this series with a friend, but knew immediately that reading and clicking through a series of posts is not something they could do, so having this on a different medium is a game changer for me.
Some great recommendations, have added a bunch of these thanks! Here are some of my top recommendations
These are probably more subjective than anything else
Got a bit carried away, but fun way to spend a morning, hope that's useful to some of you!
Great recommendations! Some additions I've found helpful.
App and Extensions:
Software:
A serious, non-rhetorical question: Is there a moral difference between "Bypass Paywalls" and a manual with advice for how to steal newspapers from a kiosk?
I don't necessarily endorse it but the moral argument would go like so: "I'm definitely not going to pay to read that article so me bypassing the paywall is not hurting the newspaper. The marginal cost is zero. Stealing from a kiosk, on the other hand, deprives the newspaper of a sale (and is just obvious plain old stealing)." In other words, "I'm not stealing a newspaper from the kiosk, I'm just breaking in, photocopying it real quick, and putting it right back. No harm no foul!"
A counterargument might be that you're contributing to demand for paywall-bypassing which does deprive the newspaper of sales, just less directly.
When you steal a newspaper from a kiosk, you are taking paper and ink that do not belong to you. The newspaper is harmed because it now has less paper and ink. When you bypass a paywall, the newspaper still has all the same computers and servers that it had before, it hasn't lost any physical object.
The actual costs of producing the newspaper are sunk. So the only relevant part would be the opportunity costs of seeling the paper to someone. So for my question you can assume that in the kiosk there are more newspapers than will be sold that day.
You got a few general answers already, but they talk about the hypothetical notion of bypassing paywalls, rather than about what a "bypass paywalls" addon actually does in the real world.
Newspaper websites want to have their cake and eat it, too: They simultaneously want their content to be available for free (so they e.g. get indexed in search engines and shared widely), and to then get people to pay for it. They do that by e.g. giving you a limited number of unrestricted articles to read per month, or by restricting all content except when it's referred (i.e. linked) from specific other websites, or by making it a hassle to read unless you pay, etc.
The crucial point here is that the content is freely available somehow, and that its restrictions are intentionally somewhat flimsy (because otherwise search engines and people wouldn't share the articles). That's why addons can exist which are capable of disabling these restrictions.
Contrast that with paid Substack posts. Substack puts those behind true (hard) paywalls, doesn't load the content on your local browser, and hence provides no attack surface to any addons intended to bypass them. Newspapers could do the same - but they don't, because their business model requires non-tight paywalls.
Thanks for the answer but I don't see how that touches the morality of bypassing paywalls. The morality would be the same if there were no technical paywall at all but the newspaper told people explicitly on page 1 that you are only allowed to read it if you paid, and there were a community of people telling each other "you can just click 'continue' and that's okay".
In the world you describe, both readers and newspapers would know that that statement was nonsense, and nobody would take it seriously. Or in a world where people did somehow take it seriously, the newspapers would go bankrupt after losing all their network effects because people wouldn't encounter articles from search engines or word of mouth.
That's my whole point. The business model of a newspaper crucially depends on there being free ways to read its content, and getting people to pay for it anyway. And once a business model depends on a "paywall" which is in fact a fiction or lie, I do think that bears on the morality of circumventing it. A newspaper can't call people bad for circumventing a paywall when it could've made the paywall secure but intentionally chose not to.
This also bears on the notion of laws and enforceability: If you say "you can't read this unless you pay", and then don't take the slightest steps (as in your original comment) or sufficient steps (as in the case of intentionally soft paywalls) to enforce this rule, then to what extent does this rule even really exist?
In the world you describe, both readers and newspapers would know that that statement was nonsense, and nobody would take it seriously.
I don't see why that should be the case, given the similarity to exchanging ideas on how to avoid paywalls. In real life, people don't tell each other that it's okay to ignore the "please pay", because people don't "need" that advice, they just do ignore the "please pay".
Or in a world where people did somehow take it seriously, the newspapers would go bankrupt after losing all their network effects because people wouldn't encounter articles from search engines or word of mouth.
I guess that's why many newspaper websites paywall their articles nowadays.
That's my whole point. The business model of a newspaper crucially depends on there being free ways to read its content, and getting people to pay for it anyway. And once a business model depends on a "paywall" which is in fact a fiction or lie, I do think that bears on the morality of circumventing it. A newspaper can't call people bad for circumventing a paywall when it could've made the paywall secure but intentionally chose not to.
Sorry, I don't understand they point. The existence of the paywall clearly signals to people that the newspaper does not want them to read the content for free, whether or not the newspaper also decides to make it technically possible to read it such that indexing works etc.
This also bears on the notion of laws and enforceability: If you say "you can't read this unless you pay", and then don't take the slightest steps (as in your original comment) or sufficient steps (as in the case of intentionally soft paywalls) to enforce this rule, then to what extent does this rule even really exist?
In my example, the newspaper did not tell people that they can't read it if they did not pay, but that they are not allowed to read it if they don't pay. So in this world, people are morally expected to follow the wish of the content creator in order to make a more efficient economy possible (i.e., one where enforcement costs are not necessary). In real world, something similar exists, for example the "please support me" of people writing a substack (or the usual pop-up on wikipedia or here: https://taz.de/-Nachrichten-im-Ukraine-Krieg-/!5892878/)
An example that comes close to my use case is this. I'm in a bookshop and have bought a copy of NY Times and the WSJ. I then see an interesting article on page 13 of the Chicago Tribune. I pick up a copy and read the article and put it back. Did I steal from Chicago Tribune? Maybe. Is there a way I can compensate them for this? I'm not sure of a good way to do this. Bypass Paywalls fills a similar gap in my use case when I run into articles I don't have subscriptions for. I endorse supporting blogs/newsletters/news sites if one gets significant value from them.
I am not really convinced of this case. Of course you can compensate for that. You can buy the Chicago Tribune. Now you may say that is exaggerated, for just one article. But when you buy the NYT and the WSJ, you also pay for a lot of articles you don't care about. I think in this case we can hope that there are other people who buy the Chicago Tribune and also sometimes read an article in the NYT without paying for that. Or maybe you sometimes buy the NYT and every once in a while you buy the CT. In a certain social equilibrium, a variety of newspapers can exist, and I think that is more relevant than the exact payment or profit at the margin.
Now technology has changed, and there are paywalls. As in the case of the newspapers, the ethics of using an app that circumvents paywalls may depend on the way you use it, and on the social equilibrium. But it's hard to say how exactly, and which behavior should generalize.
Great recommendations, thank you for making this post. I would add to the books section: Deep Work & So Good They Can't Ignore You (Cal Newport). It definitely led me to take a new perspective on what I spend time on.
Thank you for the recommendations!
For something like Keysmith (automating series of tasks) for windows, I use AutoHotkey. It's free and super easy and powerful and has a very good Tutorial Page.
Counterpoint: I've bounced off of AutoHotkey multiple times so far and would therefore not describe its docs as good. Or rather, I always install it to solve a moderately difficult problem, then get stumped because the tool has way too many functionalities with weird edge cases.
AutoHotkey might work fine if one first installs it and gets used to it, and only then encounters that moderately difficult problem; but my experience with it has always been disappointing.
Interesting, I wrote that comment a year ago and autohotkey is still embedded into the genes of how I use my computer. My capslock is remapped to control, I can write a small four letter string to pull up a notepad file with my daily journal, another string for my sleep long, another four my collection of fictional quotes I like, and fun ones like typing 'nowk' to expand to the current date without having to check it (2022-12-05) or typing -0 to auto expand to — em dash are things that my computer feels very empty without now
Maybe my expectations for usability are just too high, or the tool is easy enough for professional programmers? (Which I am not, though I have some minor programming experience.) Or maybe you're used to the tool, flaws and all, so now you benefit from the upside without suffering from the learning curve? Or maybe I would've fared better if I'd consulted that specific quick start tutorial rather than searching in the docs when I had questions?
Anyway, a few days ago, I finally took the plunge, again. It took me ~80 min to write this almost trivial key recording script to help an author of video game guides who up to this point had typed their huge walkthroughs by hand (example, one of those solutions is >700 characters long). The majority of that scripting time was spent raging at the documentation and syntax and lack of error messages, for a script I expected to be very simple.
The resulting script worked and the recipient was very happy about it, so spending the time was worth it, but I found the scripting experience itself just unpleasant. On the other hand, maybe now the worst is behind me, and writing further scripts would be smooth sailing?
I use it for the usual shortcut keys I use all the time, so mostly: alt-tab, alt-q (from the chrome extension), ctrl+t, and ctrl+l (L as in llama)
thanks!
when i do ctrl+t and ctrl+l it's because am about to write something, so i think id still use the keyboard for those. although, maybe with short cuts i actually dont need the keyboard after ctrl+t, so i might still use it.
i might find alt-tab and alt-shift-tab useful; also going backward and forward on a browser
maybe id also use it to close a tab, and open a link on a new tab
- Erasable pens. Pens are clearly better than pencils in that you can write on more surfaces and have better colour selection. The only problem is you can’t erase them. Unless they’re erasable pens that is, then they strictly dominate. These are the best I’ve found that can erase well and write on the most surfaces.
I also loved these Frixion erasable pens when I discovered them.
But another even better step up in my writing-by-hand experience was the reMarkable tablet. Genuinely feels like writing on paper — but with infinite pages, everything synced to the cloud, pages organised in folders, ability to reorder pages/paragraphs and a passcode on the lock screen so you can write your most embarrassing secrets or terrible first drafts without fear of someone accidentally reading it.
For Windows I recommend the (free, open source) tool ShareX any time you want to capture something (as a screenshot, video, gif, whatever) and share it (e.g. by uploading it to imgur or Youtube or Twitter or something). It takes a bit to get used to[1], but then it's immensely powerful and rewarding because it can do so much.
For example, with just 1 click, it can record a screenshot or gif, and upload it to an image hoster, and copy the image URL to your clipboard. That's pretty neat.
Examples of how I use it: I've used it to record gifs of bugs on the Less Wrong website so I can upload them on the Issue Tracker; and for lots of other bug reports; and to take screenshots of puzzle games so I can draw on the screenshots. If I used social media, it would be great there, too.
The main shortcoming I'm aware of is that some features don't work well on (non-borderless) fullscreen applications. So to record e.g. gameplay videos, I instead use Geforce Experience (restricted to Nvidia GPUs).
E.g. IIRC the default workflow automatically uploads screenshots you take, so don't try it on sensitive data until you understand how it works. Youtube tutorials and the docs should help, plus you can ask me.
- Switch between your two most recent tabs. Use the shortcut Alt + Q to switch between your two most recently used tabs. It's like alt-tab but for tabs instead of windows. I can't imagine navigating a computer without this. It feels crippling. I know that there are better ones that allow you cycle through multiple tabs, not just your most recent. If you know of one, recommend it in the comments! I just haven't had the spare time to optimize this more.
In Firefox (and apparently also Chrome), the shortcuts Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab switch to the next / previous tab. Were you unaware of those, or does the "two most recent tabs" switch make a practical difference from those?
Seems quite different to me, Ctrl+tab let's you circle through your tabs, but the new alt+q returns you to the previous tab which might or might not be next to the tab you are currently at. (I hardly use the Ctrl+tab thing, even though I'm aware of it as you'll always have to look or think what the right shortcut to use is (There is also Cmd+[number] which gets you to the xth tab, but again here you'll have to look and check what where you actually want to go to), but Alt+q sounds significantly more of a no brainer to just click if you want to go back.)
The link to your framework for onboarding habits / SEEP is broken. Here is an archived version of that article: https://web.archive.org/web/20211125065547/http://www.katwoods.co/home/june-14th-2019
Good catch! Yeah, I'm switching to .org instead of .co and the re-direct link is currently not working for some obscure reason I'm working on. In the meantime, I've updated the link and this is the new one here http://www.katwoods.org/home/june-14th-2019
It has the boomerang feature but (as far as I can tell) doesn't have the "reply only if this person hasn't replied yet" feature, which I find super useful. Especially as a manager, this is a lifesaver and should be a feature in way more things.
With Boomerang you can make it so that it will only return the message to your inbox if the person hasn't replied to it yet. So if you send an email saying "Hey, can you do X?" and they don't respond within a week, it'll come back to your inbox. If they do respond though, it won't remind you later.
unless I'm missing something, that's how Gmail's snooze feature works
if someone replies to a snoozed email, it automatically unsnoozes it and brings it back to your inbox
Interesting. Didn't know it had that feature.
That's the opposite of what Boomerang is offering, though. It's if there no reply that it'll bump it back to your inbox. So if you ask for something and they don't get back to you, you get notified so you can bump them again.
For example, I might say to somebody "Can you send me that spreadsheet we were talking about?" and say to boomerang to send this back to my inbox if they don't get back to me by Monday. Then I can bump them and say "Hey, just checking in on this spreadsheet."
Well, no, I think it's the same as Boomerang. If someone replies to an email thread that's been Boomerang-ed, I presume it also brings it back to the inbox, no? Snooze, just like Boomerang, also brings back an email thread in the inbox at a set datetime if it has received no replies by that time.
Obsidian.md - it's a note-taking application. It supports the ability to link notes, creating a graph, a little like a wiki, but more flexible. Files are stored as a version of Markdown, so it's not locking you into a proprietary format. And it runs locally, so you're free from the cloud, but there are apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, OSX, so there are paid and free ways to share notes across devices. Other solutions like wikis felt too heavy-weight and too network dependent. Vimwiki was nice, but it didn't support adding pictures/graphs/files, etc. Obsidian.md seems to do it all. On top of that, it supports a vi-mode, so if you're a vim person, you'll probably enjoy working with it.
Say Goodnight to Insomnia - it's a short book that goes over how sleep works and some common causes of trouble sleeping. I was already doing a few things, like avoiding screens late in the evening, but what really worked for me was understanding that my mind was preventing me from sleeping because it was afraid of not sleeping. A silly cycle. Learning that made me relax and, in just a few days, I was able to start falling asleep in under 30 minutes without valerian root.
This list is pretty amazing (and I'm not just saying that because Beeminder is on it!) and you've persuaded me on multiple things already. Some comments and questions:
If somebody asks you the same question more than ten times, that’s probably a sign it’s time to write a blog post about it. So after being asked by far more than ten people about what books and resources I recommend, both for EAs more broadly and for people interested in charity entrepreneurship more specifically, here it is! After spending roughly the last 15 years optimizing nearly constantly, these are the systems and products I recommend.
If you know better versions of what I recommend, please share it in the comments! While I recommend the apps I use, I’m sure there’s ones out there that do the same thing but in a better way and I just haven’t had the time or energy to pay the switching costs yet.