I'm often lucky here, as I've worked with some amazing people.

Yet sometimes I catch myself hesitating over small details that doesn't matter because at some point in my life a small detail like that did hurt as someone caught it and used it against me.

I discussed user stories and acceptance criteria with some colleagues on a project recently and the team lead pointed out that the texts we write are just for communicating here and now, they won't be pulled out and used against us next year.

This might hopefully sound obvious to a lot of people but for me I realized this allowed me to lower my shoulders somewhat and like so many other details it frees up mental capacity for the task at hand.

And together all those small details make a huge difference.

Sometimes I find myself mindlessly pressing ctrl – t, <name of news site>.

And sometimes it doesn't matter: waiting for someone to reply, for a compile or upload to finish. But often it is a waste of time.

I recently realized that while it is hard to break the first part of the habit, and removing all the triggers is impractical, I can easily stack another habit on top:

I have now trained myself so that whenever my fingers type that pattern they also automatically type ctrl – w to close the tab before even loading it.

I did that by intentionally repeating the first part of the pattern, then closing the tabs and rewarding myself by smiling.

So far I've been right. It works a whole lot better for me than the Macbook pro ever did. Certain aspects of it are better than my Android phone, most notably the sharing system that is a mess on my Nokia 6, even with Android One.

Another big advantage is that it is fastand doesn't drop the state every time I switch back and forth between a couple of apps.

I also got a pen for it as well as GoodNotes, and this combination has proven to be able to replace my notebooks in surprisingly short time, which is awesome as it means I can now carry my notebook with me to work and back without being afraid both

• losing access to my notes
• having someone else browsing my notes

The last one shouldn't be that much of a problem anyway but it still would feel very weird.

I also use it for reading manuals, deleting mail and lightweight Internet browsing. For “research browsing” however it is next to useless for me compared to a real Firefox with Tree Style Tabs and a good pinboard extension.

If it continues to work well, my next phone might be a punkt mp02.

Filed under #gadgets #productivity #android #ipad