Hack The Box

Productivity Tips

Most operating systems are designed with user productivity tools, and macOS is no different. Productivity tools can help us be more productive with any operating system (desktop or mobile). There are a few more macOS-specific features that can also go a long way in making us more productive in our jobs and day-to-day use of the system.

When it comes to being productive in this day and age, computers and smarts phones make a massive difference in our productivity through certain features they provide. Many argue about the most important aspects of productivity apps and tools, so there is no definitive answer for which are the most important productivity tools. However, the following tools and features are among the essential tools in any productivity arsenal, so utilizing them can boost our productivity. Luckily, macOS and many other operating systems provide built-in applications for each of these tools and features.

Note: While this section focuses on macOS and some of the discussed tools are macOS-only, many of the concepts discussed in this section should be generally useful when using any device or operating system, and so should help you in boosting your productivity on any device. If a discussed tool or feature is macOS-only, you may try to find alternatives for the operating system you use.

Device Switching

As we work, it is in our best interest to use a single device instead of jumping from one device to another so we don't get distracted by notifications and messages on other devices. One of macOS's key productivity features is Continuity, which enables us to do just that by bringing everything on our iPhones/iPads to our macOS system and allowing continuous use between multiple Macs, making it seamless to work between various Apple devices.

Here are some of the Continuity features we may consider using:

  • AirDrop - All recent Apple devices support AirDrop, allowing us to seamlessly send files between any two Apple devices using high-speed peer-to-peer wifi connections. For example, if we ever need to share photos from our iPhone to our Mac, we can use AirDrop to directly send them to our Mac instead of using other means like transferring them through a USB cable or a cloud-sharing service.
  • Universal Clipboard - Anything we copy on any of our Apple devices can be pasted on any other Apple devices if they are on the same wifi network or near one another. All we need to do is copy the text/file we need and then simply paste it on the other (e.g., using [CMD+V]'). This even works with files like images.
  • Handoff - Most Apple built-in applications and many other third-party ones support Handoff. Handoff allows us to start working on one device and then continue working on another. For example, if we were working on a Word document using Microsoft Office on our Mac and then needed to catch a bus/train, we can pick up our iPhone, and an icon will show in the App Switcher, which we can click to continue working using Microsoft Office on the iPhone.
  • Continuity Camera - We can use our iPhones as a high-quality webcam for any of our macOS systems. Recent macOS versions allow us to use our iPhones as webcams once mounted on top of our monitors/screens. This seamlessly enables advanced webcam features like studio lighting, center-stage with a following cam, and overhead desk view. MacOS will automatically set our iPhones as the webcam if no webcam is connected to our Mac. Otherwise, we can select the iPhone from the drop-down menu in any application that needs the webcam.
  • Sign/Scan with iPhone - While laptops tend to have lower-quality webcams, our iPhones have high-quality cameras that make it very easy to scan documents. This is why we can use our iPhones to scan and sign documents directly from our Macs. Whenever we are editing any document, we can select Insert a Photo from the File from the menu and then select Take Photo or Scan Documents. This will open the camera on our iPhone, allow us to scan a document, and then insert it into the document we are editing on our Mac. We can also use the same thing to sign a document using our iPhone touchscreen or draw anything using the Apple Pencil on our iPad.
  • AirPlay/Sidecar - We can also use one of our Apple devices as a secondary display to extend our workspace. Recent macOS versions allow our Mac to be an AirPlay receiver so that we can cast our iPhone/iPad screen on our Macs. We can also use an iPad as a second display for our Macs, which would work similarly to a second screen connected to our Mac.

For more about Continuity, you can check Apple's website and get to know more about Continuity features and usage.

Time Management

As we start working on multiple projects or have various priorities in our lives, our time starts filling up, and we may feel stressed and fully occupied all the time. However, proper time management can go a long way in reducing this pressure and keeping us focused on whatever task we are working on. This is why the concept of time blocking is essential for whoever needs to be more productive, so we can get a chance to prioritize our tasks and focus on each task as we work on them.

To do so, whenever we have a task we need to complete, like a sub-task of a larger project, a training we must complete, an exam we must study for, or anything similar, we should block some time for it in our calendar. For example, if we know that we need to complete a skill path in Hack The Box Academy within a month, we can see the estimated time to complete it and then split the time into blocks in our calendar. We can say that every Saturday and Sunday, we will do our training between 12 PM and 5 PM and add an event to our calendar so we do not forget about it, and we know about this upcoming task beforehand. Simply having this task on our calendar makes us more likely to do it than if we were only planning it in our minds.

There are numerous calendar apps that we can utilize for this task, as we will discuss next, but the built-in macOS Calendar app has all the features most of us would need for essential time management, like the ability to have multiple color-coded calendars and the ability to sync all of them across our devices through iCloud.

Tip: macOS and iOS also have a feature called Focus Modes, which can be accessed from the Control Center on macOS. This allows us to focus on specific tasks and avoid other distractions by only allowing notifications from specific apps or even customizing our work environment when in Focus mode.

Reminders

Another critical aspect of productivity is having a to-do list or a reminder. While some can simplify things and use the calendar app for all their tasks, we can differentiate between them. Personally, I use a reminder for any task I need to complete that is not necessarily bound by a specific time and does not need a pre-calculated amount of time to finish. These tend to be shorter and more straightforward tasks, as we can use time blocking for longer tasks. For example, if we need a reminder every morning to take our medication, we can use a daily reminder for such a task. Another example would be paying our credit card bills or renewing our driver's licenses. As you can see, these are smaller tasks that usually take 15-30 minutes to finish, and often much less than that, so using calendar time blocking for such tasks would end up clogging our calendar and make us lose focus on what our priorities are.

We can use the macOS built-in Reminders for this task, as it allows us to have multiple reminder groups and syncs all of our reminders across our devices through iCloud. One excellent app we can use to have our reminders and calendar events in one location is Fantastical, which is available for most Apple platforms, including macOS and iOS. Fantastical makes it very easy to manage all of the above from a single screen. It utilizes the default calendar and reminders apps to store our data, so we will have everything synced across our devices. Fantastical has a free version with limited features, and we can unlock other features through a paid subscription.

Note-taking

To be more productive, we should keep handy notes on all of the essential aspects of our life. We can have an annual plan of our goals for each year and then track our progress as the year progresses. We can have checklists for many things we need to track, like a grocery list or a bucket list. We can write summaries for books we read or the training we attend. We can write drafts for projects we are working on or even track our progress in a particular project using notes alongside our calendars and reminders. All of this, and much more, makes note-taking an essential tool for being more productive.

As with many operation systems, macOS has a built-in note-taking app called Notes. In recent years, the Notes app has seen significant developments that added several key features to make note-taking more seamless and productive. Of course, it supports all fundamental note-taking features, like text formatting, checklists, tagging, and many other similar features. As with all other macOS apps, all of our notes are synced to our other Apple devices through iCloud.

In addition, we can start writing a Quick Note by simply moving our cursor to the bottom right of the screen, and a new note will pop up, and we can note down our thoughts. We can also search our handwritten notes through handwriting recognition in case we use the apple pencil on an iPad or the touch screen on an iPhone. Finally, we can collaborate on notes in real-time with other users and have read/write access privileges on notes we share.

Cloud Storage

In the past, portable hard drives played an essential role in storing and backing up our critical data and files. However, this meant that we risked losing our files and data if we lost our hard drive or if it got corrupted. Today, we can rely on cloud storage for most of our data storage, as it allows us to have access to our data and files around the clock across all of our devices, which plays a crucial role in our productivity by having our files available to us regardless of our location or current device.

As mentioned earlier, many of Apple's services get synced to our other Apple devices through iCloud, which also provides iCloud Drive for data storage. iCloud Drive is built-in to all macOS systems, so it is very convenient to set up and use, but we can also use other cloud storage services like Google Drive, One Drive, or Dropbox.

Multitasking

As professional users of macOS or any other operating system, we usually have multiple applications open simultaneously. So we would need a proper way to handle all of these applications in a manner that makes it easy to switch from one to another and to have visibility of multiple applications simultaneously. The key feature we can use for window management is Full Screen:

As we can see from the screenshot above, the green button in the top-left corner of any macOS application allows us to take it into full-screen mode. Once in full screen, we can navigate between different full-screen applications with a three-finger swipe to the left/right on our TrackPad, or we can use the [CTRL+←]/[CTRL+→] shortcut to do the same. If we hover over the green button, we will get a pop-up with multiple options, which allows us to have two different applications open side-by-side on the same full-screen window. This can be very beneficial if we need to have visibility over both applications simultaneously.

The full-screen feature may be enough for most use cases, as it provides an easy built-in method for handling window management. However, for some users, like those who use a super-wide monitor or need more than two applications open at the same time, we can use third-party applications to handle window management, like Moom, Magnet, or BetterSnapTool. These applications allow us to split applications into quarters of the screen or custom predefined window sizes and use shortcuts to arrange multiple applications in any order quickly. These applications also allow us to snap windows into half/quarter of a screen by moving it to one side of the screen (similar to Windows).

MacOS 13 also introduced a new feature called Stage Manager, which "automatically organizes your apps and windows in a single view on any Mac, so you can stay focused while easily moving between tasks." This feature helps when we have multiple applications open simultaneously and helps us keep them organized and easily switch between different groups of applications we are working on.

In the next section, we will discuss some more advanced productivity skills that can be achieved through Automation. If you are interested in reading more about how to be more productive, you can read the Productivity Hacks article on the Hack The Box blog, which covers the top productivity tips and tricks we can apply to be more productive.