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Every guide we have published, newest first. Search by keyword, filter by topic, or start from a topic hub for a short reading path. Each guide lists its sources, and new ones appear here on their publish date. The RSS feed announces each one.
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Showing all 45 guides
- Mac Care
MacBook Battery Health: What the Numbers Mean and What to Change
Read cycle count, Maximum Capacity and Service Recommended correctly, pick the charging setting that fits your week, and skip the battery myths.
- AI at Work
A One-Page AI Usage Policy Template for Small Teams
Copy a one-page AI usage policy for small teams: approved tools, four data tiers, review levels, incident steps, and EU AI Act and GDPR notes.
- Screen Recording & Tutorials
How to Record Your Screen on a Mac: Built-in Tools, Audio, and Limits
Record your Mac screen with the Screenshot toolbar or QuickTime: permissions, system audio before and after macOS 27, file size, trimming, and fixes.
- Websites & AI Crawlers
Make Your Docs Readable by AI Agents: A Checklist and Test Plan
Check whether AI agents can read your documentation: server-rendered HTML, Markdown mirrors, llms.txt, structured data, and a curl test you can run today.
- Habits & Routines
Fell Off a Habit? Diagnose the Lapse, Then Restart Small
Treat a lapse as data: a five-cause diagnosis table, a restart date no more than three days out, a smaller version, and a written plan for the next miss.
- Focus & Deep Work
The Pomodoro Technique, Honestly Evaluated: What the Studies Show
What two break-timing studies and a micro-break meta-analysis found about Pomodoro, which tasks suit 25-minute intervals, and a two-week test to run yourself.
- Notes & Research
Zettelkasten, PARA, or Plain Folders? Choosing a Note Method
Match Zettelkasten, PARA, Cornell notes, a daily log, or search-first folders to your kind of work, then test one in two weeks with a timed find test.
- AI at Work
AI Meeting Summaries at Work: Record, Prompt, Check, Retain
A workflow for team AI note-takers: when not to record, what to tell people, a summary prompt that quotes the transcript, a 5-minute check, and retention rules.
- Notes & Research
From Research Notes to a First Draft: A Five-Stage Workflow
Turn 20 saved sources into a draft without losing who said what: five stages, copyable note templates, a worked example, and a reverse-outline check.
- Mac Care
Mac Security Basics: The Settings That Matter in macOS 27
A prioritised Mac security checklist: what each setting protects against, where it lives in macOS 26 and 27, what it costs, and a read-only way to check it.
- Mac Care
A Mac Backup Strategy: Time Machine, Offsite Copy, Restore Drill
Set up Time Machine correctly, add an encrypted offsite copy, and run a 20-minute quarterly restore drill so a lost or ransomed Mac is a restore, not a loss.
- Habits & Routines
Build a Daily Study Habit That Survives Busy Weeks
Keep showing up and keep remembering: a 10-minute minimum session for bad days, a weekly plan, and review dates set by your test date, with the evidence and its limits.
- Websites & AI Crawlers
How AI Search Picks Sources: What Providers Actually Document
A provider-by-provider map of what Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, Microsoft and Apple document about crawling, citing and controls, plus how to measure.
- Focus & Deep Work
Make Your Phone Less Distracting Without Giving It Up
A 7-day phone reset built on what trials measured and what failed to replicate, with iPhone and Android settings checked against Apple and Google.
- Mac Care
Moving to a New Mac: A Before, During and After Checklist
A before, during and after checklist for a new Mac: choose Migration Assistant, a Time Machine restore or a clean setup, then erase the old Mac safely.
- Screen Recording & Tutorials
Should You Show Your Face in Software Tutorials? What Studies Found
Studies of instructor presence found higher motivation, no reliable learning gain and an attention cost. Get a decision table, layout options and a lighting checklist.
- Habits & Routines
The Shutdown Ritual: A 10-Minute Checklist for Ending the Workday
A 10-minute end-of-day shutdown checklist, variants for remote work, parents and shifts, and an honest look at what the detachment research does and does not show.
- AI at Work
Using AI to Write Internal Documentation Without Making It Worse
Use the four Diátaxis types to decide what each internal doc is for, give AI only jobs it can source, then review and assign an owner so pages stay true.
- Screen Recording & Tutorials
YouTube Chapters, Captions, and Descriptions for Tutorials
The chapter rules YouTube enforces, a beat-sheet-to-timestamps example, a caption review list for commands and flags, and a description template for tutorials.
- Websites & AI Crawlers
Structured Data for Small Sites: What Google Still Supports
Which schema.org markup Google still supports in October 2026, which rich results it retired and when, two JSON-LD blocks to copy, and how to test them.
- Notes & Research
Desktop Sticky Notes on a Mac: When They Help, When They Clutter
Why a visible note helps memory, why a crowded desktop stops working, five rules for Mac sticky notes, and a five-minute weekly sweep.
- AI at Work
How to Check AI Output Before You Trust It: A Risk-Tiered Method
Sort AI output into low, medium or high stakes, then run the matching checks for facts, numbers, code, summaries and translations, with a log template.
- Websites & AI Crawlers
How to See Which AI Bots Visit Your Site (and Check They're Real)
Count AI crawler hits in your access logs, then check each address against vendor IP lists and reverse DNS to catch spoofed user agents.
- Focus & Deep Work
How to Time-Block a Deep-Work Day That Survives Meetings
Plan a deep-work day with block budgets, buffers tuned to your own log, a two-minute re-blocking routine for broken days, and templates for five roles.
- Habits & Routines
If-Then Planning: Write Implementation Intentions That Work
What 642 tests show about if-then plans: five evidence-based rules, 20 example plans for focus, health, study and money, WOOP, and when planning fails.
- Mac Care
What Runs When Your Mac Starts? Managing Login and Background Items
Login items, background items, LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons start differently and come off differently. Learn to review, disable and safely remove each one.
- Websites & AI Crawlers
AI Crawlers Explained: Allow or Block GPTBot, ClaudeBot and More
Sort AI bots into training, search and user-triggered fetchers, then copy parser-checked robots.txt recipes and edge rules for the bots that ignore the file.
- Focus & Deep Work
Attention Residue: What Switching Tasks Costs and How to Cut It
What the research on attention residue shows, where the '23 minutes' figure really comes from, plus a one-minute resume note and a switch budget to try.
- Screen Recording & Tutorials
Don't Leak Secrets in Screen Recordings: A Pre-Flight Checklist
A three-stage Mac checklist for keeping API keys, notifications and private tabs out of tutorials, plus why blur fails and what to do if a secret slips out.
- Screen Recording & Tutorials
Good Audio for Screen Recordings on a Budget: Mic, Room, Levels
Choose a mic, place it, tame the room, set levels and hit a loudness target, with a five-minute test recording that shows which fix to make first.
- Habits & Routines
How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit? What the Research Found
The 21-day rule comes from a 1960 self-help book. Here is what UCL's 66-day study and later data show, plus a plan with check-ins at weeks 2, 6, and 10.
- AI at Work
How to Learn With AI Without Fooling Yourself
AI explanations feel like learning even when they aren't. See what 2025–2026 trials found, plus seven copyable study prompts and a weekly loop to follow.
- AI at Work
How to Write Reusable Prompt Templates, With Five to Copy
Build prompt templates that behave the same way twice: six parts, safe variables, fixture tests, versioning, and five complete templates you can paste.
- Mac Care
Mac Slow After an Update? A Step-by-Step Troubleshooting Guide
Most post-update slowness is background catch-up. Use Activity Monitor, Safe Mode, and install history to tell it from a real fault, and know when to reinstall.
- Mac Care
Mac Storage Full? What's Using Space and What's Safe to Delete
Find what is filling your Mac, decode System Data and purgeable space, and sort every candidate into safe, careful, or leave-alone before you delete.
- Habits & Routines
The 20-Minute Weekly Review: A Template for People Who Hate Planning
A timeboxed weekly review adapted from GTD: four 5-minute blocks, a copyable sheet, variants for students, freelancers and leads, and what the research backs.
- Focus & Deep Work
The 30-Minute Notification Audit for Mac, Chrome, and Your Phone
Audit notifications on Mac, Chrome, iPhone or Android, Slack and Teams in 30 minutes with one triage rule, exact settings paths and a 5-minute monthly re-check.
- Notes & Research
Too Many Tabs? A Four-Bucket System for Browser Tab Overload
Why tabs pile up, how to sort them into Now, Reference, Later, and Done, and which built-in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge features help.
- Websites & AI Crawlers
What Is llms.txt? The Format, the Evidence, and an Example
llms.txt explained: the v2 format, how it differs from robots.txt and sitemap.xml, what server logs say about who reads it, and a template to copy.
- Habits & Routines
Habit Tracking That Sticks: Use Density Targets, Not Streaks
Most streak counters reset after one missed day. Set density targets like 10 of 14, add a tiny floor version, and build a tracker that survives a rough week.
- AI at Work
How to Build a Prompt Library Your Team Will Actually Use
Turn a shared prompt doc into a library your team opens: variable templates, a sample entry with test fields, a research playbook, and a re-check routine.
- Screen Recording & Tutorials
How to Record Software Tutorials People Actually Finish
Plan one-task software tutorials with a beat sheet, pre-flight checklist, per-step takes, and chapter and description templates, backed by video research.
- Notes & Research
How to Stop Losing Context While Browsing: A Tab Note-Taking Workflow
Attach notes to the page where the thought happened: a scope decision table, a three-second capture routine, and a ten-minute weekly sweep template.
- AI at Work
Turning Internal Docs into Audio: When It Works, When It Doesn't
What research says about listening versus reading, which documents suit audio, plus a production checklist, a scenario-quiz template, and a measurement plan.
- Focus & Deep Work
Why Blockers Get Switched Off — and How Graduated Friction Helps
Website blockers are easy to switch off. See the evidence for small friction, a five-rung ladder matched to each site, and a two-week rollout plan.