Introduction

*A lousy workman quarrels with his tools* so the saying goes (I've edited it) but we don't want to be that. So here is a list of my favourite tools plus optimizations I have made on common ones.

I am a productivity fan and getting to the setup I have is a fairly straight forward process: I'm welcoming contributions

Productivity?

True, there is a lot of buzz around this word. I don't aim at being another buzzer.

In a nutshell, productivity is creating the best use of your time. It is a broad topic. I want to delve into tools for now. Specifically when using a Macbook.

All through my professional life I have learned that leveraging tools makes you stand out. Plus, you cut on time spent on repetitive tasks. With tools you can automate and use your cognitive reserve where it's needed most.

Initial setup

I am a software engineer so this setup focusses on a mac primarily used for development. For the non-super-techie skip the development tagged topics to the topics tagged general.

First things first, every mac needs XCode developer tools. Even for a non-techie, sometimes you'd want to run a command in the terminal (maybe as part of a tutorial) and without this, most commands do fail.

Run the following command to install the tools:

xcode-select --install

Then you can use my dotfiles to setup:

$ git clone https://github.com/NdagiStanley/dotfiles.git && cd dotfiles
sh setup.sh --complete && update

Read the README at https://github.com/NdagiStanley/dotfiles for other options.

Dotfiles are the configuration files in a system. They start with a dot, though that is not a strict requirement, so that they are (by default) hidden in your system. In the name of not repeating oneself every time you are setting up a new machine: individuals over time create their own dotfiles too for quick and easy setup to their personalised default settings. The ones referred to above are mine.

Next we look more into apps that you can use and how to set them up for both utility and add to your productivity.