I’ve read at least a few hundred blog posts, maybe upwards of a thousand. Agreeing with Gavin Leech, I believe I’ve gained from essays more than any other medium. I’m an intellectually curious college student with a strong interest in both the practical and philosophical. This blog post provides a snippet into the most valuable blog posts I’ve read on the topic of productivity. I encourage you to scan what I’ve gotten valuable out of the blog posts and read deeper if interesting.

• On systems - Living a life of zero willpower by Neel Nanda. This post inspired me to sign up for Focusmate. I can confidently say that Focusmate (1) has increased my productivity by >20% in a lasting way and (2) houses more than half of my social life. I’ve met many of my closest friends through the app. The other advice in Neel’s blog post is also great. (If you use Focusmate, feel welcome to favorite me and lock in a coworking session!)
• How to write good prompts by Andy Matuschak. Empirically, I have this blog post to thank for my >2 year long Anki habit. It was a three-hour read, but it was well worth it (being a full-time student spending 1-2h/day using Anki).
• How to learn at college by Brennan Colberg. Led me to skip 70% of my classes last college semester.
• Honesty about reading by Holden Karnofsky. I skim a lot. I mostly don’t finish books. This blog post by Holden gave me even more permission to continue skimming a lot.
• Internet Search Tips by Gwern. Two things I got from this: (1) I have single-press hotkeys for LLMs, and (2) I now use site: in search queries. I use these all the time. Having Claude/ChatGPT one click away is life-changing, highly recommend.
• My tech stack by Andrew Conner. It was either this blog post, another blog post, or a conversation with Andrew that pushed me over the edge into trying out raindrop.io. I love raindrop, and use it daily. It’s basically a bookmarks bar that actually works.

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