Categories
Apps Tips

How to declutter your Twitter timeline

I recently changed my Twitter iPhone app from Tweetbot 3 to the default Twitter iOS app.

Twitter for iOS app is largely good. But I noticed that my Twitter timeline both in the browser and iPhone app got noisy than they should be for the fifty people I follow. This is making me spend (not waste) more time than I would like to spend on Twitter. The clutter also means the actual tweets from the people I follow, the tweets I would love to see, are buried in the noise. This made me feel like I am missing important tweets.

I only ever wanted to see the tweets from the people I very carefully and deliberately choose to follow, in the order they are tweeted. Nothing more.

On a deeper look, I noticed that Twitter is not just showing me the tweets from the people I follow, but also the tweets liked (marked ♥️) by the people I follow as well as the conversations the people I follow are having with other people I don’t follow.

This has been a great revelation for me! This is my first-hand experience of Twitter’s aggressiveness and setting the defaults that work better for Twitter but cleverly wrapped as what I likely care about most.

For many weeks I thought there is no way around it and felt like I have to live with it. But having had enough, this week I decided to check if there is a way to declutter my timeline. I poked around the settings on my Twitter account and found this gem (in the red box) at https://twitter.com/settings/account:

Turn off best / top Tweets in Twitter web app.

Clicking the blue Learn more link took me to What’s in your Home timeline page on which I found this:

You can choose between viewing the top Tweets first or the latest Tweets first in your timeline (Twitter for iOS and Android only). Top Tweets are ones you are likely to care about most, and we choose them based on accounts you interact with most, Tweets you engage with, and much more. You can find instructions on how to toggle between the two timeline views below.


So instead of showing me what I want to see (latest Tweets), Twitter is showing what it wants me to see (top Tweets)!

At the end of the same help page, I also found the instructions to turn off Top Tweets in the iOS and Android apps.

Turn off best / top Tweets in Twitter mobile apps.

So changing the Twitter’s default settings by turning off Show the best Tweets first in the browser and toggling to latest Tweets in the iOS app made my twitter timeline much cleaner and calmer in both the places I check my tweets.

Barring these little annoyances, Twitter is the only social network I use and find really helpful by being deliberate about who I choose to follow, and override some of its default settings I mentioned in this post.

Categories
Advice Career Journal Money

Reblog: Short Money Rules

I feel like I am becoming tad wiser these days by reading Morgan Housel’s Collaborative Fund blog. This list of 29 Short Money Rules is one such gem I read on this blog today.

A few rules that stood out to me:

21. Being nice to people is the easiest career competitive advantage.

22. Being smarter than others is the hardest.

Choose wisely!

Then there is this rule that I liked:

2. Most people are afraid of looking wrong.

I think not worrying too much about my ego, always being open to feedback and iteration are what makes me unafraid of looking wrong.

As an aside, if you have more time, I highly encourage you read The Psychology of Money post on this blog. It is a long and interesting read. I first found it in my colleague Jeremey’s newsletter and have read it three or four times since. I am sure I will read it a few more times. It is such a good analysis of human psychology and behaviour.

Categories
Apps Journal

Hello Todoist. Goodbye Wunderlist!

I have been looking for Wunderlist replacement since last year. I can feel Wunderlist is staling. Wunderlist’s new incarnation, Microsoft To-Do, isn’t making good progress. It lacks basic features like sub-projects et al. Given how long it’s been since Microsoft’s acquisition of Wunderlist was announced and the development progress of the To-Do app, I have no hope that To-Do will be worth the wait.

Trello seemed to be a good replacement for a bit, but on looking deeper, Trello is a great project management tool, but not so much a to-do list. Sure, I can tweak Trello’s boards with checklists, but that’s taking one tool and making it work for something that it is not designed for. I prefer to avoid such hacks where possible. Sorry, Davor!

As luck would have it, I recently learned that Doist’s blog has moved to WordPress. While reading their beautiful and minimally designed blog, I came across this great post titled Why We Don’t Have an Exit Strategy. That post made me confident that Doist is going to be around for a long time if not forever. (By the way, that’s exactly how blogging helps spread your message and grow your business. So go blog!)

So that helped end my (re)search for the next to-do app. I look forward to use Todoist Premium for a long time.

Wunderlist — you have been great while you lasted. But it’s time for me to move on to greener pastures.

I imported my Wunderlist to-dos and projects to Todoist. I will soon upgrade to Premium. I also need to set up some zaps and other workflows that will take some time, but I should be done with Wunderlist by the end of this quarter.

Categories
Journal Tech Tips

Alfred workflow for managing windows in Mac

I am constantly looking for better workflows and today I stumbled upon this useful workflow to manage the app windows in Mac using Alfred.

I set it up and used a few times. I loved using it!

Thanks for making and sharing it, Paweł.

I am also on the lookout for better Space Manager apps and ideas. But more on that later, when I find a solution that I love.

Categories
Journal

Doist blog has moved to WordPress too!

After SvN, Doist blog, aptly titled, ambition & balance has moved to WordPress too!

Good times for the web!

Categories
Journal

Time to forgo WhatsApp

Time to let go of WhatsApp?

Almost.

My best buys of 2018

Categories
Journal

Signal v Noise blog is now hosted on WordPress.com

Great to see my favourite blog move to WordPress.com!

Categories
Journal

This is lovely! 👌👏

The only thing I don’t like about Signal v. Noise blog is that it is hosted on Medium.

So today, while re-reading the Become A Facebook-Free Business post, I was elated to see this edit:

SignalvNoise blog moving off Medium
SignalvNoise blog moving off Medium

Yay!

Categories
Journal Thoughts

Old habits. Not new resolutions.

Just a thought that popped up while working out the upper body in the last hour.

But first some context.

Last week and this week, I am finding it very hard to exercise. It is after all holiday season, and I have had excellent exercise compliance so far this year. So why not take a break for Christmas and New Year weeks? The world doesn’t stop, and the sky doesn’t fall if you miss just two weeks, has been my inner monologue!

But somehow that did not feel right. I felt uncomfortable from within about not having to exercise even for a week. That’s probably a nice side effect of keeping the “Exercise 3 times a week” habit for about five years now. So I dragged myself into workout clothes and laced my shoes. Rest everything took care of itself. I worked out three times last week. I am already done with full and upper body workouts this week. And I am looking forward to some squats and swings tomorrow. And repeat it all next week as well.

Again, it wasn’t easy…until I changed into workout clothes and put on my shoes.

I don’t take all the credit though. I am supported by a few great people. Besides the momentum of my exercise habit, the support system of the people I know or follow has helped me not dither in this silly season.

First, my ex-colleague, friend and a champion trainer (for the last five years and counting!) who sends my workouts remotely and checks-in every week. He also occasionally sends some much-needed inspiration:

Holiday exercise inspiration

Second, this retired US Navy SEAL named Jocko Willink. I recently started following Jocko — author of Extreme Ownership, a book that I have in my reading list and Discipline Equals Freedom, a book I borrowed from the library, read and kind of liked it, but I loved the title!— and he tweeted this:

Which lead me to think, I mostly don’t need any grand new year’s resolutions. I just need to continue my boring, but beneficial old year’s habits. I said mostly because I will likely have a few resolutions around my learning goals, but for the most part, I will be better off carrying my old habits into the new year.

I encourage you to consider this idea and think in terms of habits you can start and keep for the years to come, not the resolutions you will set and forget in a few months.