Skip to content

What's on my iPhone - Favourite iPhone Apps ft. @KharmaMedic

2020-10-01 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali, Kharma Medic · recording, 12:26 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: Productivity and time, Books and reading) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Lesson from a book

In an Appy Hour episode Ali and the YouTuber Kharma Medic go through each other's iPhone apps: Spark and Superhuman for email, Fantastical, Day One, quick capture in Notion versus Things and Getting Things Done, Readwise, reading versus listening, and Spotify.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ali introduces the Appy Hour episode with Kharma Medic

00:00:24 — Kharma's Spark and inbox zero; Ali's Superhuman and archiving

  • ★★ Kharma Medic uses Spark as his email client because he dislikes Apple's default mail app: it is colourful, has quick replies and shortcuts, and makes email more pleasurable to use. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Kharma Medic reads and dismisses emails he need not answer, but leaves those that need action unread, so the unread count works as an extended part of his to-do list. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali uses Superhuman for his email, an app that costs $30 a month to check Gmail. — 00:01:27
  • ★ Superhuman is going to sponsor one of Ali's videos soon. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali thinks Superhuman is worth its price. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Superhuman's main point, Ali says, is that it gets you through your email twice as fast. — 00:01:57
  • ★ Ali archives emails rather than deleting them to reach inbox zero: he has not deleted an email since about 2007, when he started using Gmail. — 00:02:20
  • ★ Kharma Medic uses Fantastical for his calendar, which he heard about from Ali, and writes everything down in it. — 00:02:20

00:02:37 — Fantastical, and scheduling even socialising in the calendar

  • ★★ Kharma Medic: In his first year Kharma Medic told a friend who scheduled even her socialising into her calendar that she was crazy to micromanage her time; now he does the same and says he has gone 180 on it. — 00:02:50

00:03:07 — Lightroom and VSCO, infinity pools on page two, Sleepwatch and sleep tracking

  • ★ Kharma Medic keeps his infinity pools, such as YouTube Studio, Netflix, TikTok and Reddit, on the second page of his iPhone home screen. — 00:03:19 · Netflix
  • ★ Kharma Medic has just downloaded Sleepwatch, an app that tracks sleep with the Apple Watch, and wore his watch to sleep the night before. — 00:03:19 · Apple Watch
  • ★ Ali, who has an Oura Ring (as heard), is not sure how much he believes the data it gives him about his sleep. — 00:03:19
  • ★ The first nice comment saved in Ali's Day One journal of nice comments is from October 2017. — 00:03:59 · Day One
  • ★★ Ali thinks he started his YouTube channel in July 2017. (hedged) — 00:03:59

00:04:11 — Day One and Ali's journal of nice comments

  • ★★ Ali recommends the journaling app Day One: he keeps a journal of nice comments in it, and he or his assistant forwards kind emails to its email address so they appear there automatically. — 00:04:37 · Day One
  • ★ Kharma Medic used TickTick for to-dos before Notion; now, to capture anything, he opens Notion, goes to the page and writes it down, usually in his life to-do list. — 00:04:37 · Notion

00:04:51 — TickTick, Notion and Things; capture apart from clarify and organise in Getting Things Done

  • ★★ Ali finds capturing into Notion slow: you click on Notion, wait for it to load and go to your page. — 00:05:12 · Notion
  • ★★ Ali now uses Things for his to-dos; like TickTick, it is a dedicated to-do list app. — 00:05:12 · Things 3
  • ★ Kharma Medic objects that tasks captured into an inbox still have to be sorted later; he prefers to sort them at once, for the same number of clicks. — 00:05:42
  • ★★ Ali tells Kharma Medic to read Getting Things Done by David Allen, which he calls a life-changing book. — 00:05:42
  • ★★★ David Allen's Getting Things Done, Ali says, treats capture, clarify and organise as different steps, and capture should have as little friction as possible: the fewest clicks from a thought to writing it down. — 00:05:42
  • ★★ Ali captures into an inbox in Things that he later sorts and processes, separating capture from clarifying and organising. — 00:06:12 · Things 3
  • ★ Kharma Medic agrees with Ali about separating capture and says he should likewise do his email once, at the end of the day, instead of sorting each email as it arrives. — 00:06:12

00:06:38 — Spark Post for thumbnails, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, Filmic Pro

  • ★ Kharma Medic no longer uses Spark Post for thumbnails, since he is slowly dropping text from his thumbnails. — 00:06:40
  • ★ Ali recommends Ultimate Guitar Tabs, an app with the chords for almost any song. — 00:07:42
  • ★★ Kharma Medic still films vlogs and time-lapses on his phone but finds Filmic Pro too much friction compared with the camera app: the iPhone is good enough unless it is your main filming camera. — 00:07:42 · iPhone
  • ★ Kharma Medic listens to audiobooks in Apple Books: he found Audible not worth it for him, since he reads no more than one book a month. — 00:08:28 · Audible

00:08:29 — Audiobooks in Books or Audible, The Red Market, YTCount, Frame, Forest

  • ★ Ali points Kharma Medic to his Audible library, full of recommendations he thinks Kharma would love. — 00:08:58 · Audible
  • ★ Kharma Medic is reading The Red Market, a book about the worldwide trade in human body parts, and recommends MedLife Crisis's video on it. — 00:08:58

00:10:06 — Readwise, notes from audiobooks, reading versus listening

  • ★★ Readwise connects to Kindle, Instapaper and Ali's podcast app Airr and gathers the highlights he makes in them. — 00:10:07 · Kindle
  • ★★ Readwise emails you five random highlights every day from what you have read, watched or listened to. — 00:10:07
  • ★★ Kharma Medic has no Readwise equivalent for audiobooks: he finds it really hard to take notes from them, which irritates him, and he is always looking for a way to capture a segment of audio he has just heard. — 00:10:07
  • ★★ Ali says reading is faster than listening, even at 3x speed. — 00:10:41
  • ★★ Kharma Medic finds listening quicker than reading, because when he reads he has to think about the information he takes in. — 00:10:41
  • ★★ Ali agrees that listening can be passive, while reading has to be active: you devote the time to it and cannot do anything else. — 00:11:10
  • ★★ Kharma Medic keeps the apps on his phone to the bare minimum, because he already spends a lot of time on his phone, even more since starting YouTube. — 00:11:10

00:11:26 — Keeping few apps, Spotify liked songs, sign-off

  • ★ Ali listens to music on Spotify rather than Apple Music, and keeps listening to the same 490 liked songs, by artists such as Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and One Direction. — 00:11:39 · Spotify

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Day One · Kharma Medic · Readwise · Superhuman

Also: People: David Allen · Ed Sheeran · MedLife Crisis · Taylor Swift

Works: Getting Things Done · Make It Stick · The Red Market

Organizations: Netflix · One Direction · Reddit · TikTok

Concepts: infinity pools · quick capture

Products: Adobe Lightroom · Adobe Spark Post · Airr · Apple Books · Apple Music · Apple Watch · Audible · Fantastical · Filmic Pro · Gmail · Instapaper · iPhone · Kindle · Notion · Oura Ring · Sleepwatch · Spark Mail · Spotify · Things 3 · TickTick · Ultimate Guitar · VSCO · YouTube Studio

Only in the description or credits: Appy Hour

Also centred on Kharma Medic: Stress, Regrets and Inspirations - Q&A with Kharma Medic

Also centred on Readwise: How I Read 100 Books a Year - 8 Tips for Reading More · The 5 Magical Apps That Changed My Life · How I Remember Everything I Read

Also centred on Superhuman: My Favourite Mac Apps · What's on my MacBook Pro?

← Previous: How to See Problems as Opportunities (The Obstacle is the Way) · Next → My BIGGEST Rejections in Life