6 ways to use AI to actually make you smarter - Fast Company
A Fast Company article offering six ways to use artificial intelligence tools to improve your own thinking and learning.
John Cox
Blogs · @wyome
Tagged productivity · everything
Best practices for Claude Code - Claude Code Docs
This is Anthropic's best-practices guide for Claude Code, and its central argument is that nearly every recommendation follows from one constraint: the context window fills quickly and performance degrades as it does. From that premise it lays out how to work with an agent that acts autonomously, including giving Claude a verification check so it can close its own loop, exploring and planning before coding, configuring CLAUDE.md, permissions, hooks, and skills, and managing context through /clear, compaction, and subagents. It is worth keeping as a practical reference for anyone moving from prompting a chatbot to delegating multi-step coding work to an agent.
Opera Air gets a minimalist makeover for distraction-free browsing - 9to5Mac
Opera's relaunch of Opera Air, a browser pitched as built around mindfulness, adds a redesigned interface with optional tools, new wallpapers that adapt to light and dark themes, a built-in ad blocker and free VPN, and expanded Soundscapes and break-reminder features with breathing exercises and neck stretches. The piece is essentially a product announcement that presents these changes as a push toward distraction-free browsing, with the company's own framing quoted throughout. Little in it is independent analysis; its main value is as a record of exactly which features the update introduced and how Opera positioned them.
Want to Retain Information Better? Try This Popular, 70-Year-Old Note-Taking Method
The Cornell Note-taking System divides a page into three sections—a narrow left column for "cues" (key points and self-generated test questions), a wider right column for standard notes, and a bottom section for summaries—to help you engage more deeply with material through active review and self-testing. The article recommends personalizing the system by adding emotions you experienced during the presentation and specific commitments or actions you'll take based on what you learned, both of which strengthen memory retention and encourage behavioral change.
ContextSnap
ContextSnap is a Windows and macOS utility that, when you press a shortcut, collects the visible text of your active window, open app names, basic Git state, and system details into a redacted Markdown snapshot on your clipboard for pasting into an AI assistant. The page stresses that it runs only on demand, processes everything locally, keeps no history, and redacts secrets by pattern, while warning that the redaction is imperfect and window titles or file names can still leak what you are working on. It is worth keeping as a concrete example of a privacy-conscious "context capture" tool, with its explicit scope limits and its unsigned-build and checksum caveats spelled out.
Your Mac has a powerful automation tool most people never open
macOS's built-in Shortcuts app offers a no-code way to automate tasks through a drag-and-drop interface that rivals Windows automation tools, making it accessible to users without programming experience. The app works by letting you stack pre-built actions together and then trigger them based on conditions like time of day or device connections, with support for third-party apps expanding what you can control beyond just system settings. The author demonstrates practical examples like auto-detecting keyboard connectivity to switch display layouts and launching focus modes when opening work apps, while noting the community at r/shortcuts showcases even more advanced automation possibilities.
Build live dashboards and animate explainers with Claude | Claude by Anthropic
Anthropic's announcement introduces Claude Dashboards (live, query-backed dashboards built from company data platforms and CRM tools, in beta on paid plans) and Claude Motion (code-based explainer animations that can be edited and exported as MP4, in beta on Team and Enterprise), while graduating Docs, Slides, and Design out of beta for all plans. It also covers the retirement of the standalone claude.ai/design site, with a December 14 cutoff and a migration path for design systems and chats. What sets it apart from other launch posts is the emphasis on transparency and control: each chart exposes its underlying query, animations are editable code rather than generated video, and admins decide which features are enabled.
The Weird Strategy Dr. Seuss Used to Create His Greatest Work
In 1960, Dr. Seuss won a $50 bet by writing an entertaining children's book using only 50 words, resulting in *Green Eggs and Ham*, which became one of the best-selling children's books of all time. The piece argues that constraints—whether limits on words, time, money, or resources—actually enhance creativity and productivity by forcing you to find innovative solutions and preventing procrastination, rather than hindering your work. By reframing constraints as the "size of your canvas" rather than obstacles, you can focus on executing excellent work within whatever limitations you face.
4 ways AI can improve your thinking
Rather than using AI merely to automate routine tasks, this piece argues for leveraging it as a tool for deeper thinking and creation—such as using it as a devil's advocate to stress-test decisions, building personalized learning curriculums, generating visual concepts iteratively, and creating custom tracking dashboards without coding. The author provides specific prompts, recommended tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Ideogram), and practical examples of how each approach can slow down work to challenge assumptions and build new capabilities rather than just work faster.
50 Ideas That Changed My Life
This is a collection of fifty conceptual frameworks and decision-making principles spanning economics, psychology, physics, and strategy—designed as mental models to improve thinking and life decisions. The ideas range from logical concepts like Occam's Razor and opportunity cost to behavioral insights like preference falsification and mimetic desire, arranged to illustrate how understanding systems, human nature, and hidden patterns can reveal overlooked opportunities and avoid common pitfalls. The author presents these as guiding principles that sharpen critical thinking by revealing what's counterintuitive, hidden in plain sight, or systematically ignored by conventional wisdom.
PopSQL - Modern, collaborative SQL editor for your team
PopSQL is a collaborative SQL development platform that centralizes data queries, documentation, and visualization in a single workspace to reduce inefficiencies like scattered knowledge and repetitive Slack questions. It emphasizes real-time team collaboration, interactive visual dashboards, easy query sharing, and integration with existing data infrastructure while prioritizing security and ease of use for both technical and non-technical users. The tool is designed to help data teams work more efficiently by providing a shared environment that democratizes data access and frees up analysts to focus on strategic work rather than answering basic data questions.
GoodLinks Updated with Three-Column iPad Layout, Widgets, and New Keyboard Shortcuts - MacStories
GoodLinks, a read-it-later app, received a major update introducing an iPad three-column layout that mirrors standard iPadOS design while maintaining the app's original feel, alongside configurable List and Link widgets for quick access to saved articles. The update also added numerous keyboard shortcuts to help users navigate large link collections efficiently. The app has matured significantly since its June launch, addressing early rough edges and building out iOS and iPadOS 14 feature support.
Easier Bank Connections, a Faster AI Assistant, and more | Monarch
Monarch has streamlined switching between data providers for connected bank accounts, allowing users to move to better connections while preserving transaction history in just a few steps, and the platform now recommends superior providers when available. The AI Assistant has been upgraded to provide faster and more actionable answers about spending and financial goals, while a new automatic sorting feature keeps the accounts list organized by balance without manual intervention. Additional updates include the ability to add notes to accounts, elimination of duplicate Apple Card transactions on new iPhones, improved reporting detail pages, and several refinements across goals, tax tracking, and visual displays.
Current - A River of Reading
Current is a premium RSS reader ($9.99 one-time purchase) for Apple devices that organizes feeds by content velocity—breaking news expires within hours while essays remain for weeks—so your reading stream stays fresh without manual curation. It groups feeds into customizable "Currents" for different topics, highlights individual writers as distinct voices rather than faceless sources, and offers nine carefully designed reading themes alongside features like keyboard navigation, offline saving, and sync with multiple backend services. The app prioritizes a serene reading experience with no subscriptions, ads, or tracking.
I built my own Monarch-style finance dashboard with Opus 5.5 for less than $20 : r/ClaudeAI
A developer built a Monarch-style personal finance dashboard using Claude Opus 5.5 for under $20.
Someone else's Excel spreadsheet, my problem now—these 5 tools help me handle it
This How-to Geek piece by Tony Phillips walks through five Excel tools for cleaning up a messy inherited spreadsheet: Go To Special to locate blanks, conditional formatting to flag duplicate Order IDs, inconsistent product names and unabbreviated states without altering the data, TEXTSPLIT to break up crammed contact details, and then converting the cleaned range into an Excel table with named constants and helper columns for maintainability. What sets it apart from similar tips is its workflow emphasis: each tool is used to inspect and verify before anything is changed, and the piece closes with basic structural rules for building spreadsheets that others won't need to repair.
Our Favorite Indie Apps for iOS 27, Vol. 2 - MacStories
This roundup showcases five indie apps that have integrated Apple's latest AI and on-screen awareness features into their ecosystems. Bear now uses Siri to create and append notes with voice commands and screenshot annotation; Gentler Streak and The Outsiders provide fitness data summaries via Siri and Spotlight; Cheatsheet Notes lets you query and append to notes using Siri's understanding of on-screen content; and DoMarks makes saving and organizing URLs by category simpler through voice control and the "Surprise Me" feature to rediscover old bookmarks. The article emphasizes how these updates make common tasks more efficient by reducing manual steps and enabling hands-free interaction.
I stopped overrelying on Excel's filter buttons after learning how to build live lists
A guide to improving data management by replacing Excel's filter buttons with dynamic live lists.
GitHub - onmyway133/claude-code-tips-tricks: My favorite Claude Code tips & tricks · GitHub
A collection of tips for using Claude Code effectively, organized into eight categories covering sessions, command mode, agents, skills, MCP servers, prompting, hooks, and workflow management. Topics range from practical efficiency gains like naming sessions after git branches and using subagents for exploration to architectural choices like running parallel worktrees for isolation and using hooks as deterministic gates for unattended runs. The guide emphasizes that context is the real constraint in long sessions, so managing what stays in the conversation window through deliberate pruning, subagent delegation, and rewinding failed attempts matters more than piling on additional rules.