A Quarter a Star: Setting Up a Chore Chart Economy for Three Kids
How I priced chores for three kids on our wall calendar, why every task earns stars, and why one star ended up worth a quarter instead of a penny.
4 min readRead note
Tagged · 17 notes
#Productivity.
Everything tagged Productivity, wherever it's filed, newest first.
How to Keep AI-Drafted Emails and Messages From Sounding Like AI
The tells that make people ask "did AI write this?" in short emails and messages, a paste-in style block to hand the model, and a 30-second checklist to run before you hit send.
Thread: Changing how the model answers ↗5 min readRead note
Absolute Mode: The Prompt That Turns Off the Small Talk
Absolute Mode is a widely shared prompt that strips a chatbot down to blunt, unpadded answers, and this is my copy with notes on when it's the wrong tool.
Thread: Changing how the model answers ↗3 min readRead note
Turning a Long AI Conversation Into a Reusable Workflow
When a long back-and-forth with an AI finally lands somewhere good, the method is worth more than the answer. How I pull the method out and turn it into a prompt I can run again.
Thread: Building with Claude and MCP ↗4 min readRead note
How I Use the Badges Plugin in Obsidian
Badges is a small Obsidian plugin by gapmiss that turns a bit of inline code into a colored label. What it does, the few conventions I settled on, and the parts of my setup that are still on the to-do list.
4 min readRead note
Eight Small Prompts for Everyday Chores
Eight short prompts for everyday jobs like sorting screenshots, planning dinner from a fridge photo and writing a resale listing, with a note on where each one needs a human check.
Thread: Prompts for plans, apps and side hustles ↗3 min readRead note
Execution Mode: A Prompt for Answers Without the Preamble
Execution Mode is a circulating prompt that cuts the pleasantries, apologies and hedging so every reply starts with the answer and stops when it's done.
Thread: Changing how the model answers ↗3 min readRead note
Browser Profile Icons: Telling Your Chrome, Edge and Firefox Profiles Apart at a Glance
A desktop app and a set of browser extensions I built for making custom profile icons and switching between browser profiles without squinting at identical avatars.
Thread: Desktop tinkering ↗4 min readRead note
The Life OS Prompt: A Chief of Staff in a Chat Window
The Life OS prompt sets a model up as a chief of staff for work and life, and it's useful as long as you know what it can't see and what you shouldn't hand it.
Thread: Prompts for plans, apps and side hustles ↗3 min readRead note
A CLAUDE.md That Actually Helps
My old CLAUDE.md template tried to hold everything. The one that runs this blog is about twenty lines. Here's where the file lives, what earns a line in it, and what doesn't.
Thread: Building with Claude and MCP ↗4 min readRead note
Vignelli: A Serif, Gold-Ruled Theme for Obsidian
Vignelli is my open-source Obsidian theme for people who want their notes to read like a well-set print document, with serif type, gold rules and a teal highlighter.
Thread: The design notebook ↗3 min readRead note
Terminal News: Headlines, Votes and Weather in Your Terminal
Terminal News is my work-in-progress Go project for reading community-ranked news, local classifieds and NOAA weather in a text-only terminal app, for people who'd rather not open a browser to catch up.
Thread: App experiments ↗3 min readRead note
Custom Homepage: A New Tab Page With Unsplash Photos and Real Thumbnails
A small Chrome extension that swaps the new tab page for a clock, a rotating Unsplash background and a grid of site shortcuts with screenshot thumbnails.
Thread: Desktop tinkering ↗3 min readRead note
YouTube Subscription Copier: Moving Your Channels to a New Google Account
A browser-only tool that copies YouTube subscriptions from one Google account to another, with selective transfer, quota tracking and resume-tomorrow support for big lists.
Thread: Desktop tinkering ↗4 min readRead note
From Kickoff to Launch: A Realistic Website Timeline
The seven phases and thirteen milestones I plan a website around, the sign-offs between them, and why I don't put week numbers on any of it until the discovery answers are in.
Thread: Building a site for someone ↗3 min readRead note
The Four-Letter Bookmarks Bar
Six folders, four capital letters each, one tidy row. How I keep my browser bookmarks from turning into a junk drawer.
Thread: Games and gear ↗4 min readRead note
A First Linux Desktop: Ubuntu Server, XFCE and the Fun Terminal Stuff
How I'd turn a bare Ubuntu Server install into a light XFCE desktop for someone learning computers, with the silly terminal programs that make the command line fun and a sensible order to learn it in.
Thread: Games and gear ↗4 min readRead note