Key Moments
What's on my iPhone 11 Pro Max (2020)
Ali AbdaalKey Moments
Ali Abdaal shares his essential iPhone apps for productivity, learning, and life management.
Key Insights
Notion is a central app for organizing life, content, ideas, and personal knowledge management.
Drafts and Bear are used for quick note-taking and long-form writing, respectively.
Castro and Audible are key for consuming podcasts and audiobooks during commutes.
Medical apps like Medically, Medi Rota, MicroGuide, and BMJ Best Practice are crucial for his work as a junior doctor.
Instapaper and Readwise facilitate offline reading and intelligent highlighting, syncing to Evernote.
Dating apps are a significant part of his profile, with a request for feedback on his Hinge profile.
PRODUCTIVITY AND ORGANIZATION WITH NOTION
Ali Abdaal highlights Notion as his favorite app of the year, utilizing it extensively for content planning, idea refinement, and personal knowledge management. He employs it as a 'resonance calendar' to store and categorize consumed content like books and articles, automatically pulling in information. Notion also serves as an inbox for content creation ideas, tracking their progress from inception to publication, and even managing his entire life's organizational framework. He emphasizes its versatility and ongoing discovery of new use cases.
NOTE-TAKING AND WRITING TOOLS
For quick capture, Drafts is introduced as a daily-use app that allows for rapid note-taking without extensive setup. Ideas, to-do lists, or thoughts can be jotted down instantly. For longer-form writing or offline note-taking, Bear is mentioned, though Abdaal notes he's transitioning towards using Drafts and Notion together. He also touches upon Evernote as a long-term memory or 'second brain,' storing aggregated notes on various topics to reference when writing or researching specific subjects.
CONTENT CONSUMPTION: PODCASTS AND AUDIOBOOKS
Abdaal relies on Castro as his preferred podcast player, appreciating its inbox feature that allows users to curate episodes by adding them to a queue. This helps manage the influx of content from various podcasts. For audiobooks, Audible is his go-to, with a significant portion of his listening occurring during his daily commute. He shares statistics on his audiobook consumption, highlighting its importance in his routine for learning and entertainment.
MEDICAL AND PROFESSIONAL APPS
As a junior doctor, Abdaal showcases several essential medical applications. Medically is a confidential messaging app for hospital communication, while Medi Rota helps manage his work schedule. MicroGuide provides hospital-specific microbial guidelines for prescribing antibiotics, and BMJ Best Practice offers evidence-based medical guidelines. He also uses Pocket Doctor and MD Calc for quick reference on drug dosages, scoring systems, and medical calculations, demonstrating how these apps support his daily medical practice.
CURATING AND READING CONTENT OFFLINE
Instapaper is highlighted for its ability to save articles for offline reading, functioning similarly to Pocket. Abdaal uses it when he doesn't have immediate time to read, saving content for later consumption on the go. A key feature is its integration with Readwise, which synchronizes highlights from Instapaper and Kindle. Readwise then emails daily random highlights, helping to revisit and reinforce learned information, and these highlights are also organized in Evernote.
LIFE MANAGEMENT AND PERSONAL USE APPS
Beyond productivity and work, Abdaal covers apps like Fantastical for its natural language calendar input and Todoist for managing simple, recurring tasks like calling his grandmother or watering plants. He also briefly touches on dating apps, specifically Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble, sharing his profile on Hinge and actively seeking feedback from viewers. Other notable apps include Lightroom for photo editing, Spark for creating video thumbnails, and various streaming services like YouTube, though he strategically places less-used apps on later home screens to reduce friction.
Mentioned in This Episode
●Software & Apps
●Companies
●Organizations
●Books
●Concepts
●People Referenced
iPhone App Organization & Productivity Tips
Practical takeaways from this episode
Do This
Avoid This
Common Questions
The speaker recommends Fantastical for calendar management, Drafts for quick notes, and Notion for comprehensive life organization. Todoist is suggested for managing daily tasks and reminders.
Topics
Mentioned in this video
A versatile app used for organizing life, content creation, and keeping a resonance calendar. It's described as the speaker's favorite app of the year.
A confidential messaging app used by the speaker's hospital for on-call communication.
An app providing guideline information for medicine.
An app that helps calculate various medical scoring systems for different conditions.
An app providing evidence-based guidelines for various medical conditions.
An RSS feed aggregator where the speaker subscribes to various blogs and categorizes them.
A service that synchronizes Kindle and Instapaper highlights into Evernote notes and sends daily highlight emails.
An Adobe product used by the speaker to generate distinctive video thumbnails.
An app that provides guitar tabs for songs, allowing for playing along with music.
A calendar app the speaker uses for its natural language processing capabilities to add events.
A quick and easy note-taking app used for short-term memory and jotting down ideas.
The speaker's podcast player of choice, noted for its good library and inbox feature to manage episodes.
A podcast player the speaker used for several years before switching to Castro.
Used as a long-term memory or 'second brain' for notes and aggregated information.
An app used for editing photos, particularly for the speaker's Instagram page.
A journaling app where the speaker keeps a folder for nice comments as a pick-me-up.
A note-taking app still used for long-form writing, like notes on textbooks or email newsletters, though being phased out for Drafts and Notion.
A navigation app, mentioned briefly as being 'boring'.
An electronic rota management app used by the hospital to check on-call schedules.
A hospital app containing microbial guidelines, such as recommended antibiotics for sepsis.
Used for reading articles offline and syncing highlights with Evernote.
A platform for online courses that the speaker is subscribed to, allowing offline viewing.
A food delivery app used occasionally by the speaker.
A platform used for community chat, with the speaker highlighting their active server for discussions on books, podcasts, and productivity.
An app previously used by the speaker to track calories, but no longer used.
A reference used to check drug doses, which the speaker uses through a medicine guideline app.
An online course the speaker is subscribed to on Teachable.
A book from which the speaker picked up the productivity tip of having a single daily highlight.
An audiobook the speaker just finished listening to on Audible.
A book the speaker is currently reading on the Kindle app, part of the Blood and Bone trilogy.
A supermarket where the speaker makes shopping lists in Todoist.
A dating app that the speaker discusses and asks for critique on their profile.
A dating app mentioned as being similar to Hinge and Bumble.
A dating app mentioned as being similar to Hinge and Tinder.
A to-do list app used for menial tasks, reminders, and shopping lists.
An audiobook service where the speaker has listened to a significant amount of content.
Music streaming service where the speaker shares their playlists, including those related to being a doctor.
A banking service mentioned by the speaker.
A banking service mentioned by the speaker.
A platform for cryptocurrency, where the speaker has lost money on Bitcoin.
A banking service mentioned by the speaker.
Accounting software used by the speaker for their business.
The speaker's email app, described as the fastest and best, despite its monthly cost.
An airline the speaker uses for travel.
The brand of drone the speaker uses, controlled via a DJI app.
A booking website the speaker uses for holidays.
Mentioned as a guest on a podcast episode the speaker is listening to.
Mentioned as a guest on a podcast episode the speaker is listening to.
Mentioned as the friend who runs the podcast 'The Alternative CV'.
His new podcast, where episodes are only a minute long, is mentioned.
The author of 'The Dragon Reborn'.
Mentioned as an artist whose song the speaker was listening to on Spotify, and whose song 'Blank Space' is available for guitar tabs.
An artist whose music is featured on the speaker's playlist.
An artist whose music is featured on the speaker's playlist.
Author of the Blood and Bone trilogy.
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