NotePlan: Your Notes, Tasks, and Calendar in One Place

This week’s sponsor is NotePlan, and if you’ve been looking for an app that brings your notes, tasks, and calendar together without overwhelming you, this one’s worth a look.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how different productivity tools connect (or don’t). NotePlan takes an interesting approach by combining your daily notes with task management and calendar events in a single interface. The idea is simple: everything you need to see for your day lives in one spot, formatted in clean Markdown.

Screenshot

The daily note concept is solid. It’s like a digital Bullet Journal, giving each day its own page for thoughts, tasks, and notes. You can timeblock your day and see those blocks right in your calendar to stay focused. Notes can have properties, and you can organize projects on simple Kanban boards to keep everything moving forward.

NotePlan works great for people who want structure without rigidity. The calendar integration means you can see your schedule alongside your tasks, and the Markdown formatting keeps everything readable and portable. There’s also a template system if you like consistent formatting. Best of all, you get all these features with a native Mac app!

If you’re curious about bringing your notes and tasks closer to your calendar, check out NotePlan. They offer a free trial so you can see if it fits your workflow. It’s a thoughtfully designed app that respects how Mac users actually work.

Next Up: Robots

I enjoyed this recent MDBHD video about the Neo Humanoid Robot. It’s a robot that you can buy/rent to put in your house as a robot housekeeper. It seems really rough around the edges, and it will require an actual human at Neo to drive it around.

It seems hardly ready for prime time. And yet …

I’m increasingly convinced that we will see useful domestic robots in my lifetime. I wonder, however, if they’ll actually be humanoid shaped or more like advanced iterations of robot vacuums that can also clean up, and fetch the remote. The disruption train just keeps rolling.

1Password Auto-Unlock

1Password can now unlock automatically when unlocking your Mac. The feature is now available to 1Password 8 users. You’ll need to enable it in settings. You can set the “reset” timer between 10 minutes and never.

Of course, this all depends on your own environment and comfort level, but if you find yourself annoyed by having to type your master password more than you’d like, this is for you.

Mac Power Users 823: The 2025 Holiday Gift Guide

The end of the year is nearly upon us, so Stephen and I are back to share our gift ideas on this episode of Mac Power Users. Stephen then goes on to share a new life philosophy, only to learn that I am already a master of it.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code MPU.
  • Soulver: Notepad, meet calculator. Enjoy a free 30-day no-commitment trial.

Celebrating the M1 Chip

Five years ago, Apple released the first M1 Macs. It’s hard to overstate how significant that moment was, not just for what it delivered technically, but for what it meant about Apple’s commitment to the Mac. Because the years leading up to that launch were rough.

The butterfly keyboard was a disaster. Not just for its initial failure, but also for Apple’s slow response and eventual correction. There was also way too much thermal throttling. Most frustrating was the long delays between updates that delivered the smallest incremental improvements (and more butterfly keyboards).

It felt like Apple had lost the plot on what made the Mac great in the first place. A lot of us wondered if Apple still understood the Mac, or if it had become an afterthought to the iPhone business.

Then the M1 arrived, and everything changed. I remember the jump from my last Intel Mac to that first Apple Silicon machine. It was one of those rare, obvious leaps you don’t see often in computing anymore. Like going from a spinning hard drive to an SSD. The speed, the battery life, the silence. It wasn’t just faster.

It was fundamentally different. Better in ways that affected every single interaction with the machine.

Five years later, Apple is still nailing it with the Mac. The MacBook Air is shockingly capable. The MacBook Pro is genuinely pro again. The Mac Studio and Mac Mini are giving people exactly what they need for desktop workflows. The only outlier is the Mac Pro, which feels adrift right now. But otherwise? The Mac lineup is in better shape than it’s ever been. And it all traces back to that decision to take control of the silicon.

What’s remarkable is that Apple doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The M5 family is just starting to arrive, and it’s another meaningful step forward. These machines keep getting more powerful while staying power efficient and cool.

The Mac isn’t just recovered from those dark days. It’s thriving. Five years in, Apple Silicon still feels like the beginning of something rather than a finished story.

Speed Should Not Always Be the Metric

Too often, we treat speed as the primary goal in optimization. Faster is better!

While modern technology and automation offer countless ways to accelerate our lives, the question we need to ask is: should we?

There are times when delay is a feature, not a bug. Going slower has its own benefits, giving you more time for consideration and intentionality. It’s also a satisfying way to occasionally give the finger to the modern world and its relentless demands.

I’ve recently begun writing down things I want to learn to do slower. Although it’s a new practice for me, here’s a partial list:

  • Reading thought-provoking books
  • Journaling
  • Talking with family and friends
  • Walking
  • Decision Making
  • Gardening
  • Enjoying media (movies, music, books)
  • Craftwork

My question to you: What should you slow down? In your life, what might benefit from taking your foot off the gas?

Dictation Series – Apple Solutions

I’ve had a lot of questions about how to best use dictation as this technology has improved so much in the last few years. So I’m making a video series covering it, from basic to advanced. Today I’m covering the Apple solutions, which are way better than you may remember.
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Retirement Reinvented by Jim Eagar

Depending on how you look at it, I’ve either already retired or have no intention of retiring for a very long time. My friend, Jim Eagar, however, has been there and he’s got some real insight. He’s now coaching folks at Retirement Reinvented.

What makes this interesting is that Jim’s approach is not about figuring out whether you have enough money to retire, but instead how to mentally handle retirement. I wish him luck.