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Posts Tagged → Essays

Why Quarterly Reviews Matter More Than Annual Goals

posted in newsletter on October 3, 2026

I recently did a quarterly planning session with some of the MacSparky Labs members. I do that every quarter and find it really rewarding. It gives us a bit of a personal accountability circle. During the session, I started talking about the importance of…

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Why I Killed My Daybook

posted in newsletter, productivity on August 8, 2026

As we all experiment with AI and how it can help, I went down a rabbit hole over the last month that I wanted to share. I called it “The Daybook”. It was an automated daily note. It ran every night, pulling in my…

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Apple Should Just Do One Big Thing a Year

posted in AI, apple, newsletter on July 25, 2026

I’ve been running Apple’s beta software this year and I keep forgetting it’s there. And that got me thinking. This is the smoothest beta cycle in years. Apple shipped one genuinely big new thing, Siri AI, the one we’ve all been waiting on, and…

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Why Stretch Goals Are a Trap

posted in goals, newsletter, productivity, task lists on May 2, 2026

I want to talk about stretch goals, because I think they’re doing you more harm than good. The idea sounds reasonable. You pick your top three priorities for the week, then you add a few more items labeled “stretch goals.” If you get to…

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Speed Should Not Always Be the Metric

posted in newsletter, slow, speed on November 15, 2025

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.…

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Sticking with My M2 Mac Studio: A Surprising Decision

posted in mac studio, newsletter on March 29, 2025

If you listened to the most recent episode of Mac Power Users, you heard me struggling with a decision: should I upgrade my Mac? As you may know, I’ve been happily using an M2 Mac Studio with 8TB of internal storage. It’s a powerhouse,…

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Sparky‘s Happiness Formula

posted in newsletter, productivity on January 7, 2025

Over the past several years, I’ve spent a lot of time reading classic Hellenistic philosophy. I find those thinkers’ willingness to take on the big questions interesting. Because when it comes to thinking about philosophy, I’m practical. I couldn’t care less whether or not…

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Sparky’s 2024 Apple Watch Buyer’s Guide

posted in apple watch, apple watch ultra, newsletter on December 9, 2024

I’ve been wearing Apple Watches since day one, and the 2024 lineup is the most impressive yet. They make great holiday gifts, but here’s the thing: You don’t need to buy the most expensive model to get a great Apple Watch experience. Let’s break…

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Lessons from An Ancient Craftsman

posted in craft, newsletter, productivity on October 21, 2024

Here’s a recent post from the MacSparky Newsletter. If you haven’t already signed up, I’d appreciate it. Earlier this year, I had a chance to spend time in London, and I made a point to return to the British Museum. Specifically I was interested in…

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My Current Infatuation with Whisper-based Transcription

posted in backstage, early access, macsparky labs, newsletter, supporter on April 8, 2024

I am continuing to really enjoy my Whisper Memos workflow. I think over the years working with text-to-speech dictation, I forgot how nice it is to have dictation where you don’t have to follow along with the words that get typed while you speak.
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