Ikigai — Book Notes



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I read a lot of books and spend some time after the fact digesting them. I’ve decided to start sharing some of my book notes here. I hope you enjoy this first one.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life is a worthy read. Written by Héctor García and Frances Miralles, the book looks closely at the people of Okinawa, who live longer than anyone else, and the Japanese concept of ikigai. Ikigai, or at least my understanding of it, is the Japanese notion of one’s purpose in life. It’s a mixture of vocation, passion, and abilities, which I came to think of as the reason to jump out of bed in the morning.

Moreover, you don’t just necessarily have one ikigai or keep the same ikigai throughout your life. It can evolve as you do. The book explains that having a purpose in life is so important in Japanese culture that the western concept of retirement doesn’t exist there.

The authors spent a lot of time talking to very old Okinawans, looking for commonalities and the thing that stood out most was the concept of ikigai. They all had it and embraced it.

The book goes into depth associating the ikigai concept with Japanese culture, exercise, meditation, and mental health. But the book is definitely written for westerners, attempting to translate these concepts and ideas for the western mindset, and it largely succeeds.

The authors explain ten rules of ikigai:

  1. Stay active; don’t retire.

  2. Take it slow.

  3. Don’t fill your stomach.

  4. Surround yourself with good friends.

  5. Get in shape for your next birthday.

  6. Smile.

  7. Reconnect with nature.

  8. Give thanks.

  9. Live in the moment.

  10. Follow your ikigai.

Read as this summarized list, it can feel pretty shallow, but the book adds more depth. At 208 pages, it is a fairly quick read, and I got a lot from it. I particularly enjoyed reading the advice from Japanese centenarians. This book got me thinking about many of my own habits and how well I’m tending to my own ikigai. It also led to some changes in the ways I handle stress. If you’d like to dig deeper on this topic, check out Ikigai.

SaneBox: To Unsubscribe without Unsubscribing (Sponsor)



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Have you ever want to banish someone into a black hole? You can with SaneBox, this week’s MacSparky sponsor. If you don’t want to hear from a sender again, or want to unsubscribe from a list without having to unsubscribe from a list, SaneBox will do the dirty work for you. 

The SaneBlackHole is the folder for training emails to your trash. You’ll move messages into this folder, and SaneBox will learn that all future emails from these senders go to the trash. 

Sometimes, unsubscribing from an email list can do more harm than good. Depending on the list you’re trying to remove yourself from, because you’ve identified yourself as a real person by unsubscribing, you may have opened yourself up to even more junk mail coming your way. Anything that comes from these senders in the future will be put directly into the SaneBlackHole, so you don’t even have to bother with unsubscribing.

Banish your email to the SaneBlackHole. And if you do make a mistake, you can just move the email out of your SaneBlackHole folder to the correct Sane folder. If you’re thinking about giving SaneBox a try, now’s a great time. You can sign up for your free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription.

Tinderbox 9

Tinderbox 9 is now available. It’s one of the largest leaps Tinderbox has ever taken, with all sorts of improvements — big and tiny.

Here’s just one of the new features, the Commands & Info Bar on the Help menu. Open it any time and begin typing. You can ask it about videos to watch (View video…). You can ask it to open any Tinderbox Inspector. You can ask it to find topics in Mark Anderson’s wonderful Tinderbox Reference Manual. You can Select any note by name, or Open any Tinderbox document that Tinderbox 9 has seen. This gets you to your data much faster and that’s just one of some 150 improvements.



Tinderbox 9 is a free update if you’ve purchased or upgraded Tinderbox in the past year.

Satechi’s Clamp Hub Pro


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Satechi, who makes some of the sleekest accessories, is coming out with a USB-C Clamp Hub specifically for the 2021 iMac (24-inch)—sorry iMacs made in 2020 or earlier. To match the 2021 iMac, USB-C Clamp Hub has a modern, aluminum design. It’s got a USB-C data port, three USB-A 3.0 data ports, micro/SD card readers, and an adjustable knob to clamp onto your iMac. It’s not shipping until mid-September, but if you pre-order it now, you can get receive 15% off with the code IMAC15.

I had a similar Satechi Clamp Hub for my iMac Pro and it worked great. The question is whether the convenience of easy access to those ports is enough to justify making the front of your fancy new iMac look kind of ugly.

MindNode’s Outlining Feature Now on iPhone and iPad



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Awhile ago, I wrote about MindNode’s Editable Outline feature available on the Mac. This feature has been a real game changer for me and I routinely now work on my mind maps in both map and outline modes in Mind Node. The good news is that the outline feature is now also on iPhone and iPad versions of MindNode. With this update, you can:

  • Interact with the Outline using touch, an external keyboard, or a trackpad

  • Outline and mind map side-by-side, or use the new full-screen Outline

  • Use iOS features like External Screen Support and Scribble with Apple Pencil

Outlining, like Visual Tags, Focus Mode, Notes, Connections, Stickers, Quick Entry, all styling and layout options, is a MindNode Plus feature, which is MindNode’s cross-platform (macOS and iOS) subscription. Plans are available for $2.49 monthly or $19.99 yearly. A small price, I think, for the convenience of being able to gather my thoughts, organize my ideas, and try to make some sort of sense of them. Learn more at their website.



Free eBook – What’s Slowing Down Your Mac


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The fine folks at CleanMyMac have just released a comprehensive ebook on how to speed up slower Macs. It’s got recommendations on how to identify the biggest culprits that slow Macs down, how to clean every corner of macOS, and how to retrieve RAM. They’ve also included some lesser-known Mac productivity hacks such as renaming files in bulk or turning folder icons into emojis to set the right mood. It does happen to mention CleanMyMac as a solution to some of the problems, but it also includes lots of helpful commands and actions that don’t require using additional software. Best of all, it’s free.

MacTrack Legal Conference

MacTrack Legal is back this year from September 24–25 in Orlando, FL, at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club, so, yeah, I’ll be there. It’s a tech and legal practice conference for lawyers who want to improve their use of technology. I’ve attended and spoken at this conference in the past, and with so many different and new ways to use your Apple technology in the legal profession and not having left my house for over a year, I’m really excited to go and to speak this year.

My talk will focus on the use of Personal Knowledge Management Tools (PKM) for practicing law. I have thoughts! For those running a legal practice using a Mac, iPad, and iPhone, join us!

Mac Power Users 601: Soup Blasphemy with Kathy Campbell



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Kathy Campbell is all over the internet, as both a content creator and a business owner. She’s a podcaster, artist, task-doer, and so much more. Stephen and I talk with Kathy on this episode of Mac Power Users about how she uses a mix of an iPad Pro, iMac Pro, and a bunch of apps and services to keep all the plates spinning.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.

  • Electric: Stop stressing over scattered devices. Get a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones when you schedule a meeting.

  • Indeed: Get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post.

  • Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.

Automators #82: Bad AppleScript with Jason Snell



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Jason Snell joins the Automators to talk about his automation journey, some useful automations, and the promise of Shortcuts for Mac.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

  • LinkedIn Jobs: Post a job for free by visiting this link.

  • TextExpander, from Smile: Communicate Smarter. Get 20% off.

  • Technology Untangled: Join Michael Bird as he untangles innovation through a series of interviews, stories, and analyses with some of the industry’s brightest brains.