Michael.team by Michael Sliwinski

🎧 The Podcast #226 - Top home office gadgets

2026-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Me and my Nozbe team all work from our homes. We’re a completely remote company. I’ve been tweaking my home office almost every year since 2008 and documenting it on my blog. Today I’m letting the AI co hosts to analyze the top 10 gadgets that make my 2026 home office a great place to work for me. As always, after listening, I encourage you to check out my detailed list and all the links in my original post.

🎙️ Listen to “Top home office gadgets”

📝 Show notes:

My essay of top 10 gadgets for 2026
Or history of my home office from 2008

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💌 Sub-projects suck (and I have the research to prove it)

2026-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

For 19 years I’ve been refusing to add sub-projects and sub-tasks to Nozbe. Customers left us over it. Many came back. Turns out four decades of research quietly agree with me…

Note: this is a transcript of the email Newsletter I sent to my 1500+ subscribers a while back. If you want to be one of them, sign up for my free Newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime! or if you use LinkedIn, you can subscribe there, too!

🌳 The feature everybody asks for

“I’d switch to you tomorrow, but you don’t have sub-projects. C’mon Michael, it’s an obvious feature you’re missing!” — I’ve heard this hundreds of times. The answer has always been NO. Not because it’s hard to build, but because I’ve watched what happens to people who get it.

🧾 A hierarchy is a decision machine

Every time you add a task: “where does this belong?” Every time you look for it: “where did I put it?” Building the structure feels like progress — it isn’t. It’s a tax you pay forever.

🐢 Deeper means slower and more wrong

Computer scientists have been testing broad and shallow versus narrow and deep since the early eighties. Kiger (1984) gave people the same 64 items arranged five ways: time and errors both went up as the structure got deeper.

⏱️ And it breaks exactly when you’re busy

Wallace, Anderson and Shneiderman (1987) put users under time pressure. The ones on the deep tree made 96% more errors and took 16% longer. Which is, let’s be honest, when you actually use your to-do app.

📁 What people do when nobody’s watching

Bergman and colleagues (2010) had 296 people retrieve their own real files from their own real computers. Average depth: 2.86 folders. Given total freedom, humans quietly go flat.

🧠 Your head holds four things — not four levels

Miller said seven plus or minus two. Cowan (2001) revised it down to about four chunks. Every level you traverse eats some of that budget — on looking for the work instead of getting it done.

🪂 Scrolling is like falling

Social media apps know this. A flat list asks nothing of your memory — gravity does the work. Digging through projects → sub-projects → tasks → sub-tasks feels like climbing.

✅ But breaking things down DOES help

Kruger and Evans (2004): listing the steps cuts the planning fallacy by more than half. And the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist (NEJM, 2009) cut in-hospital deaths from 1.5% to 0.8% — with 19 items on one piece of paper. Not a tree. A flat list.

Decomposition is good, hierarchy is not. That’s why Nozbe solves “sub-tasks” with checklists inside comments — and when a checklist outgrows itself, one click turns it into a project.

🗂️ What we give you instead

Project groups (one project can live in several groups — a tree makes you pick one) and project sections (a vertical Kanban you see in one scroll). Organization without depth.

🫵 Your turn: count the levels

Open your app, find your deepest project, count the levels. How many help you do the work — and how many just help you feel organized? Flatten one this week and hit reply to tell me how it went 🤔

P.S. Feel free to check out my full essay with all the studies and links.

🎙 No Office FM #95: How to Get Things Done in Nozbe in 2026

2026-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

We decided to publish my last webinar as a podcast episode. Whether you’re a daily Nozbe user or a long-time supporter, see how our apps have evolved over nearly 20 years — created with passion and a clear goal: to make productivity simple and effective. I walk you through the latest features of the new version, demonstrate them in action, and share why simplicity continues to be our guiding principle.

Listen to the audio:

Full episode show notes at NOOFFICE.FM/95

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✔️ ✅ ⭐️ Sub-projects suck — why 19 years of a flat structure made my app better

2026-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

You open a new productivity app and you start getting organized with a hierarchy. Projects. Sub-projects. Tasks. Sub-tasks. This feels serious. This feels professional. You feel in control. Yet when you open my to-do app, Nozbe, you won’t find sub-projects or sub-tasks. For the last 19 years I’ve been refusing to give my customers these features because I’ve felt this added complexity and hierarchy go against the efficiency of getting things done. Turns out my hunch was correct and there’s some actual research behind this.

The feature everybody asks for
Why hierarchy feels so good… but works badly!
40 years of research: deeper means slower and more wrong
How people actually organize when nobody’s watching
Your head holds about four (4) things — not four levels!
Scrolling is like falling… easier than climbing!
But wait — doesn’t breaking things down help?
What we give you instead: groups and sections
You don’t need a task manager but a task do-er

The feature everybody asks for

Over almost two decades of running Nozbe I’ve heard it hundreds of times: “I’d switch to you tomorrow, but you don’t have sub-projects. C’mon Michael, it’s an obvious feature you’re missing!”

The answer has always been NO.

Not because it’s hard to build — it’s trivial to build. Because I’ve watched what happens to people who get it. And here’s my favorite part of the story: many of the customers who left us for an app with a beautiful nested tree came back. Not all of them, but many. Their message was almost always the same — the structure looked great, but it was harder for me to get things done.

Why hierarchy feels so good… but works badly!

Building a structure can feel satisfying. It’s tidy and it feels like progress. When you create “Marketing → Q3 Campaign → Website → Landing page → Copy”, you’ve just spent several minutes producing close to zero results. Worse, you’ve created a permanent tax. Every single time you want to add a task, you now have to answer the question “where does this belong?” — and every time you want to find it, you have to answer “where did I put it?”

A hierarchy is a decision machine. It generates decisions forever. Deciding is exactly what you don’t need when you’re trying to execute.

40 years of research: deeper means slower and more wrong

Here’s what surprised me. Computer scientists have been testing this exact question — broad and shallow versus narrow and deep — since the early eighties, and the results are remarkably consistent.

1. People act fastest with shallow structures.

It started with Miller’s 1981 experiment¹ on menu depth, replicated by Snowberry, Parkinson and Sisson in 1983² in the journal Ergonomics. Then Kiger in 1984³ gave people the same 64 items arranged five different ways — from a narrow tree six levels deep to a broad one just two levels deep. The result: time and errors both increased as the structure got deeper, and the shallowest structures were the ones people liked most.

2. People double the error rate with complex structures.

Wallace, Anderson and Shneiderman (1987)⁴ added the detail that I find most relevant to real work. They compared a broad tree with a deep one, then put users under time pressure. The deep-tree users made 96% more errors and took 16% longer. In other words: the deeper structure works against you exactly when you’re busy — which, let’s be honest, is when you actually use your to-do app.

3. People perceive hierarchical structures… as more complicated!

Jacko and Salvendy (1996)⁵ confirmed again that the hierarchy people build to feel organized is the very thing making their work feel harder. They feel stressed by just looking at it!

Four decades, dozens of studies, one conclusion: when it comes to structure, expand in breadth, not in depth.

Complexity is not neutral. Complexity is a cost you pay every day, forever. The same is true of the structure inside your app. A five-level tree isn’t just prettier — it’s a small ongoing tax on every task you’ll ever create.

How people actually organize when nobody’s watching

Ofer Bergman and colleagues (2010)⁶ asked 296 people to retrieve 1,131 of their own real files from their own real computers, and analyzed all 5,035 navigation steps. The finding: people’s folder structures were shallow — the average file lived just 2.86 folders deep.

Nobody instructed them to work that way. Given complete freedom to build the elaborate tree of their dreams, humans quietly settle on something flat. The researchers concluded that people avoid deep structures because these cost them time!

So when I say Nozbe’s flat structure matches how people really work — this isn’t my opinion. It’s what people do when left alone.

Your head holds about four (4) things — not four levels!

Why does depth hurt so much? Because of a hard limit in your brain. George Miller’s famous 1956 paper⁷ put short-term memory at “seven, plus or minus two.” Nelson Cowan’s 2001 review⁸ revised that down to about four chunks — and four is the number that survived four decades of follow-up work.

Four. That’s your whole working memory while you navigate. Every level of hierarchy you traverse consumes some of it: Which branch was it? Did I file it under client or under project? Was that a sub-project or a section? By the time you find the task, you’ve spent your mental budget on looking for the work instead of getting it done.

Scrolling is like falling… easier than climbing!

There is a reason the most addictive social media apps entice you to keep scrolling. Why not use this pattern for something productive?

A flat project or task list asks nothing of your memory. You scroll. As I like to say: scrolling is like falling — it’s effortless, gravity does it for you.

Contrast that to digging through a structure of projects, sub-projects, tasks, sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks! It’s quite the contrary. It feels like climbing.

But wait — doesn’t breaking things down help?

Yes. There is research pointing the other way — and it changed how we designed Nozbe.

Kruger and Evans (2004)⁹, in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, showed that when people list the individual steps of a task before estimating it, their estimates get dramatically more accurate — they cut the planning fallacy by more than half. The effect was strongest for complex tasks. Breaking work down genuinely helps.

And the most famous example of a simple list changing outcomes: the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist. In Haynes et al.’s 2009 study¹⁰ in the New England Journal of Medicine, across eight hospitals in eight countries, a 19-item checklist cut complications from 11% to 7% and in-hospital deaths from 1.5% to 0.8%.

Nineteen items on one piece of paper. Not a tree. A list. A flat (not hierarchical!) checklist.

That’s the whole distinction, and it took me years to articulate it: decomposition is good, hierarchy is not. You need to know the steps. You do not need a permanent nested structure to hold them.

That’s why in Nozbe we solved “sub-tasks” with checklists inside task comments. You get the breakdown — the steps, the detail, the “what does done actually mean” — without creating a new branch of the tree that you’ll have to maintain and navigate forever. And if a checklist grows too big to be a checklist anymore, you convert it into a project with one click. The structure appears when the work demands it, not before.

What we give you instead: groups and sections

We’re not against organization. We’re against hierarchy. So we gave our users two flat tools:

Project groups — you can group projects together, and here’s the part a folder tree can’t do: one project can belong to several groups. For example “company website” project can belong to both Marketing and Development groups. In a tree, it would have to pick one. Reality doesn’t work that way.
Project sections — a big project can be divided into sections you can collapse, reorder, and move tasks between. Many of our customers use them as a vertical Kanban. Again, it’s structure you can see in one scroll, no digging necessary.

Both give you the organization you actually wanted. Neither adds a level of depth. That’s the trick.

You don’t need a task manager but a task do-er

After all, what is my app for? Its goal is not to help you manage things in hierarchies. It is to help you get them done.

A flat vertical structure does not look as impressive as a nested tree of sub-sub-projects. It doesn’t screenshot as well. It doesn’t win the feature-comparison table on a competitor’s landing page. But it gets the job done — and now I know that four decades of research quietly agrees.

So here’s my challenge to you. Open whatever app you use and look at your deepest project. Count the levels. Then ask yourself honestly: how many of those levels are helping you do the work, and how many are just helping you feel organized about it?

Flatten one of them this week. See how it feels. In almost 20 years of running Nozbe, people have tried to prove me wrong and always failed.

Now I know there’s scientific research that backs me up. Links to the research below.

Miller, D.P. (1981), “The Depth/Breadth Tradeoff in Hierarchical Computer Menus”, Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 25th Annual Meeting, 296–300. Not online, but summarized in detail in this free University of Maryland report ↩
Snowberry, K., Parkinson, S. & Sisson, N. (1983), “Computer Display Menus”, Ergonomics 26(7), 699–712 — doi.org/10.1080/00140138308963390 ↩
Kiger, J.I. (1984), “The depth/breadth trade-off in the design of menu-driven user interfaces”, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 20, 201–213 — sciencedirect.com ↩
Wallace, D., Anderson, N. & Shneiderman, B. (1987), “Time Stress Effects on Two Menu Selection Systems”, Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 31st Annual Meeting, 727–731 — this is the 96%-more-errors study; also summarized in the free UMD report above ↩
Jacko, J. & Salvendy, G. (1996), “Hierarchical Menu Design: Breadth, Depth, and Task Complexity”, Perceptual and Motor Skills 82, 1187–1201 — journals.sagepub.com ↩
Bergman, O., Whittaker, S., Sanderson, M., Nachmias, R. & Ramamoorthy, A. (2010), “The effect of folder structure on personal file navigation”, JASIST 61(12) — publisher version / free full PDF ↩
Miller, G.A. (1956), “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”, Psychological Review 63(2), 81–97 — free full text at Classics in the History of Psychology ↩
Cowan, N. (2001), “The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(1), 87–185 — doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01003922 ↩
Kruger, J. & Evans, M. (2004), “If you don’t want to be late, enumerate: Unpacking reduces the planning fallacy”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40, 586–598 — sciencedirect.com ↩
Haynes, A.B. et al. (2009), “A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population”, New England Journal of Medicine 360(5), 491–499 nejm.org ↩

✅ Customers in 165 countries!

2026-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Turns out that over 19 years of Nozbe we’ve served customers from 165 countries! Hundred Sixty Five! And these are not just free users, but we’re talking about paying customers. This small stat made my day today.

Paying customers from 165 countries?!

Just think about it - a small, mission-driven, privately-owned company from Poland in Europe, managed and led totally remotely with no physical office to go to… and just 15 people in the core team…

And not only we’ve been successful enough to be serving customers for the last 19 years… But we’ve also been serving paying customers from most of the countries in the world - 165 to be exact!

Seriously, everything’s is possible if me and my small team can do that! I hope you feel inspired.

I’m so proud. This small fact made my day.

Join me for the Nozbe webinar…

Another webinar in the books - I’ve delivered a webinar in 3 languages (English, Polish and Spanish) and the head of customer Support, Iwona, delivered it in German and our newest team member, Mayumi, delivered one in Japanese!

📺 🎬 Webinar - how to get things done in 2026

2026-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

Last week I’ve delivered this webinar to Nozbe Classic users. The idea was to show them that the migration to the new Nozbe is something they should consider. I also focused on reiterating our philosophy and core values - especially Simplicity. Enjoy!

A true international webinar in 5 languages!
German
Japanese
Text of the webinar

A true international webinar in 5 languages!

This webinar was in Englsh but I also delivered one in Polish 🇵🇱 and in Spanish 🇪🇸 and my colleagues - Iwona and Mayumi in German and Japanese respectively:

German

The webinar in German delivered by Iwona:

Japanese

The webinar in Japanese, delivered by Mayumi:

Text of the webinar

In case you’re curious, here’s the script for this webinar.

🎙 No Office FM #94: How to Successfully Implement a New Tool in Your Company

2026-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

Whether you like to click around and explore apps on your own, or you prefer getting a tailor-made system ready to go — this episode is for you. Today, we break down 3 starting paths with Nozbe that will instantly translate into better productivity for your team.

Listen to the audio:

Schedule your DEMO chat with Magda today for free

Full episode show notes at NOOFFICE.FM/94

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🔗 Make the phone Speak on your behalf!

2026-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

My eldest daughter, Milena, had her wisdom teeth removed and after the operation she couldn’t speak. She was so frustrated! Especially that she is a very talkative person. So to help her out I made this simple Shortcut for her so she could make her iPhone speak on her behalf.

“Speak” Shortcut with history

To make a simple Shortcut to speak on your behalf all you need are two actions: “Ask for input” and later just “Speak” what you just wrote. Great, but if she had to repeat herself, she’d have to write it all over again… and it was then double frustrating, so I added a feature of “history” of phrases she used.

Whenever she’d “speak” something, it’d be saved in a file called “speak.txt” in the “Shortcuts” folder. If she’d have to repeat herself, she’d just not write anything and hit “Done” and a menu would appear with the last 20 things she said in the past. Choose one of the phrases and they’d be spoken automatically.

Get the Shortcut here:

🗣️ Speak

And because my mother tongue is Polish, I also prepared a Polish version:

🗣️ Speak Polish 🇵🇱

Now that I have this kind of Shortcut I realized that sometimes it’s useful when our voice is tired or… if we just want to have fun with the iPhone…

Plus you can see from the Shortcut structure how I approach saving things to a file and sorting lines in an inverted order.

😎 🎬 Ludovico Einaudi - how a piano composer became a rock star

2026-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

A few days ago my wife took me on a trip to Madrid for a concert of my favorite classical music composer - Ludovico Einaudi. What a show it was! And how can a piano composer fill out an entire arena with 10-12 thousand viewers and entertain them for almost 3 hours so that they don’t want to leave and can’t get enough? Here’s how:

The Spanish Christmas Lottery Ad in 2015
How I discovered Ludovico and his brilliant music?
A piano player is a rock star?
Ludovico Einaudi in Apple Park!

The Spanish Christmas Lottery Ad in 2015

In Spain the Christmas Lottery is a big deal and it’s something almost the entire nation participates in. That’s why each year an ad for this event is very important and one of the best ones was the 3-minute short featuring a night watchman called Justino.

The music accompanying this film is “Nuvole Bianche” by Ludovico Einaudi, originally released in 2004. The emotional piano piece became hugely popular in Spain because of that advert and even entered the Spanish singles chart.

How I discovered Ludovico and his brilliant music?

Just for you to know about me - I have no musical talent. I play no instrument. I don’t particularly appreciate classical music. Well, that changed about 10 years ago when I was accompanying one of my daughters to a ballet class and while leaving each time I heard this beautiful music that the ballet teacher was using for warm up. One day I couldn’t resist and asked the lady what the music was, and she explained it was “In Un’altra Vita” by Ludovico Einaudi.

To this day this is my favorite song by Ludovico. It’s a shame he didn’t play it on the concert, so I didn’t get to listen to it live… but now I like most of his songs.

Actually, whenever I’m doing a Weekly Review on a Friday, I put on my headphones and play “The Royal Albert Hall Concert” of Ludovico…

A piano player is a rock star?

Ludovico is a 70-year-old piano composer. Not your typical rock star. His music has no lyrics. But it speaks to you. His compositions with other instruments are magical and they transport you to a place beyond anything else.

After the concert we were joking with my wife:

how is it that he’s not a 20-something year old blonde that’s half naked, but an old guy with a hat that doesn’t sing… yet his music fills out an entire stadium…

Ludovico Einaudi in Apple Park!

After my last critical comment about Apple and WWDC conference it’s fitting that I post something positive about them… as they invited Ludovico 7 years ago for a private concert as the first artist ever to perform in Steve Jobs Theatre.

Here’s his entire 1-hour concert - enjoy:

⭐️ Is Apple making the European Union a scapegoat with Siri AI?

2026-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

I used to fly all the way to California for Apple’s Developer conference, called WWDC. I’ve been an Apple fan for nearly two decades, I’m still iPadOnly, and I’m still a developer on their platforms with Nozbe. I even have a selfie with Craig Federighi taken at WWDC’19. However I keep being increasingly disappointed in Apple as to how they seem NOT to love us here in Europe. This week Apple announced the new “Siri AI” feature which when it ships, it will only be available in English and won’t be offered in the European Union. They wrote a whole press release about it, blaming EU’s DMA legislation (Digital Markets Act). What they don’t tell you are the real reasons behind this decision. IMHO it comes down to three words: greed, control and excuses.

Greed — “we want all the money… or else!”
Control — “we know what’s best for you”
Excuses — “we can’t ship it, so we’ll buy ourselves time”
Can Apple do better? I sure hope so!
Bonus: Siri’s history by Joanna Stern

Greed — “we want all the money… or else!”

Apple is fighting everyone — the DOJ in the US, regulators in Japan, the EU, and many new places — about its App Store dominance.

And to be fair, they earned that dominance. The iPhone is the most popular smartphone on the planet. Together with Android, they’ve built a duopoly where two companies hold the keys to two mobile platforms. That’s exactly why the EU treats them as a “gatekeeper.”

I feel this firsthand. To get Nozbe on the App Store, I must use Apple’s IAP (In App Purchase) payment system and I’m not allowed to link to our own pricing page. All I want is to offer both — Apple’s system and an alternative — and let my customers choose. That way Apple’s payment system would have to compete instead of being forced on everyone.

Instead of loosening their grip while still collecting commissions from most customers, Apple wants all the money from all iPhone users. That’s greed.

In the EU they’ve been practicing malicious compliance by introducing additional fees like CTF - Core Technology Fee and very convoluted rules to offer alternate payment methods which essentially keeps us, developers, forced to maintain the status quo.

So what does this have to do with Siri AI? By withholding it, Apple keeps a bargaining chip in its fight with the EU over the App Store — and tries to turn EU customers against our own governing bodies. Good luck with that.

Control — “we know what’s best for you”

The DMA wants Apple to allow competing app stores, let developers offer direct downloads, and open core iPhone features to third parties. I don’t find these requirements unreasonable. They’d make the iPhone I own actually feel like mine.

The same logic applies to Siri AI. If only Apple’s model can access the data on my phone, they’re effectively shutting out OpenAI, Anthropic, and every AI model that hasn’t been invented yet.

Apple frames this as “protecting user privacy” — but without letting me, the user, decide. Sure, most people won’t want to give another AI access to their data. But some of us would. Even if the new Siri AI is good — and given Siri’s decade of disappointing us, that’s a big “if” — maybe I’d like to connect a smarter model to be more productive. They don’t want to let me, the iPhone owner, to do that!

I genuinely used to applaud Apple’s stance on privacy. That’s what makes this hard to watch: “privacy” has quietly become the justification for control. And once a principle becomes a convenient excuse, it stops being a principle.

Excuses — “we can’t ship it, so we’ll buy ourselves time”

Here’s the part Apple least wants to talk about.

This isn’t the first time Apple announced Siri AI. They made a near-identical announcement back in 2024. They never shipped a smarter Siri — it got a nice new animation and stayed just as clueless.

They’ve also never meaningfully expanded Siri’s language support. I’m Polish, and in Poland you can’t even buy a HomePod, because Siri doesn’t speak Polish. A fast-growing country of 40M+ people is treated as a rounding error. To quote the late Michael Jackson: “All I wanna say is, they don’t really care about us.” And that stings — because they used to make me feel like they did.

Now here’s the kicker. Siri AI is powered by Google’s Gemini. Gemini speaks Polish. So do ChatGPT and Claude — and dozens of other languages. Yet Siri AI will launch in September in English only.

So Apple — the $4T juggernaut — can’t organize itself to ship this faster, in more languages, even though the underlying Gemini model already supports them all.

What do you do when you can’t deliver? You buy yourself time, and you find someone to blame. You search for excuses. And the EU is a convenient target, because it’s a union of countries that speak 24 official languages. Far easier to hide a language-rollout problem behind a regulatory villain than to admit you’re behind.

Can Apple do better? I sure hope so!

Remember that Federighi selfie? Here’s the same guy, with a straight face (emphasis mine):

“Our hope is to eventually bring Siri AI to the EU, and we will continue to engage with EU regulators on a path forward. However, their refusal to engage constructively on solutions that preserve privacy and security means we do not currently have a timeline for Siri AI’s availability on iOS and iPadOS in the EU.”

The EU refused, you see. Apple refused nothing — except to let go of any of the total control it holds. Yeah… no.

I want to be clear: I’m writing this because I’m still a fan. I want Apple to fix this. I want the company I fell in love with back — the one that made me dream of owning a Mac. But the leadership steering it today feels greedy and controlling, and spinning our laws to cover their own delays is beneath the company I used to know.

Prove me wrong, Apple. Stop blaming the EU.

I know you can do better than this.

Bonus: Siri’s history by Joanna Stern

✈️ 🕹️ Why I prefer a 2-in-1 Peak Design backpack instead of a carry-on?

2026-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

One of my favorite companies that makes backpacks and other pouches and accessories is Peak Design and they’ve just completed a new Kickstarter campaign with a 2-in-1 backpack which I totally had to get and last week it arrived. Now, why would I get such a big backpack with a size of a carry-on? Here’s why:

#BackpackOnly travel is the best
2in1 Backpack - two backpacks joint together!
Huge main compartment that opens entirely
Big side pockets for water bottles
Good straps with magnetic attachments
Grab handles on all sides!
I’m really impressed with this 2-in-1 backpack!

#BackpackOnly travel is the best

When I travel for a week, especially for a Nozbe Reunion, I prefer to have a backpack with me with all my tech gadgets inside so that I can move around faster and my hands are free.

This way I can breeze through airports, jump into a taxi quickly or (what I really like) rent a public bicycle and cycle around. With a carry-on it’s more hassle. With a backpack it’s just easier.

Now, my favorite weekend-trip backpack is the Peak Design ZIP which is just enough for a short trip and counts as a “personal item” by most airlines. However, when I’m traveling for a week, I need something bigger and recently on Kickstarter I got their latest invention - Peak Design 2in1 Travel backpack and it’s exactly what I need.

2in1 Backpack - two backpacks joint together!

This might be just the perfect solution for me as it incorporates two really good backpacks together: one bigger as the main luggage compartment and the smaller one for walking around town when you’re there.

Here’s me (5.6”/168cm) with this backpack in three options:

Just the big part of the backpack, without the small one attached. I don’t think I’d ever use it like this, but it can be done.
The entire backpack - 2in1 - the default mode.
Just the small backpack to use when I arrive at the destination.

As you can see, you can easily split them to two separate backpacks. Both have everything I need: good straps, laptop/iPad compartments and water bottle pockets. They look really solid:

Now, let’s dive deeper into more subtler features of this 2-in-1 backpack.

Huge main compartment that opens entirely

This backpack behaves the same way as a carry-on roller, it means it opens entirely so you can pack and unpack it easily and have access to the whole thing.

Especially when you’re like me and you love putting your clothes into the Peak Design’s pouches.

Big side pockets for water bottles

I love traveling with a refillable water bottle and I’m happy that most airports and many other places around town now offer you easy access to filtered water.

I like this new mesh material as it’s very flexible. It’s good for small bottles or items as well as a big water bottle.

Good straps with magnetic attachments

As I mentioned, both backpacks offer very good straps. What very often annoys me when handling a backpack is that the straps are loose and are in the way. These don’t as they can be attached to the backpack with magnets:

I think it’s a brilliant solution. This way the straps are easily accessible yet out of the way.

Grab handles on all sides!

Peak Design is known for this. Even my small ZIP backpack has grab handles from all three sides. This one has from all 5 sides! Even in the back and at the bottom.

This way it’s so easy to pick up this backpack and place it somewhere. You can just pick up any way you want.

I’m really impressed with this 2-in-1 backpack!

I’m glad I bought it. It’s not cheap as it retails for $400 which is steep for a backpack, but as you’re getting 2 backpacks for the price of one, it’s bearable. I got it a little cheaper thanks to the Kickstarter campaign.

Anyway, for a #BackpackOnly guy like me, this backpack looks like an ideal companion for my future travels. And if you do want a carry-on, Peak Design has Roller Pro which I don’t really like. Or you can get a Samsonite one just like my wife’s (on the picture above).

Here’s a video review I found which shows how this backpack performs on a 7-day trip:

🔗 Formatting lists in Shortcuts

2026-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

In Apple Shortcuts I use “lists” a lot. Especially in my Journaling shortcut and my upcoming new “Clipboard Manager” which I’m using every day. The lists are not very well documented so it’s a question of trial and error to figure out how to format them the way you want. Here are two tricks that I use:

Standard list

If I want just the list of items, I can list them in a text field and add action “split items” by “line breaks” and that’s it.

However, when testing this feature I realized that you can also put a multi-line item to the list and it will display the entire paragraphs inside the lists.

List instead of an alert?

The feature of displaying long paragraphs is especially useful. I started using “choose from list” in many places in my shortcuts instead of a simple “alert” because the alert would trim the paragraph or display it incorrectly.

As you can see, an alert doesn’t have a scroll and it goes over the “Cancel/OK” buttons. The list has a scroll and you can just tap on the list or add an “OK” button as another list item.

Lists formatted with Dictionaries

I realized recently that you can have a list formatted a little differently when you use a Dictionary object, but in that way you actually lose the ability for the list to display entire paragraphs. The long paragraphs will be trimmed to one-liners if you go that route:

What to watch out for:

Key is the bigger item on the list
Value is the sub-item on the list
If Key and Value are the same AND short, only the Key will be displayed. That is the case of Value being “Text”.
As mentioned above, every item is trimmed to one line
And there is a bug that if the Key and Value are the same but they are long, they will be both displayed, contrary to point (3).
If the Value is “Number” then contrary to (3) the Value will be displayed. Not the Key.
If the Value is “Array” then the Key will be displayed as the bigger item and the sub item will be the number of items in the array.

Try it yourself!

Here’s a Shortcut I built to demonstrate the different behavior of lists and their items:

🔗 Lists

P.S. There are many more formats of lists which are non-standard!

Of course, the lists also behave differently if you send them data that’s very specific like Contacts (and people often hack those!) or other items which are custom to their apps.

We’re currently working on a whole suite of Shortcut Actions for Nozbe and these will display completely differently. Stay tuned.

🎧 The Podcast #225 - Tim Cook vs Apple fans

2026-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

Apple’s Developer conference in 2026 is happening and it’ll be the last one when Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple as he already named John Ternus as his successor. Even though Tim Cook built a 4 trillion empire as Apple Inc, one of the places I think he missed is their relationship with developers like myself, creator of Nozbe, a productivity app available on the iPhone, iPad and the Mac. I’ve written an entire essay about this and I’ve let the AI co-hosts comment on it. Do you agree with my position here? Enjoy!

🎙️ Listen to “Tim Cook vs Apple fans”

📝 Show notes:

My essay Where Tim Cook looked the other way
Or about Apple - the company I used to know
Book where Apple lost its soul

🟣 Apple Podcasts
🟡 RSS
🟠 Overcast

😎 Japanese style toilet with built in bidet is glorious

2026-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

One of the key takeaways from my recent Japanese trip was how even the public toilets have built-in bidets that clean your butt. I mentioned in that article that I installed one of these bad-boys in the toilet adjacent to my home office more than a year ago and as people were asking me about it, I decided to share my setup here.

🚽 Old-school toilet with a new-school built-in bidet?

That’s right. My home office is on the last floor of a late-90s town house and the toilet that I have next to it has been built with 90s styling and has never been remodeled. It’s got these 90s tiles on the walls and a very typical toilet made by the Spanish company Roca. Nothing fancy, really.

However, the same company also produces Japanse-style toilet covers that include a bidet so I ordered one and because it’s from the same company, it fit right in. After installation it looks like this:

I know, doesn’t look impressive with the cables running so crudely, but this is a toilet basically I only use, so I don’t really care and by cleaning my butt after number 2, I feel like it’s Christmas Morning.

All you need is an additional connection to water and a power source. Again, my setup is not impressive but it gets the job done.

🇯🇵 Japanese hygiene at your home?

We have a much cleaner setup in our bedroom’s en-suite toilet with a remote control on the wall and the connections to power and water done much better. We installed our first smart toilet 12 years ago when we were remodeling our bedroom, so we could plan it well.

Turns out, having a butt-cleaning built-in bidet is great. Better hygiene, not using toilet paper as much and just refreshed feeling after getting that awful number 2 out of your system. I highly recommend it.

Also, before publishing this article I realized that there are many aftermarket solutions for this - like this SmartBidet thing for around $300 or even better, an Ultra-Slim Bidet Attachment for $50 bucks that can be installed almost anywhere.

In western world we use toilet paper, while the Japanse have discovered “sea shells”

Having a smart bidet like this reminds me of that scene from Demolition Man (1993) 🍅 67/67 when they are in the future and the main character, played by Sylvester Stallone wants to use the old-school toilet paper instead of innovative sea shells.

💌 My Japanese is better… 🇯🇵

2026-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

In April I was in Japan — my first trip there in 12 years. And as I drove around in a rented Toyota Prius, meeting people, admiring their culture and heritage, one Placebo lyric from “Pure Morning” song kept looping in my head: “My Japanese is better…”

Note: this is a transcript of the email Newsletter I sent to my 1500+ subscribers a while back. If you want to be one of them, sign up for my free Newsletter. You can unsubscribe anytime! or if you use LinkedIn, you can subscribe there, too!

Because so many things there are simply… better. Here’s the nutshell — the full post has all 19 observations, photos, and the song at the end.

🌸 Timing is everything. Visit at the end of March and cherry blossoms make every photo look better. Every memory feels better. Flights and hotels might cost more but it’s worth it. So worth it.

🛒 The convenience store is your best friend. Family Mart, 7-Eleven, Lawson — fresh food, great coffee, ATM, clean toilet, 24/7. Book accommodation next to one and you’re set. (Fun fact: 7-Eleven is now Japanese-owned.)

🚽 Even the public toilets are glorious. Free public restrooms with built-in bidets that leave you feeling like it’s Christmas morning. I liked them so much I installed two at home.

📦 Space and order are a religion. Tiny boxy cars, fuel pumps that drop from the ceiling, trays for your coins (so you don’t pay like a Neanderthal), boxes for your backpack (so you don’t put it on the floor like an animal). Marie Kondo didn’t invent anything — she just wrote down what Japanese already do.

🪪 The tech that actually helps a traveler: add a Suica transit card straight into Apple Wallet, top it up with Apple Pay, register on Visit Japan Web before you fly for painless tax-free shopping, and grab an eSIM (25GB for ~$25). One warning: don’t screenshot your QR tickets — they must load live, and a bus driver will shout “no screenshot!” at you.

🧭 One productivity tip from the road: Apple Maps was the only navigation app that consistently showed me directions in English. Waze was useless, Google Maps was random. If you’re driving in Japan as a foreigner — default to Apple Maps and save yourself a few wrong highway turns.

❤️ And the real reason I went: to reunite with my friend Zono-san after 12 years. Some friendships — like some habits — are forever.

👉 Read the full post (with photos + the Placebo song): at michael.team/japanese

Their Japanese is definitely better 🤪

Yours productively,

マイケル (Ma-I-Ke-Ru = Michael)

P.S. Work isn’t a place you go to — it’s a thing you do. Even from a tiny rental Prius between Kyoto and Osaka. If you want to keep your work and life organized as simply as the Japanese keep their rooms, give Nozbe a try.

🕹️ ⭐️ How to set up Meta Ray-Ban Glasses with maximum privacy…

2026-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

I’m not a fan of Facebook/Meta but I’ve been using their smart glasses 😎 for a while now. Recently there was much controversy around their AI features, as apparently sub-contractors from Kenya were reviewing private footage of people, recorded with these glasses. In this post I’ll explain why I like still like my smart glasses, how I use them and why I’ve turned off all the AI features to hopefully make sure my photos or videos are NOT reviewed by some strangers sub-contracted by Meta.

What I love about Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses
Generation 2 is much better?
No AI? Here’s how to set them up!
Meta AI app settings - making sure it’s not creepy
- Turning it off on cellular
Examples of photos I take with these glasses
Tricks and Tips with Meta Ray-Ban Glasses
Overall, despite being a Meta product, I love these glasses!

What I love about Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses

I initially bought the first generation of these glasses in October of 2024 - I bought the Wayfarer model, size 53 with transition lenses.

Here’s what I love about these glasses:

1. Transition lenses - indoor and outdoor!

These lenses cost extra but they are worth it. This makes them great sunglasses and just regular indoor glasses. While I don’t need correction glasses, I can just keep wearing them when I’m entering a house or when the weather is cloudy.

They are completely transparent and quickly can turn almost totally dark in full sunlight as you can see on the first photo in this post. This transition from dark to full transparency happens very quickly. When I drive a car in full sunlight and enter a dark garage, I don’t have to fiddle with my glasses. I can see where I’m driving with near-seamless adjustment.

2. Integrated speakers for podcast listening

I like to listen to podcasts and audiobooks and with these glasses I can tap to listen to things when I walk or drive the car (or cycle!). No headphones necessary.

3. Good microphones for hands-free talking

When people call me or I call them, the phone can stay in my pocket. I just talk to myself by speaking to the microphones integrated in these glasses. These microphones also tune out other noises around me so people on the other side don’t know I’m talking to them through glasses.

4. Photo camera for impromptu picture taking

When I see something and don’t want to pull out my iPhone Air I just take the picture with these glasses. It’s so quick to just snap it and people around me don’t even notice that. This way I’m not making anyone awkward by pulling out my iPhone and making a gesture of taking a picture.

And no, I’m not posting these pictures on social media and I’m not taking any creepy photos. Just quick snaps I want to get back to.

5. Video camera for first-person perspective

Especially when I drive a car or ride a bike and I want to record what I’m seeing, having a video camera mounted to your head is very convenient. The portrait mode is not my favorite aspect ratio, but hey, better this than nothing!

Also, my friend Thomas from Nadgryzieni podcast suggested I record a video when unboxing a new gadget I buy. It’s a cool way to celebrate it and something to keep in case of any warranty problems.

6. Meta AI? Well, I don’t think so…

I tried Meta AI and it was interesting to be able to take a picture and ask AI to describe what I’m seeing or translate what I’m trying to read. But I can do it on my iPhone, too. To me the privacy is more important and having AI enabled I’m not sure which footage people sub-contracted by Meta are reviewing. Only AI footage or all the photos and videos I’m taking? I don’t trust Meta so I disabled this.

Generation 2 is much better?

After a year of usage, my first-generation glasses broke. Actually the glue that holds the nostrils gave away and my year-old glasses looked like this:

When I contacted Ray Ban, they accepted the warranty claim but they didn’t have gen 1 transition glasses anymore so they wanted to offer me different ones. After lots of back-and-forth they finally gave in and sent me gen 2 glasses instead. I even offered to pay the price difference but they graciously sent me the new ones for free. 🙏

The cameras are a little better and the quality of photos and videos is better, but what’s more important is that the battery life almost doubled. This is a big deal as I tend to wear them for an entire day and now they last as much.

So to me, the gen 2 glasses are a substantial upgrade.

No AI? Here’s how to set them up!

When I got the new gen 2 glasses the whole scandal with Meta sub-contractors was all over the news so I decided to set them up from new without any AI and with maximum privacy in mind. Here are the steps I followed.

Of course, feel free to decide differently than me:

Download Meta AI app.
I went to Settings and removed “background app refresh” for this app so that it doesn’t work in the background doing creepy stuff.
I opened the app again and tapped to set up glasses.
I refused to accept notifications from this app when they asked for them.
I did put my home WiFi information to be able to upload photos faster.
I then went through the entire setup experience.
When asked about Meta AI - I chose to SKIP.
When asked for location - I chose NO. The drawback is that photos taken by the glasses have no location attached to them automatically.
It prompted me to reconsider that as Meta AI needs my location data to function correctly. I ignored it. Sorry Mark, but no.
When asked to share data with Meta - I chose NO.
When asked again if I want to enable AI - I said NO.
When asked to update firmware for my glasses, I did say yes to get them up to date.

Meta AI app settings - making sure it’s not creepy

After the initial setup procedure I re-opened the app and its settings to make sure all is good:

“Meta AI” in the Meta AI app is disabled
App connections - none (didn’t connect to WhatsApp which I actually use a lot, I don’t have Instagram or other socials on my phone anyway) - if you don’t enable “Meta AI” you won’t be able to connect to any app.
Media - auto import from glasses to camera roll - ON.
Share additional data - OFF.
Cloud Media - OFF - this way my photos and videos are NOT uploaded to Meta Cloud and will hopefully NOT be analyzed by sub-contractors.
Find device - OFF (because location is OFF).
Clicked on Photo Gallery and set access to Photos to LIMITED. Meta doesn’t need access to my Photos to be able to import the photos to it.
Video settings - I enabled 3K video recording as I want to get the best video resolution possible.
Audio settings - I used to have “adaptive audio” set to ON, but now I’m testing it with OFF as I don’t like that it listens to the environment and adjusts the audio all the time, I prefer to control it.

All the Photos and videos automatically imported from the glasses to my Photos are put into “Meta AI” album, so it’s easy to track them and later add location manually to them. I have more than 2,000 items there already!

With my wife I’m using a Shared Photos Library and the photos and videos from the glasses don’t automatically go there. I later manually put them there.

Another drawback of this setup is that I cannot use “hey Meta” to ask my glasses to take a picture or video, but then again, it’s not that useful and having the microphones always on listening feels creepy anyway…

Turning it off on cellular

To make sure the “Meta AI app” is not doing any creepy stuff, I went to iPhone Settings and apart from turning off notifications and “background app refresh” I also blocked it from using my cellular connection.

That’s right, you go to “Cellular” and look at the data usage of apps on your mobile connection and find “Meta AI app” and slide the option to disable it.

This way I use this app only at home when I need to update it or update the firmware of the glasses. I don’t use it for anything else.

Automatic import of photos still works! Even when I’m out and about taking pictures with my smart glasses, after a few moments they show up in my camera roll, so this setting doesn’t affect data import between glasses the the camera roll.

Examples of photos I take with these glasses

As mentioned in the 1,5 years of using these glasses I took more than 2,000 photos or videos with them. Just look below as I take these when (1) riding a bike, (2) driving a car or (3) just walking around in a crowded place.

It’s really nice to have these additional cameras always there waiting to be invoked by a push of a button…

Tricks and Tips with Meta Ray-Ban Glasses

Small tricks I got to learn with these glasses:

Take a picture while closing the right eye

When taking a picture, close the right eye and what you see with your left eye is basically the framing you’ll get. It’s because the lens to take pictures is on the left side.

Take a video while closing the left eye

With video do the other way round and close the left eye to get the most accurate frame. Again, it’s because the video camera is on your right, above your right eye.

Switch audio from CarPlay to glasses

When I drive my car, it automatically connects audio to my car speakers through CarPlay. Usually that’s OK, but very often I prefer to just listen to the audio directly through the glasses and there’s a very neat way to switch my audio source:

When the audio plays in CarPlay, tap on the right side of the glasses to PAUSE it.
When it’s paused, tap again on the glasses to PLAY and it will play on the glasses now.

It’s very handy as I can drive the car and don’t have to fiddle with settings to change the audio source.

Overall, despite being a Meta product, I love these glasses!

Use them every day. Don’t love the privacy situation and having to disable features like AI for it, but still find them so useful that they’re my companion every day. 😎

🎂 47 - the four-seven of my birthdays… thanks to my daughters!

2026-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Today I’m turning 47 and my two elder daughters (Milena is 17 and Emilia 14) created a collage of memes for me from my favorite movies. They decided that 47 is like six-seven, so it’s time to be goofy about it.

Jerry Maguire - Show me the money!
Matrix - I can dodge bullets!
Star Wars nerd - the importance of play
Hobbies and Friendships - that’s what it’s all about!
47 and loving my life!

Jerry Maguire - Show me the money!

Jerry Maguire (1996) 🍅 86/79 is one of my all-time favorite movies and they decided to replicate the “show me the money” scene with me instead of Tom Cruise:

It’s one of the most iconic scenes in the history of cinema:

Now it’s time for me to take my job and the founder, leader and CEO of Nozbe seriously and help thousands of smart business owners get things done better, and take our company’s revenues to a whole new level.

Matrix - I can dodge bullets!

The Matrix (1999) 🍅 83/85 is a movie that my eldest daughter really likes and I love it how she put me as her “Neo” - to her, I’m the dad that can dodge anything.

Yep, that’s who you are as a dad. That’s my life. Now that my daughters are getting bigger, they’re turning into women who look up to their dad. It’s a big responsibility that I’m feeling particularly strong today.

Star Wars nerd - the importance of play

I’m a huge fan of Star Wars franchise as you can tell from my lego collection: Baby yoda, R2D2 and Smart Brick - Darth Vader.

Even though my daughters are getting older, it’s important to keep playing with them. Keep goofing around. Keep teaching them the ability of having a distance to yourself.

Speaking of that, in 2 days the Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu 🍅 61 will be played in the cinemas and I’m planning to take my entire family for it. Can’t wait!

Hobbies and Friendships - that’s what it’s all about!

In my age I get to appreciate friendships and hobbies much more. I show it to my girls that these things let me stay sharp, youthful and curious. Here’s a poster from one of my favorite movie franchises - Bad Boys (1995) 🍅 46/78 with my best friend Steve - we are truly bad boys for life.

The other thing is my fascination with cars - and both shows - Top Gear and The Grand Tour are my favorite and my daughters know how much interest I have in cars and how I love driving…

47 and loving my life!

In my previous birthday posts I mentioned how much I appreciate life and how I love having the freedom to choose what I get to do. After last year when 3 people close to me lost their loved ones, I’m reminded even more how important it is to truly appreciate life and be thankful that I love what I do and I still get to do it.

Happy birthday me! Getting closer to 50 but not afraid of it! 💪

🎙 No Office FM #93: Why Most Teams Drown in Chaos

2026-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

Does your team constantly lose track of things, waste time searching for information, or spend the whole day putting out fires instead of doing meaningful work? In this episode I invited my friend and productivity expert Augusto Pinaud to talk about how GTD (Getting Things Done) principles — adapted for teams — can reduce chaos, improve accountability, and help everyone stay aligned without endless meetings and nonstop messaging.

Listen to the audio:

Full episode show notes at NOOFFICE.FM/93

🟣 Apple Podcasts
🔵 Google Podcasts
🟡 RSS?c=michaelteam)
🟠 Overcast
🔴 YouTube on Nozbe channel

✔️ 🎬 Cognitive fitness 🧠 how to make your brain fit?… by Cal Newport

2026-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

I love Cal Newport’s podcast “Deep Questions” - my Weekly Template is inspired by Cal and I’ve read all his books, including the Deep Work which is one my top 10 books of all time. In one of the recent episodes of his show he talks about 5 different components of cognitive fitness or better yet - how to avoid brain rot and stay mentally fit. Here are my notes:

1. 📖 Read every day - it rewires your brain!
2. ✍️ Write - writing is thinking!
3. 🚶‍♂️ Go on thinking walks - without a phone!
4. 🔌 Plug in your phone in the house!
5. 🔨 Learn a hard skill
📺 Watch Cal Newport explaining this!

1. 📖 Read every day - it rewires your brain!

To Cal, this is his base level 🧠 fitness. According to him, the more time you spend reading, the more you develop your brain and cognitive fitness. Reading long form content, especially books, rewires our brain to be capable of smarter thought.

Additionally, when you read a book, you’re getting practice directing your mind’s eye 👀 in a way that will help you actually take advantage of that rewiring.

Cal’s 3 steps to a consistent reading habit:

Start with things you’re excited to read - no profound books - just focus on the act of reading - even if it’s nothing ambitious. Start with 15-20 pages a day - read with your lunch and before you go to sleep in bed.
Create a reading habit - get to 30-50 pages. Create this association: when you have time, you’re going to read as your first choice (and not scroll social media).
Introduce harder books - once you get the hang of the habit, start introducing books that require more concentration from you.

2. ✍️ Write - writing is thinking!

Cal says we should NOT avoid writing and that’s one of the reasons I have this personal blog and I like to journal daily.

Cal says that writing is hard and he compares it to an intense gym workout when your muscles must really work hard. His tip is to force yourself to write for the first 10 minutes, knowing it’s tough. Once you’re over the 10 minutes hump, it’ll get easier.

It’s funny that to me writing is not that hard. I love writing. I enjoy writing. This is how I think. That’s why I’m a proponent for written task-based communication. Adding comments to tasks makes you a better communicator and writer!

To me the previous point of reading is more challenging because I read slowly and I don’t enjoy it as much. I prefer listening to audiobooks.

What I also need is to get better at taking notes from the books I read - especially when I listen to them.

3. 🚶‍♂️ Go on thinking walks - without a phone!

He’s encouraging us to go on a thinking walk several times a week. Not only for meetings. Just to be with your thoughts. If you need to have a smartphone for others to be able to contact you, put it in a backpack so that you can’t be tempted to easily reach for it. I don’t need to, as my Apple Watch Ultra has a cellular connection.

Think of something important you want to solve. You need a solitary target. Something to think about. He argues that this kind of self reflection is truly important. Start with short walks around the block and as you get better, try to go for longer ones. Remember to journal your thoughts after each walk.

Honestly, I’ve never tried that. I always walk listening to something. Challenge accepted!

4. 🔌 Plug in your phone in the house!

I’ve always been a MagSafe fan but now I’ve put even more Qi2 MagSafe chargers around the house. Not only in my home office:

As you can see, I like the “watch stand” mode of the iPhone when it shows the time and calendar. I have several more MagSafe chargers in different rooms around the house, including the kitchen:

This way the phone is not in my pocket, so it’s not tempting to pick it up and read news or messages or shop online. At least I removed social media from it, but still. When I want to listen to something, I use AirPods Pro.

Bonus is that the Phone is regularly being charged and I have set up my iPhone Air battery to charge up to maximum 90% and not more to preserve battery life. I still have 100% capacity after half a year of intensive usage.

Cal argues that people report to him that “the weight has been lifted from their brain”. I can relate to it, because the “pick up your phone” temptation is very strong!

5. 🔨 Learn a hard skill

Cal argues that we should master a skill that requires us to focus and that also helps us get a clear reward that we’re getting better. To many people this can be sports (I’m getting better at tennis).

To me also this is my Shortcut building because it’s fun, requires lots of focus and the reward is a new Shortcut that helps me get better at Journaling or take advantage of the Action button. I’ve recently also started posting my tips on managing JSON files or creating options dialogs.

I’m in the process of finishing version 5 of my Journaling Shortcut and I’ve been using for months my own Clipboard manager which I haven’t published publicly yet. And as I use these Shortcuts daily, I keep improving them.

📺 Watch Cal Newport explaining this!

In case my notes are not sufficient, listen or watch Cal Newport explain this himself:

🔗 Selecting multiple different options in Shortcuts à la “Radio button”

2026-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

I’m working on version 5 of my popular Journaling Shortcut App where I want to add support not only for saving journal entries to a markdown-formatted text file, but also Apple Notes, Nozbe and more… I want to give the user an option to choose from these various destinations for their journal entries to be saved. Something like a Radio button. Turns out, it’s not easy to do it in Shortcuts so here’s my solution.

How to show all options and select only few…

There are two main Actions in Shortcuts that let you show a list of items to choose from: “Choose from Menu” and “Choose from List”. When I’m using the latter one but the problem is I cannot determine easily which options should be selected when showing the list. I can only decide if I want for all the items on the list to be selected or none.

I can’t define specific items to be selected. So…

🚀 Emoji to the rescue!

That’s why I decided to use two emojis as my main determination if the option is selected or not: “👍” or “❌”.

Now I’m using a simple regular expression and simple if statements to see if an option is selected or not.

I define and save the data in a JSON file called: options.json

I’m saving the selected options in one text field separated by spaces, which lets me later use a simple “if… contains” statement to see if the one option that interests me is selected or not.

Get the “Options” Shortcut

You can download the Options Shortcut as well as the accompanying options.json file to test this in action.

Just like my previous JSON manipulation Shortcut this Shortcut doesn’t do anything useful as such. It’s just a proof of concept and a hack that I will incorporate into my latest Journaling Shortcut.

I hope you’ve found it useful, too.

Michael.team by Michael Sliwinski

🎧 The Podcast #226 - Top home office gadgets

🎙️ Listen to “Top home office gadgets”

📝 Show notes:

🎧 Subscribe to “The Podcast FM”:

💌 Sub-projects suck (and I have the research to prove it)

🌳 The feature everybody asks for

🧾 A hierarchy is a decision machine

🐢 Deeper means slower and more wrong

⏱️ And it breaks exactly when you’re busy

📁 What people do when nobody’s watching

🧠 Your head holds four things — not four levels

🪂 Scrolling is like falling

✅ But breaking things down DOES help

🗂️ What we give you instead

🫵 Your turn: count the levels

🎙 No Office FM #95: How to Get Things Done in Nozbe in 2026

Listen to the audio:

Subscribe “No Office FM”:

✔️ ✅ ⭐️ Sub-projects suck — why 19 years of a flat structure made my app better

The feature everybody asks for

Why hierarchy feels so good… but works badly!

40 years of research: deeper means slower and more wrong

1. People act fastest with shallow structures.

2. People double the error rate with complex structures.

3. People perceive hierarchical structures… as more complicated!

How people actually organize when nobody’s watching

Your head holds about four (4) things — not four levels!

Scrolling is like falling… easier than climbing!

But wait — doesn’t breaking things down help?

What we give you instead: groups and sections

You don’t need a task manager but a task do-er

✅ Customers in 165 countries!

Paying customers from 165 countries?!

Join me for the Nozbe webinar…

📺 🎬 Webinar - how to get things done in 2026

A true international webinar in 5 languages!

German

Japanese

Text of the webinar

🎙 No Office FM #94: How to Successfully Implement a New Tool in Your Company

Listen to the audio:

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🔗 Make the phone Speak on your behalf!

“Speak” Shortcut with history

🗣️ Speak

🗣️ Speak Polish 🇵🇱

😎 🎬 Ludovico Einaudi - how a piano composer became a rock star

The Spanish Christmas Lottery Ad in 2015

How I discovered Ludovico and his brilliant music?

A piano player is a rock star?

Ludovico Einaudi in Apple Park!

⭐️ Is Apple making the European Union a scapegoat with Siri AI?

Greed — “we want all the money… or else!”

Control — “we know what’s best for you”

Excuses — “we can’t ship it, so we’ll buy ourselves time”

Can Apple do better? I sure hope so!

Bonus: Siri’s history by Joanna Stern

✈️ 🕹️ Why I prefer a 2-in-1 Peak Design backpack instead of a carry-on?

#BackpackOnly travel is the best

2in1 Backpack - two backpacks joint together!

Huge main compartment that opens entirely

Big side pockets for water bottles

Good straps with magnetic attachments

Grab handles on all sides!

I’m really impressed with this 2-in-1 backpack!

🔗 Formatting lists in Shortcuts

Standard list

List instead of an alert?

Lists formatted with Dictionaries

Try it yourself!

🔗 Lists

P.S. There are many more formats of lists which are non-standard!

🎧 The Podcast #225 - Tim Cook vs Apple fans

🎙️ Listen to “Tim Cook vs Apple fans”

📝 Show notes:

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😎 Japanese style toilet with built in bidet is glorious

🚽 Old-school toilet with a new-school built-in bidet?