It’s actually OK, although it still doesn’t have all the tools that the Windows version does (e.g. Power Pivot). It does (finally!) have the Power Query Editor, however, which makes all the difference. I use it all the time now to process the data in the CSV files I download from my various financial providers—it is a huge time-saver.
ETA: Also a token-saver! I don’t need to ask Claude or Gemini to transform data for me once I’ve set up a workbook with Power Query.
That’s great to hear. I always thought of Power Query as Shortcuts for Excel. However, in its inimitable way, Microsoft presented it as a confusing mess whereby many would bail out/glaze over after the first look. Get over that barrier and, yes, it’s a fantastic, token-free tool.
Hear hear!
This is a common misconception (IMO) in many quasi-mindfulness informed approaches to anxiety and worry. While there are a lot more things that are choices than we may want to admit, it is naïve and kind of silly to think that biology, environment, upbringing, etc., play no part in why we feel the way we do. Thinking of anxiety as fear is a very good, natural response to certain circumstances. I should be afraid if I’m chased by a bear. I would argue that feeling is not a choice!
However, there are whole schools of psychology (The Adler approach, for example) which would argue that virtually everything begins in the mind and choice. Emotion and behavior are simply a result of choice. In my experience and study, there is very little simple about it.
I like Patrick a lot and have followed him since he and iMyke did their podcast so many years ago. But this kind of thought process can actually create guilt and shame where it doesn’t belong.
Despite all that, I also appreciate anyone who can use a 12 Mini and call it Enough.
Todd
This is an interesting and complex topic. My personal belief, based on observations of myself and others with no formal training in psychology, is that we cannot control our initial emotional reactions to things. Some things make us feel anxiety or fear or joy. I think of that as the initial reaction. We feel whatever we feel and have no control over those feelings in the beginning. This is especially true for new things and situations in our life.
However, I also believe there is a difference, or can be a difference, in the way we continue to feel about something, or the way we react the next time it happens. Our emotional reactions are governed to some degree by our perspective, values, and experience. Often, if we can reframe the situation in our mind, we can feel differently about it. Next time we encounter the same thing or situation, we may have a different emotional reaction because we have a new way of perceiving it.
For me, at least, I feel whatever I feel the first time something happens to me. The way I feel about it next time may be different either in the emotion itself or the degree of the same emotion depending on my experience and choices.
Why migrate to default apps? I also suffer from Shiny Tool Syndrome (doesn’t everyone here?) but in my mind the solution to that is to stop migrating, rather than migrating to something else, even if the other things are the stock Apple apps.
Overcast is working for me and so I am not migrating to anything else, even though that migration might be enjoyable.
I see @krocnyc asked the same question but I’ll go ahead and post this anyway.
We joke that Mac Power Users costs us money but this episode will hopefully save me money. Next time I want to upgrade an Apple gadget, I’ll check the refurbish store first.
I, disturbingly, get triggered by the word privilege.
not really sure how to answer other than I am forcing myself to refocus on what I need to be doing (I am a pastor facing my busiest time of the year, summer camps). the only app that can’t be replicated in macOS is Logos Bible Software. That is the one tool I use that I put back on each device after the reformat. Every other use of what I use (call me a non-pro or non-PU) can be for the most part be taken care of with stock apps.
I guess another way to word it is this. My hobbies (which is just one hobby really, keeping up with stuff/news/rumors) have taken too much time lately and I am trying to slightly turn them from a toy to a tool, a distraction to an appliance.
I spent the last 6 years in graduate school (along with a wife and six kids and full-time church job) so I guess the mental relief that came when I graduated in May 2025, I’ve let that turn into too long of a mental break (which is for me reading all the latest Apple blogs and news and rumors) and I need to get back to more academic reading.
I’m a big believer in doing whatever works! If migrating to Apple’s stock apps helps you focus on what’s important, do that!
I am a digital packrat in recovery. I absolutely cannot trust myself to use a read-it-later catch-all app responsibly, so I’ve built this Rube Goldberg contraption of a workflow to keep me from chasing every squirrel that comes into view.
A store that I can vouch for is Macsales.com, part of OWC. You can get crazy good deals on all matter of Apple ecosystem devices. Lots of options.
Tell us about your Rube Goldberg contraption of a read-it-later workflow (says the guy who also can’t be trusted to use a RiL catchall app).
The Rube Goldberg RIL workflow is designed to foster hoarding with intention. It starts with a regularly updated document I call my “Syllabus.” It’s an outline of topics I’m actively engaged with—things I’m learning, things I’m keeping up-to-date with, and things I’m working on. I try to be as narrowly focussed as I can be. Here’s a current example: not “AI”, but rather, “AI Model Welfare.” (A fascinating area of debate, but I digress …) It’s also where I keep my TBR (To Be Read) list.
Anything I commit to reading on a topic—a book, and article, a paper, a podcast transcript, etc.—gets uploaded to Readwise Reader, tagged appropriately, and put in a managed view. Readwise is the primary place my intentional reading happens, and nothing gets put there that doesn’t fall into one of the buckets on the Syllabus. I list everything I’ve uploaded to Readwise in my Obsidan Daily Note with a link to the item in Readwise that I can open up right in the Obsidian web viewer. That’s my check for intentionality: it it’s not worth uploading, listing, and linking, it’s not worth squandering focus on.
Now, life wouldn’t be worth living if there weren’t room for serendipity, too! There’s a section of my Daily Note that I’ve named “TIL” (Today I Learned). Let’s suppose I stumble across something that I’d like to explore: I list it in the TIL section of my Daily Note and then link it to a newly created note on that topic. The note is tagged “TIL” so I can surface it later. I’ll add a link to whatever it was that piqued my interest and maybe a few other things referenced there, and tuck it away for a look-see later. I go through my TIL file from time-to-time and sometimes something that’s there makes it to the Syllabus.
As an example, here’s a screenshot of my TIL note on “Junk Journaling.”
Someday, maybe, I might want to dig into this topic. I’ve flagged it with a note I can resurface so I won’t lose track of it entirely, but I haven’t clogged up a RIL inbox with a bunch of random content I might never read. My TIL system is a little time-consuming, but that’s the point.
I don’t use RSS so much anymore, but I do subscribe to a number of newsletters, which I read in the same app I use for my few remaining RSS feeds: News Explorer. I use a service called Mailgrip to forward them to News Explorer and that is the only place I read them. If there’s something I need to save for future reference, I send it to Obisidian. (A note re newsletter forwarding: I forward them to Mailgrip from Gmail. All of my newsletters are labeled “Newsletter” and are shunted off to the archive and never hit my email inbox. Every week or so, I delete whatever is in the archive under the “newsletter” label. My Mailgrip subscription, at $12 per year, is more than worth it.)
Right now I’m test-driving setting up an LLM-wiki (via Wikiwise) for the big topics on my Syllabus. I haven’t sorted out how this might fit into the workflow, but I do like the concept.
That is Rube Goldberg, as promised.
Have you considered kill-the-newsletter.com as an alternative to Mailgrip? Save you $12/yr.
I tried kill-the-newsletter.com a while back. I prefer MailGrip because I can forward newsletters to MG from directly from Gmail. If I ever change services, all I have to do is change the forwarding address in Gmail, as I did when I moved my newsletters out of Readwise Reader and into News Explorer.
MG also allows me to set up more than one forwarding address so I can sort my newsletters into named buckets—for instance, I’ve got one forwarding address for Tech newsletters, one for Arts newsletters, one for Political newsletters, etc. This means the newsletters are nicely categorized in News Explorer.
Given the $$$ I’m throwing at subscriptions, $12 is a bargain.
Fair enough. I just plunked down on a Newsblur annual subscription; if I’d known about Mailgrip then I might have gone that route.
NewsBlur is seeming like a better option again these days, now that Sam’s back to working on it actively. The new top-level plan isn’t for me, but that kind of engineering investment in particular is good for the whole app. As is the UI work.
You can also listen to David Allen himself taking you through a mindsweep at Episode #3 - David Allen guides you through a Mind Sweep - Getting Things Done® (part of the GTD Podcast series).
Stephen, I too appreciated your tactful and gentle pushback during the show.
Like you, I too have been working on my mindfulness, particularly noticing when emotions arise or other signals my body sends me. I don’t think we can control whether we have emotions and what they are, but I do believe it’s possible for us to learn to observe them, hold them, and choose how we will respond (if at all).
In a stroke of luck, I reactivated my account just as Sam resumed work on it actively. The AI-generated daily news digest has become an important part of my newsreading day. I’m looking forward to playing with the AI-generated natural language filtering as well.
