<aside> 📌 organise your writing and connect your thoughts
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One important challenge for academics and learners is to not simply read a lot but at the same time take notes and link your reading to your own ideas. This relates to Write Smarter.
At the same time many of us re-use certain phrases or want to quote certain texts often. Here is where Write Faster comes in.
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Within your studies or work you will often write the same words, expressions and sentences over and over again. In addition, Word or Pages are not necessarily the best tools for longer form writing.
There are many options for note taking apps nowadays.
My favourite note taking app for research at the moment is Obsidian (Mac & Windows), as it offers backlinks functionality and it allows me to write freely while still linking my thoughts and ideas to sources and other notes.
Here are Red Gregory’s thoughts on Obsidian vs Roam Research. In her excellent video she also explains the core functionality of both apps.
For an introduction to Obsidian see this excellent video by Santi Younger.
Also see more videos on Think Smarter as Obsidian allows you to do both.
For quick general notes I use Drafts (Mac, iOS). You can dictate your notes, even on your Apple Watch; and Drafts allows you to export your text to almost any other app.
If you use a Mac or any iOS device you have a built in functionality that allows you to use specified shortcuts for previously defined text snippets. For example writing ;em automatically expands to your e-mail address. It is important to use unique words a shortcuts, as writing the shortcut always expands to the specified text snippet.
On your iOS device go to Settings, General and Keyboard. There click on Text Replacement. Notice in the next few days and weeks which words, expressions and sentences you type repeatedly and add these to the Text Replacement. The same works on your Mac.
If you want to add a new text replacement, click the + button on the top right corner.
<aside> 📌 Remember to use unique words as the shortcut. One tip is to start every shortcut with zz or ; or . or any other symbol in order to make sure the word does not exist.
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If you want to use the same functionality on Windows, there is an option in Word that is called AutoCorrect.
Add or remove AutoCorrect entries in Word