Syed's Blog

9 posts · terminal version · RSS · all tags

My Note-Taking System Is a Mess, and That's OK

· productivity

After trying every app and method, here's what actually survived: a few plain-text habits, a search bar and accepting that perfect systems are a form of procrastination.

Deep Work in an Age of Slack Notifications

· productivity

Every ping costs more than the seconds it takes to read. How to protect blocks of focus at work without becoming the colleague who never answers.

Reading Research Papers Efficiently: The Three-Pass Method

· phd-life

You don't need to read every paper from start to finish. A practical way to skim, understand and deeply study papers, with a note-taking template.

Remote Work vs the Office: The Eternal Standup

· career

Remote work isn't magic and the office isn't prison. What each is genuinely good for, and how to make hybrid work less like the worst of both.

My Keyboard-Driven Mac Setup

· vim

My keyboard-driven Mac setup: AeroSpace and skhd for windows, iTerm2, tmux and starship, the CLI tools I use daily, and Neovim with NvChad and two custom mappings.

Prompt Engineering Is Just Asking Nicely, With Extra Steps

· ai

Context, examples, constraints and a clear output format. The same things that make a good brief for a human make a good prompt for a model.

Terminal-Based Data Science Workflow

· data-science

Build an efficient data science workflow entirely from the terminal using modern CLI tools and Python.

Vim as a Complete IDE

· vim

Transform Vim into a powerful IDE with plugins, configurations, and workflows that rival modern editors.

Bash One-Liners That Saved My Weekend

· coding

Small shell commands for finding big files, renaming hundreds of photos, searching logs and generally avoiding a Saturday spent clicking things.