Hey. Hey. Today it's a classic Pick Two episode. Though I don't think I can call it classic because this might be the first time I'm doing a Pick two episode, even though I've really wanted to for a while. So if you don't know how a Pick Two episode works, that makes sense because I've only ever heard it on one other podcast. That's Mac Stories. I'm gonna pick two tools that I really like that I'm thinking about and using, and just tell you a little bit about them, and maybe you can find some utility in them. And this is the Revisiting edition.
So the Mac Stories has co-hosts, and so they go back and forth, kind of a round robin style, talking about two tools they're using. Because it is just me here, I do want to try to theme these. And so these are two apps that I am revisiting at the end of 2025. I've used them before, and now I'm back using them again. So I hope you enjoy this Pick Two episode. If you want to see more tools and automations I'm using, you can head over to Streamlined FM/join to join the mailing list. But for now, let's get to the intro and then the two apps I'm picking. Look, you're trying to grow your small business while still having a life and not losing your sanity on Streamline Solopreneur.
We help small business owners grow without burning out through simple, powerful online automations and systems. I know you're busy, so let's get started. Okay, so these are two apps I am revisiting here at the end of 2025. The first one is Bare Notes. I go back and forth on Notes apps far too much. But the thing that encouraged me to revisit was actually a video by a friend of the show, former guest Stephen Robles. He did a video like 30 Mac apps he can't live without, or 30 apps he immediately installs on his Mac. And he mentioned Bear Notes.
I used Bear for a long time, and then I decided, you know what, I just like the look and feel of Apple Notes, and I don't want, you know, it's another subscription. So I switched to Apple Notes. But a constant struggle for me with Apple Notes is the lack of markdown support. And I know this is a bespoke thing and not everybody wants this, but I love markdown, especially from my phone.
When I'm trying to input things quickly. And Bare Notes has a nice custom keyboard that you can use with it. One of the reasons that I wanted to use Apple Notes in the first place was the ease of use for drawing, right? For doing like handwritten quick notes on my iPad. I find I'm not doing that so much anymore. If I am drawing or working through something, I'll usually go to Freeform and do it there. And so the primary place I was using Apple Notes was on my phone, where I don't need to be able to draw quickly. So I thought, you know what, the pain of not having markdown has gotten to be too great, and I'm going back to Bare Notes. So I'm playing with that. I mean, it's a beautiful app. It's iOS only.
I have an Android phone now and I've installed simple Notes on that. But my iPhone is still my daily driver, so I'm enjoying it. There are two things that I do well. It's really only one thing, two aspects of one thing that I really miss with Apple Notes. And Bare Notes just has. I feel insufficient shortcut support. I don't, maybe I haven't spent enough time with it, but it shouldn't be that hard for me to append to the end of a note. And I have found that their built in shortcuts don't work as expected. And so, you know, they tell you like not to do, not to use the shortcuts that the system automatically generates, but guess what? The system automatically generates shortcuts that work the way I expect them. So you know, I think if there's one thing, one piece of feedback, and I wrote about this actually two years ago or something like that, if there's one thing that I would encourage the team at BareNotes to do, it would be improve the shortcuts because that's such a crucial part of my workflow. And this is an experiment I'm picking two things I'm revisiting.
So, I obviously left them for a reason. But if there's too much friction in using my note taking app with shortcuts, then I'm gonna end up going back to Apple Notes.
The other thing, I guess the thing that I had trouble with when I moved away from.
Bare Notes in the first place was lack of Apple Watch support. But that's just, that's like simply not a thing for me anymore because I use Whisper Memos on the watch, and that makes it to Obsidian. I could probably do some fancy pants thing that will send Whisper Memos to Bare Notes if I want to, but what I have is working great for me right now. So I'm Trying out Bare Notes. It's a beautiful app. It is a beautiful app. It's very customizable, and I love the markdown support. So I'm gonna give it a go. We'll see. I'll probably give it to you, you know, to the end of the year, maybe like into January.
This will be a good time to really test it because I do like to shut down my computer the last two weeks of the year. I want to have the same amount of time off that my kids have. And I mean, first of all, I want to spend time with them. Second of all, it's a slow time of the year anyway.
Third of all, my wife is a nurse and still has to work over those two weeks, and the kids don't have school. So, you know, I'm doing my fatherly duty. And so I, I thought. I always think it's nice to not have to worry about work for the entirety of those two weeks.
But I will inevitably have ideas and thoughts. Right. If you followed this show for a while, you'll probably know that those times of downtime, there's a chance that I'll have more voice notes because I'm thinking about more stuff. So the audio notes, I should say, I keep calling them voice notes, but Joe's audio notes, the short episodes you get on this podcast. So that's Bare Notes. That's number one. Number two is Blinkist. And I have.
I realized I was being a little hypocritical in my own thinking. Right. I think most business books are garbage. I think they are fluff to the max, a lot of them. And I've. More often than not, I have felt like I've wasted my time reading them. And I'm not in the business of like, you know, smack talking people. I know how hard it is to write a book, but I find myself skipping through a lot of pages. But I also didn't like Blinkist because Blinkist positions itself as. Or at least they did when I was on social media.
Do you. How do these founders read hundreds of books a year? They use Blinkist, like, okay, then they're not reading the books. Right. You wouldn't check the score of a baseball game or a football game and then be like, ah, yes, I know exactly what happened in this game. No, you would just know the score.
Even if you just read the box score, the box score doesn't tell you what happens in the game. So I wouldn't say I watched the game. I would say I checked the score of the game. It's the Same thing with, with Blinkist. That said.
I've been getting a lot of books recommended to me, business books. And what I'll generally do is borrow them from the library or start them on Spotify's audiobooks. And if I start to get the feeling that this is largely fluff, I will listen to the Blink or the Blinkist summary instead. I most recently did this with the Blue Ocean Strategy. You will see that that is marked as read on my Goodreads profile. Because I started reading it. I feel like I read enough of it to warran reading it.
Because it's mostly the authors must use the word consider like 172 times in that book. And it's a lot of case studies. And so I'm going through it. I got through like 20% of the book and I thought what is Blinkist? What's on Blinkist for this? It was an eight minute summary and I thought can you really summarize this book in eight minutes? And yeah, basically the main takeaway is this one thing and there's like other graphs and strategies and figures and examples, but the Blinkist was accurate. So I'm trying that again because I do feel.
I'm starting to feel the push and pull of like having the books moratorium. But also I'm a little worried I'm like stunting development or progress because I've been so close to business ideas and so I am trying to consume more of that. My friend recommended the E. Myth Revisited and again, I just kind of felt like. With every business book I feel the same way.
It is a great book if it is the first within the first five business books you read. And then after that they all kind of sound the same. The Blue Ocean Strategy. The idea is interesting. I just feel like it could have been about 70% shorter. But like E. Myth Revisited and Buy Back Your Time are basically the same. E. Myth Revisited came out way before. Right. So again, that is if that's like one of the first books you read or you've never thought about delegation or SOPs. Yeah, absolutely. Is it? Michael Hyatt has a book about that too. I think, you know, he has a book about using your time wisely. It's a really important concept. If you're going to run a business. But, one is enough.
Oh gosh. I was googling Michael Hyatt and a very different person came up. Free to Focus, I think, is his book that basically. Talks about like an Eisenhower Matrix type thing. So anyway the, the point of all this is that I am trying Blinkist again. This is in part because I tried to do a free trial but I forgot I had done a pre trial and I got charged and then I tried to get a refund and they're like no you. I guess I've done this too much so they're like no, you have to pay for it. So I do have an annual subscription for at least this year and well I might as well use it. So I am revisiting it. It's been fine. I will probably it won't be the first place I go, but if I'm reading a book and I feel like this book could be a 15-minute or less summary, then I will go to Blinkist.
So those are two apps. That's my pick. Two things I'm revisiting are Barenotes and Blinkist. I will link them in the description. And over at streamlined.fm, what are things that you're trying out? Or do you use Barenotes? Do you use Blinkist? Let me know over@celelinedfeedback.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.