For as long as I can remember, and across pretty much all of my thinking and writing tasks, I’ve been torn between using computers and using pen & paper.

By now, I keep my to-do list online (still in ToDoist), though I print it out each morning (from my trusty, highly-recommendable and cheap Brother HL-L2340DW), and work all day from the paper version.

I brainstorm and outline best on paper, but can draft and compose far faster on-screen.

And after recently converting the contents of a slew of separate Mac and iOS apps (Day One, Paprika, NVAlt, etc.) into a series of Evernote notebooks (as I’m now testing out using Evernote as my ‘everything bucket’), I’ve also taken to scanning all of my incoming mail, receipts, etc., into Evernote (primarily using their free Scannabale app), and lazily filing the physical papers by simply sticking all the stuff from a given month into a single file folder together (ie., “October ’15”).

Nonetheless, I also recently backed a Productivity Planner project on Kickstarter. Which, in turn, drove me to buy a Five Minute Journal, the prior project from the same designers.

I’m a pretty reliable journaler already, and in fact even previously used the outline of the Five Minute Journal questions as part of what I recorded daily in my digital journal file. But, as often turns out to be the case, there’s a difference between the experience in one medium versus the other. With the Five Minute Journal bedside, I’m more reliable at answering its short questions as the first thing I do when I wake up, and the last before I go to sleep.

So, consider a hard-copy Five Minute Journal – it seems to be making me happier, at least. And give some thought to which tools you use for your various pursuits. McLuhan may have overstated it, but if the message isn’t the medium, the medium still certainly very much matters.

A recent study by Brainscape has shown that just learning keyboard shortcuts instead of mousing around the screen would save most computer users almost two full weeks of work time each year. I’m a big shortcut user (per my previous Gmail shortcuts post), though I also depend on a slew of free or cheap tools that similarly make my Mac far more pleasant and efficient. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be cataloguing the best of the bunch.

I spend that vast majority of my computer time in my web browser. But I also regularly dip into a number of other apps, as projects demand. Launching them the traditional way – going to the Finder, then opening the Applications folder, and double-clicking the app – is painfully slow. And Spotlight, the built in search functionality in OS X that also can launch apps, is underpowered and not much quicker.

Enter Alfred, a small app with a big impact. Once loaded, you can launch Alfred with a keystroke (by default, ‘command-space’), which loads an empty command bar, like this:

Launching an app with Alfred is ridiculously easy. Just start typing the app’s name, then click enter once it appears:

You can also use Alfred to quickly open files the same way:

It works as a calculator, too. Just start typing an expression, and it automatically calculates the result:

Alfred does far more than that, pulling info from contacts, managing iTunes, or saving prior cut-and-pastes from your clipboard. With custom workflows, you can add even more powerful behaviors – with just a few keystrokes, I can add a song on the current Spotify playlist to my saved files, for example.

In short, it’s a pretty deep rabbit hole. But in my experience, even if you never use it for anything more than app launcher, file-finder and quick calculator, it will already make your Mac wildly easier to use; enough so that you’ll chafe with irritation borrowing somebody else’s Mac that doesn’t have Alfred already enabled.

You can download Alfred free directly from creator Running with Crayons’ site.

Like many people, I tend to do my best works in ‘Goldilocks’ acoustic environments – not too quiet, not too loud, but just right. In college, for example, I never studied in the library, as I found the silence oppressive, and oddly distracting; I could never settle down to work. Conversely, I’ve long worked well in coffee shops, especially while listening to music through my own headphones just loud enough to somewhat muffle background noise.

But what kind of music? Anything with lyrics and I’m toast. As a trumpet player, most jazz, too, ends up sucking me into following the improvisations more than I intend. And any classical piece I’ve performed myself leads to my fingering the notes of the trumpet part along with the music.

So, instead, I tend to listen to a small number of albums, again and again. Keola Beemer’s White Mountain Journal, for example (much of which was used as score for Alexander Payne’s The Descendants), which iTunes tells me I’ve listened to north of 500 times.

Miraculously, I still like that album. As I still like the others on which I’ve been wearing off the grooves. But new, good choices are certainly a welcome change.

Which is why I was particularly happy to discover Focus@will, a music player serving up non-distracting background music while you work. You can choose from a slew of channels and energy levels, about a third of which I’m finding to be totally excellent for me.

Obviously, your mileage may vary. But if you, too, like to listen to music while you work, and would like to expand your listening repertoire to something less mind-numbing than albums on repeat, check it out. They have a 30 day free trial, so all you have to lose is an afternoon of sub-par productivity while you figure out if it’s a fit.

For years and years, I managed all of my tasks, projects, goals and ideas using a handful of text files that I wrangled in the text editor BBEdit. It was nerdy and time-consuming, but also completely bespoke; the approach fit my workflow, and evolved over time as my working style did, too.

Along the way, I briefly tried out pretty much every task management software that existed. Some, like The Hit List or Omnifocus, I even stuck with for a couple of weeks. But, inevitably, I’d end up chafing under a program’s structure, or run into problems with its stability and data security, and return to my free-form text.

About six months ago, for reasons I can no longer recall, I decided to test out the online task management program Todoist. An extremely fast and fluid web app, it also boasted polished iPhone and iPad versions. So I dumped in my text files, and started using it. And then I kept using it. And using it. Two months in, I reverted to my text approach; after an hour, I started to feel that it was text, not Todoist, that fell short in comparison.

Six months later, I still use Todoist all day, ever day. If you haven’t tried it out, you should. (And sign up for the trial of the premium features; they make the app vastly more powerful, and are certainly worth the the $0.08 a day they cost if you decide to stick with it.)