Neil Desai

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I don’t know about you but I spend a lot of time on my computer. Think about how many times you do mindless tasks on your computer that really should be automated or maybe tasks that could be done much more efficiently. Here are 10 applications/tricks that make me faster on my Mac.

• Quicksilver. By far the one application you must have if you have a Mac. I can’t begin to comprehend how many hours or even possibly days it has saved me.
  
• Keyboard Shortcuts. The mouse is great but keyboard shortcuts are where it’s at. There are so many for every application that it’s daunting to try to learn. Take it one shortcut at a time and you can conquer your entire desktop.
• Desktopple Pro. I mainly use Desktopple to help hide my desktop when I don’t want to be distracted. I highly recommend it for coders.
• Hiding my Dock. I hide my dock and keep nothing on it except for Finder and whatever’s open. It prevents me from clicking unnecessary applications and I gain a lot more pixel space.
• Good Keyboard and Mouse. I recently bought an Apple Wired Keyboard and a Logitech Performance MX mouse. I highly recommend both.
• Hazel. Helps me automate things like emptying the trash.
• Dropbox. It’s a flash drive in the cloud that acts like a folder on your Mac (or Windows or Linux). I love it.
• Automator. I wish I used this more but whenever I need to do seriously mind numbing tasks (like renaming a ton of files) I use Automator.
• Things. I organize my entire life through Things and I don’t know what I’d do without it. 
• Instapaper. I love reading articles and Instapaper gives you a text only version of what you’re actually interested in. There’s an amazing iPhone app as well.

What are some things you do to speed yourself up?