🤖 Get quick ChatGPT answers from any website ⋆ 👀 Enhance your video calls with eye contact ⋆ 🗒️ Doing the few things that count

We already have plenty of tools available. We just need to become aware of them and use them as building blocks in creative ways. And new tools are popping up every day.

Thing 1 - Get quick ChatGPT answers from any website

You know the workflow:

• Find something you're interested in
• Copy it over to ChatGPT
• Ask questions about it

Now there's a way to skip steps!

Merlin

Merlin website screenshot

It's a browser extension that lets you ask ChatGPT anything from any website you visit. Just select text for context and hit a keyboard shortcut.

• Summarize content
• Become Excel wizard
• Write email replies
• Anything else you'd use ChatGPT for

It also adds a search on Google's homepage so you can search and ask ChatGPT at the same time.

Google homepage with "Ask Merlin..." search box

How do you get it?

Download it at your browser's addons/plugins store.

• Firefox
• Chrome

You'll need to refresh open pages to activate it. Or just close and reopen your browser.

The shortcuts are a bit bonkers too. But you can change them.

Thing 2 - Eye contact tech to enhance your video calls

Nvidia Broadcast released tech that makes it look like you're looking at the camera even when you don't.

ActionMovieDad went to town with it and applied it to movie clips to make it look like actors looked at you/the camera.

Thing 3 - Doing the few things that count

The only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead focus on doing the few things that count.

- Oliver Burkema

Photo by Markus Winkler

When I was younger and didn't understand something, I'd just decide not to worry about it at the moment. Instead, I'd come home and spend time figuring it out on my own.

I didn't have the Internet, but I had time. And curiosity. So I figured it out.

When I got Internet access, this exploded. And so did my reading and to-do lists.

This seems common. As you get older, your projects become more complex. They have more steps, require more energy, and take longer. What used to take a weekend now takes months. You can't just do it "when you have time" because you don't. Your time is filled with activities you organize your life around.

At some point, you need to announce a to-do list bankruptcy and do better from scratch.

Realize there's no magical "later". You're either organizing your life around things you care about or you do things you don't.

It's freeing because it gives you a choice. Choice to plan your path and take the first step toward what matters - or accept you're a slave to "getting it all done" and find enjoyment in serving the neverending list.

Cheers, Zvonimir