Avinash Kaushik - TMAI #211: Anxiety, Joy and Zen.

I can be fastidiously picky in certain instances.

The phrase OCD would be apt.

I probably tried 20 keyboards before I settled on my Kinesis Advantage 2.

I can't tell you how many toiletry bags I tried before I found the perfect one. It is not that the first 17 were just crap garbage, but there was just something that was not quite perfect. And, I had to keep looking.

I like maximizing the window space in my browser and every morning I adjust the edges of the window off the desktop so that I see very little of the title bar and scroll bar. It only gives me 10 pixels more of visible space, but it makes me so happy. (Some people think this is bananas but every time I close my laptop and open it I have to do the ritual all over again, and again.)

Little things bother me an extraordinary amount.

I hate, yes, hate, the sorting choices inside the Google Podcast player. It annoys me so much. That sends me on a quest to look for a solution that's just right (link below).

I used to think that this is a problem.

Letting little things annoy me. (Like when you send me a table and most columns are center-aligned but one column is bottom aligned!).

It has taken time and effort, but I've come to realize that it is a strength.

If little things annoy me, it is a signal I'm paying a great deal of attention. Combined with an ability to excel at problem hierarchy, being annoyed by little things is a strength.

If little things bother me, I will work to make them better. That might set me apart from others a tiny bit.

If little things bother me, I go look for alternatives and that search itself is a thrill as it exposes me to new possibilities which in of itself brings me such joy.

I hate pillows in hotels. Universally hate. It took me two years and so many different ones to find my perfect travel pillow (NEMO Fillo Inflatable Travel Pillow with Fabric Cover - mine has orange stripes). And now every time I lay down in a strange hotel... My pillow brings me special joy.

(I will admit that being annoyed with little things is not great for the team I lead. I've learned to moderate my instincts and let things slide. Though a lot of times I go behind their backs and fix the little things late at night!)

The higher order bit.

An anxiety disorder can become paralyzing. Yet, with help and practice, you can convert it into a strength.

It is not easy, as I've experienced first-hand. But, my disorder makes me unique and dare I say, and this is probably the Berkeley, California in me talking, it makes me special.

Deep in my heart, I believe that is true for you as well.

I hope that is how you feel.

Recommendations from the heart

Since I've invested time and effort in finding the just-right thing for me to solve a problem, I want to share a list of digital tools that I use every day. I hope they'll bring you a little more joy and a little more zen.

1. Vivaldi. A couple of years ago I realized I've come to dislike Chrome. It had gotten bloated (not compared to others, but compared to what it used to be). The pipeline for innovative features was stalled. So I went on a hunt for a new perfect browser.

For a few months, I loved Brave. But then, I found Vivaldi! I get all the benefits of the Chromium under the covers, AND a whole lot of innovative features.

This is something so small, but so magnificent: They have a small Reset next to the zoom bar so I don't have to freaking move the slider to find 100% or even press CTRL - or + five times to get to 100%!

I love the depth of settings, I can press F4 and make sidebars go away, the built-in Reader View is divine and on and on and on.

You'll love Vivaldi.

(On my phone I use the Kiwi Browser, which does a lot of little things perfectly.)

2. NordVPN. My NordVPN subscription expires on July 13th, 2069. There's an indicator of my loyalty.

I go to strange places. In the physical world where connections might be overheard. In the virtual world for research. A VPN is a must. NordVPN has the best connections and choices among the 30 or so I've tried.

(In a sign that perfect things can always get corrupted, I am super annoyed that they recently changed the Disconnect button to two clicks. Gaah!)

3. OneDrive. With my anxiety, you'll understand when I say that our home computers are backed up to a super fast SSD, once again to a hard drive that is in the office (in case something happens at home), and one more time - in real-time - to the cloud. Three feels about the right number of backups.

For cloud backup, I used CrashPlan a while back. It had little annoying things, so I switched to Google Cloud. It is hard to beat the uptime of GCP. But, it had the most sub-optimal desktop backup software I've seen. I've become a fan of OneDrive from Microsoft.

OneDrive's mobile app is surprisingly good.

With $70/yr for a terabyte of storage and all the Office Apps it is a darn good deal.

4. Caffeinated A tiny program that does one thing, and it does that one thing spectacularly well.

It is so upsetting when those corporate timeouts and screen locks kick in at the perfect wrong moment!

I now press a button, the coffee cup icon fills with espresso (I love espresso!), and my computer stays awake until I press the coffee cup icon again.

I never have to worry about being embarrassed when I'm on stage. Just imagine how wonderful it is for an anxious person.

5. LightShot. I personalize every one of my keynotes. It is not unusual for me in my research to take 600 screenshots for one talk (and end up using only 35!).

I must have tried a thousand screenshot taking programs. Even when I paid for them they sucked in so many unique ways - it made me wonder if it is an industry thing.

Then, heavens parted and I found LightShot. It is tiny. It never even appears on my screen, I never start or stop it. I just press F6, a frame appears, I choose the region and click copy or save and BOOM! No fuss, no muss.

I sent a donation to the developers, and thanked them for not trying to be too clever.

6. Pure Text. Another tiny little program that makes my life zen by doing one thing and doing it really, really well.

It allows me to paste any text without formatting.

Ctrl+C to copy any text. F8 to paste into any program without formatting.

No right mouse click to find Paste As Plain Text or other BS. Just. F8.

Can you feel the zen?

7. Everything. Raise your hand if you agree Windows search sucks. Yes. I see your hand.

You need Everything. The world needs Everything. It is tiny, it is magically expansive, and so, so, so good.

I have 67 gigs of files on this computer at the moment, it takes milliseconds to find anything I want.

It has enough customization for someone picky like me, and needs none of it to work for my spouse who is a lot more forgiving. You have to try it to believe it.

8. SumatraPDF In the old days I used to (not literally) stab myself with a pencil to ease the pain I felt every time I used Adobe Acrobat. It is still perhaps the software that scores the worst on multiple user experience dimensions.

Ditching a PDF reader because I had Chrome was manna from heaven. Ditto for Vivaldi. (And, thank you Microsoft for building in Save As PDF!)

For when I needed a pdf (and epub, mobi) reader, I used SumatraPDF. It is tiny. Available on a site only a mother could love. But, it is so fast, so small, so good at doing just what it is supposed to.

9. Fences. I use my Windows desktop as a to-do list. Things to read. Things to post. Files I'm working on. Work I'm putting off.

So, you can imagine that my desktop is a source of deep anxiety as it has all these icons on it. On occasion, it even makes my heart beat a little faster as I grasp all the pending work.

It made me feel less like a weird person when I googled for some kind of solution and found Fences. I sincerely felt: Oh, there are others out there who also think this is a problem worth solving.

Now, everything is organized in a cluster of Fences. I can hide or open them. I can adjust transparency so that they look just so.

AND... This is so cool... Before I walk on stage to present I double click on my desktop and all the Fences disappear giving me a pristine desktop! A. It makes me feel so nice. B. In case the audience sees my desktop, it is pristine. :)

(Bonus: Stardock will try to sell you a bundle. The only other tool they have that you have to use to realize you've been missing something all your life is Groupy.)

10. Nova Launcher Prime. I hate, hate, hate, so much that with software upgrades developers feel the need to mess up what works perfectly well in the name of "improvements."

Every time I upgraded my phone, I was at the mercy of what Android developers decided was a good experience. My career demonstrates I'm not against investing in learning new habits. It is another thing to lose control, and lose perfectly good experiences.

All this changed a few versions ago with Nova Launcher. With it, I control every dimension of how my phone looks (no being forced to have a search bar or weather widget on my home screen or 50 more things shoved down my throat) and how my phone functions (once you use Gestures, you'll never ever like a phone without Gestures that is how magical the user experience is!).

Now. I'm free from Android, Samsung, Pixel, LG, developers and their vision of an Android experience. I simply backup my current hyper-customized Nova setting, import them on my new phone and the core experience stays exactly the same.

Less anxiety. More control. More joy. Me.

Bonus Mobile Apps.

AntennaPod is a fantastic open-source podcast manager/player. Small. Simple. So intelligent.

Duo is unbelievably good at video calling. And, so many clever things without trying to be too clever.

FlightStats I'm running to the airport and need a later or earlier flight, this is my go to.

Key Ring has all my loyalty cards, to ensure Safeway never charges me full price!

ParkWhiz has the greatest best fantastic end-to-end user experience of any app that I've used. It helps me find, and pre-reserve at a very good price, parking. Even if you don't need parking, use ParkWhiz to learn how to build great apps.

My overt agenda in making all these recommendations is to bring you a little bit of both joy and zen.

My covert agenda is to ensure that the pattern behind these choices provides lessons you can apply in your job to deliver joy and zen to your customers. I hope you'll pay it forward.