 What is up guys, Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. If you're new to the channel, hi, my name is Nasser and I'm now a fourth year medical student studying at King's College London and in today's video, I'm going to be covering a topic that's been highly requested over in my Instagram DMs. If you don't already follow me on Instagram, you can do so right over here and that is the topic of what is on my Mac. I'm going to be going through a series of apps that are on my computer that help me study while in medical school and also just help me be a more efficient human being in my day to day interactions with my laptop. I also want to say thank you to Grammarly for sponsoring today's video. I'll go into more detail about their fantastic application later on in the video. Before we begin, let's get the details out of the way. This here is the 2017 13 inch base model Touch Bar MacBook Pro. So it doesn't have the best specs in the world, but it is easily the best purchase I have ever made. And in second place very shortly after it is my iPad Pro. So first things first, let's start off with my desktop setup. On macOS, you have this amazing functionality to create three different desktops. You'll see that they're all quite similar but slightly different colors, but they each serve a very different purpose. This first desktop over here is sort of my chilling relaxing and having fun desktop. This is basically where I watch Netflix, I watch my YouTube videos, I browse the web doing random things, and also where I have both my calendar and my email app of choice. This blue desktop is dedicated solely to work. So this is why I do things like my medical school assignments, writing essays or doing any research project work. This is also why I study for the USMLE exam. So you guys will see here, I've got boards and beyond, I've got sketchy, I've got PATHOMA, I've got U world, USMLE RX, whatever, whatever. So this desktop is where I only do work. And then the last desktop is dedicated only for YouTube related things. So this is why I have my Final Cut Pro open and this is why I work on editing my videos. And this is also why I check my YouTube analytics and why I do keyword research and things like that. So anything YouTube related is dedicated to this third desktop over here. So in the same way that in real life, I never ever work on my bed or on my couch, I only ever work at my desk. In my laptop, I have different desktops dedicated to different purposes. And this helps give me cues to be in different states of mind or in different moods when I'm on my different desktops. And that way, for example, if I'm doing work on desktop number two, and I put my three fingers up to get this sort of bird's eye view, I won't be distracted by seeing anything like Netflix or my YouTube channel, which would be on different desktops. I only have work related things on desktop number two. And then last thing about my desktop, I try and keep it as decluttered and clean as possible. Yes, before filming this video, there were a couple of screenshots and documents here and there, which I filed away, but 90% of the time my desktop is 90% clean. And that's what matters to me. All right, let's start talking about the different apps that I use in my day to day interactions with my laptop. Starting off with internet browsers, there's nothing too special here. I use both Safari and Google Chrome. But what's a little bit more interesting is that I use the two different browsers for two different purposes. Safari you will only ever find on desktop number one, and Safari for me is associated with and is dedicated to relaxing, watching YouTube videos and Netflix and things like that. Whereas Google Chrome is found on desktops two and three, and is dedicated to more work related things. Again, this is a very subtle cue. It's a very simple way of reminding me that I'm currently doing work because I'm using Google Chrome. And that helps keep me in the sort of work related mood. I think each one of these segregating things that I do by themselves are probably not that useful. But when you put them all together, I've sort of created this world for myself where if I'm on desktop one, these are the apps that I use. And this is the type of work and stuff that I'm doing. Or if I'm on desktop two and three, these are the apps that I use and everything's dedicated more towards work. All right, now let's move on to talking about my email app of choice. The email app that I use is called spark. And I think that this is infinitely better that I just get an email. And I think this is infinitely better than the default mail app that comes on your Mac. With spark, you can color code all of the different emails you have so that they're a little bit easier to manage and separate. On top of that, you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the software and it just helps make things a lot more easy. For me, it's just so much more of a pleasure to use. And if it's easy and simple to use, then that makes me use it more often. And that helps me get through my emails much faster. All right, moving on to the calendar app that I use, this one is called fantastical. And it is fantastic. The reason fantastical is so great is because it understands normal language. It intuitively interprets a written sentence into a calendar event. I realize I'm probably not making sense. Let me just show you what I mean. So let's say I want to write in an event for today, the 29th of May. I'll say study for USMLE exam at 9am, at guys campus, alert me 30 minutes before. Okay, so I just quickly typed in that sentence. And now I've created this event, which says study for the USMLE exam. The location is guys campus. The start time is 9am. And there's going to be an alert that's going to remind me about this 30 minutes before. How incredible is that? Okay, that is very, very useful. My biggest problem with using the default calendar app was that every time I wanted to put in an event, it was like such a chore. It was a hassle to do. I'll have to create a new event and title it. Then I'd have to manually go in and change the time. And I'd also have to type in the location myself. And if I wanted to set a reminder, then I had to additionally click on the alert. Whoops, remind me 30 minutes before, then hit enter. So using the fantastical app has completely streamlined my process of inputting events into my calendar. And if something is easy and simple for me to do, then I'm going to do it more often. And so I can make more use of this calendar without wasting time checking in all the little details of every event that I make. All right, the next app that I want to talk about is a small app, but it has big potential and it's called thought train. So it's what you guys see up here, which is sort of this scrolling list of reminders that I've set for myself. And because it stays at the very top of the screen, you're almost forced to look at it more often throughout the day. And so it's an easy way to keep something that I want to be reminded of right at the forefront of my view. All right, next, let's talk about notability, which is my main note taking app of choice. I forgot to mention before that notability as part of my work is also open on desktop number two. Now notability is just quite simply amazing. It's a digital note taking app that I have on my iPad and it syncs up very quickly and easily seamlessly whatever with my MacBook. So ever since I switched to taking digital hand written notes with my iPad and I've made a bunch of videos on that here on the channel, I'll leave them linked in the description down below if you want to check them out. I've been using notability. So all of my notes in medical school, even from first year, which I've scanned and uploaded to notability as well, are all backed up online and stored on both my iPad and my MacBook. So after having written something down on my iPad, I can study it from my iPad or also on my laptop, which is especially useful if I'm using my iPad to do something else entirely. I love notability because it's able to take my 784 notes that you can see over here and helps me organize them into very easy, logical, different folders and files. And that way, if I'm ever trying to refer to a specific note or study a specific subject that I've done in the past, it's very easy for me to find and I have everything synced across my devices. If I update one of them, they all get updated. It's honestly just a fantastic note taking app for hand written notes. All right, continuing on to the theme of note taking. Let's talk about the notes app. I have such a love hate relationship with the default notes app on Mac OS. It syncs very well between all of my Apple devices, which is great. But the biggest pet peeve that I have with it honestly is that the text writing is so small like you can't zoom in. There's no way to make this bigger. It's just tiny, tiny, tiny. Ever since I bought my Mac and my iPhone, I've been using the notes app in order to take my type notes. So it's kind of become my default for doing that. But I honestly need to change because it's so bothersome seeing this tiny, tiny writing, especially when I'm trying to read it on my laptop. But I've used my notes app to write down and take care of absolutely anything. I have my book, movie, restaurant recommendations over here. I've got some work from the summer research lab Toronto. I've got my gym workout routine. I've got some important stuff for KCL hospital placement. And I've got a couple more things here and there. But basically I use this app anytime I want to write down something that is typed either on my phone or on my keyboard. However, like I said, the writing is very small, which makes it absolutely horrible for scripting my YouTube videos, which is what I have been using it for. And so I'm determined to make a change. So recently I've been using bear bear is a much more pleasant note taking app experience. You can see here that I have the script for the YouTube video that I'm recording right now. And I'm basically using it to keep track of my ideas for YouTube videos and my scripts for YouTube videos. I like having different apps to be used for different things. For example, bear is dedicated to YouTube scripts and ideas. I have the macOS notes app in order to write down all these other random little things here and there that you can see on the left hand side. And then I also have Notion, which I'll get into in a little bit, notabilities for my hand written notes, et cetera, et cetera. Speaking of apps that helped me with my writing and my note taking, let's talk about the sponsor of today's video, Grammarly. Grammarly is a super intelligent digital writing assistant that helps improve your writing's vocabulary, tone and clarity. Personally, as I stated in one of my older videos almost two years ago, 670 in the verbal section, that's because I suck at English. And it's true, my writing skills really are not that good. Grammarly is really easy and simple to use. It can be added as an extension to one of your browsers, or you can use it as a desktop application. My favorite feature about Grammarly is that it's not just a spell checking tool. It actually helps me change my sentence structure and give me suggestions to improve my vocabulary, which overall makes my writing feel more professional. This is something I absolutely wish I knew about back when I was doing my first degree at the University of Toronto. There's a free version which does all of the basic grammar and spell checks, but there's also a premium version, which is the one that I use, which gives in-depth writing feedback and even has a plagiarism checker and is the one that suggests sentence structure and vocabulary changes. For example, here's one of my essays that I submitted in medical school a couple of months ago. If I copy and paste this essay into Grammarly, you'll see that it makes changes to my essay based on my audience and what the goals of my writing style are. It makes changes for punctuation, also for conciseness, and even rephrasing of my sentences. If you want to use Grammarly for yourself and help improve your own writing, you can go to grammarly.com slash karma medic today and sign up using a free account to get 20% off of Grammarly premium. All right, now back to the video. Okay, next let's talk about Notion. Notion is another note-taking app, one of the many, many note-taking apps that you guys see I use. Now, Notion has a wide variety of uses, and there's so many different things that you can do with it. But me personally, the primary use that I have for it is to study for my USMLE exam. So as you can see here, I've got a page open for the USMLE, and then within it, I have one of these blocks, I think they're called for each different system of the human body. So we've got cardio, gastro, him, endocrine, renal, psych, neuro, you name it, I've got it. Now, the reason that I'm using Notion to study for the USMLE exam is because it helps integrate active recall into my study. Now, what I mean by that is for example, on notability, which I have closed because my laptop fans were running very high. In notability, the way that I take notes is by giving myself the information. I don't have to do any work in order to figure out the information. So for example, if I read sentence number six over here, it says obligate aerobics or requires oxygen, and then air bellow. I didn't have to do any work to think about this piece of information. With this type of studying and with this type of review, you don't use active recall in order to actively recall pieces of information. It's just given to you and you read it passively. However, with Notion, what I'm trying to do is integrate active recall into my studying. So for example, let's go into neurology over here. Each one of these little toggles has hidden information within it. So for example, let's talk about aphasias. I know that there's different types of aphasias. So for example, there's Broca's aphasia, Wernicke's aphasia, global aphasia and conductive aphasia. So if I open this, I would expect, yeah, so I have the four different toggles for each one of those aphasias, and then within each one of those, I have more information. So Broca's aphasia. What is Broca's aphasia? Broca's aphasia is an expressive aphasia. I better get that right. Okay, so it's an expressive aphasia. Great. And now Wernicke's aphasia, for example, I know that that's from damage to the temporal lobe and that causes a receptive aphasia. So receptive aphasia, and I don't have the cause. So caused by damage to the temporal lobe. Let's go to a different one of these, let's say reproduction. So for example, this question here says, what are the hormone levels at menopause? So I know that estrogen and progesterone hormone levels are low, LH and FSH are high. So if I open the toggle, estrogen and progesterone low, LH and FSH high, and GNH high, but whatever. Anyways, I've organized this information into questions, because that almost makes it like I'm answering questions on the exam, which is very useful for reinforcing those neuronal connections and helping me remember things better. Another app that I'm using to help me prepare for the US Family Step 1 exam is Anki. Now Anki is a flashcard app, which takes advantage of spaced repetition in order to help you remember pieces of information. I like using Anki and flashcards for specific purposes. For example, when I'm trying to memorize very memorization heavy topics such as biochemistry or pathology or immunology, that's when I find it useful for me to use flashcards and Anki. However, I don't like to use Anki as one of the fundamental core parts of my studying technique. And that's because I find that it doesn't give you enough context to help understand the information within a wider scope. It simply helps you remember that one specific fact. So the way Anki works if you don't know is that you open one of these decks, let's do Respiratory, and you hit Study Now. And it's basically flashcards, but it has some software, some algorithm that shows you the different flashcards at spaced intervals, which it has determined is the best way to help you remember. All right, the next app that I want to talk about is Revolutionary. I came across it when I asked Ali Abdaal this question on Twitter, and he came back to me with this response in his YouTube video. The biggest microefficiency I do is that when I use a computer, I try and avoid using the mouse. I try and navigate with keyboard shortcuts. And the app that makes that super easy to do on a Mac is called Alfred. And I cannot live without Alfred. It saved me so much time. So anyways, Alfred is something that I'm integrating more and more into my daily use and my daily interaction with my computer. It's basically a much more powerful version of spotlight that you're probably all used to on a Mac. Now you can also use Alfred to open different files and folders, which is so useful because it literally takes a tenth of the amount of time to open it. For example, I export all of my finished YouTube videos into a folder called finished videos, which is located in YouTube, then comrometic, then often, then finished videos. So I can access that folder by clicking through the file explorer to get to it, or I can open up Alfred and just type in finished videos hit enter and it's already open. So you can see that it saves so much time in maneuvering around your laptop in opening different files and folders and then just completing actions that would otherwise take 10 times as long. Now you might be thinking, hey, Nasser, you only saved a couple of seconds worth of your time there, who cares, but imagine saving seconds on each interaction that you have with your computer of which you do like hundreds of times a day, that's going to add up to minutes, that's going to add up to hours and even days over long periods of time. So whenever I can shave off time doing absolutely anything on my computer, I will try and do it. That's the reason that I love fantastical so much because it helps me so easily input new events into my calendar. And that's why I love Alfred so much because it just helps me save so much time. Let's say, for example, I needed to buy new pens. I just click pens, go down hit Amazon, and it's already searched pens on Amazon for me. I mean, how much more amazing can this be? My music listening app of choice is Spotify, and that's simply because it's the best app to do this with. If I'm honest, I almost never have Spotify open on my computer. I don't really listen to music on my computer because that's mostly where I'm doing my work. I use Spotify on my phone and on my iPad a lot more often. Let's talk about Final Cut Pro, which is the editing software that I use. I think it's better than Premiere Pro. And if you disagree with me, you can find me in the comments down below. Anyways, there isn't too much to show here. This is most of the projects that I've done over the last two years. There's a couple also on one of my hard drives over there and also a couple on this hard drive over here that I actually dropped down the stairs and completely broke. All right. And the last three apps I want to talk about are small apps, but they're just so useful and help improve my overall experience with the laptop very, very much. The first one is called Mac fans, I think, or fans control. Yeah, Mac fans control. What this allows you to do is to voluntarily increase or decrease the fan speeds on your laptops. For example, when I'm editing and I'm cutting through 4k footage, my laptop can get quite hot and sometimes I want to increase the fan speed to help cool it down so I can just click on custom, turn up the speed over here and I'll do the same on both sides. And now you can hear that my laptop is a lot louder. Can you guys hear that? So yeah, that's very useful if I just want to help cool my laptop down, especially if it's doing something quite intensive like video editing. The next thing that I want to talk about is magnet. That is this little application over here. And what that allows you to do is to move around and resize and reshape your windows in a very quick and easy way, which is especially useful for my 34 inch monitor that I have over here. I can very easily just click and move my different applications to different sides of the screen and take up different proportions of the screen as I see fit. Okay. And then last but not least is this tiny little app that I don't know where I found or how I got it on my laptop, but it's called OmniDisk Sweeper. And it just basically lets you see where the different storage is being used on your hard drives or on your SSDs or whatever. This is a very useful application for seeing where all of your different files are stored and how much space they're taking up in their respective folders. This is what helps me clear out my hard drive when it starts to get full. And it's also what helps me manage the many, many hard drives that I use to film my YouTube videos. Yeah, super random app, but I find it invaluable and I wanted to share it. All right, guys, and I think that's it. I've talked about pretty much everything that I use on all three desktops of my laptop. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and found it useful in some way, shape, or form. And if you did, please don't forget to leave a like on this video and also subscribe to my channel to see more content from me in the future. And that is it for me, guys. I will see you in the next one. Peace. I think part of my heart broke along with it that day. Very, very sad about that. But yeah, it's dead and it's gone. I lost a bunch of footage on that and I'm still salty about it.