Stoic Focus started as a simple way to keep Stoic quotes in the Mac menu bar. It did one thing well, but that was about it. This update turns it into something I actually want to open every day.

You can now turn on daily quote notifications so the app comes to you instead of waiting to be opened. Save favorites when a quote does enough for you that you want it close for good. And when you want more than a random hit of inspiration, you can browse by philosopher and source work: Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, Seneca in Moral Letters, Epictetus in Discourses and the Enchiridion.

The app now works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. On iPad, the quotes finally get a little more room to breathe. On Mac, it still lives in the menu bar the way it always has, with desktop widgets if you want them.

There are more than 450 quotes from 12 Stoic sources in the app. tvOS support is coming soon, bringing Stoic quotes to the biggest screen in the house.

I originally made this app because every workout tracker I tried wanted too much from me. I just needed to mark that I exercised and move on. That core idea has not changed, but the app was missing some obvious things.

You can now tap a logged day to actually see what you did and edit it. Before, tapping would just delete it, which was not great. Now there is a proper edit screen where you can update exercises, add a note, or delete the entry on purpose.

The app also supports multiple exercises per day. If you ran in the morning and did yoga in the evening, you can log both.

Suggestions got better too. The app remembers what you usually do on each weekday and pre-fills your most common activity when you tap to log. Start typing and matching exercises from your history show up right away. Activities you have not done in a while gradually move down the list so the suggestions stay relevant.

I originally made this log because my employer helped pay for workouts and wanted to see what I had been doing. They no longer check, but I keep using it anyway. Turns out it is just satisfying to watch the streaks build up on a calm calendar.

If you have been looking for something quieter than most fitness apps out there, give it a try.

I made Golden Ratio Calculator++ for one very specific moment: you are deep in a layout, canvas, frame or screen design, you know one side, and you just want the other number without stopping to do math. Type in width or height, pick a ratio, and the app gives you the matching value right away.

The rectangle preview updates as you go, the color shifts with the ratio, and the calculated value is copied to the clipboard automatically. Small thing. Surprisingly lovely when you do this often.

Features:

• Calculate width or height instantly from a chosen ratio
• Built-in presets: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Yamato, HD Video and Old Television
• Enter any custom ratio with the slider or direct input
• Live visual preview of the proportion you are working with
• Flip orientation with one tap
• Automatically copy the calculated result to the clipboard
• Choose between 0 and 5 decimal places
• Home Screen Quick Actions for Golden, Silver, Bronze and Yamato
• Spotlight search for the built-in named ratios
• Supports light and dark appearance
• Works on iPhone and iPad

Golden Ratio Calculator++ is the best and fastest way to easily incorporate the golden ratio in your layouts or designs!

👉 Play Idiot now

Idiot (yes, that’s really the name) is the perfect quick hit: easy to learn, tense in the final turns, and always one surprise away from flipping the outcome. Manage the face‑up cards, time your power moves, and avoid being the last one stuck holding junk.

Why you’ll love this version:

• Built for speed on desktop & mobile
• Satisfying tempo: quick rounds, high drama
• Great for a micro‑break or extended “just one more” streak

Need the rules or want to teach a friend?

• Read the rules: norske-kortspill.no/spill/idiot
• Jump straight into a game: Play Idiot

Let me know your fastest win or most brutal comeback. Have fun! 🃏

👉 Play Klondike (Windows-solitaire) now

No installs. No noise. Just you, the tableau and that satisfying rhythm of revealing just the right card. Perfect for a focused brain reset, a coffee break, or chasing a personal best time.

Highlights:

• Smooth play on desktop & mobile
• Auto‑moves when it helps, control when it matters
• Instant restart for “one more try” flow

Want to revisit the rules first? Read them here: norske-kortspill.no/spill/syver-kabalen.

Shuffle up and enjoy—may the next flip be the ace you need.

👉 Play Olsen now

👉 Play Vri Åtter now

Fast, familiar, and perfect for a quick break with friends. Whether you’re chasing the thrill of a last‑second twist in Olsen or flipping the flow with an eight in Vri Åtter, these games deliver instant “one more round” energy.

Want to brush up on the rules before you play?

• Learn Olsen: norske-kortspill.no/spill/olsen
• Learn Vri Åtter: norske-kortspill.no/spill/vri-aatter

Have fun and let me know which game you prefer!

1. Cognitive Shuffling: The Mental Trick That Outsmarts Insomnia

Imagine if you could trick your brain into falling asleep by thinking of random words. That’s essentially what cognitive shuffling does, and it’s surprisingly effective.

Developed by Dr. Luc Beaudoin, a cognitive scientist at Simon Fraser University, this technique works by mimicking the natural thought patterns that occur as we drift off to sleep. When our minds race with worries or to-do lists, cognitive shuffling gives our brain something neutral to focus on instead.

How to Practice Cognitive Shuffling

1. Choose a seed word with at least 5 letters (like “GARDEN”)
2. For each letter, think of words that start with that letter
3. Visualize each word briefly before moving to the next
4. Keep it random – don’t try to create logical connections

For example, with “GARDEN”:

• G: giraffe, grape, guitar, glove
• A: apple, astronaut, anchor, album
• R: rainbow, robot, river, racket

The beauty of this technique lies in its simplicity. Research shows that people typically fall asleep within 5-15 minutes when using cognitive shuffling effectively.

2. Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Your Body’s Natural Sleep Switch

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) has been around since the 1930s, but it remains one of the most effective techniques for inducing sleep. The premise is simple: physical relaxation naturally leads to mental relaxation.

The PMR Process

1. Start at your feet and work your way up
2. Tense each muscle group for 5-10 seconds
3. Release suddenly and notice the relaxation
4. Rest for 10-20 seconds before moving to the next group

What makes PMR particularly powerful is that it activates your parasympathetic nervous system – your body’s “rest and digest” mode. Studies have shown it not only helps you fall asleep faster but also increases the quality of deep sleep.

Quick PMR Sequence

• Feet and toes
• Calves
• Thighs
• Buttocks
• Abdomen
• Chest
• Arms and hands
• Shoulders
• Neck
• Face

Many people report falling asleep before they even complete the full sequence!

3. The Power of Gentle Rocking

Here’s something fascinating: adults benefit from rocking just as much as babies do. Recent studies from the University of Geneva showed that gentle rocking movements can:

• Reduce sleep onset time by nearly 40%
• Increase deep sleep duration
• Boost memory consolidation
• Synchronize brain waves for better sleep quality

DIY Rocking Techniques

If you don’t have access to a rocking bed, try these alternatives:

1. Side-to-side self-rocking: Lie on your side and gently rock your body back and forth
2. Hammock simulation: Use a reclining chair that allows gentle movement
3. Visualization: Imagine yourself in a gently rocking boat or hammock

The key is a slow, rhythmic motion – about one complete rock every 4 seconds works best.

4. Foot Movement Meditation

This technique, sometimes called “cricketing,” involves gentle foot movements under the covers. It’s surprisingly effective and works on multiple levels:

• Creates a soothing sensory experience
• Provides a focal point for your attention
• Activates pressure points that promote relaxation

How to Practice

1. Get comfortable in bed
2. Gently move your feet against the sheets
3. Pay attention to the texture and temperature
4. Focus on the rhythmic movement
5. Let your breathing naturally slow down

5. Strategic Muscle Tensing for Deep Relaxation

This advanced technique takes muscle relaxation to the next level:

1. Choose a muscle group and tense it as hard as possible
2. Hold the tension for as long as you can manage
3. Release completely and feel the wave of relaxation
4. Move systematically through your entire body

The key difference from standard PMR? You’re pushing each muscle group to its limit, creating a more profound relaxation response.

Combining Techniques for Maximum Effect

The real magic happens when you combine these techniques. Here’s my recommended sleep protocol:

1. Start with 5 minutes of PMR to release physical tension
2. Add gentle foot movements for sensory grounding
3. Finish with cognitive shuffling to quiet mental chatter

Important Considerations

While these techniques are generally safe and effective, remember:

• Consistency is key – practice regularly for best results
• Don’t force it – if a technique isn’t working after 20 minutes, take a break
• Consider your environment – ensure your room is dark, quiet, and cool
• Seek professional help if sleep problems persist beyond 3 weeks

The Science Behind Why These Work

All these techniques share common mechanisms:

1. Cognitive distraction from anxiety-inducing thoughts
2. Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system
3. Mimicry of natural sleep-onset processes
4. Reduction in cortisol and stress hormones

Conclusion

Good sleep isn’t just about quantity – it’s about quality. These science-backed techniques offer practical, drug-free solutions for those nights when sleep seems elusive. As someone who values both productivity and well-being, I’ve found these methods invaluable for ensuring I wake up refreshed and ready to tackle whatever challenges lie ahead.

Remember, the best sleep technique is the one that works for you. Experiment with these methods, combine them as needed, and give yourself time to master them. Your future well-rested self will thank you.

Sweet dreams!

Golden Ratio Calculator is still the best and fastest way to easily incorporate the golden ratio in your layouts or designs, even on iPad!

👉 Play the game! 👈

Navigate your truck to catch falling money emojis, each adding points to your score. As the game progresses, the emojis fall faster, testing your reflexes and strategy. Celebrate your catches with colorful particle effects and strive to beat the high score. Manage your lives wisely to keep the game going.

“Would you like to write an article to be published on Christmas Eve, Runar?” “Yes!”, I said. “Future-Runar can handle anything.” But was that a good decision? Read on and judge for yourself. Anyway, use the method I talk about below and make better decisions than past-Runar did.

As humans, we make decisions and choices all the time. Most choices are simple, and a select few are actually important.

For the simple ones, we have quick techniques like subconscious, gut feeling, and mental shortcuts, mixed with a bit of good old “I don’t care how it turns out” and luck. Such choices can be made quickly, usually turn out just fine, and life goes on. Fortunately.

The distinction between important and unimportant choices is primarily that we actually care about the outcome, and the consequences are significant or hard to reverse. For these important decisions, we want an effect, but the path there can be complex and unclear.

So what is a good decision-making process for important choices?

Introducing the decision ladder! Or actually, a great book written by Jan-Ole Hesselberg and Reidunnn Lognvik Reinholdt called “Better Decisions”. In the book, they describe just such a method for making better decisions. It doesn’t have to take a long time, but it contains elements that are useful to include in the process to ensure that the decision is based on what you know, not what you think.

The rest of the article explains the method, and I start with a picture of the ladder (as a repetition for new readers):

7 Small Steps to Success

1. Importance-Time (IT) Score

We start by assessing the importance and time criticality of the choice at hand. If the outcome is unimportant, or we are extremely short on time, the advice is simple: “Just do it!” If we have more time and the choice is crucial, comes a bit harder advice: “Think!” and that’s what the ladder is here to help us with. Are you short on time and the choice is a matter of life and death? “Poor you…”, but fortunately, this option occurs less frequently than the other two for most people.

2. Generate Decision Alternatives

Should be called the green zone. This is where you phone-a-friend combined with brainstorming. We want to come up with as many alternative potential decisions as possible, let’s call them hypotheses. These will be assessed, falsified, and compared further down the ladder. We will never get enough hypotheses to completely cover reality, but we get a better map. And to our advantage: avoiding idiocy is easier than being brilliant. We don’t need a perfect decision for the method to have value, it just needs to be better.

3. Gather Information

Here we will gather the information to falsify the hypotheses from the previous point. Not all information carries the same weight, so weigh the sources carefully. Useful questions might include:

• “What information do I not want to find?”
• “What information is too readily available?”
• “What similar decisions have I or others made before?”
• “What are others doing that can affect your situation?”
• “What do actual experts say about this?”

4. Test the Information

This is a safety valve with a check of the information we have dug up to ensure that we don’t make decisions on the wrong basis. Did we find opinions instead of facts, outright misinformation, or irrelevant information? Strip it away. And the rest goes to:

5. Stress Test

If point 4 was an objective check and a tribute to the rational in humans, this is an acknowledgment that we are still just humans. It means that we all fall into thinking traps. Especially when we strongly want something to be true. That’s why we take the penalty lap now.

Wikipedia has a list of 188 cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, loss aversion, and anchoring, and we don’t have time to check the remaining alternatives against all of them, but we make an effort to really be left with the cream of the alternatives before we finally get to:

6. Evaluation

Finally, the red zone! Here everything is weighed against each other based on the best knowledge we have. Many will become fewer. Useful tips here are to think about second-order effects to hopefully be left with alternatives that actually have the outcome we want. Don’t be Mao; the ecosystem around the decision can be complex.

Fortunately, just assuming that we are wrong, and considering why that might be the case, has been shown to increase the precision of evaluations. Don’t own your decision alternatives. They don’t define you. They are hypotheses to be tested, and if they don’t pass the test, they should be discarded.

7. Decide and Evaluate

The choice must be made. We remember what the goal behind the decision was and make the choice. If we can also say something about how confident we are in achieving the goal and why we settled on this choice, there’s a good chance we’re sitting on a better decision than we would have otherwise.

Two last pieces of advice on the way:

• All else being equal, a faster decision is better than a slow one. Don’t fall into the analysis trap.
• Reflect on how the decision went. A central part of making better decisions is learning from past decisions.

Summary

What is important to you in your personal and professional life? First, reflect on that, and then use the decision ladder to make more thoughtful decisions where the outcome is critical for you. Unfortunately, things can still go wrong even if we do everything right, but at least we made a little more effort than just using experience-based intuition. We thought, reflected on alternatives, and were open to making a good decision. Not just an easy one for us.