Shortcutomation

Why I Watch the Earth Spin Every Night Before Bed

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For years, my internal monologue was a harsh taskmaster. I was suffering from the high pressure I put on myself, the weight of my own relentless expectations.

I was obsessed with productivity, efficiency, and squeezing value out of every single second. I convinced myself that if I wasn’t “shipping,” I wasn’t worthy. This mindset spiraled into severe anxiety and a toxic loop of negative self-talk. I was running a race with no finish line.

I was stuck.

The harder I pushed, the more paralyzed I became.

That’s when I realized: to heal, I didn’t need to speed up. I needed to do the exact opposite. I needed to slow down.

The Power of Zooming Out

When we are anxious, we react impulsively to immediate stressors. We lose perspective.

By slowing down and creating “psychological distance” from our problems, we regain the ability to assess the macro situation.

Naval Ravikant once said:

I do believe that 99% of effort in life is ‘wasted’. If you look back at all the term papers you wrote, all the classes you took, all the people you dated, and all the things you stressed about. 99% of them didn’t matter; they were inconsequential; and there were a few 1% decisions that did matter.

When you’re deep in anxiety, every choice feels like black or white. But when you zoom out, you see that most things make no difference.

The Overview Effect

Source: Wikipedia

There is no greater example of “zooming out” than what astronauts call The Overview Effect.

When astronauts view Earth from space, many describe a profound cognitive shift: our planet appears as a fragile blue marble in darkness. Borders disappear, divisions dissolve, and the conflicts that once felt enormous shrink to near insignificance.

As the legendary astronomer Carl Sagan famously said in his 1994 Pale Blue Dot reflection, our planet is just a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Step back far enough, and your toughest struggles stop feeling so big. What once felt overwhelming suddenly feels manageable.

Source: Wikipedia

The Apple Shortcut

I wanted a way to trigger this “Overview Effect” right from my phone.

So, I built an Apple Shortcut.

It connects to the NASA EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) API to fetch the latest satellite images of Earth. The Shortcut stitches these photos together, turning them into an animated GIF of our beautiful planet in motion.

I also added a message that appears with the notification:

“你很棒，放輕鬆，別太逼自己了。” ¹

You are enough. Relax. Don’t push yourself too hard.

Thanks to Personal Automation, each night before bed, the Shortcut presents me with the ultimate bird’s-eye view: The entire Earth, spinning silently in the dark.

It’s a visual reminder that 99% of what I’m stressing about is tiny compared with the scale of the Earth.

The Most Important Conversation in Life

The Shortcut is just a tool. The real work happens in the conversation you have with yourself when the notification pops up.

As David Goggins said:

The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.

The voice in your head is your permanent roommate. You wake up with it, carry it through the day, and go to bed with it. Eventually, you live out what it says, good or bad.

For too long, my inner dialogue was unforgiving. But I’ve learned the hard way that negative self-talk is the enemy of progress. We are often our own biggest critics; no one else will ever be as brutal to you as you are to yourself.

We need to replace self-criticism with self-compassion. British philosopher Alan Watts captured this balance perfectly:

I am always sincere, but never serious.

To be sincere is to act with your whole heart; to be serious is to treat every outcome like a life-or-death crisis. When we lose that “seriousness,” we stop being paralyzed by the fear of failure.

Psychologists have found that referring to yourself in the third person—using your own name instead of “I”—creates immediate mental distance. This practice, known as distanced self-talk, is a powerful hack for emotion regulation. It allows us to rise above the emotional storm and offer ourselves the kindness we’d offer a friend.

So, the next time you catch yourself criticizing for not being great—pause.

Ask yourself: Can I be okay with being good enough? Can I celebrate the small wins instead?

Can I be, as Alan Watts suggested, “always sincere, but never serious”?

If you think you have it tough, look at your life from 100,000 miles away.

When in doubt, zoom out.

I borrowed this quote from one of my favorite Taiwanese creators, Shosho Chang (張修修). ↩

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/why-i-watch-the-earth-spin-every-night-before-bed

This Shortcut Got Me to Exercise Every Single Day

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“My number one priority in life, above my happiness, above my family, above my work, is my own health. It starts with my physical health. Because my physical health became my number one priority, then I could never say I don’t have time. […] I do not start my day until I’ve worked out. I don’t care if the world is imploding and melting down, it can wait another 30 minutes until I’m done working out.” — Naval Ravikant

We all know we should exercise more. But often, the barrier to entry is just too high. We think we need to change into gym clothes, drive somewhere, and carve out an entire hour.

What if the goal wasn’t a “workout”? What if the goal was just one minute?

For years, I fell into the “all or nothing” trap. If I couldn’t do a full long workout session, I would do nothing at all.

I used to struggle with consistency until I automated my fitness using a simple Apple Shortcut.

Here is how I used technology to build a daily exercise habit that sticks.

The Science of “Exercise Snacking”

First, let’s address the biggest question: is one minute of exercise enough?

Science says yes.

A 2022 review highlights that performing short, intense bursts of vigorous exercise (≤1 min) throughout the day is a feasible and time-efficient way to improve cardiorespiratory fitness and offset the negative effects of sedentary lifestyle.

This is called “Exercise Snacking.”

By shrinking the commitment to 60 seconds, you aren’t “going to the gym”; you’re just doing 20 squats while your coffee brews.

The “Atomic” Approach

The science proves it works for your body, but how to make it work for your brain?

In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear argues that the biggest barrier to a new habit isn’t ability—it’s friction.

He introduces “The Law of Least Effort,” which states that human behavior naturally gravitates toward the option that requires the least amount of work.

This is the principle my automated system is built upon: making the habit so easy that it’s harder to avoid than to do.

The Setup

Now that we’ve covered the why, let’s get into the how.

My system relies on content from Darebee, a crowd-funded, non-profit organization that envisions to make fitness accessible for everyone. ¹

On their homepage, you’ll find an “Exercise of the Day”—a single, equipment-free movement you can do anywhere.

However, manually visiting a website every day creates friction. The key is to automate the delivery of this exercise, so that I don’t have to remember to do it.

Here’s my setup:

I configured a Personal Automation in the Shortcuts app to trigger my custom “Daily Exercise” shortcut daily at 1:00 PM—the specific time I hit my post-lunch slump and need to wake my body up.
Each day at 1:00 PM sharp, my phone buzzes. I don’t even have to unlock it. The notification appears right on my Lock Screen, telling me exactly what the “snack” is. ²
Here is the most important part. I don’t need to open a browser or an app. I simply long-press the notification. Upon expansion, the notification presents a GIF of the exercise with the target rep count.

This setup works because it respects my laziness; on days I have zero energy, I can still do 20 squats.

By combining the biological benefit of “Exercise Snacking” with the psychological strategy of “Lowering the Bar,” I removed any excuse to say “no.”

As James Clear says, “A habit must be established before it can be improved.”

If you’re struggling to build a fitness habit, the problem isn’t a lack of discipline—it’s your system.

Stop trying to climb a mountain. Instead, build a ramp, one small action at a time.

Start small. Master the art of showing up. Optimize later.

Begin with a single notification. Give it one minute. You’ll be amazed how far that tiny first step can take you.

Darebee is an incredible free resource run by a small team. If you find their work valuable, please consider donating to support them. ↩
This is the “Cue” that James Clear talks about: the obvious trigger that initiates a behavior. ↩

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/this-shortcut-got-me-to-exercise-every-single-day

Hidden Keyboard Shortcuts for Apple Shortcuts

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When I first started making shortcuts, I spent hours staring at my iPhone screen.

Then I realized I could build Shortcuts on my MacBook too. I started dragging actions, typing names, and using keyboard shortcuts. This made the development process smoother and faster.

Now, I use my MacBook to create shortcuts and only use my iPhone for testing and fixing bugs.

Here are some Mac keyboard shortcuts for Apple Shortcuts. I didn’t find them in any guide. I discovered them by trying things out and making mistakes.

Keyboard Shortcut	Description
`Cmd + ↑/↓`	Move action up/down
`Cmd + D`	Duplicate a shortcut
`Cmd + Backspace`	Delete a shortcut
`Cmd + N`	Create new Shortcut
`Cmd + R`	Run a Shortcut
`Cmd + Shift + A`	Add action: “Ask for Input”
`Cmd + Shift + C`	Add action: “Comment”
`Cmd + Shift + I`	Add action: “If-Otherwise-End If”
`Cmd + Shift + R`	Add action: “Repeat”
`Cmd + Shift + S`	Add action: “Show Result”

Keyboard shortcuts are a small investment with huge returns. The more you use them, the more time you save. At first, you might have to look them up all the time. But you can get better through practices. Mastering keyboard shortcuts has meant less context switching and more focus for me.

If you know other shortcuts, please share with me. I will add them to the table.

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/hidden-keyboard-shortcuts-for-apple-shortcuts

How I Use Shortcuts to Recharge My Brain

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“Rest until you feel like playing, then play until you feel like resting.” — Martha Beck

We all experienced the “post-lunch dip”—that familiar drop in energy after midday.

One of the most effective ways to overcome this slump is by taking a nap.

Personally, I love taking naps (or “Siesta”). They replenish my body battery and help me refocus after intense deep work sessions in the morning.

The ideal nap time is when adenosine ¹ levels peak—usually in the early afternoon (1–3 PM) or 7–8 hours after waking.

You can enhance your nap with techniques like “Nappuccino” or guided breathwork / body scan exercises.

My favorite is Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR), coined by Dr. Andrew Huberman. NSDR is a zero-cost, science-backed protocol that restores your mental and physical energy, even if you don’t fall asleep. ²

To make things easier, I built the “Brain Recharger” shortcut. It covers the essentials of my reset ritual—connecting headphones, adjusting the volume, locking the screen, and playing NSDR scripts ³—providing a quick energy boost for the rest of the day.

“The right way to work is like a lion. We’re not meant to graze all day. We’re meant to hunt like lions. So, as a modern knowledge worker, an intellectual athlete, you want to function like an athlete. This means you train hard, then you sprint, then you rest, then you reassess. You get your feedback loop, you train some more, then you sprint again, then you rest, then you reassess.” — Naval Ravikant

I used to struggle with giving myself permission to take breaks. Whenever I did, I felt guilty—often sneaking in bits of work rather than allowing myself to fully recharge. I was constantly in hustle mode—chained to my desk for hours and caught in The Busy Trap, a treadmill that led nowhere.

Now, I learned the importance of prioritizing downtime and sharpening the saw. To perform at my best, I have to work with my biology, not against it—I’m human, not a machine. If I want to speed up later, I need to slow down first—because slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and slow and steady wins the race.

So, stop treating rest as a reward—it’s not a special indulgence, but an absolute necessity. Downtime deserves time management as well. Replace the label “relaxing” or “relaxation” with “recovery,” so you don’t see it as wasted time. Think of relaxing as recovery, because it truly is. Remember: If rest increases your output per unit of time, it’s productive. If you’re tired, learn to rest, not to quit.

I use the “Brain Recharger” shortcut almost every day. With customizable steps—like adding a timer or your favorite mindfulness audio—it’s easy to create a reset routine that fits your needs.

This tool will help you to get most of your work done outside of work.

Happy napping!

According to Wikipedia, adenosine gradually builds up in the brain throughout the day. Increased adenosine promotes one’s need to sleep—often referred to as Sleep Drive or Sleep Pressure. ↩
For more details, visit Huberman Lab’s website. ↩
To ensure the shortcut works offline, I pre-downloaded the NSDR scripts as mp3 files and stored them on iCloud Drive. ↩

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/how-i-use-shortcuts-to-recharge-my-brain

Shortcut Input Magic You’re Probably Missing

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

By default, Shortcuts proceeds if no input is provided—but did you know you can change this behavior?

Tap the “Continue” bubble, you will see the following three options:

Stop and Respond
- Immediately ends the shortcut and optionally shows a custom message. ¹
- Ideal for explicit error handling.
Ask For
- Prompts the user to enter or pick a value of the specific type.
- ⭐️ This is my favorite choice for shortcuts that require input. For example:
  1. Ask For “Text” in the “❝ Capture Quotes” shortcut
  2. Ask For “Date” in the “✏️ Create New Journal” shortcut
- If you prefer Continue, add an If Shortcut Input doesn’t have any value block at the start to deal with missing input. However, using Ask For removes this extra step—see the “Reverse Image Search” example.
Get Clipboard
- Uses the current clipboard content as input.
- Useful when users need to pre-copy text before running the shortcut.

By selecting the right input option, your shortcuts become intuitive, user-friendly, and able to manage edge cases more effectively.

Leave the “Response” field empty if you don’t want to display anything. ↩

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/shortcut-input-magic-youre-probably-missing

Live Each Day as if It Were Your Last

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one.” — Confucius

What if you could visualize, every day, how much of your life has already passed?

Death is scary. It’s uncomfortable to think about—so we tend to avoid it. But when we use death not as something to fear, but as a frame of reference, it becomes a powerful tool for clarity.

Ancient wisdom always teaches us life principles and philosophies. They stood the test of time for a reason. I like the Stoic “live as if today were your last” mindset and Memento Mori, a Latin phrase that translates to “remember that you must die.”

Death is the ultimate equalizer. Despite our differences in appearance, cultures, and beliefs, we are all going to die. Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

This universal truth inspired me to build a Death Clock. It calculates two metrics:

How old I am.
What percentage of my life is (probably) behind me.

Every morning, my Lock Screen greets me with these numbers, thanks to a Personal Automation.

I used to put off small joys in this moment, this pixel, this now—calling a loved one, taking a walk, savoring a meal—thinking there would always be more time later. But later often means never. It’s later than you think.

The Death Clock reminds me that every single second I’m dying. It internalizes the certainty of death, rewiring my brain to prioritize what I might regret on my deathbed. It’s not the number that is the most important, but seeing the number changing day after day that makes the difference.

“Almost everything…just fall[s] away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important…Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking: you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” — Steve Jobs ¹

Paradoxically, it’s only when death waits at the end of the road that the unique meaning of each person’s life can fully emerge. When you embrace the inescapability of death, you know you have nothing to lose and stop worrying what other people think about you. Life becomes less about proving yourself and more about giving away your gift to something greater than you. You view life as a service.

As Mitch Albom wrote in Tuesdays With Morrie:

The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

I believe that learning how to die means being prepared for it—knowing that it’s inevitably coming. Once you accept that death is not the opposite of life, but rather an essential part of it, you begin to notice and appreciate the little small things in your day, welcoming whatever comes your way.

So, live each day as if it were your last, because someday you’ll certainly be right. Every time you do something that is one less time you could do it. Cherish every moment of your life like it is your last, because it very likely might be. Every single thing you do today is something your ninety-year-old self will wish they could come back and do. The good old days are happening right now.

Make the rest of your life the best of your life. Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life. Don’t be a “Living Dead.” Never die before you are dead.

One day, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Make each day count.

Watch Steve Jobs’ legendary 2005 Stanford Commencement Address on death (and the full speech). Highly recommended. ↩

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/live-each-day-as-if-it-were-your-last

How I Use Shortcuts to Reflect on My Daily Screen Time

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” — Henry David Thoreau

Over the past 12 months, I’ve been training myself to become more conscious of my phone use.

After discovering the unofficial list of Apple’s Settings URL schemes, I created a collection of shortcuts to automate access to specific iPhone settings.

Each night—about an hour before bed—I use iOS’s Personal Automation to trigger one of these shortcuts. It sends me a scheduled, customized notification reminding me to review my screen time.¹

Every night at 20:00, I received a notification to check my daily screen time on the Lock Screen.

When I tap it, it opens directly to the Screen Time Summary ², where I can reflect on how I spent time with my phone that day:

Which apps or websites I used most
How often I picked up my phone
What times of day I was most active ³

A day of intense focus on building shortcuts left me feeling completely overwhelmed (but fulfilled 😊).

For the first time in my entire life, I kept my screen time under 1 hour! 🥳

That moment of awareness—seeing the actual numbers—has helped me wind down with more intention and adjust my habits accordingly.

Setting this up takes just a few minutes:

Download the following two shortcuts:
1. Check Daily Screen Time
2. Go to Screen Time Summary
Install the Scriptable app for the “Check Daily Screen Time” shortcut to work properly.
Open the Shortcuts app.
Go to the Automation tab at the bottom.
Create a new Personal Automation:
1. Tap the + button in the top-right corner.
2. Choose Time of Day (e.g. 9:00 PM).
3. Tap Next to proceed.
4. Add the “Run Shortcut” action.
5. Select the “Check Daily Screen Time” shortcut.

In this age of infinite information, almost everything is competing for your attention. It’s never been easier to slip into endless scrolling.

We must be more intentional with our phone use. That’s exactly what Shortcutomation is all about: helping people take back their time—the most valuable asset on the planet.

If you do the math, doomscrolling just one hour a day on your phone adds up to 22 full waking days a year—that’s 22 straight days spent staring at a screen, time you could reclaim for something more meaningful to build the life you want. ⁴

As Tony Robbins says: “Where focus goes, energy flows.” Every hour you spend scrolling social media, watching random videos, or switching between tasks drains your energy. But when you direct your attention to meaningful goals—whether it’s learning a skill, making progress on a project, or building relationships—your energy fuels real growth.

Your attention is the new oil. Use it wisely.

You become what you scroll. Choose accordingly.

This isn’t about cutting screen time overnight; it’s about noticing, recognizing patterns, and creating space to pause, think, and reflect.

Take just 30 seconds today to try this simple ritual:

Ask yourself: Did I use my phone today in a way that feels good to me?

Try installing the “Check Daily Screen Time” shortcut and start your journey toward mindful phone use.

You can also add a Screen Time widget to your Home Screen. The widget will display information from your Screen Time summary. However, I found it’s a distraction for me as it constantly reminds me of how much time I’m spending on my phone, which sometimes makes me feel stressed or guilty instead of motivated to improve. ↩
If you want to navigate manually to this page, go to Settings > Screen Time > See All App & Website Activities. ↩
You can also check a weekly summary and see which apps are sending you the most notifications. ↩
I assume 16 waking hours per day instead of 24 because I believe it’s a more accurate representation of day-to-day life. Hence the calculation: 365 days × 1 hour/day ÷ 16 waking hours per day ≈ 22 days. ↩

👉 Share this post: https://huam.ing/how-i-use-shortcuts-to-reflect-on-my-daily-screen-time