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Over the last couple of weeks, I was excited to see a certain rise in the popularity of new professional networks, meaning alternatives to LinkedIn. There are more than 830 million users on LinkedIn. This huge user base can lead to the fact to reach millions of people with the content you create on the platform, but on the other, there is also a potential for people who spam worthless and useless information. LinkedIn became a place of self-appointed „thought-leaders“ sharing content no one has ever asked for. Nowadays, people are not joining LinkedIn to make the professional connections they used to make on LinkedIn. Therefore, it is exciting to see new startups who are focusing on building the professional networks of our time.

Read.cv is one of those new professional networks. Read.cv is a dedicated show, don't tell professional platform, which means you can use it to show off the actual work you have done. While doing so, read.cv gives you the possibility to create a beautiful profile which you can share online, and at the same time, make meaningful connections with others. After setting up your account on read.cv, you can create your profile by adding your contact information, education, work experience, side-projects, awards, and a lot more. Read.cv will provide you with dedicated sections on your profile to add whatever work you have created. Besides that, you follow other people on read.cv, and via the Explore page, you can see what other people have created as they are sharing their work too.

If you are done with LinkedIn and looking for a new professional network where people only share their work and no spammy content, make sure to sign up to read.cv, you will not regret it. Other professional networks which are also getting more popular are Polywork and peerlist, which is one of the newest ones that recently popped up on my timeline. In general, there are great alternatives to LinkedIn, alternatives which actually let you make meaningful connections with other people and share the work you are proud of. The power of professional networks like read.cv, Polywork, or peerlist, is the fact that they are building additional features which give you the possibility to leverage the network you are creating on the platform.

Check out these new professional networks.

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Apps, Software, Tools

GoJournal →

Journaling has been one of the best habits I have incorporated into my daily life. I am getting incredible value from noting down my thoughts, ideas, and things I want to keep track of every single day. While most PKM tools nowadays give you the ability to create daily notes, there are also dedicated journaling apps, like GoJournal.

GoJournal is a modern journaling companion app, with a straight focus to keep things simple, so you can easily build up a daily journaling habit without any hassle. With GoJournal, you can create a private space to capture the important bits of your life. To structure everything you want to keep track of in GoJournal, you can create dedicated journals. For example, you can create a journal only for notes, project ideas, or quick bits, if you want to keep them separated from your diary, or your actual journal. On top of that, you can use GoJournal also to keep track of your tasks. GoJournal turns into your journal, so you have the choice of what to write and what to keep track of. To leverage all the content you write within GoJournal, the app gives you the possibility to go back in time and keep track of all your milestones. GoJournal lets you fill up your calendar with milestones, activities, or your daily musings. Besides that, you can also go back in time to get an overview of all the media you have kept along the way.

A lot of people who want to start a daily journaling habit are struggling because they do not know what to write about. GoJournal has a solution for that and it is called prompts. Whenever you have the feeling of experiencing writer's block, GoJournal gives you a possibility to get a head start with curated prompts, journal templates, and thoughtful quotes. This is exactly where GoJournal is different compared to daily notes within PKM tools. GoJournal is also the right tool for you if you are not interested in learning a PKM tool as a lot of those tools usually involve some sort of learning curve. GoJournal is a simple and lightweight journaling app to have a dedicated place for your ideas, reflection, and more. The interface of GoJournal is beautiful and clear. I am biased because I am a Product Designer, but I love to use apps and tools which have a beautiful interface and represent love for detail.

Currently, GoJournal is available for iOS and iPad and it will cost you $4.99.

Range →

Range is a dedicated tool to boost your teamwork at your company and embrace fewer meetings. Over the last couple of months, I wrote about a lot of apps empowering remote, hybrid, and async teams, and I am excited to write about even more apps in the future because remote work is here to stay and grow even bigger. With Range you get a dedicated place for remote and hybrid teams to check in with others, both async and real-time.

One of the most important aspects of remote work culture, is to keep your team connected. Range follows an integrated approach for connecting your work and your team. First of all, you can run virtual standups and async check-ins with Range, which means users can share status updates without disrupting the flow of work. Check-ins give you the possibility to know what's happening within your team. This helps you building team culture and pull work together which is usually spread across your tools. Check-ins also empower async communication. Within Range you can customise your schedule and prompts, link your tools together, and share your check-in in Range, Slack, or MS Teams. Additionally, Range lets you run great team meetings, in which you can share notes, actions, and keep everyone in the loop.

Besides that, Range gives you the possibility to keep track of your company's goals and share updates about them as part of your team's check-ins. The power of written updates is the fact, that your whole team can see what is happening whenever they start their day. People are done with packing their days with meetings since most of them could have been an email or some messages. As people are experiencing Zoom fatigue, it became hard to stay focused during loads of meetings and actually filter the important bits to keep track of. Written updates are retrievable whenever someone of your team needs to check-in again. Range is purpose-built for distributed teams. Since work is not only about work. Range lets everyone feel valued and engaged.

With the power of integrations, you can turn Range into an even more powerful tool. Deep integrations give your team updates only on what is essential. With the power of integrations you can easily add about anything to your check-ins. Tasks you have completed, documents you have written, events you have set up, or designs you have created, add anything to your check-ins to let your team know what is happenings.

You can use Range for free for up to 12 users which is great for small teams who want to get started with check-ins. The free plan gives you access to check-ins, mood sharing and culture-building questions, unlimited integrations, Slack bot, and up to 2 teams. The Standard Plan will cost you $8 per team member and gives you access to (everything in the free plan) team directory, unlimited meetings and goals, unlimited check-in and search history, unlimited teams, and annual discounts.

Design Maestro →

During my day-to-day work, I am using different tools which give me access to powerful workflows to get my work and tasks done. While I am working across different tools, I became a huge fan of shortcuts and automations. One of the most powerful automation software for macOS is Keyboard Maestro. It gives you the power to automate applications or web sites, text or images, simple or complex, on command or scheduled. Design Maestro is a dedicated extension for Keyboard Maestro.

As a designer, there will be certain kind of tasks you are repeating hundreds of times every single day. With Design Maestro there is no longer the need to repeat yourself. Repetitive tasks during your design process including navigating, typing, searching, and copying. Most of these tasks do not take that much time, but if you repeat them over and over again during your working hours they take up a serious bit of your day. With Design Maestro you have direct access to powerful macros with one shortcut, CMD+Shift+D, but you can also directly assign keyboard shortcuts to dedicated actions to trigger them immediately. Design Maestro was built for designers by designers. After analysing a designers day-to-day tasks, the team behind Design Maestro came up with macros that let you skip repetitive tasks.

Design Maestro gives you access to those powerful macros, especially created for busy designers. Macros are quick actions that you can run with Design Maestro. To run such a macro you either choose it from the list while Design Maestro is opened or you assign a dedicated shortcut so you can trigger it immediately. Design Maestro delivers macros for a Lorem Ipsum Generator, Remove Background from Images, Color Picker, Pick Brand Color, New Figma Project, Open Webflow Dashboard, Search in Google, Translate with Deepl, and a lot more. The setup of Design Maestro is super simple. You can set up everything yourself by following Design Maestro's simple onboarding experience. You do not have to worry if you get lost at some point, as Design Maestro has also prepared tutorials to guide you step by step.

While using Design Maestro you can always be sure that everything is secure and fast. The Design Maestro extension weighs less than 1 MB which ensure that it always works really fast. On top of that, while using Design Maestro all your data is kept in your local storage, so you can be sure it stays safe. Design Maestro is a free extension for Keyboard Maestro. So, if you want to use Design Maestro you first need to buy Keyboard Maestro which will cost you $36, but with the code DESIGNMAESTRO you will get 20% off your purchase.

Depix →

Depix is a powerful, AI-powered online image editing platform. High-quality image editing has been restricted to people who understood how Photoshop or Lightroom works for the longest time. But over the last couple of years, there has been loads of tools that revolutionised the way image editing works, and gave everyone the possibility to create stunning images.

With Depix, everyone has the power to remove backgrounds, create, and edit images. Since it is an online platform, all you have to do is upload your images, cut and paste, adjust lighting and shadows, and you are done. Depix is powerd by AI, which means its features are ever-evolving. The background removal works as precise as you probably have not yet experienced it. The bespoke AI does the work for you. Depix uses neural networks to deliver you the best results. You are in control, you choose what you want to keep. After uploading an image, you click on what you want, the rest is gone, Depix is calling it Selective Background Removal. On top of that, Depix delivers a new way to interact with images. It features a two canvas approach, which means on one side you see your visual source, on the other side you can see your new image composition. This gives you the possibility to compose multiple objects and let your creativity flow.

Another incredible feature of Depix is called layerless editing which is an incredible intuitive and easy way to edit your images without the frustration of complicated editing modes or layers. Layerless editing is a new way for objects and backgrounds to interact. To make your images shine, Depix makes it easy to create intuitive directional light and shadows to create realistic surface interaction. By giving people access to such a powerful platform and tool, Depix creates endless possibilities, no matter in which area you are working. Depix is an incredible tool for shop owners, resellers, content creators, or creatives just like you. It is a fast and simple way to create a new image by combining elements from many images. Depix is an online platform to let your ideas flow.

Currently, Depix is still in beta. During that beta period, Depix is free-to-use. So, sign up for early access now.

Mental Wealth

➢ Mental Minimalism – Stop Thinking. Start Doing. – “There is one overwhelming problem that we keep coming back to. It has made me question myself to infinity just to realize that questioning is the problem in itself. The problem of problems is solved by not giving life to the problem. The problem I am speaking of is thinking. Chatter in the skull. Per the main teachings of spiritualists and philosophers — we must learn to silence the mind. “Silencing the mind” may seem impractical. Like it will take away from our material progress in this world. I disagree.”

➢ How to Deal With the Unexpected – “In life, the winds of circumstances blow on us all in an unending flow that touches each of our lives. It’s one thing to create change. It’s another thing—often unavoidable—to have change foisted upon you when you don’t expect it. We all experienced the blowing winds of change. Yet some of us still manage to reach our intended destinations. What guides us to different shores is determined by the way we have chosen to set our sails. The way that each of us thinks makes the major difference in where each of us arrives.”

➢ Habits change your life. Here’s how to change your habits. – “So you want to make a change in your everyday life — say, exercise more, meet all your deadlines, or develop a new skill. You make a plan, conjure your willpower, and commit. Yet, like the vast majority of people, you eventually fail. What happened? Perhaps getting to the gym was more of a hassle than you realized, or you found yourself too tired at night to study that new programming language.”

➢ The Mind Scribble: Solving the Blank Page Problem – “My wife was an arts teacher for 8 years. During this time, she taught thousands of students across all ages: from hyper kindergarteners all the way to serene grandparents. While her student demographic shifted quite a bit, she noticed that the biggest creative roadblock they faced was a common one. This roadblock could care less about how old you are, how experienced you may be, or how many times you’ve faced it before. It will reveal itself at the start of any endeavor, and you’ll have no choice but to confront it throughout your life. That roadblock is the daunting blank page.”

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Appendix

➢ ICYMI

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➢ Quick Bits

Twitter thoughts

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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