What's In Your Dock, Saron?

Saron: Hi. My name is Saron. I am the founder of disco and the creator of not a designer, and this is what's in my dock. Firstly, my devices. I use the MacBook Pro as my primary computing device.

I also have my trusty iPhone, which is my phone. It has a lovely crack on it, which happened the day before New Year's, which honestly I think makes it look kind of pretty, and gives it some character, so I think I'm okay with it. And then lastly, I have my smartwatch, which actually isn't too smart. I was very opposed to having an Apple Watch. I tried it for a week, didn't really like it.

I hate getting notifications on it. This is purely for health and fitness. It counts my steps, It tells me the time. It tells me the weather, and that's all I need from a watch. And it has, it's performed beautifully.

My day to day as a founder involves a lot of writing and a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of planning, so I am in the Google Apps ecosystem all the time. I'm constantly writing emails or I'm busting out a spreadsheet to calculate something financial, something budget related, or to make, you know, let yet another contact list for another project I'm launching, or I'm in Google Docs and I'm writing my latest, newsletter issue for not a designer, my newsletter that I drop, or I'm in slides. I actually use slides quite a bit, Google slides. I use that for meeting agendas. I used to do agendas in Google Docs, but what I found is when you have this nice long agenda, you end up skipping ahead and kind of reading the whole thing while someone else is talking.

So instead, now I use Google Slides, and now I can just focus one agenda item per slide and just have people focus on that one thing, and I found that it makes for much better meetings. So a couple other tools I recommend for newsletter writing is Beehive. I absolutely love Beehive. It's relatively new. It's only a couple years old, but I think they do such a phenomenal job.

The focus of the user interface really is on the writing, so you get to really focus on getting your ideas on paper, getting really good content. I use it for my newsletter, not a designer, which is all about design tips for developers, and it does such a good job of giving you enough flexibility that you can kind of make it your own. It has some, you know, colors and some branding guidelines and things like that, but it's also relatively standardized, so you don't feel like you're overwhelmed with all these new design decisions you have to make. It comes with some segmentation. It comes with a survey.

It has referrals. You can actually do, like, swag and do giveaways for referrals. So it's just a really fully featured, platform that does a really good job for newsletters. So if you're starting a newsletter, you can start one for free. I highly recommend Beehive.

It's a really great piece of software. Another piece of software that I really like that I've been using, a lot recently is actually Typeform. It feels kind of old because it's not new. I feel like Typeform has been around for quite some time, but I was doing this application for my new initiative, Big Cash Money 2024, which is all about, income streams, different income streams for people who are looking to maximize revenue. And I was creating this application and trying out all these different tools, and typeform is like still the best one.

It makes it so easy to break down the the questions one at a time. Their logic and their flow is really beautiful and really intuitive to use, and I feel like they took just as much care of the admin, the person actually administering the form, as they did the people taking the form, and it's just a delight to use. It has all these really great stats. It's a little pricey, so you gotta kinda gotta watch out for that, but besides that, it's just a really great tool, and I've just been really enjoying still using Typeform all these years later. And the 3rd piece of software is this new tool that I recently came across called Passionfruit, and it is essentially like a storefront, but for sponsorships for ads for creators.

So for example, if I have a newsletter, like Not A Designer, and I want to sell an ad, I would have a storefront, and listed as a product is one of the ad spots available on my newsletter for that week. And I've actually used it not really as a creator, but I've used it as a sponsor. And it has made things just so much faster. It's so easy to just look at someone's storefront, look at their stats, see how much it costs, see when it's available, take care of payment all in one go, get your sponsorship accepted, get it reviewed. I've done sponsorships for many, many years for my first business, CodeNewbie, and I've started to do it for not a designer.

And it has always been kind of a pain in the butt. It's been like a lot of back and forth, and this just makes the whole process so much I hope the creators you go for are on Passionfruit because it'll save you a lot of time. I don't know what's gone into me lately, but I've been really into country music, but very specific songs. So there are 4 specific country music songs that I've been really into. They're by Walker Hayes, Morgan Wallen, and Jordan Davis.

And I just have those songs on repeat, and I've had them on repeat for the past maybe 2 or 3 weeks. Like, that's pretty much all I've been listening to, which is very strange because I'm usually not intercountry music, and I only got introduced to it, like, last year. But something about it just feels so great and comforting to work through and to to have in the background, and it's just been, like, feeding my soul. So that's been my big music go to recently. I really love my podcast mic.

It's actually this mic right here. It's the Shure MV 7. And I love it because it is a USB mic that I feel like all the podcasters really got hip to over the last couple of years. I I feel like I see it on all the YouTube channels and all the the video podcasts that I've been looking at, that I've been watching. But it's just a really great mic.

It's it's easy to use. It's it's I don't need, like, a mixer for it. I can just plug the tray into my laptop, and it's just a a really great convenient relatively affordable. I think it was, like, 200, 250, which is not too bad considering how expensive mics can get. So, yeah.

That's been one of my favorite piece of hardware that, that I've been using. To be honest, I'm not very big on hobbies, but I have been doing weightlifting for almost a year. I think it's been about like 9, 10 months so far. And one of my favorite things that I've been using for weightlifting is actually this, like, grip hook thing. So, basically, you put it around your wrist, and you tighten it like this.

And then you use this to lift the the bar. And it has been so helpful because I get a lot of wrist pain when I'm lifting, and this helps me kinda keep my wrist in place and keeps it just straight on, and it's helped me lift way more than I was able to lift before. So hugely love. I think they're called like power grip hooks or something, but they have been, really really helpful in that hobby. One thing that I do analog is my to do list.

I don't use apps, I don't use software for it. I got my trusty little notebook, and I have this amazing, really cheap, classic, multicolored pen. There's 4 colors. I think think this is like a couple bucks, but I love this tool so much because I love using color coding to manage my to do items. I have blue as my primary task.

I have black if it's like super serious. I've got green for, move it on to the next day. I use red if it's something that needs attention. And this gives me all the 4 colors I need. It's really cheap.

It writes really smoothly. So, yeah, I do my to do list completely analog, and I use this trusty pen to help me get it done. And finally, something for my workspace. This is my absolute favorite thing that I have and that I own as far as work is concerned, and it's barely even work related. It's actually more for stress relief and anxiety, but this is my comfort wrap.

So this is an electric blanket that you wrap around your shoulders, and it turns on. And it even has a little space here where you can put a little, aromatic, a little aromatherapy moment for you here. So you can like spray aroma essential oils and put in this little pocket, but I absolutely love this tool. I am a big fan of making work as enjoyable as possible. So when it's a little bit chilly at night especially, I'll put on my comfort wrap.

I've got my hot tea going. I've got my little country music. I'm setting the scene, and I am super productive, super relaxed, having a great time. And that's how I get my work done. I got my hardware.

I got my software. I got my physical tools and my comfort wrap. And if you wanna learn more about me or my work, check me out on Twitter at saronyitbarek, s aronyitbarek. Thanks.