If you use bash (or zsh, and maybe others), hit ^L (control-L) to clear the screen. From the bash(1) manual:

clear-screen (C-l) Clear the screen leaving the current line at the top of the screen. With an argument, refresh the current line without clearing the screen.

I must hit ctrl-l a thousand times a day, learned it before I knew of clear.

If one of your top commands is `cd ../..` you may like my alias/function `..`

    $ .. 2 # go back 2 directories, i.e. 'cd ../..'
    $ .. # 'cd ..'

https://github.com/Aperocky/unix-setup/blob/master/.bashrc#L...

Going to my home dir is another frequent operation for me so I also have

  alias ~='pushd ~'

(Those are tildes but may look like dashes depending on your font and size...)

Not as fancy as some other aliases I see here but does the (basic) trick.

A raw "cd" with no arguments will take you back to your home-directory. Of course "~" is one less character to type, but on the off-chance you didn't know.

As we're offering alternatives. Either `shopt autocd` in bash or `setopt auto_cd` in zsh, then ~ changes to home by simply being a path.

I use '..' for '$ cd ..' and '...' for '$ cd ../..'.

I like '$ .. 5' because after the number goes up the dots become very hard to count.

Great idea, thanks!

I clear the screen a lot, but I use Cmd+K to clear the whole Terminal.app screen or Cmd+L to clear the last command (and its output) on Mac, rather than using the `clear` command. I use Bash, not sure if it works on other terminal emulators.