The most useful shell trick I've used to date is mapping the 'cd' command to 'zoxide', which is a more powerful version of cd that remembers folders you've been to.

I go a step further. When I press Alt + j, it sends all the directories in zoxide to fzf (in order of frequency), and I quickly choose the directory and jump to it.

I rarely type "cd" anymore. A huge quality of life improvement!

You don't need to use fzf. Zoxide has an interactive function too.

yes! zoxide is also probably my most used tool. I did not map it to cd yet, but I use the z command to jump into directories indexed by zoxide.

Is it much more powerful, than pushd?

Yes, because you don't have to pop in order. "zoxide " is "search the history of working directories for a path ending in and cd to that".