App creator Andrew Dumont, talking about his daily schedule that he shifted two hours earlier:
You’re probably thinking, “I’m not a morning person.” Well, I wasn’t either. But I trained myself to become one. As is true with anything, you get used to it. The first two weeks are the hardest. After that, it’s smooth sailing.
I’m not a New Years resolution kind of guy, but there’s something about an earlier schedule that I’m finding increasingly appealing long before I read Andrew’s post. As I head back to work I’m moving everything a good hour earlier. Hopefully results are positive.
Venture capitalist Tom Tunguz, discussing the ratio of meetings you asked for vs. meetings asked of you:
What is your ratio? And what should it be? Presuming meetings I request are more productive than meetings I’m invited to (because I’m driving the agenda and accomplishing my goals), if I could shift that ratio by just one minute to 7 to 3, I would improve my productivity by 17%.
Ever have a conference call with a coworker living far away? Planning a trip to get a sense of jet lag? That requires time zone math. There’s a million native app solutions (e.g. Apple’s dashboard clocks) but I’ve disappointed with what’s offered on the web, until I stumbled on Every Time Zone. It’s a simple one page design with a slider to quickly calculate the time zone around the world.
I’m pretty hooked on a workflow of plain text lists synced with Dropbox. That said, Clear for iPhone is pretty slick and now that they actually will be introducing syncing via the Mac…it looks a bit tempting. Available next week on the Mac App Store.
I use Due – a simple reminder app – virtually every day on both my iPhone and Mac. There’s a lot of reminder options on iOS, but I haven’t found anything that comes close to the fluidity and speed of Due’s UI. The syncing also works slick between iPhone, iPad and Mac clients (via Dropbox or iCloud, your choice.)
The app rarely goes on sale, but they dropped the price this week from $5 to $3. If you’re in the market it’s well worth your time.
Blockr is a new Chrome extension that blocks you from the internet until you’ve reached some writing or coding goal. A bit draconian perhaps, but for easily distracted workers, this may be worth investing time into.
I’ve lately been giving the cross platform to-do list app Cheddar a run through it’s paces. Bottom line, it’s a well built app, one I’ll write more about in the future.
For now though, if you use keyboard launcher Alfred, there’s a new Cheddar extension developed by Chris Vaughn. It’s simple but solid and should make entering new list items much faster in my workflow.
When I first heard about this listening to an episode of The Industry podcast my first reaction was “wait, another to-do list app?”. This one looks pretty cool though: full syncing on iPhone, iPad and web with a streamlined interface and it apparently will be free.
It’s not out yet but I’m keeping my eye on this one once it reaches the App Store.
An interesting paradox became apparent months ago at the office: As I got better organized and more focused on my projects, breaks between the action became increasingly messy and unsatisfying. While I’ve always liked to stay abreast of the latest news from RSS and Twitter, given the sheer volume of content available combined with little free time during the work day, it’s rare I ended up digesting anything of substance.
Yet, more recently, I had a revelation: Given the distractions and tribulations of the modern workplace, why bother with the rush? I now file everything away in a simple yet organized manner, going back to the content later in the day when I have time to process it at a more relaxed pace. It’s led to less stress in the office and I’m able to better enjoy the various articles, videos and other assorted content I find.
Below, the details on my workflow that I’ve broken down into two sections, gathering and processing.
For anyone looking for a way to manage their time better and stay focused in the office, all it can take are a few simple rules, a timer and 25 minutes. That’s the idea behind The Pomodoro Technique, a dead simple concept that’s made a noticeable change for the better in my day to day workflow.
Distractions and productivity manifestos
Like many, my normal “plugged in” work environment is filled with distraction; Emails, instant messenger and questions from coworkers often compete with my attention on the task at hand. To stay focused I’ve tried many different productivity techniques with little success. Getting Things Done, one of the most popular productivity techniques among tech circles, never really clicked; the startup work and the perceived day to day complexity were a stumbling block. I struggled with how to fully organize my projects list, and clearing off my inbox of actionable items was a chore that took longer than I wanted.