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What is it that holds you back from being efficient and intentional with your time? What obstacles do you face to doing focused, deep work?
Previously, I shared about the three “waves” of productivity: Efficiency, Intentionality, and Meaning.
Now, let’s dive in and find out what it is that threatens these three areas of productive. In short, what is it that threatens your time, attention, and focus…?
It’s obvious, but it’s also true. Your efficiency is threatened by inefficiency.
The first wave of productivity focused on improving efficiency through the implementation of productivity workflows, systems, and tools.
You don’t have to go full-on GTD, nor do you have to start using expensive and complicated software. I get by just fine using a physical paper notebook to manage 90% of my task and time management needs.
The tools and systems you use in and of themselves are not what’s important. But if you have an inefficient system — or perhaps even no system at all — then you won’t be able to reap the benefits and freedom that come with efficiently managing your day to day life. Instead, you’ll be spending a significant amount of your time just juggling and wrangling things that you could easily be managing well.
Without protecting the margin in your day, then the free time you create will be swallowed up by other demands and responsibilities on your schedule. This most commonly occurs by giving in to the tyranny of the urgent.
Boundaries are important. You must be able to say no to the non-essential demands on your time and attention, and you must maintain margin and breathing room within your schedule so emergencies don’t arise every time there is a little unexpected thing that pops into your day.
Many people do not have clarity about what it means to be productive and valuable in their work. From a high-level, they cannot define what important, deep work is. And from a granular level, they lack the clarity to know what their next steps are and what they should aim to do on a regular basis.
As a result, that lack of clarity leads to unfocused busy work such as checking email, social media, news, etc. And this is super-bad-news because many people substitute busyness as a proxy for productivity.
As I mentioned last week, clarity cures busywork.
But clarity alone is not enough. You also need the skill to focus and do the work, rather than procrastinate and give in to distractions.
If you’re struggling to find clarity about your focused, deep work, you’re not alone. Ditto if you’re a master procrastinator.
(Side Note: I put together all my book notes from Deep Work and also combined those notes with all the key takeaways and highlights from my interview with Cal Newport. You can download the in-depth notes here.
Up next in this series, we’ll be hitting on the most common pitfalls to productivity and how your time and attention are crucial in protecting your margin.
The pitfalls differ from the above threats in that the former are habits and mindsets you have that you may not even know about. They’re things that are found in your own individual productivity systems as well as within the teams you work with, and even within your whole company.
If your to-do list overfloweth and you have multiple areas of life to manage, it’s time to get a system that actually works.
Get complete access to all the frameworks, training, coaching, and tools you need to organize your daily tasks, overcome distractions, and stay focused on the things that count (starting today).
Step 1: Refresh → Audit and streamline your current tools and systems and get clear on what’s working for and against you.
Step 2: Upgrade → Build a productivity system that plays to your strengths (even if you find “systems” annoying).
Step 3: Nurture → Make your system stick. Create a flywheel that keeps you focused on what matters most day after day.
Get all this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator membership.
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and masterclasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
Productivity training has matured significantly over the past 15 years.
We began with an emphasis on efficiency. Then, we began to ask the question about how to use that efficiency to free up time in our day. Now we are realizing that using that extra time to do meaningful work is a skill in and of itself.
In short, third-wave productivity has nothing to do with artisanal to-do list apps.
A little while back, I had the honor of interviewing Cal Newport about his book, Deep Work. While there is a lot in our conversation that I’d love to get into, it will have to wait for another time. Today, I wanted to pull out one segment where Cal and I talked about the Three Waves of Productivity.
Side Note: I put together all my book notes from Deep Work and also combined those notes with all the key takeaways and highlights from my interview with Cal Newport. You can download the in-depth notes here.
There are two very distinct periods to my year: tax season and not-tax season. The not-tax-season season continues to get more busy, but there’s still quite a drop off from the prior high-stress period of the year. With each passing deadline between April 30th, June 15th, and June 30th, the demands of the season progressively subside.
Like most people, I tend to revisit my systems during the less stressful periods of the year. Creativity returns over the summer, system failures are addressed, and new habits are adopted. Coincidentally, nearly all my annual app subscriptions renew between August and October of each year.
On the other hand, the veil of less intensity hangs over the non-tax-season season. This often tricks me into thinking I can do more during my busy seasons than I actually can.
Sunsama and Obsidian were perfect examples of this.
When it comes to productivity and focus, I have a secret weapon — a book that I never see anyone talking about.
Now, I know not everyone is a nerd about planning, scheduling, and setting goals, but there is a book by J.D. Meier that’s just fantastic.
It’s called Getting Results the Agile Way. (It’s free on KindleUnlimited, but since it’s more of a workbook I recommend getting the paperback.)
This book is jam-packed with ideas and practical systems for helping you manage your time and priorities. I first went through this book nearly five years ago, and it had a significant impact on the time management system I use today and on which I based The Focus Course.
I love me some Obsidian, but one of Obsidian’s weak spots has always been it’s Shortcuts support (or lack thereof).
That’s where Actions for Obsidian comes in.
Actions for Obsidian serves as the bridge between Obsidian and Shortcuts on the Mac, resulting in almost native support for Shortcuts actions that allow you to do some pretty neat things with the text you send to Obsidian.
To call Actions for Obsidian an app is a bit of a stretch. It’s a macOS utility that serves as a graphic interface for adding over 30 additional actions to Shortcuts that Obsidian doesn’t support out of the box. It also includes a tutorial for setting up Obsidian to take advantage of them, and gives you a link to an Actions & Workflow Library where you can download some pre-made example Shortcuts workflows to download and use instantly.
When you first launch the “app” you get a window with three options: 1) link your Obsidian vault, 2) open the Shortcuts app to use the actions, and 3) visit the Actions & Workflow Library to download pre-made workflows.
If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.
Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.
A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.
Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Productivity training has matured significantly over the past 15 years.
We began with an emphasis on efficiency. Then, we began to ask the question about how to use that efficiency to free up time in our day. Now we are realizing that using that extra time to do meaningful work is a skill in and of itself.
In short, third-wave productivity has nothing to do with artisanal to-do list apps.
A little while back, I had the honor of interviewing Cal Newport about his book, Deep Work. While there is a lot in our conversation that I’d love to get into, it will have to wait for another time. Today, I wanted to pull out one segment where Cal and I talked about the Three Waves of Productivity.
Side Note: I put together all my book notes from Deep Work and also combined those notes with all the key takeaways and highlights from my interview with Cal Newport. You can download the in-depth notes here.
This first wave focused heavily on systems, methodologies, and tools. It touted efficiency as the ultimate form of productivity, stating that you need to capture and organize all your tasks and projects and other areas of responsibility. To do this you need smarter lists and more powerful tools.
(Note that there are many ways to be efficient with your time and your tasks beyond a specific or complex methodology. I for one am a huge fan of the Ivy Lee method.)
This second wave built on the first. Saying that organizing your tasks is not the height of productivity. Rather, it’s about making room to do the real work. This second wave was more of a mindset shift than a skill.
In other words, it was the realization that when you are efficient with all the incoming stuff and your ideas and time, then you are able to create space in your day to do the important work. (Note that another way to create space in your day is to say ‘no’ to certain incoming things and create some margin for yourself.)
This intentionality of choosing to do meaningful work exposed a truth that to merely free up your time isn’t enough.
Once people had time available to do the “real work,” they often didn’t even know what it was — nor did they have the skills needed to take advantage of that time.
Doing the real work is, in itself, a craft that takes time and practice, and this is what the third wave is all about…
Wave three is about defining what to do in the time that you’re fighting to clear out and taking advantage of that “real work” time.
We have had to reengage with what it means to concentrate and do focused, meaningful work. We are now giving our attention to what it means to do deep work.
These three waves serve one another. You need all three to get the true benefits, and it’s not until you get to the third wave that you start to see all the benefits.
It is in the third wave where you start to produce more valuable work and you find your work more meaningful.
However, the challenge here is that many people do not have clarity about what it means to be productive and valuable. They cannot define what important, deep work is. As a result, that lack of clarity leads to unfocused busy work such as checking email, social media, news, etc.
In his book, Deep Work, Cal warns against using busyness as a proxy for productivity:
In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.
Clarity about what matters also gives clarity about what does not. Clarity is vital if you want to do deep work on a regular basis over the long run.
Next, we’ll talk about the most common issues that will threaten your efficiency, intentionality, and deep work. We’ll also get into the most common pitfalls to productivity.
In the meantime, I’ve put together all my book notes from Deep Work and combined it with all the key takeaways and highlights from my interview with Cal Newport. You can download the in-depth notes here.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
When it comes to productivity and focus, I have a secret weapon — a book that I never see anyone talking about.
Now, I know not everyone is a nerd about planning, scheduling, and setting goals, but there is a book by J.D. Meier that’s just fantastic.
It’s called Getting Results the Agile Way. (It’s free on KindleUnlimited, but since it’s more of a workbook I recommend getting the paperback.)
This book is jam-packed with ideas and practical systems for helping you manage your time and priorities. I first went through this book nearly five years ago, and it had a significant impact on the time management system I use today and on which I based The Focus Course.
I love me some Obsidian, but one of Obsidian’s weak spots has always been it’s Shortcuts support (or lack thereof).
That’s where Actions for Obsidian comes in.
Actions for Obsidian serves as the bridge between Obsidian and Shortcuts on the Mac, resulting in almost native support for Shortcuts actions that allow you to do some pretty neat things with the text you send to Obsidian.
To call Actions for Obsidian an app is a bit of a stretch. It’s a macOS utility that serves as a graphic interface for adding over 30 additional actions to Shortcuts that Obsidian doesn’t support out of the box. It also includes a tutorial for setting up Obsidian to take advantage of them, and gives you a link to an Actions & Workflow Library where you can download some pre-made example Shortcuts workflows to download and use instantly.
When you first launch the “app” you get a window with three options: 1) link your Obsidian vault, 2) open the Shortcuts app to use the actions, and 3) visit the Actions & Workflow Library to download pre-made workflows.
If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.
Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.
A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.
Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.
👋🏼 Hi, I’m Mike Schmitz, and I’m an independent creator.
Like Josh, Matt, and Jeff did previously, today I’m going to share a handful of my favorite productivity apps that are essential for how I work.
We’ve heard from Matt and Josh on which apps they consider irreplaceable for their workflows and productivity, and now it’s my turn to pull back the curtain. These days, a lot of my work happens on a work MacBook Pro that is fairly locked down. The IT-managed operating system presents some challenges when it comes to finding a good productivity balance, and these apps meet my needs on my work device and personal devices too.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
I love me some Obsidian, but one of Obsidian’s weak spots has always been it’s Shortcuts support (or lack thereof).
That’s where Actions for Obsidian comes in.
Actions for Obsidian serves as the bridge between Obsidian and Shortcuts on the Mac, resulting in almost native support for Shortcuts actions that allow you to do some pretty neat things with the text you send to Obsidian.
To call Actions for Obsidian an app is a bit of a stretch. It’s a macOS utility that serves as a graphic interface for adding over 30 additional actions to Shortcuts that Obsidian doesn’t support out of the box. It also includes a tutorial for setting up Obsidian to take advantage of them, and gives you a link to an Actions & Workflow Library where you can download some pre-made example Shortcuts workflows to download and use instantly.
When you first launch the “app” you get a window with three options: 1) link your Obsidian vault, 2) open the Shortcuts app to use the actions, and 3) visit the Actions & Workflow Library to download pre-made workflows.
If you’ve been around here at all, it’s no surprise to you that I am excited about Notion’s newest update to the button feature. As soon as it came out, I was already trying to figure out how to create Notion buttons to help automate my workflow and the workflow of my teammates.
Previously, Notion’s button feature was, well, pretty lame. I didn’t even bother using them. They weren’t worth the effort. But now with their latest update, you can add new tasks to your task database, change properties on different pages, create an actually helpful quick capture feature and more with just the click of a button.
A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.
Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.
👋🏼 Hi, I’m Mike Schmitz, and I’m an independent creator.
Like Josh, Matt, and Jeff did previously, today I’m going to share a handful of my favorite productivity apps that are essential for how I work.
We’ve heard from Matt and Josh on which apps they consider irreplaceable for their workflows and productivity, and now it’s my turn to pull back the curtain. These days, a lot of my work happens on a work MacBook Pro that is fairly locked down. The IT-managed operating system presents some challenges when it comes to finding a good productivity balance, and these apps meet my needs on my work device and personal devices too.
Apple has all sorts of widgets for the iPhone. They each seem to have evolved on top of one another, making them difficult to keep track of.
Today View widgets are accessed by swiping to the right on an unlocked Lock Screen or the Home Screen, providing some quicker access to your favorite widgets. Today View widgets range in size from small to large, with there even being a special extra-large Apple News widget only available in the Today View.
Home Screen widgets live alongside your installed apps. They update occasionally with live information. They can launch directly into a specific view in the app, or they can trigger shortcuts that string together apps right across iOS. Ranging in size from small to large, Home Screen widgets really bring out the best elements of customization on iOS.
Dynamic Island houses widgets in a sense as well. On iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, the camera housing morphs into an interactive pop-up window, enabling you to control apps right from the pop-up, launch into the app from the pop-up, and keep an eye on your Live Activities.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
A couple of months ago, we were in a Blanc Media staff meeting and we were talking about one of our resources, an e-book called Procrastinator’s Guide to Progress. And I asked, “Do we have a central place to easily find all of our resources with source files and links?” Well, the answer was…. “um, I don’t think so”. So then I had the idea to track down all of our resources, PDFs, slide decks etc. and drop them into one place. So our Master Resource Database in Notion was born.
Just for a little bit of context, The Sweet Setup and The Focus Course have been around for a minute. Shawn has created dozens of PDFs, courses, and e-books and hosted even more webinars and workshops. We have A LOT of content floating around in the ether. So I wanted to create a place where we could easily access and share it without digging around our site for 20 minutes.
👋🏼 Hi, I’m Mike Schmitz, and I’m an independent creator.
Like Josh, Matt, and Jeff did previously, today I’m going to share a handful of my favorite productivity apps that are essential for how I work.
We’ve heard from Matt and Josh on which apps they consider irreplaceable for their workflows and productivity, and now it’s my turn to pull back the curtain. These days, a lot of my work happens on a work MacBook Pro that is fairly locked down. The IT-managed operating system presents some challenges when it comes to finding a good productivity balance, and these apps meet my needs on my work device and personal devices too.
Apple has all sorts of widgets for the iPhone. They each seem to have evolved on top of one another, making them difficult to keep track of.
Today View widgets are accessed by swiping to the right on an unlocked Lock Screen or the Home Screen, providing some quicker access to your favorite widgets. Today View widgets range in size from small to large, with there even being a special extra-large Apple News widget only available in the Today View.
Home Screen widgets live alongside your installed apps. They update occasionally with live information. They can launch directly into a specific view in the app, or they can trigger shortcuts that string together apps right across iOS. Ranging in size from small to large, Home Screen widgets really bring out the best elements of customization on iOS.
Dynamic Island houses widgets in a sense as well. On iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, the camera housing morphs into an interactive pop-up window, enabling you to control apps right from the pop-up, launch into the app from the pop-up, and keep an eye on your Live Activities.
Do you have thoughts about Notion? Good! We need your feedback.
We’re working on some new trainings, resources, and templates for Notion users — specifically to help with prioritizing ideas and managing tasks.
We’re excited about it, but before we get too far we have a quick favor to ask you:
Would you mind taking a few moments to provide your feedback on this brief survey? Your ideas and feedback would be super helpful. Thanks!
Interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded in recent months, due in large part to the popularity of ChatGPT. While the technology is still evolving, there’s no denying the impact that it’s already having on the world around us.
In this article, we’re going to look at how to leverage AI to boost both productivity and creativity.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
If you’ve been around here at all or are a fan of the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) world, you’re no stranger to the term “Quick-Capture”. Quick Capture is an essential component of a good PKM system. Since Notion is my go-to app for pretty much everything, I’ve worked out a few ways to create a good system for quick capture in Notion.
New to Notion? Check out our Beginners Guide to Notion here.
A few months ago, Mike Schmitz (our resident Obsidian and PKM expert) hosted a PKM workshop for our January cohort of the Focus Academy. He talked about the important components of a good PKM system and how no single app will be a complete PKM system. It is a collection of apps that allow you to disseminate ideas from note-taking to quick capture to creative output. You might collect and organize your ideas in Notion, write about them in Ulysses, and drop your projects back in Notion, but having ideas and making sure you capture them is a key first step.
In this article, we are going to focus mostly on how to quickly capture ideas and notes into Notion.
What’s so great about relational databases?
We have been big fans of Notion for a while now, and relational databases are what makes Notion, well Notion. If you had a lot of organized spreadsheets next to each other that would be great, but in Notion your organized spreadsheets talk to each other. Relational databases connect everything together.
You can see which projects are connected to which clients and what contractors you hired for that project, or how much you need to bill a client for that project, and more — all in one place. It’s pretty great.
Years ago, Shawn embarked on his journey to go “paperless” in his personal and work life. Inspired by David Sparks’ Paperless Field Guide, he incorporated three important components:
In this Quick Tip, we are mostly going to focus on Hazel, but the scanners are worth a brief mention. Office scanners are great if you have a decent amount of stuff to scan and you want good-quality scans. iPhone scanning apps are ideal for scanning things quickly on the go. As digital as the world has become, we still have to scan stuff (receipts, medical bills, important documents — no matter how many times you “opt-in for paperless post”).
Way, way back when, Shawn showed off one of his cool tricks for spurring the creative juices each morning. Rather than sitting down cold turkey at the computer to begin work for the day, Shawn would leave a note right in front of his keyboard the prior evening outlining the next step, the next idea, or the next topic to write. Rather than sitting down to chaos, the note provided a clear path forward for Shawn.
This was my first introduction to a “startup” routine.
Honestly, the introduction didn’t root — I only developed a startup routine about five or six months ago.
I had no idea what I was missing. Since adopting my own startup routine, I’ve never felt so in control. I wake up in the morning with a new shot of confidence and a spurt of energy because I know what’s coming. I know what I’m in for. Less reaction. More action.
I can point the rooting of this startup routine to the discovery of Sunsama. Sunsama has done a number of things for my life in recent months. The app has rooted this startup routine and is developing a shutdown routine. The app helps me come to grips with an immense workload and an acceptance of my limits each day. The app helps track my time, carve out moments of personal time, and ensure my actions are aligned with my objectives each week. Sunsama has quickly become one of the most fundamental apps in my workflow.
This startup routine, though? It’s this startup routine in Sunsama which has altered how I work.
You need input, advice, and inspiration in order to make decisions, come up with new ideas, or take action on something.
But with too many inputs (especially too many non-essential inputs), your ability to think clearly and make decisions is hindered. It leads to less progress, dual focus, and, ultimately, very little traction.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
What’s so great about relational databases?
We have been big fans of Notion for a while now, and relational databases are what makes Notion, well Notion. If you had a lot of organized spreadsheets next to each other that would be great, but in Notion your organized spreadsheets talk to each other. Relational databases connect everything together.
You can see which projects are connected to which clients and what contractors you hired for that project, or how much you need to bill a client for that project, and more — all in one place. It’s pretty great.
Years ago, Shawn embarked on his journey to go “paperless” in his personal and work life. Inspired by David Sparks’ Paperless Field Guide, he incorporated three important components:
In this Quick Tip, we are mostly going to focus on Hazel, but the scanners are worth a brief mention. Office scanners are great if you have a decent amount of stuff to scan and you want good-quality scans. iPhone scanning apps are ideal for scanning things quickly on the go. As digital as the world has become, we still have to scan stuff (receipts, medical bills, important documents — no matter how many times you “opt-in for paperless post”).
Way, way back when, Shawn showed off one of his cool tricks for spurring the creative juices each morning. Rather than sitting down cold turkey at the computer to begin work for the day, Shawn would leave a note right in front of his keyboard the prior evening outlining the next step, the next idea, or the next topic to write. Rather than sitting down to chaos, the note provided a clear path forward for Shawn.
This was my first introduction to a “startup” routine.
Honestly, the introduction didn’t root — I only developed a startup routine about five or six months ago.
I had no idea what I was missing. Since adopting my own startup routine, I’ve never felt so in control. I wake up in the morning with a new shot of confidence and a spurt of energy because I know what’s coming. I know what I’m in for. Less reaction. More action.
I can point the rooting of this startup routine to the discovery of Sunsama. Sunsama has done a number of things for my life in recent months. The app has rooted this startup routine and is developing a shutdown routine. The app helps me come to grips with an immense workload and an acceptance of my limits each day. The app helps track my time, carve out moments of personal time, and ensure my actions are aligned with my objectives each week. Sunsama has quickly become one of the most fundamental apps in my workflow.
This startup routine, though? It’s this startup routine in Sunsama which has altered how I work.
You need input, advice, and inspiration in order to make decisions, come up with new ideas, or take action on something.
But with too many inputs (especially too many non-essential inputs), your ability to think clearly and make decisions is hindered. It leads to less progress, dual focus, and, ultimately, very little traction.
How would you describe your average day?
Here are some common answers I see to this question. People often describe their day as being:
In contrast, how would you describe your ideal day? How do you WISH your average day was?
For me, my average day is generally fulfilling, fun, and productive.
As much as I love a good vacation in the Colorado mountains, I would get a bit stir crazy if I didn’t ever have something to put my hand to. And, of course, if all I ever did was work, I’d burn myself out — which is what I used to do.
I used to work 70 hours a week. In 2015 I only took about 10 days off the whole year. I even worked over my Christmas vacation! Yikes.
It took me years to become comfortable with taking time off. Evenings, weekends, long lunches, even vacations… I would feel guilty if I wasn’t cramming every minute of my day with something productive and important.
Dr. Richard Swenson writes, in his book on Margin, that we must “develop the necessary underpinnings for margin that will allow us to accept its importance without guilt. For just as we need to eat and sleep, so we also need to breathe.”
When you’re at capacity, there is no room for anything else. But when there is space left over — when there is margin — that space enables you to breath.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
Way, way back when, Shawn showed off one of his cool tricks for spurring the creative juices each morning. Rather than sitting down cold turkey at the computer to begin work for the day, Shawn would leave a note right in front of his keyboard the prior evening outlining the next step, the next idea, or the next topic to write. Rather than sitting down to chaos, the note provided a clear path forward for Shawn.
This was my first introduction to a “startup” routine.
Honestly, the introduction didn’t root — I only developed a startup routine about five or six months ago.
I had no idea what I was missing. Since adopting my own startup routine, I’ve never felt so in control. I wake up in the morning with a new shot of confidence and a spurt of energy because I know what’s coming. I know what I’m in for. Less reaction. More action.
I can point the rooting of this startup routine to the discovery of Sunsama. Sunsama has done a number of things for my life in recent months. The app has rooted this startup routine and is developing a shutdown routine. The app helps me come to grips with an immense workload and an acceptance of my limits each day. The app helps track my time, carve out moments of personal time, and ensure my actions are aligned with my objectives each week. Sunsama has quickly become one of the most fundamental apps in my workflow.
This startup routine, though? It’s this startup routine in Sunsama which has altered how I work.
You need input, advice, and inspiration in order to make decisions, come up with new ideas, or take action on something.
But with too many inputs (especially too many non-essential inputs), your ability to think clearly and make decisions is hindered. It leads to less progress, dual focus, and, ultimately, very little traction.
How would you describe your average day?
Here are some common answers I see to this question. People often describe their day as being:
In contrast, how would you describe your ideal day? How do you WISH your average day was?
For me, my average day is generally fulfilling, fun, and productive.
As much as I love a good vacation in the Colorado mountains, I would get a bit stir crazy if I didn’t ever have something to put my hand to. And, of course, if all I ever did was work, I’d burn myself out — which is what I used to do.
I used to work 70 hours a week. In 2015 I only took about 10 days off the whole year. I even worked over my Christmas vacation! Yikes.
It took me years to become comfortable with taking time off. Evenings, weekends, long lunches, even vacations… I would feel guilty if I wasn’t cramming every minute of my day with something productive and important.
Dr. Richard Swenson writes, in his book on Margin, that we must “develop the necessary underpinnings for margin that will allow us to accept its importance without guilt. For just as we need to eat and sleep, so we also need to breathe.”
When you’re at capacity, there is no room for anything else. But when there is space left over — when there is margin — that space enables you to breath.
Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
There are a million habit-tracking apps out there. But almost all of them are built on some form of the idea, “Don’t break the chain.”
The basic idea is that when you consistently show and take action, you create a lot of momentum toward creating positive change. And that makes a lot of sense. But when you mess up and break your streak, it can be pretty discouraging.
This is great for helping you keep an established habit going, but it can be frustrating when you fall off the wagon.
If you’ve felt this before and are looking for a habit tracker to help you make positive changes without the guilt, then you need to check out Polar Habits.
Polar Habits is a simple web app that allows you to create habits and build momentum by completing them. The momentum is calculated by adding the number of days you’ve consecutively completed the task or subtracting the number of days you’ve consecutively missed and is displayed visually in a Dashboard.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
This week, we are kicking off our next Focus Booster inside the community. And it’s a Complete Guide to Margin.
There are only two ways you can restore margin to your life. And they’re actually quite simple…
As part of our upcoming Margin Reset — a done-with-you program — we will take you step-by-step through the mindsets you need, the obstacles to watch out for, and the steps you need to take in order to restore margin in every area of your life.
You will also discover the habits, systems, and routines you can build in order to KEEP margin for the long run. While anybody can quickly restore a little bit of breathing room using a few quick tips, it takes more than that in order to maintain margin in your life over time.
When your life has margin, you are able to focus your energy on doing your best work, showing up for those who need you, and living at a sustainable pace of life.
This community-led, mini-course is completely free for any and all members of the Focus Accelerator Membership.
Inside our popular community membership, you’ll be able to join us for the Margin Reset that is starting later this week.
Stop wondering why it’s so difficult to keep breathing room in your life, and finally break free from the overwhelm…
Additionally, you’ll get instant access to the entire course library ($5,000 value), including our popular Focus Course, Margin masterclass, Time Management masterclass, productivity templates, and more…
All this, and more, inside the Focus Accelerator
Join 300 focused members who have access to $5,000 worth of our best courses and mastercalasses, the Digital Planner, a Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
As you may have heard, Focus Boosters are something new we are doing in 2023 for our Focus Accelerator members.
Each Booster is a community-led, themed challenge to help you up-level in a specific area of task, time, and idea management.
These are all the Focus Boosters happening in 2023:
The latest booster, Margin Reset, begins this week at our members-only coaching call (Tuesday the 14).
Get complete access to all the frameworks, training, coaching, and tools you need to restore breathing room in your day-to-day life.
Imagine, your life WITH margin. It means you’ll have:
A life with margin means is one with less stress and overwhelm in your work; more time on your calendar and more space for the things you love and want to do; more mental and emotional strength to show up for your relationships; and overall healthier work / life balance.
Here is the plan for the Margin Reset:
Step 1: Assess: Use our Margin Assessment to find out exactly where to focus first.
Step 2: Discover: The ideal next step you can take to restore margin in your life.
Step 3 Restore: Using our simple tools and frameworks, we’ll show you how to thrive with a life full of margin.
If you want to join us, sign up for the membership so we can help you get set up before things begin.
In addition to all the live Boosters, your membership also gives you instant access to everything in our entire library. Both here on The Sweet Setup as well as on our sister site, The Focus Course.
And when I say “everything in our library,” I mean you’ll have access to:
Your membership comes with both online and in-person coaching and community. You’ll also get:
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
You need input, advice, and inspiration in order to make decisions, come up with new ideas, or take action on something.
But with too many inputs (especially too many non-essential inputs), your ability to think clearly and make decisions is hindered. It leads to less progress, dual focus, and, ultimately, very little traction.
How would you describe your average day?
Here are some common answers I see to this question. People often describe their day as being:
In contrast, how would you describe your ideal day? How do you WISH your average day was?
For me, my average day is generally fulfilling, fun, and productive.
As much as I love a good vacation in the Colorado mountains, I would get a bit stir crazy if I didn’t ever have something to put my hand to. And, of course, if all I ever did was work, I’d burn myself out — which is what I used to do.
I used to work 70 hours a week. In 2015 I only took about 10 days off the whole year. I even worked over my Christmas vacation! Yikes.
It took me years to become comfortable with taking time off. Evenings, weekends, long lunches, even vacations… I would feel guilty if I wasn’t cramming every minute of my day with something productive and important.
Dr. Richard Swenson writes, in his book on Margin, that we must “develop the necessary underpinnings for margin that will allow us to accept its importance without guilt. For just as we need to eat and sleep, so we also need to breathe.”
When you’re at capacity, there is no room for anything else. But when there is space left over — when there is margin — that space enables you to breath.
Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
There are a million habit-tracking apps out there. But almost all of them are built on some form of the idea, “Don’t break the chain.”
The basic idea is that when you consistently show and take action, you create a lot of momentum toward creating positive change. And that makes a lot of sense. But when you mess up and break your streak, it can be pretty discouraging.
This is great for helping you keep an established habit going, but it can be frustrating when you fall off the wagon.
If you’ve felt this before and are looking for a habit tracker to help you make positive changes without the guilt, then you need to check out Polar Habits.
Polar Habits is a simple web app that allows you to create habits and build momentum by completing them. The momentum is calculated by adding the number of days you’ve consecutively completed the task or subtracting the number of days you’ve consecutively missed and is displayed visually in a Dashboard.
“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement” — James Clear
This time of year, everyone is talking about goals. And New Year Resolutions. And Progress. And taking over the world.
Over here at The Sweet Setup, we’ve been talking about habits a lot lately. Without habits, your New Years Resolutions, Goals, and plans to take over the world will most likely fall pretty flat.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he talks about the importance of how habits help you not only to play the game, but to actually win the game. But how do you know if you’re winning the game unless you’re tracking your progress?
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
I’ve been spending time playing with infinite canvas apps lately, and there are a lot of great options available. In this article, we’ll compare and contrast the features of each of these apps to help you choose the one that best fits your needs.
An infinite canvas app is a digital board that gives you an unlimited virtual workspace to create and organize your ideas, sketches, notes, and other types of content. Think of it like a virtual whiteboard, but with no predefined pages or fixed dimensions so you never run out of space (hence the term ‘infinite canvas’).
Infinite canvas apps are particularly useful for creative professionals, artists, designers, and educators who need to brainstorm, sketch, or plan their projects in a flexible and unrestricted way. They can also be beneficial for personal use, such as for note-taking, mind mapping, or laying out the different parts of a large project.
👉 Join me (Shawn) to find out how you can free yourself from overwhelm and restore margin to your week. RSVP here.
My simple, 2-part framework to restore margin
The 5 Areas of Margin
How (and why) we use this approach to take off 9 weeks per year in our company
Why people struggle to maintain breathing room in their life
How to get more breathing room in your own life (starting now)
RSS has been an important part of information workflows for many years, but read-it-later apps (and the RSS services many of them are based on) desperately need some inspiration and innovation.
Enter Readwise Reader, an app that attempts to combine your RSS, newsletters, web highlights, and more into a single location.
In this golden age of technology, it is quite easy to get sucked in and find yourself knee-deep in too many apps, RSS feeds, and inboxes.
If you’d like to get a better approach to how you use your apps and devices, here are some key takeaways from Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism.
A while back, I reviewed the reMarkable e-ink tablet. There’s a lot to like about the reMarkable tablet: it’s thin and light, has incredible battery life, and offers a great writing experience for a digital tablet. But the software was lacking, and the more I used it, the more I found myself bumping up against the limitations of the device in frustrating ways.
One of the most annoying was that I couldn’t use my own PDF templates. When David Sparks and I put together the NeuYear Focused calendar for 2023, I worked with Jesse at NeuYear to create a PDF template for planning your day with the intention of using it on my reMarkable to plan my day. I was expecting that I would be able to swipe to create additional pages with the same PDF template applied, but it didn’t work. With the reMarkable, you can upload PDFs, but can’t use a single page as a custom template for a notebook.
Around the same time, a friend of mine was telling me about another e-ink device he was considering that ran the full Android operating system. Which I completely dismissed, until he sent me a screenshot of the device running Obsidian.
Now the wheels were turning. Could I possibly find an e-ink device that would fill the role of the reMarkable, provide a decent writing experience, and could be used for digital journaling in Obsidian?
I had to see for myself. So I ordered the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, and have been using it for the last couple of weeks as my “end-of-day device.”
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Join us next week for our next free workshop.
Our March, live class is all about how to get your time back . . . even when it feels like everything is always busy.
If you want to get your time (and your life) back, I’ll show you how.
Even if things feel overwhelming, you’re not sure where to start, and you’ve already “been there, tried that, and bought the darn t-shirt.”
The truth is, what I’ll show you next week is very simple and straightforward. (Stuff that works always is.)
But, as you know, it’s easy to get stuck by overthinking and overcomplicating things.
Or maybe you find yourself trapped inside of too much momentum of a life that is too busy and you’re not sure how to slow it down.
But…
When you have more breathing room, it means more possibilities, more rest, and more fun.
👉 Join me (Shawn) to find out how you can free yourself from overwhelm and restore margin to your week. RSVP here.
My simple, 2-part framework to restore margin
The 5 Areas of Margin
How (and why) we use this approach to take off 9 weeks per year in our company
Why people struggle to maintain breathing room in their life
How to get more breathing room in your own life (starting now)
There will also be time for live Q&A to talk about any questions you may have around time management, how to say “no”, decision making, and more.
Register for the Everything is Busy webinar
What: Everything is Always Busy: (Live Webinar) — The only two ways to restore breathing room to your life
When: Wednesday 8 March 2023 — 3pm Eastern / Noon Pacific / 8pm GMT
Where: RSVP Here (this way we can email you a link to join us live).
Plus, live Q&A to talk about any questions you may have around margin, time management, how to say “no”, and more.
Bonus: The Margin Assessment tool (shows you exactly where you should focus first).
Here's an oddly specific British PSA: Don't boil a kettle on a boat. What? I had so many questions. Is this a thing? Do boats really blow up when boiled water spills? Is this even a real public information film? — Read the rest
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
RSS has been an important part of information workflows for many years, but read-it-later apps (and the RSS services many of them are based on) desperately need some inspiration and innovation.
Enter Readwise Reader, an app that attempts to combine your RSS, newsletters, web highlights, and more into a single location.
In this golden age of technology, it is quite easy to get sucked in and find yourself knee-deep in too many apps, RSS feeds, and inboxes.
If you’d like to get a better approach to how you use your apps and devices, here are some key takeaways from Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism.
A while back, I reviewed the reMarkable e-ink tablet. There’s a lot to like about the reMarkable tablet: it’s thin and light, has incredible battery life, and offers a great writing experience for a digital tablet. But the software was lacking, and the more I used it, the more I found myself bumping up against the limitations of the device in frustrating ways.
One of the most annoying was that I couldn’t use my own PDF templates. When David Sparks and I put together the NeuYear Focused calendar for 2023, I worked with Jesse at NeuYear to create a PDF template for planning your day with the intention of using it on my reMarkable to plan my day. I was expecting that I would be able to swipe to create additional pages with the same PDF template applied, but it didn’t work. With the reMarkable, you can upload PDFs, but can’t use a single page as a custom template for a notebook.
Around the same time, a friend of mine was telling me about another e-ink device he was considering that ran the full Android operating system. Which I completely dismissed, until he sent me a screenshot of the device running Obsidian.
Now the wheels were turning. Could I possibly find an e-ink device that would fill the role of the reMarkable, provide a decent writing experience, and could be used for digital journaling in Obsidian?
I had to see for myself. So I ordered the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, and have been using it for the last couple of weeks as my “end-of-day device.”
Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
In this golden age of technology, it is quite easy to get sucked in and find yourself knee-deep in too many apps, RSS feeds, and inboxes.
If you’d like to get a better approach to how you use your apps and devices, here are some key takeaways from Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism.
A while back, I reviewed the reMarkable e-ink tablet. There’s a lot to like about the reMarkable tablet: it’s thin and light, has incredible battery life, and offers a great writing experience for a digital tablet. But the software was lacking, and the more I used it, the more I found myself bumping up against the limitations of the device in frustrating ways.
One of the most annoying was that I couldn’t use my own PDF templates. When David Sparks and I put together the NeuYear Focused calendar for 2023, I worked with Jesse at NeuYear to create a PDF template for planning your day with the intention of using it on my reMarkable to plan my day. I was expecting that I would be able to swipe to create additional pages with the same PDF template applied, but it didn’t work. With the reMarkable, you can upload PDFs, but can’t use a single page as a custom template for a notebook.
Around the same time, a friend of mine was telling me about another e-ink device he was considering that ran the full Android operating system. Which I completely dismissed, until he sent me a screenshot of the device running Obsidian.
Now the wheels were turning. Could I possibly find an e-ink device that would fill the role of the reMarkable, provide a decent writing experience, and could be used for digital journaling in Obsidian?
I had to see for myself. So I ordered the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, and have been using it for the last couple of weeks as my “end-of-day device.”
Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
There are a million habit-tracking apps out there. But almost all of them are built on some form of the idea, “Don’t break the chain.”
The basic idea is that when you consistently show and take action, you create a lot of momentum toward creating positive change. And that makes a lot of sense. But when you mess up and break your streak, it can be pretty discouraging.
This is great for helping you keep an established habit going, but it can be frustrating when you fall off the wagon.
If you’ve felt this before and are looking for a habit tracker to help you make positive changes without the guilt, then you need to check out Polar Habits.
Polar Habits is a simple web app that allows you to create habits and build momentum by completing them. The momentum is calculated by adding the number of days you’ve consecutively completed the task or subtracting the number of days you’ve consecutively missed and is displayed visually in a Dashboard.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
A while back, I reviewed the reMarkable e-ink tablet. There’s a lot to like about the reMarkable tablet: it’s thin and light, has incredible battery life, and offers a great writing experience for a digital tablet. But the software was lacking, and the more I used it, the more I found myself bumping up against the limitations of the device in frustrating ways.
One of the most annoying was that I couldn’t use my own PDF templates. When David Sparks and I put together the NeuYear Focused calendar for 2023, I worked with Jesse at NeuYear to create a PDF template for planning your day with the intention of using it on my reMarkable to plan my day. I was expecting that I would be able to swipe to create additional pages with the same PDF template applied, but it didn’t work. With the reMarkable, you can upload PDFs, but can’t use a single page as a custom template for a notebook.
Around the same time, a friend of mine was telling me about another e-ink device he was considering that ran the full Android operating system. Which I completely dismissed, until he sent me a screenshot of the device running Obsidian.
Now the wheels were turning. Could I possibly find an e-ink device that would fill the role of the reMarkable, provide a decent writing experience, and could be used for digital journaling in Obsidian?
I had to see for myself. So I ordered the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, and have been using it for the last couple of weeks as my “end-of-day device.”
Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
There are a million habit-tracking apps out there. But almost all of them are built on some form of the idea, “Don’t break the chain.”
The basic idea is that when you consistently show and take action, you create a lot of momentum toward creating positive change. And that makes a lot of sense. But when you mess up and break your streak, it can be pretty discouraging.
This is great for helping you keep an established habit going, but it can be frustrating when you fall off the wagon.
If you’ve felt this before and are looking for a habit tracker to help you make positive changes without the guilt, then you need to check out Polar Habits.
Polar Habits is a simple web app that allows you to create habits and build momentum by completing them. The momentum is calculated by adding the number of days you’ve consecutively completed the task or subtracting the number of days you’ve consecutively missed and is displayed visually in a Dashboard.
“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement” — James Clear
This time of year, everyone is talking about goals. And New Year Resolutions. And Progress. And taking over the world.
Over here at The Sweet Setup, we’ve been talking about habits a lot lately. Without habits, your New Years Resolutions, Goals, and plans to take over the world will most likely fall pretty flat.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he talks about the importance of how habits help you not only to play the game, but to actually win the game. But how do you know if you’re winning the game unless you’re tracking your progress?
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
Notion is constantly coming out with new features, which as an avid user, I greatly appreciate. One of the most notable new features is sub-tasks and dependencies. This is a fantastic new feature for those who work on a team in Notion, making it an even stronger contender with Asana.
The dependency feature lets you know what tasks need to be completed before another one, a great feature for teams who work using the Scrum and Agile project management method.
There are a million habit-tracking apps out there. But almost all of them are built on some form of the idea, “Don’t break the chain.”
The basic idea is that when you consistently show and take action, you create a lot of momentum toward creating positive change. And that makes a lot of sense. But when you mess up and break your streak, it can be pretty discouraging.
This is great for helping you keep an established habit going, but it can be frustrating when you fall off the wagon.
If you’ve felt this before and are looking for a habit tracker to help you make positive changes without the guilt, then you need to check out Polar Habits.
Polar Habits is a simple web app that allows you to create habits and build momentum by completing them. The momentum is calculated by adding the number of days you’ve consecutively completed the task or subtracting the number of days you’ve consecutively missed and is displayed visually in a Dashboard.
“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement” — James Clear
This time of year, everyone is talking about goals. And New Year Resolutions. And Progress. And taking over the world.
Over here at The Sweet Setup, we’ve been talking about habits a lot lately. Without habits, your New Years Resolutions, Goals, and plans to take over the world will most likely fall pretty flat.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he talks about the importance of how habits help you not only to play the game, but to actually win the game. But how do you know if you’re winning the game unless you’re tracking your progress?
Quick wins are rarely the elements of a long-term strategy.
If you search for quick wins, you’ll find them. But they won’t add up to anything substantial over time.
Instead, focus on being consistent with smaller actions you can stick with over a long period of time. Here’s why…
The two types of goals (and how they overlap)
There are two types of goals:
Attainment Goals are something we accomplish. Running our first marathon. Losing 10 pounds. Paying off student loans. Reaching 1,000 newsletter subscribers. There is a clear definition of done and you know when you have attained that goal.
Lifestyle Goals are something we “install” into our everyday life. Such as a daily reading routine, a workout routine, a writing habit, a financial budget. A Lifestyle Goal is a desired outcome we have for what we want our day-to-day life to be like.
On a practical note, these two types of goals go hand in hand.
For example, suppose you want to run a marathon. Naturally, you will need a daily routine of eating and exercise in order to have the strength and stamina for race day.
Moreover, while the marathon itself is a mountaintop type of experience — something exciting and memorable. The race day itself is not a life-changing event. Rather, you will be changed through the lifestyle goal that was required to get you there — the biggest impact on your life will not be the marathon itself, but rather the months of preparation leading up to the race.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
“Habits are the compound interest of self improvement” — James Clear
This time of year, everyone is talking about goals. And New Year Resolutions. And Progress. And taking over the world.
Over here at The Sweet Setup, we’ve been talking about habits a lot lately. Without habits, your New Years Resolutions, Goals, and plans to take over the world will most likely fall pretty flat.
In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he talks about the importance of how habits help you not only to play the game, but to actually win the game. But how do you know if you’re winning the game unless you’re tracking your progress?
Quick wins are rarely the elements of a long-term strategy.
If you search for quick wins, you’ll find them. But they won’t add up to anything substantial over time.
Instead, focus on being consistent with smaller actions you can stick with over a long period of time. Here’s why…
The two types of goals (and how they overlap)
There are two types of goals:
Attainment Goals are something we accomplish. Running our first marathon. Losing 10 pounds. Paying off student loans. Reaching 1,000 newsletter subscribers. There is a clear definition of done and you know when you have attained that goal.
Lifestyle Goals are something we “install” into our everyday life. Such as a daily reading routine, a workout routine, a writing habit, a financial budget. A Lifestyle Goal is a desired outcome we have for what we want our day-to-day life to be like.
On a practical note, these two types of goals go hand in hand.
For example, suppose you want to run a marathon. Naturally, you will need a daily routine of eating and exercise in order to have the strength and stamina for race day.
Moreover, while the marathon itself is a mountaintop type of experience — something exciting and memorable. The race day itself is not a life-changing event. Rather, you will be changed through the lifestyle goal that was required to get you there — the biggest impact on your life will not be the marathon itself, but rather the months of preparation leading up to the race.
If you’ve ever tried to learn something new or up-level in an area of your life, but fizzled out… then we’ve got just the thing for you. 🚀
Focus Boosters are community-led, themed challenges to help you up-level in a specific area of task, time, and idea management.
Here’s a sneak peek at the 2023 Focus Booster roadmap:
Rewind is a pretty incredible new tool for Mac users that bills itself as the search engine for your life, and that’s really not a bad way to describe it. It’s the sort of app that is kind of rare to come across these days, as it feels completely new. Truly, I can’t think of a single alternative to Rewind that does anything like this; it feels like they are charting their own course and we’ll be seeing similar apps trying to match what they’re doing over the next few years.
In short, Rewind records (almost) everything you do on your Mac, and makes that information searchable in the future.
Want to know the secret to creating new habits and sticking with them? Hint: It’s not Sunsama (though, as we’ll see, Sunsama can be a really big help.) There’s no app or workflow out there that will magically transform all your desired habits into actual habits.
The key to developing habits is to perform the habit over and over and over. Each day, or every other day, or every week (depending on the habit, of course). But you have to actually do the thing you want to do.
If actually doing the thing is the goal, then you have to set up a few things to ensure you will do the thing. First, you’ll need a desire to complete the task. Second, you’ll need a goal or some sort of reward at the end of the rainbow. Third, you need some time to perform the habit.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
Here are the things we published this week and last. You can also stay up-to-date by following us on Twitter and RSS.
Also, we have a weekly email newsletter that sums up all the new and cool things published to the site. If you like to stay up-to-date via email, then you should sign up here.
Quick wins are rarely the elements of a long-term strategy.
If you search for quick wins, you’ll find them. But they won’t add up to anything substantial over time.
Instead, focus on being consistent with smaller actions you can stick with over a long period of time. Here’s why…
The two types of goals (and how they overlap)
There are two types of goals:
Attainment Goals are something we accomplish. Running our first marathon. Losing 10 pounds. Paying off student loans. Reaching 1,000 newsletter subscribers. There is a clear definition of done and you know when you have attained that goal.
Lifestyle Goals are something we “install” into our everyday life. Such as a daily reading routine, a workout routine, a writing habit, a financial budget. A Lifestyle Goal is a desired outcome we have for what we want our day-to-day life to be like.
On a practical note, these two types of goals go hand in hand.
For example, suppose you want to run a marathon. Naturally, you will need a daily routine of eating and exercise in order to have the strength and stamina for race day.
Moreover, while the marathon itself is a mountaintop type of experience — something exciting and memorable. The race day itself is not a life-changing event. Rather, you will be changed through the lifestyle goal that was required to get you there — the biggest impact on your life will not be the marathon itself, but rather the months of preparation leading up to the race.
If you’ve ever tried to learn something new or up-level in an area of your life, but fizzled out… then we’ve got just the thing for you. 🚀
Focus Boosters are community-led, themed challenges to help you up-level in a specific area of task, time, and idea management.
Here’s a sneak peek at the 2023 Focus Booster roadmap:
Rewind is a pretty incredible new tool for Mac users that bills itself as the search engine for your life, and that’s really not a bad way to describe it. It’s the sort of app that is kind of rare to come across these days, as it feels completely new. Truly, I can’t think of a single alternative to Rewind that does anything like this; it feels like they are charting their own course and we’ll be seeing similar apps trying to match what they’re doing over the next few years.
In short, Rewind records (almost) everything you do on your Mac, and makes that information searchable in the future.
Want to know the secret to creating new habits and sticking with them? Hint: It’s not Sunsama (though, as we’ll see, Sunsama can be a really big help.) There’s no app or workflow out there that will magically transform all your desired habits into actual habits.
The key to developing habits is to perform the habit over and over and over. Each day, or every other day, or every week (depending on the habit, of course). But you have to actually do the thing you want to do.
If actually doing the thing is the goal, then you have to set up a few things to ensure you will do the thing. First, you’ll need a desire to complete the task. Second, you’ll need a goal or some sort of reward at the end of the rainbow. Third, you need some time to perform the habit.
Of all the things you can do to make your inbox more calm, the biggest thing, by far, is to eliminate what I call the “Just Checks.”
The Just Checks are all the times when you’re not quite sure what to do, so you reach for your phone to “just check” social media. Or “just check” your messages. Or “just check” your email.
You don’t really have anything specific you need to do, you just have a few moments to fill, so you’re pulled magnetically pulled towards the screen in your pocket. That’s a just check.
My biggest pet peeve in life are people who are checking their phones when at a stop light. Seriously??
The problem is that these “just checks” can become an actual addiction. I call it inbox addiction.
Introducing the new Focus Boosters.
Inside our popular community membership, join us for a the Habit Building challenge (a.k.a. “Booster”). You’ll find out how to make simple changes that will make your daily life better, remove distractions, and create a new simple habit.
Membership Includes: Simple Habits Course, Habit Tracking Templates, Digital Planner, Private Community Slack, 2x Monthly Coaching Calls, and much, much more…
We spend an inordinate amount of time sorting through hundreds of apps to find the very best. We put together a short list of our must-have, most-used apps for increasing productivity.
FreshRSS 