Login
Most Thursday mornings you’ll find me in a co-working session with members of the Productive Flourishing Academy.
Part of the routine in our coworking sessions is to start off with a word pulled from a deck of motivational cards. My friend, the group leader, pulls the card, and the idea is to use the word that emerges to create alignment or a point of focus throughout your day.
When my turn came, she pulled the word “Relaxation”.
Ummm… no.
“I have a mountain of tasks ahead of me and I don’t have time to relax today,” was my instant reaction.
Luckily, I have my own set of this particular card deck, so before diving into the task I had planned (which ended up turning into this piece of writing) I decided to pull a new card. Take that, universe!
So what card did I pull?
“Risk.”
Well-played, universe. Well-played.
What am I supposed to do with these mixed messages? These two words — that are now at the forefront of my mind — seem to be at odds with one another.
As I moved into the work I had planned to do during this co-working session (namely a speech I had to give the following week for Toastmasters, a public speaking and leadership club I’m a part of in NYC), I couldn’t get these two words out of my head.
These ideas, risk and relaxation, don’t seem to fit together. More than that, they seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum.
When I heard the word relaxation, what came to mind was an extreme state of rest, inaction, becoming sloth-like.
To enter a relaxed state is something too often we feel we need to earn. I’m allowed to just relax? Without doing anything or accomplishing anything first?
So when my friend pulled that card for me, I rebelled. Because I have a too-long list of things that need to get done (yep, violating the 5 Projects Rule) before I can even think about allowing myself to relax. Calm will have to wait.
I recognize this mentality runs counter to a lot of what has been written about here at PF, including pieces I myself have written. It just goes to show, we’re all in a constant state of learning and unlearning.
Still, relaxation is a self-care practice — and a necessity — we can all get behind. But risk? Risk seems to imply anything but rest and relaxation, and seems, well, downright dangerous.
Risk implies action, making a change, getting uncomfortable, and putting yourself in a position to fail (the horror!).
It’s inevitably scary to take a step in a new direction. Our minds and bodies perceive this newness as danger and set off all sorts of alarms to try to get us to do anything but this risky behavior — fight, flight, or freeze.
Taking action, no matter how big or small, is inherently risky.
But what happens if I put these two words together? What if relaxation didn’t need to mean a full and complete stop to any activity, but instead it could mean an easing in?
And what if risk didn’t require actual danger but simply meant trying something new? What if it was just about easing into the discomfort of putting myself in a slightly different position than yesterday?
And as I was thinking all these thinks, and most definitely not writing my Toastmasters speech, it dawned on me that the exact combination of these themes — getting more comfortable (relaxation) with being uncomfortable (risk) — is one that continues to show up in my life.
A recent example: I’ve been starting to get back into writing. More specifically, I’m starting to share my writing more frequently. Risk.
I’m leaning more and more into my instinct, and how it relates to both writing and sharing; this article is an example. Relaxation.
Ease can be about letting go. Letting go of expectations, of perfectionism, of the outcome. And that is inherently risky. Where are you holding on too tight? What small action can you take today to move yourself closer to where you want to be?
The post Relaxing Into Risk appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Habits change. Inspiration comes and goes. Workflows spring up and taper off. But for me, time blocking never changes. Time blocking has become fundamental to my work day, ensuring I have chunks of time to complete tasks and ensuring my colleagues know what I’m up to. Time blocking structures my day. Time blocking blocks out extra meetings. Time blocking pushes me forward.
I’m not sure if one could say there are many forms of time blocking. By and large, time blocking consists of putting tasks into your calendar with a time duration for completion. To my knowledge, nearly all forms of time blocking consist of tasks — rather than events — building out your calendar.
But some apps do structure various parts of the time blocking workflow differently. Today, I’m hoping to discuss the two apps I have the most experience with on the Mac: Sunsama and Fantastical. These are very different apps — one is a full-on productivity app with many productivity features; the other a calendar app on steroids. However, both have succeeded for me in some shape or form and both have fallen flat in other facets.
Many may not even consider Fantastical a productivity app at all. Recent updates have me thinking otherwise, though — you can now quickly drag and drop tasks into your calendar and use natural language parsing to set a duration for the task. Those tasks sync over to the built-in Reminders app or Todoist, providing integration with other productivity apps. And Fantastical also provides excellent meeting scheduling features. Think Calendly, but in a Fantastical style. Overall, I think Fantastical is right at home in any time blocking conversation.
To me, there are three major stages to a time blocked day:
Sunsama and Fantastical both play a role in all three stages, but differently.
Without further ado…
The planning stage for me consists of sitting down, looking at all my task silos, and building out a day to work on the most important items. I aim to complete this in 15 minutes or less. Some days I prefer granularity and specificity (“reply to this email”) and some days I prefer generalities (“email”).
Sunsama does an incredible job helping you plan out your day. Each morning, Sunsama pings you with a reminder to build out your day. The planning process works in the following order:
Sunsama rocks in the planning department. You can quickly drop all tasks you want to complete in a day in step #1. This is effectively your “Inbox” of tasks. Sunsama also integrates with Notion, Todoist, Clickup, Github, Exchange, Gmail, and more, ensuring you can actually bring in your emails and other tasks from a wide variety of apps all at once. This first step is basically the ultimate productivity inbox.
Once done, you can also tag your tasks “Work” or “Personal”, set an estimated duration time, and add any other notes to build out the task’s context. This can become quite granular and can take some time if you have many shorter duration tasks.
In step #3, you can defer the less important tasks to a future date.
In step #4, you can use some automation features by clicking a certain key to automatically build out your calendar based on the duration of each task created in step #1. Sunsama ties a tag (“work” or “personal”) to the calendar of your choice. This effectively creates a unique calendar event for each task you add in step #4 — perfect for notifying your colleagues what you’re up to each day.
Fantastical doesn’t have a built-out planning workflow of any sort. There are no queues to sit-down and tackle your day. There are no task silos or multiple inboxes to bring in everything you want to do into one specific list. There are no pings or notifications to get you off on the right track.
However, since Fantastical integrates nicely with the Reminders app — which itself integrates with a few other apps on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac — you can still build out a planning workflow in Fantastical.
My planning workflow involves Spark (my email app), Reminders, and Fantastical. I tend to swipe important emails over from Spark to Reminders, which nicely show up inside Fantastical’s “Tasks” section.
From there, I can drag specific emails and tasks right into my calendar. Each task adds a default event with a default duration in your calendar, but you can quickly edit this by stating the number of minutes you expect the task to take by adding “[15m]” or “[120m]” to the task. Fantastical will then update the duration of the time block automatically.
The biggest hiccup for me with Fantastical’s planning process is the fact that time blocked tasks do not become calendar events. This means my colleagues can’t see what I’m doing during the day. If I need to block out time to notify my colleagues what my plans are, I’ll have to create a second generic time block within a calendar. This duplicates some of the planning work.
As you work through the day, you’ll have to return to your productivity app to check in on your progress, mark tasks completed, and make changes to your plans. Again, Sunsama and Fantastical are very different in this regard.
Sunsama has two specific time tracking features some users will love:
The first method provides an extra area to store notes as you work through the task. This works great for writing meeting minutes and referencing any other notes you added to the task when you planned out your day.
The second method is ideal for folks who get interrupted throughout the day and forget to toggle the task’s timer. This is definitely where I fall — instead of tracking down to the minute, I complete a task and mark how long it took me to complete, generally with a round estimate to the 15 minute mark.
Tracking time in Sunsama is fundamental to the last stage of time blocking: review.
Fantastical is king at capturing events and tasks throughout the day via its natural language parsing field. Simply typing task Pick up car from oil change at 3:00PM [15m] will create a 15-minute time blocked task at 3:00PM to pick up the car from the oil change. This is ideal for capturing new tasks and events throughout the day.
However, there aren’t any specific time tracking features baked into Fantastical at this point. Jumping in and out of the app is pretty easy and you can check off tasks in any calendar view or the Tasks list view in the left sidebar. If you want to be more specific about how long it took you to complete the task, you can change the “[15m]” moniker in the title of the task to the amount of time it actually took you. You won’t be able to review the difference between your planned duration and your actual duration this way, but it certainly helps in the review stage of your time blocked day.
Finally, the review stage. What good is all this planning if you can’t go back, review, and learn from your mistakes? Reviewing each time blocked day can be important in different ways — you can review to ensure you don’t miss any billable time, you can review to determine if your expectations aren’t matched with reality, and you can review to provide a jumpstart to your next day’s plans. No matter the reason, review is fundamental to good time blocking.
Sunsama’s review process isn’t as built out as its planning process, but it’s still great.
When your day is about to wrap up — which can be set to any time you want — Sunsama will allow you to work through the shutdown routine. The shutdown provides analytics, breaking down how much time you spent working on work and personal tasks and which tasks you completed. There’s also an opportunity to write out your thoughts on the day and post those thoughts to Slack.
More than anything though, the shutdown routine in Sunsama triggers and somewhat forces you to step back from your computer. When it’s time to be done for the day, Sunsama can force you to be done for the day. If you’re aiming for a better work-life balance, Sunsama is certainly trying to do its part.
You can read more about Sunsama’s startup and shutdown processes in our article right here.
Just like the prior two stages, Fantastical doesn’t have a specific shutdown or review process. You can, however, ensure you have a shutdown routine through a few more manual ways.
First, I tend to create blocks at the beginning of my day labelled “Wake, prep, and arrive” and at the end of my day titled “Shutdown”. Both of these can be very easily created using a shortcut in the Shortcuts app, which you can trigger from anywhere in iOS or macOS. Once created, you have your day’s start and end times. This shutdown time block ensures you have the time you need to review your day and move into the next one.
Second, if you change the number of minutes for each planned task to the number of minutes for actual time taken to complete the task, you can review your day pretty easily in either of Fantastical’s Day or Week views. To view completed tasks, you’ll have to jump into the View menu and select Show Completed Tasks. Otherwise, completed tasks will disappear off your calendar. If you change that duration when you finish a task, you should be able to quickly tell where your daily plan went awry.
Can you tell? Indeed, Sunsama is built for time blocking. In each of the above three steps, Sunsama has a feature or workflow to work through each day. Fantastical’s time blocking features are quite new, meaning any time blocking routines you want to use inside Fantastical will be more manual by nature.
And this is fine — some folks may find Sunsama’s built-in routines to be too stringent and structured. You may find Sunsama to be too granular — each individual email and individual task has to be added to your calendar, creating the potential for a calendar littered with short events throughout the day and constant need to interact with Sunsama as you work through your task list. Some folks may prefer the generalities and manualness Fantastical provides in these regards.
Or, planners will be planners — some folks will adore the top-to-bottom planned approach Sunsama provides.
You do ultimately pay for the specific Sunsama routines. There’s a price difference between these two apps, to be sure. For those who have endless buckets of tasks, Sunsama’s monthly cost will be a bargain. For those who either have better control of their buckets or want a more general approach to time blocking, Fantastical’s cost may be easier to stomach.
Hopefully the above breakdown provides two options on opposite ends of the time blocking spectrum to help build out your daily calendar.
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…
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…
The other day, I returned home from a short trip, and immediately unpacked and washed my clothes, putting everything away. It felt nice.
The next morning, I was feeling a bit unsettled. So I started cleaning. I cleaned in the kitchen, outside in the yard, swept the garage. I felt so good.
I’ve come to realize that cleaning, organizing, decluttering … for me, it’s a form of self-care. It helps me feel settled, makes me feel like I’m taking care of my life.
Yes, cleaning and organizing can be overwhelming, and is often avoided. But it doesn’t have to be. Take a small corner to tidy up, and let yourself just enjoy the cleaning. Get lost in it. Feel the niceness of making things nicer.
Yes, there’s always more to do. But that’s a disempowering way to think about it. Why does it matter that there will always be more to do? That just means there’s more self-care available, always. Just do a small portion right now, and enjoy it. A good analogy is that there will always be more tea to drink … but I only need to focus on this single cup of tea, and enjoy it fully.
As you clean, you might feel things getting cleaner. As you organize, you might feel the progression of settledness of things. As you declutter, you might feel the slight liberation with everything you toss out.
And of course, we can extend this self-care of cleaning and organization into every part of our lives — today I worked on organizing my finances. I’ve been fixing little things around the house. This morning I deleted a bunch of apps on my phone, and turned off a lot of notifications, to simplify my phone experience. I also unsubscribed from a bunch of newsletters and started clearing out my email inbox.
You can think of taking a task from your task list as a form of this self-care. One item at a time, taking care of your life.
It can be overwhelming and dreaded … or it can be nourishing and lovely. It’s a choice, and I choose to feel the care that I bring to every sweep of the broom or rake.
The post Cleaning as Self-Care appeared first on zen habits.
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.
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.
Last October, I began a simple bullet journaling habit inside Obsidian with the hopes of developing a small knowledge archive that could be used by students or other young accountants in the office. I intended on logging general steps to the solutions I developed each day — either via voice dictation and AI summaries or via direct SOP-creation — and ensuring the notes were all searchable inside my own Obsidian bank and the office-wide Notion database.
That habit made it to mid-January — I encountered more problems each day than I expected back in less-intense October, and the Obsidian habit died.
Sunsama lasted a lot longer than Obsidian. In fact, Sunsama may return, though with a different approach during the most stressful seasons of the year.
Here are three things I found myself adopting during the busiest season of my year to ensure my productivity system still worked for me each day.
Sunsama was the bread and butter to my productivity system during tax season this year. I jumped into Sunsama every morning and planned out each day. I’d generally check off items throughout the day with the amount of time each task took to complete, and I’d generally review each day’s success late in the evening or the next morning.
Where Sunsama broke down for me was in its granularity. For instance:
Each tax return I wanted to complete, each email I wanted to answer, and each ordinary task I wanted to work on amounted to a mountain of work I could barely keep track of. While Sunsama did a great job of tracking everything, the breakdown came in the planning process. I would ultimately spend 30+ minutes in the morning clicking and dragging each email/task/tax return into my time-boxed day.
I could probably complete 2 or 3 tax returns in that 30 minutes if I focused. And I dreaded the mental overhead in that 30-minute span.
My treasured Sunsama planning process quickly found its way to pasture.
I had to come up with a new solution to track all my work and ensure I found focused moments throughout each day.
My first step to fixing my stressed out productivity system was to break down everything I needed to do each day into four or five general categories. The five main categories became:
These five blocks became the core of my work days. And by and large, each work day became very routinized and structured.
Once it was email time, rather than pore through my Sunsama list to view all the emails I wanted to answer, I would instead just jump straight into my email inbox and hammer out as many replies as I could in the time allotted.
Once it was tax time, instead of jumping into my pre-planned set of work for the day, I’d either jump into our office-wide Notion and pick the most urgent tax work to complete, or I’d walk straight into our file room and just pick a random name to begin work.
I hated admin time, so I avoided it at all costs.
And when it was finally personal time, I dropped everything I was doing and headed straight into personal time.
In summary then, instead of having my actual tasks in my calendar — the method which was so great for me in my non-tax-season season — I created blocks or zones of time where I would focus on one general category of tasks instead. Flying at 30,000 feet, you could say I stepped back and summarized my day into zones rather than planned out what I’d work on each day.
It became apparent that I could easily fall into a trap of thinking I was productive each day by checking off dozens of tax tasks, non-tax tasks, and emails as I worked through them. I think this was somewhat of an illusion though — in reality, I jumped in and out of Sunsama at least 30 times a day to see what was next on the list, which ultimately led to less focus time, more distraction, and a higher probability of getting out of my chair and grabbing a cup of coffee.
The solution was to avoid my productivity system altogether save for three important times of the day:
Each day, I found myself operating more by memory than by direction. When planning, I’d pick the absolute imperatives for the day — file this return, send that email, finish that piece of admin — and ensure those were done first thing within each of the appropriate time zones. After the imperatives were done, I’d just continue onto the next thing I saw in that particular silo:
And of course, when enough was enough…
I would jump into the next personal, family or free time block whenever my brain hit a wall.
As time wore on during tax season, I found it absolutely fundamental to stop everything I was doing on the spot when a personal or family time block rolled through my schedule. It didn’t matter how close I was to finishing a return or how much more work pumped through the email inbox, when it was time to slow down, it was time to slow down.
There were two main things I found both surprising and awesome about scheduling free time into the schedule:
There are two other little things I did during the most intense part of the season to ensure I always had some personal time scheduled:
I greatly appreciated the chance to stress test my productivity system this last six months or so. I learned a few important lessons about myself:
I’m sure the coming months will result in a bunch of imaginative workflow brainstorming and will result in a more convoluted planning workflow than I’m capable of implementing. It seems to be the annual cycle. But each year that goes by, past stress tests of my productivity systems have moulded my workflows piece by piece into something that works great for me.
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…
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 say Meier’s book is a secret because I’ve never heard anyone talk about the book anywhere. (Perhaps it’s the fault of the cover design, which, honestly, isn’t great.)
In his book, Meier identifies 30 pitfalls to productivity. These are common pitfalls that limit your results and cause immense friction and roadblocks to your workflows and systems.
Moreover, these pitfalls can be found in your own individual productivity systems as well as within your teams and even within your whole company.
Of the 30 pitfalls that Meier lists, the five most common are:
Analysis Paralysis: You are constantly waiting to take action until you have more information, call more meetings, get more opinions, etc.
Doing It When You Feel Like It: You wait for motivation and inspiration before you get started, and you lack a routine of doing your most important work on a regular basis.
Not Knowing the Work to Be Done: You lack clarity about things as granular as the next step or as macro as the whole big picture, thus you can’t plan accordingly.
Lack of Boundaries: You allow work to spill over into other areas of your life (weekends / evenings); you push yourself past your limits; you allow urgency to become the dominant factor surrounding your work.
Perfectionism: This bites you before, during, and after a project. Perhaps you don’t even begin because you know you won’t be able to do it just right. Or you never finish because you’re incessantly fiddling and trying to get things just right. Or, once you’ve shipped, you’re beating yourself up over how things could have been better.
Do any of these pitfalls sound familiar to you?
Perhaps you see them at work within your office culture or within your own life. Or both!
For me, numbers 1 and 5 are what I’ve most had to learn to overcome. I also use to suffer from a terrible case of #3, but that has changed completely for me over the years — a story for another time, perhaps.
Here are some related links where we’ve discussed other pitfalls and ways to bolster your productivity:
FYI: I put together all my book notes from Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work and combined those notes with all the key takeaways and highlights from my interview with Cal. If you haven’t already, you can download the in-depth notes here.
Over the past few months, in the lead-up to the publication of my book, I’ve used this space to share brief excerpts. Now the book is out! If you want a copy, you can order it from the University of Michigan website (or other popular book ordering places!). In case you haven’t decided whether this book would be a good addition to your library, here’s a brief overview.
I wrote Thriving as a Graduate Writer because I believe graduate students can reframe their experience of academic writing. We all know that writing is at the heart of the academic enterprise. It is both how we communicate and how we are assessed. That combination can be brutal for any writer, and it’s particularly fraught for graduate writers, who must learn disciplinary writing practices while being judged on their early efforts. Recognizing these challenges is valuable; graduate students are better off knowing that their difficulties with academic writing are entirely legitimate. This recognition, however, is only the first step. The next step must be to find ways to ameliorate those challenges.
In the book, I offer a discussion of principles, strategies, and habits that I think can help. (The table of contents can be found below, so you can see the breakdown of this material.) The principles point to a way of thinking about academic writing. Since writing takes up so much time and energy, it is worth exploring foundational ideas that can ground a writing practice: writing as thinking; writing as revision; writing as reader awareness; writing as authorial responsibility. Those principles lead into concrete strategies that can transform the experience of creating and revising an academic text. The heart of this book is the five chapters that unpack these approaches to working with text: managing structure; managing sentences; managing punctuation patterns; managing momentum; and building a revision process. The final element of the book is the consideration of writing habits. Even with a solid approach to academic writing and range of useful strategies to hand, we all still need to find ways to get writing done. Graduate writers, in particular, need exposure to writing productivity advice that is rooted in their unique experience of academic writing. This chapter provides a range of strategies to help build a consistent and sustainable writing routine: prioritizing writing; setting goals; finding community; developing writing awareness; and grounding productivity in writing expertise.
This book is a short (only 226 pages!) self-study text. You can read through the whole book—in whatever way works for you—and then use it as a reference. The manner in which you refer back to the book will depend on what you currently need to concentrate on. Most readers will benefit from returning to two chapters: Establishing a Revision Process (Chapter Eight) and Developing Sustainable Writing Habits (Chapter Nine). Those chapters are organized around charts that are distributed throughout the chapter (and that appear again at the back of the book). Since every writer has their own challenges and their own optimal writing process, I urge readers to take those charts and rework them—on an ongoing basis—to suit their needs. In addition to the charts, you will also find other resources at the end of the book: guides to using the book in a graduate writing course or graduate writing group and brief account of the blogs and books that I most recommend to graduate writers.
Overall, this book aims to inspire graduate writers to think differently about the nature of writing and then offers concrete strategies for managing both their writing and their writing routines. It was a labour of love to craft the writing advice that I offer everyday—here and in the classroom—into a more coherent and enduring form. I hope it gives you the capacity to approach this indispensable part of academic life with more confidence and more enjoyment. I look forward to hearing what you think!
Thriving as a Graduate Writer is now available from the University of Michigan Press. To order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!
rcayley
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.
In order to use the new actions, the first thing to need to do is to link Actions for Obsidian with your Obsidian vault.
Click the blue button, and the app walks you through a short wizard that helps you set everything up and make sure it’s all connected.
Once you link your vault, the next step is to go into Obsidian itself and enable a specific plugin that allows Obsidian to receive and act on the requests that will be sent to it from the Shortcuts actions. If you’ve not used community plugins before, it will show you exactly how to enable them first.
Once community plugins are enabled, Actions for Obsidian walks you through installing and enabling the Actions URI plugin needed for the Shortcuts actions to work.
Once everything is configured, Actions for Obsidian will perform a test to see if instructions can be sent to Obsidian (and whether it can also send information back using callback URLs). Click the blue Ask Obsidian to call back button and you should see a confirmation prompt if everything is working correctly.
Once everything is good to go, you can start to use the additional actions by creating and editing shortcuts from inside the Shortcuts app. You can find the additional actions by looking for Actions for Obsidian under the Apps section.
The actions are split into five sections:
Some examples of things you can do with these additional actions are creating your Daily Note using a shortcut to help start your day, adding events to an appointments section of your Daily Note from your calendar, and even getting results from a Dataview table (another very powerful third-party plugin that can query your entire vault and return results in the form of a table).
While this does add a nearly-native level of Shortcuts support to Obsidian, there are some limitations. For example, the additional actions currently only work on macOS. The developer is working on adding support for iOS, but it’s not surprising that there are some additional technical hurdles to be overcome there with iOS sandboxing. So right now you can build Shortcuts and fire them on iOS, but the extra actions will break the moment they need to communicate with your Obsidian vault.
Regardless, I’m thrilled this app exists and find it fascinating that a cross-platform Electron app like Obsidian can offer such extensive support for Shortcuts — with a little help from a utility like Actions for Obsidian.
The distribution model is interesting too, as Actions for Obsidian is free to download on the Mac App Store with an in-app purchase. There are three different price tiers to choose from based on how helpful you find the app, starting at $9 USD and going up to $15 USD.
I think this is a really interesting business model for a really interesting app. I hope it’s successful, and I hope to see others create extendable Shortcuts like this for other popular apps. I know Obsidian is well-suited for this because of the third-party plugin architecture, but I think power users of apps like Notion or Craft would absolutely be willing to pay to have a little more automation power at their fingertips too.
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…
👋🏼 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.
Of course, an article about my must-have apps is going to start with Obsidian. 😂
My entire life is in Obsidian. I use it for digital journaling, storing all my notes and ideas, all of my writing projects, even Bible study.
What makes Obsidian so powerful is the plugins. You can basically design your own app with the features that you want. For example, I wrote previously about how I used community plugins to add the essential features I missed from Ulysses into Obsidian, giving me the best of both worlds.
One of the best things about Obsidian is that it sits on top of local Markdown files. So if Obsidian ever disappears (doesn’t seem likely in the near future with the release of 1.0 and the hiring of a new CEO), I can take my Markdown-formatted text files anywhere else.
This is easily my most used (and most loved) productivity app.
Mind mapping is underrated. I use it all the time for brainstorming, thinking through things, breaking down complex projects, and more. I even take notes on the books that I read in mind map format.
And if you’re going to create mind maps, MindNode is the app to use.
It has the best user interface of any mind map app available, and gives you a ton of power while still being incredibly easy to use.
If you are looking for a visual thinking tool for macOS or iOS, you need to check out MindNode.
Keynote is a deceptively powerful app that can do WAY more than just create great presentations.
The auto-align feature makes it a great canvas for making quick designs. Yes, they can be exported as images, but I frequently just use CleanShot X to grab a screenshot and add a quick background before sharing.
It’s also great for making quick animations with the Magic Move transition. Create a couple of slides, start a presentation, and use screen capturing software like ScreenFlow to record the animation as a video.
Don’t write it off just because it’s free and comes with your Mac! In my humble opinion, this is easily the best app Apple has ever made.
I don’t use my iPad mini a lot. But when I do, I’m likely using GoodNotes.
GoodNotes is the app to use if you’re going to do anything with handwritten text on the iPad. It’s also a great tool for sketching or diagramming, and the ability to add PDF templates opens up a host of other uses for this powerful app (like The Focus Course Digital Planner).
GoodNotes is the place that I create anything with an Apple Pencil. I’ve tried other more “professional” apps like Procreate, but GoodNotes is the perfect sweet spot between ease of use and powerful tools. I started sketchnoting in GoodNotes several years ago, and it’s only gotten easier and more fun.
If you do any kind of sketching or diagramming, this is an essential app.
I wrote recently about my experiments in using ChatGPT for productivity and creativity, but my preferred way to access ChatGPT is through a macOS app called MacGPT.
On the tin, MacGPT is a menu bar app that allows you to quickly access ChatGTP, and the quickest way to access the ChatGPT website for using GPT-4 without a GPT-4 API key. But it also has a couple of other modes (which do require an API key) for accessing ChatGPT via a spotlight-style global textfield or even inline in any text editor.
If you’re a heavy ChatGPT user who uses your Mac a lot, check out MacGPT.
The apps listed above are critical for my productivity and creativity workflows. If you took these away, my job gets a lot harder.
But there are a bunch of other apps and utilities that I rely on for my day-to-day work. Here are some of the honorable mentions for apps that are important to me, but not quite essential.
Matt Birchler has convinced me to use Cron as my calendar app. It’s Google-only, but I’ve had countless issues with iCloud calendars, so I’m happy to leave those behind.
The keyboard shortcuts in Cron are top notch. You could probably do everything in Cron without ever taking your hands off the keyboard. But what I really like about it is the built-in scheduling system. Just set some availability on your calendar and Cron gives you a sharable link that people can use to book time on your calendar. It doesn’t have all the features of Calendly, but it’s so easy to use that I find myself using this instead most of the time.
Best of all, it’s completely free. And since the makers of Notion are also behind this app, I’m not worried about this one disappearing any time soon.
Like Matt, I also use CleanShot X all day, every day. It’s a brilliant app.
In addition to letting you make quick edits and share your screenshots to the cloud (so you can share link instead of a file), CleanShot X also makes it easy to capture animated gifs and scrolling screenshots.
But the feature I find myself using the most is the ability to add colorful backgrounds to your screenshots. Built-in macOS screenshots are boring, and CleanShot X makes them a lot more interesting.
At the day job, I had a lot of meetings. And Camo Studio was essential for whenever I wasn’t in my home office to attend them.
For example, I share an office with someone at a coworking space so I can get out of the house once in awhile. I have an external monitor there and can use Continuity Camera, but it’s still fairly limited in my ability to touch up my on-screen appearance. But Camo Studio now works with any of your camera sources, so I can customize the video from my Continuity Camera and get it look almost as good as my setup at home.
If you want good-looking video but don’t want to spend a ton on a dedicated webcam or camera, check out Camo Studio.
For a long time, I was a die-hard Alfred user. But Raycast has become my launcher of choice because of the library of extensions you can use to easily extend the capabilities of the app.
You can get extensions that allow you to add things directly to Obsidian, view events on your calendar in Fantastical, add todos to your task manager in Things, and a lot more. Just search the Raycast Store and find the one you want to use from within the app itself and click Install.
I also like what Raycast is doing with the built-in AI in the Pro plan. And I’ll be really intrigued when they add the promised support for the GPT-4 model.
We’ve written about this a ton before, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Drafts. I use Drafts for quick capture on my iPhone and Apple Watch all the time for small bits of information or as the starting place for content pieces. It’s especially useful when I want to capture an idea while out for a run.
Where I really rely on Drafts though is on the Mac. That’s where I go through everything I’ve captured and either delete things I don’t need or move them to their permanent home (likely Obsidian). Having access to all my Drafts on my Mac (and the actions I use to process them) makes combing through my Drafts inbox a breeze.
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…
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.
I use Todoist for task management. I spend a considerable amount of time on Linux systems, and I absolutely love how Todoist is available on every modern operating system. I’ve used Todoist for years and am quite comfortable with its many strengths and weaknesses. It fits my system and helps me stay productive, and that’s all I ask of my task manager. Since I share several projects with my partner for house chores and shopping lists, I now consider project sharing and collaboration features a necessity for any task manager. Todoist does this flawlessly across all my devices.
1Password is essential for me in the way electricity is essentially to electronics. This password manager has matured so much over the past few years, and I love finding new ways to use it for my own needs or our household. 1Password houses all my username/password and MFA tokens, but also holds security keys for logging into remote servers as an additional level of protection for those assets. Like Todoist, 1Password has excellent support for Linux (and even the command line!), and I encourage anyone that uses SSH to check out 1Password’s SSH key functionality.
Online shopping is such a large part of our world, and the risk of credit card information being leaked or stolen is at an all time high. Cancelling a credit card is a huge hassle, so we use Privacy whenever possible to reduce that risk. Privacy is a service that 1) securely connects to your bank account for funding and 2) allows you to create credit card information for paying for stuff online. The beauty of this is that you can create a credit card number for each retailer you shop with. Similar to passwords, using different information for every retailer you shop with significantly reduces your exposure if someone steals that information. On top of creating credit card numbers that are locked to specific retailers, you can also create cards that automatically close after one use, automatically limit the max spending amount on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis. This is a service that I recommend to everyone I meet. This service is fantastic on its own, but they’ve partnered with 1Password recently so that you can create unique Privacy card numbers on checkout forms straight from 1Password. This saves you the step of logging into Privacy and creating a new card.
I’ve spent a couple years getting away from Gmail, and I chose Fastmail as my email provider. I love Fastmail because I know that I’m paying for a straight-forward, reliable service instead of providing Google with advertising data. After two years, I’m really happy with how rock-solid and fast Fastmail’s email, calendar, and contacts platform is. It also simplifies my life by making it easy to use custom domains for email, as well as setting a number of aliases for different purposes. In fact, Fastmail also partnered with 1Password so that you can create unique email aliases straight from 1Password when creating a new account online. It’s only a few clicks in Fastmail, but having it automatically populate in the form from the 1Password extension is so useful.
I was a customer of 1Password, Fastmail, and Privacy long before they were in business together, and I’m legitimately happy to see how they work together to make security and privacy easy. Their integrations certainly make a compelling argument to use them if you don’t want to use Gmail or iCloud for email.
Whether it’s notes for work, personal knowledge blurbs, recipes, writing, or editing, I use Obsidian to keep it all organized. This Swiss-knife text tool is great at what it does, and it doesn’t hurt that it also has apps that work on any platform you use. I love that this app can be a simple, minimal text editing app when that’s what I need, but it’s also a powerful organization tool for all the information that I decide to keep around.
Alfred is my launcher of choice on macOS, and I quickly forget that it’s not actually part of macOS due to how integral it is to how I use a Mac. It’s fantastic for quickly launching apps and finding files, but I use it quite a bit for quick calculations and the one-off script run. But, the other major thing I use Alfred for is clipboard management. There are other dedicated clipboard managers out there, but I’ve always used Alfred for this. It does what I need, and it’s second-nature at this point.
I used TextExpander for the longest time as a snippet tool, but I moved to Espanso shortly after it came out several years ago. Espanso is open-source and community driven, and also (you guessed it) works on all operating systems. Instead of a GUI tool for setting up snippets and combinations, Espanso relies on a configuration text file, which is something I’ve come to appreciate from my time on Linux. Adding a snippet or making a small adjustment is quick and easy, and keeping it in sync is easy enough with a file sync tool.
Managing windows can be a headache, and I don’t have any interest in clicking and dragging window borders around to set up the perfect layout. Josh mentioned the excellent Magnet in his list of apps, and I love that app for bringing easy window snapping/sizing controls to macOS. It’s the perfect gateway drug to what I’ve used for years now on my Mac: Amethyst. Think of Amethyst as an automatic version of Magnet. Instead of pressing a shortcut key to make a window snap to a certain area, Amethyst automatically tiles all windows on your desktop as you open and close different things. This is a somewhat common thing on Linux, and I’m a big fan of tiling window management systems. Amethyst gives me the tiling window experience on macOS. If you’re interested in an even more true-to-form window manager for macOS, check out yabai. I prefer yabai, but it isn’t compatible with my IT-managed MacBook Pro.
I’ve written about Meeter Pro before, and I’m still using it today. This is a great menu bar utility that pops up a notification that takes you to the virtual meeting in the calendar invite. This is definitely a “does one thing well” utility, and I really miss it if I don’t have it on my work computer. When it’s time for a meeting to start, Meeter Pro pops up a notification, and all I have to do is click the notification to launch the meeting — Meeter knows which app to open based on the meeting link. Simple but efficient!
Finally, I use Bartender to keep my menu bar tidy. I love how this little utility has grown over the years. It keeps things hidden unless I need to see them, and even when I need to find something that Bartender has hidden, it’s just a simple click away under the Bartender menu. This is truly one of the apps that I forget I have installed until I set up a new computer and wonder why it looks so cluttered.
I’m definitely at a point in my life now where I’m less inclined to try out new apps or tools just because they’re new. I’ve found a really good combination of apps that meet my needs and make me more efficient. I don’t see a reason to go looking for something else unless the current apps stop working for me. I’m really enjoying the innovation and collaboration I’m seeing between companies like 1Password, Fastmail, and Privacy, and I want to see more of that in the industry. Making online privacy and security so easy and approachable is a good thing!
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…
Consider two truths: (1) it’s usually easy to tell what the next step of a project is at the end of a working session, and (2) it can be incredibly hard to figure out what the next step is at the start of a working session. Part of the reason we can get entranced with our best work is that, once we get on a roll, it’s really easy to keep it up. Likewise, part of the reason we avoid our best work is that the colder the project is, the harder it is to get started.
Charlie shared this in Chapter 9 of Start Finishing before he went on to explain the idea of leaving yourself breadcrumbs (thanks, Hansel and Gretel) as a way to address this tension.
For me, it’s always been a core piece of the book but also how I now approach my work (well, try to). I recently shared this with Charlie along with my frustration that we didn’t have a blog post about it so he challenged me to write one. So here I am.
Like many of the concepts we share here at PF, the practice of leaving yourself breadcrumbs is a relatively simple one to apply and a powerful tool you can use to move your best work forward.
I found the power of it lies in three areas: 1) there are different times you might put this into practice, 2) the many (some surprising) benefits it brings, and 3) learning the art of leaving yourself effective crumb trails.
Here are the best times to leave yourself a crumb trail. (If you think of others, let me know in the comments!)
At the end of a focus block
As Charlie mentioned in Start Finishing, knowing your next step is easier at the end of a working session than the beginning. Yet, often we run out the clock (sometimes overrun the clock ) and jump right into our next thing. Breadcrumbs can ease the transition between working sessions. The key is intentionally leaving time at the end of a focus block to do so.
Trust me, I know how easy it is to fall into “but I just need to do ONE more thing!” (It’s never just one more thing and likely you won’t finish it in the next five to ten minutes anyway.) We think we’ll seamlessly pick up where we left off because it’s clear to us now. Because we won’t have that same clarity later, we’re better off stopping and leaving notes to come back to.
When you need to put a project on hold
It happens. You’re into a project and then plans or priorities change, new circumstances pop up, something happens that means you need to hit pause. Whether you know when or if you’ll be able to come back to your project, leaving yourself notes before you file it away will help ease the process. When you pick up the project again a week — or year — later, those notes will help you more easily dive back in.
And in the event it becomes a dropped project, your notes can serve as the After Action Review that might inform another project down the line. Either way, the act of capturing notes will allow you to set the project down to focus on the project that needs your attention now.
You have a “not yet active” project
The Five Projects Rule states “no more than five active projects per timescale”. But what do you do about those miscellaneous thoughts, ideas, and tasks that come to you related to a project you’re not actively working on but hope to in the future?
A client recently asked me what to do with character and plot points for novels she wants to write but simply doesn’t have capacity to work on right now. (The creative muse does not often follow the Five Projects Rule.) This is where breadcrumbs can be incredibly useful. The client created a folder where she stores the notes as they come to her and built a monthly routine to go in and sort through, connect pieces, and leave herself notes on where her characters might go next. Now when that novel project is ready to move into “active” she’ll have a great head start.
Before AND during vacation.
Breaks between work sessions are sometimes extended breaks with the intention of disconnecting from our work. During these times it’s especially beneficial to leave our future selves notes so we can pick up where we left off. But as Charlie has shared, your mind can have a hard time slowing down even when (maybe especially when) you’ve slowed down your physical pace.
Don’t fight it; plan for it. Have a space to drop these thoughts quickly and get back to your vacation. When you return to work, add these notes to the breadcrumbs you left yourself prior to vacation and smoothly transition back into work mode.
How often have you spent half (all?) of a focus block trying to retrace your steps? Trying to figure out where you saved that file? Or maybe most frustrating of all, spending your precious time, energy, and attention (TEA) redoing all that work you either forgot you did or can’t find? When done consistently and with intention, crumb trails can save you not just time but a lot of frustration, too.
Accelerates your path to Flow
You’ve built focus blocks into your schedule (hazzah!!) because you know they fuel your highest-value, deep work. But there’s a caveat here: you need to be able to get into that deep focus to move your project forward. If you spend too much time figuring out what you need to do or retracing your steps, you’ll find it really hard to get into that blissful state of flow where you tune everything else out and hone in on the work. Crumb trails guide you straight back to the work, which means you’ll be less likely to wander off the path, get distracted by something else, and get to the end of your focus block dissatisfied that you didn’t actually do what you intended to do.
Use your precious TEA on the work, not figuring out what the work is.
Be ready no matter your mode
We can’t always dictate the type of work we’ll be primed to do when we come to a focus block. As much as we can do to plan them around our typical energy cycles, sometimes we hit up against resistance and no matter the effort, we just can’t seem to make ourselves do the planned activity.
Making a practice of leaving yourself breadcrumbs gives you options.
Feeling creative? Open up that writing project and pick up where you left off.
In more of an intake vs. outtake mode? Grab that list of items you wanted to research and hit the books or one of those YouTube videos you’ve bookmarked.
Just need to do something but don’t have creative energy? Find one of those admin projects that you never seem to get around to, consult your notes to figure out the next steps, and get going.
See your projects from a new perspective
When you come back to your project (and breadcrumbs) fresh, whether that’s an hour or a month later, you may just see things you couldn’t while you were in it.
This is especially true when we take an extended break from our project like a vacation or longer. That time away can be a blessing, allowing us to come back to our project(s) with a clearer head and a lighter heart. We can more easily prioritize next steps and projects without worrying that we’ve forgotten something.
Put down the (mental) load
Our minds, our own personal supercomputers, don’t like open loops. So while you may have stopped working on your project, your brain has not.
While I can’t promise this practice will completely stop you from waking up at 3am trying to solve a problem, it will drastically reduce the occurrence. Leaving yourself crumb trails frees up your attention so that you can be more present for the other projects, people, and experiences in your lives. And it gives you the ability to come back to this project at an appropriate time (hopefully allowing you to sleep a little more soundly.)
Put your subconscious to work
Crumb trails not only reduce our conscious cognitive load, they also free our subconscious minds to work the problem, turning information over and looking for new connections.
When we create crumb trails we’re also leaving ourselves mental notes to come back to. We can rest easy now that the project is no longer front of mind taking up valuable processing space. That doesn’t mean our minds aren’t working in the background.
Those ideas that come in the shower or washing dishes? That’s the work of your subconscious.
Helps us see what needs to be deferred, delegated, or dropped
Capturing breadcrumbs forces us to think through our next steps. Doing so, we may find a blocker or new opportunity that could impact the project plan and timeline.
A crumbtrail may reveal a need for resources or another project standing in your way that require you to put the current one on hold (defer). Or maybe you’ve hit a roadblock you don’t have the capacity or capability to overcome, but you know someone who does (delegate). And sometimes, our breadcrumbs give us insight into projects that we’re holding on to because they serve a past version of who we are but don’t serve us today (consider dropping).
Now that we’ve covered when to leave yourself breadcrumbs, and why it’s a valuable practice, let’s talk about how to do it effectively.
Find your Goldilocks level of information
The amount of detail you’ll need to leave yourself will depend on two things: 1) what serves you, and 2) the length of time between work sessions.
We all have different thresholds for just how much information is helpful vs. overwhelming.
Speaking of “future you,” consider when in the future you might be picking this back up.
If you’re planning to come back later in the afternoon, a few quick bullets will suffice. But if you’re putting this down for the day or week (or longer) make sure you capture:
Make a habit of it
As I shared above, there are a lot of different times and uses for breadcrumbs. The more often you do it, the easier and more intuitive the practice becomes. Try adding it in as a regular feature of your day:
Experiment with different capture and storage methods
Breadcrumbs are only useful if you can find them when you need them. The method you use to capture them and where you store them may depend on the type of project you are working on.
But Maghan, what about those miscellaneous ideas and tasks that pop into my brain at random times? We’ve got you covered here too! Our Action Item Catcher (in PDF, and now a feature inside the Momentum app) allows you to get these out of your head and into a central place. Then when you have time, you can move these notes into your relevant project plan or project breadcrumb list.
Like I shared at the start: simple concept, powerful tool.
What’s one small way you’ll incorporate breadcrumbs into your day today? Future you will thank you!
The post Breadcrumbs: How to Find Your Way Back to Your Project appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Your department or college may be able to pay for your participation in ANY Professor Is In work, including our formal programs, as well as editing of your professionalization/job search/tenure documents. What follows is context and scripts for asking your department to fund your participation in Unstuck: The Art of Productivity and The Art of the Academic Article, and/or The Professor Is In Pre-Tenure Coaching Group, but you can use it to ask for any kind of professional development or program improvement support. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected] for more help!
****************************
Your department might pay for your enrollment in this course, and the only you will find out is to ask. Don’t be afraid. Department heads get requests for funding all of the time. There is nothing shameful about it. In fact, learning how to ask is great practice for the rest of your career.
The best way to loosen the departmental purse strings is to show the money is going to solve a problem the department head considers worth solving.
So what problem does the course solve?
You also have to show the stakes of not solving the problem.
Stating the problem and stakes is not enough. You also have to show why this particular thing you are asking to be funded will solve the problem.
***********
Here is an example email that you can use to approach your dean, department head or PI to make the request that the course be funded. NOTE: IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU DO NOT USE THESE EXAMPLES VERBATIM, AS WE HAVE THOUSANDS OF READERS AND CLIENTS, MANY IN THE SAME DEPARTMENTS. WE SUGGEST YOU SLIGHTLY REPHRASE THE MODELS BELOW IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
>Dear <administrator>
I have an opportunity to enroll in a coaching program designed for academics to
//produce a full draft of journal article in 10 weeks
//support my success on the tenure track
//help me complete my research and writing for tenure
>and I am requesting departmental support to cover the costs. The course is being offered by The Professor is In, a career services organizations with well-documented and unparalleled success since 2011 in assisting academics in all phases of their careers.
>The benefit of
// The Art of the Academic Article, over other programs, is not only the extensive experience of the two coaches offering guidance but also the ongoing access to the online material. I will be able to use the course material for not just this article, but all future ones as well.
//The Professor Is In Pre-Tenure Coaching Group is that it provides individualized, confidential small group coaching as I confront the challenges of mapping out a publication trajectory, establishing an effective writing schedule, managing a sustainable balance of research, teaching, and service, managing the demands of conferencing and networking, and grasping the elements of a successful tenure case (including the role of external reviewers) to support my success in that arduous process.
>As we have discussed,
//I have XX articles in progress that are necessary/would improve my third year review/tenure review/post doc production/chances of success on the job market. This course would assure that I produce xx articles in the next year. It also increases my chances of publication in the mostly highly ranked journals because it includes instruction on positioning both in terms of discipline and journal rank.
//I have an active research program underway, while also being dedicated to effective teaching and productive service to the department. This coaching program will give me the support of Dr. Karen Kelsky- who has not only been a dedicated academic development coach since 2011, but is also a former R1 department head who in that role mentored 5 junior faculty to tenure – and a small group of peers who can together serve as a sounding board for decisions I need to make about publishing strategies, writing timelines, teaching dilemmas, and work-life balance – to name just a few topics the group covers. The program will assure that I avoid common pitfalls and focus my time and effort most effectively toward eventual tenure success in a way that is *individualized* for our specific field, department and campus expectations.
>The next session of the course starts on XXXX. Please let me know if you are willing to support this effort and I will purchase and submit the receipt for reimbursement/contact accounting to arrange payment.
OR [another style of approach- adapt as you see fit!]
As we have discussed, one of the critical components of raising the profile of our department is to increase faculty publications and the quality of those publications. This course would assure that I produce xx articles in the next year. It also increases my chances of publication in the mostly highly ranked journals because it includes instruction on positioning both in terms of discipline and journal rank.
It is no secret that balancing research, service and teaching is a challenge for all junior faculty here at xx. With this course, I will have the resources to achieve the balance required for success. With your support, I will be able to avoid common problems like false starts, writer’s block, and perfectionism, while assuring I choose the best journals to target, and submit a draft to a strong journal in an efficient time frame.
The next session of the course starts on XXXX. Please let me know if you are willing to support this effort and I will purchase and submit the receipt for reimbursement/contact accounting to complete the registration/ xxx
The post How to Ask Your Department To Pay for Professor Is In Help appeared first on The Professor Is In.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I’ve spent the last few years working on a book about graduate writing. That process is now drawing to a close: Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be published in June! Between now and then, I’m going to use this space to share brief excerpts. In addition to my discussion of principles, strategies, and habits for effective academic writing, the book has short ‘asides’ that allowed me to engage with topics outside that main narrative. Over the next four months, I’ll share my favourites of those asides. As always, I’d love to hear what you think!
Looking Productive
Any discussion of productivity must consider the aesthetics of productivity. Could you be working in ways that you think look like what hard work should look like—starting early, avoiding breaks, denying yourself things—rather than in ways that you have found effective? A good approach to productivity must pass a real test: Does it make you more productive, in the sense of making you feel in charge and stimulated by your work? Don’t think of a midday walk as a guilty pleasure; think of it as crucial to the overall health of your embodied mind. Rather than finding it random that you have great ideas in the shower, build in ways to capture those ideas. If you are helped by napping, then a nap is probably a good idea. Mindfulness or meditation breaks may do far more for you than would just sticking with your task. Your goal is positive writing experiences, not the appearance of hard work. The greatest hazard of trying to appear productive is the push toward long days; those sorts of writing endurance tests can be inhospitable to writing because writing is often too draining to be an all-day thing. Recognizing and respecting your limits might make you look less productive while nonetheless allowing you to build a sustainable and satisfying writing routine.
Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be available in early June from the University of Michigan Press. To pre-order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!
rcayley
Book Cover showing title: Thriving as a Graduate Writer
I’m equal parts excited and trepidatious to announce that I’ve started a new publication on Substack called Better Team Habits. As I mentioned in my first post there, the intent is to create a more focused and fresh space for content and conversations about teamwork, leadership, strategy execution, and organizational dynamics.
I’ve long resisted separating team topics and conversations from individual topics and conversations. Since the early days of Productive Flourishing, it’s been a both/and conversation in my mind. Since most people work in teams and many of our readers start as or inevitably end up in leadership and management positions, it’s made the most sense (to me) to keep it as one global conversation.
A few different forces came into play that prompted me to think harder and make the different and harder choice to split the spaces:
I often say “When in doubt, choose the simpler option.”
The far simpler option compared to all that repositioning, shoehorning, rebuilding, and segmenting was to let Productive Flourishing be what it’s become — a site that helps creative types thrive in their individual work and lives by focusing on foundations — and to build another space focused on thriving with and in your team.
In another post, I’ll talk about why I chose Substack over some of the other options, but as soon as I made the decision that this was the next step, I felt a relief I hadn’t felt since 2015. I don’t have to hold back in either space. I can go full-in to my body of work in the team, leadership, and org space on Better Team Habits and I can go full-in to my body of work in personal foundations here.
Better Team Habits is new and doesn’t yet have much content. Between the book, content from here that I’ll revise, and what’s coming up from my fieldwork every day, I have a lot I’m looking forward to sharing. If you like watching things evolve and don’t want to feel like you’re catching up, you can join the journey now.
And, as far as what’s going to change here on PF, expect more resources that will help knowledge workers, creators, and entrepreneurs do their best work. PF has always served the creative class and we’re going to get better at doing that.
It’s too early to tell how it’s all going to work out and whether I’ll wish I had done this a long time ago or if I’ll wish I’d never done it. But I’m most engaged when I’m actually exploring and figuring it out rather than wondering, hedging, and holding back. So it’s time to experiment. And I’ll be sharing what I’m learning along the way here and on Better Team Habits.
The post Launching Better Team Habits on Substack appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
Much like the mid-month review is a great time to assess progress and reconfigure your plans for the remaining weeks of the month, doing a mid-week reassessment has many of the same benefits for the remainder of your week.
Let’s say you made your weekly plan as you closed out last week. Or perhaps you did your planning first thing Monday.
But now it’s Wednesday morning (or maybe Tuesday evening), and you’re starting to get that feeling: I’m behind, I’m not going to get all this done, I haven’t gotten to my important projects yet, and the days are getting away from me…
That exact moment is a great time to see how you’re doing with your projects, observe what else popped up in the first couple days of the week, and determine what you might need to do to reassess and redistribute your projects. (Real-life examples of emergent projects might be: enduring a stomach bug, dealing with a visiting sister whose return travel was delayed, or multiple Slack tag-ins requiring your attention.)
You may already know that because of everything else going on, those lovely focus blocks you’d set aside Monday and Tuesday for moving your top two or three projects forward got eaten up. Now you’re looking at the remaining three days of the week and wondering how you’re going to get everything on your weekly plan done.
First hard truth: you probably aren’t. At least not without some extra hours, Dunkirk spirit, or pushing yourself beyond your regular limits. Which may be necessary once in a while, but in the long term is a recipe for burnout.
So instead of just buckling down and “doing more,” now’s the time to reassess and replan your week.
Step 1: Review your week. Here’s a quick list of questions you can ask yourself as you’re reviewing your previous weekly plan and retooling it for the days you have remaining:
Step 2: Revise your plan. Now that you’ve taken stock of what has happened so far, you can look forward and make any necessary revisions to your weekly plan.
1⃣What needs to get done first? Remember first in priority doesn’t always mean first in sequence.
Step 3: Renegotiate. Chances are there is going to be some level of negotiation (with yourself or others) needed in order to clear space in your schedule.
For the projects or tasks that need to get deferred, remember to leave yourself breadcrumbs (be kind to your future self). Leave yourself notes that will help you easily get back into the work later without spending time figuring out what you were doing, where you were, or why you were doing it in the first place.
Didn’t do your weekly plan yet? Then today’s the perfect day to create one. This way you’ll make sure you’re not running around the next three days chasing the urgent and missing the important.
Both Wednesday morning and Tuesday evening are good opportunities to do your weekly reassessment. Reinstitute your 10/15 split, do your check-out or check-in, and use that time to reconfigure the rest of your week to make sure your priority projects are getting the love they need.
And lastly, if your plans change, don’t beat yourself up. As Charlie says, that’s the nature of planning: if you’re planning effectively, you’ll always be changing your plans.
The post Reboot Your Week with a Mid-Week Reassessment appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
I’ve noticed that so many of us are incredibly focused on getting stuff done. Productivity systems and tools, anxiety about being behind on all the things we have to do, a complete focus on all the stuff to do, at the exclusion of all else …
But here’s the thing: if you ever get really really good at executing and getting stuff done … you realize that it’s an empty, meaningless game. I’m a testimony to that — I’m very good at getting things done. And I can absolutely crush my task list for months on end. And at the end of all of that, I still don’t feel much more satisfied.
There’s some satisfaction in getting a bunch of things done, but that’s not what really drives us. What drives us is fear — fear of what will happen if we fall too far behind, if we drop all the balls we have in the air, if we can’t get a sense of self-worth through accomplishment. Our fear is really about what it will mean about ourselves if we don’t get stuff done.
That fear never goes away, no matter how much you get done. It’s like a sex addict who has a ton of sex, and still doesn’t feel fulfilled, and has to go get more. We’re addicts who are never fulfilled.
What would happen if we decided not to play that game? If we could set aside for a moment the fears that drive us, the hope that we’ll ever finish everything, the hope that we’ll somehow get a feeling of being good enough if we are good at getting things done?
What’s beyond all of that?
I don’t know the answer, but here’s what I’m finding:
Those are a few observations I’ve found in the space beyond getting stuff done. What might you find there?
The post Beyond Getting Stuff Done appeared first on zen habits.
By Leo Babauta
I’ve noticed that most people (myself often included) make complicated task and organizational systems. Today I’d like to talk about why and how to simplify that.
Task systems that are overcomplicated require a lot of overhead work — if you have to spend a lot of time organizing and going through your system, you’re spending time on the system that could be spend doing something more meaningful.
Having better productivity systems doesn’t make us more productive. Actually being able to do the hard stuff isn’t down to the system — it’s down to your ability to face uncertainty and resistance. And that’s something you can train in — but it won’t be found in a productivity system.
Having better organizational or note-taking systems doesn’t make us more organized. It is busywork to distract us. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Why do we spend so much time figuring out our systems and making them so complicated? It’s simply fear. We’re overwhelmed and afraid we can’t handle it all. We think if we get a better system it’ll be the answer we need to start crushing things. We are afraid of dropping one of the many balls we have in the air. It’s simply fear, and everyone has it.
What I’m going to share here is a simple system — it’s not meant to be the perfect system, or the one you have to adopt to start crushing things. It’s meant to be a simple model that can show how simple things can be.
But perhaps more important is the mental view of tasks that underlies this simple system. I’ll talk about that as well. And then I’ll get to the most common obstacles or objections to this kind of simplicity.
Here’s the system: make a single list of your tasks. One List. Put everything you have to do here. Each day, pick some things from that One List to focus on.
That’s the system.
Go through your emails, and for each one that’s been sitting there, add a task to the One List. Star the email and archive it so it’s out of your inbox. Repeat until your inbox is empty. Do the same with messages you haven’t responded to because they contain a task or decision. Emails and message apps aren’t meant to store your tasks.
Maybe you have a bunch of things on your computer desktop. Go through those and put them on the One List.
Go through your Ten Thousand Browser Tabs and take the tasks each one represents, put it on your One List, and bookmark and close the tab.
OK, now you have One List. Things should be a lot simpler (some possible additions are below in the last section). There’s a good chance you’re feeling overwhelmed. That means we need to talk about the underlying mental model of this One List simple system.
The reason why a long list is overwhelming is because underneath the task list is a view: 1) we think this is a list that we need to finish; and 2) we fear that if we can’t finish it or at least stay on top of it, we will be inadequate in some way. We base our self-worth and safety on whether we can finish this list … but it’s too long to finish! In fact, a task list will never be done, even when you die.
This is an unhelpful mental model that produces stress and overwhelm.
Instead, I propose a different view: Tasks are options that we can use as we create the art of our lives.
Imagine you have a big palette of paints, and you get to use them to paint your art on a canvas. You don’t feel like you need to finish all the paints on the palette, right? It’s not a matter of getting them all done so you can avoid feeling inadequate.
Instead, the paints are your supplies for making art. They’re things you can dip your brush into, to create the art of your life.
You can have fun with your art. You can fully express yourself and the deepest truth of yourself. It’s a whole different game.
Just having One List is perhaps too simple for people, so let’s take a look at some possible modifications based on questions you might have …
Q: The list is too long, how do I find focus?
A: Have a shorter Today list. Pick things from the One List and put it on the Today list. Do that at the end of each day for tomorrow, so you can start your day with a plan already done.
Q: How do I choose what to focus on each day?
A: If you’re struggling to decide what to put on your Today list … you might be struggling with uncertainty. This can cause a lot of people to get stuck, because if you don’t know … then what? I would encourage you to stay for a minute in this stuckness, in the “I don’t know,” in the uncertainty. The answers will come to you if you sit in the not knowing for a minute or two. It’s good to create a daily ritual where you create your Today list for the next day … and in that ritual, allow yourself to sit for a moment to get some clarity on what to add to the list. And as you create the list … allow it to be like creating art out of your life!
Q: I never end up finishing my Today list, what can I do?
A: If you are creating art and you don’t finish it … what do you do? You might continue to work on it tomorrow. Or abandon it and start afresh! Or incorporate some of it in your next art piece. But not finishing it isn’t a problem. It’s just a part of the process.
Q: What about meetings, calls, appointments?
A: I like to put those on a calendar instead of a task list. So the calendar can be a part of the simple system. I check my calendar the evening before to see what I have coming up, and again in the morning.
Q: What if I want to have all my financial tasks in one place, all my calls in another, all my errands in another, etc etc?
A: That’s fine! One List is just an example. If you want to have One List for your main work tasks, but another list for your finances and administrative tasks that you do on certain days, go for it. Just keep it fairly simple.
Q: What if I find myself dropping tasks and feeling disorganized?
A: If you were painting a huge canvas, and you kept forgetting to paint certain parts of it … what would you do? Probably you’d set aside some time to paint those parts, if they’re important. Sometimes they’re not important, so you don’t set aside the time. So you can decide how to work with that. The bigger problem is the feeling of being disorganized. This is simply a feeling. It’s a feeling of chaos, of change, of not having everything in perfect order. Can you create art with that feeling?
The post We Overcomplicate Our Task Systems appeared first on zen habits.
Most daily stand-up meetings make whatever they’re trying to solve worse as a result of eating up team time and focus.
First, let’s look at real meeting math. The daily stand-up isn’t just the 15-30 minutes of the stand-up — when we talk about meetings, we also need to include the prep, post, and slack time. That stand-up meeting eats up at least one hour of teammate time — so if you have five teammates, that’s at least 5 hours of team time.
Five hours of team time per day per week adds up; given that the average knowledge worker makes ~$30 per hour, that’s $3,000 per month in wages for just this meeting, for five people.
Should you still decide to do daily stand-ups, despite knowing this, here’s what not to do:
Here’s what TO do:
As I write in Team Habits, most bad or counterproductive meetings are a result of other poor team habits. If your team’s habits around decision-making, prioritization, and collaboration aren’t working, you’ll end up having a lot of crutch meetings to address those issues.
But crutch meetings cost your team’s most precious resources: their time and their attention.
This means that often, the best way to fix bad meeting culture isn’t just to work on improving meetings, and adding new ones. It’s by starting with the root issue with your team habits, that is, working on decision-making, planning, communication, so that the endless unproductive meetings won’t need to keep happening.
I’ll turn it over to you: if you’re doing daily stand-ups, what are the root challenges or (bad) team habits that are creating the need for the daily stand-ups?
The post Does Your Team Really Need a Daily Stand-Up Meeting? appeared first on Productive Flourishing.
As a chronic maximizer, here are a few reminders that I need from time to time.
Having breathing room — a little bit left over — is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it’s preferred.
In a nut, I’d rather go big on a few really special things by doing less on everything else.
FreshRSS 