I’ve been helping small business owners and their teams maintain a work-life balance since 2007. I work from home, I don’t email my team, we have few meetings and I don’t work on Fridays!
My projects: ✅Nozbe to-do app and 📖#NoOffice book
Side projects: 🖋Journal, 🎲Dice, ▶️YouTube watcher and 🇺🇦FCKPTN
⭐️ Featured article:
🗓 ⭐️ 2024 review - downsizing and regrouping
Last year was my most difficult year as an entrepreneur. I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom but… luckily managed to bounce back. Hopefully now the only way is up and to the right! But yeah, 2024 was something else… that’s why I procrastinated writing this summary, my 11th one and published it only now, at the end of March, when we’re already 3 months in 2025… This will be my most candid yearly summary yet… hopefully this much transparency will serve other struggling entrepreneurs:
Topics on my blog:
Latest articles and posts:
💌 Why less is more in productivity?
What is the greatest obstacle for any product, system or task? How to avoid overworking and sabotaging your efforts? Get the best tips to cutting the clutter and simply getting things done:
🎙 🎬 No Office FM #72: The Shocking Truth: Simplicity Beats All the Fancy Features
This time on the podcast we’re discussing one of our CORE values: Simplicity and how it affects our work, the way we design the app and how hard it really is to pull it off!
🎧 The Podcast 217 - Immature business decisions in 18 years of Nozbe
AI co-hosts have a great discussion about my essay celebrating 18 years of Nozbe - immature business decisions. They manage to catch the essence of what I was trying to convey - enjoy!
🕹️ ✈️ 3 BIG problems of Peak Design’s Roller Pro - weight, size and price
I’m a big fan of Peak Design and I have ordered their Everyday Zip Backpack 15L (Amazon link) as my go-to backpack for travel. And before that I ordered their Outdoor Backpack 25L as my new default backpack (Amazon link). What I didn’t order is their latest invention - the carry-on luggage Roller Pro despite looking very cool:
💌 Remote Work Hacks: Fighting the ‘Dark Side’ of #NoOffice
Remote work offers many benefits BUT it comes with some challenges that can make it difficult to stay productive and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Problems like:
🏠 💻 Perfect Recording Studio in my Home Office 2025
Now that I’ve finished setting up My new Home Office for 2025 I’m starting to appreciate the tweaks and improvements that lead to making it my best “recording studio” ever. It’s an improvement to the Streaming setup from 2021 and most gear stayed the same, but with the new things that came in and much better light management this makes the overall result amazing:
🎙 🎬 No Office FM #71: Remote Work Hacks
We discuss a series of hacks that you can use to make your #NoOffice experience better. How you can work from home and finally get the lifestyle you want while still benefiting from a focused and productive environment.
🔗 Photo Info - quickly manipulate photos on iOS and Mac
On my #iPadOnly journey I keep making lots of Shortcuts to improve my work on the iPad. Sometimes I need to manipulate images or photos. Here’s a handy Shortcut for it:
🕹️ ✈️ Is Peak Design Everyday Zip 15L an ideal small backpack for airplanes?
In Europe, most airlines, especially Ryanair, Easyjet and Wizzair, let you have a free small bag which you can put under a seat. The dimensions are more-less 40cm of height (16 inches), 25-30cm of width (10-12 inches) and 20cm of bulk (8 inches). Most of my backpacks are between 20-26L and they are just too big. Normally I’d get away with it, but recently the airlines started paying more attention to these bags’ sizes. So I checked if my favorite bag/pouches company Peak Design had anything that would work and I think I found it. It’s Everyday Backpack Zip 15L (Amazon link).
🏠 ⭐️ Home Office 2025 upgraded with Mac Mini, Prompter and more!
After a longer stint with my home office (only with minor changes since 2022) it was time for some major re-modeling. I started with moving furniture around but then I upgraded basically everything: cables, Mac, teleprompter and much more. So stay tuned for my best home office yet!
💻 How to put iCloud Photos and Dropbox on an external SSD
I’m in the middle of renovating my home office for 2025 and this time it’s not only about moving some furniture around but also upgrading some hardware. I’ve retired my trusty M1 MacBook Air and bought an almost-base M4 Mac Mini to which I connected an external 4TB SSD drive for storing both all the photos and all of my Dropbox files. Here’s how:
🎙 🎬 No Office FM #70: Remote Work Banned – Because Workers Are Just Napping?
Why companies ditch hybrid work? Are there any data-based reasons to back up this decision? Are CEO’s too emotional and employees simply cheating when working from home? In today’s episode, we tackle one of the most controversial workplace topics: the return-to-office (RTO) mandate. Does this policy make objective sense or is it simply nostalgia of certain CEOs?
🎙 🎬 No Office FM #58: Immature Business Decisions
I’ve been running Nozbe for the last 18 years and very often I made business decisions that were against the “common business sense”, yet they’ve benefited me tremendously. Here are some examples where I just followed my gut and succeeded.
✅ 💼 ⭐️ How my immature decisions led me to celebrating 18 years of my productivity business?
Nozbe - the productivity app that I founded back in February of 2007 is celebrating 18 years in business. To commemorate the occasion, we bid and won the cover of iMagazine (see below) as all the proceeds from this auction went to charity. So… my Nozbe app is now mature. However, as I’ve been preparing today for this Wednesday’s celebratory recording of the NoOffice FM Podcast, I’ve realized that I’ve been making some very immature decisions on my way to getting here:
📝 On February 1 `25 I am…
…I’m celebrating 18 years of Nozbe on a weekend with my wife, as we plan our year. I’m so blessed!
🐘 Follow me on Mastodon or see what I’m up to now
Hi, I’m Michael Sliwinski, the host of this site. Are you a fellow small business owner? Make sure to give Nozbe a try - my app will help you and your team get your professional and private life organized in a simple way. It’s FREE and you’ll get a bonus of $15 for Premium version by signing up below:
