Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for business owners and their teams. I write essays, books, work on projects and I podcast for you using #iPadOnly in #NoOffice as I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do.
I’ve had a personal blog since 2008 using different domains. Here’s where I share all my stories regarding blogging, platforms and writing itself.
When I was doing the migration from my old blog at sliwinski.com to this one, I wanted to make sure this one loads fast also on mobile phones. So I painstakingly compressed all of the images using a free(ish) service called Tinify. I wanted to both have cookie and eat it, so have lower file sizes AND great quality. I automated it using Shortcuts and each image was reduced by between 70%-30% of the original one without visible loss of quality. Here’s how I did it (and no, they are not a sponsor, I just recommend them because I like them).
About two years ago, I decided to stop posting regularly on Facebook and Instagram and I announced it with a very dark avatar which I later uploaded to all my social media profiles. Recently as I started posting more regularly both here on this blog as well as on my LinkedIn page, I decided to update the avatar and go for my favorite color - blue, I hope you like it:
Ever since I set up this new site I wanted to migrate all of the content from my previous personal blog to here. Finally it’s done. All blog posts from way back in 2008 to today are migrated, reviewed and tagged and available for you and me to enjoy. Boy, it was a long and time-intensive journey and here’s how it went down:
One of my best personal decisions of the pandemic-driven 2020 was to finally migrate my old blog from Sliwinski.com to this. To Michael.team. And not only because I have a new, shorter domain, but mostly because it’s a different technology stack and I can completely control it. I wrote about the transition here. As in Nozbe I hire brilliant programmers, I don’t code the app anymore. But I still like using programming languages to build something out of nothing and for this purpose, this blog is my place to do that.Last weekend I decided to get back to coding and built some long-overdue features like “next post”, “previous post” and “related posts”. It was so much fun! Read on, if you’re a programming geek like me:
Today I’d like to remind myself and you that to start a good habit of doing something consistently you should commit to doing it just once a week. And for best results, same day every week. This helped me start running and eventually doing triathlons. This will hopefully help me blog more regularly and reply to emails. From now on I’m committed to writing a new blog post every week on a Thursday and reviewing all my email backlog every week on a Friday. Details below.
One of my favorite parts of this new blog project is re-learning new/old technologies. At Nozbe I don’t code anymore but programming still brings me joy so over here I get to learn modern JavaScript and CSS and HTML5 again. It’s cool to discover that most modern browsers support the latest technologies and it’s also exciting to see how the web conventions have developed over the years. Today let’s talk about styles, CSS and Sass.
Today is the day when I’m finally launching my new home page. I know, who cares about a “home page” anymore in 2020? Well, I do, and below I’m going to explain to you, why I do care so much about it. Anyway, new blog, new address, new technology, lots of new things. Here are the details:
On the first day of this year I wrote about my best nine IG photos. I really liked how the photos turned out so I decided to report on them and describe them briefly on this blog… and when I wrote and published the post I was happy that I’ve done just that… but I wasn’t quite happy how it turned out. Now I know why:
I’ve always struggled to blog consistently. And in May I just posted 1 (yes: one) blog post. And it’s not like I didn’t have things to post about. I’ve always had a whole backlog of drafts, recordings, etc. So I set my goal for June: post every weekday. And I can write with pride that I managed to pull that off. And I keep posting. Check my archives. Here’s how I did it (one step/post at a time):
One of the main goals this year for me is to make this blog my main platform for publishing my productivity-related content for you. Given that now I’m the CEO of two companies (Nozbe and Remag) and still the editor in chief of Productive! Magazine, it’s not like I have more time… but I do have more to say and I want to serve you - my readers - better. And I want to communicate with you and be in touch with you better. That’s why as of today I’m introducing three new exciting changes to my blog… and they all start with an “S”, ssso here goes:
