Productivity-related topics. How I hack my life, do things better, faster and most of all, create long-lasting habits. I’m a constant productivity student. Now focused mostly on team productivity with the recent launch of Nozbe Teams.
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📲 ☑️ My new minimalist iPhone 12 Mini Home Screen for 2020
Now after I’ve posted the details of my iPad Pro 11” home screen it’s time to share the Home Screen of my cute iPhone 12 Mini. As I was doing my annual review I decided to also simplify and reduce the number of apps on my iPhone’s screen as well as embrace the two things iOS14 was all about - the widgets and the app directory. Here’s the result:
📱 ☑️ Updated and simplified list of iPad apps that help me work #iPadOnly and get lots done on my iPad Pro 11”
About three years ago I posted a detailed screenshot of my iPad Home Screen with the list of apps I use that help me work #iPadOnly using iPad Pro 11” as my main computing device. That list hasn’t changed much over the years. Now that we’re entering 2021 I’ve decided to re-think and simplify my app setup. I hope this inspires you to set up your iPad as a more serious computing device that you can carry anywhere.
📱 📲 ☑️ Simplify journaling, daily planning and time tracking with just one Siri Shortcut and iA Writer
I like journaling daily. I like planning my next day in the evening. I like tracking how my day is going and what I spend my time on. Yes, I care about all these things and to make sure I do them consistently I prepared a Siri Shortcut (iOS only, sorry!) that helps me do just that! I hope you’ll also find it useful:
☑️ 🎥 Subscribe to my Team Productivity Show as an audio podcast!
Just yesterday I posted a 9th episode of the Team Productivity Show which up until now was only available on YouTube. Now you can enjoy all of the 9 past episodes in an audio form - just subscribe to it as a podcast.
✅ ☑️ 🎬 Live demo walkthrough of Nozbe Teams - how to do GTD in teams?
On my last webinar about working differently I did something crazy and performed a live demo of Nozbe Teams and turns out it went pretty great. It’s only 20 minutes and it shows clearly how easy it is to invite people to a team, create projects, add tasks and delegate them, and just make sure you know what’s going on in your team. Check it out:
☑️ Once a week to create a long-lasting habit
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.
☑️ My new journaling routine for 2020 using Shortcuts on iPad or iPhone
I’ve been keeping a semi-regular journal for the past few years and every now and then I’m tweaking the way I approach it. In 2016 I posted why it’s important for me to journal regularly and who inspired me to do that. In 2018 I posted my updated workflows for journaling and planning the day with additional apps I was using - Ulysses, Bear, etc. Later I introduced the concept of intermittent journaling with updated workflows. For 2020 and iOS13 I decided to review and simplify all of this and now I write both my journal and daily planning in Bear app using only three Shortcuts in iOS - here are the details:
☑️ 🗓 2019 review - a transition year…
Hello in 2020! So… instead of saying that “hindsight is 20/20” we can say that the future is twenty-twenty! Does it mean, I have a “perfect vision” for this upcoming year - well, maybe… but now let’s focus on reviewing 2019 as it was a very transitional year for me:
☑️ 👨🏼💻 I challenge you to simplify your life in 2020
In the January isssue of iMagazine - the leading Polish lifestyle magazine I wrote a column challenging people to simplify their stuff (and the way they’re doing things) in 2020 - to make this year a year of simplifications and reducing the barriers of entry to things they want to be doing more of… to basically simplify in order to create good, meaningful habits.
Get iMagazine 01/2020 and read my column (in Polish)
☑️ Pre-deciding is the key to success.
Decision fatigue is real. It means that the quality of our decisions deteriorates as the days go by. We make better decisions in the morning when we’re rested… but by the end of the day we make worse decisions. So the key is to make most important decisions in the morning… and to reduce the number of decisions we make every day - and that’s where the concept of “pre-deciding” comes into play:
🤩 ☑️ Productivity technology and more at the Productivity Summit 2019
I’m very excited to be participating at the end of this week live at the “Productivity Summit 2019” virtual conference - and unlike Business Systems Summit, this one is not pre-recorded but it will be done live via Zoom, so make sure to sign up.
📖 ☑️ Why reading the same book again (or several times in life) is OK
I just maxed out my limit of audiobooks for this year’s Audible subscription and I still haven’t read all of the ones I purchased, but recently I decided to re-read some of the old books I already read before. Why would I do that?
☑️ 📲 My new smartphone - iPhone SE - why I’m voluntarily switching to the slowest smartphone possible.
I’ve owned every iPhone in the history of mankind… or more like in the history of smartphones… and for many years I’ve been upgrading to the latest and the greatest every year… and now that iOS13 is about to ship and the new iPhone 11 is about to be launched… I’m gradually switching to the smallest and slowest iPhone there is - the iPhone SE - here’s why:
☑️ Emailing like texting - how to get back to inbox zero and make every email a GTD “2-minute rule”
In the last years I had some serious problems replying to emails from people. Internally we don’t use email at Nozbe, but people from the outside had serious problems emailing me - either because I was throwing my assistant at them, or because I really took lots of time (weeks or even months!) to reply. This all changed last month by introducing a new way of dealing with email - “emailing like texting” which I introduced inspired by Katie’s article from Buzzfeed. Now my email inbox is at zero most of the days and I don’t need an assistant as much as I used to. Here’s how it works:
☑️ 😎 Focusing on the WHEN and not the HOW…
Today I’m at a catholic families retreat with fellow friends and we’ve been discussing (among other things) our problems with regular prayer. Or “meeting with God”, or better yet: “meeting with dad” (like someone would call Him). And one of my friends said something that struck me - that his biggest obstacle to praying well is focusing too much on HOW (which prayer, which bible excerpt…) instead of just setting aside the time to do it - the WHEN… and I found it fascinating as it clearly applies not only to prayer, but to most aspects of our lives.
☑️ 🎾 No Ironman - how I blew my dream because I was… late
Yesterday evening at 9:30pm I was rushing in my car loaded with an amazing triathlon bike and all the gear ready to put everything in the transition area before my first ever Ironman race… It was my dream come true - I was about to become an Ironman in my home town of Gdynia, right when I turned 40. It was going to be great!… I was driving fast as they’d close the area at 10 pm. “I’ll make it! I always do!” I thought. Yet again I was doing stuff at the last minute, but as a person who always gets away with this, I was fine. There was still time, right? Wrong. When I got there I realized I was too late. Yes, they were closing the transition area at 10pm and I arrived just before that… but I failed to pick up my starting number and this had to be done before 8pm. And there was nothing to be done. Without a starting number I couldn’t participate in the race. I couldn’t leave my bike in the transition area…
This time I didn’t make it. This time I was really late. This time I really blew it.
I was standing there with the bike and the gear, completely ashamed and disappointed… and was replaying the events of this day over and over in my head trying to realize what just happened. I couldn’t understand how I got to this point where the race will take place and I won’t be in it. And it all looked so promising…
☑️ After 10 years, GTD Summit is back!
It’s been 10 years since the “father of GTD”, David Allen - the author of the best-selling book “Getting Things Gone - the art of stress-free productivity” (Amazon or Audible), organized a conference dedicated to being productive - the GTD Summit. I was there last time (in 2009 in San Francisco, USA) and I’m here this time (Amsterdam, The Netherlands in Europe) and I can’t wait to meet my fellow over-achievers here.
☑️ Challenge: social media sabbatical for a month
Yesterday with Radek we recorded the 184th episode of “The Podcast” where we’ll be discussing Cal Newport’s new book - Digital Minimalism (Amazon or Audible) - and the episode will air next week… but while recording Radek challenged me to do a fully-blown social media sabbatical (Twitter/Instagram/Facebook) for the next 30 days. No Twitter. No Instagram. No Facebook. No Social Media. And I accepted it! Here are the rules:
📖 ☑️ 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity book now available in Traditional Chinese!
After I’ve initially published my video course, 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity, I decided to self-publish a book inspired by the course. I went ahead and did that in Polish my mother tongue first, then in English for the entire world to read and now in Traditinal Chinese on Taiwan. Yes, Chinese version of my book, officially published by a major publisher on Taiwan - here’s how it happened and why I’m so psyched about it:
☑️ 📱 How intermittent journaling and some smart Siri shortcuts help me enjoy more intentional and productive days
I love journaling. I’ve blogged about it in the past and the same rules basically apply today. I’ve also been more conscious about planning my days and I’ve also blogged about my workflows for it in the past. Today I’ll be joining both concepts together, with my up-to-date workflows (Siri shortcuts) and a new concept I’ve been trying lately - intermittent journaling. Here goes: