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 the new Nozbe.
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 the new Nozbe.
Today is Friday so it’s time for my weekly review and personal development time. I spent it watching some videos from SaaStr YouTube Channel and I found a video by Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Engine where he talked about his journey to $100M. The last part of the video was particularly interesting as he talked about how to find out if you and everyone on your team are working on the right thing. It’s the intersection of JOY, SKILL and NEED of the company and it looks like this:
A few weeks back Derek Sivers wrote why he prefers writing everything in plain text. I totally agree with him, but I’d take it one step further - I write everything in plain text and in Markdown - and you should write like this, too! Here’s why:
Normally on this blog I’m not writing much about details of my app, Nozbe. I write about lessons learned in business, life and the like, but hardly about the particular features of Nozbe app… however when a feature helps me become a better CEO, I think it deserves a highlight. Let me explain why I hate asking people for status updates and why the “Activity” view in Nozbe helps me stay on top of things without doing any kind of asking.
I’m a big fan of Seth Godin and his podcast, Akimbo. In one of the recent episodes, he explained that if something needs improving, we very often tend to say we’ll do it next time, when we should really suck it up, and do it this time. Make the change now, this time, and reap the benefits of the change from now on. Here’s how I see it:
Derek Sivers in his book “Anything You Want” coined the term: Hell yes, or no!. This basically means that if a decision is not an instant, exciting yes for you, it should be a no. Turns out my 4-year old daughter, Liliana, already gets it. She applies a very similar rule: I don’t love it.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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: