I liked this post’s rules of thumbs for when to avoid scheduling meetings at work: Before calling a meeting, ask yourself: What’s the goal? If it’s just to convey information—like a status update—then yes, this meeting can (and should) be an email. Meetings should be dialogues, not monologues. If all you’re doing is delivering information that doesn’t require back-and-forth discussion, spare your team the calendar block and just send an email. ...
I like this emphasis on the impact of health on productivity: Biological health is upstream of mental health and mental health is upstream of productivity. Adding to this, I believe engaging in physical activities and working on improving one’s fitness has tremendous effect on productivity in long term. I play tennis regularly, the fact that I make progress in the court and I improve and become a better amateur player increases my confidence in me. I can later use that boost of confidence in my work and personal life. ...
A few days ago a question was asked on Hackernews on how slow thinkers compensate for their lack of quick-wittedness . Some people have responded that preparation is key: Sometimes what people think is quickness is actually extensive prep. I had a 30 minute meeting the other day to ask a team to do something I didn’t think they would want to do. It ended up going really smoothly and they just took my word for it, but had they not, I spend several hours preparing for that meeting, gathering data, preparing charts to illustrate the data, thinking of the possible objections and responses to said objections. ...
If you’re into either Alfred or Raycast , Josh has a nice comparison of these tools from his experience using them: … for me, in the era of paid subscription software overtaking everything, I don’t need yet another $8–10/month siphon on my bank account. By the time you’ve paid for Raycast Pro for a year, you could’ve paid for Alfred for a lifetime. I absolutely agree. Due to Alfred being a one-time purchase and its wonderful speed and performance, I tend to agree with Josh that: ...
TLDR: Here is a simplified diagram of how I keep reading articles, books, and other materials without overwhelming myself or having a never-ending pile of to-read items. In this blog post, I will go into the details of each part of the workflow, the tools I currently use, the alternatives I have tried, why they work for me, and what I can improve in the process. Feel free to use the above table of contents to jump to the section that is more interesting to you. ...
Alfred has definitely boosted my productivity since I started using it almost a year ago. Sharing some fragments of my experience using Alfred with a few friends and colleagues made me realize I need to write down a summary of what I find helpful on Alfred, so I can share it with people in future when needed. What’s Alfred Alfred is an app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac. ...
Recently, I decided to switch my primary password manager to 1Password , using it across my Macbooks and Pixel phones on various browsers, including Firefox and Chrome. One bonus feature that I particularly enjoy is its compatibility with Alfred , an app that helps me be more productive on my Mac. However, the transition was not all smooth sailing. When I transferred my passwords from Firefox and Chrome into 1Password, a couple of things didn’t go quite right. I ended up with: ...
I keep hearing from people that they find it difficult to keep track of what needs to be done. Every one of us has a list of different things to remember, work on, and accomplish. This list includes not only the very well-defined tasks that we call work, but also any Slack messages and emails that we have to reply to, documents that we have to read and review, and vacation time that we need to submit. ...
I use Google Docs every day at work to communicate with various groups of people. It’s a very effortless tool to start writing and share the output with whoever I want once I’m finished. But it definitely lacks a few critical features that hinder my productivity. What I like: Convenience and Collaboration Google Docs makes it easy to write and share documents with others and to invite them to review and collaborate. ...