Are we done pretending we're okay?
Choose wisely and choose few
Hello there!
Congratulations on surviving the lockdown with some of your sanity intact. You probably snapped at someone this week or threw a tantrum. It’s okay. I threw five but hey who’s counting?
From friends who have confessed to sulkily throwing all their tea away because it didn’t taste ‘good enough’ to those who preferred to stay mad at themselves for running out of supplies instead of choosing to then order some supplies; we are all having a hard time.
And anyone who isn’t, is either pretending or should immediately displace me as the author of this productivity newsletter.
PS: If things are much worse than just a tantrum, please talk to a mental health counsellor. We all need help from time to time.
Here’s a list to help you organise ‘something’ because covid-knows we can’t control everything
So here’s list I’ve received from various folks who live incredibly busy lives and have been trying to find a way to Marie Kondo their days into submission.
If only I could throw away every work-task that didn’t ‘spark joy’.
I haven’t tried every single tool listed here. I was busy with my five tantrums this week.
So let me know what worked for you, if you try any of these. I’m not including the more obvious ones like Slack.
Scheduling meetings with folks outside your organisation
Who here has sent out those ‘three possible slots’ for a meeting and then had the other party pick an entirely different fourth? Calendly is for you. It creates a simple link with only your acceptable slots and the other folks simply pick and it adds it to your calendar.
Staying on top of notes & projects
Notion (recommended by Chinmay): for 360 degree notes and project management. Looks pretty cool to me.
Obsidian (recommended by Manoj): It calls itself ‘your second brain’ and I have’t used it but I’m so intrigued. Manoj says it’s great for knowledge management. The chart from their demo is so complex that I’m immediately drawn to it.
Organising your Mac and how you work with it
Concentration
Pomotodo (recommended by Chinmay) to keep you on you A-pomodoro-game
Forest (recommended by Sushmita) for when you need your phone to stop you from phubbing :)
To-Dos
Workflowy (recommended by Gaurav). This one sounds like magic, but better (fractals!) The ‘infinite’ document for infinite joblists :D
Mindmaps
iThoughts (recommended by Manoj). I absolutely love mind maps and have been known to insist others used them too. I really like being able to chase all my different streams of thoughts. Looking forward to trying this one out.
Are these super-organised people for real?
Some are like me, pretending to be organised.
But some are like the over-achieving Siddharth Raman. Part of the management team of a 500+ people organisation. Productivity-ninja.
Be like Siddharth.
Collaborating:
G Suite (Docs/Sheets/Slides)
To-Dos:
Trello is a bank of all my to dos across Biz Dev, Client Success, People Management and Internal Org processes. I have one board for each of them and within each board there are three broad buckets of To Do, Doing and Done. I’ve realised that moving something from To Do to Doing acts as a great forcing function to actually get it done. And there is a dopamine hit for every item moved to Done :-)
Organising time:
Calendar
I live my life by my calendar which is accessible to everyone in the org.
So if anyone reaches out to me for anything they check before hand to know whether I’m in a meeting or not.
I also keep time blocks for deep work no calls/mails and in the current WFH scenario there are time blocks for household chores as well as I’m a big believer in work life integration
Personally, I swear by Asana for my to-dos, Teams for collaborating/sharing files and my CALENDAR for helping my time move along in an organized fashion.
And if all these fancy tools aren’t your thing, then as Nirav told me over Twitter - a paper and pencil will do.
Unless you’re like me and spend most of your time obsessively sharpening the pencil.
Next Up: Nonsensical ideas to make us do sensible things.