2021 Productivity Setup

I try to optimize my daily work routine as much as possible and constantly look for ways to be more efficient. Here’s my 2021 setup that has been more and more optimized for mental health, clarity and allows uninterrupted moments of focused work.

Tools:

• Email: Superhuman $30/month
• To-dos: Mindnode $3/month
• Calendar: Fantastical $3.33/month

Principles:

• Deal with any communication on my own time
• Be able to forget about to-dos, follow-ups, and emails to respond to
• Enable others to do their work, then do mine
• Prioritize revenue generation or cost savings

Notifications:

• Everything off except for Slack and iMessage
• Do Not Disturb at night
• Do Not Disturb is automatically on when I start an Apple Watch workout

Where:

• anywhere on Mac, iPhone or iPad

General communication:

• Seriously read the Pyramid Principle

Email: Superhuman

At first, I was against Superhuman. I tried it for a week and then decided it was a giant bubble. During onboarding, you find that a lot of the supposed speed comes from keyboard shortcuts, and those are the same as in Gmail. 

I tinkered with Gmail and found out I can get it to feel as clean as Superhuman with Simplify Gmail. But there is no good tool that would allow email tracking and intelligent reminders in one app. When you combine these two features with multiple tools, the total nears $30/month anyways, and the experience is worse.

So I came back and have not turned around since (it has been a year and nine months now)

How I work with email

Inbox Zero

I keep inbox zero as a matter of course because I would be distracted without it. I keep all the actionable unanswered emails in Starred if I need to respond later.

Morning Triage

1. Unsubscribe from everything I did not want to get in the first place (cmd + U)
2. Respond to everything that takes less than 2 mins
3. Other actionable emails that are too long or require too much energy (=are written as an essay and not as a transaction) go to Starred for me to deal with at a different time
4. Archive everything else

During the day – I keep my email open with notifications turned off. If something comes in, I apply the same triage rules and check if my not responding will prevent anyone else from doing their job – if it would, and I can do it quickly, I do it right away.

Once/Twice a week – I sit down and respond to everything that is in Starred – this session can take anywhere from 30 mins to 90 mins. I do not clean up everything because sometimes there is information I need from others to respond, and it is night in their timezone/weekend. 

Follow-ups – Superhuman automatically tracks every email I send. Every email I want a response on gets a reminder set – I do this on internal and external emails. A combination of reminders and the starred list allows me to forget about the critical things but know that they are covered.

Covid note: There are email chains about periodically postponed projects based on the current situation in the particular country. I could very quickly be annoying by constantly following up when it is irrelevant. When I see the person on the other side has looked at my email a couple of days back without responding, I move the reminder to a later date and check back then if my communication is still top of mind.

Scheduling emails – Superhuman allows for scheduling emails, and I use it all the time; either to ensure my emails are the first thing people see in the morning or so I do not bother them over the weekend.

It is pretty typical for me to write many emails on Friday evening PT and schedule them for Monday morning CEST.

This setup’s outcome: There are vital emails right now that I know are waiting for my work, and I do not know what they are. When I make time to deal with them, they are in Starred or will show up in my inbox again. It gives me peace of mind to focus on other things.

To-dos: Mindnode

I tried Evernote, Clear, Omnifocus, Apple Reminders, etc.

Nothing captured the branching out of tasks I have to do. Something as simple as “Send an email about X to customer Y” would take 2 hours because the information about X required working with multiple team members, maybe producing an asset like a slide deck or an update on a website…

At the end of the process, I will have completed my task and should be happy, but I end up more frustrated than anything because one task took 2 hours.

What you have to understand about me is that I am a person who would put a just-completed task into a to-do list just to be able to check it off to get my dose of endorphins. So not being able to capture the organic branching out of subtasks and getting the boost of knowing I did a lot made me less productive.

So I started using mind maps as my to-do list – it has been going on for nine months, and so far, it is the best system I have used.

There are four primary nodes that I add tasks to:

1. Now – anything that I want to get done in this work session 
2. Today – anything I promised someone to get them today
3. Tomorrow – pretty much everything else that did not get through the prioritization for today
4. Backlog – a black hole of stuff that is likely never going to get done
5. Done since the last standup – a tracker of to-dos I have done since the previous standup – gets deleted every standup/status with my core team

I treat it in the same way as my email – whatever blocks someone else’s job or whatever generates revenue or saves costs, do it first.

The tasks rotting there for some time were probably not important enough, and I delete them regularly because priorities change.

I also use the to-do mindmap file as a scratch pad – I did most of the outline for this article there.

Calendar: Fantastical

Fantastical is probably the best all-round calendar app. It covers all of the basics and adds two differentiating features:

1. Quick switching of a second time zone so when I am arranging a follow up with a person in a specific timezone, I speak their language
2. Allows me to add an event with conferencing from multiple accounts (e.g., multiple G Suite accounts)

That’s it. There is nothing else special I use it for – I pay $3.33/month for a second time zone and the “add Google Meet” button.

There is one more helpful feature that I used to use in Sunrise before it was bought by Microsoft and turned into Outlook – a link that shows a couple of slots that work for me, from which the invitee can choose. If some of those slots are no longer available by the time the invitee gets to my link, they won’t show up. I am not sure what Fantastical’s implementation is – there is always something new to try!

Happy Easter!