What's your #1 productivity hack you couldn't live without?
Title says it all!
My #1 hack. I use Trello extensively for both business and personal for planning work/tasks/to dos.
The best thing I ever did was add an "Unsorted" list to my Trello board. Then I added a 1-click widget to my phone homescreen (think there's an iOS equivalent with a long press), that creates all new submissions in my "Unsorted" column. Whenever I think of an idea, to do, quote, or anything that I want to look into I open up my phone, and submit a ticket.
Then, once a week I sort through my "Unsorted" column; todos go one place (i.e. todo app), books that work recommended by friends go another (i.e. notion), and birthday gift ideas for my wife go to a third (i.e. spreadsheet).
Having a dedicated "Unsorted" list makes it so that I never have to think about "where should I put this?" when I think of something.
What's your hack?
Signing up for email newsletters with jack+newsletters@email.com so I can automatically filter/tag all incoming newsletters into their own folder 🙌
I used to do this until I discovered Feedbin. Sign up with your Feedbin email and newsletter show up in your RSS feed instead of your inbox ✨.
https://feedbin.com/
Oooh, I knew about the + hack but always did +spam so I could remember when I need to filter out junk sign ups. I love +newsletters! Stealing this idea!! Thanks 😊
Being healthy. It's amazing how much more productive you are wither proper sleep, exercise, and nutrition.
The one big tip that helped me the most was to take very conscious, scheduled breaks. Most people take a break after they get exhausted, which is exhausting. It's better to tell yourself "Ok at 2pm I'm going to take a break for an hour" than to burn out constantly.
Agreed. My problem is I never know what to do on my breaks haha, and always end up bleeding work over them...
Great question @elijahmurray. Using Google calendar to timebox certain tasks and ensure that I am sticking to a schedule had been very helpful for me. It helps to timebox creative tasks and ensures that I get what I need done each day. Its a simple way of doing things but definitely helps put more structure on things!
Project management - I’ve being using notion for very a long time, it was my all-in-one app. But recently I’ve switched to JIRA + Confluence and I’ve found it super productive. Notion is a do-it-all platform and is great, but JIRA is more tailed towards software project management and i’ve found its features like backlog, release management very useful. Also I use confluence for documentation.
Custom alerts - I use my own product (https://push.techulus.com), I have created custom push notifications for every critical flow in my app. I’m always instantly alerted and I don’t have to keep checking dashboards everywhere. This saves me a lot of time.
Alright, maybe it's not one hack but still - doing what I do would be less effective without them.
Peace!
Not pressuring myself! Taking it slow and enjoying the process
With a colleague of mine, we are developing a product based on a connected totem that you need to touch with your phone to launch a workspace on it. In your workspace there is no more app that may distract you, you have a smart notification management system (you only get the critical ones) and you can follow your progress in productivity, focus capacity and wellbeing.
The goal is to help people in developing new habits with their phones in order to feel better when they work. And it worked for me because I was always struggling to keep focused at work, I keep on going on Facebook or answering to some notifications which were not important. And I've lost hours and hours of productivity. But now with Let Me Think, I am able to stay focused all my working session long and it also gave much more confidence in myself !
https://letmethink.io
Waking up early... around 5 or early. By the time the world is starting to do work, I've done half a day of work, in peace and quiet, being very productive.
I use this Chrome Snippets extension to quickly respond to common support questions I receive on email: https://blaze.today/
I second Trello - super useful.
Google Keep, quickly note an idea and have it synced on web and phone :)
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Smart provided you actually stick to it. Bet it's cathartic to say the least.