Productivity Archives

Productivity
How to Aggressively Guard Your Time and be More Productive
August 23, 2019
Tell me if this sounds familiar: you start in on a project. 5 minutes later you get an email. Maybe a phone call comes in (confirming you go the email, of-course). After that you start on the project again. Someone pings you on Slack. You chat with them until you realize you have a meeting in 5 minutes. After the meeting it’s lunch time. You get back and browse around for a bit – you have a meeting in 10 minutes anyway. Then more email. More Slack. More distractions. Suddenly it’s after 5pm, you feel like you did nothing, and you wonder where the day went. Sound familiar? It happens to me too much. That’s why I’ve been aggressively guarding my time. Here’s how.
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Books | Productivity | Thoughts
Eliminating Slack as a Distraction to Work Better
January 21, 2019
One of my goals is to read 21 books this year, and I’m doing super well so far. After finishing the super dense (and very thought provoking) Homo Deus, I’m flying through It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work. While the hubris of Jason Fried used to drive me crazy, I’ve read all of his and DHH’s books, and they’ve all been excellent. The hubris is well-deserved. In any case, I’m almost done with that book and I’ve decided to take my first action: turning off Slack notifications.
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Gear | Productivity
Using the iPad Pro as my Travel Laptop
January 14, 2019
Since going out on my own full time, my tech stack has been a bit of a revolving door. In the quest to find the perfect set up I went from a MacBook Pro to a PC / smaller MacBook for travel. Less than a year later and I’m not too happy with that setup. Nothing against the PC, but living in two-thirds Apple land makes having parity between machines very hard (plus, Camtasia, my main video editor, is a hot mess). So when Apple announced the new iPad Pros, I made a decision to go with that and only that as my travel machine.
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Business | Productivity
5 Ways I’m Improving my Affiliate Program
November 26, 2018
Affiliate programs can be one of the best ways to drive traffic and sales to your products. Mobilized affiliates can become your best advocates. In recent months I’ve been working to improve my own affiliate program to make sure my affiliates are energized about Creator Courses as well as informed about what’s going on. Here are 5 ways I’m working to improve my affiliate program.
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Gear | Productivity | Websites
I Have a New Podcast: Creator Toolkit
August 9, 2018
I’ve been mulling this idea in my head for about a month now. See, in the last 2 years running How I Built It, a podcast that has gained some shocking popularity, I’ve realized something. Podcasting is the most fun part of my day. I love interviewing people and publishing to such a great medium. I’m good at talking and have been since I was a kid. I want to keep podcasting, and I have other ideas. One is Creator Toolkit, a show I think would compliment How I Built It very nicely.
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Process | Productivity
Fleshing Out My Work Week
February 4, 2025
I have a confession: I’m in a bit of a funk. April was not a very productive for me. We were in Disney World for 8 days, and the rest of it, I was either sick or recovering from being sick. Trying to balance the different types of work I do and properly boxing time has also become a problem. Couple that with some distractions at home, and I haven’t felt very productive lately. I want to try going to a coworking space once a week, but I’d have to schedule it on a day where I don’t need my recording setup. So I’ve decided to set my work week with days dedicated to different types of work.
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Gear | Productivity | Thoughts
Switching to Apple’s Native Apps
October 25, 2017
Since iOS 11 came out, I’ve been forming new opinions on apps and what I want to use on my phone. When I was an Android user, I would try not to pay for apps, and had reasonable success doing so. Call it the open source mentality, sure, but Google also had pretty great native apps — especially when they rolled out Material Design. When I switched to iOS, I went a little app crazy. I wanted to try everything. I was also more willing to pay for apps, mostly because more apps cost money. But recently, I’ve decided to cut out most 3rd party apps and focus on the native apps Apple sends with the phone. Here’s why.
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Productivity | Thoughts
My 2017 Learning Plan: Javascript Edition
August 14, 2017
So…I write about learning a lot. Turns out, I really love learning. I also like coming up with plans about learning, and telling you about them. The last one that went really well was the one I did in January 2014, when I learned Sass. But now that I’m no longer at an agency, I feel like pushing myself to learn is even more important because it’s not part of my daily routine; I don’t have amazing co-workers I can learn from anymore. So with that in mind, I came up with a learning plan for the next few months of 2017.
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Productivity | Software
Thoughts on Buffer Pro after 1 Month
February 3, 2017
Moving into 2017 I knew I needed to do more to increase engagement on social media for both WP in One Month & How I Built It. Simply promoting isn’t a great strategy; while I convert most listeners and students through my personal Twitter, I want change that. I tried doing it manually for a while, but it was too time consuming. After toying with the idea, I decided to upgrade to Buffer Pro for a year to see if it would help me while also saving time. About a month in, I have some thoughts.
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Business | Productivity | Thoughts
Trade Secrets to Help Build Something Wonderful in 2017
December 28, 2016
I imagine building product is like building anything else. Let’s take a recipe for lasagna. Sure there’s a basic set of instructions you should follow, but everyone probably does it a little differently. Everyone has their own method for layering the pasta, or what sauce to use.
When it comes to building products, the same thing is true. The only difference is there’s no cookbook. There’s no set number of steps you can take to get from start to successful business. The best thing you can do is the same thing I do when I try to cook: talk to the experts*.
*The expert in this case is my Italian mother. Thanks mom!
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