Weekly previews are intentionally inefficient

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutes

When I started using the Full Focus Planner back in May, by far the best thing I liked about it was the “Weekly Preview”. While I sort of tried to do one each week, with varying levels of success, this forced to take about 30-60 minutes each week to look back on what happened in the past week and plan ahead for the next week.

A little over a month ago, I left the Full Focus Planner and went back to 100% digital, this time in Notion. Here is how I set that up. The Planner is amazing, and I encourage you to check it out, but I wanted to see how far I could take Notion and it’s been excellent.

When I first made that switch things were good, but not great. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was, but then it hit me — I had made things too efficient. I’m all about efficiency, for sure, but part of the beauty of the Full Focus Planner (or any proper weekly preview) is slowing down to take a close look at each day. By automating most of that away, it ruined some of the effectiveness of it.

After I took the time to build out separate Notion cards for each day (versus just having everything listed on the main “week” overview), things clicked again. The ability to take just a few minutes to focus on each individual day was the change I had missed.

My weekly previews are once again something I look forward to each week, and I almost always do them on Friday afternoon (as encouraged in this episode of the Before Breakfast podcast). A lot of folks do them on Sunday, and that can work too, but Friday afternoon helps for a few reasons:

  • If you need to confirm a meeting for next week, that person is more likely to be around to confirm or shift the meeting.
  • You can go into the weekend already having next week lined up, so that’s not hanging over your head.
  • Related, you’re not having to take time away from your family to work through this every Sunday.

What’s in my weekly preview?

In terms of content, here’s what I work through each Friday afternoon:

Last week

First, I take a look back at the past week and go through a few things.

  • Biggest wins from the past week: I simply list out any big wins from the week that is ending.
  • Review of last week’s “Big Three”: How far did I get on those three big tasks?
  • Overall, what worked and what didn’t? Just a list of things that went well or went poorly.
  • What changes? As a result of the previous item, what should change for the week ahead?

Next week

Next I look ahead at the coming week.

  • What are my “Big Three” for the coming week? I think through the main three things I’d like to accomplish in the week ahead.
  • What main events are coming up? I’ll get into details with the daily cards, but I’ll quickly list some of the big calendar items in there.
  • What big tasks are due next week? Again, the details come with the days, but what are other projects/tasks due next week?
  • I’ll spend a few minutes to add my workout schedule to the calendar. In theory I should add it well ahead of time, to stay on track better, but so far I’ve not had any problems sorting out next week’s workouts on Friday.
  • Add morning carpool assignments to the calendar. In a typical week, I drive our daughter to school on Tuesday and Thursday, and my wife does it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. However, I take this chance to look at the week ahead, find any potential snags, and work through making any necessary adjustments.

Daily

Lastly, I spend a few minutes looking at each day of the week individually, with the following thoughts in mind.

  • What are my “Big Three” for the day? I can’t always determine each day that far ahead, but I’ll often get one or two of them listed now, with the rest coming as the day approaches.
  • List the events for the day. I still live by my Google Calendar, but I’ll list the events in here. It’s partially so they’ll be in my face a bit more, but also so I can do any necessary work on them (buy a ticket for a luncheon, confirm a coffee meeting, etc).
  • Look at tasks coming up for that day. There’s usually not much there at this point, but I’ll take a look and see what things are likely to pop up that day.
  • Journal stuff. My daily cards also include some nightly journal questions, but those obviously aren’t answered until that evening or the following morning (or never, sometimes).

It’s strange

This weekly preview is weird and inefficient, and I love it! I know there are a lot of different ways to handle your weekly planner, but this has been working out really well for me. I’m continually tweaking, but the general flow has been feeling good.

In my course on Roam Research I dig into this a good bit more, so if you’re needing more help to get started with your weekly preview, this course might be a great solution for you.

Do you do a weekly review/preview? If so, what do you do differently? I’m always looking for new ideas, so please share your thoughts in the comments below.

A different look at 86,400

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There are 86,400 seconds each day, and we’ve all heard the motivational phrases like “If you had $86,400 and someone took $10 from you, would you throw away the rest of it?“. It’s a good way to see things, but I recently heard a slightly different take on this that got me thinking.

It was a recent podcast episode from Duct Tape Marketing that featured Laura Vanderkam (from Before Breakfast). In talking about making the most of your time, Laura said:

“Time continuing to move along… is like the challenge of spending money well, if all our money was burned at the end of every day. It’s very difficult to make use of this extremely limited resource, given that it’s constantly going. So you need to think about your time before you’re actually in it.”

When she puts it that way, the similarities between time and money seem so clear — those that manage their time well are very similar to those that manage their money well.

$846

Let’s imagine that every second in the day is worth a penny, so you get $846 every day, which is $308,790 per year — not bad! Like Laura said, though, the money you don’t spend each day gets burned. How do you spend it?

If you’re not prepared, then you’ll just need to quickly figure out something to do with the money as it comes in and you likely won’t make the best choices on how to spend it. This is like finding a bit of extra time in your day and using it to check Instagram for the 32nd time.

If we all got that same amount of money, over the years you’d find some people were somehow really starting to move ahead. They have a bigger house and nicer cars, but they did it with the same amount of money that you receive daily! The difference is that they thought ahead each day on how to invest it, versus having it show up and then scramble to figure out what to do with it.

Free time

The same is true with your time. Ideally, your calendar has some free time baked into it, though that depends on how much control you have over your calendar. This will often be used by things you didn’t see coming (a meeting running late, a flat tire, a sick child, etc), which is why you should build that free time in there in the first place, but sometimes you’ll end up with actual free time on your hands. How will you use it? Will you scramble to find something to do, or do you have a plan in place?

I’ll admit, I’m certainly not perfect here; I’m on social media more than I should be, I keep a pulse on Reddit, and I’m progressing pretty far in Dr. Mario World. However, I have a solid plan in place for how I ideally take advantage of found time, and I do fairly well with it:

  1. Anki: First, if I still have cards remaining for the day, I’ll work through Anki. All told this takes me about 20 minutes each day, usually split into little pieces as I find time here and there.
  2. Feedly: If Anki is already done for the day, I’ll open Feedly to see what stories are waiting for me. Feedly is intentionally a limited list; there’s no endless scrolling here. I tell it the sources I want to see, it sends me the stories, and eventually I hit the (temporary) end. I tend to have a lot in there, but keep up fairly well.
  3. Kindle: If I hit the end of Feedly, then I open up my Kindle app and read. As I mentioned earlier this year, reading on my phone is not ideal, but it’s a good way to keep making bits of progress on the current book I’m reading. 95% of the reading will happen on my Kindle at home, but that extra 5% here and there helps keep me invested and more likely to continue later that evening at home.
buy celexa online cheap pharmacy

Another thing Laura says in the podcast is that “time passes whether you think about how you’re spending it or not“. Spend your time intentionally, and you may realize you have more of it than you thought you did.

Week one with the Full Focus Planner

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I never thought I’d do it, but as I mentioned in my last post I’ve started using a paper planner this week. I’m not leaving any of my digital tools behind, but adding this paper planner could be a great addition to my workflow.

buy stendra online cheap pharmacy

It started by listening to Michael Hyatt’s podcast. I had listened in the past, gave it up, but somehow I got back into it. In listening, two big things recently clicked together for me:

  1. I work and think a lot like Michael, at least from a technical perspective. We’ve both used Nozbe, Todoist and Asana for tasks, we both have used Evernote for years, and we’re both slowly giving it up in favor of Notion. If he has a suggestion for tech or productivity, I’m willing to listen.
  2. He insists that his “hybrid” productivity solution (partially digital, partially paper) is essential to getting things done. I was skeptical, and still am to some degree, but see item #1 above.

With that in mind, I picked up his Full Focus Planner and am diving in.

I’ve gotta say, I really don’t like to write. I have bad handwriting, and it’s much slower than typing. I’ve come to learn, though, that the slowness of handwriting is exactly why tools like the Full Focus Planner work. By forcing yourself to write, you have to slow down and really consume what you’re doing.

For me, the best part of that slowness is at the beginning of my day. I was usually pretty good about reviewing my calendar each morning so that I’d know what was in front of me, but taking the time to write down the main meetings in the calendar, and taking the time to consider what my “daily big 3” tasks will be has been remarkable.

I’ve also been bad about personal goal setting. Ali and I do a great job of meeting quarterly to plan for the future of GreenMellen, but my personal goals were just kind of floating around. By digging into this planner and using it properly, it’s forcing me to articulate some of my goals and start putting together solid steps to achieve them.

If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, there are tons of videos on YouTube of people giving their thoughts. For me, the most helpful videos were the “getting started” series. Just seeing a bit about how they suggest you set it up helped me to really understand it. I skimmed through those to help me decide to buy it, and then once the journal arrived I worked through those videos in more detail to really get things set up properly.

Do you still use a paper planner? Is it your main source of info, or does it simply augment what you have in your digital tools?

Busyness vs Clutter

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A few days ago, a friend of Facebook posted a screenshot of their computer desktop and it was total chaos, with hundreds of folders and files filling the screen. She was proud of how busy she was, and I don’t doubt it, but it got me thinking about the intersection of busyness and clutter. I think it works something like this:

Starting on the left, when you don’t have much going on, you tend to not have as much digital clutter. As you get busier, things get worse. I think my friend was at the peak of this chart — as busy as possible, but not nearly fully productive. I’ve been there too.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Michael Hyatt lately, as I find him to be incredibly productive, but with virtually no clutter — he’s likely as far to the right on that chart as anyone I can think of. Part of that is the systems that he uses (and the staff to help him), but it’s not an accident. He’s worked hard to keep things streamlined and running smoothly so he can be as productive as possible. If you have a desktop full of icons and an inbox full of email, you simply are putting yourself at a big disadvantage.

I’m certainly not all the way there yet, but I work on it constantly. I do a good job of keeping my desktop and inbox clean, but I still deal with digital distractions that pop up and should be delegated elsewhere.

I recently picked up Michael’s Full Focus Planner, which is something I didn’t think I’d ever do. Having a paper planner to go alongside all of the digital tools that I use seemed foolish, but I’m beginning to come around. I still expect to use all of my fun digital tools to keep things humming, but spending a bit of time at the beginning of each day (and each week) to sit back and plan things out seems like a great way to go. I’m early in this process, but enjoying it so far.

If you find yourself in the middle of that chart and think “I just can’t push any harder”, you’re probably right. Work on finding ways to clear the clutter so you can focus and get more done, and hopefully you’ll continue to work toward the high productivity / low clutter end of the scale.

Three lessons from Before Breakfast

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

A few weeks ago, a new podcast came out called Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam. It’s a short (5 min), daily podcast to give you “productivity advice that will take your day from great to awesome.“

It’s been really interesting for me. Most days I think “that episode was a nice reminder of x”, but really nothing more. It hasn’t felt life-changing or anything. However, it’s only been out for about a month now and I realized that I’ve already made three fairly major changes as a result of it, so she’s doing something right!

Tracking my time

I’ve known the value of time tracking for a while. We do it a lot at GreenMellen for projects, but Laura suggested tracking your entire life in big chunks in this episode. I’ve been doing it for a few weeks now, and it’s opened my eyes to some interesting patterns.

I’m not sure if I’ll keep it up long term, but I think I will for a while. I have a simple spreadsheet that I keep in Google Drive and update a few times a day with colors and short notes. Here’s an example:

Some of the colors: light green for work, dark green for network/biz dev, red for family time, yellow for driving, blue for 50% working (answering email while browsing Reddit).

The downside to this time tracking is the actual time involved in doing it. It only takes a few minutes a few times a day, but it can add up a bit. I’ll be interested to see how long this sticks for me.

Plan next week on Friday

This tip from Laura was simple, seemingly obvious, and brilliant. Instead of planning the week ahead on Sunday evening, do it on Friday afternoon. She gives a few big reasons why:

  • If you get it out of the way on Friday, your head will be a bit more clear on the weekend knowing that next week is already firmed up.
  • If you are confirming meetings for the following week, people are likely to respond on Friday afternoons, but not on Sunday evenings.

It was a simple change to make, and I like it. I’m pretty sure I’ll keep this going for a while.

Read everywhere

I’ve worked with a few business coaches over the years, and I find that one of the best things they do is to give you permission to do something differently that you “should” do it.

For example, we use the EOS model at GreenMellen, but we were frustrated by a few small aspects of it (though we love it overall). A coach told us “if you don’t like those parts of it, then don’t do those parts of it“. Somehow getting his permission made all the difference in the world.

I know I want to read more, but I can’t seem to find the time for it. Audio books while driving work great for many folks, but I have a relatively short commute and I already have too many podcasts to listen to (and I don’t want to give them up). I enjoy reading on the Kindle, but can’t easily bring it with me everywhere to fill up those small gaps of time. The Kindle app on my phone is fine, but it’s not good for long stretches of reading.

Laura’s suggestion in a recent episode — go ahead and use your phone to fill in the gaps. Her simply giving that “permission” that it’s ok to occasionally read on the phone has made a big difference and has helped me get better about the habit of reading. I still do 90% of my reading on the Kindle, but that extra little bit that I fill in with during the day on my phone is keeping the books more fresh in my mind, and it’s making me more likely to pick up the Kindle in the evening instead of just watching TV.

Give it a listen

I encourage you to check out her podcast and see what you think. It’s unlikely that every episode will be super valuable, but if you can pick up a few tips here and there, it may be worth your time.

Becoming Superhuman pushed me back to iPhone

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 7 minutes

I’ve loved Android for years (and still do), but I often said something like “I’m using Android for now, and for the foreseeable future, but I’ll move back to iPhone if it ever makes more sense for me.”

In my opinion, people on both sides should always keep an open mind; “iPhone for life!” or “Always Android” is silly thing to think, because things can change. For me, something just caused that change — Superhuman.

Superhuman

If you’re not familiar with Superhuman, it’s an email program. It works with Gmail, and there are a lot of similar applications out there (Newton, Spark, and dozens of others). I send/receive a lot of email every day, so I’ve tried most of the options out there. Some are ok, but I always went back to Gmail after a few days. Not this time.

Superhuman is weird. It breaks the rules. You can’t just sign up and try it out. There is a huge waiting list for it. At the end of the waiting list, you need to fill out a form to see if you’re a good fit for it. Then you have to sign up for a 30 minute one-on-one call with their staff to learn how to use it, and then it costs $30/mo. It’s that last bit that gets people; most email clients are free, or perhaps a few dollars per month. $30/mo is unheard of, but for those that love Superhuman it’s worth every penny.

This short podcast from Matt Bilotti at Drift talks about that onboarding process and why it’s so remarkable:

As for using Superhuman itself, there’s no one magical thing about. It’s cleaner than any other email I’ve used, it’s faster than any other email I’ve used, it has lots of great features, and it simply all comes together in a great package. I’m much more efficient when I use it, and it’s $1/day. Done.

iOS only

The main Superhuman app is web-based, which is perfect for me. I can use it on Windows or my Chromebooks, it works on Mac, etc. The problem is mobile — they only have an iPhone app. They’re working on Android, but it looks to be at least another year away.

I talked to them about this, and their suggestion was to use Superhuman on the computer and keep using the Gmail app on the phone. At the end of the day, Superhuman is still accessing my Gmail account, so that should work fine. And it did, and it was fine. Fine, but not great.

The more I used it, the more I hated the disconnect between Superhuman on the computer and Gmail on the phone, so I contemplated a switch from Android to iPhone. I did lots of research and before long, I did it. I’m an iPhone user again. I fully expect to switch back to Android in a year or so when Superhuman arrives over there, but we’ll see what happens.

iPhone versus Android

So for the second part of this post, I want to talk about iPhone versus Android. Over the years, they’ve become more and more similar to one another, which helped make the transition easier for me. If you’re considering a move from one to the other, here are some of my thoughts on their differences.

Messaging

Messaging on Google is a mess. They have Hangouts and Allo and Duo and Messages and no real plan. SMS works fine, but it’s not great.

Apple’s iMessage, on the other hand, is awesome — if you’re fully entrenched in the Apple ecosystem (particularly if you use a Mac). Since I still use Windows and Chromebooks, the benefits of iMessage would be largely lost on me. In a move I should have done a while ago anyhow, I ported my Verizon number back over to Google Voice and I’m using that on the iPhone. It has a few shortcomings, but all in all works quite well. I can get my messages on any device, and if I end up switching to something else later, it’ll be seamless.

Apps

In general, apps are a bit easier to load on Android (Apple keeps giving me bogus updates, takes more clicks to install, etc), but the general selection is essentially the same. The one bummer is that I had to pay $25 to get Anki on iPhone, but it was a cost I didn’t think twice about.

Of course, the lack of Superhuman on Android was the whole reason for this switch, so that counts in this section too…

Google Stuff

Being a Google-focused user, I’m also working to see how much other Google stuff works on the phone. Google Voice was the big one, and Superhuman replaces Gmail, but I also use the Google app (for searching), Google Maps, Hangouts, Google Keep and others. For the most part, other than the lack of deep/default integrations, Google’s apps on iPhone work quite well.

Speed

I hear a lot about how Apple’s chips tend to be faster than the ones that Android phones use, but it doesn’t matter much. However, in a few cases I can see a big difference, such importing all of those Anki cards, or loading a game of Ingress to play. Day to day, though, they’re comparable.

Photos

iPhone has excellent cameras, no doubt, but this is an area where Google has them beat. I’m already missing the amazing “Night Sight” on the Pixel 3, and the quick access is a little quicker on Android. Still, both have great cameras and I can push the images to Google Phones on iPhone without a hitch.

Notifications

I was concerned about this, as it seems that Android still has a much better notification system than iPhone, and it’s true. However, Apple is catching up and the gap isn’t as large as I thought it might be. I still miss the power of notifications on Android, and the ability to deal with things when viewing a notification, but Apple is getting better.

Auto

When I bought my current car back in 2017, a must-have feature was support for Android Auto (and Apple CarPlay). I still much prefer Android’s solution (largely because of Google Assistant), but CarPlay is better than expected. It tends to be more responsive to the touch, though it randomly jumps around to different screens sometimes. Ultimately, it gets the job done but I’ll be glad to switch back in a year or two.

Stupid Lightning Cable

It’s sad that Apple is still using Lightning connections on the iPhone instead of USB-C. I understand why ($$$$), but literally everything else I use is USB-C: our laptops, all of our other phones, our mobile hotspots, our new battery pack, etc. Even iPads and the new Macbooks use USB-C; it’s just the iPhones that don’t. We have USB-C cables everywhere, but now a slightly growing collection of Lightning cables.

It looked for a while like Apple might finally come around and change to USB-C with the new iPhones this year, but the latest rumors suggest they’re going to stick with Lightning for at least another year. Bummer.

Browsing

Web browsing simply isn’t as powerful on iPhone (Chrome is hamstrung by Apple’s rules). It’s fine, but I already see some shortcomings. It’s weird little issues (hard to view source code on iPhone Chrome), but a little annoying nonetheless.

iPhone has better bluetooth

Both my Pebble and my Moto 360 would occasionally disconnect from my Pixel (perhaps once every few days). Both devices sync and work with iPhone, but they never seem to disconnect. Somehow iPhones keep a more consistent connection, which is nice.

Pixel has better LTE/Wifi

I noticed this back when I was still using the Pixel and my wife had her iPhone; I often had 4G service when she didn’t (both using Verizon), and she often complained about dead wifi areas in our house that I never saw. Now I understand. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s noticeable.

Face ID vs Fingerprint + Smart Unlock

Face ID is pretty neat, and works well. It’s comparable to the fingerprint sensor on the back of the Pixel; each works better in various circumstances. However, the iPhone really needs to adopt some sort of “smart unlock” like Android has. With Android, you can tell the phone “stay unlocked in these circumstances”, including:

  • When my watch is connected.
  • When I’m on my work wifi.
  • When I’m connected to my car with bluetooth.
  • When GPS says I’m at my house.

If any of those situations are true, the phone stays unlocked. As soon as they’re not true (like if the phone was stolen), it locks immediately. It’s really handy, and I’m surprised Apple hasn’t copied this feature yet.

Superhuman

I use email more than any other single app, and having access to Superhuman on my phone makes it all worth while. Plus, given my affinity for tech stuff, it’s only fair that I try both sides from time to time so I can speak from a place of experience when comparing the two platforms.

I’m more impressed with the iPhone than I expected, but I still dream of the day when Superhuman launches for Android so I can go back.

The best ways to keep track of your favorite sites

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Browser bookmarks have been around since some of the very first web browsers were invented in the 90’s. They’ve improved a bit over the years, but have remained essentially the same.

I’ve been using the built-in Chrome bookmarks for years now, since they just work. It’s easy to add something, and they sync across your computers to always stay backed-up.

There are also tools like Evernote and Google Keep that have “clippers” to help you quickly grab items from pages that you’re on. They work well, but can led to clutter over time.

I wanted a place to just save stuff

I come across a variety of interesting sites each day, and I wanted a place to just put them all. Saving them all in Chrome would make a huge list, and putting them all in Evernote/Keep would make a mess. I wanted it to be easy to add new items (no tagging/categorizing required) and super easy to search.

After much effort, I found four good options — three of them might be a good solution to you.

Stash

I was very excited when I found Stash. They use AI to help categorize what you find, and it really works well. It had two problems, though:

  1. It’s buggy. When browsing your sites, it simply didn’t always work the way it should. That’s bad, but the bigger issue was…
  2. It’s made for saving, not finding. It does a great job of saving and organizing your items, but doesn’t have an easy way of getting them back. Most of these kinds of tools will (optionally) replace your “new tab” page to help you quickly find your saved sites.

Stash has potential, but I ruled it out rather quickly.

Pinboard

Every time I did a search in my quest for the right tool, Pinboard came up. It has an old-school feel to it (similar to Craigslist), but has a rabid fan base. It has a solid Chrome extension and tons of third-party tools.

For me, the problem again came down to surfacing the items you saved. It has a nice interface, but doesn’t have an easy way to add this to the “new tab” page. Even without that, their search feature is simply acceptable, but not great.

Raindrop

The one I may end up with eventually is Raindrop. It feels the most professional of the apps I tried, and does a great job. It has the “new tab” page that I’m after, along with mobile apps for easily saving on the go.

It’s a bit heavy on the “please organize these items”, but works well enough even if you don’t take the time to organize them. I’m going with Kozmos (see below) for now, but could certainly see myself ending up back here if things go south with Kozmos. Part of the issue with many of these tools is that they come and go often, and this feels like it’ll be one that sticks around.

Kozmos

The winner, at least for now, is Kozmos. While it seems to be a one-man show, which keeps me worried about it’s future, the goal is exactly what I’m looking for. Azer Koçulu, the founder of Kozmos, explained it well in an post he wrote in 2017. In part, he said:

This is exactly why I built Kozmos; bookmarking should be simple. Found a useful web page ? Click the heart button in your browser, boom, done. No more filling forms, no more trying to figure out tags. Kozmos is powered by an advanced search engine, so you’ll always find what you’re looking for.

Perfect! On a desktop/laptop, it works amazingly well. Easy to save, and super fast to search. It’s imperfect, for sure, but it’s a very good place to start.

There is no mobile app yet, but that’s in progress. They have some workarounds for mobile, but 95% of my use of this kind of product will be on desktop, so it’s not a big deal.

For now, it does exactly what I need — I can save a page with a click, and (more importantly) I can find it just as quickly. I find their “new tab” page in Chrome to be the best of the ones I’ve tested.

I have my worries about a product like Kozmos that is free to use with one guy behind it, but they’re clearly pushing forward and hopefully develop the missing features (mobile app, etc) and and a revenue model soon.

What do you use to keep up with your bookmarks?

My new morning routine

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutesA few weeks ago I was inspired by an episode of the Contactually podcast to work on setting a more focused morning routine. As I began working on building a good routine, Adam Walker talked about a great app during this episode of the Tech Talk Y’all podcast called “Morning Routine”. That app is only available on iOS

buy stromectol online stromectol online

(how is that possible in 2017?), which was unfortunate. However, after some digging I found an app called Tinygain (available on both iOS and Android) that does essentially the same thing but with some nice added features.

I’ve been test driving and tweaking my morning routine in preparation for today, the first day of school for my two girls (yes, it’s July 31 and it’s the first day of school here in Georgia). While I’ll continue to adjust as time goes on, it’s come together nicely and takes roughly 40 minutes as I start my day.

I still don’t drink coffee in the morning, so I just get up, grab a glass of water, and get to work.

Email (2 min)

I intentionally keep this short, but I do a quick glance to make sure there are no fires to put out. Since I typically go to bed with an empty inbox, there’s usually only a handful of junk in there by the morning. I delete the junk, save other tasks for later, and then I can attack the rest of the routine without having the “what if there’s an emergency email?” in the back of my mind.

Tinygain

Next, I fire up Tinygain. It walks me through the rest of the routine with the pieces I’ve set up in there.

Morning power questions (2 min)

Tinygain has a lot of “routines” available that you can add, and “morning power questions” is a good one to help start the day. It just walks through a few simple questions so you can begin to frame your day:

  1. What do I have to look forward to today?
  2. What’s absolutely perfect about my life?
  3. How can I make today absolutely awesome?
  4. What is the best thing that could happen today?

I may adjust the questions a bit over time, but that’s how they came and it’s a solid way to start.

The five minute morning journal (4 min)

Next is another pre-built routine called “the five minute morning journal”. It asks somewhat similar questions, but encourages you to write them down. I use journey.cloud to store them, but you could use any app or even just a pen and paper.

  1. Write down three things you are grateful for.
  2. Write down three things that would make today great.
  3. Describe how well you slept last night. If you remember any dreams, write them down.
  4. What is the one thing you want to accomplish today?
  5. Write whatever is on your mind right now.

My custom routine

Lastly I dig into my custom routine that I built into Tinygain. Most are simple slides, but I have a timer on one of them.

Feedly (4 min)

I go through my Feedly, save items to read for later, and just work it down to zero. Feedly tends to stay fairly quiet overnight (but crazy during the day), so I like to make sure I’m at a fresh start.

Bible (8 min)

I’m working through a one-year Bible, so each day is roughly a 8-10 minute read. Each day is a passage from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs.

Brainscape (10 min)

Studying Brainscape can be open-ended, so I set a 10 minute timer on it in Tinygain. I try to study more throughout the day/evening as time allows, but this makes sure that I at least get a little time in there in case the day gets crazy.

I’ve also discovered that the Brainscape iOS app has some new features that aren’t yet in the web version or on Android. One is called “smart study” (to go through all of your subjects at once) and the other is called “random mix” to go through all of the decks within a given subject at once. They’re killer features, and should be coming to Android and the web later this year. In the meantime, I’ve taken over an old iPod Touch from my daughter (she has an iPhone now, so she’ll be ok) and I’ve wiped everything from it except for Brainscape. It works quite well.

Because Brainscape syncs between devices, I can use that iPod Touch for the morning session, but still use my Pixel or the Brainscape website to study at other points during the day.

Cloze (3 min)

Next I visit Cloze to see who it thinks I need to get in touch with today. It usually gives me 2-4 people, and I often only choose to reach out to one of them with a quick email.

Birthdays / Special wishes (3 min)

I hit the Facebook birthday list and the LinkedIn notifications and reach out to a few people. I don’t necessarily reach out through those platforms (“happy birthday” wishes on Facebook get buried), but it’s a good place to see who is celebrating today.

High fives (4 min)

The last piece is what the Contactually podcast called “high fives”. The speaker said he hits his major social channels and tries to like/comment on five things on each. I don’t use the rule of five, but I try to go to my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn feeds and interact with a few folks.

As with other items on this list, I try to do this a bit throughout the day, but some days get hectic and I don’t get back, so this ensures that I’ll at least talk to a few people on there.

That’s it!

It’s a fairly long list, but Tinygain helps me to walk through it fairly quickly. After this is breakfast with the family, typically a short workout, then shower and off to work.

Do you have a set morning routine? What am I missing from mine?

Contactually vs Cloze

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 4 minutesI’ve been using Contactually for a few years now, and it’s a great system. However, I recently made the switch to Cloze and I’m quite pleased with it. In looking for what I need in my system right now, these two are the only ones that were serious contenders and I’ll explain why in a minute.

Alongside of Cloze, I’m also using two other systems. The first is FullContact, which I use to simply manage my contact list, explained here:

Getting all of those contacts organized

We also use ActiveCampaign for our inbound marketing efforts over at GreenMellen. I also used to use Pipedrive to help manage our sales pipeline, but I’m using Cloze for that now as well.

It was actually the integration of the sales pipeline that got me re-interested in Cloze (I had looked at it a while ago), and some features of it are why I moved over.

Proactive Notifications

Before I get into that, though, I want to explain why I said that Cloze and Contactually were the only two “serious contenders” for me. The answer is proactive notifications.

Most CRM systems do a great job of reminding you to follow up with people, but only after you set those reminders yourself. That’s nice and all, but I already have reminder systems (primarily Asana and Google Keep

). Cloze and Contactually go further. Both systems keep a close eye on your email history, and automatically remind you to reach out to certain contacts that you haven’t spoken to in a while. They each handle that process a bit differently, but the end result is similar — each day they’ll show you a handful of people that you should reach back out to, with some info about why. For example, I see this reminder is coming up next week in Cloze:

It’s telling me that I usually talk to Forrest every 36 days, and it’s about time again. I can choose to respond, to defer that notice for a few days, or just skip it completely. This feature is the key to Cloze and Contactually.

Both do it largely by having you group your contacts (You tell it that person x is a client, y is a friend, z is a coworker, etc) and they choose how often you’d like to handle each.

  • Contactually does a bit better job of forcing this with their “bucket” system and the “bucket game“.
  • Cloze, on the other hand, makes it a bit trickier to organize contacts into groups but will still send you proactive notifications even if a client isn’t sorted correctly (such as Forrest above, who I haven’t yet organized). With Contactually, if they’re not in a bucket they’ll never come up in a notification.

Managing the pipeline

I mentioned that I recently left Pipedrive as well. Pipedrive is a kanban-style deal management system, and it works great. You set up columns for your sales process (or other workflows) and then slowly drag leads from left to right as they go through your process. It feels similar to Trello for anyone that uses it. Here’s a screenshot of Pipedrive:

Pipedrive’s system works great, and it’s very affordable, starting at just $10/mo. However, it’s kind of an island — it does great with that workflow, but really doesn’t do much else. I started digging into what Cloze and Contactually could do for this piece of the puzzle, and I liked what I saw.

Proactive pipeline notifications

If you use them for your deal management, Cloze and Contactually both offer proactive pipeline notifications. You set a duration for each step of your sales process (for example, 5 days for your “waiting on client to send questionnaire” section), and they’ll bubble up those people if they’re still in the same column after the time has elapsed. That is pretty awesome, but then I had to look closer at how each system works to see if they’d fit my needs.

  • Contactually feels more like Pipedrive, and I like it. That kanban-style flow works great, and Contactually’s is solid. However, they’re missing a major piece, and it’s small item; you can’t manually adjust the dates on your sales deals. I like to go into systems like these and backfill our previous deals (so we can see history, trends, etc) and Contactually simply can’t do that.
  • Cloze, on the other hand, can do that. Their system is more filtered-list style instead of kanban, which I don’t like as well, but it has great fine-tuning on the dates of the deals.

Cloze wins

In the end, it was two things that made me choose Cloze over Contactually:

  1. The date options for backfilled sales deals.
  2. The monthly price. Paid month-to-month, with the features I need, Contactually is $69/mo and Cloze is $19.99/mo.

Both are excellent systems. I’ve had great success with Contactually over the years, and it’s certainly worth checking them out. However, for what I need right now it seems that Cloze is the better fit.

What do you use to help stay on top of your contacts?

Tinycards vs Anki

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutesAs I’ve talked about before, I’m a big fan of Anki and the concept of spaced repetition flashcard learning. There are competitors to Anki out there, but I always considered them the best. Now there is a new player on the block, Tinycards

, and it gives Anki a good battle.

Tinycards

Tinycards comes from the folks at Duolingo, who make excellent language learning apps. As with most of their stuff, Tinycards is completely free to use. Better still, it can connect your Duolingo account to pull in your language words as flashcards.

Tinycards was actually first released last year, but that was only on iOS. They recently released a web version, making it accessible to all, and an Android version is in the works. While I’m looking forward to the Android version, the web version works great on my phone and is more than adequate to use. After using it for a few days, it does some neat things that Anki can’t do, but it also falls short in some areas.

Where Tinycards wins

Appearance
While this is a fairly low priority for me, Tinycards is a much better looking app than Anki. If you told me that Anki was built with Windows 95 in mind, I wouldn’t disagree. It’s not essential, but looks count for something and Tinycards is much better looking and more intuitive to use.

Better shared decks
Anki has a huge library of shared decks, but they’re not really “shared”. Once you download it, it’s saved in your system but it’s separate from the source. With Tinycards, your shared decks are still tied to the original author, so they can update them at will. A good example is this comment on Reddit, where a user noticed some rapid changes to a “world leaders” deck that they were using (not sure which one they were referring to, but I think it was this deck).

The one downside is that right now when you create a deck it is either public or private — no inbetween. I’ve asked if they can create an “unlisted” option, so I can create and share decks privately, but we’ll see if they ever add it.

Where Anki wins

Deck size
The shared decks in Tinycards are great, but every deck is limited to a paltry 150 cards. That leads to a lot of decks coming in multiple parts (“World Leaders 1” and “World Leaders 2”, for example). In my case in Anki, I have 900 cards in my “people” deck, 260 in my “us cities” deck, and there are over 1000 in the “ultimate geography” deck that I downloaded. Cutting those all up into smaller decks seems painful and unnecessary.

Wrong answers
This is probably my biggest issue with Tinycards — they don’t trust you. With Anki, you reveal a card and click whether you got it right or wrong. Tinycards doesn’t work like that at all. They’ll show you a card and then show you the answer. Or they’ll show you a card, and give you a multiple choice answer. Or, perhaps most frustrating, they’ll show you a card and you need to type in the answer. I suppose that will help you learn better, but it’s a pain to have to type in all of those answers if you already know them. You never get to tell it whether you know the answer or not — you need to do the work and show them.

When you create your own deck you can disable the typing answers, but pretty much every shared deck I’ve found has that enabled and a shared recipient can’t turn it off.

Which is better?

Right now, it’s too early to say which one is better, as it largely comes down to your use cases. I may start using some of the new shared decks in Tinycards, but I suspect I’ll largely be living in Anki for now. If Tinycards can add “unlisted” shared decks and allow for ~1000 cards/deck instead of 150, I might be willing to make the switch. Time will tell.

Go check out Tinycards and leave a comment with what you think of it.