February 27, 2015

Ai UniversityLessons learned from 9 years in the Ai trenches

Ninja Productivity Tricks

Earning my black belt

We are all always works in progress - I’m going to share a bit about my journey of improving how I manage my day and my life overall.

Hofstra Volleyball Team circa 2002

I played sports growing up and throughout college, time management and productivity was all about me. I didn’t have to worry about tasks that others were doing. I didn’t have to set expectations with people about timing (I couldn’t tell a professor that I’d be two days late with an assignment)… It was, here’s your homework, here are your projects to get done, be at the gym for practice at 2pm, etc. The structure was set for me and I just had to figure out how to balance keeping up with school work and playing volleyball / traveling and having a life outside of both.

Alexander Interactive circa 2005

I went from a volleyball team in college to this team of less than a dozen here at Ai as an intern in college in our office on Park Ave South. I wore many hats, and the concept of managing time and tasks for others was something I struggled with. I didn’t know how to prioritize, because I didn’t have a full view of what was in the mix. I often stayed late at the office because I didn’t have a system to help me.

Treo

Blackberry

Enter the Treo. Alex (our CEO) and I had a system where he would get a new phone, and I would get his old phone. The concept of a digital calendar, tasks always in my hand, rather than a paper notebook entered my world.

Alexander Interactive 2014

Here we are now. Projects grew, teams grew, responsibilities grew. Over time I developed a system for me so that no matter the size of the team or the project, the principles of managing the associated tasks still applied.

“Like all PMs at Ai, she values the intersection of well-defined

processes for ensuring success, repeatability of that success, and

overall efficiency with the practical realities of getting stuff (i.e., great

work) done for Clients.”This was recently written in an intro email of one of our new employees. For me, repeatability is the key here. We’re not trying to re-invent the wheel with every project. The process I use to manage work projects is the same process I use to manage trips I take, fundraisers I plan, my wedding, etc.

The "busy business of busyness."

I read a lot of productivity blogs and recently I read an article that quoted Tracey Foulkes, CEO of a company called Get Organised South Africa, says too many of us are in the "busy business of busyness."

"We're always rushing from meeting to meeting and drowning in work.

It’s not about doing more; it's about making wiser choices."

You need a system in place that allows you to make wiser choices and see the full picture.

Every day, do something that you must do, something that you should do, and

something that you want to do.

So, when you ask me how I can get all of my work done but still make time to be with my friends, family, and workout - the process I follow is how I do it, and you can do it too. I have a system in place that allows me to get stuff done, make priority calls, and still be able to do things I want to do.

Maintaining Control

The second I feel like I don’t have control of what I need to accomplish or what my teams need to accomplish, I freak.

Maintaining Control• How do you plan your day? (tools and approach)

• How well do you stick to your plan?

• On days where you don’t stay on plan, why?

We all go through this. We have a plan for the day, things come up, our to-do list goes out the window, we end up staying late or leaving early with anxiety, etc.

Maintaining Control• One home

• Instant and easy access from anywhere

• Confidence that everything is covered

• Minimized distractions

• Quick ways to accomplish it all

I feel like I’m in control of my tasks and my day when the following things are true. Maintaining control means I hit deadlines, I can set set appropriate expectations, I can manage my personal time, etc. Everything I’m about to go through allows me to maintain that control.

Meet the Playas

Over the past 9 years I’ve tried a million tools. I keep coming back to a core set that work for me so that sense of control and comfort and less stress are real. I’m not looking to have everyone adopt my entire way of working. It’s not the only way, and different personalities and brains think in different ways and need different views, but we all share common needs in terms of things we need to solve.

My GTD Army

I use every single one of these tools daily. This is my GTD (Getting Things Done) Army.

This may seem like a lot, but most of them are doing the work for me. I set it and forget it. There are things I need to manage, and each of these things needs a home.

Task Management

This is, bar far, the most important tool in my toolbox. Without Todoist, my work would not get done.

Data Management

File Management

• My new “local” - so I can access files on my computer / phone

• My transfer tool from phone to computer

I’m that person who can always find that photo no one else can because of how I’ve tagged it and put it into albums. Flickr is my tool for photo storage. It’s the forever home for my photos.

Speed & Automation Tools

• Alfred - Get to things quickly

• TextExpander - Save time and brain space

• Dashlane - Save passwords, CC info (or One Password for those who like that)

• IFTTT - Automatic based on systems you already use

Speed & Automation

Reference Later Tools

Speed & Automation ToolsReference Later Repositories

• Feedly - aggregator of all things I want to read separated by topic

• Pocket - save to read for later • Pinterest - save to buy or browse later • Evernote also falls into this bucket of

reference later repositories

ONE

The key here, again, is that everything I need to do or manage has a home, and that’s when I stay calm and know that things are under control. Everything has a home, not multiple homes - that’s what gives me the sense of control and relieves anxiety.

Tactics my army and I use to go to battle Feeding off of the Inbox

Zero and Evernote AiU sessions that Alex and Josh ran, I’m going to dive a little deeper into some of the tactical ways I use the systems I just mentioned in order to manage my days here at Ai, and really, my life.

Get on a cycle

01

Practice Inbox Zero

• A repeatable, dependable system to empty your inbox, follow up with everyone, and stay in control of your digital (and physical) life.

• A system for processing our messages and converting them into appropriate actions as quickly as possible.

I cycle through my Inbox and my Todoist task list multiple times throughout the day. Those feeds are ever-changing and always have incoming things and things I’m finished dealing with. Trust your search.

Let your inbox feed your todo list

• Go down inbox list

• Answer quick emails

• Archive / delete items that do not require response

• _DO is temporary

• Read again, forward to Todoist

Three components

• Initials for assignee

• Actual task

• Due date (using Todoist syntax + TextExpander)

As a PM, if I assign a task it is really still on me to make sure it gets done. Trust the people, but trust your system. In Todoist, I can then sort by project and alphabetically, and I can therefore consolidate conversations with people based on what I need from them. I can also see the email as a note, so when I need to answer I’ll go back to my Inbox and search for the title and then reply to the latest one.

Get on a cycle• Go through your inbox

• Go through your to-do list

• Check your calendar often

• Assess, re-assess, set expectations, do

Check your calendar before you leave for the day and your to-do list for the next day before you walk out the door. If your calendar “free time” does not line up with the time it will take to complete everything in your to-do list then you need to re-asses and reset expectations. You’re only setting yourself up for failure if those things don’t line up.

Photo management example

• Take a photo on iPhone

• Automatic upload to Dropbox

• Check Camera Uploads folder

• Edit photos as desired

• Upload to FlickrYou can skip Dropbox and editing and just go straight to Flickr from your phone.

Set it and forget it

02

Let Todoist do the work

• Once that task for Christina is in Todoist, I can forget about it until it comes up in my feed

• Online order management

• Recurring activitiesFor me, things will happen and get done if I write it down, assign it, and give it a due date, and that’s what my Todoist workflow allows me to do. I have a project specifically for orders that I place online so I can check off that I received it once I do. It is the only project where tasks don’t have due dates because they aren’t tasks, it’s just a list, but a list I want to make sure I’m checking regularly.

Recurring ActivitiesFor recurring activities, have them include notes that you need to reference every time when completing it.

Let Evernote do some work, too!

• Software licenses

• Wifi passwords

• Packing list

• “How to” archive

• Company meeting ideas• Forward to Evernote from email. • Why aren’t my Wifi passwords in Dashlane? Because I’m often just taking a photo of a device or a post-it note that

someone has or whiteboard at Client office - don’t have to type it. • For packing lists, I duplicate the checklist, print it, check it off each time I use it. • Examples of things I have in my “How to” archive are manuals for things I own, steps to turning on my BBQ, etc. • When Josh asks for ideas for the company meeting I already have a set of things saved and tagged in Evernote to send

him in bulk.

And then let IFTTT in on the party.

• Never miss a blog post from Ai

• Never miss an Instagram post by your favorite place

• Never duplicate effort

Never duplicate effort - upload something in one place and it will automatically upload in another if you connect channels.

Implement visual cues

03

These are equivalent to what we do for users on websites in our UX/Designs to make it easy for them to get done what they are looking to get done.

Color code• Todoist projects

• Calendar categories

• Folders

Color code to recognize colors associated with projects (keep colors consistent across tools)

Color codeI only do Client meetings in the color on the calendar - all other internal meetings are blue, and grey is for PM tasks so I know it’s not a meeting, but work time.

Attach humans to actions

One time setup. Make them funny photos if you want. It’s easy to recognize who messages are from at a glance, and it reminds you that there’s more to the message than just the text. There’s a human behind there!

Action-based iPhone screen foldersVisual cues can still be text. I sort my iPhone folders by verb - “watch, listen, pay, eat” etc.

Easily and quickly identify things

• Create iPhone alarms based on what you are waking up for and when.

• Add photos and emoticons to contacts so it is easy to associate messages and calls.

• My husband gets a heart and my friend with a star tattoo gets a star emoticon. Easy to find them when scanning a list.

Surround yourselfSurround yourself with things you love. Visual cues to get things done but also visual cues to remind you of things and just make you happy. I surround myself with my favorite color, photos of my family, a kettle bell to remind me to go workout and finish up work so I can - it’s a form of stress relief and constant reminder that things just aren’t that serious.

Keep things lean and clean

04

Keep a clean desktopAnything on my desktop is something I’m currently working on. When finished working on it, I place it in the appropriate folder on my computer and on our shared work drive. And, an actual physically clean desk to work on helps too.

Short and sweetI have this personal rule that things must be on one line in my to-do list so I can easily can down the list.

Take shortcuts

05

Take shortcuts

• Dashlane auto fill in forms

• Jiratabs

• Pin your tabs

• Use your Chrome bar to set search engines and trigger JS snippets

• TextExpanderJira tabs - allows you to open all Jira tickets listed on a page in new tabs without having to individually click into them (thank you, Tim!)

Chrome barEasy access to URLs I go to all the time by using text shortcuts instead of typing the entire URL.

My fave TextExpander snippetsThese are all set it and forget it. By typing “meetingnotes” I get my template at the start of every meeting to take notes.

Silence the unnecessary

06

Shhhh…

• Clean desktop

• No Outlook notifications

• No IM notifications

• No badges (VIP only)

• Search for unsubscribe

• Do not disturbThis goes along with minimizing distraction to feel in control. Notifications and badges are only on for

things that I want to tell me what to do. Otherwise, I’m in control, and I decide when to look and when to

respond.

Share the wealth

Productivity Blogs I Follow

Questions?

Holla’ anytime.Jessica Lippke Associate Director, Project Managementjsl@alexanderinteractive.com

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