How does she do it? With a lot of help.
How does she do it? With a lot of help.
The magical tools you need to slam that laptop shut on Friday 👀
Happy Monday! We hope this email finds you well after a restful and enjoyable weekend - a weekend so good you might have already forgotten that the Nice Work theme for this month is working smarter, not harder.
First, we love that for you.
Second, to help reorient you in what we’re sure is a busy inbox, this theme is all about helping you work at work, freeing you to NOT think about work when not at work. No toxic hustle culture here.
And, excitingly, next week is our Nice Work advice column!
So leave a comment, DM us on Instagram, or reply to this email with any questions you want answered on all things productivity, workflows, and how to shut your laptop on Friday and feel good about it. And our lovely paid subscribers get even more Q&A access ✨
Let’s get started on finding ways to slam that laptop shut!
A good system for working smarter, not harder, will be unique to you. It should be tailored to how you work, your job/role, your tasks, and what’s possible in your workplace/with your human-in-charge.
Generally speaking, though, a system for working smarter has three parts:
A determined mindset to work this way [vs. tickbox exercises or run out the clock approaches, all of which is covered here!]
Elements of ‘best practices’ in productivity structure - last week, Jade shared some of these. There’s many to choose from, but a combination of the below works for most people. Namely, to:
Check email at certain times, not all times
Work on “like” work together
Assign time to work on specific client work/topics together
Stack calls and meetings
Work from new places + leave your distractions behind
Plenty of help. These are the tools and apps (and processses) that save you time, automate some of your work, and give people the answers they need without you. Making your time spent at work much smarter (and that much nicer).
If you’re new to Nice Work, take a read through our past editions for our recommendations on processes, tools and settings for:
Managing your time well (complete with a free journaling exercise)
How to keep information available at work - key: keep files accessible, converse in open channels, communicate clear next steps.
With that, here’s a non-exhaustive list of the best ways to get time (and sanity) back at work!
✨ Our Favorite Apps + Platforms
Get yourself a calendar automation. Seriously, stop pinging back and forth about call times.
Employees: Figure out what your workplace allows you to do/use according to your IT policies. Or, ask them how to see other internal calendars. At the very least, you can find a way to more easily schedule with your colleagues (if not external people - yet).
Freelancers, consultants, etc.: Calendly is great. Google also lets you set appointment slots. Hubspot has it too. There are so many choices, just pick what works best for you and your current system.
Whatever you use, make it usable and visible. Put it in your messaging profile, perhaps, or your email signature. Or pin it to a Slack channel. And start actively looking/asking for the calendlys/links to other people’s calendars, and use them!
Otherwise, go analog. Every time you suggest a call or meeting, proactively suggest 3-4 times that work for your timezone, and theirs.
Find an AI and use it.
AI helps. It does. And in case you need a reminder - nothing can rob you, a human, of your value. Especially an AI, because it doesn’t and can’t replace your life experience.
AI can, however, help you get started/automate the more time-intensive work, which is the best reason to use it.
Use Midjourney to generate a moodboard to help you figure out where to begin.
Use Copy.Ai to write that cold pitch email you don’t want to write.
Use Jasper.AI or Notion AI or Google’s tools to give you something not-great to edit into something beautiful.
Use Upscale AI to upscale that really, really low res photo you really need to use in your presentation today.
A word of warning. You need to read, in full, the T&Cs of the AI you select, and I strongly recommend you pay for it. ChatGPT is cool, except 1) it keeps your prompts and 2) you can’t view or delete them in the future. Check out the Google link above if you pay for Google Workspace, or get a subscription to another platform. There are thousands of other AIs (there is truly an AI for that).
Employees, check with your humans-in-charge to make sure you’re using approved programs (for security, competitive protection, etc., etc., etc.).
And, of course don’t forget to edit and make your own whatever AI creates - let’s keep email/Slack/work nicer and more human.
Make your phone less appealing with focus modes.
If your work days seem to drag on and on past closing time, take a look at your phone hygiene. How often are you interrupting yourself and your flow by checking your texts, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.? If you lose your train of thought, it takes a long time to get back to it and suddenly, that thing that was meant to take 30 minutes has taken over an hour.
One reason it might be hard to break the phone habit is because of notification badges. So turn them off. Honestly, it's so good for your brain anyway. Here’s a great article on how to do this on iPhone, and on Android.
Set focus modes so only certain types of notifications come through at certain times. My Work Mode allows Slack/Email/WhatsApp Business messages, and all other notifications go to a “scheduled summary.” My “Focus Mode” quiets all of them except for the most important people. And my “Personal” mode quiets all work apps and lets through personal WhatsApps and calls. How to do this on an iPhone. How to do this on Android. You can set rules so you know no matter what you do, emergency contacts/calls will always get through.
Go analog - put your phone behind you/out of reach and check it only at breaks.
Done all of this, but group texts blowing up regardless? No better time to practice boundary setting than with loved ones. Try texting, “I’m going back into work focus mode now / I need to get some work done. Talk to you later.”
Use platforms to make good writing easier.
Aside from the writer’s block that AI can help with, we love these tools to make professional writing much easier + quicker.
Grammarly - good for catching passive voice, typos/grammar errors and PLAGIARISM. A good flag for you + team members who may have forgotten a citation or two.
Hemingway - amazing for giving you a “readability score”. Lower readability score = easier to read.
Noisli - an undistracting screen for writing. On the paid version, you can select a nice color too. Both versions let you add optional background noise sounds for zen. Just be careful to make sure you’re using wifi so it saves your work!
Have a to-do list.
The best to-do list is the one you’ll use. I’ve asked a lot of humans what works for them, and here’s a short list of the to-do list/task management apps/processes they swear by:
Slack, especially its “Save for Later” function (amazing if you work in a noisy Slack environment)
Leaving important emails unread so you remember to do them
“Flagging” as important emails you need to do/respond to
Sending yourself email/Slack messages of what you need to do
Pen and paper
Google Sheets and/or Excel (my favorite)
Trial them out and evaluate which one makes it easiest for you:
To add things to, especially in a rush after a busy meeting
To keep track of what you need to do, and by when you need to do it
To move tasks/items around if your day changes
To save information related to the task (i.e., links to files/info you need to finish it)
And, if needed: Track time spent doing it
If you’re an employee, your workplace probably needs you to keep track of your work/project progress in some way. See if the platform they use has a task list built-in. Much easier to keep everything in one place than constantly port info here and there.
While at a conference recently, I had a “light” existential moment. Behind on my emails/messages to my team, inbox growing at a rapid clip, I wondered: How on earth do SO many humans travel SO often to these without getting SO behind on their “work work?”
Even more incredulous is that, at any given (high quality) conference, journalists are there too. And they don’t just attend - they set up interviews, moderate panels, write articles live from the event, etc. They have one of the most timely and deadline-oriented jobs in the world, and yet they are still doing their “work work”, which has to happen on time.
So I asked a few of them - how do you run your day? How do you decide what to do and when? Is there a secret productivity journalism app we can all use? 😅 Sadly no (not yet), but some of what they had in common was:
A schedule so they (and others) knew when they were and weren’t free, along with calendar automation and blocks of time saved for their writing.
A clear + simple to do list (big use of Excel - as someone who runs my life in spreadsheets, I love it).
Recognition that a big part of their week was for creating connections/doing interviews that would make their work in the future easier.
Structure. Tools. Mindset. All specific to their role, of course, but hey - it works.
So, with that, I invite you to do a “light” trial this week to figure out what works for you.
Choose a structure item from above to try, or create your own.
Then, pick or find a tool to help you.
Lastly, set a goal. Even if it’s just: “Feel 10% better about slamming that laptop shut until Monday.” Put it somewhere visible.
And begin!
You got this,
Rachel
Links We Love 📚
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. A random read, but a good one on expertise, excellence and the importance of practice. This is great for you as you explore what kind of structure works for you to do your best, and how to deliberately practice it + your skills in a way that delivers results.
Paid Subscribers: Google Docs Agenda Template
For your action-oriented sanity! You should use the to-do list that best works for you. This template is about making it easier to figure out what those are during and after meetings!
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