I've been on a 10-year quest to find the perfect way to organize myself and my teams. Sure, it's been a crooked path, dotted with wrong turns and missteps, but over the last three years at Zapier I've developed a system that works well for meand taught me a lot about what doesn't work.
If you're at the start of your own productivity quest [or even somewhere in the middle], I recommend focusing efforts in three broad categories: calendar management, tasks and projects, and work-life balance.
Why target these? First, as sustainable productivity guru Carey Nieuwhof has written, they involve the three assets everyone brings to work: time, priorities, and energy. Just as important, these three areas represent the best opportunities to improve your productivity with low-effort, high-impact automation.
This was adapted from a session given at ZapConnect, Zapier's user conference. Watch the presentation and browse other sessions from the event.
Hack your calendar with timeboxing and swimlanes
Since I can't wait for technology to create more hours in a day, using time more intentionally is a great jumping-off point for creating an effective productivity system. Honestly, I adore my calendar. I live and die by Google Calendar, and it's true: if it's not in there, it's not happening!
But even my beloved calendar has a dark side: it's easy to overload or overcommit. It's not just me: A recent study by Atlassian revealed that "45% of meeting-goers have felt overwhelmed by the volume of meetings on their calendar." Ring any bells?
To optimize my calendar, I rely on two techniquestimeboxing my tasks and using swimlanes to create daily routines.
In an early blog post on the topic, Cal Newport says timeboxing made him 50 percent more productive. Sometimes called time-blocking, it's the process of accounting for all your tasks in your calendar each day, allocating a specific duration for each. See the screenshot below for an example.
I've found two significant benefits to timeboxing:
First, it holds me accountable to complete a specific task on a specific day. I hate dragging an unfinished task to a new day,
Second, timeboxing is great for estimating level of effort. This is a great project management skill to have. You assign yourself an amount of time for a task and check yourself on how long it actually took.
Worried you might end up spending too much time moving your tasks from your to-do app to your calendar? My colleague Pedro, a Support Team Lead, uses Todoist. He recommends this Zap that allows you to create a task in Todoist when a new detailed event is created in Google Calendar, allowing you to block time in your calendar and work from Todoist on your tasks!
Using swimlanes has been a game-changer. In the example below, notice the rectangles in yellow borders that run across the week? The intention is to create a consistent, flexible daily routine for myself. The swimlanes I use reserve specific times for meetings, focused work, interviews, and breaks. I still have flexibility in my day, but I know where I need to be at any point of the day, and it helps me to feel in control of my time.
Once you have your swimlanes set up, use this Zap to send yourself a text message before the next calendar event is due to start. This is helpful when you have a meeting that starts after lunch or a breakjust a nudge that your meeting is due to start. It's a simple two-step Zap with one trigger and one action using Google Calendar and SMS By Zapier. Best of all, the advance notice time is configurable.
Polling time varies based on your Zapier plan. If you're on a free or starter plan, set the advance time to be at least 15 minutes to ensure your text comes before your meeting.
Hacks for to-dos, notes, and projects
Researchers at Microsoft report that "information workers switch windows, on average, 373 times per dayor around every 40 seconds while completing their tasks." Yikes! Frequent context-switching exacts a huge toll on your focus, increases distractions and can undermine your priorities. How can you keep yourself and your team on task?
My first simple piece of advice is to categorize tasks with a limited set of listsand use the same app to store all your lists. For instance, I currently keep three lists in Google Tasks:
My main list is for bigger pieces of work and helps me plan weekly priorities.
My second list is for work in progress [WIP]for example, all the tasks needed to complete this article. This one helps me zoom in on immediate action items.
The third listand my all-time favoriteis "Quick Actions - 5 mins or less." I use this list to quantify reactive tasks like Slack replies, emails to send, etc. I spend about 30 minutes each morning knocking out items on this list, clearing the day for more focused work.
You can aggregate tasks and notes in your list-keeping app with automations. For instance, a lot of my to-dos come from Slack and it's important to move them to the right lists in Tasks. This Zap will create a task from a Reacji on a message, and I have three Zaps and three Reacjis, each corresponding to one of my three lists. This is a fun, simple Zap that can help you to stay organized and quantify quick tasks that eat into your time.