Productivity Juggling 🤹‍♀️

Earlier today, a friend reached out asking to cancel our learning pod meeting. It seems that calls and other stuff took over her day, and she forgot to keep some free time to eat.

I replied immediately:

For context, I’m the guy who loves free space in calendars, async work and time away from digital devices. Considering that my last few weeks are basically non-stop action from morning to late at night, it seems like now is a good moment to pause and ask myself gently:

WTF ARE YOU DOING, MICHAŁ?

Checking in to my Enspiral Work Pod was a perfect opportunity to reflect on that question. Here’s what came up:

I know very well that this is not sustainable modus operandi and I know that in the next week I will make an effort to increase the amount of free space in my day. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that in order to keep up with all the open projects I’m fuelling my energy into at the moment, I needed to step up my personal productivity game, and drop some projects that I just couldn’t keep up with anymore.

In other words, the times of nakurw {roughly translated as “full fucking thrust”} forced me to cut the crap and develop a super effective way of juggling all my things to do without even noticing.

After all I am a juggler.

🤹‍♀️

Let’s geek out on this for a bit, shall we?

1. Braindump into Obsidian

When in doubt - Braindump ✅

Obsidian is the central point of my digital focus. I write everything there and continuously optimise it for effortlessness.

So: I created a note called Braindump ✅ and started dumping all the shit I want to do there.

It’s kinda like a backlog, but I don’t need another app for it.

I progressively edit the list every time I look at it, which is kinda all the time, and rearrange the order of items in order of priority. Whenever I notice resistance suggesting that a task is too big to execute, or not clear enough, I replace it with a smaller version of that task, or define it better.

I also added some basic guidance on top:

In this example “tax return” is way too big, and I replaced with a single step from my accounting checklist.

Whenever I complete a task, I move it to the done ✅ section below all the tasks and feel the boost of endorfins kicking in.

2. Timebox in Proton Calendar

I timebox almost everything into my calendar, including meetings and work slots.

For work slots, I write specific tasks I intend on executing.

During the day I just follow the plan and dynamically adjust calendar events as needed. Whenever a task is done, I mark it as ✅.

3. Reply Immediately

I use the octopus of my digital communication channels (Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Email, Slack, Discord…) to dynamically brainstorm, schedule, and move tasks forward.

When working with others, I aim to reply as soon as possible in order to leave the ball at their side. This way I don’t need to remember to do something - it eventually comes back to me whenever the other person is ready to bounce it back. Most people take their sweet time to reply, which is perfect because it gives me time for other tasks.

Of course, this is not a perfect system and I’m not perfect either, duh.

Sometimes I take much longer to reply, or forget to follow up on something. In any case, it works most of the times, and if a task is mission critical, it is recorded somewhere else, so I won’t forget about it completely. Worst case scenario it will take me longer to get around to it.

OK Computer, that’s it for the digital stuff.

💻

Let’s zoom out for a bit into the good, old organic world.

(twitter thread about my digital and analogue workspace.)

4. Journal-it-All

My journal is my swiss-army-knife and One Ring to Rule Them All.

I journal everyday with Infinity Squares, as well as record tons of information, brainstorm, process, meditate and so on. Journaling is the key practice in my life, and the longest habit I kept consistently -> I haven’t skipped a day since 2017, or something like that.

While I prefer my digital tools for day-to-day tasks and calendar management, pen and paper is king for brainstorming and continuously re-aligning with my Big Dreams.

Here’s an example of my Moonly Page with the Squares, intentions, and important notes-to-self, which I want to see every day.

And here’s brainstorming / structuring a workshop to boost an Enspiral friend on her new business venture:

5. Whiteboard

I have a whiteboard. I love whiteboards. I use it mostly to incubate ideas over a period of a few days. I write/draw stuff whenever I feel like, until incubation process is completed and I can turn an idea into reality.

Here’s a half-incubated participatory experience called Merging:

That’s it, folks.

Simple, fast, efficient.

The next step is to keep this system running while I dramatically reduce the intensity of my calendar and sink into the magical forest where I’m blessed to live.

Wish me luck.

🌳

Oh, and It would be sweet if you’d consider channeling some cashish into my Patreon, especially if this was helpful / fun to read. In any case, thank you for being here 💜. In fact, thank you for Being!