Codeblazing: My productivity ecosystem.

Welcome back to CodeBlazer! Yes, I changed the newsletter's name again; no, we're not going to talk about it. 

In this edition, I want to share details on some of my favorite productivity tools and how they fit into my productivity ecosystem. 

Before diving deep into the tools themselves, I want to walk through why I have a productivity ecosystem and how these tools have helped me accomplish what I want to get done in a day.

First of all, anyone who knows me knows that I love doing a million things at a time (not literally at the same time but in the same time frames). Ironically I can get more done when I am doing something in parallel because I know I have to be diligent with my plans. Here is where my productivity ecosystem comes in.

My productivity ecosystem has three main goals:

1. Prioritize what matters
2. Respect others’ time + energy
3. Get shit done 

As you can see, all of the goals above have personal and professional lenses. One of the biggest challenges in being an entrepreneur is maintaining the balance between personal and professional goals.

The combination of tools works together to achieve all my goals, but some applications inform a goal more clearly than others. 

Prioritize what matters

Reclaim.ai: 

What it is:

Reclaim is a virtual assistant that helps you "Make time for Habits that keep your life in balance." It automatically syncs your different calendars and blocks time for things you ask it to.

Why I like it: 

I started using Reclaim because I had multiple calendars that I struggled to keep in sync. I needed all my events to show up in my work calendar so that people wouldn't schedule things over personal circumstances that were important for me. The sync was easy to set up and has proved particularly useful now that I have a work calendar, a school calendar, and a personal calendar.

The ability to set up habits that automatically move around with your schedule kept me using reclaim even when they started charging me. 

Have you had a day when you look at your calendar only to notice you won't have time for lunch? Reclaim helps make sure this doesn't happen.

How I use it:

Whenever I want to accomplish a new goal, I go into the habits tab on Reclaim and add a new habit. For instance, right now that I am training for a marathon, I know that I need at least a 1.5-hour block to exercise every day.

You can also use the habit feature for habits where you don't necessarily want to pick the day but you know you want several times a week. You can also set your ideal day, and the assistant will try to put the event on that day.

Note: Reclaim has a version for teams. The only feature I've used is the smart 1:1s that help you schedule 1:1s with people in your team based on each other's schedules.

Sunsama: 

What it is: 

"A daily planner for professionals."

Why I like it: 

I like Sunsama because it integrates with all major business task managers like Asana and Trello and your calendar to help you map tasks to different times of the day.

Everything about Sunsama's UX screams planning. From the morning planning to the evening shutdown, Sunsama has helped me break the big goals of what I want to accomplish into smaller, more realistic goals that can fit into my schedule. Depending on how intense you are, you can use Sunsama to time box tasks and then see how long they take. I can see them using this information in the future to automatically create a schedule for you based on those times.

What has kept me using Sunsama is the habit of planning my week and days that have come with using it. I know it will get done if I've added a task to my Sunsama. If you like lists, this one is for you.

How I use it: 

I use Sunsama as the digital compliment of my pen and paper.

Weekly Planning

Every Monday, Reclaim adds an hour to my calendar for me to plan my week. I use this time and Sunsama to revise the upcoming tasks for the next week. In this process, I use the Sunsama weekly planning tool. The first thing Sunsama does is give you an overview of what your last week looked like and where you spent your time.

Then Sunsama prompts you to plan your week by setting weekly goals. After you have set those goals, Sunsama gives you a text overview that you can either keep to yourself or post to Slack for your team to see. After selecting the weekly goals, I add all the events in my calendar to my to-do for each day. I often feel that on days where I have many meetings, I feel like I've accomplished nothing, and having calendar events as items on my to-do list helps me see the reality of what has happened in a day. After doing this, I go through every one of the tasks I have in place and align them to the objectives I have for the week. If the tasks don't align with the objective, I move them to the backlog.

Daily Planning & Shutdown

The weekly planning is more like a rough outline; the more precise planning comes every morning when I start my workday. Before doing anything, I open my computer, open Sunsama, and enter daily planning mode. At this time, I get much more granular, set a time in the calendar for all necessary tasks, and move the tasks that are no longer relevant to another day or week. Susana also automatically adds a block on my calendar for me to shut down my day. This feature has encouraged me to set a time at which I close my work day and reflect on what did and did not get done.

Respect other's time + energy

WhatsApp Business + Cooby

This one requires a backstory.

If you ask any of my friends, I have always been the worst at responding on WhatsApp (unless you were my crush, of course). I have always found WhatsApp's UI extremely hard to navigate, and at that time, I decided that all I could do was apologize. I told friends that if they needed something from me, they should call me, or they wouldn't get what they needed.

A year ago, when we started Nido, I quickly realized that WhatsApp was one of many people's primary forms of professional communication in LatAm. I quickly realized that not responding to some gossip a friend had sent me was very different from not responding to a founder in our portfolio. At this time, I started my journey into WhatsApp productivity and found the Whatsapp Business + Cooby combo.

What it is:

WhatsApp Business is what it sounds like_it's WhatsApp but with features for businesses. An important thing to know is that it's free. You download WhatsApp Business on your phone, and you migrate your account.

Cooby is a tool for Sales professionals who use WhatsApp. In developing that, they came up with tools that can help anyone who wants to get to inbox zero on WhatsApp. They packaged these tools in a Chrome Extension.

Why I like it:

I like this mix because I can separate personal from professional without needing two separate phone numbers, and because it has made me better at responding professionally and personally. I must highlight that these tools work well for me because I use WhatsApp mainly on the web (my famously long nails make it difficult to type on my phone). Before these tools, I was so overwhelmed by WhatsApp that I would only open it when an urgent message arrived and avoid opening it at all other times. I have a much better relationship: I do a WhatsApp clean-up at least twice daily. 

How I use it: 

Filter by Unread

The most powerful feature of WhatsApp Business is the ability to filter by unread. Seeing who I had ignored without having to scroll down to answer was game-changing. The Cooby extension has a tab dedicated to unread messages, but it has something even more powerful. It has the equivalent of folders and helps you separate chats into different inboxes.

Cooby also allows you to schedule meetings, take notes, and schedule reminders on chats. You can also share chats with other workspace members using the workspace setting. Cooby is also building integrations with many CRMs, a game-changing feature for those of us who have many work relationships on WhatsApp.

Vimcal 

What it is: 

"The world's fastest calendar, beautifully designed for a remote world."

Why I like it:

I started using Vimcal because I wouldn't say I liked Calendly. Vimcal solved a very particular issue I had. I wanted a link where people could book times I had pre-selected for that meeting. Vimcal allows me to do this and ensure that the invite is personable.

How I use it:

I use the Vimcal desktop app, and I mainly use it to join my meetings or schedule meetings. One of my favorite Vimcal features is that instead of sending a generic link, I can send embedded links that are much more personable and where I can pick the times that make sense for that particular person. I use this feature in particular when traveling. I use the time travel command to look at the timezone in the place I'm going to and then send time slots based on that.

Get shit done

Yes, I've left the best for last. I want to close by sharing how Superhuman helps turn you into a superhuman and how I hope that one day, all the things that I’ve described in my productivity suite can live in one product.

Superhuman

What it is:

"The Fastest e-mail experience ever made." 

Why I like it:

If you've seen Gmail's latest update, you know that they somehow managed to pick three different shades of blue for their new UI. As you can tell, I'm not into it. I like products that look good and work well; Superhuman is precisely that.

The Superhuman user experience is so good that it makes going through e-mails fun on both desktop and mobile. I know. I can't believe I'm writing that either. Superhuman keeps a weekly inbox zero streak and rewards you with pretty nature pics when you get to the end of your inbox.

Superhuman has many features I didn't know I needed, but now I can't imagine my work day without them.

How I use it:

Like many other productivity tools, Superhuman uses a command (⌘K) terminal to access all the different features available. I could dedicate an entire newsletter to the Superhuman features, and maybe I will, but here are my favorites for now.

Mark as Done (E)

Reply (E)

To BCC (⌘ Shift i): You can customize the bcc message, and the command sends the person automatically to BCC. 

Switch Accounts (⌘ [account number]): Superhuman makes it easy to navigate having more than one e-mail account instead of merging all of them into a single inbox. I have three accounts on both Desktop and Mobile, and switching between them takes a single click.

Split inbox (tab to switch between inboxes): When I think about e-mails, I have the e-mails I have to read and the e-mails I hope to read. With Superhuman, you can separate those e-mails into different inboxes that are treated separately. I have my primary inbox with the e-mails I have to read, a news inbox for the e-mails I hope to read, and an inbox for calendar invites.

Reminders (G then H) to open panel, (⌘ Shift H) to set: This has to be one of my favorite features. Superhuman makes it extremely easy to set reminders for you to respond and reminders when others don't respond.

Snippets (⌘ ; ) for a new e-mail (; ) for inline: If you repeat e-mails often, this one is for you. Snippets allow you to create e-mail templates that can be used inline or as e-mails. It will enable you to cc others, attach documents, and insert variables like first names.

Overall, all of these tools have many features that I have not yet explored, but I hope this Newsletter helps you at least get an idea of the primary powers that each of them has.

To my readers, I hope this Newsletter inspires you to build your own productivity ecosystem based on what works for you. This Newsletter will continue to evolve as my career does, and I hope you will continue to join me on this journey. 

Thanks, @Sofi Arimany , for your edits and support. You rock.

See you soon,

CodebloodedVC