Month: July 2020

Give Yourself Time

When I sit down to plan my week, I always write down the two or three most important projects I’m going to focus on.

Sometimes those projects are easy and obvious: fix this; build that; finish the thing.

But sometimes a project’s outcome is not obvious. Or, perhaps I don’t know if I will be able to finish it this week or not because I don’t yet know how much time is left to find the solution.

Instead of committing to a finish line that may not be possible yet, I simply commit to spending time working toward my desired outcome.

Not all goals need to have a specific outcome or milestone right now.

Sometimes my most important project for the week is to spend uninterrupted time working on a project so I can keep making progress.

Give Yourself Time

How to Plan Your Week Like a Boss

If you feel that your productivity has been hitting a slump, I highly recommend planning out your week ahead of time.

Getting clear about what you’ll be doing during the upcoming week will help you stay focused on those things that are most important to you.

Here’s how to plan your week:

  1. Start by writing down everything you need and want to get done this week. From the bigger projects all the way down to the smaller tasks.

  2. Now look over your “master list” and select the 3 most important things that you will actually focus on. This is how you will define success for your week.

  3. Bonus: For each of those 3 most important things, write a a few words about WHY that task or project matters. What is your motivation and reasoning for wanting to get it done? (This will help you follow through later on in the week when you’re not feeling it.)

  4. Lastly, look at your calendar for the week and schedule the various blocks of time that you will spend working on your 3 most important things. Or at least select the day(s) of the week that you will focus on each thing.

I do this process every week, usually on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. It only takes me about 20 minutes, and it sets up my whole week for me.

I also plan each of my days in a similar fashion: listing out the day’s most important tasks and then scheduling it onto my calendar so that I have time blocks for my main tasks and activities.

Why take the time to do this? Two reasons:

  1. Clarity cures busywork.
  2. Your to-do list should exist on your calendar.

It is liberating to your schedule and your emotions when you know WHAT you will be doing and WHEN you will be doing it.

(That’s why I built weekly and daily planning templates right into the design of our iPad Digital Planner. It makes the above process faster and foolproof.)

How to Plan Your Week Like a Boss

The Focused Writer (a TSS Webinar)  →

Tommorrow (Wednesday 15 July) I’m hosting a webinar to talk about all the ways I use Ulysses to keep my ideas (mostly) organized.

I’ll be sharing some easy ways you can make the writing process easier and more productive on yourself. And I’ll be sharing some simple suggestions for how to organize all your ideas, and notes, and writing, etc.

RSVP here so we can send you the link to the live room.

The Focused Writer (a TSS Webinar)

The Ultimate Guide to Collaborative Writing in Ulysses  →

Something a lot of folks ask me about with Ulysses if it can be used for collaborating.

While Ulysses doesn’t support “native” collaborative features (such as what you get in Google Docs or (kinda) Pages in iWork), you can sync external documents, which means that if you use a 3rd-party service (such as GitHub) then you can write in Ulysses and then sync and collaborate in the background.

It’s a little bit nerdy to set up. But it’s something that can be very much worth it because, well, Ulysses is the best writing app out there.

And so that is why we put together this step-by-step guide for how to collaborate in Ulysses.

You can read the full guide — or watch the videos that Marius made — right here.

The Ultimate Guide to Collaborative Writing in Ulysses