Luke Williams

Posts for Tag: habits

The Boot-Up List

I've gotten some questions about how I start my work day, so here are current details.  This is always a work in progress - I frequently experiment with new checklist points.  I'm just including the ones that have endured long-term here.

If you want the list without background, feel free to skip down to the numbered, bolded points below.

Sometimes checklist points are quickly discarded, and sometimes they endure.  For them to stay, they have to be truly valuable and worth looking at every day.  If I find myself skimming over them consistently then they have to go.

There are a few major goals with this list:

Start the day off with a series of familiar, small successes.

I learned this from the excellent book, "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg.  He relays the story of how Michael Phelps starts each race day in exactly the same way - physical routine, eating, music, etc.  I start each work day in the same way which means that 20 minutes into my day, I've already experienced a number of familiar small successes.

"The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension."

- Bob Bowman

Clear my plate of anything that might be urgent or distracting, so I can focus solely on my top priority.

I want to clear out emails, ad hoc task lists, and other inputs so that there's nothing I feel I need to be looking at except what's right in front of me.

Create an ordered task list for the day

I originally learned about this from speaker Brian Tracy.  Throughout the day, I don't want to make repeated decisions about what to work on next.  Those decisions would drain energy and introduce opportunities for procrastination or mental drift.  So, once I'm done with the first item on my list, I just want to grab the second item and go - no need to think about it or look at anything else further down my list (which would also distract from the present task).

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With those goals in mind, here's my current list, with a few notes.

(1) Start Toggl: "Boot"

I track all my business time each day, partially because I bill time to clients and partially to hit input goals - how many focused hours I'm working, and on what.  Toggl works pretty well for this, and in particular has an idle timer which I find essential.

(2) Straight back, shoulders back, breathe deeply

(3) Clear Slack messages

"Clear" is an essential word here.  I never "check" and encourage my staff to do the same.  If you're going to look at messages in email, Slack, phone etc. - aim to clear them out fully (do now if only a couple minutes; delegate; archive; push to later date if not yet actionable, I do this with Boomerang in gmail; or add to task system).

"Checking" messages, on the other hand, pretty much ensures you'll need to go back and look at them again which means you're thinking about them more times than needed.

Additionally, in my companies Slack is generally only used for items that truly can't wait till the next day.  For everything else, there's email.  This means we're not getting interrupted frequently and can focus for long stretches on creative work.

(4) Fully hydrate

This just means drinking as much water as I'm totally comfortable drinking - almost never just a sip.

(5) Have lots of water on hand

Have a large, full bottle of water within arm's reach.  #4 and #5 here in my view are the best way to stay hydrated and be at full mental and physical strength.

(6) Start work in the sun

If it's an option, I want to get ~15 min of direct sunlight per day, preferably early.  This kick-starts my circadian rhythm and helps with being appropriately tired at bedtime.

(7) Set up workspace

I work remotely from many locations around the world, so this is setting up my portable monitor and headphones.

(8) Open pinned browser tabs

I have a Keyboard Maestro (Mac automation tool) shortcut to do this automatically in Firefox.  Throughout the day I keep these tabs pinned open, always in the same order so I can access them with cmd+1-5 via muscle memory:
  • Calendar
  • Task manager (Asana)
  • Email accounts (I have 3 for my two companies and personal - left open for compose and search, not checking.  See brief email guidelines below.)
(9) Fill in Daily Questions

Right now I just have one of these:

What's awesome right now?

I date and fill that in for each day.  It's really good perspective.  Others prefer a question like "What am I thankful for?"  If I'm really struggling with "awesome" which does happen on occasion, then I answer "What can I be content about right now?"

(10) Clear inboxes

  • Business email for both companies
  • Task management urgent items (anything assigned to me by company staff and needing ASAP attention)
As noted above, it's essential to clear and not check here.

I use Boomerang Inbox Pause to get only two "deliveries" of email per day, at 6am and 12pm-1pm.  Otherwise my inbox remains empty and distraction-free.  When working with clients we always give them a way to immediately contact us - an urgent@ email address that will Slack us instantly - but also reinforce that we are doing creative work all day and so we don't check email constantly.  This needs a whole-company commitment to work, but is a very powerful cultural shift.

(11) Today and +2 days calendar check

(12) Clear mobile phone reminders

Anything I can do at a computer goes in my normal task system, mobile reminders are just for away-from-computer items

(13) Clear Weekday Urgent folder

    In OneNote I keep a list of items that I want to clear out start of next business day.  I just skim these and drop the into my Current folder in OneNote (that I work out of all day, and where I arrange my tasks for the day).

    "Weekday Urgent" gives me a place to drop things I want to ensure I follow up on quickly but don't want to get sidetracked on immediately.

    --- [End of Daily Urgent]

    Once I get here I've looked at anything that could possibly be urgent.  If there's nothing that requires immediate attention, I may go ahead and change location, e.g. move from home to office, or do my 2MR workout if I haven't yet.

    (14) Clear Business Anki

    I use spaced repetition daily for both business and non-business memory - language learning, anatomy, quotes to review from time to time, important lessons, technical knowledge.  This takes about 1-2 minutes for business usually, but that small amount of time allows me to remember many thousands of concepts long-term.  The Anki app is excellent and syncs between computer and phone.

    (15) Clear all daily notes:

      (a) From Kindle books

    I wrote a program to scrape my Kindle notes from the previous day.  I use these because I don't ever want my phone near my bed, but I always have my Kindle Paperwhite there - if I think of something for the next day when drifting off to sleep, I make a note in any Kindle book with my own notation (".n.") which indicates I want to think about it "now," i.e. beginning of next day.

      (b) From physical notebook

    Sometimes I write notes in a 3x5 Volant Moleskine notebook that I usually have with me; if I need to look at any notes write a way I mark them with "Now" in a box.

      (c) From Simplenote

    This is my current go-to app for making notes on my mobile.  It syncs very quickly between my Mac and iPhone.

      (d) From OneNote "Unfiled" section

    I have Zapier set up to automatically drop my Echo voice notes and iPhone voice notes into OneNote so I can pick them up the next day.

    (16) Add Asana clear to task list

    I don't do it here but prioritize it along with the other tasks for the day.  This includes answering questions and doing code reviews assigned to me, then assigning the tasks to others as needed or closing out if I'm the final person in the relevant workflow.

    (17) Set a daily goal

    I got this from Sam Altman who considers it essential - I do too.  Most days I want to complete some goal that constitutes progress toward my major long-term goals.  Without this a lot of time can pass working on "urgent" items but not actually feeling like I'm making any progress.

    Occasionally I need to have a "catch-up day" where I clear out accumulating tasks but on most days I set a goal, and most of those I'm able to hit.  I adjust it to the time I have - can be several hours or as little as half an hour to complete.

    (18) Update Daily Goal journal

    I journal the date and chosen goal + yesterday's completion status in a OneNote page.

    (19) Finalize queue and start

    With all the inputs above I create the queue for the day.  This could be an entire post in itself (I'll link here if it does end up being one).  Briefly, it usually involves these steps:

      (a) Bucket my tasks by perceived immediate importance

      I'll have one or more "bucket" folders in OneNote, for example: "Today Deadline [DL]" or "Week DL".  At beginning of week, month, and quarter I make buckets for setting aside time for tasks I don't want to push.  If there are more than 5-10 tasks in a bucket, I split out into smaller granularity, like "Early Week DL" and "Late Week DL".

      (b) Order the tasks in the top-priority bucket

    I only ever sort tasks in the top bucket, after which I consider it a "queue".  (Further out than that, it's often less clear what the actual order should be and time spent on ordering may be wasted.) 

    Since I know I want to get all those tasks done now, I sort them roughly from smallest to largest.  That gives immediate momentum as I knock out the smaller ones, and it's motivating to see the list getting whittled down.

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    If you have feedback or questions, Twitter is currently a good way to reach me.
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