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Don't cram plenty people on Zoom. Fluorescent light at the office all day long. You know,

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you probably are going to work from home.

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Hello and welcome to episode number 39 of No Office, a podcast about work, technology

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and life from a remote company perspective. My name is Rafal Sobolewski and as always,

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I'm joined by CEO of our No Office company and my good friend, Michael Sliwinski. Hello,

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Hello Michael, how are you today?

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Good, good, good. We are back from our Nozbe reunion.

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We have just seen each other.

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So it's good to see you Rafa again, but it was good to spend time with you for the last whole week.

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So, yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, that was really fun.

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We met with the whole team in the beautiful city of Lublin.

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Yes, we did some cool stuff but we will talk about it in the further part of the episode.

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And today, as I wrote down my notes to the podcast, this episode, I see that we want to

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talk about writing stuff down. Exactly, I mean, you know, it might sound obvious but it's not.

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So I dedicated a whole chapter of my No Office book to this subject if you go to nooffice.org/write

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and the chapter's name is exactly "Write stuff down".

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It's about this fact. We talked in the last episode about hybrid work style,

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about being hybrid. Being hybrid means having all the information in one place

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accessible from anywhere. It means writing much more than you think,

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because you will no longer communicate with people only through

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hanging out together like we did on the reunion, and talking on meetings.

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But you have to write stuff down for everyone else to see, for yourself to see

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in the future to be able to check with your past self. So basically writing

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stuff down is really important to write in a good way, to write good

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comments, write thorough comments, write thorough feedback and really take time

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to write and to really hone writing skills. I remember when I was

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listening to people, I think it was still the guys from Basecamp, where they

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said that when they were hiring they would say that when in doubt

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between two candidates a better writer wins. So the skill set to write stuff

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down well, coherent, concise in a good way is really important.

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Ah, that's interesting.

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But that's a really good idea because writing stuff down

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in a coherent way with straight to the point

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is a really good skill, especially now

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with all the hybrid and remote work.

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And we really see it in our company as well.

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And funny thing is because writing stuff down

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is like the most important habit or first habit of getting things done.

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Oh yes.

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Methodology, yeah?

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So it's like, it's very important for your personal productivity, but it's much more

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important for your team productivity also.

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That's why it's really crucial to be able to add tasks from anywhere quickly.

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Like instead of keeping it in your mind, "Yeah, I'm going to create a task about it later,"

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you know?

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No, no, no.

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Do it now.

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people are, that's why many customers have been asking for our Mac app and we will link

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in the show notes to our beta version of the Mac app and the Windows app, which is also

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coming soon, that they want to be able to have a shortcut to quickly add stuff to Nozbe.

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And that's why we have a share sheet on iOS, to add stuff quickly to Nozbe. And we are

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still tweaking the ways how you can add stuff to Nozbe. This way, when you have a thought,

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when you have an idea, write it up, write it down.

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It's like, you know, whenever we talk on Zoom meetings

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or where we hang out and somebody is like,

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yeah, Michael, do you remember about that?

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And I'm like, yeah, not really.

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Where is the task for that?

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So like, if there is no task, it won't be done.

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Michael Hyatt used to say, what gets scheduled gets done.

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And I say, if there is no task for that,

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it's not gonna get done.

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- And writing stuff down, even for yourself,

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it's really important because talking like a geek

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in geek language, your brain is not your storage.

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- No.

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- It's your CPU, GPU, and RAM.

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It's your M1, actually.

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It's your silicon.

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You needed to generate great ideas and to calculate stuff, to analyze stuff and not to remember stuff.

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That's why you need to have your trusted system. You need to write stuff down in notes, in Nozbe, whatever suits you.

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Always to write stuff down then. I mean now. When you have this idea, when you have this moment,

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or when you have to remember that, just write it up.

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Write it up in a system or in a way,

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like ideally, for example, in Nozbe,

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in your single tasks or in a project,

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but in a way that you'll know you'll get there.

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You'll know you'll go through it, so you won't forget it.

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Very often, I mean, my brain is already,

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after 15 years of running Nozbe,

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it's just completely wired like this.

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So when people ask me, "Michael, do you remember that?"

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I'm like, "Nope, I don't remember that,

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but I know where it is so I'm gonna check it out. Yeah, I can tell you exactly which hour or whatever

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but I have to check it out. I don't remember these things. Yeah, you don't remember the whole idea

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but you remember you have a reference in your brain. Yes, it is in your system. Exactly, exactly.

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So you save a space in your brain and that way your brain is free to generate brilliant ideas

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because it's not occupied to remember everything you need to do.

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Exactly. And that's why it's so important to have this trusted system, to have this

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system where you know you can go there back and see where it is and see exactly the details,

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you know, everything. That's why even when you have a personal to-do app or when you have a

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team of one in Nozbe just for yourself, it's so important to keep writing stuff in the comments

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about tasks, because this way you communicate with yourself, with your

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future self. So many things we do like once a year or once every

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quarter or once every two years and then like when the time comes you're

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like "oh so I have to renew this license, how did it go again?" So just having

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the task "renew license" or "renew", I don't know, "do checkup" or like write it up in

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in the comment. So first go here, log in here, click there, and remember to mark this checkpoint.

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Do it all for yourself, do your own manual for yourself, for your future self. So next year

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it's going to be so easy. I remember in the beginning when I had just only a few domains

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for nosb.com, nosb.net, nosb.something, and I remember one of the registers we used

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for local domains had a really bad user interface, really clunky. So basically every year I was

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rediscovering how to use it because it was so bad. And then like after I think second year I decided

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man I'm gonna write this up. So I wrote it down. Go here, click on this link, go there, click there,

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renew, you're done. And then next year I was so thankful to myself that I did it because it was

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just straightforward. If you look at this in that way, it's kind of an investment, yeah?

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You need to spend like five minutes to write things down, how to do a thing, and then you

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after a year you save yourself like 15 minutes or even more figuring out this

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cranky user interface. Much more because you're writing stuff up while you're doing them, for

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example. So it doesn't take you so much extra time, but then next year, you don't have to

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rediscover the thing and you lose an hour or so. It can be just as...

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Yes, and an additional point. Let's say the next year you hire an assistant to do it for

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you.

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Right?

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You have everything written down, so you just delegate stuff to your assistant and they

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they can jump in, read the comments, and yeah, they know what to do.

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I think this is exactly a brilliant, brilliant point that we assume it's going to stay, I

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mean, what we're doing is going to stay like this forever. So when people sign up for a

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personal Nozbe just for themselves, they think, "I'm going to be just on my own. I don't need

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anyone else." And then you realize, "Hey, maybe I need an assistant or a coworker or

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maybe my business thrives and then I need more people." Then all the investment I've

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done in my system and putting all these projects and tasks and writing up these comments pays

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off in dividends. It's just beautiful. And you're like, "Whoa, accidentally I created

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a system."

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Yes, and we call it transparency. So you should be transparent with you, with future yourself,

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with your team. I really felt how important it is, especially when the war in Ukraine

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started and we started this gathering staff in our local community center. The communication

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was a house. It wasn't transparent. It was like, "Okay, this person knows this. Another

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person knows this, oh this person called to this center. Yeah, it wasn't transparent at all.

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And the system like this, like Nozbe or any other tool, it's really crucial for yourself and for

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your team to use it because it teaches you how to write stuff down and it just facilitates

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communication and people don't have to spend time on searching stuff, on figuring out

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how to do something or who to ask etc. I hate to admit it, but the king has no clothes.

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So the emperor has no clothes. The fact is that for many years we've been using

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as our Nozbe company, many additional tools, not just Nozbe.

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We use Nozbe to build Nozbe, but we also use other tools, like for example here, StreamYard,

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to record this and all that stuff. So we use many tools.

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And we didn't really keep track of all of them.

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Somebody was a manager of this tool, somebody was using that tool.

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So only last year we built a project

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called Subscriptions, where each task is a different

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subscription for different thing. So we have this account, we use this for sending emails,

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and this is the service name, this is who is the admin, this is how much we pay monthly or yearly or whatever.

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We write everything in the comment, like really all the details. And this way, when we have to upgrade or downgrade

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or we have to figure out like who has the password to this thing? It's all there.

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It says, you know, there is a password in our 1Password directors vault or

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1Password marketing vault. And so you know where it is, you know which email

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to use, you know everything, you know. And this way also security. We started using

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2FA, so multi-factor authentication, for most of these services because we found

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out that we were not using them very very often because, you know, like

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Like somebody forgot.

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So it really gives us a place that we have,

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like we have one project where we know all the external

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services that we use.

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We know who's in charge of all of these,

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like of each of them and what to do with them

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and how to renew and all that stuff.

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So it's fantastic.

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And I just, I can't understand why we were not doing it

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before, 'cause we should have.

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So really there's a pro tip for you.

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Don't be like us, have a subscription project.

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you than us. Yeah, that's really good because there were times when some subscription expired

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and some service stopped working. Exactly! And like who's in charge of this? Why did it expire?

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Where's our domain? What happened? All that stuff. This can't be like this. We can't have it like

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that. We have to be able to manage it. And of course, because in NoSpy we can set for each task

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a date or something like that so we know when it renews, where is the due date or where we have to

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renegotiate or whatever. So this is just a basic example of just putting that in

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one place. So now everybody knows that to find out about service that we use just

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go to the subscriptions project and it's all in there. When things are written

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down they are searchable. Oh yeah. So they're easy to find. In many tools

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the search is default right now in all of the apps. Yeah, finding stuff in

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In Nozbe, for example, it's really easy.

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You just hit Command + K or Control + K on Windows.

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And yeah, there is this jump to window.

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You start typing and you can really, really easily find tasks, projects, and commands.

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- Exactly.

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So people don't even have to know

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that we have a subscriptions project.

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For example, they want to know who's managing Slack, let's say.

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So they Command + K Slack,

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and they will find very quickly the task responsible

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for Slack in the subscriptions project.

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So it's really easy to find.

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you're totally right. This is a big deal. The advantage of written word, of writing stuff down, is that it's searchable much easier than audio or video. Audio or video is great, like if you're watching this live or in the replay on YouTube. That's great. You can see me. Hey, hello.

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Yes, but we are getting there because like every now for example when you post the video somewhere or audio the automatic transcription is happening.

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So we are getting there slowly. We are not it's not yet that searchable as written text but...

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Yeah and I think we'll get there because it's really like it all goes back to the search to the written word.

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word. Even if we say it in audio or in video, we want to have the written word,

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because then we want to find out the paragraph or the place where they said

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that what they said. So it's really important. And then also a

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pro tip, on Mac for example there are Siri shortcuts, so we can quickly

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create shortcuts for writing stuff down. For example, a rough out the other

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day I was ordering plane tickets for the reunion. And as you know I fly with just

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one airline because this airline gives me direct connections everywhere I go.

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I mean to most places where I go. So basically most of the tickets that I

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order, now that I'm ordering tickets back for plane after the pandemic, are with

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this airline. So they always send me the same email confirmation. I mean it's

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formatted the same way. "Congratulations Michael, you ordered the

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tickets for this flight at that time..." So what I did is I

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spent again five minutes, maybe ten, to create a shortcut that basically I can

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just copy this chunk of text that gives me the details of the flight and my

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shortcut parses, goes through each line and parses this to know what is the

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flight, when it starts, when it lands and creates a calendar entry in

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my calendar. It just basically adds a calendar entry to my calendar and it's done.

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This way I wrote it down in my calendar. I don't have to again remember when was the flight, what was the flight, and all that stuff.

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It's all in the calendar entry. I'm sure it can be done even better. Maybe you can just format the whole email or whatever.

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Yeah, if you are using Google for this, it should create automatically the flight details in Google Calendar.

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It could be, but I remember that it was kind of failing me at some point, or not adding it always, consistently, for some reason.

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So I just decided I'm going to just copy and paste it to Shortcut and it just creates the event.

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So, and I have several shortcuts,

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so we're gonna put them in the show notes.

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As you know, I have a shortcut for journaling.

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So we'll link to my whole article

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on my blog about journaling.

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And again, it's a shortcut, so it asks me questions.

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So helps me write stuff down and write my thoughts down.

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Also, I have a shortcut to block something

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when I have an idea for a blog post.

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I launch the shortcut and put a title and put a few notes,

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and then it creates a text file in my iCloud AI writer.

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library. I even have this shortcut with a share sheet. So for example, if I read an

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interesting article and I click the shortcut, I can write the title and then

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in the body of the text it's already the link to this article. So this way I

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can later refer to this article in the blog post.

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So you say for like drafts of the blog post.

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Exactly. So when I feel like posting something I can just go through my

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drafts and like, "Oh, I feel like posting about this, so I'm gonna just extend this

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and write it up. And because if you see Michael Dot's team, my blog, there are more than

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1,000 blog posts already. So I like writing on my personal blog. I just enjoy it. And

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that's why it's there.

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I think the tool we use for Twitter, Typefully, also has this kind of feature of drafts and

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there is some kind of shortcut to add something as a draft.

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Yeah, the other day I was thinking that some of the blog posts I can just write directly and typefully

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and convert them to a thread very easily because I think also it could improve my writing because then if it's a thread, every tweet counts.

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It has to be concise and very well written and edited. So this way my blog post will not be that long.

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It will be shorter because it will be basically consisting of tweetable phrases.

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Tweetable paragraphs. Exactly. And I think it's a good tip to practice writing, you know, to write

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a thread first for Twitter that you wouldn't be ashamed of and then later convert it into a blog

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post which is, you know, exactly with every paragraph tweetable. Do you use QuickNote on your

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iPad to quickly jot things down? Because it seems like a very obvious feature for this.

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No, no, I should try it more. I don't. It's a new feature and I have my pencil

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all the time on me so I can even use the pencil just to write something down,

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but I don't. What I do use a lot is whenever I see, for example, a bug or a feature

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or a suggestion or something cool, I want to communicate to the team, I do the screenshot

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on the iPad and write stuff with pencil, like annotate it with pencil, the screenshot,

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save it to photos, and then later or directly use the share sheet to add it to Nozbe

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or share it to photos and then go to the task that already has a history about it.

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And then I can just attach the screenshot. So the screenshots, for example, on the iPad with

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the pencil, they're just glorious because I can really very easily point out the problems, point

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out or a suggestion or a solution or something. Later I try to delete the

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screenshots from my photo library but for that moment that I can attach

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to any kind of task anywhere to give feedback to my peers. It's

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fantastic. On Mac I do the similar thing. I just grab the screenshot. I use

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CleanShot X. It's a wonderful tool to grab screenshots and short

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screencast and I just drop it on my priority list and it creates task with

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this and I can write down details to the team.

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About writing things to the team. Again, many people if they want to communicate and we talked

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about meetings and how they have to be optional, well-prepared and regular, the

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one thing that it's really important before you do a meeting with anyone,

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write it up first for them and give them a chance to read it first. After the

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reunion when I was on my flight I did my quarterly review because I don't know

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this kind of thing that you fly high above in the sky I have this perspective

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on world and I am offline so there is no temptation to do something apart

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from you know binge watching some videos I say on the iPad but it's glorious it's

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fantastic. I opened my linear app where I have a few templates where I can just

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fill them out and just write stuff. And what I did was also thinking, you know,

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what I can do to improve our marketing efforts, you know, everything that we're

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gonna do this quarter at Nozbe. And I had this plan. So my first inclination

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was, okay, so I'm gonna talk to my marketing team on Monday right away, even

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though we have a marketing team meeting on Tuesday. On Monday I'm gonna tell them

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all about this plan. And I was like, no, no, no, no. I'm going to write it up on Monday

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for them. And I'm going to talk to them on Tuesday. And I did that. You remember? So

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I wrote it up on Monday as a document. And we have great tools like Dropbox Paper or

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Google Docs or Microsoft Word online where you can very easily comment also on things,

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so on paragraphs. So I write it up in such a document. And then this document I posted

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as a link in a comment and a task about when we had our agenda for the marketing meeting.

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And this way, on Monday, people could read that stuff before we discussed them on Tuesday.

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So that's why writing stuff down is so important.

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When your first inclination is to discuss, to meet, which is the obvious choice because

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it's the easiest, stop.

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Write it up.

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Once you've done it, send it to the people.

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them a chance to think about it, to ponder on it, to give you better feedback, to have

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time to digest what you want them to hear, and then discuss the new ones on the meeting.

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So again, we talked about it when we talked about meetings, but it really correlates with

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this idea to writing, the importance of writing stuff down. Instead of getting a meeting first,

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write it up.

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Yep, and one important thing that you said we use many tools like Dropbox paper, Microsoft Word or Slack.

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We sometimes discuss something on Slack on chat. But always after that, the result of this discussion is posted as a task in Nozbe.

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And in this meeting, we created a special product for the thing we were talking about and already created a task there.

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though? >> My document posted on Monday was just the initiation of conversation.

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Because later we had a meeting and later after the meeting we created tasks for

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that. So the document is no longer relevant actually. It's no longer the

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source of truth. The source of truth is in Nozbe after, as a result of my writing

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this document, us discussing it, and now creating tasks for that. So it's

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really important to have this process like this. So again, write, write, write.

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If you are part of a team that likes meetings and you don't, try to write

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more stuff down before and after the meeting to really show your teammates

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that many things can be discussed asynchronously via text. And that way

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you can have effective meeting or shorter meeting or less meetings at all.

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So be proactive and do the first steps to reduce your time

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spent on unnecessary meetings.

305
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That's brilliant. Rafa, you're so right.

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People many times ask me how to convince boss to have fewer meetings.

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This is the way. Do what Rafa said.

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Write stuff down, write it up before the meeting so that people can actually refer to that.

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And then they will see, "Huh, this is interesting. Maybe I'm going to write something as well."

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So you're going to just keep poking the box, keep pushing them to write.

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And this way you will change gradually, slowly, but surely, you will change the culture of your workplace by just writing.

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One more thing I wanted to try about writing stuff down, which is also very important,

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is when you write things down in Nozbe or in Node.Sub or another place, it's very important

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to review those places regularly.

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That's why we have this tool called weekly review.

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And Mighty Fly Day.

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Yes, and Mighty Fly Days.

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And the weekly review is one activity we do on Mighty Fly Day.

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And yeah, that's the time when I review all the not so important places I put stuff, I

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write things down.

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For example, I review my quick notes.

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Exactly.

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Because I don't use it that much when I used to, when I had my iPad as my main mobile computer,

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but I still use it sometimes on my Mac and on my iPad mini with a pencil or with a short

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sheet.

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I save stuff there, I write stuff there, but I know that they are not so important that

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they don't have to be a task right away.

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I can process it later.

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And of course, for the most important stuff, I write them as tasks and I try to have incoming

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counter on zero by the end of every day.

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So that's how I assure that anything that is really important is not missed.

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Yeah, and also, downloads folder, for example, if you have a downloads folder, you download

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stuff throughout the week, check it out because there might be a gem there.

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There might be something that is a task actually there, because you just downloaded it, but

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you forgot about it.

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So now it's good time to review it.

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Yeah, actually, that's the good tip.

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forgot about it. Remind me to clean up downloads further on Friday. So speaking of this,

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because sometimes you don't have a way to write things down, but I have an Apple Watch,

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and I found that adding stuff with Siri is not reliable if you try to add it directly to third

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party app. But it works very well if you add it to reminders. Exactly, and then you can review

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your reminders at the end of the week or they will be just popping up,

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as you just mentioned. Siri will remind you on Friday about this.

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I'm searching through my notes and I think... To wrap it up, basically, because

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we can talk about this topic for a long time.

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I want to just summarize, because in my chapter, in No Office book, I wrote

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the benefits of writing stuff down. So I'm going to just repeat them here on

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air because they're pretty good. So first, the benefits of writing down.

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You stop forgetting stuff because it's written down.

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You don't need to explain things over and over again because it's written down in one place.

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Notes can be referred to later.

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There is more transparency. People see how things are done,

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which teaches them how things are done and they can keep improving on this.

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Not everyone has to attend all the meetings because they can refer to notes from the meetings.

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So you don't have to invite everyone and their body to the meeting.

356
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You get better feedback because as people become better writers, they write better comments.

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And there is just basically less chaos, no stress and overall better productivity.

358
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Yeah, that's true. And I see that we have a live comment from a listener.

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I'm a writing person, I like to write, but sometimes with some people at work it's better to just talk because they suck at writing.

360
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Yeah, that's true. I used to suck at writing as well.

361
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And now I feel like I'm good at it. I think it's a skill that you can learn.

362
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It's just a matter of attitude.

363
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And as I mentioned, it's better to hire the best writers you can, but even if they're not the best writers but they're just people good at their job,

364
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I think by doing, by adding feedback in comments, by writing asynchronous communication, by

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writing asynchronous comments, like good, thorough comments, you teach them that this

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is the way to go.

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And then the good FOMO kicks in, and the good FOMO is that they also want to write good

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comments and they will start writing more.

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On our team, we have a person who, for example, because we write comments in English, basically,

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most of our tasks, even though we're a Polish-based team. We have a person whose English maybe

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is not the best, but their written English has improved dramatically over the last few

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years working with us because of writing comments together in English. So it's just a matter

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of will, of motivation, and of just consistency.

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Talking to someone like one-on-one meeting as a quick meeting can be very productive

375
00:30:59,420 --> 00:31:03,420
as well, but the most important thing is to write things down after this.

376
00:31:03,420 --> 00:31:08,940
Oh yeah. Yesterday I had a very, very tough meeting with Tomas and

377
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my right-hand man in the company because we were discussing some

378
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scheduling conflicts of our plans. And it was a

379
00:31:19,260 --> 00:31:22,780
thorough meeting. We were just discussing things

380
00:31:22,780 --> 00:31:26,780
based on stuff that I have written down before.

381
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And then after the meeting concluded, the first thing Tomasz did was write a thorough comment explaining what we did and what we're going to change.

382
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And then I had another meeting two hours later with another colleague, and she already knew about it because she read the comment.

383
00:31:43,180 --> 00:31:52,060
So it's brilliant. Because he didn't keep what we discussed on the meeting, but he wrote it down as a comment.

384
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Like the word already got out.

385
00:31:54,500 --> 00:31:56,820
- Yeah, I know what comment you're referring to.

386
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I need to add my feedback to it as well.

387
00:32:01,820 --> 00:32:06,840
Okay, but let's wrap up this topic and let's take a break

388
00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:11,340
'cause Nowadays podcast is sponsored by Nozbe,

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00:32:11,340 --> 00:32:13,300
the fastest way to down.

390
00:32:13,300 --> 00:32:16,120
It's a task-based, async communication tool

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00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:18,800
for personal, family and business use.

392
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:21,620
So let's hear what Nozbe customers say

393
00:32:21,620 --> 00:32:23,260
about the product.

394
00:32:23,260 --> 00:32:25,760
- When we've been around for about 10 years,

395
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:27,620
our business has, and we've been using Nozbe

396
00:32:27,620 --> 00:32:28,860
for about eight of those years.

397
00:32:28,860 --> 00:32:30,820
And as we grew, we kind of got to the point

398
00:32:30,820 --> 00:32:33,820
where I just couldn't remember everything anymore.

399
00:32:33,820 --> 00:32:35,120
I'm pretty organized.

400
00:32:35,120 --> 00:32:36,660
I would just kind of keep everything in my head

401
00:32:36,660 --> 00:32:38,580
and with post-it notes and things like that.

402
00:32:38,580 --> 00:32:40,020
And it just got to be too much.

403
00:32:40,020 --> 00:32:41,180
And so I started looking around

404
00:32:41,180 --> 00:32:43,520
for some sort of project management software

405
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,780
that could help me have a set up really trusted system.

406
00:32:46,780 --> 00:32:47,920
But really I just wanted a system

407
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:50,340
where I could know that I had everything in there.

408
00:32:50,340 --> 00:32:51,720
I wasn't going to forget anything.

409
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,380
I wasn't going to drop any balls for clients or miss deadlines.

410
00:32:54,380 --> 00:33:02,960
Rafal, if we could run this ad also in the audio of the podcast, because it's

411
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:06,800
Sarah's audio, and she explains that she was forgetting stuff.

412
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:08,540
So that's why she goes...

413
00:33:08,540 --> 00:33:10,100
Yes, it really fits the topic.

414
00:33:10,100 --> 00:33:10,840
Yes, it does.

415
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:14,760
And I remember talking to her, she said that also it gives her superpowers

416
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:18,760
because when customers, for example, call her,

417
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:21,360
and potential customers, prospects call her,

418
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:24,160
they want a website and she's considering

419
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:25,400
creating a website for them,

420
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:26,800
she writes everything in Nozbe.

421
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:28,200
Like she writes their name and everything,

422
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:30,320
and then in comments, what they talked about

423
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:31,680
during the call.

424
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,840
And she told me on our interview,

425
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:36,640
I'm gonna link to the interview,

426
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:40,520
we have the whole interview as a blog post at iNotable.com.

427
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:42,600
And she said that it's brilliant

428
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:44,920
because let's say they called in two years.

429
00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:46,800
Two years later, the same customer calls,

430
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:49,480
and they're like, I'm sure you don't remember me.

431
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:51,400
My name is this and this, blah, blah, blah.

432
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:54,480
By the time they say that, she already searches Nozbe.

433
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:57,240
She finds the thing, and she's like, oh, yeah, I remember.

434
00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:58,440
We talked about this and that.

435
00:33:58,440 --> 00:33:58,940
And--

436
00:33:58,940 --> 00:33:59,440
Yeah.

437
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:01,040
[LAUGHTER]

438
00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:03,840
And you're just like, how do you remember all that?

439
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:06,000
There we go, writing stuff down.

440
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:07,280
Exactly.

441
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:11,160
All right, let's kick out a little bit.

442
00:34:11,160 --> 00:34:14,360
So we had a Norsby reunion.

443
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:19,440
And do you know that I haven't charged my MacBook there?

444
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:19,960
At all.

445
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:21,680
I just-- at all.

446
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:23,960
I packed my MacBook.

447
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,840
It was fully charged on Sunday.

448
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:29,680
I headed to train station.

449
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:35,320
I went to Warsaw to visit Radek to sleepover at his place.

450
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:39,680
Then on Monday, we went to Lublin for our reunion.

451
00:34:39,680 --> 00:34:43,060
And yeah, in this reunion I used my MacBook

452
00:34:43,060 --> 00:34:46,660
like one or two hours per day.

453
00:34:46,660 --> 00:34:49,140
Oh, and I also use it in a train

454
00:34:49,140 --> 00:34:53,060
to also for one or two hours to do my weekly review.

455
00:34:53,060 --> 00:34:58,060
It was, Sunday was my mighty fly day that week.

456
00:34:58,060 --> 00:35:03,100
And then yeah, I haven't run out of battery

457
00:35:03,100 --> 00:35:06,980
because the battery is awesome on this MacBook.

458
00:35:06,980 --> 00:35:14,540
And I did some work, I did some invoicing, I responded for some support tickets during

459
00:35:14,540 --> 00:35:15,540
Reunion.

460
00:35:15,540 --> 00:35:17,580
Yeah, it was really nice experience.

461
00:35:17,580 --> 00:35:24,060
I only needed to charge it on Friday when we come back from Reunion to Warsaw, to Radek's

462
00:35:24,060 --> 00:35:25,060
place.

463
00:35:25,060 --> 00:35:31,700
Then I charged it because I wanted to use it on a train back to my place on Saturday.

464
00:35:31,700 --> 00:35:32,700
That's brilliant, man.

465
00:35:32,700 --> 00:35:37,020
is why I'm envious about the new MacBooks in that sense because my iPad...

466
00:35:37,020 --> 00:35:45,740
Yeah, my MacBook Pro 14-inch. I just love this computer so much.

467
00:35:45,740 --> 00:35:50,540
I mean, this is the only gripe with my iPad. It's a fantastic machine. I love my iPad Pro.

468
00:35:50,540 --> 00:35:57,180
But when you do things on it, when you have meetings and all that stuff, and when you have

469
00:35:57,180 --> 00:36:01,180
full brightness, and very often I need to put a full brightness when I'm in the airplane or

470
00:36:01,180 --> 00:36:07,180
something. So then it lasts seven, eight hours. It doesn't last even ten hours.

471
00:36:07,180 --> 00:36:14,940
So that way I have to charge my iPad quite often. I would love to have an iPad with 20

472
00:36:14,940 --> 00:36:19,580
hour battery life, like just not to worry at all about battery life, but it's not the case.

473
00:36:19,580 --> 00:36:23,500
Especially of course with Zoom calls, for example, when we have Zoom call and I have it on battery,

474
00:36:23,500 --> 00:36:31,420
then it drains battery twice as fast. So in that sense, you know, it's worse than the new MacBooks.

475
00:36:31,420 --> 00:36:37,820
But in every other way, it's a perfect machine. So I prefer it.

476
00:36:37,820 --> 00:36:45,660
Yeah, good for you. The most important thing that our machines bring us joy.

477
00:36:45,660 --> 00:36:51,100
Yes, they do. Also, now that we are on video, who is watching us on video?

478
00:36:51,740 --> 00:36:55,100
can see our merch because I think you have the t-shirt right from

479
00:36:55,100 --> 00:36:59,540
Nozbe. India? Yes I have a t-shirt from Nozbe. India. And I have the polo long sleeve with

480
00:36:59,540 --> 00:37:06,980
Nozbe logo. Yeah. So yeah so we got these and we got a Nozbe backpack which

481
00:37:06,980 --> 00:37:12,380
people were asking for a Nozbe backpack. I have it here actually so I will

482
00:37:12,380 --> 00:37:20,500
show it as a photo of chapter art. Yeah but it's it's really nice backpack I'm glad

483
00:37:20,500 --> 00:37:25,460
Ivona picked it up. It's not perfect but it's very very very very

484
00:37:25,460 --> 00:37:32,900
good and I already love it. Yeah it's the NordAce Ciena Smart

485
00:37:32,900 --> 00:37:40,340
backpack. So that's the model and it has this USB port so you can connect

486
00:37:40,340 --> 00:37:47,060
power bank inside and connect your smartphone to the external USB port on

487
00:37:47,060 --> 00:37:53,060
on the backpack and the nice feature of this backpack is it can stay the shape

488
00:37:53,060 --> 00:37:59,460
of the backpack really stays almost the same if it's empty and if it's full.

489
00:37:59,460 --> 00:38:03,700
So it stays horizontal, like vertical. It stays horizontal when you put it on the floor.

490
00:38:03,700 --> 00:38:09,600
Vertical, yeah. So that's really nice and I already tested it because I

491
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:15,700
used it to travel back. So because, yeah, the funny thing is because I travel

492
00:38:15,700 --> 00:38:23,620
backpack only but with an asterisk to this reunion because I wanted

493
00:38:23,620 --> 00:38:31,460
to travel backpack only but I wanted to have as few things as possible so I sent

494
00:38:31,460 --> 00:38:36,780
some stuff to myself to Lublin via this we have this Pachkomate thing it's

495
00:38:36,780 --> 00:38:42,820
it's I don't know if it's popular outside of Poland probably some somewhere

496
00:38:42,820 --> 00:38:52,660
Europe but don't know if in the US but we have this many machines on the street that has

497
00:38:52,660 --> 00:38:59,700
some drawers for your parcels and you can, yeah, the carriers move them between those parcels and

498
00:38:59,700 --> 00:39:06,660
you can put them inside to send it and take it away in the same

499
00:39:07,140 --> 00:39:17,060
similar machine in other cities. So I use it to send me, I sent a homemade wine

500
00:39:17,060 --> 00:39:25,220
to show it, to give it to the team so they can try it because it's the wine made by my dad.

501
00:39:25,220 --> 00:39:26,180
It was very good.

502
00:39:26,180 --> 00:39:33,460
It was heavy, so it wasn't good for back-pup only. And I use my two or three t-shirts to

503
00:39:34,820 --> 00:39:41,660
make sure that the wine is will not gonna break in the in the transport yeah

504
00:39:41,660 --> 00:39:48,740
and I actually didn't use those t-shirts so I did because we got so much so many

505
00:39:48,740 --> 00:39:54,640
merch yeah yeah we got we got quite a few that's why I was you know before I

506
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:59,020
packed I asked Magda because you know in my company I don't know what's coming

507
00:39:59,020 --> 00:40:03,260
because Magda decides she organizes the reunion so she decides what kind of

508
00:40:03,260 --> 00:40:08,260
gadgets we have and my father, our CFO pays the bills,

509
00:40:08,260 --> 00:40:10,180
so I really don't know.

510
00:40:10,180 --> 00:40:12,540
That's why I'm also getting surprised,

511
00:40:12,540 --> 00:40:14,420
what's gonna be next time.

512
00:40:14,420 --> 00:40:16,700
So I asked her what's coming,

513
00:40:16,700 --> 00:40:19,100
I mean, what kind of clothing is coming

514
00:40:19,100 --> 00:40:22,220
so that I knew how many shirts I should pack

515
00:40:22,220 --> 00:40:23,820
and still I packed too many.

516
00:40:23,820 --> 00:40:28,700
As yourself, I haven't used like two shirts I packed

517
00:40:28,700 --> 00:40:32,620
because we got so many and we got used,

518
00:40:32,620 --> 00:40:41,740
we didn't use them. So yeah, in the end I didn't need that much pieces, many pieces of clothing for the reunion.

519
00:40:41,740 --> 00:40:48,780
Yep, and another tip I wanted to share is actually your tip, because our Polish train system,

520
00:40:48,780 --> 00:40:54,300
you can have a ticket with a QR code, but there is no way to add it to Apple Wallet.

521
00:40:54,300 --> 00:41:01,740
Yeah. Even if you try it with some apps that can do that, the result is that you have, it's broken.

522
00:41:01,740 --> 00:41:11,820
it's not gonna work. So I always use it like that I have a Dropbox folder and I put tickets there and

523
00:41:11,820 --> 00:41:18,220
before the trip I made sure that it's downloaded locally on my iPhone because sometimes on train

524
00:41:18,220 --> 00:41:23,660
you don't have a reception. Yep, so you don't have an internet connection and yeah you shared

525
00:41:23,660 --> 00:41:30,140
a nice tip but actually it's better to add it to a note. Yes. With Notes app because you then can

526
00:41:30,140 --> 00:41:39,420
have a notes widget on an iPhone with this specific note when you have all the necessary

527
00:41:39,420 --> 00:41:45,660
information about your tip, your tickets, etc. And that's available offline. So that was really cool.

528
00:41:45,660 --> 00:41:51,340
I did that and yeah, I really liked it. I mean having a note in Notes app is also good because

529
00:41:51,340 --> 00:41:55,580
when you take pictures there, the pictures go only to this note. They don't go to your camera roll.

530
00:41:55,580 --> 00:41:59,180
So for example, this way I take a picture of the parking place where I park the car.

531
00:41:59,820 --> 00:42:02,820
I take a picture of something else that I have to remember.

532
00:42:02,820 --> 00:42:07,820
And then I also add the PDFs of tickets and all that stuff also to this note.

533
00:42:07,820 --> 00:42:12,320
So in this one handy note, I have all the reference information for this trip,

534
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:17,920
and it's offline always because this is how notes work.

535
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:20,820
They download offline to your phone.

536
00:42:20,820 --> 00:42:23,420
So I don't have to worry that exactly at the time when the ticket checker person comes,

537
00:42:26,620 --> 00:42:30,140
There will be no reception, no service, and I will not be able to show them the tickets.

538
00:42:30,140 --> 00:42:34,740
So it's a good tip.

539
00:42:34,740 --> 00:42:40,380
Yeah, I see that the listener is sharing that they always put

540
00:42:40,380 --> 00:42:44,140
train tickets, Polish train tickets to BooksUp.

541
00:42:44,140 --> 00:42:47,500
So they are also available offline.

542
00:42:47,500 --> 00:42:51,740
Yeah, but in BooksUp, I really have books, so I prefer to have notes.

543
00:42:51,740 --> 00:42:56,380
And this is one thing that I also did recently when I was when I switched

544
00:42:56,380 --> 00:43:03,980
to this new MacBook Air and that I finally got rid of my Evernote subscription, Premium subscription.

545
00:43:03,980 --> 00:43:09,100
I'm on Evernote free now because I still have it just in case I need to check some notes,

546
00:43:09,100 --> 00:43:14,300
some random note that I still haven't imported but I basically went through all my thousands of notes

547
00:43:14,300 --> 00:43:19,820
and just chose the ones to export and basically from Evernote you can export to

548
00:43:20,540 --> 00:43:27,020
Nx format, their proprietary format. But then on the Mac you can import these nodes very easily to the Nodes app.

549
00:43:27,020 --> 00:43:35,660
So now I've either downloaded some of these things as PDFs to the Dropbox folder or iCloud folder,

550
00:43:35,660 --> 00:43:41,980
but sometimes I just imported them to Nodes. So basically I managed to move my life out of Evernote

551
00:43:41,980 --> 00:43:47,100
and I'm not using it anymore. I'm using right now Apple Nodes or the iCloud drive.

552
00:43:47,100 --> 00:43:54,860
Yeah, so same as me because there are many great apps for notes, but the System Notes app is

553
00:43:54,860 --> 00:44:00,860
really, really good and it has always some advantages because of spotlight integration,

554
00:44:00,860 --> 00:44:04,860
etc. It's always more reliable. Yeah, and then we have great apps. I mean,

555
00:44:04,860 --> 00:44:11,100
both the Notes app scans things very well. So another tip is that all my cards,

556
00:44:12,460 --> 00:44:17,700
membership cards are scanned as well. I take pictures of them and I have a one note for all these cards.

557
00:44:17,700 --> 00:44:24,620
So for example, the other day I was getting my youngest daughter vaccinated and they wanted her,

558
00:44:24,620 --> 00:44:28,760
you know, health insurance card and I didn't bring it with me.

559
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:35,140
I had it on my notes and I showed it to them and they just checked the number and I was like,

560
00:44:35,140 --> 00:44:39,580
okay, good, then you're good to go. So this way you can have all these cards handy.

561
00:44:39,580 --> 00:44:42,860
You don't have to carry them with you. That's why you can have a minimalist wallet.

562
00:44:42,860 --> 00:44:50,460
Yeah, and there are even apps that some of them you can add to Apple Wallet and even connect them with a specific location.

563
00:44:50,460 --> 00:44:57,240
For example, when you are in IKEA, you will have a notification with your IKEA card ready to show.

564
00:44:57,240 --> 00:45:06,820
That's a good idea. I use that for example, recently I started donating blood for my first time and I scanned the card.

565
00:45:07,140 --> 00:45:14,400
But then I converted this card also to the wallet card. So that's why I have a wallet entry and with my you know

566
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,220
ID of blood donator guy

567
00:45:17,220 --> 00:45:23,760
Anything else you want to share from from the Union? It was good to see you all like and and

568
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,220
yes, but yeah, but

569
00:45:26,220 --> 00:45:32,620
The thing is that we figured out after so many reunions that the most important thing actually is to hang out

570
00:45:32,860 --> 00:45:38,100
It's just to be together. Like we don't need to do many things. We don't need to work on many things.

571
00:45:38,100 --> 00:45:41,060
We don't need to really have like a really...

572
00:45:41,060 --> 00:45:43,540
Workshops.

573
00:45:43,540 --> 00:45:47,620
We need to have a plan to hang out in different environments and

574
00:45:47,620 --> 00:45:54,280
things that we discovered, for example, was it was good to have a guided tour of the city because we always go to a different

575
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:57,020
city and on Tuesday we had a guided tour to the city.

576
00:45:57,020 --> 00:46:01,140
And it was brilliant because this way, like the rest of the days, I felt

577
00:46:01,660 --> 00:46:08,140
more at home in city of Lublin, which was my second time visiting it and first time really staying longer and

578
00:46:08,140 --> 00:46:12,440
After the guided tour, I felt like I knew the city, you know

579
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,460
And now we know that every time we do a reunion

580
00:46:15,460 --> 00:46:21,020
We have to have a guided tour of the new city on Tuesday right away when we you know, we land on Monday

581
00:46:21,020 --> 00:46:25,920
We have the keynote and stuff. But then on Tuesday first thing we should have a guided tour this way

582
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:31,960
we, you know, learn the place. We know what it's all about and it was very very good.

583
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:38,720
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I enjoy it a lot. The guided tour, the city by itself,

584
00:46:38,720 --> 00:46:41,300
the museums we visited and

585
00:46:41,300 --> 00:46:46,840
the workshops of baking Cebulazhe. It's a special

586
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:50,520
special kind of pizza like from onion.

587
00:46:52,320 --> 00:47:00,640
local traditional food. Yeah, that was really fun and can't wait for next reunion in the autumn.

588
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:08,560
So yeah, but we wanted also to mention that we have some improvements to our

589
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:19,840
referral program in Nozbe. And you can just give, by recommending Nozbe, you can give $15 to your people.

590
00:47:20,560 --> 00:47:25,560
The thing is that we wanted to combine a reflow program and affiliate program, like everything in one place.

591
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:31,060
So word of mouth is the key. This is why we are still here after 15 years,

592
00:47:31,060 --> 00:47:36,620
because people were recommending Nozbe to others. This is how we got our marketing done, basically.

593
00:47:36,620 --> 00:47:41,960
And we want to really improve it now.

594
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:43,920
And if you go to nozbe.com/refer or refer-a-team.com, then you will learn all about it.

595
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:54,480
But the cool change was inspired by our recent promo. We had a promo because of our 15 years of Nozbe.

596
00:47:54,480 --> 00:48:07,280
We had a promo that when you sign up for a free account at Nozbe, you get $15 or 15 euros or 15 pounds or 60 zł as credits.

597
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:10,800
And you can use it to upgrade or extend your premium subscription.

598
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:16,720
And you get it if you sign up for a free account. So you can use free, you know, up to five projects and five people as long as you want.

599
00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:21,720
But when you decide to upgrade to premium, you can use the credits to do that.

600
00:48:21,720 --> 00:48:25,780
And we thought after the promo, because it was very popular, we had two or three thousand people get the credits.

601
00:48:25,780 --> 00:48:32,460
So we thought, let's just extend it to our affiliates referrals.

602
00:48:32,460 --> 00:48:37,340
So when a person goes to Nozbe.com and they sign up for an account, they don't get the credits.

603
00:48:37,340 --> 00:48:44,300
But if they go through you, through your recommendation, Nozbe.com/your-affiliate-id, you will get the credit.

604
00:48:44,300 --> 00:48:49,300
ID, you give them 15 bucks.

605
00:48:49,300 --> 00:48:52,740
So when they sign up, they get the credit instantly.

606
00:48:52,740 --> 00:48:54,500
And of course, if they sign up for premium

607
00:48:54,500 --> 00:48:58,400
and they start paying, you get a 25% recurring commission.

608
00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:00,860
So it's great all around.

609
00:49:00,860 --> 00:49:02,900
But the best part is I think the recommending person

610
00:49:02,900 --> 00:49:05,500
gives them a better deal than they would have otherwise.

611
00:49:05,500 --> 00:49:07,940
And I think it's the key of a good referral program

612
00:49:07,940 --> 00:49:11,140
that when they come from you, they get something in return.

613
00:49:11,140 --> 00:49:13,540
Not just it's like your business

614
00:49:13,540 --> 00:49:18,540
because you want to have a commission. No, it's also their business because they get the credit.

615
00:49:18,540 --> 00:49:24,020
And of course, when you get the commission, you can use the commission and apply it directly to extend your account.

616
00:49:24,020 --> 00:49:28,740
So it's really a win-win. Like when you recommend to four people and then four people sign up for a year,

617
00:49:28,740 --> 00:49:36,380
basically it's a free year of Nozbe for you.

618
00:49:36,380 --> 00:49:41,540
And for this person that uses your link, this $15 is all you can do.

619
00:49:41,540 --> 00:49:47,620
the analysis, you can exchange it to almost, I think, two months of Nozbe

620
00:49:47,620 --> 00:49:52,280
Premium for one person. Exactly, so it's a much better deal than a free trial

621
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:56,620
because then actually they have a longer period of time that they can try

622
00:49:56,620 --> 00:50:02,620
using Nozbe. Plus, and if you don't have a Nozbe account yet, you can

623
00:50:02,620 --> 00:50:09,080
use our referral link which is if you use nooffice.fm website to sign up,

624
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:14,280
there is in the header there is a sign-up button for Nozbe on our podcast

625
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:19,200
website nooffice.fm you will also get those $15.

626
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:26,720
Because we created a special NoOffice affiliate. We are affiliates of ourselves.

627
00:50:26,720 --> 00:50:32,480
Well we don't use the commission because it goes internally to the company but at

628
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:36,400
least we can give you the $15. So if you want a $15 from us go to

629
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:41,380
know office.fm. If you want to learn more about how to refer people to Nozbe,

630
00:50:41,380 --> 00:50:45,140
go to refer@hint.com and you will learn all about it. How to set it up

631
00:50:45,140 --> 00:50:49,900
correctly, how to convince people to start using Nozbe because if you like it,

632
00:50:49,900 --> 00:50:52,960
I'm sure they will like it and then maybe you can have a joint project with

633
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:56,820
them and collaborate with them. You know, the sky is the limit.

634
00:50:56,820 --> 00:51:02,020
Exactly, sky is the limit and I think it's a time to wrap up this episode.

635
00:51:02,020 --> 00:51:09,280
Yep. So what day is tomorrow Michael? It's Friday. Yes and fly day so remember to

636
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:13,380
make it mighty fly day and that means that you should do your weekly review,

637
00:51:13,380 --> 00:51:17,580
plan priorities for next week and spend the rest of the day on learning

638
00:51:17,580 --> 00:51:23,720
something new, some new skill that you can later use it in your work or learn

639
00:51:23,720 --> 00:51:30,940
how to better use the tools that you are using in with your team. For

640
00:51:30,940 --> 00:51:35,440
example, learn some new features of Node-B. And after this you can have a

641
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:41,740
great weekend. And I think it's time for us to have this adios

642
00:51:41,740 --> 00:51:48,340
moment, this goodbye moment as a homework section. So homework for you, our listener,

643
00:51:48,340 --> 00:51:54,140
is go to nazimbi.com/friday or fridayisfree.com and learn more about

644
00:51:54,140 --> 00:51:58,620
Mighty Fridays. But because it's about writing stuff down, so think about the

645
00:51:58,620 --> 00:52:02,620
way how you can speed up writing stuff down for you. Think about maybe

646
00:52:02,620 --> 00:52:07,020
shortcuts or any other things that you can do this Friday so that next week is

647
00:52:07,020 --> 00:52:11,020
gonna be easier for you to write stuff down. And if you don't know how to

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touch-type, we will have a link in the show notes about how to touch-type

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and why it's important, you can start a touch-type course on

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Friday to learn how to type faster and write faster. So this Friday make it

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a homework to write stuff down better.

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Yes, actually TouchType is a very good tool and as we talk about writing stuff

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that I just wrote down to include the link to TouchType course in our show notes in our task.

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And a video from 10 years ago where I showed how TouchTyping works.

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So many layers. Okay, remember that if you enjoyed this episode please

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help support this podcast either by sharing it with a friend or leaving us a nice review

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00:52:56,380 --> 00:53:04,140
in Apple Podcast or by checking out our Nozbe app. So that's it for today, say goodbye Michael.

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Thank you guys, have a great Friday and learn how to write stuff done better.

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This episode has not been created in the office. Because in Nozbe there is no office. Your hosts

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were Michael Stivinski and Rafal Subolevski. All the links and show notes you will find on

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novices.fm/39. The whole production process of this episode has been coordinated in a project

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in Nozbe app. Control is good, but writing stuff down and transparency and trust are so much better.

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Thank you and see you in two weeks. Remember to have a mighty Friday!