Don't cram plenty people on Zoom. Fluorescent light at the office all day long. You know,
you probably are going to work from home.
Hello and welcome to episode number 39 of No Office, a podcast about work, technology
and life from a remote company perspective. My name is Rafal Sobolewski and as always,
I'm joined by CEO of our No Office company and my good friend, Michael Sliwinski. Hello,
Hello Michael, how are you today?
Good, good, good. We are back from our Nozbe reunion.
We have just seen each other.
So it's good to see you Rafa again, but it was good to spend time with you for the last whole week.
So, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that was really fun.
We met with the whole team in the beautiful city of Lublin.
Yes, we did some cool stuff but we will talk about it in the further part of the episode.
And today, as I wrote down my notes to the podcast, this episode, I see that we want to
talk about writing stuff down. Exactly, I mean, you know, it might sound obvious but it's not.
So I dedicated a whole chapter of my No Office book to this subject if you go to nooffice.org/write
and the chapter's name is exactly "Write stuff down".
It's about this fact. We talked in the last episode about hybrid work style,
about being hybrid. Being hybrid means having all the information in one place
accessible from anywhere. It means writing much more than you think,
because you will no longer communicate with people only through
hanging out together like we did on the reunion, and talking on meetings.
But you have to write stuff down for everyone else to see, for yourself to see
in the future to be able to check with your past self. So basically writing
stuff down is really important to write in a good way, to write good
comments, write thorough comments, write thorough feedback and really take time
to write and to really hone writing skills. I remember when I was
listening to people, I think it was still the guys from Basecamp, where they
said that when they were hiring they would say that when in doubt
between two candidates a better writer wins. So the skill set to write stuff
down well, coherent, concise in a good way is really important.
Ah, that's interesting.
But that's a really good idea because writing stuff down
in a coherent way with straight to the point
is a really good skill, especially now
with all the hybrid and remote work.
And we really see it in our company as well.
And funny thing is because writing stuff down
is like the most important habit or first habit of getting things done.
Oh yes.
Methodology, yeah?
So it's like, it's very important for your personal productivity, but it's much more
important for your team productivity also.
That's why it's really crucial to be able to add tasks from anywhere quickly.
Like instead of keeping it in your mind, "Yeah, I'm going to create a task about it later,"
you know?
No, no, no.
Do it now.
people are, that's why many customers have been asking for our Mac app and we will link
in the show notes to our beta version of the Mac app and the Windows app, which is also
coming soon, that they want to be able to have a shortcut to quickly add stuff to Nozbe.
And that's why we have a share sheet on iOS, to add stuff quickly to Nozbe. And we are
still tweaking the ways how you can add stuff to Nozbe. This way, when you have a thought,
when you have an idea, write it up, write it down.
It's like, you know, whenever we talk on Zoom meetings
or where we hang out and somebody is like,
yeah, Michael, do you remember about that?
And I'm like, yeah, not really.
Where is the task for that?
So like, if there is no task, it won't be done.
Michael Hyatt used to say, what gets scheduled gets done.
And I say, if there is no task for that,
it's not gonna get done.
- And writing stuff down, even for yourself,
it's really important because talking like a geek
in geek language, your brain is not your storage.
- No.
- It's your CPU, GPU, and RAM.
It's your M1, actually.
It's your silicon.
You needed to generate great ideas and to calculate stuff, to analyze stuff and not to remember stuff.
That's why you need to have your trusted system. You need to write stuff down in notes, in Nozbe, whatever suits you.
Always to write stuff down then. I mean now. When you have this idea, when you have this moment,
or when you have to remember that, just write it up.
Write it up in a system or in a way,
like ideally, for example, in Nozbe,
in your single tasks or in a project,
but in a way that you'll know you'll get there.
You'll know you'll go through it, so you won't forget it.
Very often, I mean, my brain is already,
after 15 years of running Nozbe,
it's just completely wired like this.
So when people ask me, "Michael, do you remember that?"
I'm like, "Nope, I don't remember that,
but I know where it is so I'm gonna check it out. Yeah, I can tell you exactly which hour or whatever
but I have to check it out. I don't remember these things. Yeah, you don't remember the whole idea
but you remember you have a reference in your brain. Yes, it is in your system. Exactly, exactly.
So you save a space in your brain and that way your brain is free to generate brilliant ideas
because it's not occupied to remember everything you need to do.
Exactly. And that's why it's so important to have this trusted system, to have this
system where you know you can go there back and see where it is and see exactly the details,
you know, everything. That's why even when you have a personal to-do app or when you have a
team of one in Nozbe just for yourself, it's so important to keep writing stuff in the comments
about tasks, because this way you communicate with yourself, with your
future self. So many things we do like once a year or once every
quarter or once every two years and then like when the time comes you're
like "oh so I have to renew this license, how did it go again?" So just having
the task "renew license" or "renew", I don't know, "do checkup" or like write it up in
in the comment. So first go here, log in here, click there, and remember to mark this checkpoint.
Do it all for yourself, do your own manual for yourself, for your future self. So next year
it's going to be so easy. I remember in the beginning when I had just only a few domains
for nosb.com, nosb.net, nosb.something, and I remember one of the registers we used
for local domains had a really bad user interface, really clunky. So basically every year I was
rediscovering how to use it because it was so bad. And then like after I think second year I decided
man I'm gonna write this up. So I wrote it down. Go here, click on this link, go there, click there,
renew, you're done. And then next year I was so thankful to myself that I did it because it was
just straightforward. If you look at this in that way, it's kind of an investment, yeah?
You need to spend like five minutes to write things down, how to do a thing, and then you
after a year you save yourself like 15 minutes or even more figuring out this
cranky user interface. Much more because you're writing stuff up while you're doing them, for
example. So it doesn't take you so much extra time, but then next year, you don't have to
rediscover the thing and you lose an hour or so. It can be just as...
Yes, and an additional point. Let's say the next year you hire an assistant to do it for
you.
Right?
You have everything written down, so you just delegate stuff to your assistant and they
they can jump in, read the comments, and yeah, they know what to do.
I think this is exactly a brilliant, brilliant point that we assume it's going to stay, I
mean, what we're doing is going to stay like this forever. So when people sign up for a
personal Nozbe just for themselves, they think, "I'm going to be just on my own. I don't need
anyone else." And then you realize, "Hey, maybe I need an assistant or a coworker or
maybe my business thrives and then I need more people." Then all the investment I've
done in my system and putting all these projects and tasks and writing up these comments pays
off in dividends. It's just beautiful. And you're like, "Whoa, accidentally I created
a system."
Yes, and we call it transparency. So you should be transparent with you, with future yourself,
with your team. I really felt how important it is, especially when the war in Ukraine
started and we started this gathering staff in our local community center. The communication
was a house. It wasn't transparent. It was like, "Okay, this person knows this. Another
person knows this, oh this person called to this center. Yeah, it wasn't transparent at all.
And the system like this, like Nozbe or any other tool, it's really crucial for yourself and for
your team to use it because it teaches you how to write stuff down and it just facilitates
communication and people don't have to spend time on searching stuff, on figuring out
how to do something or who to ask etc. I hate to admit it, but the king has no clothes.
So the emperor has no clothes. The fact is that for many years we've been using
as our Nozbe company, many additional tools, not just Nozbe.
We use Nozbe to build Nozbe, but we also use other tools, like for example here, StreamYard,
to record this and all that stuff. So we use many tools.
And we didn't really keep track of all of them.
Somebody was a manager of this tool, somebody was using that tool.
So only last year we built a project
called Subscriptions, where each task is a different
subscription for different thing. So we have this account, we use this for sending emails,
and this is the service name, this is who is the admin, this is how much we pay monthly or yearly or whatever.
We write everything in the comment, like really all the details. And this way, when we have to upgrade or downgrade
or we have to figure out like who has the password to this thing? It's all there.
It says, you know, there is a password in our 1Password directors vault or
1Password marketing vault. And so you know where it is, you know which email
to use, you know everything, you know. And this way also security. We started using
2FA, so multi-factor authentication, for most of these services because we found
out that we were not using them very very often because, you know, like
Like somebody forgot.
So it really gives us a place that we have,
like we have one project where we know all the external
services that we use.
We know who's in charge of all of these,
like of each of them and what to do with them
and how to renew and all that stuff.
So it's fantastic.
And I just, I can't understand why we were not doing it
before, 'cause we should have.
So really there's a pro tip for you.
Don't be like us, have a subscription project.
you than us. Yeah, that's really good because there were times when some subscription expired
and some service stopped working. Exactly! And like who's in charge of this? Why did it expire?
Where's our domain? What happened? All that stuff. This can't be like this. We can't have it like
that. We have to be able to manage it. And of course, because in NoSpy we can set for each task
a date or something like that so we know when it renews, where is the due date or where we have to
renegotiate or whatever. So this is just a basic example of just putting that in
one place. So now everybody knows that to find out about service that we use just
go to the subscriptions project and it's all in there. When things are written
down they are searchable. Oh yeah. So they're easy to find. In many tools
the search is default right now in all of the apps. Yeah, finding stuff in
In Nozbe, for example, it's really easy.
You just hit Command + K or Control + K on Windows.
And yeah, there is this jump to window.
You start typing and you can really, really easily find tasks, projects, and commands.
- Exactly.
So people don't even have to know
that we have a subscriptions project.
For example, they want to know who's managing Slack, let's say.
So they Command + K Slack,
and they will find very quickly the task responsible
for Slack in the subscriptions project.
So it's really easy to find.
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.
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.
So we are getting there slowly. We are not it's not yet that searchable as written text but...
Yeah and I think we'll get there because it's really like it all goes back to the search to the written word.
word. Even if we say it in audio or in video, we want to have the written word,
because then we want to find out the paragraph or the place where they said
that what they said. So it's really important. And then also a
pro tip, on Mac for example there are Siri shortcuts, so we can quickly
create shortcuts for writing stuff down. For example, a rough out the other
day I was ordering plane tickets for the reunion. And as you know I fly with just
one airline because this airline gives me direct connections everywhere I go.
I mean to most places where I go. So basically most of the tickets that I
order, now that I'm ordering tickets back for plane after the pandemic, are with
this airline. So they always send me the same email confirmation. I mean it's
formatted the same way. "Congratulations Michael, you ordered the
tickets for this flight at that time..." So what I did is I
spent again five minutes, maybe ten, to create a shortcut that basically I can
just copy this chunk of text that gives me the details of the flight and my
shortcut parses, goes through each line and parses this to know what is the
flight, when it starts, when it lands and creates a calendar entry in
my calendar. It just basically adds a calendar entry to my calendar and it's done.
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.
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.
Yeah, if you are using Google for this, it should create automatically the flight details in Google Calendar.
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.
So I just decided I'm going to just copy and paste it to Shortcut and it just creates the event.
So, and I have several shortcuts,
so we're gonna put them in the show notes.
As you know, I have a shortcut for journaling.
So we'll link to my whole article
on my blog about journaling.
And again, it's a shortcut, so it asks me questions.
So helps me write stuff down and write my thoughts down.
Also, I have a shortcut to block something
when I have an idea for a blog post.
I launch the shortcut and put a title and put a few notes,
and then it creates a text file in my iCloud AI writer.
library. I even have this shortcut with a share sheet. So for example, if I read an
interesting article and I click the shortcut, I can write the title and then
in the body of the text it's already the link to this article. So this way I
can later refer to this article in the blog post.
So you say for like drafts of the blog post.
Exactly. So when I feel like posting something I can just go through my
drafts and like, "Oh, I feel like posting about this, so I'm gonna just extend this
and write it up. And because if you see Michael Dot's team, my blog, there are more than
1,000 blog posts already. So I like writing on my personal blog. I just enjoy it. And
that's why it's there.
I think the tool we use for Twitter, Typefully, also has this kind of feature of drafts and
there is some kind of shortcut to add something as a draft.
Yeah, the other day I was thinking that some of the blog posts I can just write directly and typefully
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.
It has to be concise and very well written and edited. So this way my blog post will not be that long.
It will be shorter because it will be basically consisting of tweetable phrases.
Tweetable paragraphs. Exactly. And I think it's a good tip to practice writing, you know, to write
a thread first for Twitter that you wouldn't be ashamed of and then later convert it into a blog
post which is, you know, exactly with every paragraph tweetable. Do you use QuickNote on your
iPad to quickly jot things down? Because it seems like a very obvious feature for this.
No, no, I should try it more. I don't. It's a new feature and I have my pencil
all the time on me so I can even use the pencil just to write something down,
but I don't. What I do use a lot is whenever I see, for example, a bug or a feature
or a suggestion or something cool, I want to communicate to the team, I do the screenshot
on the iPad and write stuff with pencil, like annotate it with pencil, the screenshot,
save it to photos, and then later or directly use the share sheet to add it to Nozbe
or share it to photos and then go to the task that already has a history about it.
And then I can just attach the screenshot. So the screenshots, for example, on the iPad with
the pencil, they're just glorious because I can really very easily point out the problems, point
out or a suggestion or a solution or something. Later I try to delete the
screenshots from my photo library but for that moment that I can attach
to any kind of task anywhere to give feedback to my peers. It's
fantastic. On Mac I do the similar thing. I just grab the screenshot. I use
CleanShot X. It's a wonderful tool to grab screenshots and short
screencast and I just drop it on my priority list and it creates task with
this and I can write down details to the team.
About writing things to the team. Again, many people if they want to communicate and we talked
about meetings and how they have to be optional, well-prepared and regular, the
one thing that it's really important before you do a meeting with anyone,
write it up first for them and give them a chance to read it first. After the
reunion when I was on my flight I did my quarterly review because I don't know
this kind of thing that you fly high above in the sky I have this perspective
on world and I am offline so there is no temptation to do something apart
from you know binge watching some videos I say on the iPad but it's glorious it's
fantastic. I opened my linear app where I have a few templates where I can just
fill them out and just write stuff. And what I did was also thinking, you know,
what I can do to improve our marketing efforts, you know, everything that we're
gonna do this quarter at Nozbe. And I had this plan. So my first inclination
was, okay, so I'm gonna talk to my marketing team on Monday right away, even
though we have a marketing team meeting on Tuesday. On Monday I'm gonna tell them
all about this plan. And I was like, no, no, no, no. I'm going to write it up on Monday
for them. And I'm going to talk to them on Tuesday. And I did that. You remember? So
I wrote it up on Monday as a document. And we have great tools like Dropbox Paper or
Google Docs or Microsoft Word online where you can very easily comment also on things,
so on paragraphs. So I write it up in such a document. And then this document I posted
as a link in a comment and a task about when we had our agenda for the marketing meeting.
And this way, on Monday, people could read that stuff before we discussed them on Tuesday.
So that's why writing stuff down is so important.
When your first inclination is to discuss, to meet, which is the obvious choice because
it's the easiest, stop.
Write it up.
Once you've done it, send it to the people.
them a chance to think about it, to ponder on it, to give you better feedback, to have
time to digest what you want them to hear, and then discuss the new ones on the meeting.
So again, we talked about it when we talked about meetings, but it really correlates with
this idea to writing, the importance of writing stuff down. Instead of getting a meeting first,
write it up.
Yep, and one important thing that you said we use many tools like Dropbox paper, Microsoft Word or Slack.
We sometimes discuss something on Slack on chat. But always after that, the result of this discussion is posted as a task in Nozbe.
And in this meeting, we created a special product for the thing we were talking about and already created a task there.
though? >> My document posted on Monday was just the initiation of conversation.
Because later we had a meeting and later after the meeting we created tasks for
that. So the document is no longer relevant actually. It's no longer the
source of truth. The source of truth is in Nozbe after, as a result of my writing
this document, us discussing it, and now creating tasks for that. So it's
really important to have this process like this. So again, write, write, write.
If you are part of a team that likes meetings and you don't, try to write
more stuff down before and after the meeting to really show your teammates
that many things can be discussed asynchronously via text. And that way
you can have effective meeting or shorter meeting or less meetings at all.
So be proactive and do the first steps to reduce your time
spent on unnecessary meetings.
That's brilliant. Rafa, you're so right.
People many times ask me how to convince boss to have fewer meetings.
This is the way. Do what Rafa said.
Write stuff down, write it up before the meeting so that people can actually refer to that.
And then they will see, "Huh, this is interesting. Maybe I'm going to write something as well."
So you're going to just keep poking the box, keep pushing them to write.
And this way you will change gradually, slowly, but surely, you will change the culture of your workplace by just writing.
One more thing I wanted to try about writing stuff down, which is also very important,
is when you write things down in Nozbe or in Node.Sub or another place, it's very important
to review those places regularly.
That's why we have this tool called weekly review.
And Mighty Fly Day.
Yes, and Mighty Fly Days.
And the weekly review is one activity we do on Mighty Fly Day.
And yeah, that's the time when I review all the not so important places I put stuff, I
write things down.
For example, I review my quick notes.
Exactly.
Because I don't use it that much when I used to, when I had my iPad as my main mobile computer,
but I still use it sometimes on my Mac and on my iPad mini with a pencil or with a short
sheet.
I save stuff there, I write stuff there, but I know that they are not so important that
they don't have to be a task right away.
I can process it later.
And of course, for the most important stuff, I write them as tasks and I try to have incoming
counter on zero by the end of every day.
So that's how I assure that anything that is really important is not missed.
Yeah, and also, downloads folder, for example, if you have a downloads folder, you download
stuff throughout the week, check it out because there might be a gem there.
There might be something that is a task actually there, because you just downloaded it, but
you forgot about it.
So now it's good time to review it.
Yeah, actually, that's the good tip.
forgot about it. Remind me to clean up downloads further on Friday. So speaking of this,
because sometimes you don't have a way to write things down, but I have an Apple Watch,
and I found that adding stuff with Siri is not reliable if you try to add it directly to third
party app. But it works very well if you add it to reminders. Exactly, and then you can review
your reminders at the end of the week or they will be just popping up,
as you just mentioned. Siri will remind you on Friday about this.
I'm searching through my notes and I think... To wrap it up, basically, because
we can talk about this topic for a long time.
I want to just summarize, because in my chapter, in No Office book, I wrote
the benefits of writing stuff down. So I'm going to just repeat them here on
air because they're pretty good. So first, the benefits of writing down.
You stop forgetting stuff because it's written down.
You don't need to explain things over and over again because it's written down in one place.
Notes can be referred to later.
There is more transparency. People see how things are done,
which teaches them how things are done and they can keep improving on this.
Not everyone has to attend all the meetings because they can refer to notes from the meetings.
So you don't have to invite everyone and their body to the meeting.
You get better feedback because as people become better writers, they write better comments.
And there is just basically less chaos, no stress and overall better productivity.
Yeah, that's true. And I see that we have a live comment from a listener.
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.
Yeah, that's true. I used to suck at writing as well.
And now I feel like I'm good at it. I think it's a skill that you can learn.
It's just a matter of attitude.
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,
I think by doing, by adding feedback in comments, by writing asynchronous communication, by
writing asynchronous comments, like good, thorough comments, you teach them that this
is the way to go.
And then the good FOMO kicks in, and the good FOMO is that they also want to write good
comments and they will start writing more.
On our team, we have a person who, for example, because we write comments in English, basically,
most of our tasks, even though we're a Polish-based team. We have a person whose English maybe
is not the best, but their written English has improved dramatically over the last few
years working with us because of writing comments together in English. So it's just a matter
of will, of motivation, and of just consistency.
Talking to someone like one-on-one meeting as a quick meeting can be very productive
as well, but the most important thing is to write things down after this.
Oh yeah. Yesterday I had a very, very tough meeting with Tomas and
my right-hand man in the company because we were discussing some
scheduling conflicts of our plans. And it was a
thorough meeting. We were just discussing things
based on stuff that I have written down before.
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.
And then I had another meeting two hours later with another colleague, and she already knew about it because she read the comment.
So it's brilliant. Because he didn't keep what we discussed on the meeting, but he wrote it down as a comment.
Like the word already got out.
- Yeah, I know what comment you're referring to.
I need to add my feedback to it as well.
Okay, but let's wrap up this topic and let's take a break
'cause Nowadays podcast is sponsored by Nozbe,
the fastest way to down.
It's a task-based, async communication tool
for personal, family and business use.
So let's hear what Nozbe customers say
about the product.
- When we've been around for about 10 years,
our business has, and we've been using Nozbe
for about eight of those years.
And as we grew, we kind of got to the point
where I just couldn't remember everything anymore.
I'm pretty organized.
I would just kind of keep everything in my head
and with post-it notes and things like that.
And it just got to be too much.
And so I started looking around
for some sort of project management software
that could help me have a set up really trusted system.
But really I just wanted a system
where I could know that I had everything in there.
I wasn't going to forget anything.
I wasn't going to drop any balls for clients or miss deadlines.
Rafal, if we could run this ad also in the audio of the podcast, because it's
Sarah's audio, and she explains that she was forgetting stuff.
So that's why she goes...
Yes, it really fits the topic.
Yes, it does.
And I remember talking to her, she said that also it gives her superpowers
because when customers, for example, call her,
and potential customers, prospects call her,
they want a website and she's considering
creating a website for them,
she writes everything in Nozbe.
Like she writes their name and everything,
and then in comments, what they talked about
during the call.
And she told me on our interview,
I'm gonna link to the interview,
we have the whole interview as a blog post at iNotable.com.
And she said that it's brilliant
because let's say they called in two years.
Two years later, the same customer calls,
and they're like, I'm sure you don't remember me.
My name is this and this, blah, blah, blah.
By the time they say that, she already searches Nozbe.
She finds the thing, and she's like, oh, yeah, I remember.
We talked about this and that.
And--
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
And you're just like, how do you remember all that?
There we go, writing stuff down.
Exactly.
All right, let's kick out a little bit.
So we had a Norsby reunion.
And do you know that I haven't charged my MacBook there?
At all.
I just-- at all.
I packed my MacBook.
It was fully charged on Sunday.
I headed to train station.
I went to Warsaw to visit Radek to sleepover at his place.
Then on Monday, we went to Lublin for our reunion.
And yeah, in this reunion I used my MacBook
like one or two hours per day.
Oh, and I also use it in a train
to also for one or two hours to do my weekly review.
It was, Sunday was my mighty fly day that week.
And then yeah, I haven't run out of battery
because the battery is awesome on this MacBook.
And I did some work, I did some invoicing, I responded for some support tickets during
Reunion.
Yeah, it was really nice experience.
I only needed to charge it on Friday when we come back from Reunion to Warsaw, to Radek's
place.
Then I charged it because I wanted to use it on a train back to my place on Saturday.
That's brilliant, man.
is why I'm envious about the new MacBooks in that sense because my iPad...
Yeah, my MacBook Pro 14-inch. I just love this computer so much.
I mean, this is the only gripe with my iPad. It's a fantastic machine. I love my iPad Pro.
But when you do things on it, when you have meetings and all that stuff, and when you have
full brightness, and very often I need to put a full brightness when I'm in the airplane or
something. So then it lasts seven, eight hours. It doesn't last even ten hours.
So that way I have to charge my iPad quite often. I would love to have an iPad with 20
hour battery life, like just not to worry at all about battery life, but it's not the case.
Especially of course with Zoom calls, for example, when we have Zoom call and I have it on battery,
then it drains battery twice as fast. So in that sense, you know, it's worse than the new MacBooks.
But in every other way, it's a perfect machine. So I prefer it.
Yeah, good for you. The most important thing that our machines bring us joy.
Yes, they do. Also, now that we are on video, who is watching us on video?
can see our merch because I think you have the t-shirt right from
Nozbe. India? Yes I have a t-shirt from Nozbe. India. And I have the polo long sleeve with
Nozbe logo. Yeah. So yeah so we got these and we got a Nozbe backpack which
people were asking for a Nozbe backpack. I have it here actually so I will
show it as a photo of chapter art. Yeah but it's it's really nice backpack I'm glad
Ivona picked it up. It's not perfect but it's very very very very
good and I already love it. Yeah it's the NordAce Ciena Smart
backpack. So that's the model and it has this USB port so you can connect
power bank inside and connect your smartphone to the external USB port on
on the backpack and the nice feature of this backpack is it can stay the shape
of the backpack really stays almost the same if it's empty and if it's full.
So it stays horizontal, like vertical. It stays horizontal when you put it on the floor.
Vertical, yeah. So that's really nice and I already tested it because I
used it to travel back. So because, yeah, the funny thing is because I travel
backpack only but with an asterisk to this reunion because I wanted
to travel backpack only but I wanted to have as few things as possible so I sent
some stuff to myself to Lublin via this we have this Pachkomate thing it's
it's I don't know if it's popular outside of Poland probably some somewhere
Europe but don't know if in the US but we have this many machines on the street that has
some drawers for your parcels and you can, yeah, the carriers move them between those parcels and
you can put them inside to send it and take it away in the same
similar machine in other cities. So I use it to send me, I sent a homemade wine
to show it, to give it to the team so they can try it because it's the wine made by my dad.
It was very good.
It was heavy, so it wasn't good for back-pup only. And I use my two or three t-shirts to
make sure that the wine is will not gonna break in the in the transport yeah
and I actually didn't use those t-shirts so I did because we got so much so many
merch yeah yeah we got we got quite a few that's why I was you know before I
packed I asked Magda because you know in my company I don't know what's coming
because Magda decides she organizes the reunion so she decides what kind of
gadgets we have and my father, our CFO pays the bills,
so I really don't know.
That's why I'm also getting surprised,
what's gonna be next time.
So I asked her what's coming,
I mean, what kind of clothing is coming
so that I knew how many shirts I should pack
and still I packed too many.
As yourself, I haven't used like two shirts I packed
because we got so many and we got used,
we didn't use them. So yeah, in the end I didn't need that much pieces, many pieces of clothing for the reunion.
Yep, and another tip I wanted to share is actually your tip, because our Polish train system,
you can have a ticket with a QR code, but there is no way to add it to Apple Wallet.
Yeah. Even if you try it with some apps that can do that, the result is that you have, it's broken.
it's not gonna work. So I always use it like that I have a Dropbox folder and I put tickets there and
before the trip I made sure that it's downloaded locally on my iPhone because sometimes on train
you don't have a reception. Yep, so you don't have an internet connection and yeah you shared
a nice tip but actually it's better to add it to a note. Yes. With Notes app because you then can
have a notes widget on an iPhone with this specific note when you have all the necessary
information about your tip, your tickets, etc. And that's available offline. So that was really cool.
I did that and yeah, I really liked it. I mean having a note in Notes app is also good because
when you take pictures there, the pictures go only to this note. They don't go to your camera roll.
So for example, this way I take a picture of the parking place where I park the car.
I take a picture of something else that I have to remember.
And then I also add the PDFs of tickets and all that stuff also to this note.
So in this one handy note, I have all the reference information for this trip,
and it's offline always because this is how notes work.
They download offline to your phone.
So I don't have to worry that exactly at the time when the ticket checker person comes,
There will be no reception, no service, and I will not be able to show them the tickets.
So it's a good tip.
Yeah, I see that the listener is sharing that they always put
train tickets, Polish train tickets to BooksUp.
So they are also available offline.
Yeah, but in BooksUp, I really have books, so I prefer to have notes.
And this is one thing that I also did recently when I was when I switched
to this new MacBook Air and that I finally got rid of my Evernote subscription, Premium subscription.
I'm on Evernote free now because I still have it just in case I need to check some notes,
some random note that I still haven't imported but I basically went through all my thousands of notes
and just chose the ones to export and basically from Evernote you can export to
Nx format, their proprietary format. But then on the Mac you can import these nodes very easily to the Nodes app.
So now I've either downloaded some of these things as PDFs to the Dropbox folder or iCloud folder,
but sometimes I just imported them to Nodes. So basically I managed to move my life out of Evernote
and I'm not using it anymore. I'm using right now Apple Nodes or the iCloud drive.
Yeah, so same as me because there are many great apps for notes, but the System Notes app is
really, really good and it has always some advantages because of spotlight integration,
etc. It's always more reliable. Yeah, and then we have great apps. I mean,
both the Notes app scans things very well. So another tip is that all my cards,
membership cards are scanned as well. I take pictures of them and I have a one note for all these cards.
So for example, the other day I was getting my youngest daughter vaccinated and they wanted her,
you know, health insurance card and I didn't bring it with me.
I had it on my notes and I showed it to them and they just checked the number and I was like,
okay, good, then you're good to go. So this way you can have all these cards handy.
You don't have to carry them with you. That's why you can have a minimalist wallet.
Yeah, and there are even apps that some of them you can add to Apple Wallet and even connect them with a specific location.
For example, when you are in IKEA, you will have a notification with your IKEA card ready to show.
That's a good idea. I use that for example, recently I started donating blood for my first time and I scanned the card.
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
ID of blood donator guy
Anything else you want to share from from the Union? It was good to see you all like and and
yes, but yeah, but
The thing is that we figured out after so many reunions that the most important thing actually is to hang out
It's just to be together. Like we don't need to do many things. We don't need to work on many things.
We don't need to really have like a really...
Workshops.
We need to have a plan to hang out in different environments and
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
city and on Tuesday we had a guided tour to the city.
And it was brilliant because this way, like the rest of the days, I felt
more at home in city of Lublin, which was my second time visiting it and first time really staying longer and
After the guided tour, I felt like I knew the city, you know
And now we know that every time we do a reunion
We have to have a guided tour of the new city on Tuesday right away when we you know, we land on Monday
We have the keynote and stuff. But then on Tuesday first thing we should have a guided tour this way
we, you know, learn the place. We know what it's all about and it was very very good.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I enjoy it a lot. The guided tour, the city by itself,
the museums we visited and
the workshops of baking Cebulazhe. It's a special
special kind of pizza like from onion.
local traditional food. Yeah, that was really fun and can't wait for next reunion in the autumn.
So yeah, but we wanted also to mention that we have some improvements to our
referral program in Nozbe. And you can just give, by recommending Nozbe, you can give $15 to your people.
The thing is that we wanted to combine a reflow program and affiliate program, like everything in one place.
So word of mouth is the key. This is why we are still here after 15 years,
because people were recommending Nozbe to others. This is how we got our marketing done, basically.
And we want to really improve it now.
And if you go to nozbe.com/refer or refer-a-team.com, then you will learn all about it.
But the cool change was inspired by our recent promo. We had a promo because of our 15 years of Nozbe.
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.
And you can use it to upgrade or extend your premium subscription.
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.
But when you decide to upgrade to premium, you can use the credits to do that.
And we thought after the promo, because it was very popular, we had two or three thousand people get the credits.
So we thought, let's just extend it to our affiliates referrals.
So when a person goes to Nozbe.com and they sign up for an account, they don't get the credits.
But if they go through you, through your recommendation, Nozbe.com/your-affiliate-id, you will get the credit.
ID, you give them 15 bucks.
So when they sign up, they get the credit instantly.
And of course, if they sign up for premium
and they start paying, you get a 25% recurring commission.
So it's great all around.
But the best part is I think the recommending person
gives them a better deal than they would have otherwise.
And I think it's the key of a good referral program
that when they come from you, they get something in return.
Not just it's like your business
because you want to have a commission. No, it's also their business because they get the credit.
And of course, when you get the commission, you can use the commission and apply it directly to extend your account.
So it's really a win-win. Like when you recommend to four people and then four people sign up for a year,
basically it's a free year of Nozbe for you.
And for this person that uses your link, this $15 is all you can do.
the analysis, you can exchange it to almost, I think, two months of Nozbe
Premium for one person. Exactly, so it's a much better deal than a free trial
because then actually they have a longer period of time that they can try
using Nozbe. Plus, and if you don't have a Nozbe account yet, you can
use our referral link which is if you use nooffice.fm website to sign up,
there is in the header there is a sign-up button for Nozbe on our podcast
website nooffice.fm you will also get those $15.
Because we created a special NoOffice affiliate. We are affiliates of ourselves.
Well we don't use the commission because it goes internally to the company but at
least we can give you the $15. So if you want a $15 from us go to
know office.fm. If you want to learn more about how to refer people to Nozbe,
go to refer@hint.com and you will learn all about it. How to set it up
correctly, how to convince people to start using Nozbe because if you like it,
I'm sure they will like it and then maybe you can have a joint project with
them and collaborate with them. You know, the sky is the limit.
Exactly, sky is the limit and I think it's a time to wrap up this episode.
Yep. So what day is tomorrow Michael? It's Friday. Yes and fly day so remember to
make it mighty fly day and that means that you should do your weekly review,
plan priorities for next week and spend the rest of the day on learning
something new, some new skill that you can later use it in your work or learn
how to better use the tools that you are using in with your team. For
example, learn some new features of Node-B. And after this you can have a
great weekend. And I think it's time for us to have this adios
moment, this goodbye moment as a homework section. So homework for you, our listener,
is go to nazimbi.com/friday or fridayisfree.com and learn more about
Mighty Fridays. But because it's about writing stuff down, so think about the
way how you can speed up writing stuff down for you. Think about maybe
shortcuts or any other things that you can do this Friday so that next week is
gonna be easier for you to write stuff down. And if you don't know how to
touch-type, we will have a link in the show notes about how to touch-type
and why it's important, you can start a touch-type course on
Friday to learn how to type faster and write faster. So this Friday make it
a homework to write stuff down better.
Yes, actually TouchType is a very good tool and as we talk about writing stuff
that I just wrote down to include the link to TouchType course in our show notes in our task.
And a video from 10 years ago where I showed how TouchTyping works.
So many layers. Okay, remember that if you enjoyed this episode please
help support this podcast either by sharing it with a friend or leaving us a nice review
in Apple Podcast or by checking out our Nozbe app. So that's it for today, say goodbye Michael.
Thank you guys, have a great Friday and learn how to write stuff done better.
This episode has not been created in the office. Because in Nozbe there is no office. Your hosts
were Michael Stivinski and Rafal Subolevski. All the links and show notes you will find on
novices.fm/39. The whole production process of this episode has been coordinated in a project
in Nozbe app. Control is good, but writing stuff down and transparency and trust are so much better.
Thank you and see you in two weeks. Remember to have a mighty Friday!