Tech Productivity Issue #212 (How Roadmaps Make Teams Powerless)

Issue #212 (How Roadmaps Make Teams Powerless) 03/06/23

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I'm sure at some point you've heard about the health implications of sitting too much each day and the importance of getting some non-sitting time and exercise.

Health Coach Dan Go shared a thread on Twitter that you may want to check out if you want not just motivation, but some practical advice on how to improve your health.

After pointing out some of the negatives that come from too much sitting, he offers 6 exercises you can do to reverse the effects of too much sitting. Usefully, each of the recommendations includes a video with a demonstration of each exercise. Nice!

So there's no excuse anymore! If you feel motivated to do more but haven't had a simple and easy-to-follow set of instructions, this is a great thread to check out. I'm definitely in the "I'll start eventually..." crowd so I may bookmark this thread and try the exercises every few days!

Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!

Tools & Apps

Minimal — A simple and customizable meditation-inspired writing app designed for iPhone, iPad, and Mac and featuring collaboration features, project organization, and todos.

PodText — A text-based search engine for podcasts that allows you to quickly pull up specific words or phrases from podcast episodes, useful for researching specific clips.

Wisdolia — Chrome extension that uses GPT-3 tech to allow you to automatically generate 3-5 flash cards that quiz you on any article you're reading.

Retool Mobile — Build native iOS and Android apps with no mobile expertise—all you need is JS and SQL. Retool Mobile is the fast way for developers to build business apps for teams on the go, at a warehouse, or in the field. Teams of up to 5 can build for free. sponsor

Tira — An all-in-one workspace that allows you to chat with your team, create projects, manage tasks, and organize your work, all in a single place.

followup.fish — An email service that reminds you to follow up on emails by bubbling them back to the top of your inbox. It works by adding an email address from the service to your email's BCC field.

FastForward — A browser extension that allows you to bypass link shorteners and also includes some ad blocking/skipping and privacy features.

Articles & Resources

How Good Documentation Can Improve Productivity — An important article for teams, summed up nicely with this quote: "We treat documentation as a product, and put care into creating comprehensive documentation."

16 Qualities You Need to Be Productive — A good list, with some supporting external references, covering just about everything most others would have thought of and more.

Keep Main Branch Green: Use a Merge Queue. — Outdated pull requests cause many issues: broken main, constant revert, and frustration… Using a merge queue allows you to queue, update, and merge each PR automatically and sequentially. Embrace both safety and velocity with Mergify! sponsor

Time Is Money: The True Cost of Commuting — Not an article but a simple infographic showing how much your pay is reduced and hours are increased when commuting to work.

Is Modern Life Ruining our Powers of Concentration? — This piece tries to settle the debate about why we've lost our concentration. Is it our devices distracting us? Or our willpower?

▶ How To Get More Time in Your Day, with Dr Ashley Whillans — From the Instant Genius Podcast, a social psychologist discusses how to overcome 'time famine' and feel more in control of your day.

How Roadmaps Accidentally Make Teams Powerless — A nice practical list of do's and don'ts demonstrating that the problem is how roadmaps are created, and not the roadmaps themselves.

Suggestions?

Have a suggestion for a productivity-related tool, article, or other resource? Send me a direct message via X (@LouisLazaris) and I’ll consider including it in a future issue.

Stay productive!

Louis
techproductivity.co
@LouisLazaris

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