Tech Productivity Issue #318 (Rituals for Engineering Teams)

Issue #318 (Rituals for Engineering Teams) 03/17/25

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You might be familiar with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who's well known in the productivity space. I've shared her work in this newsletter dozens of times, so if you've been subscribed for a while, likely you've come across her website.

She recently released her first book, entitled Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, which you may want to grab a copy of. It already has a 5-star average review across well over 100 reviews!

I'm not being paid to promote her book. I simply respect the work she does and I'm always excited when a talented person puts out their first book. The links here will lead you to my "Recommended Reading" page, which has a list of other books that you might want to check out, and I do get a small commission if you purchase through those links.

The great thing about this book is that it encourages you to personally do your own experiments (hence the title), to help you develop better habits and work more efficiently and successfully. So it can be a very personal book if you put the lessons into practice. Maybe you'll enjoy it.

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

Tools & Apps

Notion Everything — A resource for free and premium Notion templates that include a second brain template, note-taking system, goal tracker, freelance OS, and lots more.

QuickQuill — A Chrome extension that's a text expander, enabling you to use custom predefined shortcut words that expand into full text, saving you time and keystrokes.

Whalesync — Update your website and CRM directly from a spreadsheet. Manage Webflow, Supabase, or HubSpot from Airtable, Notion, and Sheets. Just make edits and changes appear automatically – no technical skills required. sponsor

Hiyllo Work — An all-in-one team app that includes video meetings, chat, project management, team calendar, email, file and document storage, and more.

Ripple — A minimalist iOS note-taking app that allows you to effortlessly capture your thoughts on the screen via a smooth user-friendly interface.

Wellpin — A Google Calendar plugin that offers a scheduling assistant for you and your team, to easily share meeting availability and sync your calendars and video apps.

PassVult — An offline, secure password manager for Mac (with iOS and Android companion apps) that lets you store and manage your passwords, secret questions, codes, credit card info, with help of an authenticator tool.

Articles & Resources

I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too — If you tend to rely on social media algorithms for your news and research consumption, you might want to take to hear this old suggestion.

Once You're Laid Off, You'll Never Be the Same Again — Software developer Mert Bulan reflects on one of the more significant events of his life, being laid off less than two years ago.

Sick of Biased News? — Sign up for 1440 newsletter. It's free, has no biased opinions, and is only a 5-minute read. sponsor

The Reality of Long-Term Software Maintenance From the Maintainer's Perspective — "The term software rot aptly describes how unmaintained software still degrades over time, almost like some organic substance that starts to rot, even if the actual program data is perfectly preserved."

4 Rituals That Revolutionized My Engineering Teams — From Dennis Nerush who is AI Director at Elementor, who believes, like many team leaders, that additional team habits along with the Agile methodology are what make teams truly successful.

Master the Art of the Product Manager "No" — Not an article but a humorous and useful website that allows you to generate polite ways to say 'no' in the context of something being pitched at a meeting that's not on topic.

Don’t Use Productivity Advice to Procrastinate — A brief but important reminder that we shouldn't allow productivity-related advice to delay something important we're supposed to be doing instead.

Suggestions?

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

Stay productive!

Louis
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