What’s in a productivity system?

26:31I just, I'm done writing by hand. It's 2024, handwriting is over. Do you have good penmanship? No. So that's probably why. That's my real problem. My wife makes fun of me because I have like, like literally there will be like a, you know, postcard written by a kindergartner on someone's fridge and Anna will point at it and be like, that looks like your handwriting. Yeah. And she's right. It's terrible. That's nice. Yeah, I feel very proud of my penmanship. So that's probably part of it. It's like, you know, when you're like in a group setting and someone's like, who has good handwriting? I'm always like, give me.

27:04Yeah, I run from those rooms. That is not under no circumstances should I be allowed to write on the whiteboard for everybody. But I do think there's something to that. There's like a slightly performative nature if you're doing something with someone else and you're handwriting it because you're like, they have to be able to understand what I'm saying here versus typing it. You're like, they'll get it. They don't have to worry about that element. So, you know, part of it is just like, is this for me to remember that I need to like go pick up my dog from doggy daycare or is this for like somebody else to know what I'm doing?

27:34You know, it is amazing how far write everything down gets you like that. That is one of the big takeaways I've gotten from talking to people about this, like kind of at all levels of it that like if you just write everything down, most other things kind of start to solve themselves. I'm going to be really interested to see if there's any communication increase after this podcast, because I'm curious to see how many people say they write everything down. And then I'm going to be like, Bob, what's the deadline? You know? Yeah. Bunch of liars. It turns out. All right. Thank you, Kara. No problem.

28:07All right. We got to take a break and then we're going to keep going. I'm having so much fun with this. I'm already learning so much. We got more to do. We'll be right back.

28:20Oh, hey, welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa, Zoe Saldana. Hey, can you wrap these, please? Wow, iPhone 17s. You splurged. At T-Mobile, you can get four iPhone 17s on them. It's the perfect gift for everyone. I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe. Well, it's better than socks. So I have to trade in my old phone, right? No, at T-Mobile, there's no trade-ins needed when you switch. Keep your old phone or give it as a gift. Incredible. In fact, wrap up my old phone, too, for my Aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous. Sounds like my family drama. Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with, hey, where are you going?

28:55To T-Mobile! Thanks, Zoe! The holidays are better at T-Mobile. Get four iPhone 17s on us. No trade in needed when you switch. Plus four lines for just$25 a line.

29:17$30 required. Visit T-Mobile.com. All right, we're back, and I have many more productivity questions for all of my friends here at The Verge. Next up, we have Esther Cohen, The Verge's Associate Director of Audience Development. Esther Cohen, hello. Welcome to The Vergecast. First time on The Vergecast, this is a huge day. Hello. Tell me about your productivity system. If you can call it that. I would say I am an old school gal who likes to check, you know, have a checklist and check off boxes. So anything that involves a checklist is my friend. What that looks like at work is usually Google Docs.

29:54I love a good doc. I sometimes get fancy with it and organize it and put dates on things. But it's generally just like, here's all the things I have to do and we're going to check it. So are you like you have one doc called like my to do list that everything lives in? or are you like every time you get a new thing to do, you make a new beautiful Google Doc and start from there? It's both, right? So I have my to-do list in life and at work that I just run through and add things and take things away from. And then I project-based have lists that, you know, a lot of the memos that I write or project trackers that I put together are just glorified Google Docs with checklists that I just, you know, assign different people to different things, like, but it's just, it gets checked as it gets done.

30:36So that's like my number one way in which I organize my life and my work and get everything done. Why Google Docs? So I love Google Docs, but I loathe using Google Docs on my phone, which is the reason I don't do what you're describing. So I'm curious why Google Docs? I love Google Docs because it's the closest thing to a piece of paper. And so that's why I use it. Again, old school here. I don't really use my phone for productivity. I guess that's a good thing to mention here. I feel like when I'm in getting things done mode, it's going to be me and my computer typing away and looking at things and having my 87 tabs open.

31:12My phone is more for fun and to hear from my kids and my husband. Besides for that, like, so I guess that that doesn't really answer your question about how it's bad on the phone because I don't use it on my phone. Right. That's a totally fair answer. Yeah. I'm the opposite. Like, for me, I am constantly like the only reason I ever remember to do anything is because I write stuff down on my phone all the time. And if I had to wait until I was back at my computer, I would forget everything. And so Google Docs becomes a total non-starter for me. Oh, well, I do that also. But here's what I do. I text myself, like things that I want to remember.

31:45So that is my own chaotic personal system is I will text myself, whether it's like a link to something that I want to buy, whether it's a reminder to do something, like anything. And then that gets transferred to my to-do list when I'm sitting in front of my computer. So if I'm sitting down to write a grocery list, let's say, I can't do that on my phone. That has to be on my, and like I said, Google Docs is for my work life. For my personal life, I use the Notes app on the Apple, Apple Notes. So lame. But it has a really, really good check feature. But again, if I'm trying to get things done, whether it's like to plan a menu or figure out school supplies for the kids or whatever, I'm sitting down and typing on my computer.

32:24I'm not doing that on my phone. Does it help like organize your life a little bit where like when I'm sitting on my computer, I can I can do, you know, like capital P productive things. Yeah. And I close the computer and I don't have to do those things. I think it's helpful because I just I feel like when I'm on the computer, I'm more focused. Whereas my phone is like the opposite of focus for me. It's just like jumping from like social media apps to streaming apps to the news to notifications to so and so is calling me and text and WhatsApp. So I just like being from my computer. Sometimes I mute text if I need to focus really more.

33:00And that's like my work time. That's my getting things done time. And I think also like, again, this is, I'm showing my age, but like bigger screen, easier to just like picture the thing you need to picture, look at the full thing you need to do. I'm much more comfortable browsing the internet on my laptop browser than I am on my phone. Like I feel like it's, the phone is too small and too confined. And so if I need to look something up or anything like that, I'm much more comfortable on the computer than I am on my phone. Okay. What about calendar? You're a person who has a lot of meetings at work.

33:34So I assume your calendar is very important. But are you a calendar person in general? Are you the one who's throwing take out the trash in your calendar with a reminder every week kind of vibes? So if it's a spectrum, I'm definitely not all the way on that side. But I'm also not on the ignore the calendar side. Um, I would say I am really into calendar. I rely on my Google calendar so much, but I'm not at the point where like, I want to have a shared G cal with my husband. Like we're not like, that's not like, I'm not like, and I know a lot of people do that and they love it. Like, I don't need to do that.

34:09Like, no, thanks. Are you the holdup there or is your husband the holdup there? I think we are both very happy not to, not to be, not to be that efficient as a family together, you know, like that's too much pressure. So when you have a thing that you all have to do together, how does it happen? I put it in my calendar. He puts it in his calendar. We remind each other. We just remember. Would you send him a calendar invite? No. No, no, no. Okay. That's too much too. Yeah, that's too much. I would not take it well if he did that to me. I feel like that's very aggressive. Thank you very much. It's like date night sends you an invite to your work email.

34:46No, thanks. Thanks. But I would say at work, especially, I do like to be really strict with my calendar. More because I think it's like, it gives you permission to focus on that task when you're doing it. So like, I try to, even sometimes if my meetings get canceled, I won't take them off my calendar because I'll want to spend that 30 minutes or that hour working on the things I would have done in that meeting anyway. So like, I'm really good at getting things on the calendar, not super uptight about like canceling things in advance or whatever. Like it's more about just setting those times up as I'm setting up my week and setting up my month or whatever it is.

35:22Got it. Okay. That makes sense. So anything else that when you think about the, like, how Esther lives her life system, does anything else belong in that system? Yes. I would say, uh, let me think how to phrase this. I would say there's a step before making a to-do list. I think sometimes, which is like, what are the things I care about when I'm, when I'm embarking on this project, right? So I do a lot of like, you could call it journaling, you call it brainstorming or just kind of like vibing, but I like to have a written down vibe session with myself of just like, what are the things that I need to, what are like the pillars of this project or what are the things I need to solve for when I'm doing this project before I sit down and then break down the actual to-do list?

36:04It's really helpful because that kind of defines the buckets of work as you're going to start doing them. And it also serves as like your guide to like making sure you're always staying on track and hitting those original goals. The other thing, which is much, that was like the macro answer. This is the micro answer, is I like to, especially when I'm doing, you know, I work on a lot of group projects and I work with a lot of different departments a lot of the time. I assign stakeholders to everything. Like, even if it's like, you know, blink your eyes. Like I will literally put a, put a, assign a stakeholder because I think it's really important to just always have the person who's accountable to do the thing written down in everything you do.

36:45Otherwise, that's when things don't get done. If people are like, oh, I thought you were doing it. No, I thought you were doing it. And sometimes that's funny, right? Like I'll be in meetings with like VPs or executives and I'll be like, okay, so just pause everyone. Like, so who's going to do the thing you all said we should be doing? And it's awkward and funny, but I find that it helps me get things done when I know like who is in charge of everything. I love that. All right, Esther, this is you came in saying I have no system. This is actually like a surprisingly thoughtful system. I'm kind of impressed.

37:12Is it? Is it though? We'll see. Listen, I would get you out of Google Docs, but otherwise I feel like you're doing fairly well. I think my church and state with phone and my computer is a good thing. So I can stay in Google Docs for now. I agree. Awesome. Esther, Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm starting to sense a theme here with a lot of these, but I'll come back to that. Let's keep going. Up next, senior producer, Victoria Barrios. Victoria, describe to me your productivity system. So for my own life, I have a three-block system, basically. So I have a wide eagle-eye view. I have a weekly view.

37:52And then I have thoughts and notes. And the way those are broken up is above me. If you're ever in a meeting with me, I might be looking up because I have a three month calendar breakdown full of sticky notes of like main events for my personal life or work life. And that's the best way for me to like see both work and personal. And then I have paper calendar. Full of sticky notes, easy to reference. and then for like my everyday like weekly tasks i have a google sheet that is broken up by the different team functions so because of my role i am like integrating in a lot of different aspects of production but also like editorial management special projects so i have it like literally broken down monday wednesday friday and then sponsorships operations production and then i I spend about 20 minutes a day before my day begins filling out my tasks.

38:49And usually you're just like, these are the buckets of my job. And then you kind of fill out each bucket each day. Exactly. And then I have this like loose notebook at me next to me at all times, um, taking notes during meetings, whether they're like actual direct tasks or thoughts that I have while someone else is speaking, especially depending on what kind of meeting it is. I just had an operations meeting with Kara and Sarah, who are also two of the most organized people at The Verge. And for that one, it's like I usually have tasks to do. I go in with the list of things I want to discuss written in this notebook, and then I have the tasks that I go away from.

39:27I take everything written in this, and then I'll put it onto that weekly calendar, and then I'll make sure that weekly calendar is working back from the big three-month calendars. I feel crazy. I'm describing this to you. I feel crazy. No, I actually, I think you've actually described like a surprisingly like catch all system that kind of collects everything. But what I'm, what is tripping me up is, is the mix of digital and analog because you're like, you're taking all your notes physically, but then you like live inside of a spreadsheet. but then your most important stuff is on a physical like wall calendar so particularly with the like sitting there at your computer during a meeting taking notes why do that on paper instead of like in a google doc or whatever notes app you feel like using i feel like that's more of like a a social courtesy so i don't i don't want to look at another screen while i'm speaking to someone taking notes.

40:24I also don't want to like break my because like visually unless I have a huge monitor, which I don't. So maybe this will change in the future. But if I want to be looking at the computer and looking at the person, I'd have to like split my windows to then be taking notes. It really comes down to like, one, like social courtesy, and another being like the amount of space I have on my windows and how cluttered I want that to feel. So the Excel like weekly stuff. I'm not looking at that constantly. I'm not referencing that constantly unless I finish a task. So I have a task, you break around for like an hour, 20 minutes, whatever it is, X amount of time throughout the day, I don't need it.

41:05And I don't want a window that I constantly need. I've tried like the Google for like Google notes or Google keep or Google. Yeah, I tried that. And I found that I kept having to go to like a certain tab to keep that open. It's not flush across all screens and all tabs and all programs. So the two paper things help me keep that, like keeping it flush across it, no matter what I'm working into or what program I'm looking into. And I reference them constantly. I'm constantly looking at these calendars because I'm constantly talking about when things should be published and who's doing what and where.

41:42I'm realizing now, I've never really thought about this, but just having an at-a-glance thing that is just like, here are the one or two most important things on days is so helpful. Like this happens to me all the time where it's just like, Oh, somebody is like, can we do this thing two weeks from Thursday and being able to just look up and be like, Oh, what's two weeks from Thursday and just have like the one or two main things for that day seems so useful. Uh, I think I'm going to end up stealing that idea from you. It's probably my proudest like moment of realization for four years. so why a spreadsheet by the way for all the weekly stuff is that because you're like working with other people and sharing that stuff or you're just like a spreadsheet person I know from experience you are a bit of a spreadsheet person uh but I'm curious why it works for you I'm a thousand percent proud spreadsheet girl uh and I I think it's it's super versatile so I keep my spreadsheet super easy and I think it's a matter of it's adaptable So something like Airtable, which I love also, it's too, I think, sharing focused.

42:50And you need to follow the rules that Airtable brings up. And it is very adaptable and versatile in its own ways. Whereas in an Excel sheet, or sorry, in a Google sheet or Excel sheet, I could build that no matter what. I haven't always had it broken down into the three buckets of my position. like way back when in the day it used to just be you know five columns six rows and like i'd call that you know a working day but now i could like i have a note section like throughout the week if i need to like remind myself of like oh you know this is this coming up catch all again because i never want anything to slip through the cracks even though it will maybe eventually but it's just very versatile okay that makes sense i i have become like a reluctant spreadsheet person and I sort of hate that I've become a spreadsheet person, but I'm slowly becoming a spreadsheet person for that exact reason.

43:40And it's like, the more I learn about how to make spreadsheets, the more fun it is to make spreadsheets. Like I just learned how to do the thing where you take a bunch of cells and just turn it into one big white box that you can just write in. Ah, ah, feels so good. Now I'm just like taking notes and spreadsheets. It's bad times. What about all the stuff out of work? Like when you're not at work, are you as sort of ruthlessly organized in like personal tasks and personal life and all that stuff? Uh, no, I've admitted myself to being a digital hoarder. So like I have, I'm one of those people that has like way too many photos on my phone, too many unread messages.

44:18And I've tried, I think what it comes down to is like, I also like the luxury of just letting life happen. And so just, you know, whatever email comes through, whatever notifications come through, I'll read them when I can and it's kind of like a snapshot of just what I can get through in a day whereas if I keep trying to focus of organizing every moment then I don't enjoy like what's actually happening because if that also happens at work right that's why I also have these notes like why it's so important for me to be looking at someone while taking notes is because I don't want to like take myself away from the creativity of it all I know that sounds way more like prophetic or philosophical than I I was going to say that's a pretty profound insight about digital life right there.

45:01That's really good. So no, I would say like the biggest buckets I have is like these big calendars for my personal, like how I'm organizing, but how I organize when I'm like in a team setting is very different because how I understand how other people are taking information is going to be very different. So this is why you're a good producer because there's like, you're like left to my own devices, just let chaos rain. But I understand that other people are less chaotic. And so I'm going to have to, this is like you just described why you're good at your job. And that's, that's very good. That's good.

45:36At least. All right. Awesome. Victoria, thank you very much. This is super fun. Next on my list, we have Jake Castronakis, the Verge's executive editor. I, for the longest time, just wrote down a manual to do list in text edit every day. I wanted it to be as ugly and simple as possible. Very quickly realized that doesn't work. You need a real system of to-dos that can alert you at certain times on certain days. So eventually I found TickTick, which has been a game changer for me and I've relied on it for years now. So 99 % of my organization is in TickTick. Professional, but also like personal too.

46:18So just everything you have to do whenever, wherever, whatever ends up in TickTick in some way. I literally, I have reminders to talk to my friends in TickTick. I, yeah. I mean, I do too. I'm laughing. I'm laughing out of like, it feels good to know that it's not just me, not at you. Don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. No, Kara has like mocked me for being like, oh, I see. I was a to-do for you today to say hi. On a normal day of work, how many to-dos would you say are in your TickTick? Oh, God. Okay, so it's probably like 10. Yeah, that's not so bad. But the reason is that I don't rely on a calendar. And so I have my entire calendar duplicated into TickTick.

47:04So TickTick isn't just my to-dos. It's also my meetings. Wait, so you write a to-do with a time for every meeting that you have to go to? Yeah. Listen, Jake, I'm not judging. I'm just asking. But I'm also, on this one, to be honest, I am slightly judging because TickTick has like a whole calendar thing where you can sync your calendar to TickTick. Okay, they do. I tried paying for it. It's like their only paid premium feature. And I was like, you know what? I should pay these guys some money. And so I paid for it and it was total chaos. It was terrible. And then as it turned out, and like, maybe edit this out.

47:36Turns out if you stop paying them, they don't turn it off.

47:41So I'm not recommending anybody to do that. But I may still have access to some of their calendar features. Yeah, but basically, that is what I do. If somebody sends me a Google Calendar invite, I accept it in Google. And then I go over to TickTick and I type it in. Because I don't know how to get the alert from Google Calendar. I don't have a Google Calendar app that's real pretty and nice and simple. Yeah, I just want a nice little list. Okay, so you like your days are basically you like wake up and just sort of follow your tick-tick list down through the day. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like a mix of untimed, just like general to-dos at the top.

48:18And then I've got my list of like basically meetings after that. And then, you know, very pleasantly check them off. And you can set things to repeat the next day, the next week, next month. So do you check your calendar essentially never? No, I still check my calendar all the time. Okay. Just in case? I guess the visual element of checking the calendar is still helpful. And I don't get that from the to-do list, which is weird because otherwise I don't find the calendar. I find it overwhelming. There is something. So as you well know, as the person who edits most of my stories, I have been writing about calendar apps for forever.

48:53And one of the things I have found fascinating about calendar apps is that they're mostly terrible, but the time grid might be perfect. Like we might have just solved it when it comes to like quickly looking at a thing and getting a sense of what's going on and when. Lots of people have tried to do a new job and the time grid might just be perfect. And I have gone through the same thing where like a list of stuff I have to do doesn't like communicate the same level of understanding that just like quickly opening my calendar and looking at it does. Yeah, a list is perfect for me personally. If I'm just planning out my own day.

49:28But as soon as somebody says, when are you free? where as soon as I have to figure out when I mix in with somebody else's schedule, just gotta go to the calendar app. Totally. Are you a person, like do you every morning or every night like sit down and make a plan or do you just like show up and see what TickTick has for you? Oh God, no. Yeah, I just like, if it's either in there or it's not. Okay. Yeah. Okay. If it's not, then I'm forgetting somebody's birthday. Okay. That's, listen, I buy it. So do you have things like, you see a link that you want to come back to. Where does that go? A link that I want to come back to?

50:06Oh. It just stays as an open tab until it destroys your computer, doesn't it? Yeah, no, that's 100%. That's most people's answer. And it makes me so sad, but it is the answer. I just leave it as an open Chrome tab until my computer beach balls. And then many of them are gone. And that's just what it is. That's the cycle of life. What's your stance on email these days? That's an existential question. Email is sort of like my B-tier to-do list. Email is like, I leave a lot of things to be like, I got to get back to that. Now, the problem is when I have to respond to somebody and then I'm like, it's been a month.

50:46I feel bad about this. My inbox is a total, I do clear it out. I aim for inbox zero. But that requires archiving like 100 emails a day. because I get so much nonsense. But it is like, I don't know. I guess email is mostly like a secondary to-do list for me. So I check TickTick and I go over to my email and I'm like, oh, okay, what do I actually have to do? Okay, yeah, I feel like we are a weird example because more than any company I've ever worked at, Vox Media, just does not use email. We are so Slack run as a company that I think we have a different relationship with our inboxes than most. where like if I got an email from Neelai, I would literally assume it was spam.

51:30I'd be like, why on earth would Neelai email me? But that's not how it works most places. So I think we've all like, but then because we're people in a newsroom whose email addresses are mostly public, we get more email than most people and we get more crap email than most people. So I feel like I have reached a point where I've realized like my own email habits have nothing in common with most normal people's email habits. Yeah, I always see journalists complaining about email and I'm like, right. I don't think most people get like 200 spam pitches every day. Like, and if they are, like, I don't know.

52:03I have a lot of questions, but yeah. I think that we are unique there. And like probably email is fine if you are getting a more manageable amount of it. Yeah. Yeah. That seems right. So, okay. One more TickTick question, and then I'll let you go. TickTick on your computer versus TickTick on your phone. Do you spend more time with one or the other? Do you think about them differently? it's 95 % on my computer. Okay. But the fact that it is cross-platform, I'm pretty sure it's Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, web as well. Yeah, it's everywhere. That was big for me because I use a Mac and I use an Android phone.

52:40Yeah, you're like a unicorn in the tech universe. I don't know what's wrong with me, but most of the beautiful to-do apps are Apple ecosystem only and would like to be able to change platforms whenever I'd like. And it's important to be able to get, this is the other thing that's really nice about TikTok, it'll send me reminders on my phone as well. So if I'm running late for a meeting, I'll look down my phone and it'll tell me that I'm running late. So it's 90 % on the Mac, but having the ability to quickly add things and quickly check things on the phone, key. Any feature requests? What would you change about your system if you could change something?

53:12I mean, look, it's a mostly free app that's like slightly buggy and broken, but does absolutely everything you could dream of. I wouldn't change a thing. That sounds like every to-do list app. I love it. Mostly buggy, wouldn't change anything. Yeah. Awesome. All right, Jake, thank you. Godspeed. All right, we have to take one more break, and then I have two more people to talk to, and then I'll share my own system at the end. We'll be right back.

53:40What do walking 10 ,000 steps every day, eating five servings of fruits and veggies, and getting eight hours of sleep have in common? They're all healthy choices. But do all healthier choices really pay off? With prescription plans from CVS Caremark, they do. Their plan designs give your members more choice, which gives your members more ways to get on, stay on, and manage their meds. And that helps your business control your costs, because healthier members are better for business. Go to cmk.co slash access to learn more about helping your members stay adherent. That's cmk.co slash access.

54:24All right, we're back. Time to continue Verge productivity sharing feelings time. Up next, Antonio DiBenedetto, a commerce and deals writer on our team. So my productivity system is like really simple. I've tried different things like going back years ago, like Wunderlist and whatever. And it basically boils down to like to-do lists, right, is like how I keep myself on task. and I've just for a few years now just settled in on I have a notebook next to me on my desk and I write down what I need to get done for the day and the way I make it a little treat is I use a cadre of fountain pens that I have at my disposal that I continue to buy even though I probably still don't justify using them enough aside from this one little thing with my to-do How many pens are we talking?

55:16Oh, shoot. I might be over a dozen. Okay. That's not so terrible. I've got a drawer. I've got a drawer and it's like, it might be over. It might be like getting close to two dozen now. I don't know. It's somewhere in that range. So you like sit down in the morning and just sort of write out the day you're going to have. Basically. Yeah. And sometimes if I move to the couch from my desk, I'll just take my notebook with me. Kind of keeps me on task for the most part. and when I get it done, I have the joy of checking it off the list with a little pen and sometimes I use a different pen with a different style nib and different color ink to check it off versus to write it.

55:55So each time's a little treat. I love this. Frankly, every time I've tried some kind of digital solution, I feel like I spend more time working on that and setting up what it is than I do actually just putting it in and getting a task done. Like I tried, I tried like Notion years, like David, I, I know every time there's a, there's a chat about this stuff and work Slack, I, I, I snicker to myself and I don't weigh in because I, I'm all I think is like notion is a scam. Like I just can't get behind it. I mean, you're, you're right. And you're wrong. I fully understand that. What kind of notebook do you have?

56:33So I've alternated. Oh yeah. And this is an important thing. Yeah. Have notebooks are pretty cheap and I think it's fun to get like ones of different styles. Like I've used like this, like basic black one that my wife got me, I think off Amazon like years ago. And it looks like a whole lot like Moleskine or that kind of style. But you know, you can pick ones that have like different like rulings, like different like line spacing or dots instead of like a dot grid instead of lines. Or I've used one that had, it was really a sketchbook. I think my wife wasn't happy with me that I kind of stole her sketchpad because it was kind of fancy.

57:08But I liked having for a period of time, no lines at all. It was kind of like, oh, I can write big, I can write small. And some pens that have like a broad nib, for example, force you to write bigger. And that can be kind of fun or adventurous. But I've kind of settled on like a Rhodia notepad that's spiral bound and the spiral is on the top, which is kind of nice because you can like tear these sheets out, throw them away when you're done with them or, you know, kind of make it, keep it nice and tidy if you really muck up a sheet. And then it's a good quality paper, but you don't have to like spend a lot on a notebook.

57:40I mean, only if you really want to. I do. I am a big believer in the top spiral bound ones because you can like, you don't run into the crease when you're trying to write on the left side. It lays flat. It's, that is the way if it's just going to live on your desk. Exactly. And if I'm a righty, but if anyone's a lefty, that's also good. Totally. Does your notebook go everywhere with you or does it like like live on your desk and you go to it when you need it? It usually lives on my desk. I don't go to many places, sadly. I know that feeling. Yeah, I mean, I'm remote, but I have gone to our New York office like a bunch of handful of times.

58:16And yeah, every time I've gone, I've brought my notebook with me. Sometimes doesn't leave the bag, but you know, hey, it's all well-intentioned, right? Like we're just trying here. Absolutely, I'm with you. So what about like calendary stuff when you're like, I have to do something next Thursday? Where does that go? Yeah, I mean, that's where like I always lean on, yeah, digital stuff. And that's really going to be like Google Calendar, you know, for work. I've got my work and personal calendars, of course, separated. Personal calendars, my wife and I have a bunch of shared ones that are like, here's our events.

58:48Here's our like, you know, works related stuff or hustles or whatever that maybe come up from time to time. So they're all color coded. and family functions, stuff like that. So when it comes to scheduling in advance or that, and then what I do for my personal errands, I just use a Google Keep to-do list sometimes. Just because I think I started using Google Keep years ago when I had a Pixel, just because it was there, and it's clean and simple enough to make a little checklist. It is the perfect, if you just want a Notes app you use every once in a while, Google Keep is perfect. Exactly, and it's the perfect kind of thing to not care about because it's just like pull it up make some check boxes uh it's like this is the kind of thing i'm like it's a saturday and i've got a bunch of chores to get done and i want some kind of like i just want to write this stuff down fast like without like again going to my desk and like writing stuff down by hand like that'd be nice but i don't i just don't need to on like a busy saturday so it's like all right it's all there and then check it off check it off check it off i'm done you know like maybe i can put it depending on i used to like change the color of it And I think I stopped caring about that too.

59:55Okay. So that sounds very much like you think about it the same way you think about the physical notebook, just kind of a digital version of like it has pages you can tear off as you need to. Everything is kind of transitory that way. Yeah, basically. And I try not to get too attached to it. I mean, like the amount of times like I go to write and like on my actual notebook and like a pen doesn't want to start because I haven't used that one in a while. It's like, oh, screw it. Just move on to the next one. Or like I'm just like so that each each page sometimes is like filled with like scribbles of me getting a pen to start.

1:00:30And, you know, sometimes it's like whatever. It's ugly. Who cares? It's fleeting. Like it's just just kind of be in the moment. Get your stuff done for the day and move on. it. Cause like the greater tasks are going to be like, probably in like your calendar appointments or for us with work, if it's air table, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you're, you're, it's what you're getting assigned. And it's like, well, it's, it's there for like me to, but I need to dive into like the micro tasks for, for just today. Like, what do I start on right now? What do I need to do? How do I make this mechanical?

1:01:00So many times, like we, we jump, I jump into like a post and I think like, I tell myself make a mechanical, if I don't know where to start writing. Let me start filling in like the less exciting, less not creatively demanding things that just make it, I'm just going through the motions to get those gears moving. And when those gears are moving, it's like, okay, now I can kind of take off and run. So I start walking basically with every little step. That's great. Make it mechanical is a pretty good like sticky note to put on your computer monitor every day. I like that a lot. Thanks. Anything you would add to your system?

1:01:33If you could, what do you feel like is missing? Or do you feel like it works? I would add more pens. I will always be buying more pens. Love it. Better handwriting. But no, I don't really know. But maybe like if for some other like personal projects that really are kind of more multi-layered, like a photo project that I kind of am ideating on or whatever, like, I don't know, maybe I could see myself trying again with something that's like a little bit more involved. Again, not Notion. Sorry, been there, tried it. Nope. But no, I don't I don't know. I guess I just try to keep things really simple.

1:02:08Fair enough. I like it. All right, Antonio, thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Thanks, David. Up next, and last, but certainly not least, reviews editor, Barbara Krasnoff. Barbara, welcome to the show. Thank you. So tell me about your productivity system. Oh, it all depends on what I'm doing that week or what I'm using that week because I've used a whole lot of things. Right now, my main productivity app is Notion. I use it to track most of the things I do. I basically take a page. I say it's my tasks for this day or this week. And there's a list of everything that needs follow up.

1:02:46Sometimes I use a checkbox to do list. Sometimes I just type things out. Sometimes there are links to the Slack messages that inspired them. Sometimes I've got due dates. Sometimes I don't. If anyone else looked at it, they wouldn't see it as an organizational system. They'd see it as a mass of stuff. but it works for me. I did try to be more organized with Notion. I tried building a Notion database because if you do that, then you can right-click on a Slack entry and share directly with Notion without having to do the cut and paste thing. And I tried that for about two weeks and it did not work for me.

1:03:24A, it was much too formal. In fact, that's it. It was much too formal. I just couldn't deal with that. I had the exact same experience. It ends up being, It felt so fiddly to me to be inside of this database thing that I ended up, I went back to the same thing you did of just like, I'm just going to write down a bunch of stuff and figure it out from there. Absolutely. Now, if there's something that I'm really afraid I'll miss, like a task that's due at a certain date, then I'll use Google Tasks. And the reason I use that is because I'm always checking my calendar because I'm always missing meetings.

1:03:57So I'm always checking the calendar and the tasks come right up on the calendar. I mostly don't give them dates. I mean, times. I just give them a date because then you have this big colored bar across the top of each date. And I can use that to give myself a sort of poke in the ass. So Notion is kind of the like scratch pad for your life. But then if it's like this thing has to get done or else the world falls apart, it goes into your calendar in some way. It goes into my calendar, yeah. And then, of course, there's Airtable because we've got to use Airtable. Do you like Airtable? We've heard some mixed things about Airtable from folks so far.

1:04:39You know, the funny thing is, first I liked it because it was fun to play with. Then I didn't like it because it's one more thing to check. But now that I'm starting to pay more attention to when something that I edit has to appear, And so I have to look at the calendars that Alex Krantz and some other people have created. Now I'm finding it useful again. So I keep going back and forth. So on the whole, I like Airtable. I do have some problems with it. I think if I spent about another two weeks really, really learning it, I'd like it even better. I think that's probably right, which is the thing that drives me crazy about Airtable, which is like so many of these tools, including Notion, actually, it is so incredibly powerful.

1:05:23and I don't care about most of it. And as a result, it ends up being kind of fussy and slow in some ways. Every time I go back to Notion, I end up like running away towards some other simpler app, but then it can't do all the things that Notion does. So I go back to Notion. And I feel like Airtable is the same way where it's like, if you leave, you can't do stuff. But if you come back, it's too much stuff. And this is like the productivity app nightmare that you and I have signed ourselves up for. Yes, it really is. And the funny thing is with Notion, And I'm actually starting to like it more.

1:05:54I left it for a little while because I felt it was a little bit too fussy. There was too much you could do with it. And it was getting Evernote syndrome, you know, where there was just too much stuff there. But then I started using it back. And now I'm actually trying to use it to write a novel. So it's... Is it working well for that? Yes, it is. Because I have trouble. I'm a short story writer mostly. And I'm trying to write a novel. And I need separate chapters. I was able to separate them in Notion where I wasn't able to really do it in a couple of other things I tried. So we'll see what happens with that.

1:06:27That's cool. What about outside of work? Do you have the same kind of organizational system for your non-work life that you do for your work life? Or do you have a totally separate way of thinking? I've totally – well, except for the fact that I'm now using Notion, trying Notion with writing. But for personal to-dos, I use TicTic. I've been using that for a long time. Unfortunately, I also tend to ignore it sometimes. So I'm starting to actually use the same Google Tasks format that I used with my work stuff because I have a different calendar for personal. But, you know, it sort of waves at me and says, hi, you've got to do this by this time, which TickTick really doesn't.

1:07:11And then I used to use Evernote, but it got too large and then it got too expensive, way too expensive. Agreed and agreed. What I used it for, which was fairly simple stuff. So I recently left Evernote in favor of UpNote, which is one of the lesser known ones. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed because it's also very small. So who knows? It'll be around in five years. But it pulled in my Evernote stuff without much trouble. And it looks a little bit like a simpler version of Evernote. I like it. It's just a day-by-day. You can make to-do notes or you can write whole essays. And it looks a little bit like Evernote.

1:08:00I was going to say, it's like if Evernote were much better designed and didn't have 15 years of like cruft attached to it, I feel like that's what Evernote looks like. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And they're responsive. I had a little trouble with my getting my Evernote stuff over. And I sent them a note and figured I'd hear from them in about two weeks. I heard from them in a few hours. So it was great. That is really great. Any other apps you've tried recently that you really like? You're probably the person on staff who tests as many of these as I do. I just do it because I'm a lunatic.

1:08:33You do it because you like to help people on the internet. Anything else you've tried recently that you like? Not recently, no. I mean, there are several i should have brought up my article because i can never remember the names of these things there are several that are sort of on the up note level that are okay and that i was trying and so let's see i used keep occasionally but that's only for the the odd note here and there joplin was not bad okay that that that's really interesting because it uses markdown And my problem with it was it depends on Markdown a little bit too much. And if that doesn't bother you, it's really nice and simple.

1:09:17And, you know, there is a very decent free version available. That's a good one. I have not tried that one, but I have heard a few people who swear by Joplin as a tool for collecting all your stuff. And a lot of people swear by Obsidian as well. And that was what I almost went to Obsidian. It was between that and UpNote. and I ended up with UpNote. I also use a notebook. I mean, I actually write. What a concept. You know, in a real notebook. So there's that as well. I always carry something like that around with me because, you know, sometimes you just have to grab something and write down a very quick note.

1:09:55I have not found it as easy to, you know, grab my phone and talk into it. Sometimes I do, but not all the time. This all makes a lot of sense to me. it just sounds like a lot of things. That's my, my only, my only immediate reaction is like, this strikes me as a lot of places just to check for stuff. Uh, and especially like, you know, the, the to-do lists, uh, I, as soon as you said, I also use TickTick, I was like, do you remember to check TickTick? And you said you don't, but so do you ever feel like you, you want to consolidate everything into fewer places or does the system you have work for you?

1:10:31I should probably consolidate a little bit. My biggest problem is with the to-do list, with the TicTic versus Google Tasks. And I sometimes think I need to go to TicTic, look at all the stuff that's like months old that I haven't done. Sure. You know, and go through that and get rid of it. I'm so used to using it. Then sometimes I think I should be using Google Tasks. I should be just using TicTic better. But those are the only two because everything else, like Notion, I use for almost everything else fairly. I like playing with the other stuff, but I usually tend to come back to that. And the only other thing I really use is writing in a notebook, and that's just something I carry around with me.

1:11:18And then if there's anything in there that I need permanently, then I move it over. Fair enough. Yeah, again, I keep trying to quit Notion and I keep coming back to Notion. So I know. And by the way, if you find anything that you think I should be trying or playing with or adding to my list of note-taking apps, please, please tell me because I'm always playing with new ones. I will. I'll keep you posted for sure. All right, Barbara, thank you so much. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. Well, that was fascinating. There are some things in there I'm definitely going to steal immediately, like Jay's shared doc of stuff to talk about with his partner and Victoria's wall calendar.

1:11:55I also think the idea of just like writing all your stuff down, no matter what, as a to-do list is great. Also, Kara is definitely right. Everyone should just take more notes on everything all the time. But before I make anything work better in the spirit of sharing and openness, here's how my system currently works. I've tried everything. Like I actually feel fair saying that. I've tried every app that there is to try. I've tried a lot of systems, and I've settled on this thing that you hear a lot called time blocking. And basically, the idea is at the beginning of every day or the night before or whenever you want to do it, you sit down and you go through your calendar and you give every minute a job, right?

1:12:37So things like projects you have to get done. You don't just put them on a list, you put them on your calendar at a time. Because the theory is if you don't give things a time to get done, they won't get done. And so I, for a long time would have things like take a shower and eat breakfast as calendar events. And then that started to seem bananas. So now it's just an hour of like get ready in the morning on my calendar every day. But I put sit and watch movies on my calendar. Like downtime is a thing I schedule now because the idea is if you put everything in your calendar in a way that works and makes sense, you can trust that when you say downtime, you can do downtime.

1:13:17And that has actually been really meaningful for me. The app I use most is an app called NotePlan. It's mostly on Apple devices, but there's a web app now that works pretty well too. And its thing is it's basically a combination of calendar, notes, and to-do list app. And I wouldn't say it's amazing at any of those things, but it does all of them serviceably well. And I love that. So I can open the app and it shows me all my calendar events in the right sidebar for the day and all of my reminders. I mostly use Apple reminders now because I use an iPhone and it's just easy to use Siri to dump stuff into reminders.

1:13:51And then it shows up in that sidebar in note plan. And so every morning I'll sit down, I'll look at my calendar events, I'll look at my to-do list, and I will basically write a bulleted list of everything in order that I plan to do that day. And then the goal, if all goes right, is just to plow through that every single day. Something about writing it all down and sort of seeing it in one place and also knowing, like, what do I need to do next is a question I can answer just by opening an app is very handy. I would say I switch away from NotePlan like once every three weeks. I've tried Notion.

1:14:24I've tried Obsidian. I used Obsidian for a long time, actually. I think that app is very good. I go to Evernote periodically. I tried Roam. I really like Workflowy because my brain just kind of thinks in bullets and outlines, and that worked for me really well. Uh, I've tried all of the apps that there are for doing this kind of thing and note plan, because it's that combo of calendar reminders and notes all in one place has just worked for me. Uh, I do live out of my calendar. I am very much the kind of person that if I don't put something on the calendar, it's not going to happen. I just don't trust my brain and I trust my calendar.

1:14:59So I don't even think right. Like I, that lingering sense of like, Oh, did I schedule that thing? What was I supposed to be doing today? I don't have that because I just assume it's all in my calendar. I miss things occasionally because I forget to schedule them, but I trust my calendar a lot. I use an app called Fantastical, which I think is wonderful. And again, has reminders integration. So I can see my tasks in there too. I can schedule stuff. Google calendar works fine. I think the outlook calendar is kind of hideous, but Google calendar is solid. It all works fine. I don't have particular religion when it comes to calendar apps, but I like Fantastical a lot.

1:15:38Like I said, I use Apple reminders. I've switched between all the to-do lists. I think Todoist is great. I think TickTick, which a bunch of my colleagues have mentioned, is also great. But for me, just being able to like fire up Siri, say, remind me to take out the trash at 9 p.m. tomorrow. But just being able to fire up Siri, say, remind me to take out the trash at 9pm tomorrow and have it appear in the rest of my system is amazing. The other part of my system I would say is what I use for bigger projects, like stories I'm working on or Vergecast episodes or bigger things, especially things with due dates and deadlines.

1:16:18I have used literally every app that exists to do this kind of thing. I've used Notion where I built a really beautiful database and Kanban board that has everything just right. I've used what basically you could just call like a big long list of stuff. There's a productivity blog that I read a long time ago that says one thing a lot of CEOs do is just have a long ass list. So I've tried the long ass list. Right now I'm using an app called Capacities that I think is pretty clever. It has some neat organizational tools, but it might be too complicated. I might end up back at Notion before I get frustrated with it and switch to something else.

1:16:53Again, the note plan thing is pretty settled for me, but this idea of like, how do I manage all of the different sorts of things that I need to get done in one way, shape, or form that's bigger than just like a task I can write on one line, I have not solved. And I spend a lot of time thinking about it because I think when I get it right, somehow everything will become more pleasant and doable in my life. Probably not, but it's worth a try. All of this is to say, I think the big thing I've learned from this is that I switch too much and this anarchy is bad. All of my information is in lots of places.

1:17:27I don't necessarily know how to use each of these apps to their fullest extent, which is a thing I talked about a lot with Laura Mae Martin. The idea of like really understanding the settings and being able to make the most of the app. I don't have any of that and I got to work on that. And to that point, one thing that I'm learning, both from talking to Laura last week and talking to all my colleagues here, is that simplicity and consolidation actually go a really long way. Our digital lives by nature kind of tend to spiral, right? We're on so many platforms. We're in so many apps. We do so many different kinds of things all day, and we're interacting with these endless feeds full of stuff that it just feels like the entropy of it all feels inevitable.

1:18:08So I think picking a place or a couple of places that are your places feels really important. And I think that actually might be more important than what those places are, just knowing that there are a couple of them. Whether it's telling people that email and text is better than Slack for you, or throwing your entire life no matter what it is into a to-do list, or just being like, I am a person who uses Google Docs for everything. I think less is more, even if the tools aren't perfect and actually require a little more busy work. You know that phrase, a single source of truth? I think having that for your digital life might actually be more important and more useful than building these perfect, beautiful, interlocking systems that I've been trying to build myself for way too many years at this point.

1:18:54Anyway, lots to think about. Lots of good ideas. I am probably going to go blow up my entire productivity system because that is what I tend to do when things like this happen. And we have one more episode actually coming up in this series, which I suspect will have some insight into this as well. we're going to talk about one of the OG all time, most popular productivity apps and kind of how the world changed around it. But for now, that's it for the verge cast today. Thank you to everybody who came on the show and did this with me. And thank you as always for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or awesome productivity systems, you want to ruin my life by introducing me to, you can always email us vergecast at the verge.com.

1:19:34Keep calling the hotline 866 verge one one. We love hearing from you. the feedback to this series so far has been really fun I worry sometimes that I'm like the only person who thinks too much about productivity and how to manage your life digitally so it's been really nice to hear from all the people who have enjoyed this as much as I have thank you to everybody who's reached out this show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James and Will Poore and this episode was edited by Xander Adams The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network we'll be back on Tuesday and Friday with our regularly scheduled programming everybody's back, we're going to have tons Tons of fun stuff, and we actually have a couple of really great things coming up this week.

1:20:11We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

1:20:23We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.