Working…

I’ve spent the last two years super optimized on one platform- I can’t believe the increased efficiency, and the decreased anxiety of this move. I credit Don Dalrymple.

First, about my work: I mentor startup founders, and I am quite active in that role. Which means I have to be able to plug and play into their systems seamlessly. I do not, hell I can not dictate which conference line to use, which product management tool, which crm, etc. I have to adapt, quickly, to whatever they choose. It used to be maddening, but I flipped that; now I enjoy the challenge of learning how they communicate by diving in quickly, so we can get to the real stuff.

Which meant my stuff had to be super organized. It wasn’t.

A few years ago, I had a stew of legacy systems strew across my workday: Outlook and a little Gmail; Dropbox and a little iCloud for storage; Evernote and Outlook for tasks; Ical, Outlook and Gcal for calenders; BaseCamp, Trello, Asana and Slack for product; Skype, BlueJeans, GoTo Meet and Zoom for video conferences; LinkedIn, Facebook, iChat, Insta and Snapchat for messages. And mobile Phone for voice. I was coming in hot, to most meeting I had.

I felt like Sybil.

So I read this piece, and began work with Don on maximizing creativity and output. In short, his theory is/was:

…we are the factory. You take raw materials – content, ideas, conversations, software, and relationships – and put them together creatively to make an output. If you are merely a functional piece in the assembly line without much creativity, then you’re not worth much. You are not scarce. You are interchangeable.

So now, I look like this; Google for mail, storage, tasks, calendars, video, conference and some messages. And an Iphone. No switching costs, no lag between platforms, no lost ideas or messages. One place to check. In, out and done.

The rest of my time I use to think.

Don D. for more