Category: Self Help

We’ve all been there. You’ve worked tirelessly, climbed the corporate ladder, and finally reached that coveted position you’ve always dreamed of. You’ve achieved what you thought would bring ultimate satisfaction, only to find… a hollow feeling. A sense of “is this all there is?” It’s a common experience, especially for driven professionals who often prioritize external achievements over internal well-being. But what if the path to true fulfillment isn’t about abandoning your career, but about integrating a deeper sense of self-awareness and intentionality into your daily grind?

This was the journey of Amy Vetter, a highly accomplished CPA who, at 32, found herself a partner in a prestigious accounting firm. By all external measures, she had “made it.” Yet, a quiet dissatisfaction gnawed at her. A perfect storm of personal reflection, therapy, and a forced introduction to yoga after her second child led her to a profound realization: happiness wasn’t something to be found externally, but cultivated from within. This pivotal moment sparked the creation of her B3 Method, a framework designed to help professionals find bliss by balancing business and life.

Amy’s story isn’t just about a career pivot; it’s a powerful testament to the idea that you can excel professionally while nurturing your personal well-being. It’s about understanding that true productivity isn’t just about ticking off tasks, but about managing your energy, attention, and overall state of being. Let’s dive into the core principles of the B3 Method and explore how you can apply them to transform your own work and life.

The B3 Method: Business + Balance = Bliss

At its heart, the B3 Method is a simple yet profound formula: Business + Balance = Bliss. It’s not about eliminating stress, but about equipping yourself with the tools to navigate it effectively. Think of it like this:

• Business: These are the stressors in your daily life – deadlines, demanding clients, challenging colleagues, the relentless pace of work. They’re real, and they demand your energy and attention.
• Balance: This isn’t about achieving a perfect 50/50 split between work and life. Instead, it refers to the intentional techniques and practices you employ to offset those stressors. It’s about finding moments of calm, clarity, and rejuvenation throughout your day.
• Bliss: This is the outcome – the sustained maintenance of happiness. It’s not a fleeting emotion, but a state of being where you show up with the energy you desire, both for yourself and for those around you.

Amy emphasizes that bliss isn’t about a life free of challenges. Life happens, and it happens every day. The true practice lies in cultivating awareness of how you’re feeling. Are you tired? Frustrated? Rushing from one meeting to the next, showing up “nasty” without even realizing it? The B3 Method encourages you to pause, reset, and intentionally shift your energy before engaging in your next experience. It’s about taking responsibility for your internal state and choosing how you want to show up.

Intentional Time Management: Guarding Your Most Precious Resource

One of the foundational pillars of the B3 Method is intentional time management. It’s about taking control of your day rather than letting your day control you. Amy highlights a crucial starting point: understanding your energy patterns.

For example, Amy found that in her younger years, she had more energy at night. Now, she’s a morning person. This awareness dictates when she schedules her most demanding tasks, workouts, and personal reflection. If your brain is freshest in the morning, that’s when you should tackle your deep work. If you thrive on collaboration in the afternoon, schedule your meetings then.

Another critical aspect of intentional time management, especially in a corporate environment, is managing meetings. We’ve all experienced the frustration of back-to-back meetings, often with little purpose. Amy offers practical strategies:

• Question meeting invitations: Just because you’re invited doesn’t mean you need to attend. Ask if your presence is truly necessary or if a colleague can relay information.
• Shorten meetings: Instead of 30-minute meetings, schedule 25-minute ones. For hour-long meetings, aim for 50 minutes. This creates crucial buffer time for you to reset, grab a drink, check a quick email, or simply close your eyes for a moment. This small tweak can significantly reduce stress and improve your presence in subsequent meetings.
• Communicate boundaries: It can feel uncomfortable to say no, but it’s essential to protect your time. If someone asks for an immediate meeting, ask if it can wait until next week. Most people are understanding, and this simple act of communication can prevent unnecessary stress.

If you’re a small business owner, tools like Calendly or a virtual assistant can be invaluable in guarding your calendar. The key is discipline. Your time is a precious resource, and you must guard it fiercely.

Mindfulness Beyond Meditation: Presence and Compassion in Action

When many people hear “mindfulness,” they often picture someone sitting cross-legged, meditating. While meditation is a powerful tool, Amy’s definition of mindfulness extends far beyond that. It’s about how you engage with yourself and others to get things done effectively. She breaks it down into three key components:

1. Getting Present: This is the initial step – clearing your mind from whatever you just experienced. It could be a quick meditation, a short walk, listening to music, or simply closing your eyes for a few moments. The goal is to create a mental reset before moving to your next task or interaction.
2. Acceptance: Imagine walking into a meeting with someone you have preconceived notions about. Mindfulness encourages you to clear those stories from your mind and accept the person as they are in that moment. It’s about letting go of past judgments and engaging with an open mind.
3. Compassion: This is perhaps the most challenging aspect. It involves detaching from judgment and observing information like a researcher. If someone says something you disagree with, instead of reacting immediately, pause. Ask clarifying questions. Take time to process before responding. This practice prevents regrettable reactions and fosters more constructive interactions. It’s a skill that requires consistent effort, much like building strength in the gym.

Amy shares that early in her career, she was hesitant to openly discuss her non-traditional interests like yoga within the accounting profession. But as she did, she found that it fostered deeper connections. It built confidence, not just for her, but for others who might have felt similarly. The world, especially after recent global shifts, has become more open to these conversations about authenticity and well-being. It’s a reminder that embracing your full self, even in professional settings, can lead to unexpected positive outcomes.

The Art of Delegation: Empowering Your Team and Yourself

As a leader, Amy emphasizes the critical skill of delegation. Many professionals, especially those who are used to doing everything themselves, struggle with this. There’s often a fear that no one will do it as well as they can, or that it’s simply faster to do it themselves. However, effective delegation is not just about offloading tasks; it’s about empowering your team and freeing up your own capacity for higher-level work.

Amy’s approach to delegation is rooted in trust and clear communication:

• Strategic Planning: Her team collaboratively develops a strategic plan, ensuring everyone buys into the objectives and understands their individual responsibilities. This shared understanding creates alignment and accountability.
• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results): They use OKRs to define quarterly goals and measurable outcomes. This provides a clear framework for tracking progress and evaluating success.
• Regular Check-ins: One-on-one meetings and weekly team meetings are essential for staying aligned, addressing challenges, and ensuring everyone is on track. As a leader, Amy sees her role as removing barriers for her team, not micromanaging their process.
• Letting Go of Control: Amy acknowledges that it’s hard to let go of mandating how something gets done, as long as it’s completed accurately and by the deadline. This trust in her team’s abilities is crucial for fostering independence and growth.
• Knowing When to Shed: Even with a well-oiled machine, there are times when priorities shift or unexpected challenges arise. Amy’s experience with her recent move highlighted the importance of being able to “stop everything,” reassess, and reprioritize. Sometimes, that means letting go of certain goals for the current year and pushing them to the next, and being okay with that decision.

For small business owners, Amy suggests hiring a virtual assistant early on to offload time-consuming tasks. Delegation isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a strategic move that allows you to focus on what truly matters and leverage the strengths of others.

Cultivating a Culture of Communication and Values

Amy believes that not enough time is spent on leadership training, particularly around communication. Our communication styles are shaped by our backgrounds, cultures, and past experiences. In a professional setting, this can lead to misunderstandings and a breakdown in team dynamics.

She uses the example of review notes in accounting firms, where written feedback can often be misinterpreted. Her solution? Intentional communication and a strong emphasis on core values. Her team actively identifies and celebrates instances where colleagues demonstrate their shared values. This constant reinforcement helps to shape a positive culture.

Crucially, Amy stresses the importance of addressing misalignments quickly. If someone is operating outside of the team’s values or communicating ineffectively, it needs to be addressed immediately. Ignoring it can quickly erode the entire team culture. This requires courage and a commitment to one-on-one coaching to improve communication skills.

Ever felt like you’re drowning in information, meticulously taking notes, highlighting, and organizing, only to realize you’re not actually getting any smarter? You’re not alone. It’s a common trap in our information-rich world, where the sheer volume of data can lead to what I call “data paralysis.”

I recently came across an article by journalist Casey Newton titled “Why Note-Taking Apps Don’t Make Us Smarter.” The headline immediately grabbed me, and as I read, I found myself nodding along. Casey described a journey many of us have been on: trying out countless note-taking apps, always searching for that one perfect tool that will unlock our intellectual potential. He tried everything from Rome to Obsidian, and even Mem, one of the first AI-powered note-taking apps. Yet, despite his diligent note-taking, he realized he wasn’t becoming smarter; he was becoming more overwhelmed.

This isn’t just about notes. Think about farmers today. They have access to an incredible amount of data about weather, precipitation, soil conditions, and more. You’d think this would make their lives easier, right? But often, they’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, making it difficult to actually use it effectively. It’s the same with personal health trackers like the Apple Watch or Oura Ring. While I love my Oura Ring, and I’m obsessed with tracking my metrics, even I only focus on two or three key data points out of the dozens available. The rest just become noise.

So, if more notes and more data don’t automatically lead to more intelligence, what’s the missing piece? It’s not the tools themselves, but what we do with the information they hold.

The AI Promise and Its Pitfalls

When AI started making waves, many of us, including Casey, thought, “Aha! This is it. AI will finally help us synthesize all this information and make us smarter.” Imagine chatting with your notes, asking an AI to summarize key points, or even generate action items from your meeting transcripts. Google’s new NotebookLM, for example, aims to do just that, allowing you to interact with your own notes and learn from them. This is a direct response to tools like Microsoft Co-pilot, which integrates AI into the entire Microsoft 365 suite, enabling users to interact with emails, documents, and data through a chat interface.

These AI tools are incredibly powerful, and the potential is immense. You could ask Co-pilot to summarize a client email, or generate an email based on meeting notes. The promise is to make us more productive and efficient. But here’s the catch: AI, as it stands today, isn’t always accurate. If you’ve used ChatGPT, you know it can sometimes “hallucinate” or provide incorrect information. This means you still have to review and verify the AI’s output, which, in a way, defeats the purpose of having it synthesize your notes in the first place.

So, while AI can be a fantastic assistant, it’s not a replacement for critical thinking and synthesis. The real work of becoming smarter still falls on us.

The Unsung Hero: Your Weekly Review

Casey Newton came to a similar conclusion: no note-taking app or AI tool will make you smarter unless you actively engage with the information. You have to spend time thinking, synthesizing, and connecting the dots yourself. That’s where true insights emerge. And this is where a consistent routine, like a weekly review, becomes your secret weapon.

I always tell my coaching clients that a weekly review is non-negotiable. Every Sunday, I dedicate time to go through all my notes, everything I’ve captured throughout the week. This isn’t just about organizing; it’s about processing, synthesizing, and turning information into actionable steps. It’s where I connect ideas, identify patterns, and transform raw data into valuable insights. Without this dedicated time for reflection and processing, all the notes you take, no matter how meticulously organized or AI-summarized, will have little value.

Think about it: if you’re just capturing information without ever reviewing it, it’s like collecting ingredients for a meal but never actually cooking. The potential is there, but it remains unrealized. The power of your notes comes not from their existence, but from your interaction with them.

Beyond Notes: The Power of Routine and Purpose

This concept extends beyond note-taking. I recently encountered a Reddit post from a 26-year-old woman who was struggling to get out of bed, often waking up at 2 PM. She was unemployed and felt lost, even resorting to an alarm app that required scanning a QR code to turn off. While the alarm app is a creative solution, her core problem wasn’t a lack of alarms; it was a lack of routine and purpose.

Many people face this challenge. When there’s no structure, no clear routine, it’s easy to become reactive, letting the day dictate your actions rather than proactively shaping it. This is why a “rise ritual” or morning routine is so crucial. It provides a sense of structure and accountability. Professional athletes, for example, have highly structured lives with clear schedules for training, practice, media, and games. But when they retire, many struggle because that external structure is gone. They suddenly have to create their own routine, which can be incredibly challenging after years of being told what to do.

For this woman, and for anyone feeling adrift, the first step is to implement a routine. Start with a rise ritual. It doesn’t matter if you wake up at 6 AM or 2 PM; the key is to have a consistent set of actions you take as soon as you wake up. Open the curtains, get some sunlight, and then engage in a planned activity. This creates a sense of momentum and purpose.

Another powerful strategy is to define a “daily target.” Before you start your day, know what a productive day looks like for you. For the unemployed woman, it could be submitting resumes to 15 companies, or focusing on finding a job within the next 30 days. When you have a clear goal, every day becomes a focal point, guiding your actions and giving you something to work towards. Without a target, you’re just drifting.

The “Busy Person” Paradox

It might sound counterintuitive, but often, the busiest people are the most productive. I’ve noticed this in my own life: when I have a packed schedule, I become incredibly efficient at squeezing in tasks and focusing on what truly matters. But during periods with less structure, even if I have more free time, my productivity can actually dip. The external pressure and clear deadlines of a busy schedule often force us to be more intentional with our time and energy.

This isn’t to say you need to be constantly overwhelmed to be productive. Rather, it highlights the importance of self-imposed structure and clear objectives. If you don’t have external deadlines, create your own. If you don’t have a boss telling you what to do, be your own boss.

The Takeaway: Engage, Synthesize, Act

In a world overflowing with information and increasingly sophisticated tools, the real differentiator isn’t how much you consume or how many apps you use. It’s how actively you engage with that information, how consistently you synthesize it, and how diligently you translate it into action. Your notes, your data, and even the most advanced AI are merely raw materials. You are the architect of your own intelligence and productivity. So, stop just collecting, and start creating.

Have you ever felt like you’re constantly running on a treadmill, trying to keep up with an endless to-do list, only to end up more overwhelmed than when you started? We’re told that if we optimize every minute, work harder, and pack in more tasks, we’ll reach that elusive state of calm and control. But what if the very belief that we must do it all is what’s actually keeping us stuck?

In a recent conversation on The Productivity Show, Oliver Burkeman, a New York Times bestselling author, challenges our traditional approach to time management. Drawing from his book, 4,000 Weeks, Oliver argues that our modern obsession with squeezing everything into our day is not only unsustainable but also detrimental to our wellbeing. Instead of trying to master a relentless to-do list, he encourages us to acknowledge our finite nature and focus on what truly matters.

The Illusion of Infinite Capacity

Many of us start our productivity journey with the belief that we can, and must, do it all—often fueled by a desire to prove our worth. Whether it’s squeezing every 15 minutes into work or trying to manage a barrage of emails and tasks, this approach leaves us running on empty. Oliver explains that our struggle stems from the misconception of viewing time as a separate entity we can master. Historically, people simply did what needed to be done in the moment, without the pressure of an ever-ticking clock.

With the advent of mechanical clocks, society embraced schedules and deadlines for the sake of coordination and efficiency. While this shift enabled technological and industrial progress, it also instilled in us the belief that every minute must be optimized. The result? A systematic mismatch between the infinite demands of modern life and our very finite capacity. We’re set up to feel overwhelmed because we expect our limited time to cover unlimited tasks.

Embracing Your Finitude: The Courage to Neglect

Oliver’s central insight is both liberating and counterintuitive: the key to true productivity is not doing more, but doing less. This means having the courage to neglect certain tasks—even if they seem important—simply because you don’t have the time to do everything. Rather than trying to force infinite productivity, learn to make conscious trade-offs. Every time you choose one task, you’re also choosing to let go of countless others. This isn’t about laziness; it’s about understanding that quality always trumps quantity.

In practical terms, this might mean breaking your day into focused segments and committing to just one or two high-priority tasks. It’s about recognizing that relentlessly chasing the ideal of ‘getting everything done’ is a recipe for burnout. Instead, by accepting that your time is finite, you free up the energy needed to excel at what really counts.

The Power of Conscious Choice

A memorable analogy that resonated comes from thinking about personal commitments. When you decide to marry someone, you’re not just choosing a partner, but also saying no to many other potential options. In the same way, every task you choose to prioritize is a conscious decision to close off other possibilities. By making that choice deliberately, you can reduce the anxiety of an overloaded schedule and gain clarity on what truly deserves your attention.

It’s important to realize that—even if we’re not always aware—we make trade-offs with every minute of our lives. The challenge is to do so consciously, deciding what to focus on rather than allowing external demands to dictate your time. Over time, this approach can drastically improve both your productivity and your overall sense of fulfillment.

Beyond Work-Life Balance: The Right Use of Time

The traditional notion of work-life balance implies a strict division between your professional responsibilities and personal joy. Oliver, however, suggests that this divide is somewhat artificial. Instead of striving for an elusive balance, ask yourself: “How much of each day am I spending on activities that truly matter to me?” Whether it’s a challenging project at work or a simple chore at home, every moment has its own value.

This mindset shifts the conversation from trying to carve out perfect segments of time to embracing your entire day. It’s not about reducing work to make room for life; it’s about ensuring that every part of your life aligns with what you consider meaningful.

The Importance of True Leisure

Another key point from the conversation is the role of leisure. In our productivity-obsessed culture, leisure often gets another label: a time that should be optimized. Yet true leisure is not about maximizing efficiency—it’s about allowing yourself moments of genuine enjoyment. Oliver reminds us that leisure should be savored for its own sake, not for the sake of being productive. In many European cultures, vacations are taken collectively, allowing people to disconnect fully and return refreshed. In contrast, in some American contexts, time off can feel more like an escape from work rather than a restorative pause.

I remember the days when my mornings were a chaotic rush—a jumble of alarms, half-eaten breakfasts, and frantic attempts to squeeze in one more task before the day swallowed me whole. It wasn’t until I made one simple change—adjusting my bedtime—that my mornings slowly transformed into a calm but powerful ritual. Today, I want to share how shifting your mindset from “finding time” to “making time” can turn your wake-up routine into a launchpad for a truly productive day.

Make Time for What Matters

Stop waiting for a spare moment or a magical break in your schedule. The key is to engineer your day so that time for your rise ritual is built in. I once struggled with squeezing in a routine when I found myself waking up in a mad dash. Then I realized that the solution was not to cram more into my mornings but to re-examine the night before. I began going to bed earlier, which meant I woke up feeling rested and with a clear window for my ritual.

Have you ever noticed that late nights often steal your energy for the morning?

By consciously shifting your bedtime, you create space for those important moments after you wake up. When you make time, you set yourself up to be intentional with the start of your day rather than leaving it to chance.

Customize Your Rise Ritual

There is no one-size-fits-all morning routine. The secret lies in discovering what best fuels your day. Instead of mimicking someone else’s routine, take a moment to reflect on what follows naturally from your lifestyle and goals. A well-crafted rise ritual can include a range of activities that touch on different areas of your wellbeing. Consider the following categories:

– Movement: This could mean a few minutes of stretching, light yoga, or even a brisk walk to get your blood flowing.

– Mind: Engage in mindfulness or meditation. Reading a page of an inspirational book or spending a few quiet moments journaling can help set your mindset.

– Planning: A simple, focused planning session might involve reviewing your top priorities for the day or visualizing your main goals.

– Nourishment: Whether it’s hydrating with a glass of water or preparing a healthy breakfast, fueling your body is a vital part of your ritual.

Reflect for a moment: What categories resonate most with you? If you can choose just one or two that feel essential, you can build from there—no need to overwhelm your morning.

Embrace Imperfection

Let’s be honest—mornings rarely go exactly as planned. Life happens. There are days when a last-minute trip or an unexpected family obligation forces you to compress or even skip part of your ritual. I’ve learned that a shorter, imperfect rise ritual is always better than no ritual at all. When things go off track, the goal is not to abandon your routine entirely but to adapt on the fly.

Consider designating a few key non-negotiable activities. These are the elements that, if missed, leave you feeling off balance. Perhaps it’s a short moment of mindful gratitude, a few minutes of reading, or simply a sip of water that signals your day’s start. On especially hectic days, do the essentials in the morning and loop back to the rest when you can. The important thing is to keep your momentum and never let two consecutive days pass without some form of your ritual.

Have you ever found that even a small, imperfect step can anchor your day?

Action Steps to Build Your Own Rise Ritual

If you’re ready to transform your mornings, here are a few practical steps you can take today:

1. Reassess Your Night: Adjust your bedtime by even five or ten minutes earlier. Over time, this can create enough extra space in the morning to support a consistent ritual.
2. Identify Your Non-Negotiables: Write down two or three core activities you want to guarantee each day. Do these first thing as soon as you wake up, even if the rest of your plan falls apart later.
3. Choose Your Categories: Decide on which elements—movement, mind, planning, or nourishment—are most essential to you. Experiment with different combinations until you find what feels right.
4. Plan for Flexibility: Build a compressed version of your routine for days when time is tight. Remind yourself that perfection is not the goal; consistency is.
5. Reflect and Iterate: After a week or two, reflect on how your ritual is working. What is energizing you? What feels like extra pressure? Then, adjust accordingly.

Each day is a chance to tailor your routine to fit your life. If an unexpected event forces you to drop a part of your practice, use that as an opportunity to learn instead of as a reason to quit. Creating a rise ritual is all about progress, not perfection.

The Bigger Picture: Transforming Your Day, Every Day

Your morning sets the tone for everything that follows. When you have a clear, personalized plan in place for right after you wake, you remove the uncertainty from your day. A rise ritual isn’t just about ticking off tasks in the morning—it’s about creating momentum. That momentum carries through your work and personal life, helping you make better decisions and manage your time more effectively.

Think about it: When you start your day by intentionally doing something that makes you feel good, you send a signal to your mind and body that you are ready to take on the challenges ahead. Instead of falling into a reactive mode, you’ve carved out a slice of time that’s all yours, dedicated to setting the stage for success.

Your Rise Ritual in Action

Imagine waking up and in that quiet window of time you have, you spend a few minutes stretching, reflecting, and planning. You’re not rushing to check your phone or jump straight into work emails. Instead, you’ve taken a deliberate step toward shaping your day. You realize that even if your schedule becomes unpredictable later, those precious minutes of calm and clarity provide you with an anchor. They remind you of what matters and give you a sense of control

Have you ever experienced that feeling of calm before the day fully begins?

Over time, this small act of self-care becomes a habit. It evolves into what I call a rise ritual—a personalized, flexible practice that powers your entire day. It’s a simple yet profound shift from letting the day dictate your actions to consciously designing the day you want to live.

Taking the First Step

There is no need to reinvent your entire morning overnight. Start small. Choose one element that resonates with you and commit to it—whether it’s reading a few pages of a book, stretching, or spending a quiet moment with your thoughts. Try it for a week, notice how it makes you feel, and then build on it gradually. The journey toward a better day starts with that first purposeful minute after you wake up.

Remember, your rise ritual is uniquely yours. It doesn’t have to match what someone else is doing; it only needs to serve you. So tonight, when you plan your sleep schedule, consider how a few extra minutes in the morning may be the game changer you’ve been looking for. And tomorrow, wake up with intention ready to claim your day.

Take one small step today and watch how it transforms your productivity. Your day, and your life, will thank you.

I remember a time when my workspace was a chaotic symphony of sticky notes, overflowing inboxes, and a task list that seemed to grow faster than I could check things off. Every morning felt like a battle against the rising tide of administrative busywork. I’d spend precious hours just organizing, categorizing, and shuffling things around, feeling productive but not actually moving the needle on anything truly important. It was a classic case of mistaking motion for progress.

Then, something shifted. It wasn’t a new app or a fancy gadget, but a fundamental change in how I approached my work, driven by a growing understanding of how artificial intelligence is quietly, yet powerfully, reshaping our daily routines. This isn’t about robots taking over, but about smart tools taking over the mundane, freeing us up for the meaningful.

In a recent conversation with Francesco Dalessio from Keep Productive, we dove deep into this very topic. Francesco, who has been on The Productivity Show three times (a true Triple Crown winner in our book!), shared some eye-opening insights into the future of productivity tools.

The AI Revolution: From Productivity Apps to Work Apps

Francesco believes AI is going to fundamentally change what we consider a “productivity app.” Right now, these apps often require a lot of manual input from us. Think about it: organizing your to-do list, filing notes, scheduling meetings… it’s all administrative work. While it helps us feel organized, it still takes time and effort.

But what if an AI system could do all that for you? Imagine an app that automatically organizes your tasks, files your notes, and even reschedules meetings based on your energy levels. Francesco calls these “work apps” because they don’t just help you manage your work, they do the work for you. This shift means less time spent on administration and more time on creative, high-impact tasks.

This is a huge change. For those of us who are “productivity nerds,” there’s a certain satisfaction in meticulously organizing our digital lives. It’s almost a form of mindfulness. But as AI becomes more sophisticated, everyone will become a productivity app user, even if they don’t realize it. Imagine Apple Reminders combining with your health data to suggest the best structure for your day. That’s the future Francesco sees.

The 90-Day Rule for Adopting New Tools

With so many new tools emerging, how do you decide what to use? Francesco shared a brilliant three-part process, with a focus on a “forced trial” of 90 days. Here’s the gist:

1. Research: Before you even try a new tool, do your homework. Think about your long-term needs. Are you a student now but planning a career change in a few years? Choose a tool that can grow with you. Don’t just pick the shiny new thing. Consider your existing systems… does the new tool play nice with your current workflow?
2. 90-Day Forced Trial: This is the game-changer. When you start a new tool, you’ll be slow. You haven’t built the habits yet. A week or two isn’t enough to truly evaluate its impact. Commit to 90 days. This forces you to integrate it into your routine and see if it truly makes a difference. If it’s not right after 90 days, then you know it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
3. Optimize: If the tool passes the 90-day trial, then it’s time to optimize. Get comfortable, learn the shortcuts, and make it work for you. Francesco suggests aiming to stick with a tool for two to five years, though with the rapid pace of AI development, that might be a challenge!

Notion and the Power of No-Code

Francesco also shared how his popular Tool Finder, a “Wikipedia for productivity tools,” was built on Notion. It’s pretty wild to think that a comprehensive resource like that can be whipped up in a couple of weeks using a no-code tool. This just goes to show the power of platforms like Notion for building custom solutions without needing to be a coding wizard.

The Future of Evernote and the Mobile-First World

We also touched on Evernote, which was recently acquired by Bending Spoons. Francesco is optimistic, believing that Bending Spoons, with their strong mobile development reputation, will likely transform Evernote into an amazing mobile-first note-taking app. Imagine Evernote combining with AI to organize your flight tickets, meetings, and even send files for you… all from your phone. That’s the kind of seamless experience we can expect.

The Garden Office Dream

Finally, Francesco shared his experience of building a garden office. As someone who’s been remote working for over a decade, having a dedicated space has been a game-changer. It provides a clear separation between work and home, and a quiet place for focused work and filming. He even has a walking treadmill under his desk… talk about multi-tasking! While it’s a luxury, the benefits of a dedicated, inspiring workspace are undeniable.

Your Action Item: Prioritize Sleep

Francesco’s ultimate productivity tip? Go to bed. Seriously. It sounds simple, but getting enough sleep is the silent killer of productivity. Those days you’re consistently well-rested? Your decision-making is sharper, your creativity flows, and you get more done. It’s the most underrated productivity hack out there.

So, next time you’re tempted to burn the midnight oil, remember Francesco’s advice. An extra hour of sleep might just be the most productive thing you do all day.

Traversal (FSG) broadens and deepens the questions raised in Figuring, the questions we live with: the relationship between chance and choice in becoming who we are, between chemistry and consciousness in being what we are, the tension between our love of truth and our lust for power, the restlessness of our longings and the redemption of our losses.

Our various instruments of reckoning with these questions — telescopes and treatises, postulates and poems — are revealed in their power and limitation through the intertwined lives, loves, and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the future: Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Marie Tharp, Alfred Wagener, Humphry Davy, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Woven throughout their stories are other threads — the world’s first global scientific collaboration, the Irish potato famine, the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue — to make the tapestry of meaning more elaborate yet more clarifying as the book advances, converging on the ultimate question of what makes life alive and worth living.

Here is the prelude, Chapter 0, as it appears in the book, framing the 565 pages to come:

Bigger than Manhattan, Earth’s largest living organism sways in the surf south of Australia: Posidonia australis — a species of seagrass that, unable to flower, clones itself. Older than mathematics and the written word, it has been cloning itself since before the pyramids were built — a kind of immortality. And while I kiss my lover on the fresh-cut grass under the Manhattan Bridge, it goes on cloning itself as we go on dying and passing between our lips the heat of our mortality.

Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars, between the time of mayflies and the time of mountains, we exist as proteins lit up with purpose, matter yearning for meaning on a planet capable of trees and tenderness, a world on which every living thing abides by the same dumb resilience through which we rose from the oceans to compose the Benedictus and to build the bomb.

All of our models and our maps, all of our poems and our love songs, all the conjectures chalked on the blackboard of the mind in theorems and scriptures, spring from the same elemental restlessness to locate ourselves in the cosmos of being, to know reality and to know ourselves. Across the abyss between one consciousness and another, between one frame of reference and another, we go on searching for an organizing principle to fathom the ultimate questions:

What is life?

What is death?

What makes a body a person?

What makes a planet a world?

Over and over, we discover that it is all one question, that there might just be a single answer: love. Our love of knowledge. Our love of mystery. Our love of beauty transcending the vanity of ambition. Our love of truth prevailing over the howling hunger for power. Our love for each other — each of us a festival of particles and probabilities, a living question, a perishable miracle composed of chemistry and culture, of passion and chance.

By Maria Popova

“If the body is not the soul, what is the soul?” wrote Walt Whitman in his heroic revolt against the lasting tyranny of Descartes, whose dismissal of the body and disdain for the soul may be the single most damaging ideological misstep of modernity. Long before we had evidence that the body is where we heal the traumas of being, that it is our mightiest instrument of sanity and joy, that “the mind narrates what the nervous system knows,” Whitman ministered to disfigured soldiers as a volunteer Civil War nurse, knowing what we still, in our age of disembodied intellects, deny — that the body is the frontline of our values, the revolutionary battleground on which all of our ideas and ideals are won or lost.

A century later and a hemisphere over, a young medical student mounted his motorcycle to tour his continent, an inhaler in his battered backpack. Along the way, Ernesto “Che” Guevara (May 14, 1928–October 9, 1967) dreamt up a revolution on the scale of the world, the fundaments of which — a refusal to accept the givens, a defiant will to take charge of the possible — he had learned on the scale of the body.

Born two months premature and almost immediately afflicted with bronchial pneumonia, Ernestito was a sickly, chubby child who wore heavy glasses to correct for his astigmatism and carried a vaporizer at all times to ameliorate the regular attacks of asthma so severe that his mother home-schooled him until the authorities demanded he enroll in a state school. He did, but his attendance record was punctuated by frequent asthma-induced absences, sometimes lasting weeks, during which his mother continued to tutor him, teaching him French. From the moment he learned to read, books had been his solace through the long and lonely quarantines, and now he was reading the poetry of Baudelaire and the novels of Émile Zola in the original. But with each paginated portal into another world, he suffered the tension of a mind so free, so limitless, captive to the limitations of the body.

Just as the young Beethoven had resolved to “take fate by the throat” as he began losing his hearing, Ernesto took his destiny in his own hands. He fasted, became fastidious about his everyday diet, started swimming, took to the outdoors, trying to find his limits, to push them, sometimes so hazardously that his friends had to carry him home wheezing. As a teenager, he joined a local rugby team coached by a young biochemistry and pharmacology student several years his senior, who became a close and dear friend. During practice breaks, Ernesto would sit with his back against a light post reading Freud and Faulkner, Dumas and Steinbeck, beginning to think about what it means and what it takes to be free — thoughts that would deepen and complicate a decade later as he witnessed the hunger, poverty, and disease throughout South America from his motorcycle, thoughts that would lead him to approach the body politic of the world with the same defiant will to change the givens, to prevail over the forces that keep people unfree.

In the high summer of 1960, having anchored one major revolution and inspired many, Che Guevara addressed young doctors at the inauguration of a new training program at Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health. Although much of his speech, appropriately titled “On Revolutionary Medicine,” speaks to the particular conditions of Cuban society in the wake of the revolution, pulsating through it are timeless insights into the deepest meaning of health for any person and any society in any epoch.

Arguing that a revolution aims to create “a new type of human being,” that this is “the greatest work of social medicine,” and that “social change demands equally profound changes in the mental structure of the people,” he throws a gauntlet at Descartes with the intimation that the body is the substrate of the mind — for a person and for a people. Health, he argues, is a personal responsibility that has political power, which in turn makes it a collaborative intention:

For one to be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary at all, there must first be a revolution. Isolated individual endeavour, for all its purity of ideals, is of no use, and the desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone, solitarily, in some corner of America, fighting against adverse governments and social conditions which prevent progress.

[…]

The battle against disease should be based on the principle of creating a robust body — not creating a robust body through a doctor’s artistic work on a weak organism, but creating a robust body through the world of the whole collectivity, especially the whole social collectivity.

He envisions the best possible fruition of revolutionary personal and public health:

One day medicine will have to become a science that serves to prevent diseases, to orient the entire public toward their medical obligations, and that intervention is only necessary in cases of extreme urgency to perform some surgical operation or to deal with something uncharacteristic of that new society we are creating.

Paradoxically, this collective triumph hinges upon the personal responsibility of the individual, who (as Eleanor Roosevelt also knew) is the fulcrum of all social change:

As for all the revolutionary tasks, fundamentally it is the individual who is needed. The revolution does not, as some claim, standardize the collective will and the collective initiative. On the contrary, it liberates man’s individual talent. What the revolution does is orient that talent.

[…]

If we know the direction in which we have to travel, then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch; that stretch is the personal road of each individual; it is what he or she will do every day, what a person will gain from their individual experience, and what they will give of themselves.