Tag: Time Management

Set Up Reminders and Appointments (For You AND Your Team) in Slack

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

via Michael Arrighi, Flickr

We all have multiple systems and devices for reminding us about appointments and tasks. The one flaw in most of them however, is the fact that you can only set reminders for yourself. That’s no longer the case though because you can easily add high-impact, useful reminders, bit for yourself and your teammates, to Slack!

As you can see below, all it takes to set up a reminder in Slack is typing out /remind. In order to maximize your reminder potential, just follow this simple equation with your prompts:

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4 Hidden Google Calendar Tips From The Pros to Use in 2017

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

I asked the team at Google to give me their best tips for making your year more productive using Google Calendar. Here are some lesser known tools that they shared with me and how to get started using them.

1. Goals

Did you make some New Year’s resolutions for your business? Google Calendar Goals is the way to track them. The tool asks you a few basic questions, then sets up a schedule to help you achieve your goal.

To get started, just tap on the red + button on the bottom right of the screen and click on Goals. Then, follow the instructions on the screen.

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Prioritize Your Tasks Using General Eisenhower’s Matrix with Trello

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Some things in your working life are urgent. Some are important. Some are both urgent and important. And some are neither. The trouble is, it’s easy to get caught up with the busy-ness of each work day and not ‘zoom out’ to see the bigger picture, even if you’re using a task management tool like Trello.

That’s why General Eisenhower came up with a now-famous matrix to prioritize his actions, noting that those that are important — but not urgent — tend to get overlooked.


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Manifesto: I’m Not Busy

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Get Shift Done: Management

Imagine standing in a wind tunnel: you’re doing your best just to keep upright, the noise is overwhelming, and you can’t really see, hear or make sense of whatever someone is shouting at you. That’s how busy people operate, day in and day out. Days jammed with meetings, email, there’s always something they need to urgently respond to, get on that conference call, finish yet another presentation. Have you ever tried scheduling fun with busy people?


I was this person. I lived on busy: I had three careers going in parallel, a family, and a deluge of emails spilling out of my inbox daily, so much so, I couldn’t even force myself to put the phone down in the evening. It’s just that, well.. Life was happening to me. I wasn’t happening to life.

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Use PomBot for Slack to Co-ordinate Short Sprints with Your Remote Colleagues

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Image Source: Michael Mayer on Flickr

The Pomodoro Technique is widely regarded as one of the most effective ways to organize your time and get shift done.

In its simplest formulation, the Pomodoro Technique goes something like this:

  1. Decide what you need to do.
  2. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
  3. Work on your task until the timer goes off.
  4. Take a five minute break, and then start again.
  5. Every four ‘pomodoros’ take a longer break.
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How to Create Calendar Invites That Don’t Piss People Off

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Get Shift Done: Management

You’ve sent the emails, made the pitch, and landed the meeting. Big meeting, big stakes. So when you send a calendar invitation to hold another person’s valuable time, don’t be a noob — especially if you want the right people to show up at your meeting, at the right time.


In a perfect world:

  • You create the invitation in a calendar program…
  • which emails the invitation to the people you invite…
  • who accept the invitation…
  • at which point you are notified that the meeting is all set.
  • If the meeting’s time, place, or details change, that change is reflected on everyone’s calendar.
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Sync Your Calendars Using Microsoft Flow (And Yes, Google Calendar Works Too!)

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

For many of us, some parts of each day can feel a bit like the movie Groundhog Day. Why? Because we have to perform the same tasks over and over. For example, we spend lots of time working between our various calendars saying things like, “OK, I’m free at that time on my work calendar, but what about my personal calendar?”

Thankfully, a new service entitled Microsoft Flow changes all that. It features pre-built ‘recipes’ to connect together the different calendars you use, as well as the ability to create custom workflows from scratch. Let’s take the example of ensuring you see all of the events across your calendars in one place.

First, head to https://flow.microsoft.com and sign in. You’ll need to read and accept the license agreement, as you are giving Microsoft access to other accounts so they can pipe data between them

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Prioritizing Your Trello Tasks Using Labels

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks


Trello may be one of the the best platforms for organizing your tasks, but it has one glaring flaw: no baked-in “priority” indicator for task cards.

While this is an oversight I hope the team fixes in the future, there is a simple workaround — Trello’s “Labels” feature. With labels, you can color code each task and assign unique names to each color. Each board can even have an entirely different set of labels if you want to get that specific. Here’s how:

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