01.20.21: How Lola got her groove back

A new day which I’m feeling thankful for. I had a productive workday without feeling overwhelmed 🥵 and looks like we’re going to 2x our previous best month at Lunch Pail 🙌🏿. I think I've found a formula that works.

Removing notifications and email from my phone and choosing times to check/ respond to notifications (that pull vs. push) has helped me feel a lot less scatterbrained.

 I'm even starting to feel an abundance of time and spent some time this evening optimizing Lunch Pail's internal OS and working on an internal idea 🎉. The revelation came from leaning into Notion’s to-do tracker (my version looks something like this and investing in planning out my mini-sprints throughout the day. My Process follows the below flow

• Step 1: I create a macro task add some details and queue it up in the appropriate work category (I use no status, next up, in progress, and done)

• Step 2: In the morning, I plan the 2-3 macro tasks to focus on for the day (usually something like builds feature x for project y, or incorporate feedback from client project z)

• Step 3: if I’m just getting started on the macro-level task then my first sprint (I work in 25-minute sprints) is planning the mini-tasks that make up the larger task. It’s a low-lift way for me to get into the mood and completing the very small tasks in subsequent sprints helps me feel the momentum. I try to chunk tasks down to the size that at least a few of them could be completed in a 25-minute sprint

• Step 4: 25 minutes of work, 5-minute break, and then repeat until it’s done. If I shift to other kinds of work (like LPL internal projects or admin work) then I move the macro task to the next up stage so that the in-progress stage is specific to what I'm working on.

Excited to continue the process 🎉