Notes from Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup, January 2017

Last night I got downtown for the Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup. As an aside, there is a fun art installation downtown called LuminoCITY. I spotted it on my way in and recommend you check it out after dark.

The meeting topic was Productivity Tools & Workflows, with 4 quick talks:

• 5 “Getting Started” Productivity Hacks: Anthony Montalbano
• Manage your time and invoicing with Harvest: Deborah Edwards-Onoro
• Task Management with Trello: Eric Malcolm
• Pomodoro-ish: Amit Rathi

I took notes, but the talks are pretty well documented by Andy Melichar on his blog and Eric Malcolm on the Meetup’s blog. If you didn’t make it out, read those to get a good recap. I do have some thoughts though.

Anthony’s getting started tips were great. He uses a Flic with IFTTT to tell RescueTime to lock him out of time-wasting site and disable notifications. e uses a dedicated voice recorder to remember things. I’m interested in the implication that single-purpose devices lend themselves to higher productivity. I have been reading more since I got my Kindle. I wonder how much of that is tech novelty and how much is from having a dedicated device.

Eric’s presentation on Trello was eye opening. I know people love Trello but never had much luck making it a part of my workflow. Seeing someone use it helped me understand what it’s capable of. I’ll also have to check out the recommendations for Trello’s blog and their inspiration page.

I am going to try to adopt Eric’s process of having boards for each “project” in his life as a backlog and then moving those things onto a board with daily columns to schedule his day. It might work well with the 1-3-5 system Anthony advocated.

The other talks by Deborah and Amit were great too, so great I don’t really have anything to add. Next month is Quarterly WordPress Q & A Workshop, come on out!