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Ryan Burgess
Happy New Year front end Happy Hour listeners, we are excited to be back in the new year with brand new episodes. I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions, but one thing we always seem to want to improve on is being more productive. So in this episode, we're gonna talk about tools and techniques that we leverage or maybe aspire to leverage to be more productive. So before we dive into the episode, let's give introductions of today's panelists surely want to start it off.

Shirley Wu
Oh, hello, Happy New Year. My name is Shirley Wu, and I am a former software engineer, data visualization person and now I'm in grad school for art and technology

Ryan Burgess
right on

Augustus Yuan
Augustus i Yes. My name is Augustus Hugh and I'm a software engineer at Twitch, Stacy Linden

Stacy London
principle of front end engineer at

Ryan Burgess
Trello. And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. In each episode, the front end happier podcast we like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, in the episode, we will all take a drink and what did we decide today's keyword it just distractions. Cheers. I mentioned earlier about the new year's resolutions. I'm not a big one for it. I'm not really. I don't think I've ever really tried it. But I'm curious. The three of you. What are your thoughts on New Year's resolutions?

Stacy London
I haven't done it. I don't know. It seems so stressful to like, try and I don't know it. We I like the idea of gradually working your way towards something and not so much like boom, on this day, we're gonna start doing something totally different that I haven't been doing it all. Seems like you've set yourself up for failure, which I think you see a lot of people get into it for a few few weeks and then crash.

Ryan Burgess
The gyms get very busy.

Shirley Wu
Yes, yes, we actually it's funny, quick story, we went to one of the bouldering gyms on January 2, and like the line was out the door to register for the gym. It was really funny. But I totally agree with you about the like, news resolutions have like a very weirdly bad rap for because I think Suzy you like really hit the nail on the head that it's you're you're like trying to get into something like, like at the snap of a finger. And that's I feel like oftentimes we're not we're not as people we we do need to gradually build up a habit. And a few years ago, I've never really done New Year's resolutions either. I was like, the sounds myth. But a few years ago, I heard from Sarah Dresner that like she and Dizzy do like a variation of it, where they pop up on a bottle of wine and they just kind of like set some New Year's goals and then at the for the upcoming year. And then at the end of the year, they like review the goals from the previous year. So my husband and I have kind of adopted a variation on that. That's kind of like become our own tradition, we've been doing this for like five or six years now, were on New Year's Eve, or like a few days before will pop up in a bottle of wine. And that was really because he did not like setting big goals. So the wine was to help with that. And so And over the years, it's become a thing where it's not even really goals, goals aren't the accurate word, we just kind of like set, maybe intentions or like the better word where we just kind of write down things that would be awesome if it happens in the next year. And then we kind of just like forget about it. So like we don't put the pressure on ourselves to do anything about it. But like it just like, naturally, if it's something that we want enough, then it's something that will like happen naturally in the course of the year. And then after the end, at the end of the following year. We'll go back and we'll review our goals from that we set. And oftentimes it's really cool because we're like, oh, I'm like, Oh, I forgot I wrote this, but this did happen. And like, and I'll check it off. So we did this last week. And then apparently for 2022 I had written down that I had wanted to do some sort of like an art show or something. Um, and I had completely forgotten that I wrote that down and I I looked back and I was like wait, this did happen. So it's always just it's, I think it just puts a little bit more of a positive spin on it for me.

Augustus Yuan
I like how there's this accountability aspect, in a sense, because I also think that's why a lot of new year resolutions don't work out like there's a much accountability other than yourself, which makes it really hard. I have some I make very, very achievable New Year's resolutions. So I do do them, but they're super achievable. Like, I'll define a goal. I mean, I like that

Ryan Burgess
I think that oftentimes, like, similar to what all of you said is like, the New Year's resolution, I think, is like, the strong, hard goal. And you're like, I'm gonna do this, and it's almost not attainable. Or it's like, you know, it's like, I'm going to work out, like, you know, five days a week, or whatever that may be going from zero days to five days is you'll do that once or twice. And then the problem is, you might get down to like, because you had a busy week, you got down to three days, and you feel shitty, because you got down low, and then you kind of just fall off. And I think that, to me, I'm, I like the fact that it's like, the small chunks, like maybe Augustus and Stacy kind of mentioned something, too, is like, just things that you're like, yeah, like, I want to do this, or I'm gonna work on this a little bit, but not something that's like, come to an extreme. And I think that's the way I've approached it. And I think, you know, even talking for us on this episode is like productivity. It's like, I think there's always things that, you know, I start the new year off, and I'm like, alright, well, how can I be maybe more productive or, you know, just get more things done. And so I think like you even small or learn small tricks to do that. And so, you know, maybe that's, that's a good way to kind of dive in is, you know, what are some of the techniques that you will leverage to help you be more productive. One of the things

Stacy London
that I started off the new year doing is I get really overwhelmed with like clutter. And so I noticed by my desktop had like a bajillion files all over it. I had like, way too many tabs open, I had notes spread across several apps, because I have a problem sometimes putting notes and just one app. And it just it was like, kind of chaotic, and I was like I feel settled. So I spent hours just like cleaning all of that up. So I could start like fresh, coming back in the new year and be like, I have everything organized. Everything is in its place.

Ryan Burgess
That's awesome. I'm a big like believer in that of like, not even just the like, files that you're talking about, like virtual files, I'm like, my desk has to be clean. You know, having kids stresses me out in the sense that they leave their shit everywhere. And it drives me nuts. Like I've realized that is like the clutter gets to me. And so even sometimes I'll clean up all that. And I'm like, Ah, like, it just feels calming. And I do feel like that makes you in a better headspace. So let's call it you do that, Stacy, for

Augustus Yuan
for me, if I've started being very, very consistent with scheduling dedicated time, even for like very trivial things like to clean up the house on like a monthly or weekly cadence or something like having explicit like calendar events, like, that's what's helped me become very productive. I do it a lot at work too. And like, blocking off time on your calendar, like, this is focused time for me to get my work done. You know, like, if I have a, I'll be honest, I have a lot of respect for managers, because when I see manager calendars, I just look I'm like, oh my goodness, how does this person gay? It's like, it's like a jungle.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, it's bad. And I think that the calendar is a big one for me. I mean, it's a it's a productivity tool for me. Absolutely. I'm sure all of you too, is like, I do live by the calendar and follow that. And if I don't have it on my calendar, I'm gonna forget or you know, it's really helpful to leverage that. But something that I've been we're actively working on, even before the new year, is trimming that back. I think it's really sometimes you feel, especially as a manager, you feel like, well, my job is to be in meetings. And yes, you are in meetings, but there's still so many other things that you have to do. And sometimes it's even thinking about future things. And so, for me, I'm trying to afford myself more time. And so some of that might be being a little more ruthless on not going to all those meetings or blocking off blocks where I'm like, No, I'm not letting people block on on that time because I need that time to read some documents, write some documents, spend more time with my team. So those are some things I'm actually actively been doing is like not letting the calendar take over my life. So it's a good tool, but also it can be negative as well

Stacy London
Augustus to like your point about using the calendar. I even found that it started to block my calendar just like in chunks to say like oh, focus time, but I found that even that starts to get me like or I'll still kind of swirl around. I've been getting really specific with my calendar. It'll be like a half hour chunk where I'm like, update performance review or I don't know whatever I have to do like I'm They're incredibly specific about the time block, even 15 minute ones, like, it sounds sort of stressful. But for me, it's helpful because I'm like, like, right now I need to do this very specific thing.

Shirley Wu
The calendar thing, I, I also, I think my situation might be a little bit different in that I'm not working full time at a company. So I don't have a lot of like the meetings everywhere in my calendar. But there's like two things. That's really, that really helps me. And the first thing is like speaking of calendars, I actually found that I can't quite function with like digital calendars. I don't know what it is, I don't know if anyone feels the same way where, like when it's a digital calendar, it just feels really cluttered and overwhelming for me. So then like a few years ago, I actually started using like a planner, at first to just write down there like two or three simple to do's for the day to go through just because like for me, it was even before grad school, I was a freelancer. So then I had a lot of control over when I take meetings. And so for my day to day, it was a lot more like icy work. And so I would write down two or three to do lists. And now I get these planners where I actually just asked my husband to bring it over. And it's like, a like actual paper planner that I get to like write in. And so like if there is one productivity tool I have is this like paper hard, like in person tangible planner, that I can, I think for me, the most useful part is that I can actually physically flip through the months and like be able to see like when things are due and when things and then that helps me like I have in the planner like a monthly view. And then that helps me then when I get into like my weekly view, I can then kind of like, I think people call it time blocking where nowadays I'll use it to like block out when I'm in classes. It used to be when I was working, I would block out when I have my meetings, and then I write down like my two dues on the side for like the week and then I would put down all of my like, and then I would do something very similar to what Stacey is saying where I'll write down those two dues, like in between all of my calls and stuff. And I found that I for me. Um, I think that a lot of my unproductivity is because I get a chunk of time. And then I don't know what to do with it. Like, I'm just overwhelmed by all of the options of what I could do with the time that like I just spent so long being like, Oh, this is what I should be doing. This is all of the XYZ that I need to accomplish. And then I spend that hour just like being like, Okay, I should be doing this, and then this and this. So then I found that if I just spend like the hour or two hours at the beginning of the week, writing out everything I need to do during the week, and then like scheduling that all out for myself. And that then I can just like get in, when I get to that hour. I'm like, Okay, this is exactly what I need to do. And that's it. So that's the first thing that has been like, life changing for me. And then the second thing has been Calendly and Calendly only setting aside like three hour blocks that people can book. And then everything else. I mean, like this is this is a luxury I have that I can be like you only get three hours a day of my time to book meetings on. But Calendly to use for scheduling has been amazing. And I swear by

Ryan Burgess
it, that's really cool. It's funny how like, calendars are such a big part of it. And surely, I don't know if I like the you know, the calendar, the physical calendar so much, but I will stand by with the like pen and paper is huge. Like I find taking notes in on pen and paper can be really helpful. I actually miss the days where we were a lot more in person because I wouldn't go to meetings with a laptop, I would go with just pen and paper, I would have my phone but like most of it was just like I'd rather take notes. I felt like I was more present there. But nowadays like well, we're not as in person anymore. A lot a lot more remote. And I find like I get distracted really easy. And so that can be really Yeah. Cheers ring a ding ding Oh, cheers. But I find that that to me is actually something that hinders my productivity is staring at a computer screen and so I have to like I actively make sure that I'm not hands on keyboard when I'm in a meeting. And so I've even found things like where I'm, I added a, a mic extension for my mic so that I can like pull back from the computer and like, lean back a little more, just so that I'm yeah, like, just so I'm not like, oh, a Slack message, I should respond to that. Or, and yes, you can shut off notifications, I do that. But like, it's just so easy that there's something there that you can kind of multitask, which, honestly, multitasking. There's a there's a hack. Don't do it. Like multitasking doesn't make you more productive. I think it actually makes it worse.

Shirley Wu
Yeah. And actually, I was just about to say, like, whenever I have to be heads down, that I turn off all of my notifications, and I put my phone like, all the way on the other side of the room, and that that helped a lot, too. But yeah, multitasking in a meeting does not actually work.

Ryan Burgess
No, it's like you you kind of miss some things or you just you're not present, right. Like and I think that that I think multitasking in general doesn't work too much. I'm curious, like, aside from meetings, like multitasking, while you're coding, like that doesn't work either. Like, you really need to have that dedicated space. Like I can't think of many times where I'm like, multitasking really works. It's tough.

Shirley Wu
I actually, I do have one tiny exception, where if I'm doing code that does not need like higher level thinking, and it's a lot of groundwork, then I love putting on shows or movies in the background. Because then like not too entertaining, like the show cannot be so entertaining that then I start watching it, but just entertaining enough that like my my brain is still engaged so that I'm I'm okay with doing the grunt work while like my brain is like entertained.

Ryan Burgess
That makes sense. Like it's kind of like the shows that it's like a sitcom or something, or even something you've seen before. It's like it's entertaining, but not like this deep drama that you have to pay attention to.

Shirley Wu
This is why I've watched the Harry Potter movies an infinite amount of times.

Ryan Burgess
What are other things that are distractions for you all?

Augustus Yuan
Cheers, cheers. Cheers. Maybe not personally. But I also like to think of the productivity from a team aspect. Like when you're working together in a team. And it can be pretty distracting when people don't know what they're supposed to be focusing on. And I actually kind of wanted to, I love I think it was Ryan, you mentioned, you know, meetings, they can definitely be kind of in the way. And it's not necessarily like you get rid of meetings, but you have make sure that the meetings you do have are very meaningful, which is why I think really, really good standups really productive sprint planning, or whatever ceremonies you use for software development at your company, like making sure those meetings are very focused and on track will lead to like more productivity for everyone. You know, make sure that every minute and that meeting is meaningful for people.

Ryan Burgess
That's such a great point, Augustus like I like the the meaningfulness of it too, because like, even us talking a lot about meetings is you're right, like they're often not effective. Like if, you know, if someone's not writing an agenda, or they're not, it's not, you're not really sure why you're there. Don't go like I think that's the problem is like, don't go just because it's on the calendar. But I love that if a stand up is very clear, you know what you need to do you hear what you know, needs to be done, it's done quickly. It's not like, alright, let's have an hour long, standup it's usually like, depending on depending on how big the team is, and stuff. It's pretty quick, like 1015 minutes. So I've even been in shorter ones. But that's, that's really effective. I like that. And then like you said, your team is more productive, because they know what needs to get done there. They have the tasks, everyone's aligned. And you go forth and do that. And so I think that's, that's a really valid point.

Stacy London
I think, in that same vein, I guess this team productivity, I don't know if you found this to it, if the whole team is working on the same project. So you kind of are working on very similar things. So when someone asks you for help, and you like pair up and stuff, it's like, not context switching, because it's really is related to kind of the things that we're all working on together. I found that it feels like unproductive when the team is like there's four projects going on at the same time. And like maybe one person's totally on their own doing one thing and and then if they need help, it's like you're totally have to contact switch and like try to understand where they're at. And like that feels like that slows teams down. It's such a hard thing though, because sometimes projects aren't big enough for like a whole team. So it's like this balancing act that you have to do.

Augustus Yuan
I love how you bring that up because that definitely happens a lot at I think big bigger companies will definitely run into that a lot more. I'm sure every size company runs into that. But it puts a lot of onus on the people who are running those projects, I would say, it shows how important it is to give set, set aside time to make sure people like understand what you're working on. And making sure that that time that you use to fill them in like hey, this is what's what's happening in this project is like meaningful

Ryan Burgess
mentioned, like the clutter, things like that bother me. I think sometimes, like background noise can be really bothersome. I'm sure a lot of people feel that. Like, I'm fine if I'm in somewhere like a cafe or something and like people are going by and like that is kind of like white noise. But there's some times when there's like other distractions, I find it really I don't know, hard. I like my like silence. Yes, cheers. Cheers. So I find like getting rid of the clutter. And also even just like the noise can help, like I like music or something like that, like that is awesome. It can really help you focus. But I think it's just some of those. It just depends on what kind of noise it is.

Shirley Wu
I actually speaking of noise, one of the other things that I wrote down, like when thinking about productivity was like Lo Fi, when I used to listen to a lot of just like music with words. And then it was like, sometimes distracting, but it wasn't just like to like to shine, so distracting that it bothered me. And then I watched like, and then like Lo Fi started to get really big, right? And I was like very weird. Like, I was just not hesitant, not suspicious. But I was like, oh, like does it actually work? And then I watched some YouTube video explaining, like, why it works. And I was like, ah, and then I actually tried it. And then it was like cool. Like, my productivity is, I don't know why this works. But like some I think it really is that white noise. I think it really is like, the same way why I like working on cafes, where there's like a little bit of that background white noise. And, like the Lo Fi for some reason just really stimulates my brain. But like not distract. Oh, cheers and cheers,

All
cheers.

Shirley Wu
But yeah, it just, I I've been so much more productive. Since I started listening to Lo Fi someone said that Lo Fi is a jazz of our generation. And now I like my it was it was really sad, my 2022, Spotify RABs they were like you explore so many different genres. And like the top 10 genres or like just different kinds of Lo Fi works.

Stacy London
Another This is very tangential, but productivity for me will hack. It's not a hack, sleeping and taking a break. So like I like I'll run I'll be working on something super hard. And I can't like think through the the right answer solution. And if I just keep working on it, I'll just keep getting more irritated at myself that I can't figure it out. And then it's like, just stop, like, go for a walk, go outside for nature, or go to bed. Sleep. And then you wake up and your brain has kind of worked on it in the middle of the night and you come up with better answers. So that's been that's just huge. Like, always try and get enough sleep. And I know that's hard for a lot of people. I think a lot of people have like, sleep troubles and, you know, like, they'll throw you throw you off. I mean, there's all sorts of science around around that. So sort of maybe a dumb thing to say but

Ryan Burgess
no, I think it's like it's some of those obvious ones are that were like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. But it's like you actually have to practice that too. Like it's eating right to like eating and sleeping and like yeah, getting some of that exercise is very useful to actually be more productive. It's almost feels counterintuitive in some ways. You're like, Wait, if I sleep I'm not getting shit done, but you're like yeah, but if you have a really good night's sleep you're actually getting more done or more effectively when you're actually applying yourself to so no, I don't think it's like I think it's obvious but also I feel like we're all guilty of not practicing it as well as we should

Stacy London
yeah, and there's a whole like toxic TECH CULTURE grind culture situation that exists that makes you like feel bad for trying to do that but it's like this there's science that proves all this if

Shirley Wu
we I was wondering if we were gonna bring up toxic productivity

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, let's hear it surely kick it off. For me

Shirley Wu
personally, there's like the capitalism and then there's also like, I think there's I grew up in a very Chinese household very with Chinese ideals and Confucianism and work hard suffer. If you suffer and work hard, then you'll reap great benefits later. Um, and there's like little things that I've found, I think the worst I, the peak of this was in high school and college for me where I took pride in the fact that I could sit there for hours and like study and not go to the bathroom. Because I was studying, which in retrospect is really bad, because you're supposed to get up every hour to stretch and you're supposed to go relieve your bladder, when your bladder says it needs to be relieved. In college, it was like the worst I ever had it because I was in like a unnecessarily competitive business program. And so everybody there was trying to get into top investment banks and investment banks are pretty much like, I think one of the most, like toxic productivity capitalism thing there is, and everybody's like, work hard, play hard. And so I used to not be able to, like I used to not feel good about myself, unless I was falling asleep in my bed completely exhausted, and like, burnt out from the day. And I would only feel good about myself, if I finished every single thing on like a long list of to do lists I gave myself. And if I didn't, then I was obviously a failure. And this took me like many years to work through. And like, probably just like a few rounds of burnout until I recognized how like how bad that was. So this is a very, I'm, I'm very passionate about this topic. And I think the peak of it for me was like, part of the reason why I got that planner, I think back in 2019 was because I was just feeling so both burnt out. And also feeling like such a failure, for not accomplishing everything on my to do list that was like 10 things long every single day. And I will only let myself check them off if I 100% of them. And so I think in 2019, I got a tiny planner, where I could only write three to five things per day. And I would check them off. If I even touched that item, like even if I started on it, I would let myself check it off. And that kind of flip has really, really helped, like kind of, for me to start getting a little bit healthier with my relationship with work, um, and my relationship with my self worth tied to my work. And I am also like, Fuck capitalism for like, because if I'm working this hard, who is it actually benefiting? Because it's not really, it's not benefiting? It's like kind of benefiting me. But like, it's not like I'm not the main benefit or of my, like destroying my body and my mental health. Yeah, so that was my rant. I'm gonna get off my soapbox. Now.

Augustus Yuan
I have a thought when I heard toxic tech productivity. Before that, I hope no one here feels that they are insignificant or, you know, not worth it. In fact, if you're listening to front end, Happy Hour podcast, I'm just going to say that you're probably off to the right start for the year. But amazing, but yeah, actually, one thing that came to mind was demos. And for people who don't know, like, typically, at the end of a sprint, you know, you might have a retrospective where you talk about how you can improve. And that's always good. And then there's also like demos that, you know, you ask engineers or ICS present what they worked on. I have found that sometimes this can become I don't know if toxic is the right word. But I hope people don't get this impression that they need to always be presenting something. That's not the point of demos, you know, demos are like a way for you to align with your stakeholders the progress of what's going on. And expectations should be kind of set in that way where you know, you're just trying to give people updates. You know, it doesn't need to be a formal presentation. And I've seen a lot of people take it that way. Like they expect to see something at the end of every sprint, what's happening, what's the demo and not everything can be demoed. Right. Like some person who was on call for the last two weeks, the fighting fires not stopped. Do you want them to demo the alerts that they had to go through at night? So that's like one thing that I thought I don't know it's not a productive meeting right to have people stress over that ticket. point,

Ryan Burgess
there's a lot of trying to be productive that can actually be not so great for your mental health and probably ineffective and all together. I'd be curious for maybe on some of the like, helpful tools that you all have used like, I'm pretty sure Stacy, you probably a Trello user, I would expect. That's probably Trello. You should it's a great

Ryan Burgess
product. There's there's a lot of really great tools out there, like people live by some of those tools. And like even surely your note paper like that, to me is in itself can be a tool. But yeah, I'm curious, what kind of tools do you all use to help yourselves be more productive,

Augustus Yuan
I'll start. And this was one that I didn't know about until I joined Twitch, it's really useful if more of your team uses it. It's a Chrome extension called clockwise, where effectively you it's a Chrome extension that hooks into your Google Calendar. And it tries to smart, we figure out what time should be allocated for focus time. And it will help people who are also using clockwise to figure out what's a good time to schedule meetings for you. And it tries its best to reschedule meetings so that they're grouped up all together. So you don't have like little pockets of like, you know, how you like have a meeting, and then it half an hour later, you're going to have another meeting. So that half hour, you're just like, Oh, what do I do? Do I pretend I'm working or something like that. And you usually don't wait for this meeting that comes in half an hour. So he tries to like group those up. And I freaking love that.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, that's actually a really good one, Augustus but it it does a lot of things I find that are very useful, even like you can connect it to your Slack. So that if you're in a meeting, it will show like Do Not Disturb. And so that's all automated, like you shouldn't have to manually do those things. And I think that's great. Because I think that that's another thing for me is like avoiding interruptions as much as possible. And so that can be helpful, you can have it automatically set like when you're, you know, in and out of the office to or your like hours that you're actually working. So you also get that like work life balance. And I think things like that, where it's just like these little simple things that it's doing it behind the scenes for you and taking some of that cognitive load off you it can go a long way to so I think that's a great suggestion. And yes, if more of your team uses it better, but I think even personally, like if it's just you and like even the Slack integration can be really helpful.

Stacy London
I mean, I will say Trello, because I do use it. I work on it, but I do I, I've been using it before I worked on it. But yeah, it just helps for a bunch of different things, it started that blank slate kind of concept. So you can really make it into whatever you want. Sometimes I prefer an even more simple UI for like managing to dues or things. So like, home for personal stuff. I've really, I've been using things for MacOS for a long time for just like personal stuff. But that's just because it's like a very slim minimalist you I have like almost like a checklist kind of thing. Instead of like that kind of card concept. But I've waffled between many different tools, like I used to use clear for ephemeral to dues. So it was like that the way the UI of that app was was very minimalist, and then you could just swipe quickly and something would disappear and you didn't have to like think about it was just very like a grocery shopping list or something where you just needed to get something odd on and off really fast. But that one's not being developed anymore, which kind of bummed me out. And Evernote for I still use Evernote, I know it's just purchased by some rando company in Europe, but but I still use it because all my mind is in there. So I use I put notes I give notes, very specific names, so that I can command J to quickly jump between things without having to use a mouse so it's very like optimized. I've optimized myself to be able to jump between notes really fast. So I found that helps me be pretty productive. Hey, I

Ryan Burgess
don't hate on the Evernote, I still use Evernote, I find it it's not even close to good for collaboration like I think it is very much a personal note taking thing like anytime I need to collaborate like with all of you. We have Google Docs for front end happy hour where we're commenting and things like that. That is awesome. Everyone never did a good job of being able to collaborate but for me I just it's so quick and easy to spin up a note and for myself and same similar to you Stacey like some of the search and everything is really powerful. It's like to me it keeps it in that one place. Now. Yeah. Ever noticed purchased by another company. So who knows what will happen to it? Yeah, it will be interesting. But I guess there is a pretty easy export to like, the like Apple notes and other note taking. But for me, I just I'm like, I don't feel like going through the hassle of doing that I'm like, I already have everything I've been using it for years I worked there, I just kind of nostalgic, I guess I'm still using it, I feel like

Shirley Wu
maybe I am like the most non tech person in this tech. In our group of, I swear, I used to be a software engineer, I used to, I swear I come from Tech. But more and more I kind of just really like pen and paper, I just keep coming back to it. Like See, see what you were saying about like, you wise with cards. Like those are just mimicking Real Life cards. And so I just kind of like real life cards, um, and I and what you were saying about like notes and like getting it like becomes harder to search through. I very much index everything, like chronologically. So that's why I love being able to like flip through a notebook and be like, oh, like a few days ago, I wrote this down as a note. And then my planner and has a month section, that weekly section and a daily section and then the date section, I can write down all my notes for that day. And I can the this is like, I don't know why it doesn't work for me digitally. But like, in my planner, if I need to do something, if I remember that I need to do something like a week in the future, I'll just flip the seven pages into the future, and I'll jot it down there. And then when I get to that page, I'll see it. I don't know why that doesn't work for me on like my Google Calendar or something. But it just I need to do is I just can't do it digitally. And even to your point Ryan of like taking notes. I take notes on my iPad only because I've used to live in San Francisco and have had my backpack stolen like twice and like lost not only my laptop by my notebook. And so and that's very tragic. And nobody, the person that stole my backpack doesn't care about my notebook, but I'm I do and, and so now I just use my iPad and very specifically paper 53 I think paper by 53. I think I'm to like write down my notes. And then I'll use that that like, they actually surprisingly have a very easy way to browse through all of the pages. And I'll write all of my I used to write all of my client notes in there. I used to write all of my like, Project notes in there. And now I write all my class notes in there. Something about writing, I think what you said Ryan about like writing makes you be more present or like just even like that, that gesture helps me just remember more, and then I can recall easier. So maybe I'm not sure if they are considered productivity tools. They're certainly not like team oriented or collaborative productivity tools. But I think it just productivity tools in a way that helps me remember and recall things.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think that's, that's a tool in itself, you know, one that I'm going to throw out there. That's definitely the like a hotter new tool that's kind of popping up everywhere is the AI to help you know what it's, I've used it a couple times to one, I was started playing with it to just test things like I think one of my first ones was write me a memo or like plan if you were choosing between using React Native or going full native, obviously, I know like the pros and cons of that. And I think I asked it like pros and cons, I'm not gonna lie, it did a very good job of kind of giving you a bit of a skeleton, it gave you a lot of great points that kind of set things up really well. And so I started trying that a little bit when I would start to have to write an email to someone or like just to get some thoughts like from nothing. And it was interesting, I never sent it 100% The way it was written because it just didn't feel like that was something I would write. It kind of kicked off something when it was a blank page. And I was I've only done it a few times. But I'm like, it's pretty powerful. And I know I've seen others on Twitter talking about it. And I was like, this is this could be interesting. You know, I have a lot of thoughts on that. We definitely have to do like a episode just dedicated AI but like I think that there is some productivity in that you're offloading things and leveraging the computer to to really do some of these things for us. And I think that is always a smart thing. You can go too far. Absolutely. But I think it's kind of cool to see that you can leverage it to be a little more productive

Stacy London
when I go workers we have like, this concept of the Comp kudos. So you can like send your your teammates, like a thank you for helping you out or whatever. And my co workers use ChatGBT to write me on. And it was like, your hard work and attention to detail really paid off, and I am so grateful for your efforts just sounded. I mean, it was like a joke. Like, I knew that he was doing it. But it's not it's like a robot, not him.

Ryan Burgess
There again, he could have been like, oh, yeah, I mean, that's changed a couple of the words or tightening something up. But like if you had nothing, granted, that's a pretty small message. I hope you can just write that. But like if it was a bigger, maybe, but yeah, that one sounds really bad. Like really like, yeah, that don't don't just send that

Augustus Yuan
plot twist. We're actually not doing natural podcast, we're actually reading a transcript. We typed in ChatGBT written but should we read a podcast?

Ryan Burgess
It's exactly. Give us like we're wanting to talk about being productive in 2023. You know, we're gonna do a podcast, there's four of us, please give us a script. And that's, that's we're doing a really good job. I just just want to give us pat on the back there.

Shirley Wu
Plot twist. We're not actually here at all recording. These are all just AI mimics of our voices reading the ChatGBT plot to is really good. We're not even here.

Augustus Yuan
Who is that handsome AI mimic?

Ryan Burgess
We could be drinking in the bar. We don't actually have to be drinking virtually. We just be at the bar. Yeah, I love it. All right, well, this is probably a great point to jump right into our picks for this episode. At the end of each episode, we like to choose picks that we found interesting to share with all of our listeners. Let's go around and share this episode's picks. Stacy, you want to start it off? Sure.

Stacy London
So I guess I always do music picks, but I'll tie it into productivity because I do listen to music while I code and helps me be productive by helping me focus. So I have a couple of the music picks for this episode related to that. At the end of the year, I usually try and do like a favorites of the year list. And I kind of add to it as as I go. So I have a favorite new songs of 2022. There's artists like forte remote John happines, Max Cooper, hi, Fred again, motor at tourists, rival consoles and more. So it's all my favorites from this last year. So check that out. And another song that I liked from checking other people's lists out sober friend, Justin, who DJs as screen door he puts out a ton of amazing curations at the end of the year of his favorite tracks, and one of them was 2022 UK based favorites. And in that list, the song called dreading by plus addition was really great. And I discovered that, that that was another good coding coding sounds nice.

Ryan Burgess
Augustus What do you have?

Augustus Yuan
Oh, sure. So this one's a bit. I've never done this before. But what my first pick is an Instagram of someone named Tim Tran. He was he is a friend of my girlfriend's Monica. And he makes these amazing macarons and he posts them and I just like want to give a shout out for it because they're just so freakin good. He it's like they're a Korean type of Macron I believe with this, like special butter cream may combine some French? I don't know. It's just It's just I had one that was just so good. I was like, that's all I could think about when I was thinking of pics. So that's my first pick. And then my second pick. My second pick. Very coincidentally, we talked about jet ChatGBT I started doing a lot of moderation on a subreddit. And we started getting a lot of ChatGBT spam. And you know, it's like, it's pretty obvious sometimes. But then sometimes there is like a little like, is it and I found that this person named Edward Tian, he, I believe is a Princeton student and he created an app to help decipher if a body of text is written by ChatGBT it needs a decent amount of text to be able to know but it looks at like word distribution. It looks at all these things and it tells you like variants I don't I'll be honest, I don't know whatever I'm saying right now. I don't know. I don't even know these words, but it I thought it was a really cool tool he made so it's worth checking.

Ryan Burgess
Augustus is AI right now so yeah, he does. Yeah, what he's saying is having a glitch is a bug. Can't process

Ryan Burgess
Surely what do you have for us?

Shirley Wu
Yeah, so the very first thing is the planner that I kept on mentioning in this episode is by this Japanese company. It's called the hobo Nietzsche planner. They also have English versions, they're so big that they have like English releases now. They're like very specific on the paper quality, like it just isn't enough, but like, it's smooth enough that like most pen, ballpoint pens like rollover it really nicely, they actually also come with like, if you buy a planner, it comes with their pen, and that's like, and the ink is like, it just all interacts really nicely. There's like a grid system, they're like, very particular, they have like pages and pages describing each little detail that goes into their planners. And also, they come up like every single year, they have really cute covers. So like, I just get really, like, that's the thing, right? Like, if you like the thing you're looking at, and using, it just makes you happy to use it. I'm just so excited about my 2023 cover for my planner. And like a lot of things Japanese, it's really extra, like as I'm like, you never thought you would need this, you probably don't need this. But it is amazing. And you need this in your life kind of thing. So that's helpful when you see planner. The other thing it's been a while for me, so I have a lot of pigs. But the other thing is, if you're in Washington, DC, you might have already heard of this. But there is a museum that opened I think a year or two This has nothing to do with productivity, but a year or two ago called a planet word. And it's a museum about linguistics and like kind of just I don't even know how to describe it. But it's like four floors, dedicated to different aspects of language. And the thing that was really cool about this is that because it's such a new museum, a lot of the technology in there was like just I think it just it was just really fun and cool to witness and like the crafts, mentorship that went into it. There was like projection mapping, but also there's like different um yeah, I don't know how to describe it. But if you like art, and if you like technology, I will highly recommend if you're near DC, I highly recommend it. Um, and in a similar vein, we also went to MIT Museum, and there was a particular room that was called in concert with a Ganson and kava torta. And it was Kelvin. Andy Kava. torta has a new piece called whale song, which is these like a dozen or so corrugated tubes of different lanes that get spun really, really fast and, and then it generates this like beautiful whale like sound like a whale song like sound. And the song that is playing is speaking of AI. This AI generated compose song that is supposed to last 250 years like the length of a whale's life. And that is paired with Arthur Hansen's work, which is a lot of like really kind of playful, whimsical, mechanical movements work. And then so that's at the MIT Museum. And my final one is 20 read by Pixar because the first time I watched it, I don't know if I need to explain it, but the first time I watched it, it was so much cringe. But then, but then it was such good cringe. And the TLDR is is a Pixar movie about a Chinese Canadian girl, turning 13 in 2002. So basically it was written for me and I highly recommend it.

Ryan Burgess
I like that very cool. I just have two picks not really not on productivity so much. Actually. One is a video of Ken Bloch he's pro rally driver passed away just like few days ago, unfortunately in a snowmobiling accident, but one of my favorite videos of his is him driving it's called Ultimate urban playground where he's driving in San Francisco doing these wild stunts this is like it's old this video but it's always like I've rewatched it I remember showing my son this video like not that long ago. And so to me, it was just like a really, it's really sad to see him go but it's really cool to kind of go back and watch this video. So I highly recommend just checking that out. He was such an influential racecar driver that it's really cool checking out. Then we brought up Sarah Dresner I thought a great pic to To share is her book that she wrote engineering management for the rest of us. I haven't finished it. But I'm, I must be fairly close by now. But it's been really good. It's a really good read. Sarah's amazing and just like very thoughtful in a lot of the tips and things that she shares in the book. So I highly recommend it. It's it is, you know, geared at being an engineering like manager, but I don't want to say that it's a management book. It's like it talks about leadership, it talks about things that even as a I see that as being a leader on the team, I think it's a really great read. I highly recommend that one. So check that out. Thank you all listeners for listening to us yet another year. We are in 2023 already. It's great. I'm really excited for this year. We have a lot of amazing episodes coming up. So make sure to subscribe to whatever you like to listen to us on so we'll have more coming. You can find us on front end happy hour.com You can follow us on Twitter at @frontendhh. Any last words

Stacy London
don't get distracted. Listen to our podcasts.