Meetings are a massive part of knowledge work. So much so that being good at meetings can change the trajectory of your career. Worst case, it saves you time and reduces the number of meetings you need to attend. Best case, your preparedness and follow-through brings you higher quality opportunities and career growth. The only cost is the time you need to spend to prepare.

I made a video about a shortcut I use to automate my meeting preparation, reducing my time investment to seconds while also improving the quality of my work. Let me show you what I did.

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Almost all of my incoming tasks for work come via email. As much as I love an online collaborative task management tool, I just can’t get away from emailed tasks. So a few years ago, I decided to embrace the emailed task. I used some automation, and now, tasks I receive via email have the highest success rate of any work-related task.

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Morning routines are all the rage; I am constantly trying to improve mine in an attempt to positively impact my day. I have certainly seen positive changes from this work, but I also love how my morning routine experimentation allows me to create new automations!

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I made a video about how I use Drafts to do a GTD style brain dump and then send those action items to OmniFocus. This version prompts me with a trigger list so I don’t forget about the critical areas of my life that are not front and center at the moment.

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I have written before about the hierarchy of tasks (i.e., action items) in OmniFocus. In this post, I will zoom in on the base unit of productivity, an action item, and identify the characteristics every action item should have.

I like using OmniFocus and calling tasks “action items.” Regardless of the program you use, and whatever you call the things you need to do, you should think about how they are composed. As of March 2021, I think these are the essential parts of an action item. When I clear to neutral every day, I make sure each action item that goes into my system has been reviewed for each of the following characteristics.

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