### Details - Title: How are people managing themselves? Share tips and tricks, tools etc., how to improve work/life balance - Date: 2017-10-23 - Location: GitLab Summit, Crete, Greece - Moderated by: @jmay1 - Recording: https://youtu.be/7r9mo-QwBbM?t=3h55m6s ### Notes and actions - Have a private workspace - Leave it when you’re not working - When you close the door, focus on your personal life - Add a “do not disturb” sign on the door - Have quiet, stable lunchtimes and leave your workstation - Block off time - Schedule items on your agenda when you’re off and want to make time for friends and family - Create meetings for yourself, block slots to Get Things Done™ - Have a frictionless process for doing that - Tool: [Fantastical for macOS](https://flexibits.com/fantastical) - Track the time you spend to understand if you’re spending it wisely - Tool: [Rescue Time for macOS](https://www.rescuetime.com/) — puts sites and apps in categories and it gives you a summary how much time you’ve spent doing some things - Tool [Time Sink for macOS](https://manytricks.com/timesink/) - Similar to Rescue Time, but offline. - Tool: [Cultivate for Gmail and Slack](https://cultivateai.com/) — tracks the time you spend on communicating with certain people on your team to understand if you’re neglecting someone or spending too much time with another - Distractions (Slack, email, social media) - Monitor them - Mute notifications for e.g. 30 minutes - Don’t do social media, maybe just 5 minutes during lunch or so - Achieving goals - Set targets for things you want to do - Make a task list for the next day - Prioritize your life, and work is one of those - “Get real with yourself”, look what you’ve habits have become, and do they map your priorities? - Book: [Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time](https://www.amazon.com/Eat-That-Frog-Great-Procrastinating/dp/162656941X) - Handling work (There is a never-ending stream of todos/emails/tasks waiting for me. So how do you decide to end the day?) - Look at your throughput, if you only get 15 things of the 50 done, prioritize - Do the most important things first or the things you don’t want to do first - Todos don't work for large quantities, difficult to prioritize - When receiving email notifications for todos, automatically label them: e.g. direct mentions — makes it easier to prioritize - First do “direct mentions”, then respond if they are quickly to respond, look at emails with a lot of activity on them (a lot of responses) - We’re using GitLab for everything. And probably we’re missing features that would make us more productive so we're relying on other tools/tricks - Be mindful when mentioning someone - Feature request: automatic prioritize things (Todos) - Feature request: board view for Todos - Feature request: Personal issue boards, with automatic actions moving issues around - Feature request: mark todos as follow-up, delegated, etc. - Feature request: Make Todos easier to consume - Feature request: message a person in Slack about an issue with a quick action `/slack @username` - Tool: [Boomerang for Gmail](https://www.boomeranggmail.com/) — scheduled sending and email reminders - Stop working - To discipline yourself to stop working at a certain time, schedule things that take you away from your workspace. Sign up for something: gym class, etc. - Vacations/off time - Make sure who’s gonna handle your work when you’re out - 2 types: some people don't disconnect from work completely, others need total disconnection to rest - Issue: GitLab in DnD - Idea: GitLab house swapping