The Productive Dad Read this post online here. Hi Reader đ Hope you're having an amazing Friday! Data entry is one of those jobs that drains your energy fast. Itâs the kind of work that makes you question your life choices. When did you become a cog in the knowledge-worker machine? But if youâre running a business, or even just trying to keep your team organised, you canât skip it. You need those categories for reporting, for insights, for making better decisions. So you grit your teeth and...
about 2 months ago â˘Â 2 min read
ClickUp is for creativity. Donât agree? Today, Iâve loaded up a new project in ClickUp to organise my music composition process for the first time. This is a bit of an experiment for me. Iâve always used ClickUp for consulting, client work, and the usual project management stuff, but never for something as creative as writing music. I used to write a lot of music before my daughter was born. You can check out the full playlist here. Iâm genuinely excited to see how a project management...
about 2 months ago â˘Â 1 min read
Hi Reader đ Hope you're having an amazing Friday! If youâre anything like me, you pay for too many apps. Maybe even multiple âread it laterâ apps, only to have your saved articles scattered across different browsers and platforms. But this week, I found a workflow thatâs free, faster, flexible, and puts you back in control. It started with Timâs newsletter (shout out to @WebInspectInc). He got me thinking: Why am I still using paid tools to save articles when Obsidian already houses my notes...
2 months ago â˘Â 1 min read
How To Find More Time Systems. Thatâs it. You donât need to read the rest of the email. If youâve ever worked all day and felt like you accomplished nothing, then you need better systems. When I first became a dad, I suddenly had zero free time. The few hours I used to have each day were now squashed down to zero. It was time to sort it out. Why was I wasting time on emails, pointless meetings, or tasks that werenât getting me more clients? It was busywork. It it wasnât giving me any freedom....
2 months ago â˘Â 1 min read
Read the longer online version of this week's newsletter here. I've been playing with ClickUp AI a lot lately and discovered some really useful things that it can do. I'll talk about AI agents in a future issue (check out a preview of the work on LinkedIn). But today I want to give you a prompt that saved me hours last week. If you're managing multiple clients in ClickUp, you need a quick way to get an overview of each one. Usually this involves delving into the tasks, seeing what meetings...
3 months ago â˘Â 2 min read
I was testing out a new camera this week and thought it was the perfect chance to share a little automation for agency and business owners who live in ClickUp. You need a space for your team to collaborate, revise, and handle all the internal back-and-forth. But you want your client's view to be clean, simple, and professional. They don't need them seeing your internal notes of, "ergh why are they asking for another revision!?" This quick automation creates a perfect separation between your...
3 months ago â˘Â 1 min read
So yeah, weâre all chasing that same dream. Having one app to rule them all. A single, perfect system where our tasks, projects, and all our awesome ideas can live and work together in perfect harmony. But what if that dream is actually a trap? What if putting everything in one bucket, especially a project management tool like ClickUp (which I love), is quietly sabotaging your most valuable asset? That asset is your thinking. This is why I practice something I call The âSecond Brainâ Split....
4 months ago â˘Â 2 min read
Want to listen to this article instead? Check out the audio version here: https://share.descript.com/view/oC57XHKi92Y You think a project should take 20 hours, but it ends up being double that. Youâre pouring hours into client work, only to look at the books and wonder where the real profit is. Iâm finishing up a ClickUp implementation for a client and the final time log gave me a bit of a reality check: 50 hours đ That was⌠more than I initially planned for. I track every minute of my time...
4 months ago â˘Â 1 min read
You know when youâve just finished working on your business and youâre heading out to the pub â but youâve got this nagging feeling in the back of your mind? Youâre worried that a really important client call or a hot new lead might come in⌠But thereâs nobody in your business to pick it up! So it rings, goes to a generic voicemail, and then you just hope that somebody remembers to follow up tomorrow. But hope isnât a good strategy, especially when youâre trying to juggle lots of clients,...
5 months ago â˘Â 2 min read