5 Quick Productivity Tips for Solopreneurs

and curated awesomeness of course...

Okay, I promised quick tips, so let’s get started.

1. Time blocking

Colorful calendar = going on autopilot

Spend 30 minutes on weekends planning your next week. Timeblocking keeps you on top of your professional engagements, personal responsibilities, and fun so you don't have to spend time midday wondering what to do.

Here’s what a time-blocked day looks like:

2. Distraction-free environment

Phones off.

On average, Americans check their phones 144 times a day. Wow, that's a lot! Sure, you’re just “checking emails” or “checking Twitter X replies“ but - be honest, - how many times do you end up scrolling social media for hours after just “checking emails“?

Put your phone in do not disturb mode and keep it away from you.

3. Single-tasking

You’re not a multi-threaded CPU.

Context-switching is hard on your brain. According to researchers, it can eat up 20%-80% of your productivity. This invisible (cognitive-)tax can be responsible for not meeting deadlines, feeling like an imposter, and being tired af.

Focus on one specific project or type of work for at least half of your workday.

4. 2-minute rule

Your brain is excellent at processing information but terrible at storing it.

That’s why you should always make to-do lists. However, scheduling a tiny task takes the same amount of time as scheduling a big task. If something takes less than ~2 minutes, it’s better to do it on the spot.

This helps you manage your time and the quick win gives you some extra boost.

5. Hell yeah, or no

This is the one I've been using the most recently.

In the past, I was always busy because I thought saying yes to everything would get me ahead. As a result, I've never gotten around to working on my own projects, exercising daily, or simply spending enough time with loved-ones. It's a fast track to burnout.

Now, my default answer to new tasks or engagements is no. My productivity went up a lot after this.

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❓ Weekly Quiz

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Curated

👉 4 Developreneur Tools

SaaS Landing Page Examples - It’s what the title says. Cool, modern SaaS websites with screenshots, fonts, colors, and technologies.

Posthog - 7+ tools in one for your product. Analytics, A/B testing, feature flagging, and more. Built for the frontend cloud.

PlanetScale - MySQL database platform with insights, branching, schema handling, and easy integration. Also, very generous pricing.

TailKits - Curated TailwindCSS templates, starters, components, kits, tools, generators, and more.

👉 Content to binge

IdeaHub - This newsletter, written by a Product Manager in B2B SaaS, is already helping 400+ tech entrepreneurs start and grow their own products every week. Each email contains actionable product strategies, examples and recommendations.

Building a Vaporwave scene with Three.js - Lately, I’m deep into learning interaction design, animations, and WebGL stuff. This interactive article is great to give you a taste.

Bun 1.0 is here ▷ - I really did not care about Deno when it got released last year (maybe it’s already 2-3 years? I don’t even know) but for some reason, I’m excited about Bun! My prediction: Vercel will acquire it in 2024.

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👉 That’s about it

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Until next time,

David