Gtd
Controlling someone's time is boring for those who charge and for those who are accountable. In addition, it is an unproductive activity, so the ideal is to integrate accountability with the operation activity itself. The less friction the better. The less the person feels that he is stopping his work to be accountable, the better.
And if you can integrate accountability with a kind of satisfaction for having completed a task, this is also something very desirable to keep your team together and productive.
Creating a culture of accountability
Here comes the title of the text and its dilemma between inspecting or stimulating: timetracking (or preparation of timesheet) is the activity of generating reports for billing services provided by professionals who work by the hour; while the worklog is a simpler activity, whose purpose is to give visibility to the work done. Another name that this activity takes, in its most simplified variation, is status report. The emphasis on these activities varies between monitoring and encouraging participation in accountability.
Especially for people who are not used to working by the hour, the social satisfaction of sharing a completed task may be what was missing to adhere to a way of working that is essential to remote teams.
By this I mean that, in order to create a culture of accountability (by inspecting), perhaps the gateway is a simplified worklog, as a means by which people simply feel that their work is seen and their progress celebrated (by stimulating). If this objective is met, you will be able to improve the workflow and gather more information about the team's productivity, improving the workflow.
This data can inform a better decision when deciding who stays and who has to leave the team. In other words, monitoring the team's progress based on data is not merely bureaucratic. Collecting this information is essential to manage the team itself and know who is doing well and who is not.
The right tool
If we are dealing with time control, we are talking about paid work, which also means that the application will hardly be free.
Overall, a good app for this purpose costs USD 4.00/month/user. It may even be free, as is the Workingon , in which case integrations with your preferred work platform, chat, etc. will not be available. A competitor that promotes itself because it is free is the Supdate . A more mature alternative - and one that goes beyond the motivational worklog - is the Idonethis . As you might expect, Idonethis doesn't have a free version.
If you need a more hourly billing-oriented solution, consider Toggl or the Harvest . Particularly, I really like the selection promoted by the Zapier , in which these two applications are listed as the most suitable.
From my point of view, one of the advantages of investing in a remote time and attendance tool is getting rid of a lot of emails. That's why I don't see the point in investing in a solution that works around email, as is the case with TeamColony or the StatusHero . In fact, it is possible to notice that all the most modern applications are leaving email aside and building their operation based on platforms, such as the Jibble or the Jell and its integration with Slack.
Despite the great usefulness of these applications, when I deepened the research to write the post, I found it very curious that the tools are not very popular among startups. Be that as it may, for a complete list, see the ranking of recommendations from Stacklist . I got the impression that the person who works within the startup should not work by the hour. Hourly work tends to be more of an established business trait, which seems to me to be the reason for the low popularity of this class of apps in lists of recommendation tools for startups.
Conclusion
As you can see, it is quite difficult to distinguish the applications that only intend to keep the team motivated (by sharing each task completed) from more complex applications, whose mission is to generate reports for charging hours. There are many options on the market for whatever point in the journey you are in: sharing status, clock-in and clock-out (check-in) or even the preparation of billing reports.
The maturity of your team and your point in this journey (whether you need to improve how to work or how to charge) will be the most decisive in choosing the software. There is no shortage of options. The hardest thing is to realize what the real problem is that you need to solve.
Everyone who uses a laptop has a natural limitation of disk space. Since, in the smallest computers, disks have ceased to be disks and have become solid ( SSD ), this problem has become much worse.
This happened - more or less - at the same time as cloud storage proliferated. But what was once innovation ended up becoming a commodity. Today there are numerous cloud storage services and the most difficult part has become managing them.
Retiring the USB stick and looking for alternatives
Of course, we liked it when we were able to, almost entirely, retire our USB sticks. But cloud storage has created a number of problems as well. For me, who uses a laptop with an SSD, the biggest problem was always that my disk was small and my disk space in the cloud was larger than what was available on the computer. That's why I've always had to manage this issue with Dropbox selective sync.
The fact is that I never liked selective sync, as you have to enter a hidden panel to select what you want to see at the moment. In addition, he has to wait for the synchrony of the folder. If the file to be synced is large, Dropbox will queue you with no management over.
Whoops! I just saw that I see that it has a "smart sync" plan at USD 199/year.
Dropping Dropbox
By this I mean that I am totally convinced that Dropbox is no longer a place for me. This price is out of (my) reality, so much so that I won't even get to test the service.
Anyway, even though I was a plus (paid) user of Dropbox for a few years, I realized that the company had no plans to solve what for me was a real problem. On the contrary, Dropbox was just creating much more expensive additional services, few of which I was interested in and none that could fit in my pocket. Then the day came to downgrade my Dropbox.
I don't think there is an easy solution to this. My solution was not very easy or rational, as I decided to pay - the same as I already paid in Dropbox - for a service that I used in the free plan. Maybe I did it to get "revenge" on Dropbox and its strategy that ignores ordinary people and those on a budget. At least it ignores people of this type who are able to reorganize themselves and find another better service for the same price. 💪👊
Innovative options: oDrive and Google Drive
The proposal of the oDrive It's simple and has many competitors: it's an application for managing your multiple drives in the cloud. So you can have several Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. accounts on your computer. In my case, I had a Google Drive account at work and a personal one, so I always had to choose one of them. I can now have all the accounts simultaneously on my laptop, making use of what some call "cloud unification".
What about the paid plan? The paid plan of oDrive allows you, in addition to syncing multiple accounts, to have the option to unsync each of their folders. The usability is perfect and you can navigate through the folders choosing what to download and what to return to the cloud, freeing up your precious disk space on your laptop.
Well, it's still an expensive service without a doubt. A competitor named ExpanDrive It seems to offer a more affordable plan. It is no coincidence that the price of oDrive is the same as Dropbox's mid-range plan, which reinforces that it is a reference for the market. The fact is that at least now I subscribe to a service that seems to be aligned with my interest. My interest at the moment is to explore Dropbox's free plans and its con 😇
And, for those of you who have a corporate Google account, there is the File Stream , which solves a similar problem at no additional cost. The problem that the tool solves, in fact, is that of selective synchrony, not that of managing multiple accounts. But, as the space provided by Google is quite generous, it is a possible solution for you who want to keep your notebook's disk space in order.
Everyone who uses a laptop has a natural limitation of disk space. Since, in the smallest computers, disks have ceased to be disks and have become solid ( SSD ), this problem has become much worse.
This happened - more or less - at the same time as cloud storage proliferated. But what was once innovation ended up becoming a commodity. Today there are numerous cloud storage services and the most difficult part has become managing them.
Retiring the USB stick and looking for alternatives
Of course, we liked it when we were able to, almost entirely, retire our USB sticks. But cloud storage has created a number of problems as well. For me, who uses a laptop with an SSD, the biggest problem was always that my disk was small and my disk space in the cloud was larger than what was available on the computer. That's why I've always had to manage this issue with Dropbox selective sync.
The fact is that I never liked selective sync, as you have to enter a hidden panel to select what you want to see at the moment. In addition, he has to wait for the synchrony of the folder. If the file to be synced is large, Dropbox will queue you with no management over.
Whoops! I just saw that I see that it has a "smart sync" plan at USD 199/year.
Dropping Dropbox
By this I mean that I am totally convinced that Dropbox is no longer a place for me. This price is out of (my) reality, so much so that I won't even get to test the service.
Anyway, even though I was a plus (paid) user of Dropbox for a few years, I realized that the company had no plans to solve what for me was a real problem. On the contrary, Dropbox was just creating much more expensive additional services, few of which I was interested in and none that could fit in my pocket. Then the day came to downgrade my Dropbox.
I don't think there is an easy solution to this. My solution was not very easy or rational, as I decided to pay - the same as I already paid in Dropbox - for a service that I used in the free plan. Maybe I did it to get "revenge" on Dropbox and its strategy that ignores ordinary people and those on a budget. At least it ignores people of this type who are able to reorganize themselves and find another better service for the same price. 💪👊
Innovative options: oDrive and Google Drive
The proposal of the oDrive It's simple and has many competitors: it's an application for managing your multiple drives in the cloud. So you can have several Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. accounts on your computer. In my case, I had a Google Drive account at work and a personal one, so I always had to choose one of them. I can now have all the accounts simultaneously on my laptop, making use of what some call "cloud unification".
What about the paid plan? The paid plan of oDrive allows you, in addition to syncing multiple accounts, to have the option to unsync each of their folders. The usability is perfect and you can navigate through the folders choosing what to download and what to return to the cloud, freeing up your precious disk space on your laptop.
Well, it's still an expensive service without a doubt. A competitor named ExpanDrive It seems to offer a more affordable plan. It is no coincidence that the price of oDrive is the same as Dropbox's mid-range plan, which reinforces that it is a reference for the market. The fact is that at least now I subscribe to a service that seems to be aligned with my interest. My interest at the moment is to explore Dropbox's free plans and its con 😇
And, for those of you who have a corporate Google account, there is the File Stream , which solves a similar problem at no additional cost. The problem that the tool solves, in fact, is that of selective synchrony, not that of managing multiple accounts. But, as the space provided by Google is quite generous, it is a possible solution for you who want to keep your notebook's disk space in order.
DireitoTec's work platform is based on the Slack . There are other platforms, but Slack is a good starting point for you if you're looking to build a research group or a working group that needs to communicate in a more organized and asynchronous way.
Surpassing Whatsapp
Instant communication is no longer a problem with Whatsapp. But Whatsapp has created a series of other problems for us. For us, it is a premise that work and other subjects are separated and that our researchers are effectively concentrated while they dedicate themselves to our projects. At the same time, we need agility in communication.
Well, if you are on Whatsapp, your group will be a timeline only, confusing communication. Or rather, apps like Whatsapp are made for the purpose of instantly informing a community about a single subject, preferably a simple one. Also, it is normal that you may miss some notification without severe consequences. It simply does not serve our purpose.
The solution given by Slack and its alternatives is to create a channel for each subject, so that different subgroups inhabit only the channels of their interest.
In short, Slack is a kind of set of Whatsapp groups, in the sense that each group has a timeline. Of course, it is not only that, but it is first necessary to establish some minimum understandings to understand the full potential of remote work areas.
Designing Your Desktop
Our Slack workspace changes over time, so much so we share here what's available today. We have some open groups (marked with an # icon), in which we separate some communities. In our case, the closed channels inhabited by teams destined for some financed project and within them the accountability of the project takes place.
Mastering the bots
We also have channels inhabited by bots. It's actually not that fancy.
Bots are Slack's integrations with other software, so that the messages exchanged serve as both input and output. This means that channels passively display messages in Slack when updating the status of some activity performed outside of Slack. Or, Slack itself actively sends a command so that you can operate the software integrated with Slack, through a message with previously established syntax.
It's easier than it sounds, as the usability of the tool is amazing. All you have to do is search for available integrations and invite the respective bot to your desktop. The list of apps with Slack integration is available on your shop . Choose the app you prefer and, if this is not already part of your habit, start getting used to talking to it through a command line.
A channel for every need
Going back to the subject, for every need of our group there is a channel and often there is a bot as well. To manage the spreadsheets we have the Airtable . For collaborative writing we have the channel of Draft . And to manage bibliographic references we have the Zotero .
There are also closed channels (marked with a padlock icon), as they are reserved for researchers who are in paid activity. This group reports through a kind of time sheet, called Jibble . In addition, researchers on a paid project answer periodic questions about what they have done, plan to do, and the difficulties they are facing. The bot that takes care of this maintenance is called Tatsu . Finally, we have the bot dedicated to managing tasks with stipulated deadlines, called Todoist .
Some people may find this toolbox overloaded. But the truth is that if you get involved in a complex project, you will need to manage several fronts and it is best that they are separated.
Soon we will be publishing posts dedicated to each of these tools here again and we hope to hear how they are helping (or not) your work process.
DireitoTec's work platform is based on the Slack . There are other platforms, but Slack is a good starting point for you if you're looking to build a research group or a working group that needs to communicate in a more organized and asynchronous way.
Surpassing Whatsapp
Instant communication is no longer a problem with Whatsapp. But Whatsapp has created a series of other problems for us. For us, it is a premise that work and other subjects are separated and that our researchers are effectively concentrated while they dedicate themselves to our projects. At the same time, we need agility in communication.
Well, if you are on Whatsapp, your group will be a timeline only, confusing communication. Or rather, apps like Whatsapp are made for the purpose of instantly informing a community about a single subject, preferably a simple one. Also, it is normal that you may miss some notification without severe consequences. It simply does not serve our purpose.
The solution given by Slack and its alternatives is to create a channel for each subject, so that different subgroups inhabit only the channels of their interest.
In short, Slack is a kind of set of Whatsapp groups, in the sense that each group has a timeline. Of course, it is not only that, but it is first necessary to establish some minimum understandings to understand the full potential of remote work areas.
Designing Your Desktop
Our Slack workspace changes over time, so much so we share here what's available today. We have some open groups (marked with an # icon), in which we separate some communities. In our case, the closed channels inhabited by teams destined for some financed project and within them the accountability of the project takes place.
Mastering the bots
We also have channels inhabited by bots. It's actually not that fancy.
Bots are Slack's integrations with other software, so that the messages exchanged serve as both input and output. This means that channels passively display messages in Slack when updating the status of some activity performed outside of Slack. Or, Slack itself actively sends a command so that you can operate the software integrated with Slack, through a message with previously established syntax.
It's easier than it sounds, as the usability of the tool is amazing. All you have to do is search for available integrations and invite the respective bot to your desktop. The list of apps with Slack integration is available on your shop . Choose the app you prefer and, if this is not already part of your habit, start getting used to talking to it through a command line.
A channel for every need
Going back to the subject, for every need of our group there is a channel and often there is a bot as well. To manage the spreadsheets we have the Airtable . For collaborative writing we have the channel of Draft . And to manage bibliographic references we have the Zotero .
There are also closed channels (marked with a padlock icon), as they are reserved for researchers who are in paid activity. This group reports through a kind of time sheet, called Jibble . In addition, researchers on a paid project answer periodic questions about what they have done, plan to do, and the difficulties they are facing. The bot that takes care of this maintenance is called Tatsu . Finally, we have the bot dedicated to managing tasks with stipulated deadlines, called Todoist .
Some people may find this toolbox overloaded. But the truth is that if you get involved in a complex project, you will need to manage several fronts and it is best that they are separated.
Soon we will be publishing posts dedicated to each of these tools here again and we hope to hear how they are helping (or not) your work process.
"So, Henry, what are you doing?"
"Ah... I'm reading the internet."
TL; DR: In this world dominated by platforms, I stick with one (in this case, [Feedly](https://feedly.com/)) that lets me have more freedom when it comes to choosing what I'm going to read.
If you are old enough to know that the internet was not this confusion of timelines that imprison us in addictive behavior, you will also remember that one day there was the promise of an organized form of reading. But that was a long time ago, it was before the "platformization" of the internet.
The main tool used at that time was Google Reader (retired in 2013). Then, several options ceased to exist and today finding a comfortable way of reading is increasingly rare. "Social reading" has become dominated by algorithms and you no longer find the treasures that Facebook and Twitter don't want you to see.
For those who are not familiar, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and, from the user's point of view, it has always been a good alternative to follow websites and blogs without having to subscribe to any newsletters (i.e., deliver your email). Those who are old will also remember that their email was a precious commodity, as it was the key to attention that is now dispersed in chat tools. And back then, e-waste dominated your inbox. Well, I don't miss that part.
But I miss RSS. Allegorically, consuming the news through social networks is like eating in the "self-service". At least that's what we call it, in Brasilia, that restaurant that always has cooked beets as the first option for you. The expensive dish for the restaurant (and lighter) is always at the end. Reading in RSS is an "à la carte" experience.
Photo by Ingrid Hofstra / Unsplash
That's where the Feedly , the tool used by 14 million people to read RSS. In fact, after the closure of Google Reader, this market seemed to me to be stagnant for a while, until recently Feedly positioned itself much more as a content search tool for comfortable consumption - and not just a reader.
By the way, this is the purpose of the post: to remind you that RSS is ready for a triumphant return, as it now has the best of both worlds. He serves "à la carte" or can recommend a new dish that was not on the menu. This way you discover new sources of reading without being so exposed to sponsored timelines.
Today without a doubt Feedly is the most popular tool for RSS, but there are interesting alternatives that I will not develop here. For the record, in addition to numerous applications, they also do a good job: Inoreader , The Old Reader and FeedBase .
Ironically, now that I've written it, I'm going to go on Twitter and Linkedin to share this post. Maybe you also share it on your networks... 😬
"So, Henry, what are you doing?"
"Ah... I'm reading the internet."
TL; DR: In this world dominated by platforms, I stick with one (in this case, [Feedly](https://feedly.com/)) that lets me have more freedom when it comes to choosing what I'm going to read.
If you are old enough to know that the internet was not this confusion of timelines that imprison us in addictive behavior, you will also remember that one day there was the promise of an organized form of reading. But that was a long time ago, it was before the "platformization" of the internet.
The main tool used at that time was Google Reader (retired in 2013). Then, several options ceased to exist and today finding a comfortable way of reading is increasingly rare. "Social reading" has become dominated by algorithms and you no longer find the treasures that Facebook and Twitter don't want you to see.
For those who are not familiar, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and, from the user's point of view, it has always been a good alternative to follow websites and blogs without having to subscribe to any newsletters (i.e., deliver your email). Those who are old will also remember that their email was a precious commodity, as it was the key to attention that is now dispersed in chat tools. And back then, e-waste dominated your inbox. Well, I don't miss that part.
But I miss RSS. Allegorically, consuming the news through social networks is like eating in the "self-service". At least that's what we call it, in Brasilia, that restaurant that always has cooked beets as the first option for you. The expensive dish for the restaurant (and lighter) is always at the end. Reading in RSS is an "à la carte" experience.
Photo by Ingrid Hofstra / Unsplash
That's where the Feedly , the tool used by 14 million people to read RSS. In fact, after the closure of Google Reader, this market seemed to me to be stagnant for a while, until recently Feedly positioned itself much more as a content search tool for comfortable consumption - and not just a reader.
By the way, this is the purpose of the post: to remind you that RSS is ready for a triumphant return, as it now has the best of both worlds. He serves "à la carte" or can recommend a new dish that was not on the menu. This way you discover new sources of reading without being so exposed to sponsored timelines.
Today without a doubt Feedly is the most popular tool for RSS, but there are interesting alternatives that I will not develop here. For the record, in addition to numerous applications, they also do a good job: Inoreader , The Old Reader and FeedBase .
Ironically, now that I've written it, I'm going to go on Twitter and Linkedin to share this post. Maybe you also share it on your networks... 😬