Productivity is a topic that has always found its place in people's lives. People are always searching for formulas on how to be more productive in their lives. Often, they channel all their efforts into one aspect of their daily lives: work. This is a mistake. There's a common belief that we should separate our "professional self" from our "personal self." There's some truth to this concept, but the error lies in its generalization. There is only one "self." Therefore, trying to be productive and organized professionally can create significant bottlenecks for that very productivity. And guess what? People will try even more methods to optimize themselves, sometimes unnecessarily.

I'm not an exception in this. I've made simple mistakes, tried various methods, and felt frustration. I followed an interesting path until I developed my own concept of organization and productivity that works for me now. I won't glamorize it by saying it was a hard journey to craft my "perfect organization and productivity system." With today's technology, many things have been made easier. There are many digital or very low-cost analog options. (Nothing in this world is free.)

My first step was to identify the current pain points in my daily life. At this point, I felt like each day I started, there was a massive rock in front of me that I somehow had to remove. How? By observing my routine and noting what bothered me the most throughout the day. And not ironically, my email inboxes were a complete mess. My personal inbox was filled with tons of junk in the form of ignored electronic envelopes, messages that occasionally slipped through the spam filter. This caused important messages to be lost or mistakenly deleted. Similarly, albeit to a lesser extent, my professional inbox faced these issues. Excellent! First problem identified.

The solution here was somewhat drastic on the personal side. I realized that although current email services are efficient, they weren't helping me much. YES, I could spend time configuring tags, filters, and all that flexibility. However, with extreme flexibility comes the impulse for continuous improvement. You're never satisfied with what you have and want to keep tinkering with it forever. And well, unlike the professional aspect (for most people), on the personal side, you end up having more than one inbox. The concept of filtering and such may be similar, but you'll always run into vendor lock-in. Accept it!

So, after a not so long search, I found that Hey! Mail had some interesting features. The main ones being "The Screener," "Feed," and "PaperTrail." I gave it a try during the trial period, and it perfectly matched my flow. The ingrained concept of Hey! forced me to create a system around it. Having the screener "defend" me from unwanted messages, the feed giving me a personal newsletter, and the papertrail keeping what I need there but not in sight, was perfect for me. I believe Hey! deserves a full post, or see for yourself on their website. And with my entire messaging flow going to Hey, I was able to archive important messages in other inboxes and CLEAN up the accounts. Now, I only receive what's necessary for me. I have more time to deal with messages that matter.

As I said before, corporate email is a "suck it up" situation. Whether you use GSuite or Microsoft, it's going to happen. In my case, I applied the same concept I learned personally. I archived everything important and CLEANED out the messages. Zero inbox is the motto. Ongoing threads are kept in the inbox. However, concluded subjects, process messages, are archived. Spam? Be your own Screener. One thing that helped me a lot is using email clients, like Outlook. There I can have all inboxes (except Hey) and manage them consistently. We are one. Separate professional, but at the end of the day, all your inboxes are your responsibility.

Well, emails come with calendars. When I started using Hey!, there wasn't a calendar as there is today. However, I tried various ways to have a synchronized calendar. Through Outlook, and in previous attempts through Thunderbird. All efficient! But my life isn't a corporate machine, although I'm part of it as a regular worker. It's our decision how to manage calendars. And I decided I don't function by corporatizing myself outside of work. Then Hey Mail came along. I won't deny I was stuck for a few weeks on how to manage the calendar. And there was also the condition that I started using it on day one. Some sync bugs with the corporate calendar provider occurred, like duplicating items or not removing entries. But all of this was quickly resolved by the folks at 37Signals. Today, I can have a pleasant flow, taking my daily routine out of the corporate world. And the corporate world syncs with me. Personal and company together. Virtually without vendor lock-in, since I can leave Hey whenever I want. (Although I have to accept the corporate suite of the company)

The Hey calendar has many features that eliminate the need for frantic immediacy, yet still give you the concept of responsibility you must follow. Like the support for the known "multiple" calendars, but what sets it apart is the "Maybe" feature, which is brilliant. Maybe I'll do that, and it's okay not to manage. Bullet points for routines that need to be tracked like "taking medication" are a strong point, they should be on your calendar, but is it worth an entry?

In conclusion, I intended to make a post covering my entire organization system. But just email and calendar are quite broad topics. It turned out that in the midst of typing, I decided to briefly focus on this topic. I'll publish the rest of the ideas soon. Like the note-taking system and To-Do list. Remember, this is a compilation of concepts and applications that worked for me. The internet is full of "productivity gurus," I'm not one of them, in fact, I avoid them. Not saying you shouldn't consume that type of content, but proceed with caution, there's a lot that's just stage props. Only you know your needs. And the important thing is to allocate effort to what works for you.

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Caso prefira, veja a versão em português brasileiro aqui!