CoThinking — by Jotham

After migrating my notes to Notion, the names Emacs and Org-mode appeared constantly in threads, podcasts, and forums.

Though I knew the destination, embarking on expeditions into different productivity systems is an inevitable part of the journey. A straightforward note-taking system expanded into task management, calendars, and time-tracking solutions.

The toll on my wallet is substantial, a practice I heavily discourage. To maintain my sanity, I reassured myself that playing with software is a cheaper hobby compared to more extravagant pursuits like cameras and cars. Plus, the benefits of increased productivity and the self-discovery intrinsic to each platform migration more than justify the costs sunk into this hobby. But still, I find it hard to justify the expenditure, even though I’m supporting developers and their work.

I habitually adopt new hobbies during transitional periods in my career. Six months ago, it was the website migration to Hugo and fussing over themes to personalize the site. Now, it’s relocating from Obsidian to Doom Emacs.

So Why Emacs?

Plain Text Files

Originating from Obsidian, I fully endorse the core ethos of plain text files. They are simple, scalable, future-proof, and easy to understand. I like to imagine that my text files will remain relevant centuries from now, accessible via some ancient terminal lost in space, much like sci-fi stories. It’s hard to expect proprietary databases from emerging productivity app makers to last that long.

I appreciate that I can effortlessly access my Obsidian and Hugo files within Doom Emacs as projects. Although I’ve migrated to org-mode, Emacs has a potent, format-agnostic text editor. I can compose my Obsidian files swiftly without needing any import/export tool.

Vim Motion

If plain text was the goal, Obsidian would have been sufficient – and so would other known editors such as LogSeq, Joplin, and one of my favorites, Bike Outliner. But few have full-fledged vim motion support, as does Evil-mode.

I’m proficient enough with markdown, shortcuts, hotkeys, automation, macros, and cursor manipulation in standard text editors. But I work and LIVE in my notes in both my professional and personal life. They are extensions of my brain, and to some degree, my identity. It’s therefore natural that vim motions would be the next logical improvement in my brain externalization capabilities. Similar to how poets learning a new language and culture can enrich their prose and vocabulary.

Currently, I’m still taking baby steps. Writing and editing this post is frustratingly slow. But already, I find myself frustrated at the lack of modal text editing in other software. Give me a few months, and I believe things would turn for the better.

Ease of Entry

Without Doom, I would never have ventured into Emacs. Doom comes pre-configured with packages and settings that render Emacs newbie-friendly while offering enough flexibility for customization.

Many might venture into Vanilla GNU Emacs after familiarizing themselves with Doom Emacs and the Elisp language. However, veterans still prefer Doom for several reasons. It’s simple, practical, and so well-tuned that configuring GNU Emacs is generally not worth the effort.

The software’s speed is remarkable. After learning how to set up a server daemon and client for Emacs, the load-up time is instantaneous. It’s amazing how efficient the software is, even though it runs on essentially a single core.

Cost Savings

After tinkering with Doom Emacs for a while, I realized that many other productivity apps are mere attempts to replicate what Org Mode brings to the table.

Task management, note-taking, and PKMs – Org mode does it all, better and faster, with more customization in a free, open-source manner, well before new apps entered the scene.

Why bother with imitations when I can go directly to the source? If only I had ventured into Org mode right from the start, I would have saved so much more. (Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I can’t help myself from trying out new, shiny things.)

Aesthetics

I won’t lie – the aesthetics of Doom Emacs is perhaps the main driver of my switch from Obsidian. It began when I stumbled upon the Hugo.386 website theme, which emulates the old-school MS-DOS aesthetic.

Expressing my love for the design would be an understatement, and I spent countless hours diving into HTML and CSS code to give it my personal touch. This made me comfortable with messing around with configuration files after being spoiled by years of using UI settings. When I realized that migrating to Doom Emacs was within the realm of possibility, I downloaded the Parus theme to emulate my blog’s aesthetics as closely as possible.

Now, I use the Modus Theme for accessibility reasons but coupling it with an Iosevka font, and it feels like I’m living within a terminal.

Final Thoughts

My thoughts today lack structure – it’s simply me expressing appreciation and love for my new toy, Doom Emacs. Perhaps it gives you an idea of why I haven’t posted much in recent weeks.

But, I plan to write more often in the future. I’ve only started using Doom Emacs less than a week ago, and I definitely need the practice.

Cheers!

Hugo excels at desktop publishing. I can create files using CLIs or markdown editors, then publish to a Github repository. This directly reflects on the website through Netlify, Cloudflare Pages or Vercel.

However, publishing from my phone is not as straightforward. I have a micropost section on my website, intended to be a Twitter replacement, where I share posts that are:

• Short

• Contain photos taken from my phone

• Can be published quickly

I initially thought that the only feasible way to publish using my phone was via Micropub. This is evident in direct integrations with writing apps such as Ulysses, iA Writer and Paper.

The issues with Micropub are:

• It’s extremely difficult to set up for someone without a technical background, like myself.

• The only feasible way I’ve managed to get this to work is via Voxpelli’s Solution.

• Even then, it costs money to host a micropub solution. The only free way I’ve managed to get this to work is via Render, which only spins up the server when in use.

• This is problematic for my use case, because it takes a long time to publish a micropost, it often displays an error and there’s a high risk of double-posting.

A Much More Elegant Solution

Because micropub wasn’t working, I stumbled upon a different approach — creating and editing markdown files directly within the GitHub repo itself.

Unfortunately, GitHub’s native app doesn’t provide an efficient way to create and edit markdown files. That’s when I discovered Working Copy — an iOS Git client that GitHub should have been.

What’s more interesting is Working Copy’s integration with Shortcut Actions, which allows me to publish microposts via the action button on my iPhone. Hence, you can easily repurpose the shortcut to create your own customised templates or run via widgets or phone back taps.

Link to my shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c6a068710cc848f3b5d0d98311e8d9fa

Shortcut in Action

I have two types of microposts — with photo and without. My shortcut differentiates the two based on whether the image is within my clipboard:

Note:

• You’re able to change the note’s file destination and template by adjusting parameters within the shortcut.

• This method only works on JPEG images.

• This method assumes that you’ll be posting photos via YAML, rather than in-line. This requires adjustments to be made to layout HTML files with the following code, depending on where you need the image displayed.

Hopefully, this quick tutorial is helpful to you! Let me know if you have any questions below.

Changing Jobs for the Eighth Time

Where Am I Heading?

I’m currently embarking on a new venture, CoThinking, a marketing firm specialising in the B2B tech marketing sector.

My return to Innov8tif is a transitionary measure, with the management there providing substantial support to help with the company launch.

Why the Change?

Now, at 28, I’ve spent a significant part of my adult life transitioning between jobs in search of a company to which I can fully commit. (Like Zhu Ge Liang waiting for a Liu Bei, as my high school friend once put it.)

However, I’ve come to realise that the greenest grass is the one I cultivate myself. Will it grow into a magnificent lawn? Or will it become overrun with weeds and die? Regardless, I have more control over my destiny than ever before.

What Lies Ahead?

Uncertainty, fear, and a considerable amount of anxiety. I foresee long hours, sleepless nights, heavy responsibilities, and inevitable sacrifices.

Yet, I’ve met friends who open and shut businesses as if it’s just an ordinary Tuesday. Building and running companies is normal to them, but this is a new and unfamiliar journey for me.

Being uneasy is natural. In the end, I’m confident that everything will turn out fine. As long as I continue to learn and practice how to 做人, things will fall into place.

Reflecting on the Past

• Freelance work since I was 16. I undertook various projects to support my hobbies, mainly camera gear.

• Internship at Director’s Think Tank. The most trauma-inducing 90 days of my life, but it moulded me into the person I am today. I still wouldn’t recommend joining.

• Videographer at ABC Studio. Awesome environment, but the pay couldn’t support me then. I often wonder how everyone there is doing.

• Brand Producer at Winner Dynasty. Caught a glimpse of society’s underbelly. Very fun, but also dangerous.

• Writer at Armani Media. Growth via trial by fire. Met my first mentor whose influence still shaped my leadership style to this day.

• Journalist at TheEdge. Learnt about storytelling and learned how to behave around iMpoRtanT people. Met another awesome boss who taught me what it means to have my team’s back.

• Marketing Manager at Innov8tif Finally experienced a respectable, livable wage. Doubled down on being a professional and got a taste of what it’s like to be a boss.

• Marketing Manager at ORLIG. The true “executive” stage of my life, where I trade away talent & knowledge for higher income.

Have been through a lot with a lifetime’s worth of trouble to come. Let’s freaking go.

I made the switch from Things (my main app for 3 years) to OF4 after learning about David Sparks and CGP Grey’s approach to task management.

My issue with most to-do apps is that they are time-based, whether it’s assigning a date or using time-blocking/calendar hybrids. This method is poor at task recovery.

My workdays are unpredictable and get disrupted all the time. Unfinished tasks today get rolled over to tomorrow, and tomorrow to the day after tomorrow, and so on. The only time-based app that does task recovery well is Skedpal, but it’s expensive, ugly and requires a lot of configuring to use effectively.

OF4 Helps Me Take a “scrying” Approach to Task Management

Tasks are like an infinite deck of cards, and it’s impossible for us to finish them within our lifetime. The best we can do is to organise the pile and work through it card by card.

Time-based systems are arbitrary ways to cut this deck of cards. “I’ll work on these top 10 today, and the next 9 tomorrow”. I find myself re-cutting the deck every time there’s something unexpected in my schedule.

OF4 works by scrying — “Here are the top 3 cards you can work on at any given time. Oh, you can’t work on them today? It’s okay. These 3 cards will be waiting for you tomorrow, and I’ll ping you if there’s something more urgent that comes your way”. The combination of features like Review, first available, available, sequential projects, custom perspectives are hard to find elsewhere.

I’ve only adopted this system over the past 2 weeks, and it works well with me so far. We’ll see how it goes.

Worst case scenario, I’ll just go back to Things.

This is my 7th blog migration now—away from WordPress, Obsidian Publish, Super.so, Ghost, Substack & Hugo.

Admittedly, it’s a form of procrastination. Spending more time messing around with websites means less time producing content.

But I don’t think it’s time wasted. I’ve learned a lot about web hosting and publishing with each content migration, and I believe that Micro.blog is just one part of a long journey ahead.

Motive

1. I love sharing, but I dislike social media

• Micro.blog is part of the IndieWeb & Fediverse movement, where the key idea is to have content ownership in the hands of users.

• By committing to social media platforms, I’ll lock myself into walled gardens where content is difficult to migrate and control.

• Moreover, it creates bad incentives—such as paying for exposure, preying on people’s insecurities, and developing addictive time-sink features.

2. Pure blogging isn’t right for me either.

• The 6 blogging platforms mentioned above have one big challenge— Reach.
• Despite hosting content on my own domain, I find myself still sharing them on platforms like LinkedIn & Facebook to get some semblance of visitor traction.
• Solutions like RSS feeds & email subscriptions aim to help with that, but the “marketing” aspect of publishing can’t be ignored.
• Hence, I find myself maintaining several platforms instead of one, while facing the same aforementioned walled garden problems.

How I Came across Micro.Blog

I first heard of webmentions while configuring the Anubis Theme for Hugo.

I tend to remove unwanted features from my themes to make my site more efficient. But learning about webmentions led me down a deep rabbit hole of IndieAuth, Micropub, Brid.gy, and a whole ecosystem of IndieWeb tools.

Getting my website “Indiefied” wasn’t difficult, and there are many resources out there that have helped. But I tried hard to make Micropub work on my site, but I can’t seem to get it right.

My site passed many of the micropub.rocks tests, but I can’t connect it to iA writer for easy content publishing.

Not to mention, I dislike how fragile everything was. My site was held up by a ton of providers like GitHub, Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Webmentions.io, Brid.gy, IndieAuth…

Knowing how each of these services works with each other is amazing, but they represent points of failure that need to be tackled in the future. I foresee myself spending hours troubleshooting issues rather than learning new things.

Micro.blog was brought up early on during my research into the IndieWeb. I’ve held off making a $5/month subscription because hosting my Hugo was free.

But a deck of cards is the only thing keeping my Hugo website afloat. The idea that Micro.Blog is also powered by Hugo, and it has all the IndieWeb configuration sorted (with a few minor tweaks), plus I don’t need to worry about hosting issues—I think it’s worth a shot.

Having my own website is essential to me.

Being an online lurker for so long, I have often regretted not contributing more to the internet space rather than just passive consumption. However, I disliked the idea of posting on social media and contributing towards data-hungry big tech corporations.

Hence, building a site on a custom domain is my way of carving out a small slice of the internet I can call my own.

I have tried many other platforms in the past (read below), but Hugo fits my current needs for now.

Hugo: My Current CMS of Choice

To be honest, I LOVE the platform! Here are a few reasons why:

• Hugo is blazingly fast. Hugo’s rendering speed is measured in milliseconds. I’ve seen full-blown websites being generated faster than a pro CS gamer clicking heads. SEO benefits aside, I just like how snappy the website is, which reminds me of the great UI/UX of many Mac apps.

• Makes me feel like a badass. I love the idea of tinkering around Git, HTML/YAML files & using the terminal despite not being a programmer. Yet, Hugo is very accessible even to non-technical people if you follow the instructions carefully and understand what’s going on.

• Obsidian is a core part of my daily life. Hugo uses markdown files, which I can load into my vault. With a git community plugin, I can publish content easily without leaving Obsidian!

• It’s free to set up. By hosting HUGO on Cloudflare Pages and using analytics tracking tools like Umami, I don’t have to pay a single penny beyond purchasing a domain name. (Highly recommend Namecheap.)

• There’s endless opportunities for tinkering. With thousands of free, open-source themes on Github, I can change the look and style of my site quickly without migrating the entire site.

• I like publishing pure text blog posts. Hugo has plenty of themes that are built for this. Many other platforms are designed in such a way that requires some level of commitment for images — even if it’s a quick royalty-free one. I’m a writer, not a designer.

But there are a few minor annoyances with the platform as well.

• A mid-high learning curve. I can see why Hugo can be intimidating for many people. It still took me a while to understand how to set everything up. Sure, I can build a HUGO website in less than 2 minutes, but it takes a lot of troubleshooting to get it the way I want it.

• There’s no default email-newsletter support. This feature comes by default on platforms like Ghost, Beehiiv or Substack. But it is entirely possible to create an RSS to email newsletter system. I heard good things about Brevo.

Hugo is the latest — but by no means the only website creation platform I’ve used. Here are the other options that I’ve tried in chronological order.

Notion & Super.so

Story

Mid-way through the pandemic, Notion had upturned how I created content, which at that point was primarily Google Docs. Beyond quickly organising and creating professional-looking documents, it allowed users to share documents publicly.

Naturally, I created my first personal website with it. This opened the doors to Notion → website translation services such as super.so. Since then, Notion has introduced their own “Sites” feature.

What I like

Notion really knows how to strike a fine balance between customisation & ease-of-use.

The way it handles images, text and page navigation… It opened up many doors that were previously tedious, cumbersome and impossible in traditional word processors.

It’s very easy for users to create a nice-looking website without any prior technical knowledge, which led me down the rabbit hole I’m currently in.

What I disliked

The reason I stopped using Notion has less to do with it being a terrible CMS, and more to do with problems with Notion as a PKM in itself.

It requires an internet connection. It’s powerful, but also bloated. Pages took a long time to load. I no longer enjoyed writing on Notion, and have since moved to other writing tools.

As a CMS, Notion’s SEO and website loading speed is not great. It wasn’t designed to be a website creation tool after all. But the real deal-breaker was the lack of custom domain support. It defeats the whole “carve out a corner of the internet” point of me starting a website.

Substack & Ghost

Story

At this point, I’ve learned about the importance of audience ownership.

Being a novice marketer, my attention was primarily focused on website visits and social media engagements. A sizable chunk of marketing dollars are essentially spent “renting” traffic and eyeballs from Big Tech companies like Meta and Google.

This idea bothered me. I then turned my attention to newsletters — a form of audience engagement that’s more loyal, intimate, and resilient to the ebb and flow of the social media trends.

That’s how I got to know Substack and Ghost.

What I like Substack & Ghost are built for and by writers; The website design, how posts are displayed, and the community sharing aspects are what made Substack a great place for journalists and casual bloggers.

Best of all, you can run a website on either platform for free or at a very low cost. It’s also the first platform I came across that merges both the idea of blogging and newsletters.

Ghost is just Substack with more customisation options, self-hosting capabilities and fewer community functions. I’ve tried it for a bit, found the theme system too cumbersome and expensive, and ultimately left Ghost after the trial period.

What I dislike There’s nothing inherently bad about Substack as a platform for writers — I just don’t think it’s the right platform for me.

Writing on Substack made me feel that my website’s fate is heavily dependent on the platform. Sure, I could export a.csv file containing my email subscribers and migrate easily…but something about the platform made me uneasy.

I was conscious about the Nazi Controversy, and was paying attention to how the website ranked in Google Trends within my country. I found myself comparing Substack and Medium a whole lot, and worrying about the platform more than actually creating content.

I dislike how most Substack websites look the same and are part of a singular ecosystem. Great for readers, but not for someone who wants their site to be unique.

I dislike how readers are bombarded with requests to subscribe from the get-go.

I dislike how I still need to add featured images to posts to make it “complete”.

I dislike how badly the domain performs on SEO.

Again, it’s mostly a ‘me problem’. Substack is still what I’d recommend for most people.

WordPress

Story Ah, ye old reliable. There’s nothing to be said about WordPress, because its history and prominence speak for itself.

WordPress’ customisability, matured ecosystem and permanence is what drew me into the platform. After getting bored with Substack, I took a whole weekend to study plugins and hosting options to make my own website.

What I like.

It’s the go-to platform if you want your website to last for decades. Website development used to be hard, but is now easier thanks to drag and drop systems like Gutenberg and Elementor.

WordPress is extremely cheap to host and run. You can customise it however you want with the plugin marketplace.

But…that’s about it.

What I dislike

It’s no secret that most website developers hate using WordPress because it’s such a legacy system to work with.

The backend UI/UX is horrible. I dislike the idea of logging into my /wp-admin/ account to publish anything. There are ways around this, such as using APIs and tools like Ulysses, but it’s finicky.

WordPress can load at the speed of light or crawl like a bug depending on your level of technical expertise. Fiddling around with Caches, CDNs and image optimisation is annoying.

WordPress reminds me of Notion. Many people hate it, but it’s a system that works. There’s only a few systems in the market like it, so we have no choice but to use it.

Obsidian Publish

Story I LOVE Obsidian. I’ve been disloyal — flirting with Apple Notes, Mem, Bear, Capacities, AnyType.io, Noteplan and countless others — but I always return to Obsidian.

I used Obsidian Publish for a few days, but the subscription price at $8 per month and lack of comprehensive customisation options made me look elsewhere.

What I like

The best thing about Obsidian Publish is that obsidian.md files translate perfectly onto the web. What you see on obsidian is exactly what you get on the web.

Plus, it’s integrated directly into Obsidian which means publishing is as simple as marking a note as ‘For Publishing’.

What I dislike

The price is quite steep for the service it provides, especially compared to actually hosting your own website.

The customisation options are very limited, from aesthetic choices (themes), to functionality with widgets and plugins. Other publishing systems are far more flexible and customizable.

In Conclusion

There’s no “Perfect” CMS; only one that evolves according to your needs.

Will I stick with Hugo long-term? Who knows.

Is it bad that I spent hours switching between platforms? I don’t care. It’s my website and I can do whatever I want with it. Plus, I’ve learnt a just by tinkering with these systems and had loads of fun.

What’s your CMS of choice? I’d love to know!

There’s a comment section below.

I lead a small team of three. Though small, this department is an important one and has an undeniable impact on the company and the industry.

We are marketers on paper but also organisers, data analysts, salesmen, IT experts, culture builders, content creators and even automation engineers.

I don’t have a marketing background, hence the word “marketing” always had a bad rep in my mind—and for good reason. It’s a word associated with deceit and manipulation.

But good initiatives need marketing efforts too. Closing The Gap, Axiata’s Young CEO Development programme … I came across these awesome initiatives precisely because of their marketing efforts.

Now, I realise that marketing exists outside the realm of morality. It is merely the craft of presenting and positioning, a craft with an endless skill ceiling.

How people outside the company view us, and how the company views itself heavily depends on the work we do. Being in this position for 18 months, maybe it’s not so bad after all.

I thought only people in their early/mid-thirties get to be heads of departments. To be in this position at this age is something I’m grateful for. I had assumed that my “leadership” glory days were behind me a decade ago—holding top positions within youth organisations and clubs.

But I also remember the extreme stress that comes along with the role. President, chairman, department head … everyone likes the title but not the work accompanying it.

It wasn’t fun getting unwilling participants to have a discussion, let alone committing to a programme. It’s not fun balancing the high expectations from above and the lack of enthusiasm below. It’s not fun working without resources, relying only on creative minds and the goodwill of people to get things done.

Being in charge of a club is prestigious, but it also feels like having dirty laundry dumped on you. “But you’re so good at cleaning! You’re better at it than I am. Thanks a lot, man!”

Hence, the past decade of being a solo worker has been liberating. I was a writer, journalist, and a solo freelancer—videographer, editor and producer all in one.

• I don’t have to seek permission to start or change anything.

• I can move fast and efficiently without shackles holding me down.

• I am accountable to only my client, employers and only myself.

• I’m the one being mentored rather than doing the mentoring.

But things have changed. I’ve had bosses who took good care of me. They fought for my salary, taught me everything I knew, and shouldered blame even though it was clearly my fault.

Some even spent a fortune out of their pockets to have drinks together, asking nothing in return. They only hoped that I would show kindness to my future subordinates, just like they did to me.

With this decree in hand, I’m again back in a leadership position after a half-decade dry spell. I’m met with very familiar challenges but unique ones as well. I’ve boiled down my key learnings to these few points.

1.0—The Pride of Building a Fearless Department

When I first joined the company, I had no idea how to build a team culture.

I just threw random words on a Miro board and forced my team to adhere to it. “A culture of documentation, continuous learning and being tech-orientated”—something along those lines. I didn’t revisit this culture statement for an entire year.

Instead, I mainly focused on avoiding bad practices rather than building good ones—no more unproductive meetings, asking stupid questions, and a dreadful lack of purpose in day-to-day work. I created initiatives with these pain points in mind instead.

It wasn’t until I read The Apple Experience by Carmine Gallo that I realised what I was trying to build all along.

I wanted to assemble, train and build fearless employees.

Fearless employees focus on fulfilling key objectives and are not concerned about the “problems surrounding the problems”. They don’t have to seek permission for everything, worry about the tools they use, or do guesswork on my expectations and opinions of them. The results and their personal growth are the only goals.

Fearless employees have self-confidence built on top of solid competence where it matters. Fearlessness is unlike arrogance which hides insecurities. It involves the courage to admit shortcomings and seek help when needed. It’s admitting that “I’ve never done this before, and I don’t know how it will turn out, but I’ll try.”

Fearless employees enjoy their work more often because they take pride in it. They don’t look over their shoulders, alt-tabbing out of YouTube or Whatsapp messages whenever I walk past. My team does it to my face, and I’m okay with it. They should only be concerned about disappointing themselves and the team which believes in them.

Fearless employees take ownership of their work—and their language reflects that. When taking on assignments, it’s never a cold “okay” or a dismissive “Can’t we…?”. My team uses cringe phrases like “aye aye, captain” or “sure thing, bossman”.

Building a fearless department is surprisingly simple, but it wasn’t easy.

• It requires establishing clear expectations. This means giving the team explicit authority to make specific calls, where they are allowed to make mistakes, and where there can’t be compromises.

• It requires having their backs. If other people have problems with my department’s performance or how they work, all complaints should go to me. Fault and responsibility lie on the department head, even if it’s the individual’s fault.

• It requires demonstration. Fear is the default state, and fearlessness needs to be trained. New recruits need to see the seniors correcting my mistakes and making fun of my insecurities without getting punished. The team needs to see me go toe-to-toe with upper management and defend what I believe is right.

• Most importantly, it requires caring about who they are and what they believe in. Fearlessness is layered on top of trust, which can only be built through deep empathy and spending consistent, quality time together.

However, managers can merely facilitate the cultivation of a fearless department. It is ultimately a process we have little control over—because it heavily depends on the personalities, convictions and capabilities of those in it. My department has had other staff members that did not jive with the philosophy and eventually left.

Hence, I’d rolled a W on the celestial dice when landing on my current team. I am extremely lucky to have them.

They are dependable and capable when necessary but also goofballs when times are lighter. They are also … real and humane, which is a strange way to put it, but it is severely lacking in many places I’ve come across. Working in soulless corporations can be surreal and inhumane sometimes.

2.0—Proper Departmental Bureaucracy Yields Compounding Returns

To reward myself for joining this new company, I retired my stinky old laptop for a shiny new Macbook. From there, I went down a deep productivity rabbit hole which I haven’t climbed out of till this day.

Task management, folder organisation, calendars—each has its own unique framework and methodology. The names may differ, but the core underlying principle remains the same. More importantly, it is scalable to a team setting with just a few minor tweaks.

My research spilt over to project management, change management and team communication. I’ve learnt how to plan and pitch, which led to new software tools in the pipeline. The systems the department use daily are the outcome of my experimentations from my personal productivity system and trial and error from how the team reacted to the new tools.

Many systems were set up, but I just want to focus on these two:

2.1—Systems Of Information

Let’s start with informational systems because it’s fundamental to many interpersonal issues within the workplace.

I noticed that a lot of unnecessary anger and frustration comes from information retrieval:

• “Hey, can you send me this PDF by today?”

• “Who is our partner for this project again?”

• “How many leads have we captured within this month?”

Even worse is the way these questions are asked. Most are via instant messaging rather than email, implying urgency and interrupting people when they are “in the zone”.

The most egregious is when the question is asked in a group chat and not directed to a specific person. Should you answer it? Should I answer it? It looks urgent. We shouldn’t ignore it. Now there’s a cat-and-mouse game where someone has to volunteer to do the work. It’s either that or you have six executives scrambling to retrieve a document that can be easily found with a quick search on Google Drive.

These “non-problems” drive me insane, but what shocks me is how many people are willing to just go along with it. It seems part and parcel of the workplace culture. If I want to dislike someone, I want to do so because they’re an asshole, not because they’re inept at sourcing information.

That’s why I’ve spent significant effort establishing a single-source-of-truth (SSOT) using Notion. Every marketing material and every status on projects, campaigns and exhibition events is stored in a single place that everyone can easily access. If it’s not on Notion, it doesn’t exist. No duplicated information is stored on multiple cloud platforms or, god-forbid, someone’s local drive.

The best part? It has nothing to do with the software or technology itself. I can easily establish an SSOT on Google Drive, Miro, or even Google Keep if I’m desperate. It mainly boils down to establishing clear processes, explaining how it works and why it’s important to the team, and guiding them for the first two weeks.

With that, my (current) team has never asked me any “stupid” questions like…ever. I can’t recall the last time I received a non-important inquiry within the department. Whenever my team speaks to each other, it’s either we’re screwing around, having high-level strategic discussions, or it’s personal development in nature.

This leads to the following:

2.2—Systems Of Communication

My company adopts a hybrid work culture, and it’s a tricky arrangement to work with as a manager.

On the one hand, you want to maximise face-to-face time amongst team members for productivity’s sake and to establish a sense of “belonging” to the team. Good luck trying to build a culture through texts on a screen.

On the other hand, working from home and having personal space is essential to many people and a key reason why many joined the company in the first place. To force employees to come to the office is a dealbreaker for many.

To address this, I’ve implemented the most important departmental policy I’ve ever introduced—daily standups. There are many variations and loose implementations via SCRUM methodologies, but mine is absurdly strict.

Everyone shows up at 9.15am and explains what they have done, what they plan on doing today, and any obstacles they face in completing their tasks. The session should last 15 minutes at most, and any deeper discussions warrant a separate meeting. The event starts on time, with or without anyone present. There are a few exceptions, mainly involving the team attending exhibitions and such.

The daily standup is crucial in my department because it serves as our sole accountability system. With daily standup, I can implement a results-only-working-environment (ROWE). You can come to the office late, renew your passport in the morning, or send your car to the workshop in the afternoon—as long as you have something to show for in the daily standup the next day.

It also serves as a productivity mechanism, making our daily tasks visible to everyone. I don’t have to scold or scream at any of my teammates for being lazy. We all realise how unproductive we are when the same task persists for multiple days and will automatically take active steps to fix them.

More importantly, teammates shouldn’t be scolded for being unproductive, either. If the team is unproductive, it’s largely a work-related obstacle that needs resolving, a sign of deteriorating mental health, or private issues—all of which need to be supported rather than punished.

I’ve noticed that teams tend to perform better when they’re allowed to get their affairs in order, and sometimes that means taking a day or two to reset. Without such a mechanism, stagnant tasks may persist for weeks and months until it blows up in your face when you least expect it.

Finally, it serves as the team’s baseline commitment towards each other. Sometimes the team never see each other physically for a month due to holidays or overseas exhibitions. Showing up every workday to a 15-minute virtual call on time is the simplest task we can do for the team and is a sign of respect. It’s like falling in during a marshall drill. You don’t do it for the commander or yourself but for the team.

Anything beyond daily standups is just the cherry on top. For instance, I’ve implemented degrees of escalation to help facilitate the urgency in communication and asynchronous working.

Any matters that are time-sensitive warrant a Whatsapp or a G.Chat message. Non-urgent tasks, such as reviewing documents, only requires an email or a mention on Notion. Anything important but not-urgent warrants a quick meeting, which can be quickly scheduled via Google Calendar without a back-and-forth permission request.

I’ve also enforced the practice of having meeting agendas and meeting minutes. I have witnessed far too many 3-hour discussion roundabouts that ended nowhere, and I will have none of that in my department. Agendas and minutes make meetings purposeful, effective and efficient.

There’s also the bi-weekly retrospective session, where we have WIFLE (What I Feel Like Expressing), something I’ve learnt from a BFM interview with business coach Jeevan Sahadevan. Everyone takes turns sharing anything without judgement, and it’s a great way to measure burnout levels. This is also where we have sharing sessions, workshops or project post-mortems.

2.3—Side Tangent

I abhor the improper use of the collective “we” and the vague “should” in group meetings, which I find everywhere. “I think we should…” “Let’s find a way…” “Maybe we can….”

While great for brainstorming, it’s almost always used when someone gives a neutral statement or highlights an obstacle—not an appropriate moment to provide suggestions. Many people get excited about publicly sharing opinions on how to improve or how problems should be solved. When it comes to actually taking ownership of the project, eyes will start darting around the room.

It’s not company-specific, either. It persists everywhere, from high school event planning and college assignment groups to boardroom meetings.

• It gives the illusion of contribution. Many people feel smug after offering suggestions. They don’t realise that opinions are just doors to possible solutions, not a replacement for strategy and work distribution.

• It is lazy. It is easy to offer opinions without context on the subject matter. Problem-solvers know that available options get increasingly narrower the more they understand the scope of the problem. Offering unfounded opinions just makes you look dumb at best and invalidates the actual hard work problem-solvers have committed to at worse.

• It is manipulative. It is a risk-free, win-win scenario for the person offering their opinions. If their opinion doesn’t work out, it is “our” problem or the execution sucks. But if it does work out, their ideas are validated, and they can take the credit. In their minds, offering suggestions is always a good look.

The worst part? Offering unsolicited suggestions mid-way stalls an entire discussion, forcing conversations into a tangent that will most likely go nowhere. The conclusion is either “we will revisit this next time”, or topics move on entirely without a conclusion.

Fortunately, solving this only requires a proper meeting agenda where there’s time and space to solicit these suggestions. The meeting must end with an action plan, which is dead simple: Who does what by when? Have it written down, and have it reviewed by the next meeting. It’s just that easy. Rant over.

3.0—Accepting Issues Outside My Control

A decade of freelancing has changed my work philosophy.

The challenge of being a jack of all trades is that I don’t have fixed services to bring to the table. Each unique situation calls for a different skillset, be it filmmaking, writing or PR consulting. Charging for these services is even worse because companies rarely want to pay for consulting services by the hour. So what am I ultimately getting paid for?

I’ve settled on project-based payments, with the philosophy that people pay me to care about their company as if it’s my own.

This works well for me. Without this philosophy, I can’t bring myself to commit my heart & effort to a project without caring about the current & future state of the company. It also enables me to turn down clients I dislike or projects I can’t get behind, like MLM companies or shady gurus. (There’s a huge demand for ghostwriters for their autobiographies and non-fiction books.)

Working this way means consulting is baked into the project costs. The scope is highly process-&-outcome-orientated rather than materials-orientated. I assess the situation, make plans to fix them, and get the green light from stakeholders. Clients didn’t need to micromanage my work because they knew I had their best interests at heart.

While this philosophy has worked well for me as a solo worker, moving into a permanent managerial position has changed my perspective. In this context, I don’t think going above and beyond is a display of enthusiasm and active participation. In some scenarios, it means stepping over grey boundaries that were not clearly laid out.

Being a manager opened my eyes to the theoretical side of politics in the workplace —and not in a bad way. More specifically, it’s the interesting interplay between management and politics:

• Politics WILL exist when multiple parties need to make a collective decision—be it discussing where to have dinner with your spouse or a team discussion on the date of an exhibition event. There is never an “absence” of politics. Like rules, it is always there. Companies can only decide if they want to make it transparent and manageable. With uncontrolled politics, the boundaries are never clear, nobody wants to make a decision, and initiatives are left to fate.

• Proper management NEEDS politics to function because politics is the ever-changing ebb and flow of power—power that is needed to push initiatives forward. That’s because projects and solutions need an endorsement to turn from a plan into a reality. A variation of “I’ll support your initiative if you support mine” always exists implicitly or explicitly. Such is a fundamental pillar of management.

• Conversely, politics NEED proper management to be facilitated. Bureaucracy may sound horrible, but the lack of it is even worse. That’s because bureaucracy is the vaults that control the ebb and flow of power. Meeting minutes and agendas are an example of that. Bureaucracy also separates the people problem from the systems problem. With bureaucracy, getting items approved is no longer about currying favours from individuals, but a side quest involving obtaining the necessary signatures from well-defined parties.

Frankly, during my early months, I have been focusing too much on management that I neglected the importance of gathering political power. This sound like Little Finger from Game of Thrones, but hear me out.

How does one “gain” political power? The keyword: capital …or leverage. They mean the same thing.

• You can have financial capital. People have no choice but to listen to you because you outright own a part of the company.

• You could also have knowledge capital, gaining authority because you know things that others do not—be it internal affairs, partner relations and so on.

• Your powerbase can come from social capital, where you’ve spent years building friendships and garnering favours with others.

For me, I’ve primarily relied on career capital: the ability to get things done. Although most people want meritocracy, being capable alone does not give someone the necessary strength to make an impact. That’s why useless politicians still get elected, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Understanding this concept fundamentally helps me accept that certain things are outside my control, because I don’t have the necessary capital to do so. In certain cases, garnering more capital requires me to make sacrifices I’m unwilling to make, and I’m okay with that. “If you don’t like something, do something about it!” Well, that line is drawn here, and admitting that line exists is a critical step in stoicism.

It is pragmatic, but by no means it’s pessimistic. There’s plenty of room on this side of the line! I’ve also learnt that capital can be shared.

I can share social capital by endorsing my teammates for a promotion and salary raise that they clearly deserve. I can share knowledge capital via water-cooler conversations or over a few drinks with colleagues. I can distribute my career capital by coaching my team and having private team workshop sessions.

Sharing capital with others provides a strange sense of fulfilment, and it’s never a zero-sum game.

Capital is only effective when it is spent. I’ve exhausted a lot of goodwill with upper management acquiring new tools and implementing policies that look controversial to others. It’s a price that needs to be paid to help my team work happier and more meaningfully.

So do think about it. If you have a limited amount of capital, how would you spend it or share it? Personally, I never recommend hoarding it, but this seems to be the status quo in large MNCs and tiny startups alike. “Why should I go above and beyond and risk anything?”

To me, that’s called not putting your skin into the game; Skin needed to implement changes that you know are important. Making lives better—be it your own, your colleagues or the overall well-being of the company—requires initiatives that need to be spent and leveraged through said capital.

To not use them is choosing to live under undesirable circumstances rather than doing undesirable work to fix them. One requires payment out of one’s own pocket—risking effort, goodwill and reputation. The other only requires collective tolerance, a tax collected from others.

This pretty much summarises my key learnings as a manager. If I am capable, perhaps I should reflect on my time as a journalist and write a similar piece as well.

This reminds me: For every client, story interviewee and boss that I’ve ever interacted with, I’ve always asked two questions. “What is the core essential skill that every employee should have?” half the time, they say continuous learning. (Critical thinking and creativity are top contenders) This essay is my attempt at capturing my personal growth over the snapshot of 18 months.

The other question is, “What kind of company/department are you trying to build here?” Almost every time, they give me a vague or half-arsed answer. But it is also understandable. Answering this requires deep introspection and emotional processing, elements that are hard to find in this highly distracting, hustle-filled world.

I’m just grateful that I have managed to find my own answer to this question this early in life.

Stay fearless, my team and future me.

It’s easy to chalk up e-sports as just children’s pastime. But like any other sport, it takes a lot of practice, skills, and talent to be highly competitive—even more so within a team setting.

After more than a decade of playing competitive shooters, I come to appreciate the mental gymnastics, teamwork and quick decision-making needed to reach the top of the leaderboards. These values have also helped shaped my career as a B2B marketing manager.

If traditional sports coaches can espouse the values of hard work, patience and skilful manoeuvring, it’s strange that society views gamers as the opposite: Lazy, slobs and toxic. I mean… such groups do exist, perhaps more so percentage-wise than other communities.

But let’s put that aside and focus on the sweaty tryhard gamer values we can extract from this thought experiment. Hopefully, making these comparisons can help with your career aspirations as well.

💡 Granted, this is not an 🍎 to 🍎 comparison. One is a job, and the other is straight-up procrastination. I will also switch between gaming and corporate analogies a lot, so try to keep up!

🚫 Working With “Bad” Teammates

Competitive solo queue is a cesspool 💩. Imagine teaming up with 4 random strangers who:

• Have little team commitment.

• Don’t speak the same language.

• Are either children, toxic, drunk, or high.

• Puts personal ego above winning the game.

The worst part is: You’re stuck with them until the match is over, unless the team abandons the game and quits.

It’s not that different from a workplace now, is it?

And yet, winning the game is a must; For your sanity, MRR points and career ambitions all depend on it. We all wish to be paired with teammates who are competent and rational, but we’re usually stuck with what we’ve got and have to live with it.

If you’re unfortunate enough to have “bad” teammates, the trick is to work around the team, rather than with or against them. Instead of fighting both friend and foe, use each player’s selfish tendencies to further the team’s goals.

• Do you have teammates who only rush sites and die? Don’t crowd the chokepoint and yell “Go! Go! Go!”. Instead, use them as bait and lurk around.

• Do you have passive teammates who only hold angles? Don’t force a fight, sit with them and run out the clock. Instead, take map control and gather intel,

Just because the team doesn’t do what we expect, it doesn’t mean that they’re bad at the game. Learn how to differentiate play styles from competencies!

One player might be comfortable smoking sites and playing at the back lines; Others like to flash and entry-frag. Understanding and working around your team’s intricate habits is more important than outsmarting the enemy team under most circumstances.

The same goes for work settings. For a domain as diverse as marketing, you might have introverts who prefer to commit hours on end producing content; Some are extroverts better suited for public relations. So don’t go around forcing tasks upon people who are not good at the job in the name of “learning”. Let their strengths shine instead.

🔈Team Communication

Watch any VOD or YouTube gameplay, and pay attention to how professional players communicate within solo queue lobbies. Their call-outs generally fall into 3 categories:

• Observations —“2 at B,” “Bomb’s down,” “Footsteps A.”

• Intention —“Flashing market,” “Smoking tree”

• Requesting help —“Can you flash here? Ping,” “Peek with me.”

Notice how c l e a n 👌 these call-outs are. No fluff, no useless intel and no nonsense. Anything more would increase confusion, cloud judgement, and take away precious seconds that will cost the entire match.

More important is the dangers of NOT giving out these call-outs. The rest of the team would essentially operate blind; unable to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances, worrying if there’re enemies behind every nook and corner.

In my department, daily standups are our form of call-outs. Everyone takes turns sharing what they’ve done yesterday, their plans for today, and blockers for their tasks.

The session takes 5 minutes per person max. No filler; No hour-long discussions. In less than 20 minutes, everyone is on the same page and can focus on their deep work sessions for the day. Any work obstacles are highlighted daily so that managers can go around fixing them. Anything extra would warrant a separate meeting, with a proper agenda and meeting minutes.

👑 Role of In-Game Leaders

Statistically speaking, most in-game leaders (IGL) play the tank or support within teams, but rarely the DPS.

Our contribution comes from timing, positioning, and flexibility in assisting the team—not clicking heads. Because, like any workplace, team-based competitive games are designed with hard limits towards solo carries.

There are surprisingly a lot of new studies in this area. Szilágyi (2022) found that the presence of leadership within teams increases the likelihood of winning. Teammates also prefer IGLs who are “supportive” and “participative”. Tucker (2022) found that well-performing teams also have a distributed and collective leadership structure. Even if someone is in charge, everyone gets to make their own calls.

Hence, having ownership is important within the team. Teammates should be given the autonomy to own their respective roles and tasks, along with the relevant rewards and mistakes. More importantly, their autonomy shouldn’t be encroached upon unless they have royally screwed up.

Beyond executing strategy, as managers, we make sure that the team has the resources needed to do their job.

From smoking sites to troubleshooting IT permission issues, we ensure that there’s little standing in their way. If my team is worrying about stupid problems, I’m not doing my job well enough.

There’s no room for solo plays within a team setting. An S-tier graphic designers are like caffeinated teenagers with high K/D ratios. They are good at their jobs, but skills alone can’t carry the team towards the win. Both can’t deal with intense encounters, and both will eventually burn out.

In a way, our primary responsibility is to offer support, occasional guidance and trust the team to do their job. It sounds simple on paper, but many times a manager would step in too early and override the teammate’s judgement.

Your teammate has made a call. The best we can do is work around it and see what happens. Harsh criticisms should come after the fact.

🧸 Role of Fun

I think that competitive video games are an excellent illustration of Cal Newport’s idea of passion and motivation resulting from talent, and not the prerequisite to talent.

I remember playing Sudden Attack for the first time. The server was full of Korean players, so you know you’re about to get wrecked. It was David versus Goliath, and I rarely survived beyond the 30-second mark.

I didn’t “get” FPS games coming from vanilla Runescape, Maplestory and Pokemon. “Is dying over and over again really that fun?”

But things took a turn when I got my first double kill and triple kill. The developers took the effort to make every headshot chunky and bloody—it was morbidly fun. I’ve started ranking second place in a five-man team, and then first place then got a 2:1 K/D ratio three games in a row. Confidence grew, and an idea surfaced. “Maybe I’m good at this game after all”.

Conversely, stagnancy is a motivational killer. Many streamers actually hate playing competitive games after a while, and most of them are not at the top-tier ranks. Yeah, they’re good. But they don’t practice, analyse their games, nor invest in training. They play to entertain.

The same maps, same weapons, same strategies, same unlucky lottery of teammates—it’ll get real old, real fast, real quick. To a certain point, games become routine work, just like a full-time job.

The People I’ve Come Across Who Love Their Day Jobs Have Only One Thing in Common

They’re damn good at what they do.

Work fulfilment mainly comes from deep-seated confidence in one’s own abilities. Our ability to do good work is the source of pride and jealousy which fuels the competitive spirit. It’s the boost in motivation when you face against someone better than you, and you go “yeah, I can totally win against that guy”.

This goes beyond motivation—it’s an obsession. Competitive players are chasing after the dopamine rush of being better and getting better. As managers, we just need to coach teammates, offer resources, and build environments that compel them to tryhard.

But unlike video games, there are no immediate feedback systems for the workplace. There’s no scoreboard a tab button away, nor jingles and announcements after a winning match. There’s no dopamine rush for doing a good job; Only immense dread when you underperform instead.

In a marketing team, imagine tiring yourself out after consecutive exhibitions and doing a stellar job. Instead of feeling accomplished, your bosses decide to “reward” you with more exhibition work because you’ve done such a great job. There is no basking in the afterglow of your success, no end in sight, no sense of progression. There is no carrot, only the stick.

That’s why I heavily emphasize post-mortems within my department. Everyone needs to take part through sticky notes on a Miro board, analysing the campaign outcome, each other, and mostly themselves. Successful campaigns are celebrated with drinks and Starbucks Frappuccinos (for my Muslim colleagues). Shortcomings need to be brought up and analysed. Good individual performance needs to be documented so that I can help them apply for a raise.

In short, a department’s reward systems need to be clearly defined. Employees can’t be expected to “know” if they’re doing a good job. As managers, we need to implement systems to recognise and highlight employee achievements. Because how else are you going to make work engaging, rewarding, fulfilling, and fun?

🎲 Role of Luck

Competitive FPS may be a skills-based game, but we always underestimate the deceptive role of luck.

At the intermediate levels of gameplay, it’s about isolating 1-on-1 gunfights to win 50/50 odds. The bigger your gun relative to theirs, the better your odds are. Sure, you can totally win against a 2 man gank if you’re talented enough, but is it worth the 66/33 dice roll?

Tryharding is all about squeezing every little advantage and tilting the odds to your favour through better guns, positioning and strategy. There’s always the most optimum rotation route, the most optimal decision to make. Deviate from it, and you’ll reduce your chances of winning. To a certain point, competitive shooters become speed-running gambling fiesta.

But at the higher ranks, competing teams are equally skilled mentally, physically and strategically. Even when executing the “right” decision perfectly, there’s a chance that you’ll still screw up and die. Does that mean that you’ve made a “wrong” choice?

The same goes for marketing campaigns. We have no control over market conditions, the economy or buyers’ intent. We can only prepare ourselves to capture consumer demand if it surfaces, using whatever levers we can push and pull.

A well-planned, stellar exhibition may not yield any customers, while a simple signup form can convert a boatload of leads. The world just works weirdly like that.

So what separates the professionals and amateurs? It is their ability to commit and operate under this veil of uncertainty. They can bounce back quickly from an unlucky streak and not overheat when they lucked out. They face each new round with the cold, hard objectivity that it warrants, shedding behind useless emotions that interfere with the ultimate goal: winning the game.

Hence, for marketing campaigns, we can only plan, execute, measure, and move on—to a new campaign with a new fresh pair of eyes. The rest is truly up to lady luck.

Us small enterprise bronze players can’t compete with international diamond players, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win matches. Sure, they may have better market reports, fancier websites and larger booths. But those come at significant costs, and they’re still operating under levels of uncertainty as well.

We only have ourselves to compete with; Not the market nor our competitors.

🧠 Closing Thoughts

Truth be told, I rarely game now after I’ve transitioned into the Apple ecosystem since 2022. I’m glad that I did so too, because it forced me to cut down on my gaming time—the god-awful time sinkhole that it is.

In a way, this writeup is a goodbye to the childish gamer side of me. Perhaps looking at gaming through this lens is a way for me to justify the thousands of hours I’ve sunk into it.

I now replace one addiction with another: A.I. productivity apps and note-taking systems. At least, it’s an obsession that helps me get paid better.

Subscribe to my blog/newsletter to get bi-weekly updates! Perhaps I can write another piece on gaming once I finally able to afford a PS5.

Cheers, 🙃

Jotham.

Recommended channels to follow:

• SovereignGuides

• Woohoojin

• Shroud

• Peak

A few weeks back, an old friend asked me this over some pints. “Do you think ChatGPT will replace us one day?” Both of us are from the creative industry, initially assumed to be technologically resilient. But like truck drivers with self-driving vehicles, it is now our heads at risk of the chopping block.

By now, most readers are well aware of the disruptive capabilities of ChatGPT. OpenAI and their counterparts have been making inroads within the generative A.I. space, mainly for text, images and code. With rapid development within this space, is it a cause for concern for the average knowledge worker?

New Guns, Same Battlefield

Despite what pundits might say, generative A.I. at its current state will not replace creators but serve as a supplementary tool within existing workflows. Article writing using ChatGPT, for instance, still needs human involvement to craft deliberate prompts and scrutinise the output, which includes fact-checking. What was once an hours-long writing endeavour can be shortened to just mere minutes.

To put things in perspective, asking ChatGPT to replace the writing process is like having a Thermomix or InstantPot replace my mother’s cooking. It is like believing traditional Japanese knife makers will be put out to pasture just because a factory has opened up nearby, producing thousands of knives in a single day.

I agree ChatGPT will affect large swathes of the content creation industry; but mass-produced, low-quality content has always been primed for disruption. Serious writers have grappled with content mills, where regiments of writers get paid per word by the cent. Similarly, reputable artists have also struggled with copyright issues and low-effort copycats.

This new threat of mass-produced content is not new, but has merely shifted to a digital landscape. Many will pay more for quality content, but they just need a reason to do so. While grammatically correct, articles produced by ChatGPT are generic, lack substance, and most likely factually incorrect. Although the competitive landscape has drastically intensified, it is not a battleground we creators are unfamiliar with.

How the Sausage Is Made

The truth is that A.I. has always been highly disruptive in niche industries. Microsoft’s integrated development environment (IDE) VSCode, has a co-pilot program that auto-completes code, trained using data collected by popular code-hosting platform, GitHub. Auto-transcribing services built into Google Meet and Microsoft Teams have also put manual transcribers out of business, even disrupting incumbent auto-transcribers like Otter.ai.

ChatGPT is not unique in this manner. The only reason it stands out is because of the leaps in capabilities compared to its predecessor, but more importantly, it brought A.I. tools to the mainstream. This is thanks to its high accessibility and low learning curve. Anybody can sign up for an account and start conversing with ChatGPT immediately. The responses given seem intellectual, and the A.I. gives an illusion of sentience, but it is not.

In overly-simplified terms, ChatGPT is a language model that conducts a series of predictions based on given user prompts and conversational history. Think of it as repeatedly tapping the auto-suggested word on your smartphone when typing a text message, except that the sentence generated actually makes sense.

ChatGPT is incapable of “understanding” the semantics behind the prompts it has given, nor the words it has generated. To it, words are just ones and zeros transformed using word embedding techniques, pieced together using statistical likelihoods. It appears intelligent because it excels in its predictive capabilities and assumptions, learnt through petabytes of trained data scraped from the internet. It is not an understanding machine but a predictive one.

Therefore, ChatGPT struggles with face-checking because it does not comprehend what “truth” is (this might change with the integration of additional modules). It is also why conversations with ChatGPT will gradually become weird to outright disturbing as the conversation drags on, where the multitude of inputs causes the deep learning model to go out of whack.

It Boils Down to the State of A.I. Developmen

Source: Vincy Khandpur & Shikhar Sahni

While I’m still assured of my job security, my opinion might change drastically depending on the state of A.I. language model development.

Essentially, technological life-cycles exist on a sigmoid curve. If we are at the middle or tail end of technological innovation, our circumstances would be like the internet in the 1990s. This infrastructure will give rise to companies competing to develop applications leveraging while the technology gradually matures and stabilises. The use cases might differ, but the A.I. equivalent of Napster and AOL will rise and fall, paving the way for even larger corporations in the future.

However, if we are still at the early growth stage of this technology, its potential for disruption will cause heavy whiplash. The companies with the most resources will reign supreme. A.I. will benefit the many, and impoverish the most, while only enriching the few. I have mentioned the idea of integrating fact-checking modules into ChatGPT, but this is opening a can of worms. Who gets to decide what is factually correct and wrong? How will the results inform and direct human decisions? The topic of ethical A.I. has been stuck in the regulatory inbox for the longest time, and hopefully ChatGPT has exacerbated the issue, making it too hard to ignore for authorities globally.

Adapting to Change

So what does this mean for regular Joes and small to mid-sized companies?

For professional knowledge workers, I highly recommend embracing premium digital tools for everyday use. In fact, I would argue that A.I. development within the productivity space is far more interesting than what ChatGPT has to offer.

As an example, Reclaim.ai and Motion auto-schedule your daily tasks unto your calendar based on the task’s priority, estimated duration, and deadline. If a task takes longer than usual, or a meeting gets cancelled at the last minute, the algorithm will readjust your calendar accordingly, letting you know what needs to be done at any given time.

For avid note-takers, Mem.ai uses natural language processing (NLP) to surface similar notes to the one you are working on, introducing a folder-less and tag-less way of organising thousands of notes. It is also the first platform that offers GPT functionality trained using your provided data besides the whole internet. This means that it can offer personalised book recommendations based on your book reviews, or come up with unique marketing campaigns based on existing meeting notes.

Companies should also increase the cycles of tool adoption and abandonment. With the switch away from licensed software to monthly and yearly subscriptions, it is now easier and in fact, cheaper to do so. This involves empowering small teams with the agency to choose their own software that is best suited for the job.

For instance, my current department uses Notion for project management and As the single source of truth. Canva replaced Adobe Suite as our design tool of choice, while Miro and Mindmeister became the default for brainstorming and post-mortem purposes. We also migrated away from locally stored phone contacts to a proper customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

Just introducing these tools into the workplace is not enough. Change management exercises involve introducing liberal yet comprehensive policies that balance work efficiency, data security and future-proofing. Not to mention getting employee buy-ins, training regimes, and migration exercises.

Although the initial process may seem tedious, the benefits of having an agile tool adoption environment pay dividends in the long run. In fact, many of the tools my department adopted do not even have built-in A.I. functionalities.

That is because well-designed software provides more holistic features and greater user experience than the status quo. It makes teammates more productive and more comfortable adopting A.I. tools in the future. More importantly, it makes working five days a week a more pleasant experience. If Asian countries can fuss over elegant stationeries for everyday paperwork, why can’t knowledge workers be fussy over the digital tools we use?

I emphasise this point because many companies I have come across are insistent on utilising legacy tools. While the industry has already shifted to the cloud for most document handling, some are insistent on using software built in the 1990s. I can understand if there are compelling reasons to do so, such as backwards compatibility or regulatory requirements, but more often than not, this is not the case. Why give farmers hoes to till the land when the industry has transitioned into tractors?

Many believe that technology is developing faster than humans can adapt, but I disagree. Humans have always excelled at adoption, being the key reason we are successful as a species. The cycles of tool adoption are getting shorter, with ChatGPT being the first to hit 100 million users in a matter of days. These 100 million users are not geniuses but everyday folks.

Knowledge workers today are no longer measured by just the skills they have or the experience they have garnered; but their ability to embrace and scrutinise new tools while being able to unlearn, learn and relearn new workflows and technologies available at hand. We are trying to adapt to a new age of A.I. digital tools.

I had a discussion with a friend about rising property prices. Both of us are in our late 20s.

“We have it tough. During our parent’s time, homes could be bought with cash. The economy was booming back then, and that’s how affordable houses were.”

Someone older heard us and came over. “Yeah, but have you seen current interest rates? You young people have it easier. Housing loans are so cheap now, and easier to obtain.”

I was stunned—enraged, even. As if lifelong debt to the bank is preferable to saving up to outright own your own home! But my anger soon mellowed into confusion, then settled into disappointment.

After all, he’s not alone in his perspective. The things we take for granted, like private vehicles, air conditioning and computer devices, were considered luxuries back then. My parents had none of these, and no doubt, our lives are better thanks to their hardships.

But does that mean we have it easier?

In the end, this isn’t a conversation about which generation has it worse; it’s a moot topic with the only outcome being a race to the bottom. Each of us has our own plight regardless of race, religion, age, or gender.

The truth is, there is never really a bygone era that is “better” or “worse”—only unique circumstances we are facing today. The better question to ask is, how do we operate under these conditions? When looked from this perspective, perhaps this era is ripe full of opportunities for us young adults.

• We live in an age of access. I have plenty of friends freelancing for overseas companies from the comfort of their gaming chairs, benefitting from the exchange rate. I can access lectures from Ivy League on YouTube for free. I can get in touch with my local MP with a Tweet or WhatsApp message. We no longer have to wait hours in line to complete a simple bureaucratic task. The world fits in the palm of our hands, and we are just as accessible to it.

• We live in a web of ideas. In the past, our belief systems were formed through our education, community, and surroundings. But on the internet, we are exposed to all forms of media from all corners of the earth. Every stupid statement or nugget of genius is constantly contested, defended, and scrutinised. Exposing ourselves to these ideas and seriously contemplating them builds character, empathy, and tolerance.

• We live in an era of productivity. Not everyone has financial access to a highly qualified personal assistant. But today, I have A.I. and automation software that automatically schedules my calendar, transcribes and summarises meeting notes, writes my emails, and organises my files. It is entirely possible to run an entire company as a solo entrepreneur using the right tools.

• We live in a time where change is attainable. It’s now easier to mobilise movements and create impact as an individual. A village girl can highlight issues with internet connectivity in rural areas, compelling the government to speed up digitalisation efforts. Students from the UNDI18 movement have successfully lobbied Parliament to amend the federal constitution. We’ve changed our government several times now, something that was unfathomable many years ago. I can easily publish this article to thousands of readers with just a few clicks—try doing that using pen and paper.

I don’t deny that we’re moving towards adversity, but we’re also equipped with the resources to better our situation.

We can choose to upskill ourselves and demand a self-respecting wage from our employers equivalent to the value we deliver. We can choose to point out and respond to everyday injustice with a “👁️ 👄 👁️”. We can choose to break down the racial, religious, and language barrier with a smile and a nod. A simple kindness can go a long way in humanising people across a divide.

Because what is change without action and willpower? Would we rather live in undesirable circumstances than do the undesirable work? We all play a role in deciding who we are and who we want to be. We all can decide what this country is and isn’t—so don’t let other people be that voice for you.

I am obsessed with productivity systems. From Ali Abdaal to James Clear, Keep Productive to Cal Newport… task apps, calendars, daily planners, and personal knowledge management—if it exists in the Apple ecosystem, chances are I’ve tried it before.

Have I become more productive after this exercise? Yes! I can’t imagine going back to the life of drifting aimlessly, living life by default and not by design. However, I went past the point of diminishing returns a long time ago.

Fiddling around with productivity tools has become its own form of procrastination. It’s a more dangerous sort because it tricks you into believing that you are much more productive than you actually are.

There are plenty of courses teaching you how to implement GTD, Zettelkasten, and PARA methods. Many are free; others are unjustifiably expensive. I found myself unable to stick to a fixed system, but it pays to understand the underlying core principles.

Even now, I encourage my peers and juniors to dive into the world of productivity systems and tools. But to avoid the same pitfalls, here’s a summary of what I’ve learned thus far:

Picking Out an Ecosystem

I think it’s OK to keep up to date with the latest trends in the productivity space. However, it’s essential to be mindful of the migration cost of constantly switching between different ecosystems.

Every day, I receive a new email highlighting new A.I. capabilities or a feature that makes the app perfect for specific use cases, but it’s generally not worth the jump.

I fell down the productivity rabbit hole because I want to enjoy my day job, but there is a clear distinction between enjoying using an app and doing the actual work. Most new features are unlikely to make you productive, even with “GPT” in the headline.

Here are things to consider if you’re looking to commit to an ecosystem:

1. Create a List of Requirements and priorities

This is the most challenging step, and I recommend taking time to think this through. Even the most obscure app has a dedicated fanbase because it does one niche thing and does it well.

Every app has strengths and weaknesses, and ranking your requirements is critical to stopping yourself from succumbing to the shiny object syndrome. The parameters to consider include cost, supported platforms, UI/UX, quick capture capabilities, dedicated features, collaboration, and file storage.

2. Decide if You Want an Integrated System or a best-of-breed

A single app that does everything, from task management to notes, is unlikely to be powerful or customisable (Noteplan 3, TickTick). On the other hand, using highly specialised dedicated apps can be expensive and complicated to keep track of (Things 3, Cron, Obsidian).

Deciding this early on will help you narrow down your options a lot. In most cases, you will adopt a hybrid approach—but deciding how to segment it is a decision by itself. Most people I found online prefer bundling tasks and calendars into a daily planner while having a separate PKMS / note-taking system.

3. Abuse the Free trials

Productivity tools can be expensive, but most have a comfortable trial period to test them out, ranging from 7 days to a whole month. Some tips include:

• Cancelling your subscription immediately after signing up to prevent unexpected charges

• Having multiple email accounts to extend the testing period,

• Taking advantage of rewards (limited-time discounts, referral bonuses, cancellation discounts).

Only pay for apps that you are sure you will stick to for months at least.

Workflow Matters More Than Technology

Not only is it free to learn a workflow from YouTube videos and Reddit threads, but systems and processes significantly impact productivity more than the technology itself.

Productivity apps exist to facilitate processes, not dictate them on your behalf. Many apps are designed to suit a specific workflow (Omnifocus with GTD), and you can’t use the app to its fullest extent without understanding the principles it is built upon in the first place.

Adopting a new app sometimes only involve a slight tweak to your workflow, but others demand an entire overhaul, and it took me some time to learn where to draw the line—especially when I haven’t figured out a default workflow yet.

Most apps come with help documentation, and it is worth taking 30 minutes to review the app’s core features quickly. Some apps do not have a straightforward user onboarding journey (cough Obsidian), which makes them very non-beginner-friendly. However, most apps I’ve encountered have YouTube tutorials and reviews highlighting how to use the app as intended.

When creating a personalised workflow, my advice is to keep it simple and stupid. For instance, systems like Zettelkasten are effective but require constant maintenance to upkeep. They’re great for academics or journalists but are called digital gardens for a reason. It is only beneficial when you have thousands of notes and spend most of your day managing textual data.

But for most people, it takes effort to upkeep the system daily. Capturing and using atomic notes is more troublesome than Googling or understanding the subject matter outright.

Currently, I’m using a dumbed-down version of GTD for task management and time-blocking. I also have a single folder to dump all my notes, navigating them solely using tags and smart searches. It’s fast and gets the job done.

The Role of Fun and Readiness in Productivity

A big hurdle for me when choosing productivity apps or workflows was deciding between user experience and everything else, such as cost, A.I. capabilities, data privacy, etc.

Affordable apps with great UX tend to lack features. An app that does everything like Sunsama and Akiflow is expensive.

Obsidian is an excellent example of this—it’s fast, quick, highly customisable and a beast of a PKMS tool. But I hardly used backlinks, and I spent more time tinkering with the system than actually processing and producing content. Scrolling through my list of installed community plugins gives me anxiety. I disliked having to wait for notes to sync every time I switched devices and how it’s not designed for the Apple Pencil.

On the other hand, apps like Things 3 are dead simple to use. The UX/UI is wonderful, and you can tell that the developers have spent years finicking over the tiniest of details. But it lacks basic functionality compared to many other apps, like natural language input, streamlined time-blocking abilities and more.

From personal experience, especially for someone new in the productivity space, it’s worth prioritising the “fun” -ness of the app over its features.

Adopting a powerful tool and workflow for future-proofing is tempting. You may want to find the “best” ever app or workflow and stick to it. But very rarely is there the “best” app—the only one that is right for you now. Switching methodologies as time passes is common, but the problem lies in how we change.

Hence, for new practitioners, having a fun system to dedicate towards is more important. It’s not worth setting up a more convoluted system for a 2% increase in productivity.

It’s not that these advanced systems suck or are over-engineered. It’s that we are not ready to take advantage of these advanced systems just yet—which leads to the following:

Output Is the Only Thing That Matters

I was inspired to write this article because of a recent note migration exercise involving 550~ notes collected throughout a year, which, granted, is a small amount within the PKMS space.

Because of formatting issues, I had to import them manually one by one—which allowed me to review my notes and purge many irrelevant ones.

I ended up with only 75 notes afterwards—most of it is my published content and essential details on my friends and family. Most of my Zettelkasten notes and Readwise highlights didn’t make it.

This made me reflect on my approach towards note-taking:

• Is building a second brain overrated?

• Why bother with digital productivity when the great minds in the past could do well with pen and paper?

• How important is note organisation in relation to note creation?

• Why am I outsourcing my remembering process instead of adequately understanding, contemplating, and digesting the content I’ve read?

After sitting on these questions, I concluded that digital productivity and PKMS tools are still very much relevant. The fact that I am delivering results at work more consistently than before and still have 75 important notes in the first place is attributed to the systems I have built, and is worth celebrating.

But it’s also a stark reminder that our productivity systems only exist to help us do important work better and faster. The system is rarely the bottleneck—we are.

Right now, I’m trying to stick to the “whatever works” principle. I’m using Apple native tools for now—Notes, Reminders and Calendarall of which compelled me to switch to the Apple ecosystem 18 months ago.

Of course, I will still try out new tools for fun. I’ll probably write a few reviews on them down the road—as long as I recognise it for what it truly is, a hobby and curious pursuit instead of an attempt to be more productive.

Thanks to the availability of AI tools like ChatGPT, completing tasks is easier than ever before.

Work that once took hours can now be completed in mere minutes, which is a dream for any knowledge worker—whether you’re a student, professional, or even a homemaker.

However, completing tasks does not necessarily translate to being a productive person. That’s because task management and task completion are, in fact, two separate skill sets.

The act of doing is different from planning what to do and how to do it. It is still up to us, the user, to ensure that the completed work actually fulfils the objectives we’ve set.

Hence, we believe that task management is a fundamental skill that every working professional should cultivate—serving as the foundation for other, more complex skills to come.

Here are the reasons why:

It Helps Us Prioritise

A task management system forces us to make conscious decisions on our priorities for the day.

Without a task management system, we work passively instead of making an active choice of what needs to be done. Clueless and lost—we will only have a vague idea of your objectives for the day.

Chances are, our priorities will also be short-term. We are only concerned with our next immediate task on top of our minds, living day-to-day on “attention paychecks”.

Without proper task management, every new task entering our inbox will seem urgent and important, even when that is not necessarily the case.

Worst of all, we will be pulled out of deep focus—which is more detrimental than the time it takes to complete these ad hoc tasks. The cost of dropping actual important work just to pursue these low-value ad hoc tasks is rarely worth it.

Once we are “out of the zone,” it takes significant effort to get back into it.

How often did you get disrupted by a simple phone message, only to return back to work uninterrupted immediately?

If left unchecked, we might find ourselves extremely busy and yet feel unaccomplished at the same time because the work that matters has been pushed back. It is difficult to prioritize our attention and focus when we lack visibility over it.

Conversely, properly managing our tasks will:

• Give us an overview of our work over a longer time frame—helping us understand how our work today will impact “future us” tomorrow.

• Set clear boundaries between work tasks, personal tasks, or any other form of commitment that we have.

• Better visibility over the deadlines of certain projects and the effort it requires to achieve them.

Prioritisation Tips for Task Management

Eisenhower Matrix

Tasks have two types of statuses—importance and urgency. Importance is based on impact, while urgency is based on time.

It is possible for unimportant tasks that need to be handled urgently, while possible for important tasks that do not have a close deadline.

Understanding this concept can help us better prioritise our tasks.

Time Blocking

I use a combination of a to-do list and a calendar, where tasks and commitments are properly scheduled. I also include leisure and break time as well.

This meant that every hour of my day had its purpose and was intentional. There is a high chance that we can’t adhere to the schedule entirely—but the point is not to discipline ourselves according to the timeline given. It is the act of assigning the task for the allocated time and giving that hour a specific purpose that matters.

Breaking up Large Projects

Procrastination is a mix of perfectionism, high self-esteem, and the fear of failure. Hence, tackling a large task head-on will paralyze you emotionally and mentally. You can’t fail or do subpar work when the work is technically not done in the first place.

This is especially true for projects that are deceptively easy. For instance, “writing an article” involves researching, thinking, outlining, designing, editing, and rewriting.

Breaking the project up into tiny chunks makes it more actionable and thus more approachable. Ticking checkboxes for sub-tasks is evidence that you are making some sort of progress in completing the project as a whole.

It Frees up Mental Space

The only logical alternative to having a task management system is to memorize them in our heads physically. To do that properly, we will have to remember a lot.

Not only will we have to factor in the name of the task, but we also need to understand the:

• scope of the work

• the process involved in completing the work,

• how the work needs to be delivered

• the tools you need

• So on and so forth.

These are questions that need to be answered subconsciously, whether beforehand or while we’re hands-on doing the actual work. However, keeping this information at the back of your mind while working on other tasks takes up a lot of unnecessary mental energy and stress-inducing.

Thinking about different tasks all the time will constantly haunt you like a ghastly presence. If you do not externalise your tasks, such as jotting it down on a piece of paper, you are constantly shifting information to and from your long-term memory and short-term attention.

Without a task management system, there is an element of fear:

• Fear of forgetting to complete a task

• Fear of not completing the task up to specification

• Fear of the repercussions of not doing the task properly.

The mental space it occupies prevents you from truly focusing on the important work in front of you.

The goal of task management is to offload the “remembering process” to an external device. It could be a to-do app with the ability to add descriptions or even a note-taking tool. In an ideal scenario, the key idea is to cut down the number of times you need to worry about your tasks.

Because without proper task management, your attention will be fractured, like a desktop computer with multiple tasks running in the background.

Are People Who Manage Tasks Just Nerds?

I have personally met people who have a strange sense of pride in not needing to rely on these external tools. They believe that all systems are fallible—A disk might be corrupted, data will be lost, and a notepad might be replaced.

The brain is the ultimate task management tool, they say. They believe that the time and effort needed to upkeep the task management system should be spent on completing the task itself.

Unsurprisingly, these are the same people who are also often forgetful. From my work experience, they also show up to meetings late, never show up at all, or notify team members of important items at the last minute.

We shouldn’t be overconfident in our mind’s ability to remember—not in an age of rising mental disorders and illness. Our minds are not built for rote memorisation, which is what external tools are for. Rather, our mind excels at building connections, establishing relationships, crafting stories, and generating ideas.

Task management is not intended just for nerds but for everyone in general.

It Helps You Become More Fulfilled

Task management is not about doing more work but doing work intentionally.

Here is a thought experiment: How often do you get around completing tasks that you truly care about?

Perhaps there is a restaurant that you wanted to visit but have forgotten—so you defaulted towards the nearest fast-food joint. Perhaps you have a blockbuster show that you really wanted to watch but found yourself scrolling through TikTok, feeling less fulfilled instead.

Task management helps us avoid living life by default but rather by design. At the very least, we were given the choice of choosing between TikTok or the blockbuster movie. Personally, I have created an interest board in my to-do list where I included a list of places to visit, foods to eat, and movies to watch.

Proper task management is also the catalyst needed to bring out the best in people. Take, for instance, great artists, celebrities, politicians, entrepreneurs, and the great minds of the world that we look up to.

Generally, they do more than their day jobs. They have commitments beyond work, such as managing multiple NGOs, giving speeches, meeting friends, and pursuing personal habits and interests—all while being dutiful parents, spouses, and being great friends to be around.

It is nearly impossible to balance all of these commitments without a proper task management system, whether outsourced to a personal assistant or via a to-do app. Their ability to manage tasks is a key reason why they hold respectable positions.

We don’t look up to them based on what they could have done but rather on what they have already done and are currently doing. A coding wizard is only as useful as the code they write. A music savant is only as inspiring as the music they produce.

It Keeps Track of Your Personal Development

Proper task management involves keeping a record of what you have done, chronicling your accomplishments, no matter how small.

With a proper system, you can have a quick snapshot of the major projects completed across the year, regardless of whether they are personal or professional.

Looking back, you might find that you have accomplished a lot. These are projects that you can include in your resume or LinkedIn profile.

Perhaps you were busy completing them, and you never had the chance to step back, review your progress, and bask in the afterglow of your hard work. Looking at the completed projects, perhaps you can reassure yourself, “Yeah, it’s about time I take that vacation that I deserve.”

Conversely, task management might also show your pockets of time where you struggled with productivity. Perhaps you were struggling with stress and mental health at that point in time. Or perhaps the gap doesn’t indicate anything because you forgot to document your tasks.

Regardless, having visibility over these achievements can inspire further personal and professional growth because they are a form of a reward system.

Apps like Todoist have a karma system that shows how many tasks you have completed. Sunsama and Akiflow have a daily review feature that helps you reflect on completed tasks from the day before.

Just completing tasks you’re responsible for shouldn’t be treated as the status quo but as tiny achievements that deserve to be rewarded. Not many people can stay motivated and complete tasks in a consistent, deliberate manner. Task management systems help make that possible.

Final Thoughts

Many people dislike managing their tasks, believing that it is a chore or a burden. I view it as a reliable assistant, informing me of important matters so that I can focus on experiencing and enjoying my personal life or the craft of my work.

You can view task management as:

• Sharpening an axe to help you cut down faster.

• A quest marker in video games telling you where you need to go so that you won’t get lost in the open world.

• A diary - an extension of who you are by documenting what you do, which makes you… you.

If you haven’t set up a task management system yet, I highly recommend giving it a go - perhaps for a week or so. You might be surprised at how something so trivial can have a profound impact on your day-to-day life.

Being recruited as a first-time manager can be both exciting yet uncomfortable.

The prospects of higher pay and benefits come at the expense of more responsibilities and an extended notice period. But the real challenge lies in managing higher expectations from your employers, new colleagues, and mainly yourself.

Externally-hired managers get called upon when there are significant problems that need solving or gaps that need filling. It’s likely that internal promotions weren’t a feasible option. Most newly hired managers are also pre-qualified, whether through recommendations by mutual friends or freelance consultants turned full-timers.

Hence, managers are treated slightly differently from executives. Even if it’s your first time, managers are expected to know what to do and how to do it from the get-go. You manage others on top of being managed; You follow company rules, but are also the one making them now.

It’s undoubtedly more freedom than being an executive. But I had jobs in the past that gave ample freedom—being a journalist and freelancer. This type of freedom is different. It feels heavier. Decisions have consequences, and they affect how my team spends eight hours of their lives every weekday.

It’s been about two years since I first became a manager, and I’ve had various wins and losses along the way. But still, it’s a fantastic job—getting thrown off into the deep end and getting paid to learn how to swim.

I’ve just entered a new firm, similarly tasked with setting up a department from scratch. In the upcoming weeks, I will be sharing what I know. Here is part one of a series and my priorities for the first month.

Step 1: Alignment

Doing nothing is unproductive, but to do the wrong thing is counter-productive.

I had coffee chats with business owners before, and a common concern they have is a new manager’s tendency to overhaul the entire department—Like newly-elected politicians upending whatever their predecessors have established.

I understand where they’re coming from. It’s the first day at a new job; you’re brimming with enthusiasm, and there’s an urgency to turn this energy into something, or anything really. This usually comes in the form of reckless initiatives.

However, this burst of enthusiasm is also thinly veiled insecurities—the eagerness to impress others and to prove that this hiring decision wasn’t a mistake.

I had to remind myself that, although everyone expects some level of change, significant disruptions can be damaging. I need to trust that the probationary period is sufficient time to prove I am capable. Plus, setting a high bar from the get-go will only set me up for burnout down the road.

What’s the worst that could happen? It’s unlikely that the management team will fire me, even if I did a less-than-mediocre job.

Fortunately, I didn’t have a predecessor to disrupt. Both times I was hired, the marketing department was non-existent, and I needed to build from scratch. Changes are mostly met with suspicion rather than resistance.

However, I’m still new at the job after all. This high level of energy still needs to be directed somewhere. Instead of seeking to do, a new manager should first seek to understand.

🔍 Getting an Overview

The first step involves plugging up any knowledge gaps and assumptions that you have about the company. This alone should distract you for a few days. For this, I love the three main frameworks taught in the YCDP programme.

Business Model Canvas

Who are our clients and stakeholders? Where do we earn money, and how do we spend it? What exactly are the relationships that we have with the client?

Usually, we would learn aspects of the business through osmosis over a lengthy period. But when your job in the first month involves making plans for the rest of the year, we have to speed up the process, and a BMC is an excellent tool for that.

Full Guide / Download Template

Value Proposition Canvas VPC

Without a value proposition, there will simply be no demand for your product, and the company will cease to exist. Whether you’re in marketing or product development, a VPC helps you understand what features and aspects of the business are essential to the client.

Most of all, it helps with prioritisation. Being a marketer, it’s tempting to jump straight to selling product features and benefits. But perhaps you’ll learn that it’s actually the unique pricing and license structure that drives clients to purchase.

SWOT

A VPC helps you understand how your products match a client’s needs—but your company is not the only player in the game. A SWOT analysis needs no introduction, and it’s a great way to find out how your company stands compared to the competition. This helps you understand what are the anchors of the business and where the industry might go.

Full Guide / Download Template

✅ Validating Your Understanding

Now you’ve learnt the existence of these 3 frameworks, here’s how you use them.

1. Place the diagrams on a digital whiteboard. I personally use Miro.

2. Fill in the framework by making educated assumptions. Research public or internal company material if needed.

3. Schedule a meeting with relevant stakeholders, usually the boss and a few of your peers.

4. Make a presentation of your understanding of the product, company and industry. I recommend putting this as part of an agenda rather than having a dedicated meeting.

5. Aligning my understanding of the product, company and industry, and correct any misunderstandings.

Frankly, I really enjoyed this exercise, and so did the bosses. They are so often down in the trenches that they rarely see their company from a fresh, retrospective point of view.

Correcting any misunderstandings also opens up discussions of why they exist in the first place. Through this exercise, I’ve uncovered value propositions that were nowhere written on the company website, which is appalling.

Having these conversations also helps paint a clearer picture of my objectives—which are often unclear for new managers. For example, I learnt that large enterprises often purchase from more reputable B2B brands despite having worse value because decision-makers who bought them can avoid culpability. “If the best service provider in the world can’t get the job done—I can’t be faulted for choosing them.” Building marketing strategies around this buyer’s psychology would make my work more impactful and meaningful.

Why I Need a Personal Website

The job market is highly competitive for both full-time work and freelancers. In the past, a solid portfolio and resume/CV were sufficient for getting one’s foot in the door, but today, companies are looking for more than just academic qualifications.

If you’re a software developer, you need a solid GitHub page. If you are a graphic designer, you need a solid portfolio on Adobe Behance.

Beyond just proof of work, companies are also looking for personality traits and people who share similar values, something that’s difficult to gauge from a portfolio alone. Hence, they stalk candidates on Instagram or LinkedIn.

But I’m neither a developer nor a designer—and there’s no dedicated portfolio site that can showcase my expertise and work. Hence, building a personal website is the way to go.

Requirements for the Website

• It needs to be affordable: I don’t expect to generate much passive income from the website to offset the hosting cost, so a monthly cost of less than USD10 is important.

• It needs to be functional: The website needs to fulfil three main purposes: Serve as a blogging platform, showcase my portfolio and job experience, and highlight my freelancing services.

• It needs to be easy to setup: I do not enjoy the configuration process of setting up a website and fine tuning the design. Ideally, the website should look great out of the box.

Why Obsidian Publish for My Personal Website?

The Barrier to Publishing Is Non-existent

Obsidian users can easily push new content with a hotkey and a button click, and their website will update instantaneously. The same is true for updating old content as well.

I’ve yet to find any website builder that has so little friction in publishing content as Obsidian Publish. This way, one can focus on writing and generating content. I no longer have to worry about fiddling over settings, copying & pasting content across platforms, and not having a single source of truth.

This benefit alone is a significant competitive moat and single-handedly makes Obsidian Publish my go-to platform to host my personal website.

It Is the Most Trusted Way to Build a Digital Garden

Digital gardens are just a fancy way of calling Wiki pages.

Normal pages reward one to “arrive” on a particular page, stay on it, and savour the content. With digital gardens, you are encouraged to click on on-page links, and go down rabbit holes into a topic they’re particularly interested in.

This gives website visitors more control over the topic they want to explore. It also encourages the publisher to create short-form content that goes straight to the point with no fluff.

My website is not a good example of this because I’m used to writing long-form blog articles. But that’s the great thing about Obsidian—it gives me the option to publish normal blog content as well. I don’t have to pigeonhole myself into a wiki format.

I specify “the most trusted way” because there are other markdown static site generators as well, such as Markbase and Quartz. These are wonderful cheaper options, but I prefer supporting the official Obsidian developers instead, and I feel that official Obsidian products have more product longevity.

Fast Loading Speeds and (Somewhat) SEO Optimised

SEO used to be a major problem for Obsidian Publish, but a bulk of it has been resolved in the latest update. It now obtains high scores on Lighthouse metrics, and it looks wonderful both on mobile and desktop.

The site takes a hit on performance—depending on browser extensions and image format and file size, but it is far more impressive than many other industry contenders.

In the latest update, it allows publishers even to specify the webpage excerpt, feature image, and permalink using YAML tags. Despite these improvements, it does take time for Obsidian pages to get crawled and indexed on Google relative to old blogs on Ghost.

It might be because of the lack of a sitemap.xml file, but it is still something that the devs need to pay attention to, and I hope that it gets resolved soon.

Obsidian Publish Looks Unique

The entire point of having a personal website is to stand out against the competition. I’m also confident that I’m not the only one with a personal website as well.

After spending days customizing my website on other platforms, despite how much I configure and tweak it—it still looks like a generic, boring website.

Obsidian Publish, however, is unique:

• The way you navigate through pages is unique.

• The layout and design are unique.

• The addition of stacked pages and a graph view is unique.

Everything about the design of the webpage screams geeky and nerdy, and that’s what makes the website more personable and charming, which is unlike the “corporate” vibe that other websites have.

If you know a bit of CSS, you can customize the look and feel of the website as well without losing the core essence of it.

Why You Shouldn’t Use Obsidian Publish

Of course, not every platform is perfect. Here are a few reasons Obsidian Publish may not be right for you.

Obsidian Is Not Your Markdown Editor of Choice

Although doable, Obsidian is not designed to be a pure content management system. Using other markdown editors, such as Nota, Logseq, or even Notion, circumvents the biggest selling point of Obsidian Publish—its minimal friction publishing experience.

You Want a More “Professional” Website

Obsidian is great for sharing thoughts and written content, but it struggles with visual elements. It’s difficult to implement cards, complex graphics, and animated backgrounds without immense tinkering with the CSS files. I doubt anyone can build an e-commerce store on Obsidian Publish.

You Are Looking for Direct Automation

Unlike WordPress and Ghost, Obsidian does not have a direct API integration, allowing you to link it directly with Zapier or Make.com. However, it is technically possible using Github as a middleman, but it makes the workflow much more complex.

Thoughts on Other Platforms

WordPress With Elementor

What I like: - It is extremely powerful with unlimited customization. - Its drag-and-drop features make it easier to use than direct coding. - WordPress is the de facto choice if you’re looking to earn a full-time income via blogging, with a host of powerful SEO plugins. - It is somewhat future-proof. Powering more than half the internet, WordPress isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

What I dislike: - It’s tedious to set up. You’re better off hiring a professional—not ideal for a solopreneur or working professional. - It can be expensive if you decide to opt for high-quality plugins. - Publishing is slow and tedious. I can spend 15 minutes fumbling around with the excerpts, meta descriptions, and featured images. I don’t want to hate posting content on my website.

Squarespace

What I like: - Squarespace sites look extremely beautiful, even with the default themes. - It is relatively easy to set up compared to WordPress. - It is scalable. I don’t need to switch platforms if I choose to expand my side-income business or venture into e-commerce.

What I dislike: - It’s quite mediocre as a blogging platform and requires multiple clicks to enter the draft post page. - SEO capabilities have improved in recent years but still lag behind an optimised WordPress site and the other options. - It is the most expensive option, which quickly disqualifies it for a personal website use case.

Ghost

What I like: - Ease of setting up. You can go live by just choosing a domain name and a theme. - It has strong SEO capabilities. The website loads fast, and the default SEO settings are sufficient for most use cases. - It has an entire suite of integration options, allowing you to automate plenty of pipelines using Zapier. - The post editor is clean and pleasant to use if you prefer writing blogs directly on the CMS.

What I dislike: - The newsletter capabilities are mediocre but sufficient to build a dedicated following. - It can be expensive. The default free themes are ugly (in my opinion), and you need to pay for much nicer themes, unless you choose to build them yourself. You also need to upgrade to a higher tier for advanced integration support. - It’s built specifically for blogging and nothing else. Anything besides the homepage and blog post page is a generic one-column layout. Which leads to: - It’s stuck between both worlds. It doesn’t look as great as Squarespace or WordPress sites, but it’s almost as restrictive as Obsidian Publish.

Substack

It is Ghost, but worse and free.

Closing Thoughts & Tips

The options are limitless when it comes to building a website. Just trying to build a site alone has led me down a rabbit hole for days. I haven’t touched on Hugo, Jekyll, and other static website generators.

Here is what I have learned so far.

• Figure out your personal requirements early on. There is no such thing as the perfect website builder, only the one that is right for you. I’ve made the mistake of succumbing to the “shiny new object syndrome” and mistaking features for must-haves.

• Build a pros and cons list. Once you have a clear idea of your requirements, you’ll narrow down your options to two or three website builders. Building a pros and cons list will help you make an informed decision.

• Start with a domain name. Your website builder might change, but your domain name will largely remain the same.

Hopefully, this article is useful. Good luck with your website-building journey

Isn’t it ironic?

Many companies preach the values of creativity and innovation within the workplace, but don’t provide the breathing space to do so (Thankfully, mine is a rare few who does).

To use office hours for self-development is viewed as slacking; to stray away from ordinary work is “risky”, “not towing the line” and “showing off”.

In fact, many people prefer working remotely because nobody will judge them for watching YouTube tutorials, experimenting and making mistakes.

But I have a hypothesis: that high-quality output are fruits borne from personal growth, cultivated through freedom of expression and room for error; not wrung out from employees like a sponge in the pursuit of “perfect execution”.

Which is why I pitched the idea of having Freedom Fridays to my department. It’s a day where teammates can pursue any side projects they want, be it inside or outside of work.

The catch? As long as existing commitments are fulfilled (meetings & deliverables) and the chosen work is productive or creative. It could be a coding project, filming TikTok, pursuing side hustles, or even writing a song.

Why Bother?

• It is colour that breaks the monochrome shades of the daily grind. Even the most ambitious of us can find corporate work soul-crushing after long hours. So why not look forward to Freedom Fridays the same way we look forward to recess and gym class in school?

• It is a judgement-free space for people to grow. The key is being judgement-free. Only you can define what personal growth is, what to focus on, and how to achieve it. Personal growth isn’t something that managers nor other people can dictate for you.

• It is room to make mistakes. Most times, the workplace demands perfection from us. But mistakes are part of the job; they are not problems, but opportunities to learn. If they’re not normalised, then we would rather choose to do less work instead. Less work means less errors, and zero work is perfection.

To my surprise, the pushback for Freedom Friday didn’t come from the upper management, but from the team itself. A common concern is guilt. The stigma towards misusing office hours runs so deep, that even the intern without prior working experience felt it.

It is a culture that needs to change. I will still test my hypothesis and the next few weeks will be my experiment. Thankfully, it’s not without precedence.

For instance, I’ve used my blog as a testing ground for many of the company website’s SEO initiatives. Sitemaps and subdomains can be confusing the first time around. Configuring SEO settings is highly technical, and there is no room to mess with the company’s DNS settings just to experiment.

There’s a reason FAANG companies have implemented side project time. If done well, it benefits everyone involved, from the company to the employee. How else are we going to make 80,000 hours of our lifetime working a bit more fun?