Productivity Archives - Dennis Cortés

After hiring our 3rd designer at Northstar, I’ve been shifting a lot of my growth to learning about being a leader and mentor for my team. It’s a huge challenge for me personally, who has been mainly an IC designer in every role I’ve had in some capacity.

Now that things are starting to shift and my day-to-day is more around decision making and process iterations, people look to me for answers and guidance each day. I don’t know about you, but it’s scary to have that pressure every day you show up to work.

I know it comes with the territory and I asked for this in a way, but some days get harder to work through.“If I just put in a few more hours, our goals will be achieved more quickly.”

“My team is counting on me, this has to be done tonight.”

“Eh, I can skip lunch for this call. I’ll eat after!”

“I can’t sleep in, what if an emergency happens even though it’s 7:00am on a Thursday?”

But after one-too-many weeks of this, I’d be setting myself and my team up for a worse situation.

When I don’t take care of myself mentally or physically, I slowly expend my energy exponentially. I’m not as alert in meetings, I’m distracted by stress, I’m overly irritable, I’m not myself.

I want to be the best version of myself for those around me. That way, I’ll be better able to do what I do best. I listen better, I’m able to focus easier, I’m more open to receiving feedback, and I give better feedback myself.

What You Can Do

You need to put yourself first. Not in a malicious way, but in a way that sets healthy boundaries between work and life. Boundaries that put your health and comfort first, in a way that lets you do your best work. It’s one thing to be self-disciplined and motivated, but another to drive your life into the ground for it.

Remember to spend time with yourself and with your family/friends. Do things that bring you joy and pursue your hobbies. Remember to exercise, eat right, and take care of your body. Go to therapy and work on yourself. Maybe try meditation or yoga before work. Remember to do nothing sometimes too, just exist and listen to the world around you.

Put yourself before anything, the people around you will be happy you did.

Published by Dennis in Leadership, Productivity, Work

June 19, 2020 — No Comments

Apps That Make MacOS a Better Operating System to Use

Even as an Apple fanboy that loves MacOS and iOS, I know that like any software, it isn’t perfect. Not to mention the lack of customization options and (at times) a cluttered interface.

Over time, I’ve found a few apps that replace default Mac apps that make MacOS a better operating system to use. I happily pay and advertise how useful they are just because of the sheer influence and impact they’ve had on my digital workspace and workflow.

In this article I’ll happily share them with you and (hopefully) dodge the dozens of questions I get every time I post a screenshot of something and happen to include one of those apps. Kidding! But no seriously, I need a place to direct people that ask this over and over ?

Bartender

https://www.macbartender.com - $15

I’m the type of person that likes to have the least amount of visual clutter and items in my view when I’m working. I tend to get easily distracted by icons and notifications and have geared my digital workspace to avoid that.

Bartender has been one of the best apps for this quirk that I have as it takes those 10–20 icons that show in your top bar and hides them in a secondary bar you can toggle on/off easily. No more having to get distracted by random red notifications and status updates!

Alfred

https://www.alfredapp.com - free or $19 for full

To be honest, I’m still baffled that Apple’s Spotlight feature is as poorly made as it is. It has become quite unpredictable, doesn’t accept keywords to better filter what a user wants, searches unusable files, mixes files with apps in search, etc.

This is where Alfred comes in. Alfred is basically a customizable version of what Spotlight should be. Not only can you customize the look of Alfred, you can also add and create “workflows” to make your own shortcuts that make your life easier. Alfred also uses certain keywords to better understand what you’re looking for and what actions you are trying to take. For example, if you just type a name it will search for apps, but if you type “open” then the file name, Alfred will switch from looking at your apps to looking at files you can open.

uBar

https://brawersoftware.com/products/ubar - $30

I get asked about this app the most and I can understand why if I’m being honest. While MacOS default dock gets the job done, it doesn’t try and do much more outside of that (possibly for better battery management). uBar takes your dock up a notch while also making it quite nicer to use, while customizable and nicer to look at.

uBar creates a smaller dock that can hold favorite apps you have, provide better context on notifications, generates window previews on hover, lets you choose which window to open to, lets you see a calendar on hover, and gives shortcut access to your main Finder folders and preferences just to name a few. I personally like that it feels more out of the way than the original dock and still feels in place in adjacency to the top bar. You can even change where it is positioned and the style of dock you’d like.

CloudApp

https://www.getcloudapp.com - free or $8 for Pro

Just like Alfred, CloudApp makes the original MacOS screenshots ten times better. With CloudApp you can use a keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot (or record a gif!) and instantly get a link that you can share with others.

This app has been super helpful for me in my work life for sharing screenshots of design and code items I’m working on for instant feedback and no hassle of uploading. CloudApp is super fast and makes recording gifs when showing animations or click throughs very easy as well.

VEEER

https://veeer.io - free

While there are quite a few window managers out there for Mac, I personally use VEEER because of how lightweight it is. It does what I need it to without using up RAM and slowing down what I’m working on. It also has a few small unique shortcuts like the way it alternates full screen and minimized windows.

Hope you found this valuable and I hope you try out the apps I mentioned. Got other apps that make MacOS better? Let me know which others I need to try out!

Published by Dennis in Productivity, Work

August 31, 2018 — No Comments

How Blogging Can Make You a Better Remote Employee

Working remotely is all the rage nowadays. Companies can hire more diverse sets of people, save money on salaries, and find the best people fit for the job. After all, 43%of the workforce has spent at least some time working remotelyin 2017. Working remotely provides for a more flexible schedule and even no set schedule like we have at MetaLab. Remote working is better suited to some people’s personalities and lifestyles and can be a healthier and happier alternative.

However, that doesn’t mean remote working is easy. As I mentioned, you really do need a personality and lifestyle that fits with not being in an office and often working in a spot from home. Routines and concentration are a must, including restrictions and reducing distractions. These are typically obvious to those in or considering working remotely, but a part you may not think about is written communication.

Technologies and companies such as Slack and Microsoft Teams have taken over the digital office space and become the new norm. As a remote employee, I’d say about one-third of my day (as a Product Designer) is spent writing and communicating with team members and stakeholders on projects we are working on. Written text can sometimes be tough to communicate in both content and tone and requires attention to detail and the way we present written words to others. Something as small as punctuation can completely change how words sound and feel to others, let alone communication not being descriptive or contextual enough.

As someone who has been blogging consistently for the past 100 weeks, I’ve naturally improved and progressed as a remote employee as well. I’m more able to think about how my writing is perceived, when and where to be descriptive, more clear and concise, and overall better able to set a tone in written communication. Also not to mention I can type much faster now ?

If remote working is something you are interested in or are currently doing, I highly recommend investing time and effort into improving your writing. Blogging is always a nice, for-sure way to improve, but if you’d rather not start a blog then writing for yourself or even being a more avid reader can impact your written communication skills altogether.

If blogging sounds enticing and you’re not sure where to start, I’ve written quite a few articles that touch on getting started! Here’s an article from last week that you may find helpful.

Published by Dennis in Productivity, Work

August 17, 2018 — No Comments

You Don’t Lack Motivation to Get Started, You Lack Clarity

Starting a new endeavor is typically difficult. You’re excited to get started and have all kinds of ideas in mind as to how you can be successful in this, seemingly all in different directions.

If you’re like most people—you’re fine for the first couple of days, maybe even weeks. Things start to slow down and you lose motivation to continue, eventually having this new endeavor die out. You struggle to find this motivation again. You accept failure and go about your life until it happens again. It sucks.

But, what if you could do something to combat your mind trying to have “motivation” kick in so that you’ll get serious about what you’re working on?

Instead of focusing on motivation, focus on clarity.

Typically the reason you can’t get completely invested in a new project or even a new lifestyle is because it’s not completely clear what you should be focusing on next.

A plethora of ideas come to mind when something new comes along, hence building that excitement (aka “motivation”) that gets you hooked and obsessed with what you are tackling. The only issue there is not typically having a clear direction of what you need to do to get you to your goal the quickest.

The solution is to filter, focus, and plan your ideas.

Take those great ideas you have and filter them out into smaller, more actionable steps. Focus in on what’s most crucial and important to your success and/or productivity and plan the best approach to attain that success.

Afterwards, you’ll naturally have a plan of action and a sure way to feel motivated and productive to keep pursuing that new endeavor that will make an impact in your life and/or the life of others.

Published by Dennis in Business, Productivity

July 27, 2018 — No Comments

Knowing When and Where to Seek Feedback on Your Ideas

Sharing an idea is like passing around an ice cube in a room of people. When you first have the idea it’s a good size and it’s sturdy. It has potential and a lot of use cases for how to best take advantage of this new thought in your mind. You’ve built up the idea and let it freeze to a solid form, just big enough to be ready to start putting into action.

But then you take this “ice cube” and pass it around to others in this room so they can have a look. They give a couple thoughts on it, provide some critique and some feedback as to how it could possibly not be successful or be better. When they hand it off to the next person, it’s melted a tad and not as solid as it was at the start.

Finally, it gets to the last person before you in the room. Once they pass it off to you, the ice cube is almost nothing now. You didn’t have enough time to build it up enough to take the heat and thought of others. Now you're lost as to what you can do with an ice cube this small now as it continues to melt in your hand.

Our latest and greatest idea is cherished and held close in our minds. We care for it and are passionate about the idea but when it comes time to put it into action, we sometimes think that the opinion of others can make or break our product/idea in an instant.

While the opinion and advice of others can be beneficial and keep us in check when we need it, knowing the time and place to ask for it is important. Your idea may still be “half-baked” and require some more thought on your end which is not a bad thing (it’s actually quite exciting in my experience). Presenting an idea to someone in this state can lead to less than ideal feedback, possibly because context is missing that you are still working on.

You may be familiar with the term MVP (Minimum Viable Product), where a product is built to have the absolute necessary features first and then built upon. I believe this can also be applicable when forming our ideas as well, say an MVI (Minimum Viable Idea) before you decide to share with others.

This MVI covers the absolutely necessary user flows and business models that to the best of your knowledge will make this idea successful. Even some iteration on how it would work in practice, benefit others, and play a part in the market competition you’d be up against.

In a more practical sense, even smaller more personal ideas can have an MVI applied to them—personal goals you have, fitness regimens, apartment layout changes, a new recipe you’re creating, etc.

Being able to find and pull out the most important parts of ideas that can make or break their success is a skill that is quite difficult to master. I honestly don’t think anyone has in every aspect of their life either. We’re constantly having to acknowledge and put ideas into play before we go ahead and share them with others. Over time smaller ideas and goals become easier to share and get opinions on while larger overarching ideas or even businesses remain what we strive for most of our lives.

Acknowledging and being able to find the correct times to get the correct advice is one way we can be better at this though. Like anything, it just takes a bit of patience, practice, and even a bit of failure before we begin to get better.

Published by Dennis in Productivity

June 8, 2018 — No Comments

Ways to Use an iPad for Product Design Work

Apple’s iPad is advertised as a stand alone device that can replace a laptop, but for many this definitely isn’t the case yet. For example, as a Product Designer, I can’t open Sketch or Abstract and go to town on my design files. Or as a developer I can’t reliably code and run a local server to work on a project.

As someone who bought a 12.9" iPad Pro a couple years back, I was hoping this would change. While I can’t do exactly what I mentioned above in the way I would like to, I’ve been able to find ways to bring the iPad more and more into my workflow for design work.

Research and Notes

A spot where the iPad can really shine is in the research phase of work. Research typically only requires a web browser and a way to document your findings which makes the iPad’s split screen perfect for the job.

My setup consists of a Chrome browser open on the left of my screen and default Apple Notes on the right. You can of course switch these out for whichever replacements you’d like (Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, etc). The side-by-side apps lets me enlarge and shrink windows as I need and even lets me drag and drop both text and media from my browser on to my Notes. This lets me seamlessly mix documentation with my own thoughts and findings. Throw my Apple Pencil into the mix for drawing extras on notes and I’m set for getting my notes complete and organized.

I’ve used this method on countless projects as I really enjoy the mobile aspect of an iPad versus a laptop. Working on the couch or outside or at a coffee shop with a smaller form factor is great. Not to mention mixing touch with writing and drawing (Apple Pencil) is a delight that I think is tough to find in products.

Wireframing

By far my favorite part of design work on an iPad. While there are definitely different ways you can do this depending on your style, I’ll give some recommendations based on my preference.

Pattern is a favorite app of mine for wireframing. Despite some limitations (no zooming, some tedious editing aspects), Pattern is great for basic wireframing of design screens. The app provides a minimal but useful interface with some delightful interactions for creating interfaces. I personally enjoy the Apple Pencil capabilities as well for making notes directly on your wireframes.

Procreate, while considered more of an app for art, is great for wireframing as well. It’s definitely more difficult to create refined shapes and lines like you can in Pattern, but the layering and editing capabilities can make up for this depending on what you’re looking for.

Inspiration

While producing work is important, consuming of inspiration and other subjects is an paramount in your creative process as well. Luckily, there are a plethora of ways to do this with an iPad. Using a browser the same way you would on a computer to browse you bookmarks and favorite websites is a sure way to do this.

In terms of apps to use, Pinterest is an obvious one for most folks and happens to be a favorite of mine as well. While following people on Pinterest has become pretty obsolete nowadays due to their home feed changes, Pinterest does a great job of feeding relevant posts related to pins you have saved before.

While there are other apps to use such as the Adobe suite, the apps and methods I listed above are the way I personally use my iPad within my product design workflow on an almost daily basis outside of hifi work. Hopefully we’ll see this change in the future and be able to do full-fledged design work but for now this is the method I use.

Published by Dennis in Product Design, Productivity

May 11, 2018 — 1 Comment

Making Your Phone a Tool, Not a Distraction

While I was first transitioning back into working from home a few months ago, a bad habit I realized I had was checking my phone constantly during breaks. I use a Pomodoro technique where I work for 20 minutes and then take a 2–3 minute break and every break I had I would reach for my phone.

It is a break after all though, so what’s the harm in checking my phone? Well for me personally it didn’t feel like a break. It distracted me; left me thinking about posts I saw on Instagram or how many notifications are waiting for me on Twitter. A break should be a reset from work, not an additional element on the mind. A few weeks ago I got fed up with checking my phone for no reason and decided to do something about it.

A phone should be a tool, that’s what made it such an innovation when smartphones with touchscreens came into our lives. How could I reset the way I use my phone and gear it more towards a tool? Here’s how I approached it:

Only have necessary apps on the main home screen of my phone that I use daily.
Turn of all notifications except phone calls, texts, and Slack messages (only during work hours).
Delete social media apps that have a desktop alternative so I only use them on a computer (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.).
Hide apps in folders that didn’t have alternatives but I still needed at times (Instagram [mainly to post], Uber Eats, Strava, etc.). This provides friction in comparison of just one tap on the home screen
Make my phone feel plain (black backgrounds, only a few apps in plain sight, no red notification icons).

After all this, this is what my home screen ends up looking like. I use each of these apps every single day and none of them have immediate distractions to them. Even a black background (I made a thin color gradient around it to make it a little nicer) to have what I need from and center and no questions as to what I need and where it is.

This setup is more of a tool for me in which I am able to easier accomplish things in both work and personal life as well as passive tracking and even photography. I keep random apps you need to have and apps I mentioned above in another folder on the second screen to keep them from being in plain sight. I also keep miscellaneous apps like banking apps, Lyft, calendar, and email tucked away since I do need them but not front and center like these that I use every day.

I recommend doing the same with your phone if you relate to the feelings I had towards my phone. While social media, games, etc. have nothing inherently wrong with them, I think there is a time and place for these and probably not the best to have them sitting at arms reach 24/7.

Shortly after I went and did this with my phone I found this great post on making a “dumber phone” if you’d like more: https://nomasters.io/posts/dumber-phone

Published by Dennis in Personal, Productivity

October 27, 2017 — No Comments

How to Work on Personal Projects after a Long Full-Time Job

I started a new job about two months ago. A job that requires me to be in work mode for 12 hours a day (I wake up at 5:30am, start work at 7:00am, and get home at 5:30pm). Needless to say — the days are long and tiring even though the work is usually fulfilling. Something I have struggled with since starting this new job is making time to work on side projects. My previous job was from 9:30am–5:00pm and I worked from home with no commute. I wasn’t used to working on the same thing in the same spot for as long as I need to now.

When I get home, I usually don’t want to do anything. Even watching over my own health and making sure I work out is a frustrating struggle. Let alone working on more design and development work after spending my whole day working on it.

Lately though, I’ve been using a 15 minute rule. Basically, I make sure I work on one of my projects for at least 15 minutes a night. Some nights I only do the 15 minutes and move on to watching Netflix or playing video games. Some nights I get into the work and am excited enough that I don’t even realize 15 minutes have gone by and end up working for an hour or two.

Either way, I feel more productive because I have at least put in some work for my personal projects for that day. 15 minutes may not seem like much, but the point is to help keep you feeling productive and motivated on what you are working on.

I’ll get back to you on making sure I work out every day ?

Published by Dennis in Productivity, Work