Блоги: заметки с тегом Productivity

Look at the right metrics

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 17:33:49 +0500

A couple of years ago when I started jogging to eventually be able to run a half marathon, I used to look at my pace as a key metric to measure my progress. Any pro runner might laugh at reading this, but I thought the faster I can run, the faster my body will adapt to sustaining that pace for a longer distance. I know it’s naive, but at least there was some logic in that thinking. Besides, running fast felt ‘cooler’.

No surprise I barely progressed. I made it to the 10-kilometre runs, but couldn’t progress any further. I looked at my pace which improved over time, but I couldn’t understand why I didn’t come close to my goal after months of running.

Then I made an effort to learn a few things, bought a running watch, and switched my attention to a whole different metric: heart rate. Turned out that if I stayed below a certain threshold of my heart rate, I could run way longer! There is another thing called cadence, which is another important metric I never even heard of before at that time (a number of strides per minute), and understanding them both has helped me tremendously. After that eureka moment, I was able to run 20 kilometres and beyond in no time.

That made me think about how often we are looking at the wrong metrics, in any domain of our lives. For example, music producers measure their career progress by the sales charts. Content creators gauge their success by the number of page views. Professionals assess their progress by the number of completed to-dos. And the list goes on and on.

Whether you are a DJ trying to build an international career, a marketer building a sales funnel on the landing page, or a jogger aspiring to run a half marathon, be sure to look at the right metrics.

Perfectionism hurts

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 01:30:05 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

I am a perfectionist. Someone might say it’s a good trait, but I would disagree.

As a perfectionist, I tend to overthink, overwork, and struggle to start new things. The desire to have everything done flawlessly stopped me from doing so many things in the past that I didn’t even bother counting.

What is on the other end of the perfectionism scale? Sloppiness, indolence, carelessness? I don’t know, I haven’t been there, and I can presume these aren’t great traits either. However, there is plenty of space on the spectrum between these two extremes.

This post is a reminder to myself that done is better than perfect. Sometimes ‘good enough’ is enough. ‘Perfect time’ may never come. And time is the most valuable resource, so use it wisely while you can.

Ask Me Anything 002

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 16:45:48 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

Discovering New Music, Gig Pricing, Beatport Improvement Ideas, and My Top Productivity Tip

The second instalment of the AMA series is here! In this episode, I answer the following four questions:

	Whenever I look at your tracklists, I’m always amazed at how many new artists I discover thanks to your show, and it makes me wonder how you discover all those names and tracks in the first place. What does your process of finding new music look like?
	I am a beginner DJ and I want to ask how much I should charge for my set to make it fair.
	If you were given the opportunity to make any changes Beatport, what would you change? (You can make several). What from this list is already in the backlog?
	What would be your number one tip for someone who wants to become more productive?

Preview:

Daniel Sokolovskiy – Ask Me Anything 002 (Preview)

The paradox of luck

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 16:05:39 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

In my younger years, I firmly believed that my achievements were solely the result of my sheer effort and willpower.

My perspective has since evolved. Life, as I now understand it, is vastly more intricate. Human relationships, in particular, are remarkably complex. When considering the multitude of interconnected pathways leading to specific events or decisions, we encounter an infinite interplay of randomness.

For instance, if you were to ask me how I obtained a Global Talent visa to move to the UK or how I found my dream job, my honest answer would be that I simply got lucky. And this sense of luck extends across almost every aspect of my life.

But what is luck, exactly? The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “the force that causes things, especially favourable events, to happen by chance, rather than through one’s own efforts or abilities.”

So where does luck originate? If luck is the force behind chance occurrences, then it follows that nearly anything beyond our direct control can be seen as luck. Even factors like birthplace and parental circumstances, which are apparently beyond one’s control, fall within this realm of luck too.

However, if everything is attributed to luck, one might logically conclude, “Well, since most of these events are beyond my control, I might as well do nothing!” Yet, here lies the paradox: that’s not entirely accurate!

In reality, I believe making efforts towards any endeavour increases the likelihood of getting lucky.

Consider the job application process, for instance. If someone wants to find a job but takes no action whatsoever, the chance of finding a job is rather low. Though not impossible, it would require tremendous luck. Conversely, submitting a hundred job applications significantly increases the probability of success. However, even in such a scenario, achieving success isn’t solely attributed to relentless efforts. The hiring decision ultimately rests with another individual or a collective group, which, in essence, is luck.

Strangely enough, after realising that many factors of my life can be attributed to luck, it motivated me to work even harder. I think recognising luck doesn’t diminish our efforts; it shows how chance and our actions are intertwined. Luck shapes our experiences, but our efforts increase the odds of good things happening, and understanding this mix can help us carve our unique paths.

Why time-blocking doesn’t work for me

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 14:55:13 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

There is a popular technique in the productivity space called time-blocking where you allocate specific blocks of time to accomplish particular tasks throughout your day. It involves scheduling blocks of time on your calendar dedicated to specific activities, which, supposedly, helps in better managing your time, staying focused, and ensuring that important tasks get done.

A random picture from the Internet illustrating time-blocking. Source: todoist.com

For me, it’s never quite clicked.

I use my calendar to add events, not tasks. Events are things that happen at a certain date and time, like meetings or appointments; there is nothing to do about them, they are just there to serve as reminders and assist in planning while considering availability.

While I do acknowledge the benefits of grouping tasks, like handling emails in bulk rather than reacting to each new arrival, I find the concept of rigidly scheduled time for tasks unappealing.

Consider this: a designated one-hour slot to address emails, as depicted above. Let’s say I efficiently manage everything in under 30 minutes. What then? Should I rush into the next block or switch gears entirely? Or take a breather? Conversely, some tasks might overrun their allotted time. In such instances, do I shuffle the blocks to compensate? Or compress subsequent blocks? None of that makes any sense to me, and this is why time-blocking as a system so easily falls apart for me.

Some tasks require deep, interrupted, focused work, and when I’m in that mode, I prefer riding that flow rather than being disrupted by arbitrary block transitions. For some tasks that require less concentrated focus, I find it comfortable to tackle them sporadically rather than allocating an entire block, there are moments in busy days when carving out a dedicated block feels unfeasible. And sometimes I feel that I’m leaning toward specific tasks over another, let’s say being in a writing mood rather than doing admin stuff, which ends up being much more productive for me.

So while time-blocking serves many, its rigid structure doesn’t align with everyone’s work style. For some, like myself, a more flexible, task-driven approach better accommodates the flow of work demands. And I think understanding one’s unique needs is one of the key elements for productivity.

Ten years of remote work: what I’ve learned about productivity and life-work balance

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 19:00:19 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

2023 marks my tenth anniversary of working remotely, a journey that began long before it became a widespread practice. Prior to joining Beatport, for over a decade, I balanced a corporate marketing job while pursuing a DJ career on the side, all while embracing the remote work lifestyle. In this post, I’d like to share a few things that I have learned from this experience.

My work setup 2023

Finding a balance is tricky but crucial

One of the prevailing myths that continue to persist in the realm of remote work is the misconception that working from home equates to working less. Quite contrarily, the distinction between the home space and the workspace can blur significantly, leading to an increased tendency to overwork. When one’s office is just a few steps away from their living room, the boundaries between professional and personal time can become nebulous.

Many, including myself at first, end up working more. Way more. It’s tempting to check work emails anytime – morning, dinner, even bedtime! When I started, my usual 8-hour workday turned into 10 or even 12-hour stretches, solely because of constant online availability that appeared to necessitate further work engagement.

This is when I realised that I must find a work-life balance, otherwise it’s just not sustainable. Here are a few things that helped me:

Heightened awareness: Recognising the imbalance was the first step. Just acknowledging my work habits and the impact they had on my personal life triggered a shift in behaviour.
Distinct devices: Having separate gadgets for work and personal use was a game-changer. It drew a definitive line between my professional duties and personal time.
Browser profiles: Even without separate devices, setting up distinct browser profiles made a significant difference. I’m using Arc browser, and I love that it allows customizing the appearance of each profile.
Varied physical spaces: Changing my location within my home environment had a surprising impact. For instance, when focused on job-related tasks, I remained stationed at my desk. But when tapping into a more ‘creative zone’ for personal projects, relocating to the sofa with my laptop made a distinct psychological shift.
Notification management: Being bombarded with work notifications round the clock wasn’t healthy. Unless there was an urgent matter, tweaking my device settings to limit notifications after hours became crucial. Fortunately, modern apps and systems provide the tools to manage notifications effectively.

Expanding further on these strategies, creating separate spaces and zones within one’s home for different tasks can substantially influence the mindset. Consider designating a specific area solely for work-related activities to reinforce the work environment mentally. Conversely, having a different space for personal pursuits can foster a more relaxed atmosphere conducive to creativity and leisure. For example, for this reason, I intentionally avoid working with my laptop in bed, as I aim to preserve this space solely for rest, both physically and mentally.

Ultimately, these adjustments aren’t just about physically segregating spaces or devices; they are about cultivating a mental distinction between work responsibilities and personal life, nurturing a healthier and more sustainable work-life balance.

Remote work is not an office work-from-home

The transition to remote work during the pandemic in 2020 was a significant shift for many companies, revealing that it wasn’t just about relocating work from office desks to home laptops. The traditional corporate structure heavily reliant on in-person meetings and constant supervision faced challenges in this new remote landscape.

For example, the tendency of some corporate environments to schedule meetings back-to-back persisted in the virtual world through platforms like Zoom. However, this simulation of the office environment didn’t quite translate effectively. The crux lies in understanding that remote work and bringing the office home aren’t synonymous; they operate on fundamentally different principles.

Remote work thrives on asynchronous communication, which means less reliance on instant, real-time in-person conversations and more emphasis on methods like emails, project management tools, and shared documents. This is why I love emails and I prefer to sync everything to the cloud. Unlike the office setting, there might be fewer instances of constant managerial oversight, fostering a culture of personal accountability and autonomy among employees.

I think remote work also requires a shift from a ‘time spent working’ mindset to a ‘results-oriented’ approach. In an office environment, the focus might be on the number of hours spent at the desk. However, in remote setups, the emphasis shifts to the quality of work delivered, enabling people to take ownership of their work, manage their time more effectively and focus on productivity over mere presence, something that I certainly noticed in me over the years.

Home distractions are real

Working remotely sometimes feels like a blessing as it allows me to spend more time with family, but it’s not without the distractions of a comfortable home environment. As a working-from-home parent, managing kids’ interruptions is certainly a familiar challenge! Proximity to the kitchen and things like YouTube in the next browser tab can hamper focus too.

I tried a few productivity techniques, from the Pomodoro technique to time-blocking (which didn’t work for me), and eventually, a simple to-do list turned one to be the most effective for me. I use Things 3 as my main task manager app, which helps streamline tasks, prioritise activities, and maintain focus by providing a clear roadmap for the day. Even when distractions occur, which sometimes inevitably happen, the task manager and the system I’ve built around it allow me to stay on top of things.

All in all, I think remote work is truly a lifestyle and a mindset. It’s important to acknowledge that it may not suit everyone, and that’s perfectly fine. Much like I can hardly imagine returning to a daily office routine after a decade of autonomy, I understand that for some individuals, the notion of spending days at home might seem daunting. Our preferences and comfort zones vary, so I encourage everyone to discover what truly works best for them.

If you have any questions about staying productive (and keeping your sanity, haha) or anything related to remote work, let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Why I love email

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 22:32:40 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

In today’s world of quick messages and social media, emails often get overlooked and might seem old-fashioned. But for me, email is special.

Email is not just another app or specific platform. It’s a universal method of communication across the Internet and it can work in any mailing app, just like RSS works in any reader app or like websites work in any browser. For that reason alone, email is still around several decades later since its invention, and probably will be around for as long as the Internet exists.

What truly sets emails apart is the sanctuary they provide – no “seen” status looming over your shoulder, no pressure to reply immediately. Instead, you have the power to read and respond thoughtfully, at your own pace. The ability to flag, mark, and categorise emails grants extra control and organisation, which I appreciate too. Additionally, the capability to revisit email threads even years later is incredibly handy and adds to the reliability of email over instant messengers.

Certainly, sometimes it’s handier to chat via a messenger app or share voice memos, a practice I often engage in with my family and close friends. The only messenger app I’m quite keen on is Telegram. It steers clear of ads, doesn’t sell user data, and it’s just all-around convenient, making WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and even iCloud Messages look pretty shoddy in comparison. Yet, even with its perks, Telegram still locks users within its own system, unlike email, which is a universal protocol compatible with Gmail, Yahoo, Hey, Superhuman, or any other email services and platforms.

I’ve noticed that when I compose an email, I strive for clear, structured writing. Such asynchronous communication naturally helps me to convey my thoughts while paying attention to formatting, grammar, and other details, it’s as if the ‘send’ button almost creates friction, prompting a second thought before clicking it. And clear, structured writing often leads to clear, structured thinking – a valuable skill worth developing.

Fixed deadlines, flexed scopes

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 23:51:28 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

In the recent episode of The Rework Podcast titled “Your Estimates Suck”, David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried, the co-founders of 37signals, discussed an exciting technique that allows their company to be productive. 37signals is a software development company, so the discussion was related to that topic, but I think you can use this approach in many other areas in general.

So the premise is that people are terrible at estimating how long it takes to complete a particular task if it includes any novelty. If you make something cookie-cutter for the tenth time, you might be somewhat decent in your estimations but still not perfect. And if the process includes any form of creativity, making something new that you haven’t done before, then your estimates surely suck, as the podcast episode title suggests. And that’s okay; it’s just how our brains naturally work.

In practice, in many companies, it works like that. Let’s say someone wants to make a website. Some person, a project manager or a developer, usually gives their estimate: “It will take us six weeks to build it”, for example. By the 4th week, the team realised they hadn’t done even a half because certain features took them longer than expected. So after negotiating with the client, which took another week, they decided to postpone the launch for a month to give the team more time. Then the same happens again and again, and eventually, the demoralised team built a product that no longer reflects the client’s needs. On top of that, the company or the client had to pay for this much more than initially estimated because time is money.

I had experience working as a project manager in software development, so I know for a fact that my made-up example above is a pretty accurate illustration of what often happens in the industry.

So how is David’s and Jason’s approach different? First, it starts with acknowledging that estimates are no better than guessing, and guesses are not a reliable source for planning weeks, months, and especially years ahead. Second, they fix the timeframe and the deadline and never change them. And third, they ship the product on time no matter what, even when the resulting product isn’t quite what was planned. Instead of delivering a set-in-stone product that would take an unknown amount of time to make, they set the deadline in stone and ship what they believe is the best version of that product possible to make during that timeframe. With this approach, they basically say, “let’s spend an X amount of time to solve this problem, and once X is passed, we are done”.

Sounds controversial, right?

The key here is that you cannot sacrifice quality. Things you deliver must be good. What you can discuss and possibly cut, though, is the scope. Going back to that website example, using this approach, they would ship it after six weeks, but probably with fewer features. And having fewer features is not necessarily a bad thing. What’s important is that the company or the client would have an actual, good working product exactly when they wanted, even though the product might be slightly different. And that alone sometimes is enough to start generating profit or making decisions on further iterations based on real-life user interaction with your product rather than theorycrafting for months while your product is stuck in a never-ending “work in progress”.

I believe that this mindset of fixed deadline rather than the scope might be helpful outside of software development in things like marketing, personal projects, or even music production.

I’ve been hosting my monthly music podcast for more than a decade, and you know how often I would like to have just a little bit more time to find some new tracks to include in the show? Every time, pretty much! Luckily, I have a fixed deadline, so I keep delivering new episodes every month, even though each episode usually isn’t as ideal as I would like it to be. I’m sure I wouldn’t make nearly as many episodes if I’d kept polishing each one until perfection.

I think this paradigm of “fixed deadlines but flexed scopes” might be especially useful and act as a self-protective mechanism for creative work where it’s so tempting to keep working until a so-called “perfection” (which sometimes means infinite). And as they say, done is better than perfect.

Productivity system that helps me to achieve goals

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 22:06:51 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

How to do things that matter

I like productivity apps: to-dos, calendars, notes, timers, and things like that of all kinds. I like being organised and that feeling of satisfaction by completing a task (which is probably just a dopamine release, but whatever).

But what is productivity, exactly? What does it mean to be productive? If I tick ten to-do’s a day, am I productive? And what about other things that I want to do but don’t do? The usual excuse is, “I don’t have time for that”, so does it mean I need to improve my time management?

I started asking myself these questions about a year ago, and eventually, they led me to the whole system that I’m going to share today.

Backstory

One day, I remember completing yet another dozen tasks, but strangely enough, I felt it didn’t really move me anywhere. All of those tasks that I ticked every day were repetitive little tasks that helped to maintain where I am but didn’t contribute to moving the needle for me.

At the same time, ironically, I always felt behind and thought I could have done more. For example, I could release more music, but I had an excuse that I didn’t have time and felt bad about it.

So, on the one hand, I didn’t feel any progress despite completing many tasks. On the other hand, I felt guilt and anxiety for not doing things I could’ve done. That’s where I was in the middle of 2020 or so.

After that, I started to think about it: “Okay, I’m stuck like a hamster in the wheel and don’t move anywhere. Hm, but where exactly do I want to go in the first place?”.

That made me think even deeper, or rather higher if you think about it as zooming out from the ground level, and I asked myself what my goals are. Literally, my goals in life. “What do I want?” – that simple question became game-changing.

Now let me explain to you the key concepts of this approach, and then I’ll give some tips on how to turn it into a doable system that you can copy and use for yourself.

Goals

The first important thing is to write down your goals. You can use a pen and paper, or any note-taking app like Apple Notes, Google Docs, Bear, Notion, or whatever. I use Craft, but again, it doesn’t matter.

To find out what your goals are, you need to ask yourself “what do I want”. Asking this question seems obvious on paper, and yet we constantly get so busy and induced with information and distractions that we rarely ask ourselves any questions of that kind. For this reason, you may struggle to answer this question initially, and that’s okay, give yourself some time.

A goal can be anything. Spending a vacation in Barcelona can be a goal. Writing a sci-fi novel can be a goal. Releasing an album. Launching a course. Buying a house. Anything you want.

When writing down goals, you need to be very specific. And there is also a very tricky difference between focusing on the input versus the output.

For example, “have at least one gig a month” sounds like a nice goal for a starting DJ, right? The problem is a gig is an output, the result, and generally speaking, we have no or very little control over the outputs. You see, to get a gig, someone needs to book you to make it happen. And how do you know for certain whether someone will or will not book you? Well, you don’t!

Another and probably more common example of goals focused on the outputs could be “get 5 kg of lean mass” or “lose 5 kg of weight”. And although such numbers are very specific which is supposed to be a good thing, you don’t have direct control over them. Furthermore, not meeting those numbers can lead to disappointment and frustration. Instead, I’d suggest writing this as “Make a habit of exercising three times a week”, which is much more tangible and within your control.

Here’s something interesting. If you think about the example above, “Make a habit of exercising three times a week” doesn’t look like a goal unless exercising itself is your goal. I would say, for most people, exercising is probably a way to get healthier and feel more attractive. So in this case, “Get healthier and feel more attractive” might be the real goal, and exercising three times a week is just one of the many ways of achieving this goal. Be honest with yourself.

Values

If you are lucky enough and know what you want, then the answer to the question “why do I want this” is your value. For example, someone may say “I want to work remotely”, and that’s the goal. But why? The answer might be, “Because I value the freedom to work from anywhere I want”, and so in that case “the freedom” is the value for that person.

But sometimes it’s less obvious. Since we live in a monetary world, many things are tight to money or the possibilities it can provide, whether we like it or not. For example, oftentimes a person might see their job as a way of paying the bills, but not the actual thing they enjoy doing. So to eliminate money from the equation, I find the following thought experiment useful.

Imagine that you’ve got one million dollars. Or that you have an almost infinite amount of money, so you never need to worry about them again. Or that society is free from money and everyone does whatever they want. You can play around with the exact scenario of this thought experiment that feels best for you, but the main question is, what would you do then? How would you spend your resources, time and energy? What would change for you?

I’ll give you my example. At some point, I supposed that I run my advice series as one of the ways to contribute to increasing my income. Although the advice series is completely free, the idea was that when I share some helpful information, people start to see my expertise and the value I provide, so it helps to spread the word about my name, and eventually that influence leads to more business opportunities and hence more income. If you shorten the path, it can be expressed like “I run the advice series → I get more income”. And as a matter of fact, this blog does indeed give me an extra indirect income, as some people I worked with explicitly said that they wanted to do some business with me because of my writings, which only supported my initial belief.

However, after having that thought experiment I described above, I realised nothing would change for me. I would still run this blog and the advice series even if I had all money in the world. As it turns out, my motivation for doing that wasn’t financial at all. And that shift of perspective changed everything for me.

After that discovery, I went through all activities and things I do (or don’t do) and asked myself why. Sometimes it took me several layers of “why’s” to get to the real answers. For example, “I do A. Why? To get B. Why?”. That articulation of why is crucial, and I’ve learned so many things about myself. For example, I realised that I didn’t produce music due to a so-called lack of time but simply because I couldn’t answer the question “why”. It was a revelation.

So write down your values next to your goals or somewhere. These are the things that are important to you, your motivation. And they are usually very basic, like health, influence, fame, curiosity, et cetera. Again, be honest with yourself and make sure to understand why you want (or don’t want) certain things, as this understanding is crucial.

Projects and tasks

Once you know what and why do you want to achieve, it’s time to ask yourself “how am I going to achieve this”. This is where projects come into place.

A project is an action that requires more than a single step to complete. It’s a group of step-by-step to-do’s that ultimately will help you to achieve a particular goal. Some complex (usually long-term) goals may have several projects; others may have just one.

For example, “Plan a trip to Barcelona” is a project because it involves more than one step. These steps might include: decide on the exact dates, purchase flight tickets, book a hotel, plan the itinerary, research local sights to visit, pack a suitcase, etc. All of those little individual steps I call tasks, or to-dos.

To keep track of your projects, I highly suggest using some form of task manager. Again, it can be a pen and paper, an app, or whatever. I have another article on how I use a to-do list to manage my tasks and projects, so I won’t go over the details here.

Quarterly planning

This system of setting your goals, understanding your values, and executing them with actionable projects works great, at least for me. But life isn’t static; our priorities, conditions, and desires change. I use quarterly planning to reflect those changes, and the name suggests how often I do it.

Quarterly planning is a 1-on-1 meeting where I check in with myself. To make this process fun and enjoyable, I usually go to a new place such as a café where I can sit with my laptop and a cup of tea for about an hour or two without distractions.

During this process, I do the following:

Reflect on the last quarter’s results: write shortly about what I’ve been working on, what I’ve succeeded and failed at, and how I feel.
Mark previous goals completed if I have any.
Set new goals for the next quarter, making sure those goals align with my values and articulate why I want to achieve them. Sometimes I might have dozens of goals, but trying to achieve them all simultaneously would be not realistic. During this planning, I pick up just some of them, typically from one to three, and set them as a priority for the next quarter.
Identify actionable projects for these goals for the next quarter and add them to the task manager as a list of specific things to do.

I find this process essential for the piece of mind and clear vision. After that, I know exactly what to do and how things I do every day actually move me towards my goals. Just knowing this brings so much calm and clarity.

Do you remember at the beginning of the article I said that I felt guilty for not doing things I could’ve done? This priority system treats exactly this symptom. By saying “the next quarter I’m going to work on A, B, and C”, I also say to myself “I’m not going to work on D, E, F, and everything else”, which is a huge deal. Compare “I don’t do X because I don’t have time for it” and “I don’t do it because I have consciously chosen to do other things that are more meaningful to me now”, that difference is a big quality shift in the attitude.

To me, doing this planning every three months turned out to be the sweet spot. One and two months seem too short for many of my projects, whereas four, five, and more months seem way too far in the future.

Weekly reviews

While quarterly planning gives a strategic birds-eye view, weekly reviews help me to stay on track on a more tactical level.

During this review, I do the following:

Check calendar events for the upcoming week to evaluate how much time I can spend on my tasks on each day.
Figure out what I should focus on next week. One of the reasons I love my task manager, Things 3, is because I can set not only deadlines for the tasks but also the day I’m planning to start working on a given task. So I usually pick some important tasks from my projects and decide when I’m going to work on them.
Set deadlines and reminders for important tasks to ensure I didn’t miss anything.
Move to “Someday” tasks I won’t be doing in the coming weeks. This is again something about my particular task manager app, Things 3, but basically this “Someday” feature hides all tasks that I don’t need right now, so I always have only relevant to-dos in front of me.
Remove tasks that are no longer relevant or outdated, which should be self-explanatory.

Basically, this whole process is a quick clean up where I make sure that all action steps for my goals are reflected in my task manager appropriately. Unlike quarter planning which usually takes 1-2 hours as I think about my life goals, weekly reviews take about 20 minutes. I usually do them on Sundays to feel ready for the week ahead, so on Monday morning I wake up with a list of to-dos waiting for me, and I know that these tasks have meaning and contribute to my goals.

Doing quarterly planning at The Moon And Maybe. London, October 2022

Recap

There was probably a lot of information to digest, so let me quickly summarise:

Being productive means doing things that matter to you, your goals. It’s not about quantity but rather direction and consistency.
Write down your goals. Things you want in your life, no matter how big or small. Take your time.
Think about why you want to achieve those goals, that will be your values. Write them down too. The answers might surprise you.
Identify actionable projects for your goals, or the steps that would move you towards them.
Transfer those projects and to-dos to a task manager.
Check in with yourself and set priority goals every quarter to stay calm and focused.
Clean up the task manager weekly to stay on track.

Credit

Last but not least, I would like to give credit to Peter Akkies. Although I’ve read many of these ideas in various articles and books, his work inspired and “clicked” with me the most.

I hope my humble article will help someone, just like Peter’s helped me.

How to stay motivated and not burn out

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 21:09:50 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

Notes from Andrew Huberman’s lecture on dopamine

Discussions about health issues, and motivation, in particular, are often neglected in the music industry. And yet I know in person quite a few people who struggle with motivation after a big release or are burnt out despite having what seems like a success.

I came across a fascinating lecture by Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, about a molecule called dopamine and how it affects our motivation, drive, and even overall happiness. He discusses important questions, like why we perceive certain experiences differently; what dictates our so-called quality of life; how to keep focused and keep enjoying things that we do repetitively; what are underlying mechanisms of motivation and what behavioural patterns can reduce it; why sometimes being too ecstatic about big achievements can cause negative long-term effects; what’s an addiction; how our internal reward system works; and many, many more things around those topics. And it’s very useful for anyone, even outside the music career, of course.

I found this lecture so eye-opening, so I took some notes and shared them here my blog, even though it’s beyond the scope of typical posts in my blog.

Here is the full video that I encourage you to watch, and below are the notes that I took from it:

What it is

Dopamine is a very important molecule, a so-called neuromodulator. It’s not only responsible for pleasure, it’s responsible for motivation, drive, and craving. It also controls time perception and is related to body movements.

There is always a baseline level of dopamine in our bodies. When you feel excited and motivated, it’s called tonic and phasic release: tonic is always there circulating in the brain, and phasic are the peaks above the baseline. These two things interact, and it’s important. Dopamine can change the way our neural circuits work at a local scale (synaptic) and at a very broad scale (volumetric, affecting many neurones).

Peaks

If you were to take a drug or supplement that increases your level of dopamine, you are influencing both the local and volumetric releases of dopamine. This is related back to the baseline and the big peak above the baseline. And that turns out to be important. Many drugs and supplements will actually make it harder for you to sustain dopamine over long periods of time and to achieve those peaks that most of us are craving when we are in pursuit of things.

Why? Because if you get both volumetric releases, the duping out of dopamine everywhere, and you’re getting a local release, it means that the difference between the peak and baseline is likely to be smaller. And how satisfying or exciting or pleasureful a given experience depends on the height of that peak relative to the baseline. So if you increase the baseline and you increase the peak, you’re not going to achieve more and more pleasure from things. Just increasing dopamine will make you excited for all things, it will make you feel very motivated, but it will also make that motivation very short-lived.

Perception

Dopamine is unique in our brain, it communicates with other neurones slower through G protein-coupled receptors. It slows, but can have multiple cascade effects. So its effects tend to take a while in order to occur.

Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals, especially humans, for moving us towards goals. How much dopamine is in our system at any one time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago and how much we remember enjoying a particular experience of the past dictates your so-called quality of life and your desire to pursue things. It’s the way we track pleasure, it’s the way we track success. Even subtle fluctuations in dopamine really shape our perception of life and what we’re capable of, and how we feel.

This is why when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up.

All of us have different baseline levels of dopamine. Some of this is sure to be genetic.

Epinephrine, also called adrenaline is the main chemical driver of energy. We can’t do anything, anything at all, unless we have some level of epinephrin in our brain and body. Epinephrin and adrenalin are manufactured from dopamine.

Appreciation

The cortical part is important. The cortical part actually has a very specific part, which is your prefrontal cortex. The area of your forebrain that’s involved in thinking and planning, and involved in assigning a rational explanation to something, and involved in assigning a subjective experience to something. So, for instance, a pen that I’m holding right now, it’s one of the Pilot V5s, I just happen to love them, I like the way they write, and how they feel. If I spent enough time thinking about it or talking about it, I could probably get a dopamine release increase just talking about this pen. As we start to engage with something more and more, and we say about it, and what we encourage ourselves to think about it, has a profound impact on its rewarding or non-rewarding properties. Now, it’s not simply the case that you can lie to yourself. What’s been found over and over again is that if people journal about something, or they practice some form of appreciation for something, or they think of some aspect of something that they enjoy, the amount of dopamine that that behaviour will evoke tends to go up.

Layers

There used to be a cigarette and a cup of coffee, or when people drink alcohol, oftentimes they’ll smoke. And it’s well-known that different compounds like alcohol and nicotine, or caffeine and nicotine, or certain behaviours and certain drugs can synergise to give bigger dopamine increases. And turns out it’s not the best approach: layering together multiple things, substances and activities that lead to a big increase in dopamine, can actually create pretty severe issues with motivation and energy right after those experiences and even a couple of days later.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t take the occasional pre-workout if that’s your thing, or drink a cup of coffee before working out; some people enjoy that. But if you do it too often, what you’ll find is that your capacity to release dopamine and your level of motivation, drive and energy overall will take a serious hit.

Celebration

Once we achieve certain things we wanted, our baseline of dopamine reduces for a while. And it doesn’t just go back down to the level it was before, it goes to a level below what it was before you went out seeking that thing.

“I’m going to run this marathon, I’m going to train for that marathon”, and when you run the marathon and cross the finish line, you feel great. And you think, “Okay, now I’m set off for the entire year, I’m going to feel so much better, I’m going to feel this accomplishment in my body, it’s going to be so great”. That’s not what happens. You might feel some of those things, but your level of dopamine has actually dropped below the baseline. Now, eventually, it will ratchet back up, but two things are really important.

First of all, the extent to which it drops below the baseline is proportional to how high the peak was. So if you cross the finish line pretty happy, it won’t drop that much below baseline afterwards; if you cross the finish line ecstatic, well, a day or two later, you’re going to feel quite a bit lower than you would otherwise. It’s so-called postpartum depression that people experience after giving birth or after some big win, graduation, or any kind of celebration. This is very important to underground because this happens on very rapid timescales and it can last quite a long time.

It also explains the behaviour that most of us are familiar with of engaging in something that we really enjoy. But if we continue to engage in that behaviour over and over again, it kind of loses its edge. It starts to feel less exciting to us.

Addiction

Dopamine is released in the system only when it’s ready; when it’s synthesised. If you take something or do something that leads to huge increases in dopamine, afterwards your baseline should drop because there isn’t a lot of dopamine around to keep your baseline level going.

Fortunately, most people do not experience or pursue enormous increases in dopamine leading to severe drops in the baseline. Many people do, however, and that’s what we call addiction. When somebody pursues a drug or an activity that leads to huge increases in dopamine, and now you understand that afterwards the baseline of dopamine drops because of depletion of dopamine, that readily releasable pool. The dopamine is literally not around to be released, and so people feel pretty louse. And many people make the mistake of then going and pursuing the dopamine-evoking, dopamine-releasing activity or substance again, thinking mistakenly that it’s going to bring up their baseline, it’s going to give them that peak again. Not only does it not give them a peak, but their baseline also gets lower and lower because they’re depleting dopamine more and more.

Burning out

What about the more typical scenario? What about the scenario of somebody who is really good at working during the week, they exercise during the week, they drink on the weekends. Well, that person is only consuming alcohol maybe one or two nights a week, but oftentimes that same person will be spiking their dopamine with food during the middle of the week. Now, we all have to eat, and it’s nice to eat foods that we enjoy. But let’s say they’re eating foods that really evoke a lot of dopamine release in the middle of the week, they’re drinking one or two days on the weekend, they are one of these work hard, play hard type. So they’re swimming a couple of miles in the middle of the week, they’re going out dancing once on the weekend. Sounds like a pretty balanced life as I describe it, right?

Well, here’s the problem. The problem is that dopamine is not just evoked by one of these activities, dopamine is evoked by all of these activities. And dopamine is one universal currency of craving, motivation, desire, and pleasure. There’s only one currency. It makes sense why that person after several years of work hard, play hard, would say, “you know, I’m feeling kind of burnt out.” What is happening is they’re spiking dopamine through so many different activities throughout the week that their baseline is progressively dropping. And in this case, it can be very subtle, so it’s difficult to notice in the short term, but it kicks in the long term.

Now, of course, we all should engage in activities that we enjoy, everybody should. A huge part of life is pursuing activities and things that we enjoy. The key thing is to understand the relationship between the peaks and the baseline and to understand how they influence one another. Because once you do that, you can start to make really good choices in the short run and in the long run to maintain your level of dopamine baseline, maybe even raise that level of dopamine baseline and still get those peaks and still achieve those feelings of elevated motivation.

Healthy approach

There are optimal ways to engage in activities or to consume things that evoke dopamine. The key lies in the intermittent release of dopamine, and the key is to not expect or chase high levels of dopamine release every time we engage in these activities.

Intermittent reward schedules are the central schedule by which casinos keep you gambling. There’s something called dopamine reward prediction error. When we expect something to happen, we are highly motivated to pursue it. If it happens, great, we get the reward. The reward comes in various chemical forms including dopamine, and we are more likely to engage in that behaviour again. This is the basis of casino gambling. This is how they keep you going back again and again, even though on average the house does win.

That intermittent reinforcement schedule is actually the best schedule to export to other activities. How do you do that? Well, first of all, if you are engaged in activities, school, sport, relationship etc, where you experience a win, you should be very careful about allowing yourself to experience huge peaks in dopamine unless you’re willing to suffer the crash that follows and waiting a period of time for it to come back up.

What would this look like in the practical sense? Well, let’s say you’re somebody who kind of likes exercise but forces yourself to do it, but you make it pleasureful by giving yourself your favourite cup of coffee first, or maybe taking a pre-workout drink, or taking an energy drink, or listening to your favourite music. And then you’re in the gym and you’re listening to music, that all sounds great, right? Well, it is great except that by laying together all these things to try and achieve that dopamine release, and by getting a big peak in dopamine, you’re actually increasing the number of conditions required to achieve pleasure from that activity again.

And so there is a form of this where sometimes you do all the things that you love to get the optimal workout. You listen to your favourite music, you got your favourite time of day, you have a pre-workout drink if that’s your thing; you do all the things that give you that best experience of the workout for you. But there is also a version of this where sometimes you don’t do the dopamine-enhancing activities. You don’t ingest anything to increase your dopamine. You just do the exercise. You might think, “well, that sounds lame. I want to continue to enjoy exercising”. Ah, well, that’s exactly the point! If you want to maintain motivation for school, exercise, relationships or pursuits of any duration in kind, the key thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine, if it’s very high, doesn’t occur too often. And if something that does occur very often that you vary how much dopamine you experience with each engagement in that activity.

The reason why I can’t give a very specific protocol, like delete dopamine or lower dopamine every third time, is that that wouldn’t be intermittent. The whole basis of intermittent reinforcement is that you don’t really have a specific schedule of when dopamine is going to be high, and when dopamine is going to be low. That’s a predictable schedule, not a random intermittent schedule. So do like the casinos do, it certainly works for them, and for activities that you would like to continue to engage in overtime, whatever those happen to be, start paying attention to the amount of dopamine and excitement and pleasure that you achieve with those, and start modulating that somewhat at random. There are a lot of different ways to do this.

For those of you that are begging for more specificity, we can give you a tool. One would be, you can flip a coin before engaging in any of these types of activities and decide whether or not you are going to allow other dopamine-supportive elements to go, for instance, into the gym with you. Are you going to listen to music or not? If you enjoy listening to music, well then flip a coin, and if it comes up heads, bring the music in, and if it comes up tails, don’t. It sounds like you’re undercutting your own progress, but actually, you are serving your own progress, both short-term and long-term, by doing that.

Smartphones

It’s extremely common nowadays to see people texting and taking selfies and communicating in various ways, listening to podcasts, listening to music, and doing all sorts of things while they engage in other activities. That’s all wonderful, it gives depth and richness and colour to life, but it isn’t just about our distracted nature when we’re engaging with the phone, it’s also a way of layering in dopamine. And it’s no surprise that levels of depression and lack of motivation are really on the increase.

I know this is a hard one for many people, but I do invite you to try removing multiple sources of dopamine release, or what used to be multiple sources of dopamine release, from activities that you want to continue to enjoy or that you want to enjoy more.

Rewards

Hard work is hard. Generally, most people don’t like working hard. Some people do, but most people work hard in order to achieve some end goals. End goals are terrific, and rewards are terrific, whether or not they are monetary, social or any kind. However, because of the way that dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard at something for the sake of a reward that comes afterwards can make the hard work much more challenging and make us much less likely to lean into hard work in the future.

Let me give a couple of examples by way of data and experiments. There’s a classic experiment done at Stanford many years ago in which children in nursery school and kindergarten drew pictures, and they drew pictures cause they like to draw. The researchers took kids that liked to draw, and started giving them a reward for drawing. The reward generally was a gold star or something that a young child would find rewarding. Then they stopped giving them the gold star. And what they found is the children had a much lower tendency to draw on their own. No reward. Now, remember this was an activity that prior to receiving a reward, the children intrinsically enjoyed to do, no one was telling them to draw. What this relates to is so-called intrinsic versus extrinsic reinforcement. When we receive rewards, even if we give ourselves rewards for something, we tend to associate less pleasure with the actual activity itself that evoked the reward.

This doesn’t mean all rewards of all kinds are bad, but it’s also important to understand that dopamine controls our perception of time. When and how much dopamine we experience is the way that we carve up what we call our experience of time. When we engage in an activity, let’s say school or hard work of any kind, or exercise because of the reward we are going to give ourselves a receive at the end, the trophy, the meal, whatever it happens to be. We actually are extending the time bin over which we are analysing or perceiving that experience. And because the reward comes at the end, we start to dissociate the neural circuits for dopamine reward that would have normally been active during the activity. And because it all arrives at the end over time, we have the experience of less and less pleasure from that particular activity while we’re doing it.

The striving to be better, this mindset of “I’m not there yet”, but striving itself is the end goal. And that delivers a tremendous performance. And all of us can cultivate a growth mindset. The neural mechanism of cultivating growth mindset involves learning to access the rewards from effort and doing.

If you say “Oh, I’m going to do this very hard thing, and I’m going to push and push and push for that end goal that comes later”, not only you enjoy the process of what you’re doing less, you actually make it more painful while you’re engaging in it, you make yourself less efficient at it, and also undermining your ability to lean back into that activity the next time. The next time you need twice as much coffee and four times as much energy drink just to get out the door in order to do the run or to study.

So what’s more beneficial, in fact, it can serve as a tremendous amplifier on all endeavours that you engage in, is to not start layering in other sources of dopamine in order to get to the starting line, but rather to subjectively start to attach the feeling of friction and effort to an internally generated reward system. The ability to access this pleasure from the effort aspect of our dopaminergic circuitry is without question the most powerful aspect of dopamine and our biology of dopamine.

Don’t spike dopamine prior to engaging in effort, and don’t spike dopamine after engaging in effort, learn to spike your dopamine from the effort itself.

Knowledge of knowledge can help our forebrain with getting a reward from the process itself. And that’s the beauty of these dopamine circuits. It’s not just attached to the more primitive behaviours of food, sex, heat etc., it’s also attached to the things that we decide are good for us and are important for us. So telling yourself that exercise or fasting or studying or listening better or any kind of behaviour is good for you will actually reinforce the extent to which it is good for you at a chemical level.

Social connections

Social connections, close social connections, in particular, evoke oxytocin release. Those are the romantic type, parent-child type, and friendship related. And oxytocin release is central to stimulating the dopamine pathways. So the take-home message here is quite simple: engage is pursuing quality, healthy social interactions.

How and why to keep a budget

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 16:44:13 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

Since 2017, I have been keeping a family budget: I record and track all income and expenses. Let me tell you how I came to do it, what it does for me and how you can start doing it regularly too.

Screenshot from the budgeting application website. The data is not mine

Backstory

This may sound strange, but the first time I thought about the need to keep a budget was not to check expenses but to answer the simple question: “How much money do we have now?

At the time, I was living in Israel, but I was still doing business with Moscow. In the Russian bank, I had a personal account, a savings account, a sole-trader account, and a credit card. In the Israeli bank, I had a personal account and a family account. I also had accounts at PayPal and Yandex-money, which were popular then. My wife had almost all of the same. And we also had some cash in rubles, shekels, and foreign currency left over from trips abroad.

At the same time, there was some small movement of money in all the accounts because of various automatic payments paid from those accounts. For example, I paid my utility bills with an Israeli card, I paid for my website hosting with Yandex-money, and I paid for Soundcloud via PayPal.

It was real chaos, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that I didn’t know how much money I had at a given time. So at first, I just wrote down all the accounts I had, and then I decided to track all the income and expenses to keep those accounts’ balances up to date.

Benefits

When you have all your income and expenses written down, you have an objective picture of your financial situation and can make better decisions.

For example, it may seem that you spend a lot on Uber, so you need a car. But if you write down your expenses, you may find that you spend just £70 per month on taxis, which is a few times less than the cost of owning your own car, let alone the initial cost of buying one.

Or it might seem like you only have Netflix and Spotify subscriptions, for example, for £15 per month. But if you write down all expenses, you may find that you have more subscriptions, including annual ones, so realistically all the subscription services cost you an average of £100 per month.

What to do with this information is up to you. The main thing is that you will be able to rely on real figures rather than guesswork.

Having such an objective picture has helped me plan my future better and make bolder decisions. I feel more in control of my own life, and that’s worth a lot.

It is also fascinating to record not only expenses but also different categories of income: for example, I now know precisely how much I earn from my music without any illusions.

Tips

Not everyone needs or wants to keep a budget. If the very thought of having to write down every expense terrifies you, there is nothing wrong with you. Many people prefer to go with the flow and not think about such things, which is perfectly normal.

However, if you want to take more financial control of your life and start budgeting, here is my advice:

Keep a budget in a separate app. Many banks’ apps have learned to categorise expenses and make nice graphs, but I recommend a separate app. It is important that you can add different accounts to it (for example, an account from another bank or a PayPal account, if you have one) and set up your own categories of expenses and income to make it more personal.
Find an app that works for you. I know how important this is: I’ve started and quit five times just because an app was uncomfortable or unappealing. This is very subjective, so I’m not specifically naming the app I use – just google it and try different options.
Keep records without tension. This is a very important point because as soon as there is tension, some minimal friction, you immediately want to quit. If you get resistance, it may be worth trying a different app – see the previous point.
Write everything down. This is crucial. If the data in your app no longer reflect reality, it will all become meaningless. That is why I recommend writing down all incomes and expenditures, even the smallest ones. It takes me about half an hour a week, and so as not to forget, I have created a recurring to-do in my to-do list.

I would be glad if anyone finds my experience useful.

What is RSS and how to use it

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 14:32:56 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

And also how to read blogs, media, and social media pages using RSS

To read interesting blogs and pages on the Internet, I use a thing called RSS. Turns out, not many people know about RSS, so I will tell you what it is and how to use it.

The problem with following on social media

It usually goes like this. When you discover an interesting person or brand, you want to follow them. For example, you find and follow a musician on Instagram or another social network. You’re interested in the person or their work, so you subscribe to their page to get new content from them. Seems logical.

The problem is that the algorithmic social media feeds don’t do a very good job of showing you the content of the authors you subscribe to. To be clear, they don’t have that task at all.

Let’s suppose you are subscribed to the Facebook page of someone you are interested in, but that person rarely posts anything there, once a month or even once every three months. And if the page has few posts and its posts get not many ”likes,” the algorithm of the social networks considers this page “uninteresting” and may not show its new post in your feed. This is known to everyone trying to run their social media pages. In my experience, on average, posts on social networks are only shown to 10-15% of the page followers.

On top of that, as soon as you go to any social network, you are attacked from all sides by notifications, banners, reposts from some unknown friends, advertising, and cats. That is, even if you try to open Instagram or Facebook for something useful, you are inevitably confronted with a bunch of unnecessary information that no one asked for. (Of course, if the goal is just to kill time, then social networks are great, but that’s a conversation for another topic altogether).

In addition to social networks, there are periodicals, blogs and other sites. For example, in the post about the benefits of blogs I advised starting blogging on your own domain. But it begs the question: how do you read content scattered across dozens of different sites? Usually, people follow pages on social media for this exact reason, to read all posts in one app. Also, most people and even brands don’t have their own standalone blogs, so there is no place to follow them except social networks. What to do then?

This is where it’s time to talk more about RSS.

What is RSS

RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) is a way to subscribe to any updated content. RSS can be used to subscribe to anything with a so-called feed: blogs, social media pages, and even services like Soundcloud or YouTube.

It’s important to understand that RSS is not a specific app, but an open technology. Like email, for example. RSS has been around for decades, and it’s all the more surprising that so few people know about it.

How to use RSS

To subscribe and read content using RSS, you need a special app, a reader. It’s like for web surfing we use browsers such as Safari or Chrome, so for reading content on RSS you need an app too.

I use an app called Reeder 5. Here is what it looks like:

Reeder 5 on macOS

If you are on a Mac, I highly recommend this particular reader: it looks great, works great and syncs quickly between devices via iCloud.

If you are a Windows user, check out Feedly. It works right in your browser, like Gmail for email. Feedly is not as cool as Reeder, but nothing better for Windows as far as I know.

To add someone to my reader app, or to subscribe to someone, I click the “plus sign” at the top left (I press the ⌘+N shortcut, of course) and paste the page’s web address. This way I sort of form my personal newsfeed of those authors I’m interested in, even if one is on Instagram, another is on Facebook, and the third is a news website, for example.

The best thing about RSS

The RSS reader allows you to group authors into folders, mark posts as unread, and add them to favourites. Also, there are no annoying ads, reposts, or other information garbage in RSS. That’s all great, but it’s not the best thing.

The best thing is that the content is waiting for you rather than demanding your attention here and now. Social networks are like this: if you haven’t been there for a day or two, all recent posts are already “drowned” in your feed. Many people develop the so-called FOMO because of this — an obsessive fear of missing out on something interesting that is provoked by social networking.

On the RSS, the posts are always waiting for you regardless of any algorithms and precisely in the chronological order in which the authors published them. Obviously, if you won’t open an RSS app for months, you may accumulate a lot of posts. Well, and that’s totally okay — they’ll be waiting, so take your time and enjoy reading later.

in RSS, the content is waiting for you rather than demanding your attention here and now

I’ve even noticed this: after I practically stopped ~~mindlessly spending hours~~ using social media, and instead started very selectively subscribing to specific authors of interest to me by RSS, I began to feel much better about myself. Less anxiety, less procrastination. More control, more usefulness. I can’t guarantee you’ll feel the same way, but this is how I feel.

How to add social media pages to RSS

To subscribe by RSS, all you have to do is put the page’s address into the reader, as I wrote above. But under the hood, things are a bit trickier: for a site to be added to the RSS reader, it must have a special file with special formatting, which is where all the new posts are collected. This file is called feed. Most news sites and blogs have such a file.

Usually, you don’t need to know this because the reader finds this file on the site. For example, if you paste the address of my blog dsokolovskiy.com/blog/ into the reader, the app will quietly search my feed link and actually subscribe to dsokolovskiy.com/blog/rss/, because this is my blog’s feed address. You probably won’t even notice such technical detail, and again, this knowledge is usually unnecessary.

However, it’s a little different with social networks. If you paste a link to, for example, an Instagram profile, the reader will likely give you an error: “Sorry, there is no feed at this address”. Social networks are doing everything they can to retain an audience within their platforms to show people more ads and simply don’t generate feeds for user pages. Social networks don’t want you to read their posts at a convenient time and in a convenient RSS reader, bypassing ads and notifications of new likes from your friends.

Fortunately, there are services like RSS Bridge and RSS.app that turn content from third-party services into feeds that readers can understand. Just exactly what we need! It works for Instagram, Telegram, Mixcloud, and many other sites that don’t generate the feed file themselves. I’ve been using these services for quite a long time, so I recommend them.

Bonus: who to subscribe to

At different times my RSS reader has had anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred authors. From time to time I unsubscribe from some, and add others. It’s such a living, ongoing process. But if you’re just starting out or have decided to try using the RSS, here are a few sources and people I recommend subscribing to:

DJ TechTools, DJ community. They write about equipment, software, artists, and industry news.

Sound On Sound: Recording & Mixing, a podcast about recording and mixing music from one of the oldest music magazines. They share how to make transients, in what order to put the effects chain, how to use dynamic equalization, and other subtleties.

Concept Art World, a showcase of digital artists and conceptual art. They post illustrations of stunning beauty. These works inspire half of the tracks I’ve written.

John 00 Fleming, DJ, producer, and owner of the JOOF Recordings label, where I help him with A&R. Aside from announcing tours, new releases, and other typical artist content, John is one of the few who gives interesting behind-the-scenes details about his DJ career and perspective on the industry. You can learn a lot from him if you want to.

Blog posts about John Fleming

Jason Fried, entrepreneur, co-author of Basecamp, Hey, and the books Rework and Remote. He gives an interesting perspective on business, management, marketing and PR.

Jason Fried on marketing by sharing

Ilya Birman — designer, DJ, creator of the blog engine on which my blog runs. He writes about product and navigation design, music, philosophy, life.

Well, subscribe to my blog too, of course!

If you know any cool authors or magazines to read – post link in the comments, I’d love to subscribe to them too.

Music listening routine

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 13:56:19 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

Tell me how you organize the process of listening to music: demos coming to the label and just new releases in different genres. Do you listen on the speakers or on headphones? Do you multitask it with other things (like replying to emails and doing social media stuff)? Do people around you complain about the constant “boom-boom”? How do you manage to stay focused on the music to listen to all the tracks thoroughly?

Nikolay Glazyrin

Thanks for asking. I honestly don’t know how it could be helpful to anyone, but I’d be happy to share.

Listening to demo recordings

First let me tell you about the demos. The demos come in an endless stream of about 30 to 100 emails a week to the label. To reply to all of them at once as they appear in the inbox means to be constantly distracted and waste attention, and I try to work in a concentrated way. Moreover, some tracks are so bad that I can’t listen to them just in the background :-) That’s why for some time I put emails into a special pile and then answer them all at once – it’s more productive that way.

Read about A&R duties

Speaking of email, I use HEY. There you can literally click “Reply Later” on emails and then respond to them all at once in “Focus & Reply” mode. It really helps. HEY is cool in general, maybe I’ll tell you more about it later.

Listening to music

Now about listening to music in general. I have two listening modes, as I call them: passive and active.

Passive mode is when I listen to music in the background, doing my own thing. I used to listen to Soundcloud, Apple podcasts, radio stations, and YouTube, but now 95% of my background listening happens on Spotify because everything is more convenient and there’s a better chance of finding something good.

Usually, I turn on some suggested playlist on Spotify or a “Song radio” based on a track I like and go about my business in comfort. I don’t concentrate on the music in any special way, which is exactly why I call this kind of listening mode “passive” – something is playing, and that’s fine.

As soon as I notice something cool playing, I press ⌥+space and <3 – this is the system-wide shortcut I made to automatically “like” tracks, i.e. to save them in my collection. And then it’s also broadcast to the Telegram channel. It’s faster than switching between applications and clicking on the tiny “heart” next to the track’s name.

A heart, kind of. Alfred app

The automation is set up with Alfred app and the Spotify Mini Player script. Alfred is fantastic, maybe someday I’ll tell you about it too.

This way I listen to music for about ten hours a day, so I happen to find quite a lot of interesting stuff. I usually play background music through my speakers.

Of course, not all music suits the background, especially if you need to work thoughtfully: for example, I find it hard to do with hard techno, but I’m okay with progressive house or chillout.

Active mode is when I’m purposefully looking for something: a track with the right tempo and key, a new release from a particular artist or other releases from a particular label. It’s important to hear the details, so I often listen with headphones while actively searching.

I used to use the Beatport Pro desktop app for this, but since the beginning of 2021, it has been discontinued. Now I use the Beatport website, even though it is much slower and more limited than the app, plus old-good Spotify.

I only need to listen to a track for about five seconds to know if it’s a good fit. This is a very highly concentrated listening mode in terms of the amount of new musical information per unit of time, so I can’t listen like that for a long time – two or three hours at the most. It’s important to take breaks, otherwise, my ears get soaked and I might miss something interesting. During the breaks, I either go back to background listening or get away from the computer altogether and switch to something else: running (also with music, of course), eating or sleeping.

Luckily, I don’t cause any trouble for the surrounding people, not anymore :-)

A new studio!

Fellow readers, where and how do you listen to music?

Why you should run a blog

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 14:29:54 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

And where to start, what to write about, and why you shouldn’t blog on social networks

I enjoy reading the blogs of various people: marketers, designers, developers, promoters, entrepreneurs, editors, and specialists in other fields. And I noticed that among my reading list, there are very few representatives of the music industry. And I’m not talking about media, I’m talking about specialists’ blogs of people who would share their personal experiences.

And then I thought: what if someone wants to start a blog but does not know how? Or someone doubts why they need a blog when they have Instagram?

Whether you are a DJ, a music producer, a label manager, or a specialist of any kind (not just in the music industry), I’d like to encourage more good blogs, so in this post I’ll talk about the benefits of blogging and where to start.

There are different kinds of blogs
First, let me clarify that blogs’ content and purpose can be different. I distinguish at least two main types: personal and professional blogs.

A personal blog is when the author talks about daily life, posts family photos and reflects on current events. If the author is not a well-known media personality, such a blog is unlikely to be of interest to anyone except a small number of people he or she knows in person.

A professional blog is when the specialist shares the intricacies of his profession, talks about the projects he has done, the problems and their solutions, new skills and useful observations. Such blogs are interesting to read, even if unfamiliar with the author.

Here I talk about the second type of blog specifically.

Why blogging

When I talk to someone about starting a blog, I often hear a question along the lines of “Who’s going to read me?”. And it’s a reasonable question: If you don’t already have an audience of your own, you’ll probably be the only visitor of your blog, at least for a while. In addition, the Internet already has almost everything.

However, in my opinion, the main benefit of a blog is not that people read you at all. If you write interestingly and for a long period of time, sooner or later, you are sure to get an audience that reads you, but that’s a nice consequence, kind of a bonus side-effect and not a reason to start writing.

Here are some good reasons to blog:

To systematize your experience. Knowing and understanding something are not the same thing. When you explain something by writing a blog, you understand it much better. That’s exactly what happened to me with the advice series: it would seem that if I’m advising someone something, I’m probably good at it myself, right? But the truth is that I have become good at some things because I explain them to others. Thanks to the blog, the experience is better learned and solidified.

In the advice series, I share my experiences and answer readers’ questions about music production, DJing, performing, marketing, management, and other aspects of the music industry

To improve your skills: writing, language, discipline. It takes practice to become good at something. Being able to write clearly and present your thoughts in a clear, structured way is no exception. And who writes clearly, thinks clearly. Such skills are worth cultivating.

To spread knowledge about yourself and your business. There is an interesting thing with specialist blogs: when you read the behind-the-scenes details of some profession, you inevitably notice that the author clearly knows his stuff, since he understands and talks about all these subtleties. That is how the reputation of an expert is formed. And such a reputation builds trust and opens up new opportunities.

Marketing by sharing by Jason Fried

To save time so you don’t have to explain the same thing over and over again. Imagine that you’ve written a large, comprehensive post about how you do business. And then in a conversation, someone asks you about this topic. And now, instead of telling everything all over again, you can kindly offer the person to read about it on your blog if he or she is interested. For example, I wrote this very post for this exact reason because I had to explain it several times.

To help people. Most of the time you probably won’t even know it. People tend to react more strongly to things they don’t like than to be thankful for things that help them. Nevertheless, rest assured that the knowledge you share will help others learn something new, come to unusual conclusions, or inspire development in their field. Isn’t that great?

These are definitely not all the reasons for blogging, but they’re good enough to get you started.

Run a blog for yourself to systematize experiences, improve skills, and spread knowledge

What to write about

Let’s say you’ve decided to blog. And then you might be confused: “So what is there to write about?”. The thing is, when you know something, all things seem simple and obvious to you, and you’d be like: “Everybody knows that!”

My advice is to write about what you’re doing and explain why you’re doing it that way:

For example, an engineer does mastering of the tracks. How does he do it? What kind of equipment does he use? How is gear better than software plug-ins, and is it better? Does stem mastering really worth it? How to prepare tracks for mastering? How much headroom in volume should a producer leave and why? Is it necessary to do a separate mastering for each streaming platform? Is there really a “volume war” and should producers be worried? Can a DJ play non-mastered tracks? Why do we need mastering at all?

It would seem an ordinary routine that an engineer faces every day, but there is so much to tell! And so it is with almost all professions. Talk about it, and the blog will become your best portfolio.

Another thing I advise you to do is to define for yourself some topics or categories. For example, on this blog I write about DJing, performing, music, marketing, productivity, and professional growth. You don’t have to think of all of such topics ahead of time, but it may be easier for the authors to start writing by identifying a few similar topics in their field.

Where to start

First, you need to decide where you want to write: on a third-party service or on your own standalone blog.

Third-party services are so-called blogging platforms: sites on which you sign up and start a blog. Probably the most popular ones are Tumblr, Blogger, Medium.

A standalone blog is a site that runs on your server and is under your control. I strongly recommend this option, and I explain why below.

To start your own standalone blog, you need three things:

Domain	The address where the blog is available. For example, dsokolovskiy.com
Hosting	The server where the files are stored.
Engine	The program which runs the blog.

For some people, these words may seem very frightening, but in fact, buying a domain name and renting hosting is not more difficult than signing up on Medium or purchasing anything online. The engine installation is somewhat different, but it depends on what to choose.

Running and maintaining a blog costs money: a domain name will cost about $10 per year, and hosting is roughly another $20 per year. The engines are usually free. Here are some popular names: WordPress, Drupal, Aegea.

My blog runs on Aegea. The beauty of this engine is that it has no typical “admin panels” with complicated user interfaces. Aegea makes blogging as easy as possible, and it’s a pleasure to write in it. It also has everything you need to make it look and work properly right out of the box: automatic typography, search, tags, drafts, a mobile version, a built-in audio player, comments (you can disable them if you don’t need them), and much, much more. By comparison, on WordPress or Drupal you would need a programmer and a designer to do all that, but with Aegea, you install it, and it just works.

The Aegea website visually demonstrates how the engine works

Why not Instagram

Some readers may wonder, “Why bother when social media is around? Why set up and pay for a standalone blog when you can do the same on Instagram? Why do all that when you can just as much systematize your experience, improve your skills, and spread the knowledge on a Facebook page? You can blog on social media, right?”

Can you blog on social media – yes, you can. You can do anything, frankly! But that said, there are fundamental disadvantages to social media that are worth keeping in mind.

Anything is possible, but

In my opinion, here are a few major flaws:

You don’t own the content. Everything you write and post on social networks belongs to corporations, not to you. In practice, this means that your years of work can disappear in a flash because the social network closes down (think of MySpace). Or because the service will become hopelessly outdated and no one is interested in it (look at LiveJournal). Or because moderators will find your post inappropriate to their guidelines and block your profile. Choosing social media as your primary platform for publishing thoughtful posts does not value your time and efforts. And all of this is true for third-party blogging platforms as well, which is why I recommend starting your own standalone blog.

Form affects content. Each social network defines a certain format, and you have to adjust the content to fit it. For example, you cannot publish more than 280 characters on Twitter in one post. On Instagram, you cannot post just text without a picture. Facebook, as experiments suggest, reduces the reach of link posts, so people get creative, publish a picture, and leave the link in the comment below it. Or at some point, the author realizes that if he takes a long break between posts, fewer people like them, and when fewer people like the post, the social network algorithms consider this content uninteresting and don’t show it to the rest of the audience, and eventually the race for engagement begins.

You are not in control. If the social network changes its design tomorrow, and not for the better, there is nothing you can do about it because you are not in control. If a social network starts running ads through every post you share, there’s nothing you can do about it because you are not in control. If a social network removes some of the functionality you’ve been relying on, as you’ve probably guessed, there’s nothing you can do about it because you are not in control. Can you easily find any of your posts from ten years ago? Or edit it? Or structure it in any meaningful way? No, no, and no, because you have no control over anything on social media.

On social media, you don’t own the content and have no control over anything. Relying on social media means not valuing your time and efforts

There’s nothing like that with your blog, and it’s exactly the opposite. You have full access to all texts, images, and files. You are free to decide whether the design of your blog will change or remain exactly the same twenty years from now. You can add or remove features as you need them. You can organize everything the way you want.

“Wait a minute!”, some probably will argue. “But social media has an entire audience! Instagram has one billion monthly active users, and my blog will have one person. So what, are you suggesting that I should just give up on social media altogether?”

Well, it is naive to think that once you create a new Facebook page, a Telegram channel, or an account on Medium.com, you will immediately have thousands of readers because, supposedly, these platforms have millions and billions of users. Winning and nurturing the audience is challenging and takes a lot of time no matter where you do it (and if such a task is even needed; and let me remind you that this is not what really matters in a specialist’s blog).

Personally, I have many concerns about social media, even beyond the flaws mentioned above. But even so, I am not yet ready to give them up completely. At the same time, nothing stops you from writing good posts on your blog and then sharing them anywhere, including social networks – I, for example, do just that.

Can we drop social media?

Happy blogging!

How I use a to-do list (featuring Things 3)

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 12:35:21 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

The main tool for making progress in personal and work projects

Previously, I discussed managing social media using Amplifr and overseeing record label duties through Trello. Today, I delve into another work tool – a to-do list.

What is that

A to-do list, or task manager, serves as a digital space where I jot down all my tasks, ranging from mundane daily errands like putting the recycle trash out to grand ventures like buying a house.

My approach

I use a few simple rules to make the whole system work.

Firstly, I meticulously jot down every task as soon as it springs to mind. Whether it’s a call to make, a place to visit, or an item to procure, I log it. This approach liberates mental space. Once documented, I can shift my focus without the burden of remembering each task. Human brains aren’t designed for juggling myriad details, certainly not mine. This method ensures nothing slips through the cracks, with the app preserving everything.

I also structure notes to ensure clarity, even if revisited years later. Often, hastily added tasks lack clarity upon later review. For instance, a task titled ‘Lord Of The Rings’ might mean different things – reading the book, purchasing it, or reminding a friend to return it. To counter this ambiguity, I preface notes with precise verbs like ‘read,’ ‘buy,’ or ‘outline.’

The app

Let me show you real examples and elaborate on the app I use.

Over time, I’ve experimented with various programs: Apple Reminders, Things, Trello, Todoist, Monday, and Wunderlist, among others. Presently, Things 3 stands as my preferred choice.

Things website

Let’s delve into Things. Here’s a snapshot of the app’s usual appearance for me:

Things app on macOS. The names of some projects are hidden for privacy reasons

Priorities and deadlines

In the top left corner, coloured icons categorise to-dos into tabs, forming the basis for priorities and deadlines:

You can quickly switch between tabs by pressing ⌘+1—5

Inbox. A repository for quickly jotting down tasks before they slip my mind. Some tasks automatically land here, which I’ll explain later.

Today. Tasks earmarked for the day ahead. I compile this list the evening before, ensuring a clear agenda for the morning. Any tasks arising during the day enter the inbox, from where I allocate them for the next day or thereafter. Thus, the day’s to-do list doesn’t expand during the day, with few exceptions.

Upcoming. Tasks planned for subsequent days, occasionally spanning months or even a year. I review this at day’s end to prepare for forthcoming commitments, making adjustments if needed.

Anytime. Tasks lacking a specific start date, signifying flexibility. This category ensures I always have tasks to tackle at any moment. You know how it goes: after hours of tackling a major project, fatigue sets in, efficiency wanes, and it’s time to shift gears. Or vice versa: after completing the day’s work, the entire evening stretches ahead, beckoning for productive tasks. In both scenarios, I turn to the Anytime tab, cherry-picking small, enjoyable tasks, and steadily making progress.

Someday. Tasks I aim to tackle eventually but cannot initiate at any time, unlike the above category. These usually encompass extensive projects fascinating enough to revisit someday, yet currently lack urgency.

Projects and areas

While the aforementioned system establishes priorities and deadlines, logical structuring groups tasks into projects and areas:

Projects. A project is a step-by-step group of tasks that moves toward a specific end result. For example, creating a new podcast episode. Calling it just a task would be oversimplifying, as it involves multiple steps: mixing and exporting the audio, making cover artwork, creating and rendering a video version, delivering to platforms, posting on social media, and so on. These projects are represented by a circular icon that fills as individual tasks are accomplished.

Areas. Projects do not exist in isolation; they relate to a unifying theme. In Things, this grouping is termed an ‘area.’ In my case, these areas encompass finance, household, personal matters, ongoing projects, and work. This hierarchy creates a straightforward, coherent structure.

***

If you too rely on to-do lists, share your approach and preferred app in the comments. I’m eager to learn from your experiences too.

Template this

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:58:51 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

How templates can help to deal with routine

Please tell us about personal efficiency and how you deal with the routine.

Daniel

I used to think that being a music producer is all about creativity, and well, you know, music production. Later I realized that it’s not really is.

Music producer’s routine also includes dealing with record labels, agents, other artists, and press; doing marketing communication with the fans over social media, websites, emails, and newsletters; and much more. And it’s very easy to get lost and overwhelmed with it.

The situation gets even worse if you add a full-time job to this scenario, which many upcoming producers have besides the music. Doing all these producer’s routine seems impossible!

Re-energizing for music production after 9-6 work

It’s good to have a manager or some sort of personal assistance that would take some of those tasks off from your shoulders, but in reality, not every producer can afford to have one, or actually need it.

Artist manager

So, I’d like to share a few tips on how to save your precious time using templates.

Use templates for emails

As an A&R at JOOF, one of my responsibilities is listening to incoming demos, and I receive a few dozens of demos every day. Some tracks are great, some are not quite, some others are absolutely out of format, like a pop dance song with some vocal.

Most labels simply ignore the demos that didn’t fit, but I believe leaving a message with no reply isn’t really polite. So I do reply to every single demo, however, I would spend half a day if I’d actually write every email from scratch.

Here come the templates. I’ve written templates for all possible occasions, and all I need to do now is to simply copy and paste the right template. Takes 10 seconds, literally.

Here are two just to give you an idea:

“Here’s my Dubstep demo for your label”, a funny name for a template used when the demo is completely out of place

“Maybe next time”, a template for promising demos

I’m using Evernote to keep all my templates library, but obviously, there are plenty of other tools: Google Docs, Notes app, Trello, simple text files in a shared folder, you name it.

I also have templates for any other kind of emails, such: when a party promoter sends me booking request, or when a fan asks when I’ll be playing next, or when a DJ wants to make a guest mix for Rave Podcast.

And guess what happens if I don’t have a template for some specific request? Right, I make a new one!

Use design templates

Do you often use similar images, or making press releases, or sending a newsletter? Invest some time and money to create a good template once, and it will serve you for years.

I use templates for pretty much every kind of graphics I share on a regular basis: Rave Podcast covers, announcements, mockup templates for the website, and more. And it saves a lot of time.

Templates used for various graphics

Use project template

When I work in Ableton, I always put a limiter on a master channel just for the sake of precaution, especially when dealing with a filter resonance while sitting in the headphones.

I also realized that every track a guaranteed has a kick, a bassline, a set of standards drums like closed hi-hats, open-hats, snare drum, and crash cymbal. So I was thinking if I always have these layers and a limiter on the master channel, why not pre-made all these channels and save it as default? And in fact, I did.

Now when I create a new project, it looks like this:

A default project in Ableton

This default template doesn’t have any actual sounds or plugins, it just a structure of pre-made channels, labelled with proper colours and text tags, just the way I like it. It allows me to instantly dive into creativity and start making actual music as soon as I open a new project rather than do some boring organizational stuff.

Organizing music project

It saves time, too.

To save a default template in Ableton, go to Preferences (⌘,) → File/Folder tab → “Save Current Set as Default” → Save.

Bottom line

Templates are huge time-savers. Take notice of what you’re doing repeatedly, whether it’s replying to similar emails or posting the same kind of images in social media, and make template accordingly. This is when creativity comes in!

I hope your routine won’t be the same frustrating as before.

On cover image: if I’d had my templates library existing in the real world, it would look like this. A frame of Jedi Archives taken from “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones” (2002).

Less is more

Daniel Sokolovskiy — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 11:34:16 +0500

Daniel Sokolovskiy:

I’m trying to use the principle “less is more” and it works great in every aspect:

In music production: fewer plugins means in-depth knowledge of each device, less CPU usage, and easier mixdown. And budget savings, too.
In radio show: less periodicity means more diversity in tracks and guest mixes. This is the reason why I’ll never turn Rave Podcast into a weekly show.
In web development: fewer features mean more attention and polishing for other important functions, and as a result, launch on time with no bugs.
In food: eat less at once (but more often) to stay healthy.

Do less to get more.