Why I write letters to my future self

For the last two years, I have written incredibly irregular (read: infrequent) e-newsletters about cool stuff that I love. One of my new (financial) year resolutions is to adopt some kind of regularity to my musings.

So here we go - three things I am loving:

A letter to your future self

Several years ago, I found this gem of a website, Future Me. It lets you send letters to yourself from the present to receive at a set date into the future. I do this every six months, whereby I write about some of the goals I have and things I am hoping for. It's always interesting to see what I have done, but equally, what I haven't done, and what is simply not relevant anymore.

Changing your to-do list and calendar workflow

For many years, I have felt frustrated with the limitations of Google Calendar. And I have also had a sub-optimal workflow when it comes to moving things from my to-do list to my calendar, and timeboxing what needs to be done. So I was very excited when one of my podcast guests, John Zeratsky, told me about Motion. I've been using it for a month now and it has completely transformed how I manage tasks and my calendar. It cleverly combined the to-do list and calendar (and syncs to my GCal). I list all my tasks and how long they will take me, and then I drag and drop them into my calendar. It means that I no longer overschedule or overestimate what I can get done in a day, and I can actually reach to-do list zero. There are a bunch of other useful features, but I am very much in love with this software!

Does your work feel effortless?

I recently had one of my heroes on How I Work, Greg McKeown. I read his first book Essentialism about four years ago and found it transformative. His latest book, Effortless, is also packed with brilliant ideas which I have been busy applying. Grab a copy of Effortless, and you can check out my chat with Greg on How I Work.

A competition!

Finally - I am running a competition! I am giving away a book pack of five of the best books I have read in the past 12 months - all from authors I have had on How I Work. The pack includes:

• Humor, Seriously, by Naomi Bagdonas and Jennifer Aaker
• Think Again, by Adam Grant
• Effortless, by Greg McKeown
• A World Without Email, by Cal Newport
• Tiny Habits, by BJ Fogg

How can you win this amazing pack of books?

Simply sign up to receive my e-newsletter Three Cool Things and you'll automatically go into the draw to win. The winner will be announced in the next issue of Three Cool Things on Friday 6 August 2021.

So hop to it and sign up