Location: North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Current Gig: IT Assistant, Enterprise Email Service Operations, Government of Ontario
One word that best describes how you work: Structured
Current mobile device: LG Nexus 5 (Android 5.1)
Current Home Computer: HP Pavillion G6 Laptop (Windows 8.1)
Current Work Computer: Lenovo ThinkCentre Desktop (Windows 7)
What apps, software, or tools can't you live without?
Google Apps (Drive, Calendar, Keep, Gmail, Calendar, Play Music)
Photoshop
Microsoft Office 365
Autodesk Inventor/AutoCAD
Twitter
What's your workspace setup like?
Very minimalist and simple, but not by choice.
My government-issued Lenovo ThinkCentre desktop PC connects to a HP Compaq 19” LCD Widescreen Monitor, an HP Mechanical Keyboard and a Logitech Wireless Mouse.
I never knew how much I’d miss the dual-monitor setup I have at home and in my dorm, until now. I also couldn’t stand the wired mouse they gave me, so I bring my own personal wireless mouse to work.
The one other thing on my desk, my telephone, whose sole purpose is to connect me to the weekly conference calls .
What's your best time-saving shortcut or life hack?
I’m terrible at coming up at life hacks, so I’ll steal someone else’s that I use almost everyday.
Some monitors and most TVs have built-in USB ports (whose actual purpose could be anything really) and almost all of them provide 5.0V of power. I use these ports at work to charge my phone, at home to power my Chromecast and even in hotel rooms when I need an extra USB charging port or forget my USB power adaptor.
What's your favorite to-do list manager?
I actually just recently decided to overhaul my organizational system. While I found my old system of Google Calendar and Keep helpful a times, the user interface with Google Keep isn’t optimized for productivity and slowly became less optimal for what I needed my system to accomplish.
After poking around a little, I found an excellent service called Asana. Asana is a project management & to-do application built for group projects/businesses, however, it’s interface, customization options, and flexibility was exactly what I needed.
With Asana, I’ve been able to formalize weekly and monthly tasks (which I used to just try to remember to do) like my Weekly Financial Review to ensure I’m spending my money wisely or my Monthly Mobile Review to clear my Nexus 5 of junk files and apps I don’t use anymore.
It’s also worked well at organizing my summer projects, like building my own computer and creating a hand-on workshop on online presence management. It's oddly satisfying checking off virtual boxes and slowly seeing a mountain of small individual tasks chip away at a big project.
I also like to go really low-tech with a dry-erase wall calendar to keep track of important dates and events.
Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can't you live without and why?
This is always a tough question. There are a few: Monitor, Chromecast, Wireless Mouse. I think I’m going to go with the Monitor.
I just recently purchased a 22” Samsung LED Widescreen Monitor, and it’s probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
I was introduced to the concept of two monitors a few years earlier and I loved the increased productivity, especially when photoshopping, video editing, and watching video.
Now, I can’t live without that extra screen space and the excellent picture it outputs.
What everyday thing are you better at than everyone else? What's your secret?
I’ve been told that I’m better at keeping myself organized than others. I was never really a free spirit, but over the last few years, I didn’t really have an official system to keep myself on track. Without something to keep me productive, I often resorted to laziness and procrastination.
In the past, I loved making guides and procedures to ensure tasks were completed properly, detailed packing lists when traveling, and knowing the behind the scenes functionality of how things worked. At university, I tried organizing my time to get large amounts of work done by scheduling by the hour. By setting a fixed amount of time to complete a task, as well as setting a fixed time for breaks, I motivated myself to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. That was all done in spreadsheets and word documents, and it never really felt like a true solution.
In the past few months, I decided to change the way I ran my life. The inspiration mainly came from YouTuber & Podcast Host CGP Grey, an organizational master, who recently described how he got things done in his life on two of his podcasts*.
So, I overhauled. As I described above in regards to my favourite to-do list manager, I switched to Asana, which, over time, hopefully will alter my productivity for the better.
I’m eager to test my new system when I get back to university in the fall.
* I highly recommend listening to this episode of CGP Grey’s podcast, Hello Internet, where he goes over his system (H.I. #39: Getting Things Done). I also recommend Cortex, an interview podcast with Grey dedicated to discussing productivity and organization.
What do you listen to while you work?
Podcasts mainly. Using my preferred app of choice, PlayerFM, I listen to a variety of podcasts, mainly:
Hello Internet (w/ CGP Grey & Brady Haron)
Cortex (w/ CGP Grey & Myke Hurley)
Nerdist (w/ Chris Hardwick, Matt Mira, Jonah Ray)
Not Too Deep (w/ Grace Helbig)
Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project (w/ Adam Savage)
Screen Junkies’ Movie Fights
I also have multiple playlists of songs on Google Play Music & Spotify Premium, with everything from Classic Rock, to Top 40, to Epic Rap Battles of History.
What are you currently reading?
I’m not reading any books or novels at the moment.
However, I do love reading blog posts, current events and news articles almost every day, mainly from sites like Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Huffington Post, The Toronto Star, CBC News etc.
Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
Definitely an introvert. I think I’ve gotten better over time and become more open to meeting new people and interacting with them. When I was Grade 4, I couldn’t read a paragraph in front of my class of 12 students. Last year, I spoke a multiple large events and was interviewed by the media several times. Nevertheless, my instincts of minimizing human contact as much as possible will unfortunately always prevail. If a store has a self-checkout option, I’ll choose it everytime, even if the wait is longer for a human cashier.
What's your sleep routine like?
I always try to go to sleep around 11PM on weeknights and wake up at 7AM to get to work for around 8:30AM.
Weekends are a little more flexible, but I try to get to bed for around midnight. I can never sleep past 10AM, no matter what day it is and no matter how hard I try.
Fill in the blank: I'd love to see _________ answer these same questions.
It used to be GCP Grey, but as I mentioned above, he now has an entire podcast dedicated to answering this questions.
Now, I’d be interested to see Chris Hardwick answer these questions. It seems like he works 24hrs/day. He hosts two TV shows, he’s the CEO of his own company, he hosts a podcast, he has a girlfriend and personal life. I don’t know how he does it.
What's the best advice you've ever received?
One of the mentors on my competitive robotics team explained to me (on many occasions) that life isn’t black and white, usually it’s shade of grey (insert 50 Shades of Grey joke here). It took me a while to figure out, but when I did (or think I did) it was powerful advice going out into the world. There aren’t clear cut problems or solutions, you’re going to almost always read between the lines and think outside of the box in order to come up with solutions to real-world issues.
Is there anything else you'd like to add that might be interesting to readers and fans?
I’m just a regular, all-around nerdy guy who loves board games, TV Shows & Movies with the word “Star” in the title, robots, and anything in the world of science and technology.
