The Podcast

Podcast sponsor:✅ Nozbe Teams - Work from home with your teamKey things you will learn from this episode: How to organize an online team retreat What special gifts and activities we had during Nozbe Reunion What we've learned from our latest Virtual Reunion Why #iPadOnly guys like Michael and Rafal are not so excited with the new iPad Pro Subscribe to our show and learn more about running a remote software company:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Add to Overcast, Get RSSThe Podcast is a semi-regular chat between Radek and yours truly (we both work at Nozbe) about productivity, business, books, and whatever else comes to mind… - if you liked this episode, make sure to check out past episodes.Show notes for this episode: The Podcast 91: Best city The Podcast 196: Hands Are Dirty The Podcast 206: Radek's Face Shield Factory Warsaw Hackerspace Copy & share: ThePodcast.fm/211Share on Twitter

Discussing Netflix CEO's thoughts on leadership: - building a high talent density workplace - leading by context - removing unnecessary policies (vacation, spending, travel)

Applying Lean methodology from Japanese factories (specifically, the kanban pull system) to managing groceries and other house supplies. Never will you ever run out of toilet paper again!

Should we focus Nozbe marketing on Work From Home? Michael has a frank discussion with Radek about this. Maybe it's a great idea! Or maybe, it's too niche and will ruin our marketing.

Let's gossip about what our competitors are doing… Basecamp 4, HEY? What are they all about? Are they a threat?

Radek has started a job in manufacturing… pro bono manufacturing of face shields for hospitals in Poland. No, really. Over the last few weeks, Radek has been applying what he'd learned about CAD, laser cutting, and lean manufacturing at the Warsaw Hackerspace to set up a face shield production line. In three weeks, they produced over 30 000 face shields.

This episode is a new, experimental format. It's just Radek calling Michael to chat about work. Like they normally would. Except that it happens to be recorded and published, so you can get a glimpse into how we do it. In this chat, we're trying to figure out how to institute cultural change at the company, and make Kaizen part of our everyday work and thinking. Also, Radek's frustrations with UI work, and change of direction for 2020.

Make a huge impact with just 2 hours per day. Discussing Michael's latest productivity hack and how this simple change allowed him to be way more productive this year.

How we apply Lean philosophy to the Nozbe Teams development process: - Weekly release train - Phased releases - One-day pull requests - CI/CD - Asynchronous testing - Feature flags - Bug fixing Mondays - Dev responsibilities - Roadmap Rangers - Time scoping - Kaizen in customer support - Text daily standups - Kaizen math Feel free to follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/msliwinski and https://twitter.com/radexp

We dive deep into Lean Manufacturing - how Ford's mass manufacturing changed the world, how Toyota dramatically improved on the process - and why it matters even if you're not in manufacturing.

In life, there's a limited number of f's you can give — very few in fact. And yet we give them out left and right, robbing us of simple tranquility in life. We discuss the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k — a modern, approachable guide to stoicism.

Celebrating nearly 5 years and 199 episodes of The Podcast, and giving our recommendations for the best stories and recommendations we've recorded so far.

When we receive feedback, or an idea, a suggestion, we tend to become defensive. We're sure they're wrong and we're right, and we stop listening. And thus we miss out on good insights. Or do we? Perhaps the real problem is the culture, people being too delicate, and so we are forced into unnecessary niceties instead of giving and receiving feedback straight?

Like every year, we're taking this moment to reflect on 2019, review our successes and failures, set some goals (not resolutions!) for 2020, and put in motion a process to ensure it's going to be a great year.

Exploring the idea of abolishing (or enhancing) the hierarchical structure of companies in favor of dispersing responsibilities broadly into a mesh — not based on rank, but particular skill, specialization, experience.

Getting your hands dirty to create physical objects, tinker, work with plastic, metal, and wood is fun! A more soothing hobby than doing stuff at the computer, and a better way to spend an evening than Netflix. We discuss home renovations, CNC milling, concrete casting, and industrial robots.

We got, no, we _made_ some cool new gadgets for the Fall 2019 Nozbe Reunion: Laser-cut phone stands, zero waste produce bags and hemp dish cleaner, and smog sensors.

To create Nozbe Teams, we had to grow from being a product company to being a technology company. In this episode, we're telling the story of what technological infrastructure we've chosen and created for this project (and why).

In 2016, we decided to make "Nozbe for Teams". Then, we changed its name to just Nozbe 4. Ultimately, we've decided to call the new product Nozbe Teams and become, at least for a while, a two-product company. In this episode, we're winding the history back to the beginnings of this project and re-telling the story of why and how this came to be.

This wasn't supposed to be this week's show. We meant to talk about Nozbe Teams… but instead, we go on a 40 minute long crusade against… jeans and MacBooks.

Catching up after a 3-month summer break from The Podcast. Vacations, conferences, open source, webmastering, Nozbe Teams, Portland, and driving licenses.

The Podcast is on a summer break. Meanwhile, Michael started playing with code again and have just launched three new website projects. And we briefly discuss and update on Digital Minimalism and Michael's break from social media.

Live from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California, we discuss our fresh reactions from Apple's conference. New iPadOS, the cheese grater, Shortcuts and automation, Catalyst, and SwiftUI.

Having reached his 40th birthday (and we, The Podcast, our fourth), Michael shares his best bits of wisdom: Finding what you're good at, striving for longevity, knowing when to reinvent yourself, having fun, and nurturing friendships.

Michael talks about what it's like to walk a 260km pilgrimage over a week and a half, why he and his wife did it, how it can be a great experience even for non-religious people, how to pack for it, and why northern Spain is kinda nice.

Discussing The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Giving autonomy to live their own lives, neither prasing nor rebuking, and finding happiness in being beneficial to people around us.

The world is bad, but better. The vast majority of westerners believe the world is poorer, more violent, deadly, primitive, and awful than it actually is. This book beautifully illustrates our ignorance, updates your knowledge, and gives you tools for a fact-based worldview.

Digital Minimalism - A philosophy where you focus your technology use on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that support your values, and happily miss out on everything else. We discuss Cal Newport's new book on this very topic. Why clutter is costly, optimization is imporatant, and intentionality is satisfying. We explore reclaiming our leisure time. BREAKING NEWS: Michael pledges to go on a 30 day digital declutter from Twitter and Instagram!

Nozbe 4, our brand new app has a brand new icon (and logo). This week, we talk about what's wrong with ticks and circles, what makes a good logo, why we decided to go for it, and how it almost didn't happen.

What we've learned about productivity and collaboration over the years. How technology improvement allows us to get to the next level. And why starting from scratch is scary, but sometimes necessary.

Pulling back the curtain on the development process of Nozbe 4. When we started, how we progressed over time, and why we had to impose on ourselves the deadline of April 4.

Stories about competition, punishment, and rewards in the classroom and our childhoods. We continue discussing what we've learned from Punished by Rewards.

When we reward someone (an employee, a student, a child) for doing what we want them to do, we think we're doing the right thing, motivating them to keep doing it. In reality, incentives only have a shallow, immediate effect — and in the long term, we're killing the other person's intrinsic motivation, and making them resent us for being controlling.

The good, the bad, and the necessary of complaining and complainers. To keep improving, and to communicate efficiently in an organization (and to be grown up) is to understand that complaints are not usually toxic, negative, or a personal attack against you — but are simply feedback. To say to someone not to bring you problems, but only solutions is to guarantee you'll be oblivious to everything that's broken in a company. (But yes, some complaints are nothing more than unhelpful snark — learn to distinguish between the two)

How to review and plan a year together. Because Annual Review is not just for you, and for your work, but for your family and relationships too.

We started paying our employees salaries based on a formula that applies to everyone, not based on individual negotiations. Here's why, and how.

Follow-up on our journey towards a (slightly) calmer life — with fewer distractions, push notifications, and social media. Pushing forward to find the right balance between utility and mindfulness. How to hide (but not delete) distracting apps on iOS and Android, time and open limits on Facebook and other apps, blocking websites, old school newsletters, and more.

Celebrating 12 years of profitably running Nozbe (without any outside investors), Michael recounts some of the most important milestones, and most amusing anecdotes of the company's history. That, and a sneak peak into the future of Nozbe

Here's a sneak peak for Michael's and Radek's plans for 2019 (a.k.a. the year of Purple / the year of intentionality).

Always busy? Endless meetings? Can't sleep? No time to think? Screw that. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. It makes no sense. Exhausted, overworked, sleep-deprived people with no long stretches of uninterrupted time can't really be productive. Busyness and effectiveness are not the same. We discuss a book from Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

The biggest themes, projects, successes, and failures of 2018 in Michael's and Radek's lives. And COOKIES! (And rockets!)

Here's your choice to live a more intentional life. To learn from the events, plans, successes, and failures of the last year. To contemplate what makes you, you. To make plans, set goals, learn new things, and develop habits for next year. To let go. Here's the end of the year, and our definitive guide to Annual Review.

Here's a crazy idea: what if half of all work performed in our society was useless or unnecessary, and if it stopped, no one would notice — or care. We dive into David Graeber's food for thought.

We own technology so that it makes our life better. Right? Or is it the other way around? What if filling every single second of our life with social media and compulsively checking all our inboxes and feeds 50 times per day makes us unable to focus and to be intentional? What if visiting social media once per day for 20 minutes is good and healthy, but 20 times per day for one minute isn't? A discussion + some coping hacks

The state of computing is in an awkward state, but full of promise. On one side, unnecessary complicated PCs; on the other, fun but somewhat clunky iPads. One year into the #iPadOnly lifestyle, Radek unpacks pros and cons of both, and their future converging paths. (Last time we talk about iPads until next WWDC, promise!)

Michael's new iPad is faster than Radek's 15'' MacBook Pro. Ouch! Why “you can't work on an iPad” is (mostly) BS. Which iPad to buy?

Instead of only complaining, you can act to change things for the better in your local community, neighborhood, city, school. Most people tend to think that getting involved must be very difficult, impossible, or political. But the truth is, a lot of the time, it takes very little to make a positive impact.

Over time, we start taking things for granted, get used to the status quo, get into the rut, and forget the basics — the motivating factors behind why we do what we do. Here are our reasons.

Follow-up on the joy of minimalist backpack-only packing: wallets, cycling, charing, shaving… and a follow-up on home renovations and tidying up.

The Podcast special, live from a Nozbe company reunion in Kraków! This one, if you can, you should really watch on video. We unpack our backpacks on camera, and show precisely every single item we have inside. Turns out, you really don't need that much space to fit everything you need for a trip.