Greg's Work System

“...In one week since adopting gregsworksystem - I feel almost twice as productive, while having gained more headspace at the same time! HUGE THANKS!”

Vahan, Data Scientist

Jump to Daily Practice

This is my extremely simple & pragmatic set of tools, practices, and hacks to manage my professional day-to-day. I’m sharing it in the hope it might help you, or someone you know.

Here’s screenshots of my personal setup.

The system helps me:

Plan my work
Deal with unplanned work & ad hoc requests
Minimize work in process, and deprioritize work that doesn’t matter
Do what’s most important first
Quickly shift context and focus
Work fast
Minimize think time spent on the stupid stuff
Integrate meditation and exercise into my work day

I have used countless tools & approaches for personal work management over the years. This is my attempt to develop a sensible & lightweight system that doesn’t feel cumbersome or clunky to use. It is intentionally biased towards keyboards and documents, and avoids use of paid apps, task management GUIs, and mice. If you are comfortable with Google Docs & Calendar, you should feel right at home.

If you want to support your working memory & executive functioning, give it a try. Setup takes 20-30 mins.

The system is highly flexible, you’ll most likely adapt it to your style and needs over time. Feel free to steal a hack or two if the entire system isn’t for you.

The system uses shortcut keys instead of a mouse to move fast. These become second nature and pay dividends over time.

If you’re interested in a walkthrough or need help setting up, ping me.

Do the One Time Setup.
Start using the Daily Practice.

chat / comments / feature requests

After One Time Setup, you’ll have 5 core Spaces - You can organize more Spaces under them based on topic.

Greg's Work System

Personas

I'm an Absolute Beginner

“I’m a seasoned professional, but still feel uncomfortable with Macs and Google Apps beyond using the mouse. I’d love to learn some basics to improve my work speed.”

Consider configuring & trying GWS as a learning exercise. It will help you learn some basics that will boost your productivity, even if you decide the overall system is not for you.

I’m a Power Business User

“I live in Salesforce. I’m opportunity driven, and I don’t have time for complex tools and systems. I might consider something simple and customer focused.”

You may like GWS for its general bias against learning “yet another new tool”. If you are familiar with Mac and Google Docs, GWS may integrate well into your work style, and provide a productivity boost.

I’m an Engineer at Heart

“I love vi, and generally feel the most at home at a terminal. Buganizer helps organize a lot of what I do, and my team is now using Tables to organize our Scrums. I still feel a challenge organizing my personal work, and the week sometimes gets away from me.”

You may like GWS for its bias towards text and keyboards. I’m an Emacs user, but I’m told the GWS substitution hacks feel a little like vi.