Your new favorite habit for being more productive

Patrick Westwood
2 min readSep 19, 2016

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When you’re designing or writing a piece of code and then decide to leave it and come back to it later (at the end of the day especially before weekend):

Write 2–3 sentences for your future self on where you left off and where you were going with it all.

I started doing this when I noticed that I waste time trying to figure out where I left off and where to continue. What were my closing thoughts at the end of previous day when I had a head filled with ideas, processes and flows? — then I tried writing down all these thoughts either on the design inside a sketch file or comment while doing development work.

The next day when I come back and open my Macbook and all the programs load, I immediately see where I ended and how to resume my work. This way I get a very productive and satisfying start to the day — its simple as that.

For example:

Finish the “Add a car” flow, remember we need to ask for VIN and License plate (they will be A/B tested) inside a modal that leads to a sign-up page as discussed in yesterday’s meeting and then send the files to Lee for implementation. You were thinking about adding another variation with page instead of modal and need to test it.

The best way to enforce this habit— in case of design add a quick sketch of what you were thinking about previously and, in the case of dev elopment, start writing that piece of code you will continue tomorrow.

Best of luck!

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