Build, Call, Slack, Repeat
Beyond Work with Makerpad Founder Ben Tossell
Beyond Work
As the world goes on lockdown, I wanted a way of documenting this unusual time via short interviews with founders and innovators including a peak into their work life and productivity tips. ⠀⠀
The series is called Beyond Work and it launches today.
I hope that, in time, people will be able to look back and find a fascinating insight into how the virus impacted the world and changed how we work forever. ⠀⠀
In the short term, I hope readers will find it useful and inspiring — a welcome relief in difficult times.
Today, we start with Ben Tossell. Ben is the founder and CEO of no-code startup Makerpad which he launched in January 2019. Makerpad is a new breed of company which can teach anyone anywhere how to build software solutions without coding.
A serial no-code hacker and the king of side projects, Ben previously led Community at Product Hunt which was acquired by AngelList. Here’s his #BeyondWork story:
London, England.
What does a typical day look like to you now?
7am
I wake up between 7–8, have a coffee in bed and do some easy tasks like tweaking the site, replying to emails etc (it’s usually revolved around building something! — or fixing a build).
Then I usually play tennis for 90 minutes BUT current circumstances mean I do an hour of exercise in the house or go for a half walk/run.
11am
Then I shower and eat lunch at like 11. Up to my home office which is where I always work to jump into building, calls and whatever else I have going on. At the moment, I’ve got quite a few calls trying to help healthcare organisations build projects and automations to work better. I catch up with members of my team and flit in and out of build, call, slack, repeat.
6.30pm
Eat around 6.30/7pm and then watch TV with my fiancée whilst usually doing some other site fixes/improvements and in bed at 9! Watch something else 9–10 then read on my phone for 30–60 mins.
How has Coronavirus impacted your life/work?
Honestly not all that much. I work from home all the time anyway, the only change is I don’t go out to play tennis. There’s been a big influx of calls and reactive project building over the last few weeks which is fine and temporary.
What productivity tips have you found useful whilst working from home?
I’m terrible at this and just spoke to a friend Jonny Miller to help me come up with some actionable things I can do day-to-day plus getting him to chat with the whole team. I’m very aware of how I work, when I’m good and bad, what’s needed and not needed but I like testing different things out e.g. only allowing calls on Tuesday afternoons or blocking out 1–2 hours to do my most important tasks. But I’ve not stuck to anything for a long time so I’m looking into other things to create a sustainable system.
I use Todoist and feel like I need to write a task down or I’ll forget and the action of completing it on the app helps me feel productive I guess. We use Slack and Notion but I’m terrible at long form documentation, so I just decided Notion will be our wiki and we have gone all-in on a team Slack paying for all the bells and whistles where we can create automations and systems that work for us and individually. I use Zoom and chat with the team multiple times a week whether it’s random or a weekly catch up call.
What five books would you recommend during self isolation?
- Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
- Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
- This Is Not a T-Shirt by Bobby Hundreds
- Who is Michael Ovitz? by Michael Ovitz
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
When this is all over, what will the opportunities look like?
I think lots more people will be paying attention to online education and no-code options which puts us in a very lucky position. Businesses will be looking to be more efficient and save resources where possible while trying to get their operations up to the same levels as before (if not way, way higher).
We want to be there to train teams for which this is completely possible, for a lot less money than they think, in a really quick timeframe.
You can find Ben on Twitter at Ben Tossell and you can find Makerpad here.
See how Makerpad is helping those working on projects to help combat Coronavirus here.
#BeyondWork
