This blog is here to document my productivity journey. As well as giving people insights into how they can improve their productivity and wellbeing.
I was a programmer for approximately nine years, developing websites and web-based systems. I studied at The Unversity of Central Lancashire doing Multimedia Development. At the beginning of my career, I enjoyed programming, learning and helping a variety of clients. I managed to build an impressive portfolio which you can see on my portfolio site JoshLister.com. However, I felt that programming was not something I wanted to do forever. Whilst I liked it, I had other interests such as digital marketing, writing, entrepreneurship and music.
I started to become more interested in productivity when I started to change the way the company I was working for workflow. They used Excel for pretty much everything except accounting. I had used Jira at a couple of companies prior and I knew the importance of using kanban boards and using agile methodologies. MeisterTask was the kanban system I introduced to be used for all types of web-based projects. These included both internal and external (client work). It was at its most effective during the IT team’s weekly department meeting; replacing the Excel spreadsheet that would take an additional five minutes to configure and amend.
Fortnightly sprints were something I introduced with projects I was working on. These helped keep a clear picture of the project’s progress and highlight any issues.
As well as kanban boards, I also started using the Pomodoro technique whilst working, and I found that this helped me by teaching my brain to aim to complete something before the timer ended. I also stopped leaving Outlook open all day, so I wouldn’t be distracted by looking at emails.
I read and listened to books about productivity from books such as Eat That Frog, The 4-hour Workweek, Ready Aim Fire and many more.
2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I decided to create a podcast. In my one and only episode, I talked about productivity and the different apps that I recommended.
2022 I moved from web development to project management.
I plan to continue this journey, and I am excited to see what happens next.
