DEV Community: Liam Gilroy

5 Productivity Apps For 2022

Liam Gilroy — Thu, 12 May 2022 14:53:29 +0000

Let's get into gear...

We all came into 2022 looking to be productive and maybe even make a fresh start, so I thought it would be good to share some resources that have been really useful to me so far to hopefully help you streamline your workflow - even if just a little.

ClickUp 📈

ClickUp is a browser-based online project management system that can be used for just about anything. I’ve been using it for some months now to keep track of the status of my projects, some aspects of billing and for it’s checklist and organisational features that make it more efficient to run through a development sprint.

It’s great for users working solo or as part of a team and also offers paid features. If you’re looking at Asana, Monday.com or Wrike, I’d give this a go first. It’s by all means not perfect, but worth a shot as it’s free!

Headway 📚

If you’re interested in reading non-fiction, self-help or self improvement books but don’t have the time in your day to make room for this, I’d highly recommend Headway. I’ve been using it for a few months now and it’s been a perfect companion for quick injections of motivation on a morning or during a lunchtime walk.

Headway condenses down popular books on philosophy, finance, self-help and more into 15minute reads (I prefer the audiobook function). This allows you to get a distilled version of the books hitting all the highlights and key info. You can always buy the full book later if you’re really into it.

Calendly 📆

Calendly is a newer one for me but is something I started to notice amongst my clients and other business owners. It’s an efficient way to link potential clients or colleagues to a user-friendly calendar that allows them to book a time slot with you for a video call, according to your predefined availability. On a basic level you can set repeating slots to be bookable, which allows you to be in control of your time and how you spend it.

You can also open this up to your calendar for more flexibility and allow users to book any time or specific time-frames that work for you. There are both free and paid options available for this app.

Tiimo ⏰

If you’re really trying to stay focused and want to get granular with time-management, tiimo provides a great visual daily planner that you can fully customise to help you keep track of your day by setting up daily, weekly or monthly tasks and breaking them down into smaller lists where applicable. You can also sync your calendars so new and existing appointments and tasks there will sync through to the app.

This app works on paid subscriptions but does offer a free trail so you can give it a go and try it on for size.

Journal 📓

So this isn’t technically an app, but there are a bunch of apps out there that can help with this (I prefer pen and paper to improve the focus on what I’m writing). Whatever you use to do this, keeping a daily journal can be a great way to help establish some routine if that’s what you’re after. It can also help you to break down the bigger picture in work and your home life to help you stay in control of your thoughts, making you more productive and focused all-round.

Some journals such as Mind Journal offer some structure and guidance to help you get started, so you can ease into it as a practice and see how it goes.

Quick Links

Here are some quick links to the resources mentioned in this blog:

- ClickUp

- Headway

- Calendly

- Tiimo

- Mind Journal

☕️

Are you looking to partner up with a freelancer for front-end development, photography or video production? Maybe you want to share some resources of your own? Get in touch and let’s grab a virtual coffee. Find me on twitter @liameighty

5 Thoughts That Help Growth

Liam Gilroy — Thu, 12 May 2022 14:49:29 +0000

I was invited to to speak at Barnsley College this week where I studied Media Production and Film & TV Studies back in the day. The idea was to talk about our business, eighty®, what I do now and how I do it. I’d listed a few bullet points to get me going and took on questions from the students that mostly centered around value. Valuing jobs, your time, priorities, work schedules and so on.

What stemmed from this were 5 key thoughts I saw as essential for anyone aspiring to go out there and make something of their own through doing something they’re passionate about. It’s not always easy to build confidence in who you are and what you do especially at such an early stage, but I think these things can help you get there…

Know your worth

In the very sense of having pride in who you are as a person and knowing you are worthy of your goals, but also more literally in the sense of understanding how much you should be charging for your work. So many of us, especially creatives, undervalue projects because the thing we’re good at comes easy to us or because we’re not comfortable with pricing. Once you can gauge where you want to be in the market vs the real value of what you do and champion that, so much more follows.

Value your time

Time is the most valuable commodity yet many of us fail to allocate the right amount of time to a job or simply give it away too freely, leaving little time for ourselves and other things we’re passionate about. This is a sure-fire way to burn out and does no favours to finances either. Think about the limited time you have and how much of it that you’re willing to give to the work is worth.

Carve your own path

The easy thing to do is to fixate on someone else’s success and how you can get there without considering the process and path that they took to get there. Everyone has their own story to tell and you will achieve your goals your way, with a healthy dose of inspiration from others along the way. Everyone you admire did it their own way.

Focus on your strengths

Looking into our weaknesses and how we can improve those can be helpful, but championing our strengths and using those to our advantage can be much more beneficial short term and long term. This helps to reinforce the positives and avoids wasting time on fixing things about us that aren’t perfect.

Challenge yourself

I’m a big fan of learning something new every day and most of us do it without realising it. Challenging yourself to learn something new or do something outside of your comfort zone can be a great habit in moderation, helping to improve yourself and regularly reach new achievements.

Solid reads on this:

12 Rules For Life - Jordan B. Peterson
Atomic Habits - James Clear
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson
Deep Work - Cal Newport

👇

It’s great to know that these students are in good hands when it comes to getting a head start and I’m glad I got to visit and answer some questions. Where I absolutely feel unqualified to give advice it’s good to be able to share a bit of the knowledge I’ve gained so far and it’s given me a chance to reflect on these things too!

Coding Journey: Year 1

Liam Gilroy — Thu, 12 May 2022 14:20:27 +0000

Today I was asked to join a Q&A with some Learning People students who are just starting their coding journey. As it turns out, I got my MTA qualification a year ago pretty much to the day, which marked the final step of my personal journey with Learning People on a Full Stack Web & Software Development course.

Back at the start of the pandemic I wasn’t hugely inspired with my work and I was looking to get more hands on with my day-to-day and needed a change to shake things up. This meant taking on more photo and video shoots, but I also had a desire to delve into the web department and reignite my interest in web development.

Getting going

I first touched code when playing around with some basic HTML and CSS in my Myspace theme editing days and in more recent years had started getting into WordPress development, mostly using themes and front-end builders. I came across an ad from the Learning People one evening and decided to submit some details.

I had this grand idea that I could get into coding and give it a shot, giving me more to do creatively. It wasn’t long before they got in touch and at first I was really anxious about my capabilities. After all, I’d been denied a place on the Games Design course at college because of my severe lack of GCSE’s, particularly my ‘U’ in maths. They set me my first 5 day coding challenge that day, which I then completed over the weekend.

I loved everything about it. Suddenly I was excited about learning, which I’d been missing for a long time if forever. I’d cracked the test and really enjoyed doing so. I quickly signed up to the course on acceptance and set about working on getting to grips with coding outside of work hours. I couldn’t remember having had a bigger challenge or goal set.

There was so much to look at on the course and initially I had the mindset that I was going to watch every tutorial, code every test and read every last character of each book to ace as many programming languages as I could, as fast as I could. With this mindset, I was working 9-5, taking care of my family and then back on the laptop to code again from 7pm, often until around 2am in the morning. I craved the challenge but I had also set myself a lofty goal of finishing the course in 6 months.

Burning out

I’d developed a tonne of really unhealthy habits and was practically living out of my spare room. Working through the day, coding at night and sleeping on the spare bed with nowhere to go in-between thanks to Covid. Burnout was inevitable. It affected me in many ways. My work life, my coding and my relationships, I got into a real slump and needed a shift in mindset to keep me going before I gave up on it completely and called it quits.

Thankfully my inspiration was still there. I was working on web projects in my day job and really enjoying it, garnering positive feedback from the team and from clients, which felt great. I had to quickly learn to develop new habits (as I’ve discussed in a previous blog) and let go of the time constraints and pressure I’d put on myself to get things done.

Staying motivated

I found a sense of community online with other full-time and aspiring developers that showed me in an instant I wasn’t alone with imposter syndrome and that yes, it’s OK to need to Google things several times a day or ‘borrow’ a bit of code from StackOverflow. After all, I learned, coding is all about problem solving – not memorising every last combination of digits to manifest websites and software with ease.

I started sticking with the things I enjoyed and was good at. It’s important to recognise these and throw yourself towards the things you’re passionate about if you’re lucky enough to do so. Not everyone needs to be a Full Stack developer, which is what I had set out to become. It turns out what I’m good at and what I enjoy is being a Front-End developer but it took a lot to learn how that shoe fit for me. I know this is still true, because I can’t wrap my head around how some developers struggle with CSS… but for me developing an algorithm sounds like a personal hell.

The kickstart

My working circumstances changed dramatically and I found myself with a decision to make on whether or not to enter the industry as a junior developer and work my way up, or stick to what I’m good at and continue developing on my own as a freelancer. That decision was made really easily for me when Jordan asked me to partner up with him to create eighty®, so I skipped a few steps on my road map and went all in.

I still struggled with the same issues when becoming freelance. Taking on too much at once, struggling with work/life balance and ultimately burning myself out, at least now I could recognise these patterns. I’ve been working on several amazing websites (not to mention some fantastic video and photography projects) since starting, each with their own individual challenges. Life is a constant learning journey especially if you work in/with tech. A year on and I’m reflecting on my journey of getting into coding and everything that’s happened since. Starting down that path opened me up to learning new things and challenging myself in ways I never have and I feel like I’m better for it.

I still have so much I want to learn and dive into as a developer that will keep me hungry and keep me learning and developing but for now I’m happy to be finding balance where I can and take everything one step at a time. For anyone starting that (or any other) learning journey, I’d suggest you do the same – take it in your stride, slow and steady.

Let’s see what year 2 brings.

Want to get in touch? Email hello@liamgilroy.com