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People ask me all the time: how do you manage to be constantly burnt out while also accomplishing very little? It's not easy. It takes years of concerted effort. You have to build up habits, to the point where the line between work and time-wasting is essentially blurred. It takes a total lack of self-awareness and an inability to reflect on your own shortcomings. Not to brag, but I'm somewhat of an expert. Here are some proven strategies for burning yourself out while accomplishing very little. Multitask constantly Multitasking is a proven method for getting less done. I can't recommend it enough. Focusing on one task comes with the risk of completing that task. That's dangerous: it might give you momentum toward accomplishing another task. Multitasking prevents this from happening—and research proves it. To quote the American Psychological Association : In experiments published in 2001, Joshua Rubinstein, PhD, Jeffrey Evans, PhD, and David Meyer, PhD, conducted...

Here's a good rule of thumb: Any time you find yourself copying a document to reuse over and over again or find yourself filling out blanks in a document, it's time you can save with automation. Zapier lets you automatically fill out Google Docs templates based on triggers from other apps. My team at Slack uses Google Docs to prepare all our art briefs for our blog. They're designed to be seen and used by dozens of people, and creating a new one used to be a five-to-ten-minute process—which adds up when you do it a dozen times a week. That process now takes about a minute. Here's how we did it in Zapier. Zapier is an automation tool that lets your apps talk to each other. Check out this Zapier demo to learn more about how it works. Step 1: Design your Google Docs template and create a Google Form to build it The best place to begin is at the end—figure out what you want your final document to look like, and then build a template based on it. Use images, formatting...

I'm Lisa Smith, I'm an engineering manager for Zapier's developer platform, and I'm An Old. I've been working in tech since before there was a Google. In a previous life, I was a librarian. The kind that touches actual hard-copy books. I've been working on inclusion and diversity issues in tech for nearly as long as I've been working in tech, and—as An Old—I recognize that tech has an ageism problem . Much like sexism and racism in the workplace, ageism affects not only the person being discriminated against but also the larger company culture. It deprives the company of needed perspective and the tools and staff they need to innovate. Before we go on, the sobering news: old in tech is 41. A survey from Indeed indicates that 82 percent of the tech workforce is 40 and under. Nearly half (46 percent) is 35 and under. 82 percent of the tech workforce is 40 and under. This means that, unless you're Gen Z, you're closer than you think to being old—or...

Customer support is hard. It's hard for all of the reasons you already know: you help folks that are frustrated or confused all day, every day. And while having empathy makes you better at it, it also means that their frustration takes its toll on you. Nobody comes to support while they're having a good day, or thinks to themselves, "Everything is working perfectly, I should reach out to a support team about this!" Remote support adds a layer: there's no "going to look in the back" when you need to get away from an irate customer. When an issue only exists on the screen and in your head, it follows you around wherever you go. The line between what is/isn't work becomes fuzzy, and when you're genuinely trying to do good work, that gray area can become overwhelming. I've been a Customer Champion at Zapier for a little over a year now, meaning if you've ever written to us at contact@zapier.com or via our contact page, there's a non-ze...

Used tractors from the 1970s and 1980s are increasingly harder to find because they're selling so well. I swear I'm going somewhere with this. "Cost-conscious farmers are looking for bargains, and tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional," Adam Belz recently wrote in the Star Tribune . He goes on to say these older tractors "aren't as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software." Modern tractors are marvels of engineering, using software to offer features that were previously unimaginable. Yet some farmers are specifically avoiding this, because the older, simpler models are cheaper, both to buy and to maintain. They're also, in some ways, more reliable. This isn't to say that modern tractors don't have any advantages. It's just that simplicity is also an advantage. There's a good chance, if you're reading this, that your job involves more time sitting in fro...

Highly productive people don't get more done in less time. Instead, they focus their attention on the things that really matter: the things that are meaningful, contribute high value, and result in the highest impact. That should sound familiar—it's called prioritization. It seems obvious, but without a clear sense of priority, most of us will let our attention wander to less important tasks. We react instead of respond. We check things off our task list, but the results are minimal. In fact, one study found that the average employee wastes up to 41 percent of their time at work on low-value tasks. I'm on the Learning and Development team at Zapier, and here I'll share some of the tips we give to Zapier employees about how to build and strengthen prioritization muscles. Our team has reviewed a number of resources, listed at the bottom of the article, to compile these suggestions for how to prioritize your work. 1. Take back your power of choice Imagine walking int...

Twitter shut down SMS notifications in most countries last week, meaning anyone who relies on that feature is currently out of luck. But there's a workaround. Before smartphones, Twitter was basically an SMS service. Every tweet from users you followed was sent to you as a text message. Most users switched to the app over a decade ago, and it's honestly impressive the legacy SMS system didn't shut down until 2020. Having said that: some people still rely on the old school notifications. You can get an SMS message without an internet connection, for example, and you can also get them on dumb phones. If you still want SMS Twitter notifications, you can use Zapier to send text messages to US and UK phone numbers. Here's how it works: Click the Use this Zap button below to use our template (and create a Zapier account if you haven't already). Sign in to Twitter when prompted and select the user you'd like to follow. Confirm your phone number. Customize the ...

Right now, working from home means adhering to a ridiculously strict schedule. Wake up early enough to get the grocery store before it's mobbed, be ready to help your kids sign on to their Zoom classes, feed your family—and, you know, get some work done. But that's not what remote work is typically like. Usually, working from home is all about flexibility. Zapier is a 100 percent distributed company, and we have over 300 employees all over the world. Every single one of us has a different schedule. And we're not talking just about starting an hour early in order to go to a doctor's appointment or taking a break mid-day to do our laundry—though we do that too. We have all sorts of unusual schedules on our team, and it makes us more productive. Here are a few examples. Early risers and night owls Zapier senior editor Grace Montgomery has a seven-year-old son, and she's structured her remote work day around getting him ready for school and being there when he's...

Our CEO, Wade Foster, recently asked the entire company to choose a single priority every week and to focus primarily on that. I couldn't help but laugh. The team I work for at Zapier—the app integration team—is responsible for all sorts of tools and interactions. There are always dozens of things that need doing. Never mind a week: how could any of us have a single priority even for a day? The idea seemed absurd. But then I tried it—and I'm a convert. It's essential that we find ways to focus on core priorities, even if it's hard. Here's why, and how I'm trying to follow this advice myself. Reactive work has less impact Every job has small tasks. There are fires that need putting out, yes, but there are also always dozens of little problems and challenges to react to. Checking those small tasks off a list is rewarding. The big, important priorities, meanwhile, are more nebulous. It can be hard to start working on them because it rarely feels like you're...

Nora Abousteit started CraftJam about three years ago. The idea was to bring people together through making—anything from calligraphy to glass etching to watercoloring and beyond. Classes were held at a studio in Manhattan or on-site for corporate or team engagement events. When the COVID-19 crisis hit, Nora had to figure out how to bring her entire business—one that was based entirely on in-person gatherings—online. And it wasn't just to save her business: Nora also knew people needed her services now more than ever. "Now is a time when people want to gather even more," she says. "They feel lonely. I didn't even think about it. I just said: We need to continue to teach. We need to continue to gather. Let's see how we can do this online." Nora's announcement of her virtual classes on her website. In less than two weeks, Nora and the CraftJam team moved everything online, turning their CraftJam sessions into WebJams. She was guided by her "...

You might be a productivity master under normal circumstances, but when a crisis hits, everything gets turned upside down. We're more distracted, have less time to focus on work, and are operating in a completely new context. Instead of assuming our productivity superpowers will stick around, we need to be deliberate about making adjustments to our process, tools, and mindset. I'm on the Learning and Development team at Zapier, and I recently hosted an all-hands meeting about reevaluating your productivity during a crisis. Here I'll give you some tips I gave my team on how to be as productive as possible when productivity is the last thing on your mind. This is not a guilt trip Let me start by saying: this is not a guilt trip. During a crisis, it's unlikely that anyone will be at 100% productivity—after all, we're dealing with constraints that are completely out of our control. Hopefully, your managers and leaders understand this and work with you to set clear pr...

Even with all the talk about work-life balance , a lot of people still struggle with it—even more so if you work remotely. According to a 2018 Gallup survey , almost half of the American workforce will feel burnout at some point. And this isn't just an American problem; it's even in the World Health Organization handbook of medical diagnoses . Simple strategies can minimize burnout , but it's hard to establish healthier habits when "rise and grind" culture has made us feel guilty for taking a vacation. If you find yourself high on will but low on power, try out an automatic workflow—which we call a Zap—to gently nudge you to healthier work habits. We've included some pre-made workflows throughout this piece to get you started. Just click on the Use this Zap button, and we'll guide you through customizing it. It only takes a few minutes. You can read more about setting up Zaps here . Set your schedule You might set a schedule for yourself in your mind,...