Beyond ‘thank you’
Plus our first interview features Mohit Mamoria from Mailman
Welcome to another edition of ProductiveGrowth 🌱, weekly stories about productivity, leadership, motivation, and anything else that helps us and our teams grow and be more productive. Plus Industry news on the companies, products, and services that allow us to work less and do more.
TL;DR
On the eve of Thanksgiving, what are you thankful for?
Did you survive covid?
Are you lucky enough to have a job?
Do you have a place to sleep tonight?
Is your family happy and healthy?
Can you go outside?
We take so many things for granted. The assumption was that you can go walking outside whenever you want. You wouldn’t die by breathing near another person. That family and friends can visit your home whenever you want. You can go to work.
This year has been eye-opening. We need to be thankful for the little things we took for granted and all that we still have today. We have no problem getting food and we have our lives!
Though we might not see them this year, give thanks for the people in your life (you’ll zoom call them later), and all those who were in your life that got you where you are today. It’s gratitude!
Remind one person in your life that they are important to you and have made a difference. Give thanks and make their day.
Have a great thanksgiving, eat some turkey.
I hope you enjoy issue #10!
-Steve
This issue talks tips and reflections on gratitude (or the lack thereof) and how to make it a part of our daily lives. We review the only gratitude journal app you’ll ever need. Plus see Mohit the CEO of Mailman talk leadership and how Mailman will make you more productive.
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EDITOR’S PICKS
🙃Are you being grateful or just polite?
This is something that might catch us off guard, but writer Sherina Berreby points out a hard reality: sometimes, saying ‘thank you’ can be a weapon. Whether we say it to get something out of others, to show our true feelings, or just because we’re used to it. What this reading made me ask myself was: am I doing the best I can to acknowledge the value of those around me?
🌟Building gratitude as a habit makes you productive.
No matter how hard our parents tried to instill gratitude in us, we can still have a hard time showing it. The good news is that we can learn how to be grateful by making it a daily practice. The better news is that recognizing the good in our daily lives actually makes us happier, healthier, and more productive. This blog post from Doist explains seven ways to accomplish gratitude in a way that makes it easier to become a habit.
🧪Science says: write down what you're grateful for, now.
Understandably, 2020 has been the hardest year of many people’s lives. Many of us often get so lost in the burden of day-to-day tasks that we forget to count our blessings. Personally, the thing that has kept me going is convincing myself that I have it good. And guess what? I really do! I’ve found that the best way to shift my perspective is to keep a gratitude journal, and this how-to from Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center explains some key tips to make the practice work for you.
🎖 Don’t know how to build appreciation at work? Start here.
As managers, we might think we’re expressing gratitude to our team when in reality, our efforts fall flat. Sometimes we might even feel underappreciated at the office ourselves while neglecting to think about whether we’re making others feel that way too. If you want to amp up your appreciation game, this article from Mirro is a good way to start (it even has drawings!).
1 Quote
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them." - John F. Kennedy
(Share this on Twitter)
1 Question
What’s your favorite non-verbal way of saying ‘thank you’?
(Add to the conversation on Twitter)
DISCOVER
When it comes to writing down what you’re grateful for, there’s no more aesthetic and simple way to do it than using Presently. A forever-free app with great terms of privacy that you’ll also be thankful for! Read the review here.
Flooded by emails? Serial entrepreneur Mohit Mamoria talks about email management.
Mohit Mamoria was hit with a notification again. A quick refresh revealed the inevitable. A flood of interruptions. A never-ending ocean demanding constant attention is the only way to describe many email inboxes. It’s the enemy of many but especially a maker, a serial entrepreneur.
In our interview, learn about Mohit, his battle plan to stay productive, and how his latest venture, Mailman, will increase your productivity by taming your inbox.
In the interview:
On Mohit Mamoria
On persistence, leadership, and motivation
On staying productive
On Mailman
On help and contacting
On Mohit Mamoria
Mohit is a maker, that is how he describes himself. He likes to make any kind of stuff as long as it is useful to at least one person (himself).
“I am a self-taught programmer and have been coding since I was eleven. I have been a founder a few times earlier to Mailman – most of them failed, except one, which was a minor success.”
He says one of his biggest learnings is that not all startups are meant to be unicorns, some will be growing and profitable businesses, and that is also a good business.
PG: What is Mailman?
MM: It is software that stops all incoming emails to your inbox. “All the emails are collected and delivered to you in batches at your defined schedule. Virtually, it makes the ‘refresh’ button stopped working.”
Having control of your inbox and “once you experience getting emails only a handful of times in the day, there’s no going back.”
On persistence, leadership, and motivation
PG: What is your biggest struggle now?
MM: Losing weight. I used to actively workout before March this year. But since quarantine became the normal way of life, my year-long habit went for a toss and I gained 10 kilos.
Now with resuming working out again (at my home gym), I am slowly coming back to regular weight, but it’s still at least four months away. Biggest struggle right now. BIGGEST. And heaviest as well.
PG: What keeps you motivated?
MM: Tiny things. Really! One new paying customer. Half kilo weight lost.
Any little progress that I make keeps me going on to make another little progress. One after another. So little progress that, if seen in isolation, can be easily missed. But given enough of these little things, they add up really quickly to provide substantial progress over time.
PG: So you've been a founder a few times do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur?
MM: Honestly, I like to see myself as a parallel entrepreneur. For the last eight years, I’ve been building products one after another and sometimes simultaneously.
At any given point in time, I stay focused on one major product but keep dabbling with other ideas on weekends. However, there’s one change between now and 8-years ago. Now, I don’t believe that I have to do everything. I’ve learned to delegate. A big lesson that I learned from my partner in Mailman, Andrew Wilkinson. He runs over 30 companies simply using his superpower of delegating. It’s a long way to go for me, but here’s the start.
So, in all my side projects, I involve someone else to take a lead on the initial exploration of the idea with me.
PG: You just talked about delegating tasks, something that defines you as a leader. Can you tell me what your leadership style is?
MM: Ah, tricky! I think it’s not possible to comment on your own leadership style without a bias, so, let me share what kind of leader I aspire to become.
I like to get involved, get my hands dirty, ship something quickly, and then iterate on it. The one thing I am improving upon is “going with someone else’s opinion”. Here’s what I mean by it.
I was a follower of, “let’s go with the data, and if there’s no data available and we are going with opinions, let’s go with mine”. Lately, I’ve realized my opinions are not always the right ones, or even required as long as you work with other smart people. So, I try to go with other people’s opinions as well where there’s a lack of data.
As a leader, I’ve learned to have strong opinions ONLY on a handful of things, not all.
PG: Since you are talking about this new learning. Can you tell me something that your past successes have taught you?
MM: It’s important to enjoy the small wins along the way. There’s no need to burn yourself out for one big treasure at the end of the rainbow. It’s important to take a look at the rainbow as well once in a while and appreciate the vibrant colors.
Don’t wait for that one big milestone to appreciate the people who are working with you. Giving them high-fives on their tiny wins go a long way.
PG: And how about failures? What’s the biggest lesson they’ve left you?
MM: Failures are temporary, lessons are permanent. I’ve failed more times than I’ve succeeded. I could write all my achievements on a half-page, and to write down all my failures, it’d take at least four.
My first few failures were messy. I cried. I locked myself in the room. I wondered, “what would I do now?”
A few months later, I realized, I was working on something new. I still go away from the internet and people for a couple of days to reset myself whenever I fail big. But now, I try not to take failures personally.
On staying productive
PG: What does your average day look like?
MM: My day starts early at 5.30 a.m. responding to all the support tickets that came in the night before. On average, it takes about a couple of hours to go through them all.
I’ve two slots of one hour each when I do video calls with our users to better understand how they are using Mailman. The afternoon slot (3-4 p.m.) is to talk to users in the eastern hemisphere and the Night slot (9.30-10.30 p.m.) is to talk to the users in the western hemisphere. (I am in India)
Then, I have Maker Time (9 a.m.-2 p.m.) when I actively work on the product, plan, build, refine various features from our roadmap.
It goes without saying, responding to support tickets goes on throughout the day except during my Maker Time.
For about 40mins in the evening (6-6.40 p.m.), I workout to stay active during the quarantine.
PG: You just shared a nice time management system, but how do you stay productive?
MM: Building an early-stage startup means always being surrounded by too many things seeking your attention. And there’s no way to ignore those things.
I follow a two-step process to not get dragged into fire-fighting for the entire day. First, just before going to bed, I plan (mentally, not using any app) what I plan to accomplish the next day. Just one big thing that I need to do to call it a day.
Then, the next day, I make sure all my email tabs, Slack, and Twitter tabs are closed during my Maker Time (9 a.m.-2 p.m.). Maker Time is only to finish what I planned the night before. The goal is not to stay productive for five full hours. The goal is to squeeze at least two hours of productivity from those five hours.
You’ll be surprised what you can accomplish in just a few hours without distractions.
PG: How do you choose what to spend your time on? Do you have a philosophy on personal time management?
You cannot control your entire day. Your family needs you. Your co-workers need you. Your customers need you. All of them demand a part of your attention throughout the day. And they deserve so.
I only try to control my Maker Time. My phone’s on Do Not Disturb mode throughout the Maker Time. My calendar is always empty during those hours. No appointments/meetings/calls.
Having limited hours in my Maker Time forces me to only keep a handful of things on my plate, meaning saying No to a dozen other exciting things that I could be dabbling in.
PG: What time management mistakes do you make?
MM: If I don’t plan my next day before going to bed, it is assumed that the next day would yield almost nothing productive.
At least for me, time management happens the night before, not on the day when you need to manage your time. Roofs are best fixed before it rains, not during.
I am guilty of spending some nights watching Netflix and then drifting off to sleep without a plan for the next day.
PG: Do you leverage any tools or frameworks to stay productive?
MM: I tried, but nothing stuck. Earlier I used to believe that I’ll need to squeeze out at least 8-10 hours of productivity from the day to count it as useful. That only led to eventual burnout.
Now I know, at least for me, if I spend just two hours a day accomplishing something really important and urgent, it’s as good as spending 8 hours doing all the tiny stuff that doesn’t make a big impact.
Calibrating my expectations and only focusing on things that are really important and urgent is the thing that worked for me.
On Mailman
PG: Why did you create Mailman?
MM: My inbox runs my day (and thus most of my life), and it’s counterintuitive that I have almost no control over it. Mine was still manageable but Andrew’s (my partner) inbox was a dumpster fire – a never-ending stream of incoming emails. 24x7. And like us, most people use their inboxes as their todo-lists. And anybody who knows your email address can add something to your to-do list. That’s not fair.
Mailman gives you tools to have better control over who and when someone can get in your inbox. And therefore, give you control over your day.
PG: You mentioned your partner, how do you know Andrew Wilkinson?
MM: Through this powerful site called Twitter. Andrew’s famous for seeking help publicly on Twitter. And almost always somebody extends the hand.
I am one of those. When he tweeted about the email problem he was dealing with, I recalled an old tool I built for myself. I sent him an email.
We finalized the discussion over 5-6 emails and started building Mailman.
PG: Andrew Wilkinson once tweeted: "Bounce any email that is more than 280 characters unless we've emailed before. I'd pay a lot for that." Does the first version of Mailman allow for that?
MM: Haha! Not yet. But maybe in the future. Seems like a good idea for Fool's Day.
If it were possible, Andrew would like to quit emailing altogether.
PG: Who do you hope will benefit the most from Mailman?
MM: Our most loyal users fall into two categories –
Executive or manager at a corporation
Owner of small or medium business
While there are certain individuals who use Mailman on their personal accounts, over 80% of our paying customers fall in the categories mentioned above.
PG: I see. How will Mailman change the world?
MM: There’s a saying, “if you focus on tiny details, the big picture takes care of itself.”
With Mailman, we plan to change the lives of individuals giving them more productive time and calmer days.
Imagine what would happen if thousands of brilliant people get even one additional productive hour in their day. We change the lives of these smart people so that they can focus on things that move the world towards better.
PG: I sure would love one more productive hour a day. What is the future of Mailman?
MM: Email is such a powerful and open communication tool that it is used for more than one purpose. We use it for marketing, 1-1 communication, work, notifications, newsletters, and much more.
Inbox, natively, was not built for so many use cases.
With Mailman, we plan to build a suite of tools that allows you to handle each of those use-cases in a better way. Each use-case of the email requires special treatment, and with Mailman, we intend to build those tools.
PG: Let’s talk about logistics! How can people sign up for Mailman?
MM: We launched publicly on October 21 and anybody can get an account at https://mailmanhq.com. It’s as easy as going to the website and clicking on “Sign in with Google”.
PG: What email platforms does Mailman work with?
MM: Unlike other email apps, Mailman plugs straight into Gmail, so you don’t need to switch email apps and risk losing features you depend on.
You can continue using your favorite email client (Superhuman, Spark, etc) and let Mailman work in the background.
On help and connecting
PG: We are almost at the end of this interview. If you could get help on one thing what would it be?
MM: If I can just get a huge list of all the headaches people face with their email, that’d be a life-saver. Most of us have accepted the current state of email as is and don’t see any problems in it.
Identifying an email issue in isolation is the first step towards solving it and the most difficult part of it.
I’ll really be grateful if every one of your audience can send me an email telling their #1 headache with email. Anything big or small. Just anything.
PG: How can people reach out to you? Email, LinkedIn Twitter what's best?
MM: The best way to reach me is on Twitter (@mohitmamoria). My DMs are open. The second best method is to email me (mohit@mailmanhq.com). But remember, I have Mailman activated on my inbox, so, unless we have communicated before, it might take me about a day before I get back to you.
Attention ProductiveGrowth members! Mohit has been kind enough to give us a promo. If someone uses the coupon code PRODUCTIVEGROWTH when upgrading to a paid plan during their trial period, they will get an additional 15% discount on the annual plan (which is already 20% discounted to the monthly plan) for the first year.
Thanks again to Mohit and you for reading!
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Edited by: Lauren Maslen.
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