Over the last week or two, if you are at all in the tech space you have probably heard of HEY, the email platform created by Basecamp. If you haven’t, Basecamp is the maker of a very successful project management platform. Now they have gone knee deep into email. This project has been underway for over two years, says David Heinemeier Hansson. If you know Basecamp, DHH the CTO or Jason Fried the CEO, you know that they are an opinionated folk. This reason alone is a huge part of why I was excited when I heard they were taking on this venture. Both of these founders are very vocal in the tech community, being leaders and advocates of security and privacy along with hating venture capital. Their vocalness and opinions are things I truly admire about them and I try to do the same with my beliefs. Long story short, when they sent out my invite, yes there is an invite list, for now; I was very excited to dive in.

Back in March 2020, I had the honor of being on a panel style Notion Office Hours. Marie Poulin was the host and the topic was remote work. This was during the first few weeks of the pandemic starting and people needed some tips on how to acclimate to the new working environment. They also probably came to peek into our Notion workspaces, though we barely touched on them.

As a videographer, photographer, and designer, I create a lot of content and need a place/places to store it all. Most people come up with an elaborate external hard drive solution. I’ve seen hard drives dedicated to the year and month, RAID and NAS setups to archival and team collaboration, even people that only store the final version and delete all RAW and unedited files. I do not handle my file management like any of those and here is why.

Remote work is officially a thing, not only with fancy startups and forward thinking creative agencies, but nearly everyone. Yes, it has become the norm through bad circumstances, but we need to make the most of it. Anywhere you look, you can find content around remote tools and services, best practices and tips, but not too much around physical things.

You, like most people are probably suddenly a remote worker. Because of COVID-19, if you like it or not, you have to dive right in. I have been getting questions about best practices about remote. There are tons of articles about this. Most of the answers are pretty obvious. Read one, read two, hell - read twenty. You'll see the trends fast. Simply, working from home is not a vacation. Find a way to emulate working from the office or better yet a more efficient office, your way.What I do want to talk about is a tool for remote workers. I have talked about it in the past and I will continue. Notion is a tool that can do a lot, way more than people have the patience to learn. So, I am here to provide you a starting point.

Time is a precious thing. Managing the little time we have in a day, week or month is hard. The busier we are, the less time we seem to have. I struggle managing my time, more so now, than ever. I don’t only have a day job and a fairly busy personal life, but I am also mixing in my freelance creative agency and side passion projects. Since a lack of time is no stranger to me, I have searched for a set of tools that is effective at helping me accomplish my tasks during my busy days. I have tried basically all of the reminder apps, project management tools, document suites, and messaging services. I have found a combination that not only works really well, it is also the most affordable.

After years of searching, I think I found the solution that does it all, that is if you are willing to put in the time up front to make it what you want.

Remote work is becoming more of a norm. It is being adopted by a wide array of industries for tons of different reasons. Some companies do it because it is cheaper, opens up their talent pool, increases productivity and opens up work hours, so they can be up and running 24/7. The part of this idea that goes less spoken about, is if it’s right for the employee? Specifically, is it right for you?