August 2017 Summaries

Imposter phenomenon, also known as imposter syndrome, is a common psychological pattern where individuals feel like they are not good enough or that their success is due to luck rather than skill and effort. This feeling of inadequacy can affect anyone, regardless of gender, and can lead to unhealthy perfectionism, procrastination, and poor work outcomes. To overcome imposter phenomenon, it's essential to recognize unhealthy perfectionism, learn to realistically assess oneself, and talk to others about their struggles. By doing so, individuals can reframe their thinking, build confidence, and develop a more accurate assessment of their abilities.

ScholarMatch, a college access program founded by Dave Eggers in 2010, helps low-income and first-generation students apply to college and provides a support system to increase graduation rates. The organization crowdfunds scholarships using donation-based models and automates tasks through Zaps connecting Stripe and Airtable. These automation tools also enable the tracking of donations and sending personalized thank-you emails to donors. ScholarMatch has expanded its services with the launch of ScholarMatcher, which rates colleges based on their support for students from low-income households. The organization collects feedback from students using Gravity Forms, a WordPress-based form, to improve its tool and better serve students.

Flow is a mental state where an individual is fully engaged in an activity, feeling energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment, losing sense of space and time. It was first proposed by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi in the 1970s and is characterized by clear goals, immediate feedback, challenge at a balanced level with one's skills, self-control, environment that requires novelty and complexity, deliberate practice to develop mastery, a clear purpose behind the task, and experiencing the activity as intrinsically rewarding. To enter flow, individuals need to have these elements in place, which can be achieved through practices such as setting standards, monitoring performance, being aware of energy levels, finding an environment that challenges them, practicing deliberate skills development, connecting to a clear purpose, and focusing on intrinsic motivation. By incorporating these strategies, individuals can increase their chances of experiencing flow, leading to heightened productivity, creativity, and overall satisfaction in their work and life.

Vicky Tatar, Director of Project Management at MeUndies, aimed to improve the company's efficiency by integrating its project management tools, Asana and Pivotal Tracker, with Zapier, an automation tool. She built Zaps to connect these two apps, reducing communication time between teams and increasing transparency. With this integration, Vicky reduced the work of her teams in half, saving time and improving productivity. The setup was simple and easy, allowing Vicky to quickly document and experiment with new Zaps.

You can effectively advance your career by building a diverse network of high-quality relationships with people from various spheres and corporate hierologies, even when you don't have enough time to meet new contacts. Apps like Shapr, Bizzabo, CityHour, 1 Million Cups, FullContact, and Clearbit Connect can help streamline the process of finding new connections and networking at conferences or through spontaneous meetings. While these tools can save time on searching for contact information and scheduling meetings, they cannot replace the need to send personalized emails, connect old coworkers to new opportunities, or mentor employees.

Building successful integrations in SaaS companies involves more than just connecting APIs; it requires strategic marketing, focusing on quality over quantity, and ongoing support. Many integrations fail because they are not effectively promoted, often due to a lack of marketing efforts or moving quickly to the next project. It is essential to have a launch plan and coordinate with partners to ensure customers are aware of the integrations. Prioritizing high-value integrations over a large number of less impactful ones can lead to more meaningful user engagement and easier maintenance. Additionally, providing robust support for integrations by answering user queries, updating documentation, and adapting to changes in partner APIs can enhance customer satisfaction and reduce churn. By treating integrations as a core aspect of their product, companies can foster strong partnerships and deliver valuable user experiences.

Fortified Bicycle, a company that creates theft-resistant bike gear, used Kickstarter campaigns to fund their products, raising over $178,000 for their flagship product, the Invincible Bike. The company worked with cycling communities and listened to feedback to design and improve their products. To connect with new leads on Facebook, they used Facebook Lead Ads and automated the process using Zapier, texting users after they expressed interest in learning more about their bikes. Fortified Bicycle also enhanced their customer experience by adding accessibility features, such as scheduling test rides through Calendly and sending text messages to customers via Burst SMS and Slack notifications. By leveraging automation tools like Zapier, the company was able to create a personalized experience for their customers while staying connected with their community.

You should have a backup of all your data stored somewhere safe and separate from your everyday devices, such as an external hard drive or a remote server, to ensure that you can recover files in case of deletion or computer failure. A backup is just "an extra copy of data in case the original is lost or damaged". You can download archives of everything from your favorite web apps, including Google Docs, Spotify, Evernote, and social networks, on a schedule to create a true backup of everything. You can also use app integration tool Zapier to save copies of your Dropbox files to Google Drive, log form results to a spreadsheet as they come in, save notes from Evernote to OneNote, or add new contacts to your CRM and Google Contacts at the same time. Additionally, you should make a full backup of everything on your computer using a local backup method, such as Time Machine for Macs or Windows File History Backup for PCs, or an online backup service like Backblaze, Arq, Mozy, or Carbonite, which can save a copy of all your files automatically with no extra fuss.

You can format text using Markdown, which is a simple way to make your writing more readable and visually appealing. You can use special characters such as asterisks, underscores, and brackets to add emphasis, create links, images, and quotes, and even mix and match different formatting options. Markdown is widely supported across various writing apps, including Google Docs, Word, and Notepad, and can be easily exported into rich text, HTML, or PDF formats. With Markdown, you can write in a plain text format, then add decoration later, making it an ideal choice for writers who want to focus on content rather than formatting.

"What’s the point?" "Why does this matter?" When faced with an unfulfilling job, personal meaning is a powerful motivator that can drive employees to perform better and be more engaged in their work. A meaningful life requires struggle, stress, and effort, but personal investment can push through mundane tasks. To create meaning in the monotony of a job, one must first figure out what makes things meaningful, then refocus work to feel meaningful. This involves cultivating self-awareness, writing a career mantra, recrafting one's job by changing tasks, relationships, or perceptions. By doing so, employees can transform mindless drudgery into more fulfilling acts of service and create a positive impact for others. Ultimately, personal meaning is essential to overcome obstacles, withstand setbacks, and thrive at work.

Focusing on a single specialty can make you more appealing to employers, but research suggests that creative cross-training, which involves spending time and energy on unrelated tasks, hobbies, and interests, can actually supercharge our ability to learn and grow. This approach allows us to connect seemingly unrelated things, making creativity just about finding new connections. Hobbies and outside interests create a "ripple effect" of learning, giving us a sense of mastery and developing new skills. Having an unrelated interest like playing music or watching anime can open up our minds to innovative ideas and boost our creative output. By incorporating these activities into our routine, we can build a network of enterprises that cross-fertilize ideas, provide fresh context, allow for idea incubation, and offer an escape from other projects. By setting guidelines to manage multitasking anxiety, we can stay focused and avoid feeling overwhelmed. Ultimately, creative cross-training can help us move forward on our path to success without denying ourselves the benefits of specialization.

The Free State Project is a nonprofit organization based in Manchester, New Hampshire that aims to promote human liberty and free markets through education and outreach. Their mission is to recruit 20,000 like-minded individuals to join their cause by protecting people's rights and minimizing government intervention. To achieve this goal, the organization needed to streamline its processes, which were previously manual and prone to errors, using tools like Zapier to automate tasks such as tracking donations and sales, sending emails, and updating spreadsheets. By leveraging Zapier, Free State Project was able to increase efficiency and reduce mistakes, allowing them to focus on their core mission and ultimately achieve their goal of recruiting 20,000 activists in February 2016.

OpenRefine is a powerful tool for working with messy data, originally released as "Freebase Gridworks" and later acquired by Google. It bills itself as a simple, yet effective solution for cleaning up and normalizing data, making it easy to find typos, variations in phrases, formatting errors, and other issues that can be difficult to spot in large datasets. With OpenRefine, users can clean up and reformat data, identify patterns and relationships, and even categorize data automatically using custom text facets. The tool is designed for bulk operations and can handle a variety of file formats, including CSV, XLS, and JSON. It also includes features such as undo/redo functionality, detailed activity logs, and the ability to use records and rows separately to organize data. OpenRefine can be used to clean up data from various sources, including app exports, old spreadsheets, and email lists, making it a valuable tool for anyone working with messy or outdated data.

APIs, much like water supply systems, require reliable infrastructure to ensure consistent availability, yet planned downtime for maintenance or upgrades is sometimes unavoidable. API providers can mitigate the impact of such downtime by following four key steps: avoiding planned downtime whenever possible, providing developers with advance warnings, maintaining an updated status page, and assisting developers in handling downtime effectively. By scheduling downtime in advance and using various communication channels such as emails, site messages, and forums, providers can ensure developers are prepared. Updating status pages with scheduled maintenance details and offering clear API responses during downtime helps distinguish planned outages from unexpected ones. These efforts are crucial for maintaining trust and reliability, as developers, who are often customers or serve customer-facing roles, rely on consistent API performance.

Snap Kitchen, a meal kit service that delivers pre-prepared healthy meals, has leveraged automation tools like Zapier to streamline its operations and improve efficiency. Under the guidance of Chief Technology Officer Scott Brittain, Snap Kitchen has automated various processes, such as managing customer feedback, using Slack for customer support, and tracking Freshdesk tickets. By integrating these tools with Zapier's automation capabilities, Scott's team was able to create quick solutions while figuring out new processes, ultimately freeing up time to focus on building better features for the app and entire business. The introduction of Zapier has enabled Snap Kitchen to scale its operations more easily and become a food-tech company, supporting special diets like vegan and paleo, and offering a seamless ordering experience through its iOS app.

When using video calls, it's essential to ensure that your microphone and camera are private to avoid unwanted situations or exposure. To achieve this, you can use various tools such as webcam covers, apps like OverSight and Micro Snitch for Mac, and Shush, Mute Me, MicMute, and other similar Windows apps. These tools can help you hide your camera, mute your mic, and disable notifications to maintain your privacy. Additionally, you can also add a microphone mute workflow to an automation app or use the command line to achieve this. By using these tools, you can ensure that your video calls are private and secure, giving you peace of mind when collaborating online.