Ari Meisel

Stop Making To-Do Lists. They Don’t Work.

March 15, 2019 by Ari Meisel

It’s high time I make an important distinction between a to-do list and a checklist because too many people are wasting too much time on the wrong thing. As a productivity expert, that makes me nuts.

A to-do list tells you something you have to do.
A checklist tells you how to do something.

I despise to-do lists.

They are a hindrance to productivity and add to your general stress level. I talk a lot about idea capture and how you can use technology to bring tasks to your attention at the right time and clear them from your mind at all other times. But I often get the question, “What do you do for big projects?”

What is a Big Project?

I have had the opportunity to witness true productivity comedy on four occasions now. While meeting with some of my productivity clients and reviewing their to-do lists I have seen an item that all four of them considered to be a good thing to put on those lists. WRITE BOOK is NOT a to-do list item.

It’s not even a goal.

Publish book might be the goal but putting write book on a to-do list is a great way to guarantee that you never write that book. Writing a book is actually a wonderfully simple and illustrative example of what I’m talking about. While write book is not a to do, write 100 words is a GREAT to do list item.

Depending on how well you write, then 1 page or even 5 may be a reasonable to-do list item. But what about the more complex stuff?

Well, I spent 10 years of my life working in construction and real estate development and I can tell you that in terms of project planning you’d be hard pressed to find something more complicated than a construction project.

There is an enormous amount of planning that goes into any construction project from finding the property and inspecting it, coming up with a design (which involves architects, consultants, local code experts, several types of engineers, etc…), permitting which can involve local and regional authorities, and of course financing the whole thing.

When it comes to building you’ve got multiple trades working at different yet coordinated times, weather, unforeseen conditions, more financing, lead times on materials and products, interior and exterior work, and about 5,000 different stakeholders.

How do you keep track of it all?

When it comes to managing a big and complex project, especially one that you will do iterations of over and over like “Write Book” or “Build Big Building” your best bet is a project management tool like Trello. It allows you to break down that enormous project into much more manageable chunks.

If you can start to break things down, that’s when we can begin to optimize, automate, and outsource everything. I have to reiterate, I’m not talking about creating to-do lists, I’m talking about checklists.

Checklists, To-Do Lists, It’s, all the same, isn’t it?

When I was 16, I got my private pilot’s license and logged several hundred hours in small planes. I’ve also experienced two plane crashes and walked away unharmed but that’s another story…no matter how many times I got in that plane, I would pull out the laminated checklist which told me the process to go through when inspecting the plane, the engine check process, the taxiing and communication process, and the takeoff process.

Seeing a theme?

No matter how many times we do something and how ingrained the steps are in our head, a checklist gives us comfort and thoroughness. I used them, commercial pilots use them, surgeons in many hospitals use them, checklists are everywhere.

Again, the difference between a to-do list and a checklist is that to do tells you what you have to do but the checklist tells you HOW to do it.

Neurologically speaking, our minds are better at remembering and understanding the pathways to end goals rather than the goal itself.

A soccer player will remember the play where he ran left, circled around the striker, stole the ball, ran up the right side of the field, got to within 50 feet of the goal, and finally kicked the ball with just a bit of side spin. The ball sailing past the goalie’s hands and into the back of the net will likely fade from his memory and he’ll have to watch a video of the game to remember the look on his own face when he won the game.

There’s a reason for this, if we focus on the result, we can’t improve the process. If a startup fails, and you don’t learn from it, shame on you. If you run a 6-minute mile, and you don’t think about what it will take for you to run a 5:55 mile, even if you don’t act on it, then shame on you. Now take a look at a typical Trello setup…

Ignore the card that says to do, instead, look at the headings and think how they might apply to your project. If it’s a book, maybe you have one on historic research for your WWII novel, and a card for character development, and then your chapters. If it’s a construction project, maybe I have a column for plumbing (which includes an item on installing a kitchen sink, something I’ll definitely do again on another project) and another for furniture. Now this is what you see when you click on an item.

Isn’t that beautiful? Every step I need to install a kitchen sink. These are not to dos remember, this is the process, step by step for HOW to install a kitchen sink.

I can share this with my team, I can assign it to people, and best of all I can always update and improve this process to make it more optimized so that I can possibly automate parts of it, and even outsource it entirely.

The visual nature of a planner like this means you can try to anticipate all of the moving parts at the beginning of the project and then update them on your own or collaboratively with others as needed.

But what am I supposed TO DO?

This brings us full circle to the underlying principle about the timing of tasks. Obviously, install kitchen sink is not a to-do where you can say that 3 pm will be the right time to deal with it.

In this case, the task could be done by FollowUp.cc which will send you reminders every day at 3 pm.

This way I know every day at 3 pm I’ll get a reminder and I can go to Trello and say either “I need to tell Mr. Plumber to install the sink at House Y” or “I need to call Mr. Plumber and see how he’s doing on the sink installation at House Y” or hopefully “I need to make sure Mr. Plumber finished installing that sink at House Y”

Throw away your to-do lists. Start creating checklists and you’ll get those large projects under control and….you guessed it…..DONE.

Putting Process Management into Practice the Easy Way

March 4, 2019 by Ari Meisel

We all hear that automating and outsourcing tasks are the best way to grow a business. It sounds pretty easy, right? Just let someone (or something) else handle all your tasks without you having to lift a finger…and watch your revenue soar.

But it’s not quite that easy.

Anyone who has tried to hire a new employee or contractor understands that other people don’t always have the same vision of a process that you do.

I know I’ve been frustrated before at hiring someone who ends up completing a task entirely different from how I would have done it. And then I just have to redo everything anyway.

That didn’t save me any time or money at all.

And guess what?

It wasn’t the other person’s fault. It was mine.

Here’s why. I didn’t have a good process map in place before asking them to complete the workflow.

Sure, I knew exactly how to do the job myself. But that’s not the same as relaying the information to someone else in an efficient manner.

So I’m going to save you from making that same costly mistake.

Here’s the most important information you need to know for putting process management into practice easily, and getting your workflow completed…

You need to set your intentions

Process management is a beautiful thing because it essentially means you don’t have to do a lot of people managing. You’ve set the process in place so well that recurring workflows just get completed.

In order to get to that place of beauty, you need communication.

And before you can communicate to your team successfully, you’re going to need to set your intentions.

You cannot lead well by making assumptions that everyone else will automatically do things the way you do.

So be very clear to your team about what you expect and how you expect it to work. They’re not mind readers. It’s your job to set intent.

Let’s talk about how that works when it comes to process management tools…

Communicate better by choosing tools intentionally

You cannot manage a process well if everyone is not on the same page about how you intend to communicate.

If you have the process set up in a particular task management software, you need to make sure everyone on your team is using that software all the time.

So if you have a project with tasks outlined on cards on Trello, your team needs to know that you expect them to communicate via Trello regarding that project.

Make sure they know that is the intent.

That way you don’t end up with important questions about a project going to a cluttered inbox, for example.

You want to avoid the common trap of using 5 different applications to communicate about the same project or workflow.

Stay organized with documentation

As you’re going through the processes you are going to optimize, automate, or outsource, you’ll likely find that there are several different areas of your business that require this kind of attention and mapping.

So sit down and document them.

Note which processes you have in place. List all of them. And put them in a queue for mapping.

You can do this with whatever app works best for you. I like to use Trello so that I can see each process on a card, and all of the processes on a board together. I can also use it to group related process under columns. It’s pretty nifty.

Asana is another similar app that allows you to use cards and boards.

Both of these platforms allow you to invite your team members to access the boards.

And to be clear, I think you can benefit from process mapping every aspect of your business. We even optimize the process of showing gratitude to one another. Seriously.

The first step is writing down your current process

You can’t optimize until you have a working process in place.

Here’s the real trick though:

You have to write down every single step. Every. Single. Step.

Sometimes you’re going to mess this up because you know exactly what the step means. But the first time your contractor misses a step you’ll realize that it’s not as clear to everyone else.

When that happens, you know you need to add in an extra step to make everything understandable. Don’t expect them to make the leap in thought of: “If I’m told to do X, then that clearly means I have to do part Xa and part Xb.”

Mapping out a process

The purpose of setting up a mapped and efficient process is so that you can ideally begin using that process for OAO — optimizing, automating, and outsourcing.

You’re going to break each process up into two areas on the map — main phases and individual steps.

Let’s take a really simple process as an example:

You need to check and organize your email.

The main phases might look something like this:

Open the email application.
Address new emails.
Address old emails.

Each phase has its own individual steps.

To be fair, opening the email application is pretty straightforward, but let’s go ahead and map it out anyway.

Click the shortcut to your email application.
Click “sign in”.
Type your username.
Type your password.
Click “log in”.

Even a short, straightforward process has multiple steps when you break it down. (And even this process can be optimized/automated. One way is to use a password saver like True key.)

You will then go through each of the other phases to break them down into individual steps.

Optimizing the process

An optimized process map is one that you can give to a person who has never been through the process before, and they can complete each step without making a mistake in the process.

That is, the optimized process map is precisely clear on what tasks need to be done and in what order.

Automation can take care of process steps, but…

Once you have your process in place, you absolutely can build in automation using software.

There’s one thing I want to warn you about though:

After meticulously marking down every little part of every step of your process, your mind may be stuck in that step by step mode.

And that is not the way you want to automate.

Yes, you want the automation to complete all the steps. But you do not want to set up 20 different automations for 20 different steps.

As you look for automation software, keep in mind that it’s much more helpful to be able to integrate multiple steps into one automated process.

For instance, if you need to send a post to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, that is 3 individual parts of a process that need to be completed. But instead of manually going to each platform and making a post, you want to find software that will post to all 3 platforms for you.

Then, you only need to make the post once, and you’ve done 3x the work. Automation. It’s a beautiful thing.

Again though, you have to have a working plan in place before you can automate anything.

Just get started

The step that usually trips people up the most in process mapping is making a decision. If you’re like a lot of people, maybe you’re wondering right now, “But which process do I start with?”

Here’s the big secret:

It doesn’t matter.

It really doesn’t matter which process you start with.

Pick one area to create a process map for, and work on it until you have the entire process mapped out. Then start optimizing, automating, and outsourcing that process.

When you’ve finished that one, then you can pick another.

The real key to success is momentum. You’ve got to keep taking action, follow through and make process. Because with the help of automations, progress can lead to perfection.

Hey Alexa, Make My Life Easier

February 22, 2019 by Ari Meisel

For years, Amazon has made our collective lives more convenient by selling just about everything under the sun on its expansive e-commerce platform. Since the introduction of Alexa, Amazon’s virtual, voice-activated assistant, and its supplementary speaker device, Echo, we can now cry out for anything we wish — and it is granted. Amazon has truly cornered the market on personal convenience.

But is there such a thing as too much convenience? Overreliance on technology can often result in a physical decrease in productivity and efficiency. When everything is available to us at the touch of a button, it can be easy to fall into patterns of inactivity and shiftlessness.

Here are some suggestions I’ve come up with for using Alexa to increase personal productivity.

Develop some skills

In order to make the most of your Alexa, I recommend learning about her available skills — these are just added functionality tools, like apps. A quick visit to Amazon’s skills store and you can choose from tens of thousands of options, nearly all of which can bring order, insight, and convenience into your life, lowering stress and significantly boosting productivity.

Word of the Day Flash Briefing — improve your vocabulary by learning a new word, and its definition, each and every day. Make it a part of your morning routine, along with your alarm, your news headlines and a briefing of the day’s weather.
Guided Meditation — I know what you’re thinking, but before you immediately dismiss this suggestion, understand that meditation does not necessarily require hours of chanting while sitting cross-legged in a silent space. A session can take as little as five minutes and can be implemented anywhere, in any type of clothing. Meditation improves focus and cognitive thinking, allowing you to gain a clear head and relinquish any stress that is preventing you from being productive.
TED Talks — a motivating lecture in between meetings is a great way to boost your productivity. Learn fascinating new methods of communication, research, innovative thinking or inspiration by tuning into one of the hundreds of official TED conferences streamed directly through your Echo speaker.
Five Minute Workout — one of the biggest excuses for avoiding the gym is a lack of time. Not with this Alexa skill. “Five Minute Workout” is designed for your hectic work life, offering intensive cardio and stretch activities you can execute on your lunch break (just be sure to close your office door and bring another freshly pressed shirt if you’re prone to excessive sweating). An active mind is a productive mind.
Get Up — sometimes when productivity and creativity are just not on the day’s menu (and when they really need to be), you might want to try something a little bit more impactful than a quiet period of internal reflection or a stimulating lecture. Quite simply, you need to get up. Yes, by uttering the simple command “Alexa, Get Me Up!”, our favorite girl unleashes a torrent of motivational prompts and missives in your lazy direction until you are sufficiently pumped up. Still not convinced? One user describes this option as “interesting and annoying enough to actually make me get up off the couch 70% of the time”. Those are some decent odds.

Make some calls and send some texts

Making wireless phone calls has never been easier. Alexa supports voice calling to both landlines and mobile phones, while an Echo can serve as a speakerphone (Echoes are relatively inexpensive — I’d recommend purchasing a few and keeping them in areas throughout your home and office). Setup is also a breeze: open the Alexa app on your mobile phone, tap the speech bubble icon and enter your phone number (you will be sent a verification code via text). Simply follow the instructions.

Now that you are verified, you can begin making calls: “Alexa, call [contact’s name]” or “Alexa, call [phone number]”. Ever the sweetheart, Alexa will ask you to confirm your request in order to avoid dialing the wrong contact.

Alexa is also a whiz at shooting off text messages on your behalf. If you’ve got an Android phone, she can send texts to any mobile number. Simply say, “Alexa, send a text to [contact name],” and follow it up with your message. You can even include punctuation while dictating by adding commands like “comma” and “exclamation point”.

Set the mood

Having Alexa play ambient music or background noise is a great way to increase productivity when performing dry or mundane tasks, especially when sitting at a desk. While others prefer popping on a podcast to enhance their thought process, others would do well to check out some of the great voiceless options to fill that intimidating silence.

Instead of manually searching for playlists on Pandora or Spotify, you can add a skill like “Shoptalk” to Alexa and have it play streams (via Echo) like “Coffitivity”, an audio site that recreates the familiar ambient din heard in coffee shops, helping you to work better by stimulating your creativity. Studies have shown that certain types of audible assistance can significantly increase productivity. And luckily, there is an entire catalog of options available, from white noise to running water to bird calls — and everything in between.

Make some commands

When you’ve got Alexa to help keep you on top of your tasks, it becomes difficult to find excuses for procrastination. First thing’s first: when you wake up, ask Alexa about your schedule for the day. If you wish to make adjustments to your calendar, ask her to add or remove an event.

But don’t stop there! Use your imagination throughout the day, or set commands based around personal challenges: ask Alexa to remind you to get ready for bed, or to go to the gym, or to brush your teeth, whatever activities typically leave you feeling unmotivated.

And of course, one of Alexa’s greatest features for productivity — making a list. Whether you’re compiling a grocery list, a weekly to-do list or even a travel itinerary, having an automatic voice reminder will not only keep you organized but increase the likelihood of you actually checking off each item.

Never Depend on Any-One Ever Again

February 15, 2019 by Ari Meisel

The case for the on-demand everything and the dedicated nothing

My mantra is “Become Replaceable” and that can freak people out.

“But I’m irreplaceable”, say some founders.

“Yes, I know, and that’s the problem.” is my standard answer

So I whipped out my dictionary to allay some fears in the hope of bringing a bit more clarity to the paradox.

What’s the difference between irreplaceable and indispensable?

Webster’s can help.

Note how the word was hardly ever used before the Industrial Revolution.

Again, common word usage tells us that before the Industrial Revolution, indispensable was used frequently.

Today, indispensable is at an all-time low.

Ideally, though we want to use that word a lot more. We want entire teams of indispensable people.

We don’t want a single irreplaceable, anything. Because, according to the dictionary and my experience, it or he or she is impossible to replace if lost.

And worse, if your business thrives or dies on a single point of failure, it’s a huge liability. It should scare you, should keep you up at night, especially if that single point of failure is a dedicated anything.

So you shouldn’t have a dedicated VA, you shouldn’t have a dedicated graphic designer, you shouldn’t have a dedicated coder.

If you have an opportunity to outsource to an on-demand service, you need to have access to as many people as you need whenever you need them. Plus, you should have the freedom to “turn out the lights” as well, without remorse or regret.

No attachment.

Now it may sound heartless, but it will make your business sustainable and allow you to sleep at night because a single point of failure is literally just that a point of failure.

But what about the replaceability thing? I bet you’re thinking.

If you’re replacing yourself with somebody else that is in a dedicated role, you’re really just taking the bottleneck from you and moving it to someone else. But it’s still there. It’s just someone else’s bottleneck.

You haven’t cleared the path, you’ve just pushed the dirt along.

Here’s another way to look at this paradox. Look at an engine, like it’s your business. The carburetor is irreplaceable because the car (your business) cannot, will not run without a carburetor.

Indispensable is the nitrous oxide that makes that engine go faster, accelerate better, and be more efficient and effective. You can still operate, you can still grow without nitrous oxide. You can still get from point a to point b, but if you really want to do it the way you want to do it, then the nitrous becomes indispensable.

So fill your life and business with indispensable and do everything you can to avoid irreplaceable.

Why Content Matters

February 11, 2019 by Ari Meisel

We finished 2018 hearing all about the unmistakable power of content for marketing and promoting your business.

Content is king.

Marketers are increasingly investing in content marketing.

Consumers love content!

No matter where you look, you’re bound to find a headline talking about how incredible content marketing is.

I’m not here to tell you that’s not the case.

Content definitely is a marketing powerhouse, but it’s so much more than that.

And the question I frequently get is: why, and how should I use content to grow my business?

The Truth about Content Marketing

No matter how great we are at what we do, there’s always going to be someone better at it than us. There may be thousands.

And the only thing that really differentiates us from all those people out there is our unique perspective.

Content is the way to share it with people it resonates with.

If you’re a marketer, you know there’s a lot of marketers out there. But why do your clients prefer you over anyone else?

Your perspective resonates with them.

But how will they understand your perspective, and realize that you’re the person they want to work with?

If you don’t amplify your voice and your perspective with content, they won’t know. Everyone out there is producing all kinds of useful and valuable content, but it’s the perspective that matters.

It’s the difference between reading a valuable article full of tips and reading a great article.

Different kinds of content work for different people, and that’s why it’s important for you to produce it. And not only produce it — you have to pour some of your soul and your perspective into it.

But I’m Not a Good Writer, I’m Not…

That’s not an excuse.

We have so many resources at our disposal that there’s no excuse for not producing content and growing our businesses by sharing our unique perspectives.

I’m producing Facebook Live videos that become blog posts, and blog posts that become Facebook Live videos. That video can become 12 social media posts, an infographic, and an ebook.

There’s no limit to what content can be, and what form we can get it in or turn it into.

Maybe you’re not a great writer — but do you like podcasting?

Maybe your voice isn’t radio-ready, but can you express yourself in words and make your audience both laugh and think?

Let’s face it:

Thinking that you can’t produce content in the medium your audience loves shouldn’t hold you back.

There are so many tools that can help you. A lot of them are free. There’s no reason not to start right now.

Ok, Where Do I Start with Content?

Before you start thinking about the format your audience likes and/or you like, start by thinking about value.

What do you think your audience needs to hear to understand how you can help them?

What tone do they need to hear it in?

For example, if you’re running a B2B business, you should think about your typical audience. Are they young people who like funny articles and memes? Do they need thoughtful pieces on long-term strategies or concrete tactics they can try out right now?

And if you’re selling B2C — let’s say you’re selling flowers — who are (going to be) your customers? What do they like talking about?

Don’t just think about your industry. Think about other interests of your audience.

You can use tools like Answer The Public to find the most common questions your audience asks, and then give them answers.

That’s the most straightforward way to think about providing value, but it’s really all about creativity. Just don’t forget to add some of your unique charms to whatever you produce.

The second step is actual content production.

You should definitely look at what kind of mediums your audience prefers, but at the end of the day, you should pick the format you’re most comfortable with; where your personality translates well.

If you’re not a good writer — if your brain just isn’t wired that way — articles and blog posts may not be your “weapon” of choice. If you don’t feel natural when writing, you may not be able to express your personality through it.

So if you’d like to speak, speak. If you’d like to be on video, do video. If you like to write, then write.

And finally…

Automate and Start Promoting

When you produce a piece of content, your work shouldn’t end with publishing it on a platform of your choice.

In fact, there’s an article I wrote: How to produce a month’s worth of content in one minute.

It’s definitely possible. All it takes are some automation tools and editing.

I personally love starting with Facebook Live videos — it’s a medium I enjoy, and I think it shows with my audience.

After I publish the Facebook Live, I use a tool to repurpose that content and cross-promote it. Then I adapt my video for a podcast and outsource written content creation. I turn it into a social media video with a tool that gets it all done with very little input from me.

I get a lot of content from just one piece of content, and it fuels my marketing for weeks to come, providing value to my audience without having to sit down and do the work for hours every day.

Even though I’m not equally skilled at every type of content production — I don’t have to be.

And once I stopped thinking about my faults and started thinking about pooling resources that are going to help me overcome my limitations and reach my goal, content creation got a lot easier.

So if you think you’re not a good writer or a good podcaster — don’t let that stop you.

All that matters is your perspective, and showing the audience that you are the person whose expertise they need.

Here’s The Solution To The Hardest Automation Problem

February 10, 2019 by Ari Meisel

You know when you do something really cool but you try to play it off and pretend it’s not that cool so ultimately you can seem super cool? This is not one of those times. I just figured out the holy grail of automation and its….kind of a big deal.

I’ve gotten this questions several times in the past…

Is it possible to trigger an automation when something doesn’t happen?

To which I’ve always had to answer with “no” because all of the standard automation platforms out there IFTTT and Zapier are very clearly structured around a trigger and an action. Some trigger happens here, and as a result, some action happens somewhere else. The key, of course, is that something always has to happen in order to trigger something. By definition, something not happening just doesn’t cut it. So every six months or so I would get that question and do that thing where you suck air in hard through your teeth and cock your head to the side like you just stubbed your toe and give me a response in the negative. That was until someone asked me a few weeks ago and I couldn’t say no.

The person who asked me is a member of my Less Doing Leaders coaching program and I’m constantly asking them to bring me their most interesting business problems, and I always figure them out one way or another.

The Magic

In the movie “The Prestige” we are told that every magic trick has three parts.

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.

When I figure this one out, it felt like I had performed a magic trick, on myself.

The Pledge

My client owns a very successful group of pizza restaurants in Canada and every week on Monday they expect the manager of each location to check in and report on the state of the restaurant’s performance over the previous week. Since there are a growing number of locations in this pizza empire and they are expecting to continue to expand for the foreseeable future, they want a sustainable way to keep track of managers reports, as well as missed reports, in an automated way. So they want to create a trigger that automatically triggers when no report is received. As we started things off with, this seems like a very ordinary thing, but it’s a really big deal. And keep in mind that this specific example is merely to illustrate how this type of automation works but once you open your eyes to the possibility of starting automation based on the absence of an event the idea of becoming more replaceable ex[ands by orders of magnitude.

My head went through dozens of iterations of ways to tackle this problem. Initial ideas were extremely complicated and involved multiple automations running in parallel at the same time, crossing paths and diverging multiple times like fighter jets at an air show. At one point I got so stuck and frustrated that I was going to retreat to using virtual assistants to manually complete the task until…

The Turn

So we start with a simple web-based form as or trigger. I like to use jotform but you can use any that you like. We put in all the info we want to the manager to report including a simple Likert scale to allow for some standardization across locations. As I’m always looking at ways of reducing errors I made the locations a drop-down menu so we don’t rely on a new manager or even a current one manually entering the location incorrectly. Once the form is submitted it kicks off the next step which is to locate a row in a Google Sheet that matches the info submitted in the form.

The first time we set up this sheet you only need to enter the location and the expected date of check-in (in this case, the following Monday). Once it finds the row that matches the location in the form submitted, it will look across the row and find the date of the check-in. At this point we need to slip in a Date Formatter function, native to Zapier, to take the current date in the spreadsheet (not the date of submital) and then add seven days to it because this is a weekly check-in. We don’t want to trigger it based on the submittal because if they submit early it would mess things up.

Now we update the spreadsheet with that new date. So effectively the person has “bought” themselves another week by submitting the form. Now comes the tricky part. We want the automation to delay until that new time that was entered (so a week from now) but since there isn’t byway to stop a delay in Zapier once it has begun, I sad of setting the delay to trigger the rest of the automation we delay and then have it find the row again.

Now we need to do a little bit of compare and contrast. Where we are currently is the manager did their job correctly and submitted the form, which added a week to the “due date” and now here we are, at the due date and we need to see what’s happened.

The Prestige

At this point, we need to create a fork in the road for this automation that looks at whether the current date is before the due date (good job manage) or the current date is after the date of expected check-in (bad job manager) and act accordingly.

So let’s take the first case where the manager DID submit. In that scenario, the current date, when compared with the date of expected next check-in will be before and thus we simply send an email to the manager thanking them for submitting.

Now let’s look at the other scenario, where the current date is after the expected date of check-in meaning they did not submit on time. In that case, we can do whatever we want but I chose to send a polite nudge by email to the manager with a cc to the owner. You could choose to do whatever you want, from a text message to slack notification or even a Trello card. Then we simply delay a day or two and check again, this time with a nested path that checks again and if they finally submit it does one thing and if they still haven’t submitted it does something else.

You repeat this for as many days as you want until you get your result.

The Close

I hope you can see how cool this is and the possibilities it opens up for your business. Keep in mind that the trigger can really be based on anything like form submission, a slack message, even the movement of a Trello card. Even if you never use this method In your work, my goal is for you to think differently about how you optimize, and automate the processes in your business.

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