Nir Eyal's new book, "Indistractable," is a beacon for everyone struggling with the daily mental tug-of-war at work. He offers actionable steps to reclaim your focus and achieve laser-sharp productivity. But let's be honest, implementing these strategies requires more than willpower alone. That's where Request Tracker comes in – a shared platform for conquering workplace distractions and keeping your boss in the loop.
Scheduled Syncing Explained
Eyal was recently on the podcast Lenny's Podcast and he explains how syncing with your boss can help you with your quest to become indistractable. Here is the part of the podcast where they talk about priority and syncing.
You can use your calendar and set up this weekly meeting with your boss, but what if there was a view of everything you were working on that your boss could check whenever they have time in their busy schedule? What if they could get an email update as you make progress throughout the day? What if they could go in and update the priority of a task directly, leaving you a note explaining why? Request Tracker makes all of this possible.
A Team Approach
Eyal emphasizes the importance of "externalizing your commitments." Request Tracker does exactly that. Ditch the sticky notes and mental to-do lists, and pour your tasks into the system. Categorize them, set priorities, and assign due dates. Suddenly, the overwhelming chaos transforms into a manageable shared roadmap.
And unlike individual to-do apps built just for you, RT's team-based system is built for collaboration. Give your boss an account, and you can create dashboards they can quickly view whenever they need to. Create accounts for your team and everyone can see what's happening and make updates as they complete tasks.
View Tasks Your Way
Eyal also talks about a "Timeboxing" technique. Request Tracker lets you break down large projects into smaller, time-bound tasks. You can then set a Starts and Due date and time to schedule your work at whatever level of detail you need. You'll be amazed at how much more you can accomplish in a distraction-free zone.
The simplest view of your plan for the week can be a list of the task tickets you have created, filtered by the tasks due this week, and sorted by priority. You can also get the calendar view you want using the free RTx::Calendar extension we recently talked about.
Screenshot of a calendar view of one week of task tickets in Request Tracker
Prefer to keep your tasks and reserved time in your main calendar? No problem. RT can provide an iCal compatible feed of any set of task tickets and you can subscribe to this from your main calendar. Events from RT will then show up in your main calendar where other non-RT users can see them.
Keeping Your Boss in the Loop (Without the Micromanagement)
Transparency is key to a healthy work relationship. Request Tracker's real-time updates and progress reports keep your boss informed without the constant need for check-ins. They see what you're working on, the progress you're making, and any roadblocks you're facing. No more frantic "What's on your plate?" emails or nerve-wracking status meetings.
Collaboration Without the Collision
Eyal highlights the importance of "frictionless collaboration." Request Tracker fosters seamless teamwork. Assign tasks to colleagues, share updates, and track progress together. No more chasing down teammates or deciphering cryptic email threads.
As you are getting control of your attention, you don't want to do so at the expense of your boss or coworkers. Request Tracker's notification settings keep you in sync with your team at whatever level makes sense. Add team members as watchers on individual tasks they need to see, remove them from personal task tickets, and mute individual updates that don't need an email.
And everyone on the team can delete email worry-free because Request Tracker keeps a record of all updates right on the ticket. In the future, they can always check the ticket if they missed an update. No need to create yet another email folder to track updates.
Becoming Indistractable, One Request at a Time
Nir Eyal's "Indistractable" offers a powerful framework, and Request Tracker provides the tools to translate theory into action. It's your digital assistant, your focus facilitator, and your communication machine. So, ditch the distractions, embrace the power of Request Tracker, and watch your productivity – and peace of mind – skyrocket. Remember, a focused you is an unstoppable you.
Ready to reclaim your focus and become indistractable at work? Sign up for a Request Tracker demo today and experience the difference!
Creating RT Scrips with AI
New Calendar Features for Request Tracker
Bookmarking Tickets: How and Why
Querying Active and Inactive Tickets Made Easy
RT's Lifecycle feature gives you complete flexibility to define your own statuses and workflow. However, if your Lifecycle has a large number of statuses, performing a simple search to see how many tickets are currently being worked on can involve building a large query to include each one. With ‘Active’ and ‘Inactive’ values for the Query Builder, it’s much simpler.
Creating Custom Themes in Request Tracker
What's New in RT 4.4.2
RT 4.4.2 Released
We're pleased to announce the general availability of RT 4.4.2. This release introduces several important security fixes, a handful of new features, and many bugfixes.
We have redesigned how time worked is calculated per user and for children tickets. As always please be sure to review the UPGRADING-4.4 document.
Please see our official release announcement for more information, including the complete set of changes and bugfixes.
- Custom fields now have a "New values must be unique" option.
- Custom fields now support value canonicalization (for example, automatically changing input values to be all uppercase). See the @CustomFieldValuesCanonicalizers config option.
- Ticket timers provide a comment box for quickly adding ticket comments to describe your time worked.
- You can now set up default values for assets on a catalog level.
- You can choose to display result counts on ticket search portlets using the new $ShowSearchResultCount config setting.
- There is now a "Load all history" link for the "as you scroll" history loading mode, to allow you to use browser-based text search.
- We now display a list of recently-viewed tickets in the Search -> Tickets -> Recently Viewed menu.
- We have made RT::Extension::AdminConditionsAndActions part of core RT, so you can now easily configure the conditions and actions of your scrips right within the admin UI.
RT 4.2.14 Released
We're pleased to announce the general availability of RT 4.2.14. This release introduces several important security fixes as well as many bugfixes.
Please see our official release announcement for more information, including the complete set of changes and bugfixes.
RT 4.0.25 Released
We're pleased to announce the general availability of RT 4.0.25. This release introduces several important security fixes as well as a handful of bugfixes. Please be aware that we intend for the 4.0.25 release to be the final release of the RT 4.0 series and no further security or bug fixes will be published.
Please see our official release announcement for more information, including the complete set of changes and bugfixes.