Modern Makers #23
01/11/2020
Modern Makers is a weekly newsletter where I share with you a selection of the best available content about no-code and productivity tools. I hope this content will help you grow your business, launch your project or automate your work.
You can subscribe to make sure you will receive all my content directly in your inbox every Sunday
Hi makers,
This week in the agenda:
📚 Book of the week : Deep Work by Cal Newport
📊 JotForm wants to compete with Airtable
🎓 On Deck announced its No-Code Fellowship
⚡ Focus on Notion Automations, the unofficial Notion API
Enjoy!
📚 Book of the week
Deep Work - Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Author: Cal Newport
Release date: January 2016
My key lessons / takeaways:The definition of deep work according to the author: professional activities performed in a distraction-free environment that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. The ability to perform such activities is becoming increasingly rare in today's society and at the same time increasingly valued in our economy. The losers in this new economy will be the people whose skills can easily be automated or outsourced. On the other hand, three groups of people will thrive: those who can use and understand technology (hello no-coders 😉), those who are the best in their field, and lastly, individuals with access to capital and financial resources
In order to remain competitive in this new economy, we must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. Otherwise, you will only fall behind as technology advances. Learning must be a constant process. Clearly, your current investment in learning how to use no-code tools makes your profile immediately more attractive and put you ahead of the competition
If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive - your talent or skills are not enough. There are two essential skills for success: 1) being able to learn complex and difficult things quickly 2) being able to produce your best possible work (both in terms of quality and speed)
Avoid multi-tasking - when you switch from action A to action B, a residue of action A is always present in your mind, preventing you from fully focusing on action B. In order to be able to do your best work, you must be able to focus on a single task for a long period of time and cut yourself off from any possible distractions. In concrete terms, this means avoiding having several tabs on your browser, leaving your phone in another room and cutting off all notifications (emails, Slack and co). The famous Pomodoro technique (25-minute sessions followed by a 5-minute break) is very useful in my opinion to help you be more productive and focused
When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done - very difficult for me, even more so in 2020 with the lockdown and work from home. It sometimes becomes tricky to make a real break between your work and your life outside of work. Yet it is crucial to be able to disconnect and really differentiate between work periods and the rest of your day. Don’t check your emails in the evening, don’t monitor Slack during the weekend. Also try as much as possible to schedule your evenings and weekends. Don’t default to whatever catches your attention at the moment (for example watching a Netflix series). Make the most of your free time by planning it in advance
Some other content that caught my attention this week:
⌛ Why Time Is Our Most Precious Resource by Polina Marinova - Taking the example of Alexander Hamilton (who, by the way, reminds me that I need to find time to watch Hamilton on Disney+), Polina reminds us that learning alone is not enough and that it must be immediately followed by concrete actions. Being both a thinker and a doer (or a modern maker 😀). And that we must act and build now, as our time is unfortunately a limited resource. Start today, not tomorrow!
⌚ At Tudor’s HQ, watchmaking is being quietly transformed - Wired UK - as a watch enthusiast and owner of a Tudor Black Bay Black, I can only appreciate this article which details the behind-the-scenes production of Tudor watches at the Rolex headquarters in Geneva. The kind of places I dream of being able to visit one day
🎙️ The Tim Ferriss Show - I had given up listening to this podcast a bit in 2020 but the episodes of the last few weeks are quite exceptional! Each of the last 4 episodes to date with Yuval Noah Harari, Seth Godin, Matthew McConaughey and Naval Ravikant is clearly worth listening
🧰 Product
JotForm is a tool for creating online forms, a market in which it competes with Typeform. This week, JotForm announced the launch of JotForm Tables, introduced as an "All-in-one workspace" allowing to process data collected through a form and to display them in different views. On paper, and from the first screenshots of the interface, it looks a lot like Airtable!
With this launch, JotForm wants to position itself as a complete solution to meet all the needs of its users, replacing several individual softwares and centralizing the uses within the same interface. In addition to the classic "Table" view, Jotform offers other ways to visualize your data. For example, there is a Trello-style "Card" view, allowing you to group the data of each entry into individual cards. A calendar view is also available. Nothing very original here. On the other hand, the "Report" view (possibility to create a presentation or charts with your data) and the "Uploads" view (view showing attachments uploaded via forms) are more interesting in my opinion.
JotForm Tables allows collaboration and let you invite colleagues on your Tables with different access levels (read only or full edit). There are also essential functions that you can expect to find a database tool, including rollups and lookups. JotForm includes a collection of more than 250 templates to help you get started very quickly as well as a list of tutorials and guides.
Since Airtable forms are currently relatively limited, we can imagine that the launch of JotForm Tables will encourage Airtable to improve this functionality in the near future.
📅 Events
On Deck has just presented its very first course dedicated to no-code. A 10 weeks program that will welcome 150 participants for this first edition sponsored by Bubble.
This community will bring together people wishing to launch their MVP for their startup, create an online business or simply optimize an existing business with no-code tools. Among the participants are some of the leading figures of the no-code movement, including Bram Kanstein, Max Haining, Edmund Amoye and Michael Gill.
What will happen during these 10 weeks?
office hours with employees from Bubble, Webflow, Glide and Adalo.
Sessions focusing on best practices, new trends, no-code tools, etc.
a final project to be launched by the end of the program
This first edition is entirely online and it is therefore possible to participate from any country in the world. You have until December 27th to apply as the program will start at the beginning of next year. Special early-bird pricing: $1,990.
⚡ Project
As a reader of Modern Makers, you should already know how much I love Notion. And how much I'm looking forward to the release of its API. While we are taking our pain in patience, other makers decided to act. That's how this week we saw the launch of Notion Automations, a service created by two French people and presented as Notion's unofficial API.
With Notion Automations, you can now connect Notion with the catalog of 3,000 applications available on Zapier. You can test it for free with 10 tasks before deciding whether or not to purchase it (currently available at $97 as a one-time fee). You can also cancel your purchase within 7 days. Personally, I'm going to wait for the release of Notion's official API (even if the wait is getting more and more unbearable). Nevertheless, Notion Automations has something to make the most impatient among us happy and has the merit of giving us a glimpse of what will be possible once the API and the integration with Zapier are available. And that future looks amazing!
For those who are looking for another alternative, Coda (Notion's main competitor and whose API is already available) has recently released its Notion Importer which allows to import a Notion workspace into Coda in just a few clicks.
📦 In other news
A Sign In With Apple component is now available on Adalo
Save to Notion is a web extension that allows you to easily add content to Notion
A Twitter thread with some tips and best practices to better manage the responsive design of your apps on Bubble
How teams at Figma are using Notion in their daily work
AppSheet is now officially available within Google Workspace
Substack now allows you to customize your post’s URL as well as to choose a picture for social preview
Webflow launches Design Monday, a series of Youtube videos where design experts share their advices and best practices
That’s all for this week. If you like the content, don't hesitate to share it with your friends or colleagues.
I also invite you to send me your feedback on this content by leaving a comment below.
Have a great week,
Martin,