How I Got Interested in Building Scalable Systems for My Life


I wouldn’t call myself an expert in productivity or system design.

However, I have spent 5,000 hours reading and learning about productivity and system design. And I have probably spent 3,000 hours practicing and integrating these concepts into my own life.

Here’s how I first became interested in building a scalable system for my own life:

It was the summer of 2021. I was falling behind on work, duties related to a rental property, personal projects, and meeting with friends and family. I felt overwhelmed.

As a software engineer, my first natural step was to identify the root cause of the issue. It turned out there were two main issues:

  • Information and deadlines were scattered across multiple tools: emails, calendar invites, JIRA, etc., making it difficult to keep track of them.

  • I hadn’t estimated the effort required for personal projects; I only set milestones with ‘imaginary’ deadlines, which added a lot of stress.

I was sure I wasn’t the only one dealing with these issues and knew it was crucial to prioritize and organize the different aspects of my life.

So my goal over the next quarter was clear:

To find or build, if necessary, a scalable way to consolidate all life-related information and tasks into a single source.


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