I’m Nick Douglas, Lifehacker Staff Writer and This Is How I Work

Every week, we share shortcuts, workspaces, and productivity tips from our favorite experts. This week we take a look behind the scenes at Lifehacker. I’m Nick Douglas and that’s how I work.

Location: Park Slope and Times Square Current Place of Work: Staff Writer, Lifehacker Current Computer: MacBook Pro at home and work, and old Air for coffee shops Current mobile device: iPhone 11 Pro, for baby photos One word that best describes, how you work: Individual intolerance

First of all, tell us a little about your past and how you got where you are now.

I answered most of these questions last year , so I’ll move on to what’s new.

What are your job responsibilities?

I write two or three posts a day for Lifehacker, some of them are in response to news, many are planned in advance. I do not have an official status, but I specialize in entertainment and culture: books , films , music , podcasts , tabletop role-playing games .

I use several repetitive features like featured playlist , Hack Your City, and How I Work . Once a year, I edit the How I Work posts with the rest of the Lifehacker staff.

Sometimes I am a guest on our Upgrade podcast. I appear in many Lifehacker videos such as How to Beat the Cat.

Tell us about a recent work day.

I get up at 7, unless the child wakes me and my wife first. We pass it back and forth for an hour, until the nanny comes and we both can go to work. I get B or Q to work. I read an e-book or listen to podcasts and play a game. Every day I grab a $ 1.25 coffee from the Boss Bagel, where the hostess knows someone’s order.

I arrive at the office just before nine, check Slack and email, and suggest any new story ideas for Slack. Sometimes I already know what posts I’m working on that day, but news often pops up.

The company moved to Times Square this spring, so we’re only here in good weather for now. I usually grab lunch from a cart or stand and eat it in Bryant Park while listening to an audio drama. Listening to a story, unlike a talk show, feels like a little digression. Sometimes I write a little for my own audio drama.

On Tuesday, we had a team brainstorming session for our annual Week of Evil . Every year we try to refuel the “evil enough, but not too evil” needle. Everything we publish at Evil Week must remain relevant all year round.

I go out around 5:15 am to change my nanny. My wife and I spend a couple of hours with the baby before putting her to bed and then hang out and watch TV before bed — unless one of us has an event that evening and the other is on duty with the baby alone.

What apps, gadgets or tools can’t you live without?

I don’t know how I worked with the Internet before Workona . It’s a Chrome extension that organizes your tabs and saves sessions automatically, so you can close multiple tabs and bring them back later. It’s much more convenient than managing Chrome’s bookmarks and makes it very easy to navigate between computers. The app is still in development, so it’s free, but I know I’ll end up paying for the pro account when it comes out.

I started using Tinycards to learn things like NATO’s phonetic alphabet and how to point to each country on a map, and multiplication tables up to 25×25. I’m practicing checking Tinycards instead of Twitter.

To jot down ideas, I use Wunderlist instead of a note-taking app because it’s better for lists. I have a list of Lifehacker presentations that I raid once a month when it comes time to tell evergreen stories.

I love reading books on my phone. There are many e-books in my library, but you can wait up to six months. So I use Libby , which allows me to create holds in the library and then manage them so that they are available when I’m ready. This provides a constant stream of free reading. I finish about one book a week.

I still use pretty much everything I listed last year. But when Overcast got sluggish recently, I switched to Pocket Casts . I have a couple hundred episodes in the queue at any given moment (maybe because things got sluggish!), So moving them was kind of a project. Pocket Casts is weird, but better than Overcast.

How is your workplace arranged?

The new G / O office is much more private than Union Square, where eight of us shared the same metropolis. I share an office with our managing editor Virginia, and we often turn to each other – usually with a comment or question about what we’ve both seen on Slack.

We didn’t move in properly and didn’t hang things on the walls. I should probably take a picture of my child, but I just look at the ones on my phone.

I am constantly trying to fix the ergonomics of my desk. The only thing that works consistently is getting up and moving around every few minutes. When there is an application Stretchly , I stand and look out the window, as though thinking about the hostile takeover of inheritance.

What’s your favorite shortcut or trick?

I have a giant Apple Music instrumental album playlist – 160 hours long at the moment . When I’m working on something and lyric music is too distracting, I shuffle the instrumental playlist until I find the atmosphere I need to hear, and then play the entire album.

Tell us about an interesting, unusual, or challenging process you have at work.

Sometimes I ask the art department to do a custom illustration and they always give me something smart. Jim Cook created the dramatic podcast masks from two stock images. In the below picture of RPG players, Chelsea Beck portrays one of his D&D characters.

What’s the biggest mistake you made at work and how did you deal with it?

In 2007, I was freelancing for the Huffington Post when I was offered a full-time job. But I talked to the vlogger Ze Frank and wanted to make a living vlogging. I learned a lot about filming a video that I used in my later work, but I don’t think I ever made a dollar from this video blog.

How do you keep track of what you need to do?

We use Airtable to manage Lifehacker publishing schedule. I have a bad habit of spreading my tasks across multiple platforms and losing a lot between hacks, but since Airtable is one common platform, it holds me back better. I can still shuffle tasks, but since I am doing it in a shared space, I am less likely to miss out entirely.

How to recharge or relax?

For my wife and I, what used to be free has now become childish. She’s an adorable handful. On warm weekends, we walk around the neighborhood or hang out in Prospect Park on a sheet and in chillbo schwaggins .

On weekdays and at any time alone, I constantly listen to podcasts and read books. I can only cram one TV episode almost every night, so I’m picky about what I watch. I’m not a snob, but I hate wasting time on crappy television.

What’s your favorite side project?

I remember a comedy podcast on the scenario of the “Neighbor in the room from hell” every time I had someone allows. I used to write a lot of spec scripts and make short videos, but now this is the only creative writing project I have time for. The four of us are writing Season 2 together, and we have ambitious plans for the story, including the Murder on the Orient Express puzzle and tons of bad Christian parody songs.

I want to pilot retired Power Rangers who have to balance work, family and saving the world again, but where can I find the time?

What are you reading now or what do you recommend?

I loved Foucault’s Pendulum, so now I’m reading Name of the Rose, which is free on Kindle with a Prime subscription. This is slow because I search Wikipedia all the time – I even read the TV Tropes page on Catholic heresies . Eco is much more useful if you research what the hell he is referring to.

When I don’t have the energy for Eco, I read something simpler. It is now Fleischmann in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Ackner, a solid contemporary novel similar to Franzen.

Thanks to our work, my wife and I receive many advance publications. I really like Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s upcoming collection of essays ” Something That May Shock and Discredit You . “

I grew up as a stupid fundamentalist Christian, and now I’m an atheist, but I’m fascinated by church history. So far, I am two books in the extensive writings of the secular religious scholar Bart Ehrman: Jesus before the Gospels and The Triumph of Christianity . His clear historical analysis doubles as research for my Hell podcast.

Can you share the music playlist you’ve created for work or somewhere else?

I’ve made a lot of playlists for Lifehacker, like Independence Day music for those who don’t like screaming and a list of great covers . A few years ago I made two playlists based on the best music my mom and dad told me as a kid: ” Dad’s Music” and ” Music for Moms . “

Who else would you like to see to answer these questions?

Any member of the squad.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

“People are busy.”

What problem are you still trying to solve?

I find it hard to find time to write creatively and try to squeeze it into smaller intervals, but it’s very difficult to make real progress without sitting down at my laptop for an hour. I want to shorten the time it takes me to get to the right space. I also can’t find a writing app that’s easy to collaborate with and doesn’t suck on mobile.