This is the second post in the Support Driven writing challenge. You can find the first piece I wrote for this here. Also… I’m not sure why there’s a pineapple in the photo, but I’m from Florida, so why not?

This week’s topic: “What tools do you use to manage your tasks and your time?”

The big things

I’m part of the 58% of GitHub staff that works remotely, which means my office could be at home or at a cafe or at a coworking space on any given day, depending on my mood. That being said, there are a few things that are an essential part of my setup:

  • My computer - Everyone at GitHub gets a maxed out computer of their choice when they join, and I went with a 13” MacBookPro for a mix of portability and computing power. It’s been about a year and a half and I’m still super happy with it.
  • My monitor - I went with the company standard at the time I was hired, an Apple Thunderbolt display. This obviously doesn’t come with me to the cafes, but we have them in the GitHub coworking space in Manhattan also.
  • My desk - I have a Jarvis sit-stand adjustable desk that I love. I admittedly don’t stand near as much as I should, but having the option to still makes a big difference for me.
  • Random ergo equipment - All sorts of monitor risers, laptop stands, standing mats, footstools, the works 😄 There are some good ideas here if you need suggestions.


Apps we use at GitHub

There are a huge number of apps and integrations that we use at GitHub that will vary depending on what team you’re on. Here are the ones that have my focus on a day-to-day basis:

  • GitHub (obviously)
  • Slack for chat
  • Atom for text editing / coding needs
  • Looker for most of the data work I do
  • Zoom for video calls
  • ScreenHero for pairing with coworkers
  • Our internal Support ticketing tool, Halp
  • A variety of other standards like gmail and the terminal


Apps for personal workflow

In addition to things that we use pretty broadly in the company, there are a ton of apps that have become part of my personal workflow. Here are some of them:

  • Fantastical2 - My Sunrise replacement 😢
  • Divvy - Helps me divide up my 27” monitor into multiple screen areas. Super useful!
  • 1Password - Essential for keeping everything secure without going insane
  • Alfred3 - I’m a heavy user of Alfred’s custom searches and snippets in the powerpack
  • Caffeine - Keeps my computer from going to sleep on video calls
  • RescueTime - Helps me track what I spend the most time on each day
  • f.lux - Essential for those days where I end up working after 5pm
  • DayOne - Where I keep track of what I’m doing each day as I do it, so I can post it in our team Slack channel as a recap later


There are other tools that pop in and out of my workflow on occasion, but I think that covers the heavy hitters. Keep an eye on the Support Driven blog to see what everyone else is using once the week 2 challenge closes!