Technologist, life-long learner, and ideas person.
I'm Liwen, a technologist and business geek based in London, UK. I work in tech innovation at one of the UK's largest media companies. I completed my Executive MBA study at Imperial College London Business School in 2024, where I enjoyed Economics, Corporate Finance and Entrepreneurship way too much. 🚀
My journey of redefining productivity by stepping away from digital tools and embracing analogue systems. After years of experimenting with digital solutions like GTD, Emacs, Notion, and Things, I found these tools unintentionally fostered procrastination and anxiety. Inspired by the simplicity of pen-and-paper planning, this experiment aims to build a more intentional, thoughtful approach to managing tasks and priorities. Dive into the challenges and insights of this analogue transformation and discover why slowing down might be the ultimate productivity hack.
learning new skills in adulthood has become essential in today's knowledge and tech-driven world. To achieve more without burnout, we need to re-discover how to learn. Here are some that helped me through my Executive MBA study along with a full-time job for the past two years.
Taking notes in your own words forces you to think deeply about the ideas beyond the passages. To truly understand an idea is not the same as to merely comprehend the written text itself. The translation process is the essence of note-taking. It integrates the newly-learned idea with your existing knowledge network.
Email is a primary communication medium and I wanted my email system to be able to read, archive, delete and draft my emails offline, store emails as plain text files, search emails across multiple accounts, link emails to my TODO items or notes directly, have powerful search options, find emails instantly, even with hundreds of thousands emails, and more. How do I do it?
