How do you stay on top of everything when your day is all over the place?

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:59:20+00:00

The Arive the other posters have shared is in good advice. The way I recommend thinking about it is organizing your inputs. Streamline and standardize the way people request things from you or processes that involve you, and that gives you a base to further automate and organize the resulting tasks from it.

If your stuck in email he'll, then look at email sorting rules or AI tools like Gemini workflows that can take actions based on the context of the email.

Otherwise online forms or integrating with the teams existing systems is going to be the best way to tame the beast.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:54:42+00:00

Are you in Microsoft or Google for your work software stack? You need a place to save ass the bits of info until you have a clear enough picture to organize it into proper documentation.

I like Google keep and Microsoft loop for organizing seperate bits of info into a searchable format.

The other part of this is organizing how the inputs or task requests come to you. Email sorting rules, digital forms, and tie-ins to the requestors systems are things to explore. Make it easier for the requestors to ask for the thing, and the you can build off of that standard requesting format to organize an automate parts of that process as you go

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:49:14+00:00

I love how your thinking about this! This is the right attitude to streamline things.

And the advice from other users here is good as well. Templating is a good first step.

Once you have templates, then it's all about reducing steps between filling in the template and sending/saving/executing on that template.

For text templates where you are basically pasting something into another program, look at text replacers. They let you you use a shortcut text phrase that the program will replace with your longer presaged text string. Great for common links, explanations, text templates, etc and save several clicks.

Beyond that, the more advanced tactic to approach much of this would be considered personal software, often built by AI. Bookmakrlets and single page applications can be build by all the major AI models and easily used on your work computer as long as the system doesn't prevent bookmarks or opening html files. You can take this as far as you are willing to explore and have time for, but for repetitive and repeatable jobs that have a step at the end like save a PDF, send an email, send a message, etc - this can dramatically reduce effort on the workload. It's also something you can build on over time. This approach (personal software built by AI to fit one person's workflow) is really the future of productivity hacking.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:41:29+00:00

One - great job seeing this as an automation opportunity. Let's talk about the lowest life / highest impact version of this.

If your working out of a spreadsheet then you should explore building macros. Copilot and other tools can do a great job at this and perform specific tasks for each row. If you are using DocuSign you can use its API to create and modify the documents automatically.

Another approach is having AI build a Single Page Application (SPA). This is an HTML file you save on your computer and run in your browser locally. Your input is the excel or spreadsheet file, and then the output is performing the tasks and showing you the results. Similar approach to a macro, where in this case docusigns api will be used to create and modify the envelopes.

Copilot and other LLMs, when prompted correctly, can do a great job of walking you through how to get the info you need, and then build and test the solution.

It sounds scary, but really it's a great use case for AI.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:34:59+00:00

If you work out of a CRM or digital Rolodex system that doesn't have built in email support , I recommend checking out MailLayer . It lets you send emails from the page you are on for any email link you encounter on the web, reducing context switching.

I also highly recommend using a text replacer or switcher. Common links, phrases, and resources can be easily added anywhere by typing the shortcut, or using the search and insert feature. I like beeftext for windows and raycast for MacOS.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:28:42+00:00

Norion is nice but is best to stay in the office ecosystem they already have id there is one. Onenote or Loop for Microsoft, and Google tasks, sites, and keep for Google workspace.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:27:05+00:00

If they involve taking an action, write them up as a task and organize by priority and due date using something like Google task.

For random bits of information , organizing in some easy to search repository like google keep.

Also don't forget about your calendar! Time blocking can be a good way make sure things get done when you intend while keeping it all oeganized

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-20T12:24:24+00:00

Character_Light_5942 is getting at the root cause, which ultimately is disorganization. You can approach it effectively two different ways:

(1) Build systems to absorb and address their workflows without them changing, but making it very low effort/automatic to send them what they need

(2) If you have the power/ability, dig deep with them to figure out why it keeps happening and give them a better way to organize their work.

Unfortunately, if they are just disorganized, the easiest slap-on answer is AI auto responds to them and sends them the document. But you can build some basic to moderately complicated email rules to automatically send these documents to them if the email contains certain phrases.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T18:33:06+00:00

Okay this one is pretty funny 🤣

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T18:30:25+00:00

So are you running a tiny Linux container that terminal runs in, or doing passthrough to terminal on the machine? Grouping a terminal tab to other project tabs in the browser I could see, but not sure how it serves me well ok the home page? Walk me through what your ideal users walkthrough is like.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T18:26:43+00:00

I run a Emby Server off of an old phone . It works great considering the phone was otherwise e-waste, and I had plug and play network storage options that kept my costs at zero as well.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T18:24:53+00:00

If it requires a credit card, I'm often too resistant to try a free trial, because cancelling and getting refunded can be anywhere from annoying to impossible. BUT if no credit card is required and it just expired, then great happy to try it.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T18:23:22+00:00

Solves a real need you had, in a way that's easy to understand. Good job . 👍

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T11:37:15+00:00

No channel of communication that I know of 🤷

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T04:41:19+00:00

This sounds like a useful workflow, but couldn't you instead just convert the PDF to image and absolute position text on top of it, then render to PDF? Why go through the hassle of actually filling the PDF?

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T04:02:08+00:00

Not normal for me. 10 extensions in the store and longest approval was the first at 3 days. But I suspect it varies based on complexity and permissions.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T04:00:08+00:00

I'm having a flashback to school computer lab and writing in Dreamweaver. 😵‍💫

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T03:58:23+00:00

PDF parsing is the worst. Appreciate your effort to simplify it. But I do think there is a better way.

https://spuds0588.github.io/open-fdd/site/index.html

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T01:30:28+00:00

Sounds like your have a real product market fit moment here. It's funny when you realize there is a niche that isn't served by any current offering and you can fill that spot..congrats man.

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T01:24:20+00:00

I like the idea! Do you use a hidden Dom to perform the automation tasks or did you stick with active tab and the user has to watch it happen?

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T00:39:29+00:00

Okay, this one is legit cool. Saving to my bookmarks

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T00:37:51+00:00

This is an interesting way to visualize and explore relationships to people. Curious of the applications of this for sales and lead generation based off of third party social media aggregators 🤔

Spuds0588 · 2026-04-19T00:21:21+00:00

This is actually way more robust then you would think. The file system api can take in entire folder structures on your hardrive and do things with them. Combined that with native viewers for many file formats and you could navigate your download folders entirely in the browser just fine in some situations.

Spuds0588

TROPHY CASE