Llama Life, issue #18
Hey friends 👋
Welcome back to Llama Life, a roughly once-a-month newsletter where I share what’s been happening with ‘Llama’, and the occasional productivity tip!
Let’s get to it!
It’s been a while…
It’s been a month since the last newsletter. That went…quickly? I didn’t think I had a lot of news to warrant an update, but as I started to look through my list of ‘completed tasks’, I surprised myself.
Also, we’re 14% though this year. What?
So, what’s new with Llama?
⏰ Added 3 new alarm settings
Visual Alarm - when the timer is up, the Llama window will flash red. So if you need an extra nudge, or would prefer to use Llama with the sound off, now you can.
Continuous Alarm - when the timer is up, the alarm will ring continuously until you dismiss it.
Nag Alarm - when the timer is up, the alarm will ring every minute to remind you that it is indeed up 😝 (probably my favorite, as I tend to dismiss alarms and then forget they had gone off).
Image: the Visual Alarm flashing red, when the timer hits 00:00
🧹 Added a ‘Clear All’ button to quickly remove all tasks from your list, giving you a clean slate
It’s a tiny button, but has made a big difference to how I’m using Llama - didn’t think I’d be clicking it that much 😝. Thanks to @HomesickMac for the suggestion.
👩🏻💻 Re-vamped the Llama Life landing page
This was a great learning experience. Having worked previously in branding and advertising, I thought I was fairly good (?) at writing website copy. But then I worked with Mariann who does copywriting for a living and now I have a much greater appreciation for the process.
If anyone is looking for copywriting services, definitely reach out to Mariann (or reply to this newsletter and I’m happy to make an intro). We met randomly over Twitter and it was a great fun working together.
Here’s a pic of the new website:
In the process I also gathered a bunch of testimonials from customers, and it felt so good to know Llama had made (even just a small difference) in people’s lives.
🛠 Behind-the-scenes optimization
I won’t bore you with this, but have been taking steps to improve how quickly the website loads, as well as automating welcome & thank you emails to new customers.
What is coming up?
I’ve had few requests for adding:
📋 Subtasks - ability to add these to a single task
📈 Daily Report Card - to get a view on how productive your day was
So they are the two features I’m working on now.
Subtasks are interesting - it’s been challenging to figure out how to include these, without cluttering the main UI. One thing which is hugely important to me is to keep things simple. As soon as things become cluttered that takes away from the ‘feeling’ of the application, so we’ll see how that goes…
A highlight!
Was absolutely blown away and humbled by this Llama Life illustration by @visualashish that popped up on Twitter. It’s simple, minimalist, yet captures the sentiment completely.
If you have a moment check out the rest of their artwork. There’s a whole visual movement I wasn’t aware of, where talented people create and share 1 simple visual image a day. Pretty amazing.
Lastly, a few productivity tips for Llama…
Did you know there are keyboard shortcuts built in? (I probably need to do a better job communicating these).
When hovering over a single task…
Hit F to add 5 min to that task
Hit S to subtract 5 minutes from that task
Hit T to move that task to the top of the list
Also…
Hit A to add a task
Hit SPACE to start/stop the timer
Ok, see you in about a months time 👋
(or on Twitter, I’m at @threehourcoffee)
All the best,
Marie 👩🏻💻
PS - feel free to reply to this email and share what you’ve been working on. I love checking out new apps and products and always willing to give feedback.
PPS - if you know anyone who would benefit from Llama, please share it. It would really help me out. Thanks :)