What is Vlad?
Vlad (the remailer) is a team productivity tool closely based on a similar system at Google. Once a day, Vlad emails everyone in the group, asking what they did. The next morning, he sends an email to the group with what everyone did.
I found this tool very useful to my productivity. It holds you accountable, and helps your organize your thoughts on how long-term tasks are going.
Email example
Each day you get an email with the subject: Vat did you do today? 2023-04-16
Hey Zak,
Vat did you do today (2023-04-16)?
Vork, chores, coding, conversations, anything... or nothing. Just reply to this email and VladTheRemailer vill send out a compilation tomorrow morning.
- Vlad The Remailer
You can then respond any time that day or the next morning.
Then Vlad sends out a summary (``) to everyone on the list:
Zak report on 2023-04-16:
- Did weekly transcription
- Did weekly review, catch-up monthly review
- Fixed Vlad timezones to be EST, not PST
- Dropped off something for my sister, and picked up the blast furnace we
made. Forgot fire bricks.
- Made a salad
- Failed to get TP-LINK to work (pocket router), ordered new one for next
time
- Solved a couple puzzles with Steve
- Did the 2020 #ircpuzzles writeup
Jen report on 2023-04-16:
- No snippets submitted
To install vlad
- Drop him somewhere
- Change the list of email addresses to target
- Run 'bundle install'
- Edit crontab. --solicit is the email requesting responses. --summary is the email for sending out the responses after they're received. Picking a good time of day for each is important. (I like to send out the summary before anyone is awake, but the "solicit" email is trickier to decide) 0 2 * * * /usr/bin/ruby ~vlad/vlad.rb --solicit 0 12 * * * /usr/bin/ruby ~vlad/vlad.rb --summary
- You're done.