AI in the service of the future of productivity.

I can probably call myself an addict of new collaboration and communication tools especially those designed for the remote teams. I strongly believe that the future of work is remote work. And both companies and individuals got to adapt to this new reality by learning and integrating new tools that will help them to improve their productivity. But the freedom that we get by going digital comes at a cost. We get used to being always online, connected and ready to collaborate in multiple time zones, forgetting about personal efficiency, ability to focus and spend quality time on what really matters.

Just a few months ago I and my friends were talking about the future and technologies that we wish could exist in order to help us, on one hand, to be more efficient as remote employees but on the other hand, to keep a balance between instant connection and deep work mode.

One of the ideas that I’ve mentioned was having a tool that will analyze my schedule, schedule of my colleagues, then match it with our personal efficiency cycles and come up with the time slots that are the most suitable for hands-on meetings and standups. Let’s say, I’m not very collaborative at 8 am, I’m absolutely hard-to-speak-to when I’m hungry, i.e. just before lunch and dinner, and I prefer to focus on deep tasks from 10 to 11 am and 4 to 6 pm CET. Therefore, my best time slots for meetings would be 9–10 am, 2–4 pm and after 6 pm CET. And I would prefer not to be distracted by calls, walk-ins or even notifications when I’m in the deep work state. And this has to be matched with my colleagues around the world.

Obviously, such an idea, together with a few dozens of others, sounded complicated and almost impossible to build without a powerful AI algorithm in place.

Now, here I got to mention that every few weeks I dedicate some time to learn about at least one new product, tool or platform related to remote work, productivity or unified communication and collaboration. And how surprised I was when I found out that Memory team that stands behind Timely, one of the most popular automated time-trackers, is beta-testing their new creation — Dewo — personal assistant for deep work.

And the more I’ve been reading about it, the more I realized that this has been exactly what I was looking for! It uses machine learning to dissect your productive patterns and actively helps you work smarter. You effectively get your own Deep Work Algorithm, trained using your data alone — which means Dewo’s outputs are tailored to your individual way of working.

Dewo can automatically block your notifications when you are “in the flow”, it optimizes your calendar and advises you on how to stay more productive by providing actionable insights.

The advising part is probably the most interesting and appealing to me. Unlike RescueTime, where I get my personal analytics but have no additional insights on how to improve my productivity (other than just block apps that distract), Dewo promises to recommend the optimal location, duration and time of day for regular deep work, to highlight not only intrusive apps but also unproductive tasks and to quantify the productive cost of meetings and total my context switching!

Honestly, all of this sounds too good to be true, so I decided to try it myself and have signed up for their beta. Looks like there are more than 1800 users who applied earlier and while this means that I’ll get to try the product not very soon, it also shows that there are a clear demand and pain to be solved.

I’m looking forward to writing another review once I get access to the beta and test it myself and if you would like to join me, just sign up here, it’s free! (if you sign up using my link, I’ll get promoted in the queue and will have a chance to test it earlier!)

I’m also curious to hear about your productivity tools and all the products that help you be more efficient as a remote worker. Feel free to share links in comments!

Let’s contribute to the future of work today.

Please note that the information and products mentioned in this blog are just my opinion and are not a paid advertisement.