Sabreen Haziq

The most recent addition is a foldable walking pad that tucks under my desk. When I joined Buffer, I noticed how many of my colleagues walked during meetings, and the FOMO hit me immediately! Before that, my step goal sat at the bottom of a list I never got to, because by the end of a working day I had neither the time nor the energy for it.

Now I can be three calls deep and still finish the morning having walked a few thousand steps, which has changed the shape of my whole day. What surprised me most is how much more engaged I feel during the meetings themselves, compared to the days I spent folded over my desk.

Better cable management! The room is compact, so there is not much I can swap out. I have become very good at bundling cords and hiding them behind the desk, but hiding is not the same as solving!

I am a minimalist at heart, which means my eyes render every visible cable in nuclear yellow. Once I see one, I cannot unsee it. What I want is a setup that stays tidy on its own.

My desk rises to standing height, the walking pad comes out, and I set it to a moderate pace. The diffuser goes on next, with jasmine flower essence in it.

From there, the first real task is clearing Slack and Linear. Buffer is fully remote across 22 countries, 51 cities, and 11 timezones, so a good deal happens while I am asleep, and I want to know early if I am the person holding something up. I keep my notifications the way I keep my desk: clear. Once that is done, my head is quiet enough for deep work, and I can be fully present in whatever meeting comes first.

I swear by offloading my busy work to AI so I can spend my time being an efficient operator. Almost none of the value comes from simply prompting my AI tool. It comes from the rich context files I build along the way and maintain in local folders, covering my tone of voice, how I approach project work, and what good looks like. Anything I do on a recurring basis gets built into a skill, so I never have to do it manually twice.

The same thinking runs how I stay on top of what I owe people. In Cowork I have artifacts laying out every project I own alongside its milestones and dates, so I can see the forest and any individual tree at a glance. Building those usually takes me under an hour, and they are the gift that keeps giving!

Granola all the way! It's a fantastic AI notepad and we use it across the whole team at Buffer for capturing meeting notes. And the notes are honestly only the tip of the iceberg. Granola has a library of what they call recipes that you can run on those notes afterwards, depending on what you need.

On a complex project where three teams see the same problem differently, I run the blind spots recipe to find what I am missing. If I'm ever running late and join a call midway, another recipe catches me up on what was said before I joined. Before an external meeting, I get a quick brief on what we covered last time, and after it, a solid follow-up email already drafted for me to send.

A recent find for me was that you can also have Granola coach you! If I ever come off a call unsure about how I presented, I can simply ask Granola for feedback that is fully based on what I said rather than generic advice. It also holds context across every meeting I have been in, so the answers get better and better the more I use it.

Mostly though, I am far more present during calls now, because I am not splitting my attention between listening and transcribing. Must try!