A day in the life of Stephanie Wu: How Eater’s EIC uses Slack reminders, a color-coded calendar and Google Docs to stay atop her to-do list

“The inbox gets manageable as long as I’m on top of it every day,” said Wu. 

Staying on top of an inbox that receives a couple hundred messages each day, though, takes discipline. And Wu has that. She’s someone who color-codes her calendar and who works on her twice-monthly newsletter while commuting and who’s able to manage a family as well as a newsroom. Which was why she was invited on the latest Digiday Podcast for the latest installment of the show’s “Day in the Life” series, in which members of the media and marketing industries share their systems and tips for getting through the average work day.

A primary component of Wu’s system is her to-do list, which she stores as a Google Doc.

“I switched to this method maybe like two years ago, and it’s really working for me. It’s just like a massive Google Doc that’s got my week-by-week to-do list,” she said.

Another tool that Wu uses to stay on top of her work load is Slack reminder notifications. “If something needs to be taken care of early the next morning, I’m setting a reminder so it pops back up at 9 a.m. so I don’t lose track of the things I need to tackle pretty much as soon as I sit down,” she said.

A color-coded calendar

I like to color-code my calendar so I can see at a glance, OK, this is in-person. That’s a type of mental preparation, for an in-person meeting versus just dialing onto a Zoom or a Google Meet. Right now we’re in performance conversation season. So we’re all doing performance conversations with my direct reports, with my own manager. And so I’ve color-coded those in a different way. 

Inbox triage

Of the 200 emails I’m getting a day, only 10 to 15 do I actually have to do something about. There’s a lot of emails that are just calendar reminders and whatnot. There’s a lot of emails where I’m being CCed on for some reason, but I know that somebody else on my team who’s more than capable is actually taking care of it. And then there’s a lot of press emails that I kind of skim and then I’m archiving them. And so once I get rid of all of that, I’m left with 10 to 15 emails that I’m like, OK, this needs a response or I need to really sit down and think about this or I need to go check with someone else before I’m responding to this.

Meetings that matter

As part of my organizational hygiene, the day ahead I’m looking at my calendar. I’m making sure every meeting, if I’m running it, it’s got a purpose. It’s got an agenda, and we’re set up. Otherwise we’re taking it off the calendar if it’s not needed.

Making time for newsletter writing

I do a newsletter that’s called “From the Editor.” It comes out twice a month, and it’s very conversational. I’m not pulling from a bunch of interviews to write something. So I really like doing that on my commute because I’m just focused. There’s nothing else I can do. I’m just tapping out on my phone two or three paragraphs, and then I’m editing that at a time when I can actually sit down and properly self-edit. And so I like to do that when I’m taken away from my desk and all the typical distractions that come with sitting in front of my laptop.