Hey 👋 this is Luca! Welcome to a new 🔒 weekly edition 🔒 of Refactoring.

Every week I write advice on how to become a better engineering leader, backed by my own experience, research and case studies.

Here are the latest articles you may have missed:

• How to Balance Your Engineering Investments

• Career Frameworks — Part 2

• Career Frameworks — Part 1

• The State of Engineering Careers

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Hey! This is a special edition of Refactoring because, rather than sharing an article, I am sharing a tool I created for myself.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about what I do to grow my network. That included journaling and staying in touch with the people I care about the most.

For doing that, I have been using Notion as a lightweight CRM for two years now. I write down whenever I talk with someone, I set how often I want to get in touch with people, and I get alerts whenever I am missing out.

This helps me immensely.

Actually, I feel stupid thinking that I resisted for so long being intentional on this. I used to think that, in the end, these things were only useful to super-connectors with hundreds of folks to index.

Right? Wrong! 🙅‍♂️

I don’t have a big network myself. Yes, many people know me from the newsletter, but the people in my life I don’t want to lose touch with are no more than 40 or 50.

Yet, even on such a small scale, I can’t imagine going back to holding everything in my head — like remembering the last time I spoke with someone, about what, or what I could be helpful with.

Long story short, at the end of the last article I entered a survey asking if you wanted me to create a Notion template for my CRM, and… you made yourself quite clear:

So here we go! I spent last week making a standalone version of my CRM + Journal system for you to use.

The template is exclusive for paid members, but I created a video explainer for everybody that goes through the whole structure. This way, you can 1) figure out if it would be helpful to you before you possibly get a subscription, or 2) replicate it yourself if you prefer so!

You can find it below, with instructions about the various parts 👇

If you are a paid subscriber, you can get the template from the button below 👇