Solar power and batteries are the future of power in Nigeria

Nigeria’s power issues persist, but solar energy and new battery tech offer us hope. Affordable, lasting solutions are making energy independence possible without having to rely 100% on the government.

Power has been a challenge in Nigeria since I was born. In fact, it has been a challenge for years before I was born. And it’s starting to look like it’ll outlive me. There’s never been any time in Nigeria when we didn’t have power issues, at least in my time and the impact of this constant struggle with power is crippling—the lack of reliable electricity has caused many aspects of life and development in Nigeria to remain messed up.

It’s difficult to understand why these issues persist because I’ve seen things that weren’t available in Nigeria, become available over the years. For instance, I grew up in the  time when there was no telephony in Nigeria; when as of January 2001, out of 100 million Nigerians, only about 400,000 had a telephone line. Things were really bad back then, and communication was incredibly limited. However, we saw what happened when telephony was done; it felt like the entire Nigeria suddenly became connected, like one team. If telephony hadn’t progressed like it did, Nigeria would’ve been a shell of itself today.

I witnessed a similar thing for the spread of the internet in Nigeria as well. Around 2015, the internet began to gain importance here. Initially, we didn’t have access to the internet but then the GSM providers started making mobile internet connectivity available and in all fairness, they did  an amazing job. Then MainOne laid the first cable, and internet pricing dropped significantly. After this, MTN introduced the West African Cable System (WACS) here. Although we always had SAT-3, but it was just a disgrace and GLO’s internet service wasn’t really impactful. However, the improvements brought by MainOne and MTN marked a turning point for Nigeria.

The internet became so accessible, and this, combined with the widespread telephony, allowed people to start to build bigger businesses because they could connect with others more easily. This transformation was also crucial for the development of Nigeria’s banking and fintech sectors. The efficiency we enjoy from innovative solutions like those of Paystack, Flutterwave, and Moniepoint , and services such as POS payments and interbank transfers, wouldn’t have existed. Maybe the only thing we would’ve gotten is USSD technology since it works without  internet access.

The internet happened but Nigeria’s power problem persists

Despite the progress in telephony and internet connectivity, here we are and the power problem still remains unsolved. It’s safe to conclude that the reason power still hasn’t happened is because it depends so much on infrastructure and the government doing the right thing. The government’s attempt to address this by privatizing the power sector at some point was a step in the right direction, but it fell short when they decided to hold onto electricity transmission and they’ve just just made a mess of it. 

Today, Nigeria has an installed generating capacity of 13,000 megawatts, but only about 4,000 megawatts can be evacuated at any time.  If transmission was never in the hands of the government, I’m very sure we would be doing about 100,000 megawatts. But that hasn’t happened yet. There’s been a lot of  interesting news about the government bringing in people to do things better, but any meaningful improvement is still likely to take some years before it materializes. 

Solar power is a big deal

Recently, we’ve started seeing the evolution of solutions that don’t depend on the government; solar energy and the likes. While these solutions are quite expensive, prices are gradually decreasing, making it a more viable option for more people.There are some companies like Imperium from Sterling Bank and Asolar, founded by my friend Hakeem Shagaya, doing interesting things in this space. We also see Lumos and thousands of other smaller players who aren’t established brands also making significant strides in providing solar solutions.

Before now, people used a combination of grid electricity, inverters and generators to take care of their power needs. So they’d use the electricity generated from these sources and store it in batteries for later. But grid electricity and generators have become so expensive now that this approach has become more difficult to sustain. Then people realized that the sun that is roasting us daily offers an abundant source of energy. 

Thankfully, the Nigerian government and its public servants aren’t in charge of the sun, or else they might have made it stop shining. So now more and more Nigerians are turning to solar power as a practical and cost-effective alternative.

Battery technology makes solar energy an even bigger deal

Away from solar, I recently read a report on Bloomberg which said that by next year, global battery production capacity will be five times the demand, leading to a glut. While this might sound like good news, don’t count on it because such gluts can even result in higher prices. However, the long-term impact could be beneficial and I foresee Nigeria being a main beneficiary. A glut could lead to a significant drop in battery prices, and I expect China to be in the center of this, going by their track record.

For instance, consider what they did with manufacturing a vehicle with capabilities similar to a Tesla Model 3 but at half the price and with China’s competitive production strategies, it’s only going to get cheaper. Those guys are crazy good like that. 

Back to batteries, a new battery technology, sodium-ion batteries, is another welcome development. Unlike lithium batteries, which can account for over 60% of the price of a new car, sodium-ion batteries are significantly cheaper, potentially reducing costs by 40-50%. 

You’re probably wondering why we don’t hear about sodium-ion batteries being used in cars. This is because despite the fact that sodium-ion charges faster and are cheaper to manufacture, the major problem is that sodium-ion batteries have less storage capacity compared to lithium- based batteries. However, sodium-ion batteries are a promising option for home energy storage solutions; they’re cheap and durable enough.

Solar + Batteries + Fintechs = Energy Independence for Nigerians

Maybe this is what’s going to happen to Nigeria: the Chinese will come to Nigeria/Africa and start building cheap ass sodium batteries and solar panels that will last for years. And with Nigeria close to the equator where the sun shines the living daylight out of everybody, we’re good.

Recently, I was on a call with Hakeem Shagaya and he told me about a power solution they could get for me. The solution he described is 5 kilowatts, about the size of a fridge and costs around N5 million and can be paired perfectly with solar panels. But I have 24/7 power where I live now so I don’t need it, but If I were still in my former house, I would have invested in it without hesitation and just gone off grid electricity completely if I wanted to.

Now imagine how much more widespread the adoption of this solution would be if it was cheaper?  And the great thing about solar panels is that they only lose about 25% of their capacity in 10 years, and they can last up to 20 years. Even for those who might not be able to afford sodium-ion batteries, combining them with traditional lead-acid batteries could still offer a practical solution

With these developments, financial service providers can also plug into this and use the opportunity to introduce credit solutions for people to access solar and battery technology on credit and pay back over time. This is what we’re doing at my company, Lendsqr; looking for lenders who really want to get it on these innovative things and fund people who want to buy these solutions and gradually achieve their energy independence.

Companies like Lumos and Asolar are already doing great stuff with Energy-as-a-Service which allows people to access energy solutions even if they cannot afford the upfront costs. They offer energy solutions with flexible payment options, and if you miss any payments, they can turn off your energy unit completely.

Nigeria’s energy revolution is already here 

Looking ahead, I see a significant shift towards energy independence in Nigeria as more people embrace solar energy and battery technology. And with this, the grid electricity transmission companies are dead in the water. The Gencos may survive but people would have moved on to covering their houses with solar panels.

This means that if the Chinese do this very well, they can just forget about trying to dominate the developed foreign markets who already have everything, and instead, take advantage of the  immense opportunities to directly supply and manufacture these affordable and high-quality solutions in African markets.

I just hope the government doesn’t try to meddle with the developments in this sector. If they want to get involved, they could support by making sure the taxes, tariffs, and duties associated with these solutions are next to nothing. 

I remember when we used to talk about fiber optics, and everyone thought it was a big deal. Now fiber is everywhere, the adoption of internet services like Starlink is growing. Yes, some of these solutions are still expensive but one day somebody will copy them in China and flood the market with cheaper alternatives and this is definitely something I look forward to.

The bad economy makes a cashless Nigeria more realistic than ever

Inflation is driving Nigeria toward a cashless economy, making electronic payments essential. This shift, though challenging, offers opportunities for fintech growth and streamlined government oversight.

Anyone who’s been watching the fall of the Naira, can only be astonished by how many notes it takes to buy anything these days. Just four years ago, in January 2020, $1,000 was worth about N360,000 which meant you’d get 360 pieces of N1,000 notes or 3,600 pieces of N100 notes. By the way, that’s 3.6kg to log around if you went for the N100 notes and a N1,000,000 composed of ten N100,000 bundles are 1kg. 

Fast forward to 2024, $1,000 is now a disastrous N1.6 million. To use that cash to make some payments, you need 1,600 pieces of N1,000 notes. So, you’d have to count out 16 bundles of N100,000. If you want that in N100 notes, that’s 16kg to carry around. The weight of this note is the testament of how bad things are for Nigerians.

With so much deadweight to carry around, everyone is looking for more and more notes to be able to do anything substantial and many are realizing that carrying the volume of cash required to do most things now is just simply impractical.

Inflation continues to destroy the value of the Naira and no new higher denominations have been introduced. Even with the smaller notes, when was the last time you saw N10, N20 or N50? It’s almost like they’ve become entirely useless. So, what we’ve seen in recent times is that people are increasingly turning to electronic payments for their everyday transactions, shifting us further away from a cash-driven economy.

Cashless economy: the Government’s push vs the economy’s hard shove 

I didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of this issue until someone from TechCabal reached out to me to discuss the line items of the national numbers. We saw that the number of electronic transactions had shot up significantly but there was something off with the revenue being paid to the Government from what the banks were reporting; it wasn’t commensurate with the volume of transactions. 

Everyone expected more electronic transactions to have a commensurate increase in what the Government is earning with electronic transfer levy.

Looking at this more closely, we then figured out the reason for this. What has happened is that small ticket transactions are now being done electronically which wasn’t the case before now. Previously, most electronic transactions were for amounts over N10,000, which used to be a significant amount of cash to carry. And people would have to pay a N50 electronic transfer levy. Back then, we were primarily paying for small items with physical cash and electronic transactions were larger, which made it easier for the Government to collect revenue.

But now with inflation and the rising costs of living, how much cash can one carry around even to fulfill the most modest transactions? Over the last 4 years, items that cost N1,000 then are now N5,000 and above. So, if you withdrew N10,000 from the ATM and you could spend N1,000 ten times for various items, you need to withdraw N50,000 to do the same thing. 

Beyond the fact that the average Nigerian is impoverished, they can’t even get the N50,000 from the ATM easily. Most ATMs now dispense a maximum of N5,000 per withdrawal, if you can get it to give you cash to start with.

It then makes sense for everyone to switch to digital payments. Yes, many of these individual transactions often fall below the threshold for fees like the electronic fund transfer levy. 

Naturally because of this, the Government isn’t seeing the expected revenue (and we hope they don’t) because this Government will tax a dead man just to raise funds (and possibly waste it on useless expenditures).

The interesting thing is that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been pushing for a cashless economy sinc2 2012; but they have not been successful because of half-hearted implementation and multiple policy reversals. But it’s fascinating how the bad economy has led to changes in the trend of transactions, doing what the CBN couldn’t – shoving us, ruthlessly and mercilessly, toward a cashless Nigeria.

Electronic transactions are becoming increasingly essential, bringing the cashless economy closer than ever. If the Government doesn’t introduce higher Naira denominations and keeps us locked at the N1,000 note, we might just see all transactions move to electronic and a fully cashless economy may soon become unavoidable. If the situation worsens—say, if a sachet of pure water becomes N500 or the exchange rate reaches N3,000 to $1 (God forbid)—cash will become practically useless. But we never know, they may decide to introduce a higher value note. 

Implications and Benefits of a Cashless Economy

As electronic payments become more prevalent, physical cash will become less necessary. People won’t need ATMs anymore but unfortunately businesses in that space will be destroyed. Also, the whole issue of the Government frowning against people spraying Naira at parties will vanish because where will the cash come from? Unless they want to spray dollars. 

With the transition to electronic transactions, the Government will have a much better view of the real economy because all financial movements will have digital footprints.

Additionally, we can expect fintechs to remain very successful as this shift presents significant opportunities for them to thrive as they’ll need to meet the growing demand for digital payments. Banks will also benefit from streamlined operations since they won’t have to handle cash so much and shift their focus to digital transactions instead.

However, there are challenges to consider. Fraudsters will find new ways to exploit the system, especially for those who may take a while to understand how electronic payments work; making easier targets for phishing scams and likes.

What I don’t understand is how kidnappers will request for ransoms. I’m not sure the unavailability of Naira in cash might be enough to deter them. Perhaps they might shift to demanding ransoms in dollars. Whatever it is they decide to do, I hope they fail miserably at it and get caught.

But by and large, beyond the unfortunate and challenging circumstances driving this, a move towards a cashless economy could offer substantial benefits. Perhaps this is just what we need to give the Government a clearer understanding of what’s really going on with our economic activities. And if managed effectively, this shift could turn a difficult situation into an opportunity for significant improvement in our financial system and the Nigerian economy.

The myth of work-life balance

I strongly believe that true work-life balance is about prioritizing hard work and sacrifices now to secure future success and fulfillment, rather than juggling every single aspect of life including work and leisure.

I was at an event recently where we got to discussing the whole work-life balance conundrum. It was an interesting conversation because the panel at that event had a mix of business owners, founders, CEOs, etc. And then among the attendees, we had a very senior HR person, probably about 50 years old; so this person had had a lot of experience on the job. 

We all started talking about work-life balance, which seems to be a hot topic these days, especially with younger people, and it was fascinating to hear from people on both sides of the argument.

I agree.

Most professionals believe that work-life balance is being able to juggle work, personal life, and everything else you want to do—which is great, right? Because life isn’t just about focusing on one single thing. But, on the flip side, you have people like me who others believe are against the concept of work-life balance. 

To set the record straight, I’m not here to oppose the concept. In fact, I strongly believe in work-life balance but I just think we have different interpretations of what it means.

The most common picture of work-life balance is having a stable nine-to-five job, and making time for family, friends, and other interests outside of work. Work is often viewed simply as a means to an end, which is perfectly fine for many people. Not everyone wants to excel in every aspect of life.

However, for some of us, this traditional approach may not work. Why? Because in reality, if you’re ambitious and striving for outstanding success in what you do, trying to achieve the conventional work-life balance will never get you there. Anything that’s special literally has to be something that the average person can’t or won’t do. Success often requires going beyond the average and the inability or unwillingness to do that is why many people don’t succeed in their careers.

For instance, imagine you’re in school and your desire is to graduate with a First Class and get a scholarship for your Master’s degree. Naturally, you may need to sacrifice some ‘fun’ time to achieve your goals. If you attempt to ‘balance’ fun and academics like others, you might just end up with a second class upper, or even worse a “strong second class lower” as some people love to describe it. Of course, just say goodbye to your MSc/MBA scholarship aspirations. 

Similarly, in your career, if 100 of you are employed at the same time but you aspire to climb the corporate ladder quickly and earn an attractive salary, you can’t be thinking about work-life balance in this way because that gets you nowhere. If you put in only the same amount of effort others do or only ever satisfy just the minimum required e.g nobody is able to reach you when there’s an emergency at work simply because it’s the weekend; obviously, what you wish to achieve isn’t going to happen. 

I think everyone just needs to decide what they want. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting work-life balance, but it’s important to recognize and make peace with what you’d be giving up for it. Of course, there’s also nothing good about killing yourself over your work and missing out on important moments with the people or things you love. Everyone needs to decide what they want out of life and be prepared to make choices that align with those goals.

But if you’re fine with settling for average then yes, by all means, choose this approach to work-life balance.

I don’t agree.

When discussing whether work-life balance is all it’s made out to be, one of the most common questions people ask is, “What if you work so hard and you die suddenly and never get to enjoy the fruits of your labor?”  Honestly, it’s a valid concern and there’s a real risk because pushing yourself so hard without taking care of your health can indeed lead to serious consequences for you, including death.

But the twist here is that if you’re also poor and become faced with health issues, you may not be able to save yourself. 

The reality is, poor health and death doesn’t discriminate between the rich or poor. It comes for everyone.

Like I mentioned earlier, if you really desire to be very successful, you have to go the extra mile. There’s no debating that.  If many people are in competition for a particular thing or role, only the absolute best will get it. And this principle isn’t limited to corporate careers only; even in sports, only the best of the best make it to the top. It’s now on you to decide how much you’re willing to fight and sacrifice to stand out.

Think about it—if you want to be a top footballer or an Olympian, you can’t expect to achieve greatness through a simple work-life balance routine. When others are taking breaks or going to meet up with friends after training, you’ll need to stay and keep pushing yourself; expanding your limits.

What do you want out of life? 

If your ambition is to excel in your field, you can’t have work-life balance because that kind of success often demands relentless dedication and prioritizing your goals above all else.

So again, what do you want out of life?  And what and how much are you willing to sacrifice for it?

Take a moment to think about your answers to these questions and then you have your bigger answer on if work-life balance is for you.

Here’s what I believe work-life balance actually is

I know all this must be quite confusing because I mentioned I believe in work-life balance right? Yes, I absolutely do but let me clarify what I mean.  I believe that the real work-life (for those who wish to be successful) is about working now so you can balance later. This is the only approach to achieving success and fulfillment that makes sense to me.

The way I see it is that anyone who’s going anywhere in life needs to attack their goals with all of their mind in the present;  putting in the hard work, making sacrifices, and pushing to achieve greatness. And of course, when you get this success, it’ll allow you to be able to enjoy yourself and find balance.

For instance, imagine giving your all to reach the top of your career; becoming a senior executive, winning gold medals as an Olympian, becoming a world-renowned artist, or an award-winning video producer. It’s about giving your all to reach that level where your efforts pay off and you can enjoy the rewards.

Picture a life after years of relentless effort, when you finally reach a point where you can relax and coast through life, content and fulfilled. When this happens, you can truly say you’ve earned your rest because the benefits and compensation for your time, effort and sacrifices would have finally fallen into place.

The risk with aiming for conventional work-life balance which is to work now and also balance now is that if you’re not careful and you focus too much on enjoying leisure so early on, without laying a solid foundation for achievement, you might find yourself working well into your later years and you still might not get to a level where your earnings and everything else you’ve accumulated is enough to create value for you to be able to really rest when the time comes.

Why do you think you still see people still searching for jobs past age 55, struggling financially? Forget those whom life probably dealt a really bad hand and they lost everything. For many others, it’s probably because they were busy lying flat, prioritizing leisure over long-term success earlier in life, without adequate savings or enough accomplishments to sustain them.

So, for me, work-life balance has nothing to do with evenly dividing your time between work and personal life—it’s about strategically investing your time and effort now to secure a future where you can truly enjoy personal fulfillment in the long run.

That’s true balance.

ChatGPT and other LLMs may be the end of chat bots

Chat technology has evolved from simple bots to advanced AI like ChatGPT, offering natural interactions and real-time solutions. This evolution promises transformative, intuitive customer service experiences for businesses but might be a threat to traditional chatbots.

Some years ago, people invented chat apps that allowed you to be able to start chats online to make enquiries and get support. Initially, there were real people on the other side of the chats but over time, the issues with this became clear: sometimes the people meant to pick up the chats weren’t available or the quality of responses between different support agents was inconsistent.

So, people came up with chatbots. The bots chat with people and if they’re unable to resolve the issue, then the chat is routed to a real person to handle. But even with this, there was still a problem. Chatbots are invariably limited to their programmed pathways so if you ask questions in ways the bot isn’t programmed to process, then the system fails miserably and you don’t get the help you came for. 

Unfortunately, almost all the chats were going this way, the obviously wrong way.

This is similar to what happened to the interactive voice response (IVR), those automated phone systems where you’re told to press 1, press 2 etc. depending on what you want. This solution isn’t so intuitive, doesn’t remember details or understand context. It also doesn’t do well with typos, so, if you make a mistake with your selection, everything goes off and you have to start all over – very frustrating.

Then came ChatGPT …

In November 2022, OpenAI changed humanity’s understanding of what it is to talk to a machine or bot: ChatGPT was born and it was extremely disruptive. Almost human-like. But of course, as amazing as this new shiny technology was, it and other AI models like it, had their own issues at launch. They frequently hallucinate, which is to make up things that didn’t exist. Worse still, their responses were only limited to the knowledge they had at the time.

Some scientists even called this fabrication; utter, stupid, falsehoods.

Things were really bad then but they’re improving and now we’re seeing the rise of new chat technologies that aren’t trained in strict conversational pathways. This new generation of chats allow for conversations that are free-flowing and feel much more natural. 

Since ChatGPT’s launch,  we’ve seen it improve significantly. During its early days, you could only chat with it but now you can do so much more: browse, analyze data ,write code and even create your own custom chat that others can use. 

Initially, these advanced features were only available to paying customers but they’ve gone steps further and made it so you can access chats without signing up and making custom-built chats discoverable even by those who aren’t registered users.

For instance, in my company, Lendsqr, we experimented with the advanced features by putting some of our content together to create our own secret Lendian GPT and made it available to our staff. I have a subscription so I was able to create the custom chat, but my colleagues don’t need to have a subscription to use it. They can ask this chat natural language questions and the responses are pretty impressive. It’s not quite there yet, it still hallucinates once in a while, but I can see it’s improved significantly over time.

There’s more disruption to come from generative AI

Interestingly, as ChatGPT tries to find more ways to monetize and expand to other areas, a few changes are expected. Here are some of them:

They’re going to create embeddable custom GPTs that you can integrate on your website and on your app using an SDK. 

Secondly, we can expect to see a multimodal ChatGPT, which means beyond text chat, you’ll be able to interact with it using voice and video inputs. It would also be multilingual to eliminate any language barriers; users can speak to it and it’ll answer in the language they choose and maybe even be able to choose the voice it uses.

This all sounds great but my fear is that when all this happens, these advanced features are likely going to completely destroy all the other guys that are running chat service businesses, like tawk.to and FreshChat. Let’s be very frank, if the ChatGPTs of this world can offer natural language chat and the capability to perform actions e.g. call an API based on users prompts, then these other guys are dead in the water for sure

It’s going to create an entirely new world. 

This situation reminds me of the time when typing skills were a big deal and how many words you could type per minute mattered – one of my technical assistants can type 78/79 words per minute –  but these skills don’t mean anything anymore. 

Similarly, customer service is evolving. Embedding ChatGPT or similar technologies from companies like Anthropic or Mistral AI, on your website or app and connecting them to your backoffice to initiate actions and complete events, is the future of customer service.

And this tech is going to handle itself very well and completely redefine how service providers engage with their users. Just watch. 

What could this mean for businesses? 

There’s all this tech but it’s useless if you don’t know what to do with it. Right?

For example, with my work at Lendsqr, we have lenders signing up and a product support team to assist them where necessary. Now imagine if our custom-built AI chat becomes so good that it can handle our lenders complaints and resolve them in real-time. It wouldn’t only be able to read chats, but also read screenshots to figure out what the error is and possibly take an action that fixes the issue immediately. 

For banks, this tech means that they could deploy their chat and handle millions of customer interactions all at once. Some customers could start a chat and decide to switch to voice in their native language and have their queries translated and resolved quickly; including complex issues like chargebacks. 

All of this is going to open up a world where supporting customers will become so intuitive and fast, that if in five years time we talk about how customer service was bad, people will not be able to understand. This is what I see ahead. 

Unfortunately, I also see only very few companies dominating this space. If ChatGPT doesn’t do this now and another company builds this solution using OpenAI’s platform, the problem is that OpenAI can see that it’s working and decide to build a similar feature that destroys those other businesses. 

We’ve seen this happen a lot with the bigger companies like Apple and Amazon who’ll see a solution or product that works well and replicate at scale; killing the actual innovators.

But this transformation of customer service is inevitable. AI-driven support solutions are the future of how businesses will interact with their customers. There’s still some distance to cover between where we are now and what I envision but this is more than a prediction, it’s going to happen.

A few of the tools that make me effective

Efficiency isn’t about being perfect; it’s about knowing your limits and leveraging technology smartly. Tools like Todoist for tasks, voice notes for clarity, and VS Code for coding keep me on track. Success isn’t a destination but a journey of continuous improvement.

I wouldn’t call myself the most effective person, but I’m keenly aware of my limitations and a few strengths I have. Let’s just say I’m obsessed with personal efficiency.

Because I respect myself a lot and I don’t want to be insulted, I’ve respectfully cultivated a culture of using technology to make up for some of these limitations and I’m able to achieve a measure of personal effectiveness using different tools and techniques. 

I mean, I’m not yet a billionaire (when will maga pay? 🥺), so I won’t say these tools have taken me to the top. But I can say for sure that they’ve definitely taken me far. Case in point, I have the worst memory in the world and I can’t remember sh*t to save my own life. As a matter of fact, as I’m writing this, I can’t even remember my name. 

But in 2015, I discovered Todoist and just to show how bad my memory is, I don’t even remember how I managed to find it. Here’s the thing. There are so many task tracking tools in the market but this particular one caught my fancy because it was easy. It was love at first sight. The chemistry was amazing. I’m even considering getting married to it 🤣.

Something that stood out about Todoist was that I could use it not only on my phone, but on my laptop and PC as well, a feature which wasn’t common 10 years ago. The app allows me to record literally everything. I have details of everyone’s information like birthdays as well as all the tasks I have to do. I can set dates and times to these tasks and it has tons of reminders. I can’t say what exactly was so special about it. I guess I just fell in love with it. And one thing that made me stick with it is the fact that I literally get that dopamine hit when I mark something as done. It’s one of the most fulfilling things in the world, marking a task as done. 

So Todoist is one of my best tools ever.

Here are some of the other areas that I have applied tools to improve my efficiency

Recording voice messages

I work with a lot of writers at Lendsqr and personally. Before now, they sometimes got stuck when they needed directions for new writing directions or a summary of what to write about. Then I discovered that I could simply send a voice note when I am in between tasks or when I wasn’t using my hands. That made their lives so easy that they now love it.. 

The good thing is that I could send voice notes from different platforms – on Windows, I use the voice recorder. On my phone, I simply use WhatsApp to send quick notes. Google Workspace recently added voice notes to their mobile and web apps; I now terrorize everyone at Lendsqr with my half-baked ideas every minute of the day.

I’m so glad I don’t work for Adedeji Olowe 😂😂

. 

Jokes apart, voice notes are incredibly helpful as it takes away the confusion and reduces the pain of so much back and forth or typing a lot. My fingers already hurt just thinking about this.

Note taking

For my notes, and things I keep to myself, I use Evernote, but I’m thinking of moving away from because they went shitty as f*.

Evernote used to be one of those tools that people used to praise and talk about, but they went bloaty, slow, and I’m sorry, extremely stupid. They’re just kind of irritating and I’m probably going to leave them.

I use Windows Notepad a lot, because sometimes I just want to take quick notes and I’ve found that Notepad, especially on Windows 11, is a really great tool to put my quick thoughts together. My brain is still begging to move to Notepad++. 

Unfortunately for my PC at home, I still use Windows 10. Isn’t that shameful? Not my fault! I have this badass PC I’ve been using for a while that is old, unupgradable, but really chocks along well. I also use Notepad on my laptop and it works really well. 

I use OneDrive to sync my personal information. But the Google Drive application on the PC is literally amazing. Instead of having to go into a browser to look through my files, Google Drive allows me to use it like it’s directly on my PC. 

Programming

I still write codes. Yes, even at my ripe old age.

My tool of trade is VS code and  I’ve a bunch of extensions and indexes like Prettier, Tabnine, etc. , which makes coding more fun and quite effective. I think I’m going to be working with data till the day I die. I have a feeling that even when I die, I’ll probably have a database of people that died before me and I’ll be arguing with the angels about the morality of using certain types of identity for each soul that gets into heaven.

I started my career with data on SQL Navigator, then  I moved over to Toad. I actually miss Toad, especially when you launch it and it makes that creaky sound. 

By the time I moved my ass to FCMB and the database was MSSQL, I switched to Microsoft SQL studio, which was pretty good. But now that I’m out of banking and life is different with everyone using MySQL, I switched to DBeaver. 

DBeaver, an open source data software, is absolutely fantastic. Like it’s super awesome and works very well for me. 

Security

At home, I have Ring cameras and they  keep me safe and secure everytime. From anywhere in the world, I can see my doors and monitor everything happening inside my home. Best thing is, everyone around me knows I have these cameras.

Emails and contacts

Google handles my emails and contacts and this works pretty well for me. I have nothing to complain about. Like I earlier mentioned, I have the worst memory in the world. One thing that helps me remember tasks alongside Todoist is my emails. I always tell those who work with me that conversations should be recorded via emails. 

Sometimes when I check-in on some tasks assigned, it’s easy to assume I go through my emails and remember all of them. I actually have a hack for this. I simply label the important threads as follow up and then add to my TO DO to check my follow up label periodically. Other times, I simply schedule an email ahead of time. 

With this technique, I’m always on top of priority tasks and I ensure packets don’t drop.

When saving contacts, I make sure  all my contacts are well saved with their emails, and recently this paid off as I was able to reach out to tons of my friends for marketing. I have a paid version of TrueCaller which ensures that when saving contacts, it finds their emails and save this as well

Video sharing

When it comes to being able to express my thoughts, Jam Dev is an amazing tool for use on the web. It’s able to show what you’re doing and help, say your developer, your friends or your customers with a lot of things by providing better clarity. It’s amazing. 

Jam Dev is probably going to be way better than Loom down the line. Loom was a choice for everybody in the beginning, but they’re kind of screwing up.

On my phone when I want to record some of the things I share with people I use XRecorder. It’s also pretty amazing. I mean yeah, it has some ads but they’ve got to make money, right?

Financial management

When it comes to monitoring my finances across all my bank accounts and figuring out how broke I am, I make use of Kolo Finance, an app that we built at Lendsqr. It works really well for me. It’s able to show me everything about my accounts in one shot, including my international accounts.

For banking,  Wise and Monzo are the best banking apps you could think of. For my individual account, of course I will give it to Monzo, but Wise is literally awesome in every possible way you can think of.

Receiving and making calls across the world

For telephone calls. I use Hushed. It’s an amazing tool for having virtual phone numbers. I’ve got a bunch of phone numbers with them, including the ones that I use for testing stuff. 

And last but not the least, I know this might seem like just a hype, but ChatGPT is actually f* awesome. It helps me to do a lot of stuff. We’ve recently been experimenting with using embedded GPT at Lendsqr and so far it’s been pretty great.I love it
So there you are. To everyone who thinks Adedeji Olowe is highly efficient and disciplined, my secrets are in the open. And maybe one day, I’ll successfully clone myself and this version of me won’t need to get anything done.