This note is weird. Me working through my history & issues with productivity systems & habits. # Churn No one system has ever _fully_ worked for me for more than a few weeks. I'm constantly churning through bits and pieces. Some things I get really in the zone with, only to realize I haven't looked at in over a month. ## Boom & Bust I wave back and forth across a line of "too much" and "too little" attention paid to my personal productivity system. ![[Productivity System Energy Over Time.excalidraw.svg]] > [!important] > The following are grouped by their efficacy *in my life* through **lived experience using them**. All of these would be "the most killer tool/habit" to *someone*. # Effective Tools & Habits ## [[Calendars are the Most Important Productivity Tool|Calendars]] Using a calendar is vital and the most consistent part of my systems. Things that fail to make it into my calendar tend to fail. ## [[Daily Post It]] The most effective habit I have - physically writing on a small sheet of paper the upper-most contours of my plan for the day. I'm generally very successful on days where I start the day by jotting down _where I need to be, when_ and [[3-3-3 Method|~3 Things]] to get done. Yet I only do a daily post it ~1/2 the time. ## [[Weekly Review]] "The cornerstone of personal productivity" actually **is** the weekly review. On weeks where I actually adhere to the "Weekly Review" hour on my calendar, I'm much better off. I forget things less, I feel [[Feeling "On Top" of Life|on top of life]] (or close to it). Yet I only do a weekly review ~1/2 the time. ## [[Inbox]] - [[Ongoing Capture]] & [[Inbox Zero]] I'm a huge fan of the dedicated inbox - a place to regularly capture things that need dealt with - and the ritual of cleaning it out. If you simply write down the things you need to deal with, then make time to deal with those things, then **it's very hard to have things fall through the cracks**. The vast majority of things not accomplished are failed simply because they fell through the cracks at some point, rather than them being "too hard". Yet I only hit inbox zero ~1/14 of the time. While I have a very effective system for "ongoing capture" to an inbox, I do **not** do a good job of hitting true inbox zero. It's perhaps the pressure to accomplish this that makes the weekly review feel so daunting. I look at my inbox, think "well I don't have the energy to do this now" or "I'm not in the right context for this now" and simply _leave it in the inbox_. At which point I become used to ignoring it... then I miss things because they were caught in the "need to remember it, but ignoring it" pile. # Borderline Effective ## [[Project Lists]] My personal project list works pretty well. I don't use it every single day, but I do look at it more days than not. My work project lists have **never** worked. As soon as I have to be able to share the list, I cannot do my usual approach. I tried only keeping the "for me" parts of projects in a list, but then I find so little of what I do is truly just "for me" that the content of the project list ends up being mostly blank. The main benefit of project lists in my experience is having a natural place to put [[Note Types#Project Notes]]. ## [[Task Manager|Task Management]] Outside of the inbox and project tasks, having a general "task management" system has always _felt_ important; but often goes for weeks without being looked at. This makes it almost entirely ineffective. Part, I think, of what makes task management difficult as an app is the nature of tasks _timeframes_. Some tasks are calendar-dependent. Some are context-dependent. Some are wide & open-ended. ## [[Medium Method]] I take notes by hand at work. I do something kind of similar to the Medium Method. This works fairly well for task management and contemporaneous notes... but it doesn't work for [[Evergreen Notes]] and [[Project Lists]]. The [[The Bullet Journal Method]] would suggest I have a page dedicated to each project, but that feels like a worse version of what's already not working. The medium method for _outside of work_ has never worked for me. # Ineffective ## Daily Pages (Digital) The thing that "feels" like it should be the silver bullet of productivity has always been just _slightly too much_ for me: a daily page. This is just one digital note per day. In theory, it's a place to do the daily post-it note work, while taking notes, while having quick tabs on outstanding projects, upcoming tasks, and what's in your inbox... but it's always felt like "too much". I get overwhelmed looking at it - or I go completely the other way and wind up spending my entire day managing the daily page. Maybe that truly is the necessary [[Overhead]] to accomplish all this - but I'm not sure I'm built for that. Also I never figured out an elegant way to handle _project meetings_, which are extremely common. ## [[Pomodoro Technique 🍅]] I really like the _idea_ of the pomodoro technique, and [[Timeboxing]] in general. I've just never _actually been able to do it_. My ability to say "I will do **this** at **that** time and stop when the timer is up!" is incredibly bad. I don't want to stop whatever I'm doing to start the block, and then I don't want to stop whatever I'm doing at the end of the block. > [!note] > [[Time Blocking]] _sometimes_ works, but only if I form the work blocks into a meeting with someone else. I need the peer pressure to enforce the start/stop times. ## [[Day Theming]] This sort of happens naturally, but "planned" day theming has not once worked for me. Some days end up taking a theme of themselves, but I've never intentionally implemented day theming with any level of success. # Tooling The only time I had a system that chugged along nicely for an extended period of time is when I've gone "all-in" on **one** productivity tool. [[Notion]] was probably the single most effective & longest-lasting of these tools... but even it I eventually stopped using. [[Obsidian]] has been good for project lists, but that's about it. Physical paper also seems to have some unique value, but only seems to work for me as a [[Capturing Logs|log]] of notes & tasks _at a point in time_. Managing the more "at your discretion" things with paper has never been effective. | Tool | Personal | Professional | | --------------- | --------- | --------------- | | Calendar | iOS | Outlook | | Tasks (Dated) | Reminders | - | | Tasks (Inbox) | Reminders | Notebook | | Tasks (Project) | Obsidian | - | | Project List | Obsidian | - | | Project Notes | Obsidian | Notebook (ish) | | Daily Post It | - | Literal post it | | Weekly Review | Obsidian | Outlook | > [!failure] > I don't have a good solution for _project tasks with dates_. I can do tasks with dates **or** project tasks. If I want both, then they need duplicated across the project manager & the calendar. # Solutioning ## [[Invert the Problem]] - What If the System Were Easy? With all these things, you have to _engage_ with them for them to be useful. Most fail because they exist some special place I simply don't interact with naturally (i.e. for reasons other than the thing itself). Apps are inside the app. Special notes are filed in special folders. Tasks in a task list I have to look at. **They fail because I have to go to them**. If the system were easy, it would be prominent. It would visible, but not overwhelming. It would be on the surface, without taking over the surface. I need to be able to quickly _backlog_ something without losing it to the void. Deadlines would be prominent. Project roadmaps & gantt chart-like deliverable dates would be easy to visualize (where they exist). I'd love a dashboard that shows today's meetings, any important things for tomorrow, tasks due today, and the **one** [[Next Action]] on all active projects. **** # More ## Source - [[Myself]]