The Perfect Productivity Tool
November 17 by CM Smith in Productivity, Technology | 158 Shares
Photo credit: otherjoel (CC BY 2.0)
First thing is first.
I’m quite sorry for the bait-and-switch that I just led you into. This post won’t really tell you what the “perfect” productivity app, suite of tools, or new service is. There are a lot of other articles out there that try to do that though – in fact, you can do a search for many of them right here at Lifehack.
What we will be talking about today is the idea of creating your own “perfect” productivity system setup with the many tools that are at your disposal. We live in an age of a flurry of new todo apps, text editors, and services that are supposed to make you more productive.
But, what I have found is that these choices make us look for the next “perfect” system that will help us get things done rather than get things done.
No system is perfect
Sorry.
I know you think that you OmniFocus setup shows just how complicated and intricate your life is and that your tagging system in Evernote is set up perfectly to express the taxonomy of your worklife. But, in reality, you are wasting a lot of time striving for a system to be perfect that will never be.
If you deal with this overwhelming feeling that your productivity systems and processes have to be perfect to use then I challenge you to try to go back and use paper to get things done for a little while. Paper is a great tool because it shows you exactly what you need and don’t need.
Want to get close to a perfect productivity setup? Then strip your system down to see what is needed and what isn’t. When I took this challenge, I found that linking of projects to tasks, contexts, due dates, and tags were pretty much all I needed to get things done in my personal and “professional” life.
It’s in the use
It took me quite a long time to reach the point where I can call myself “confortable” with my productivity tools and workflows. Instead of finding the applications and tools that “had the most features” or “synced across multiple operating systems and devices”, I had to step back and see just how I was going to use these tools.
For me, portability and “syncability” were very important as I am a commuter and work a day job. I work on different operating systems through the day so having tools that are somewhat agnostic is important, yet at the same time having tools for each operating system is something I can’t get around (ie. Visual Studio for programming on Windows).
So, to create your perfect productivity system you need to know exactly how you will be using it, what features you need, and if it needs to work cross-platform. After knowing that try to pick the tools that closely meet your requirements and then stop looking for new ones and actually use them.
I have to tell myself this on a daily basis. You should too.
Don’t over-complicate things
I’ve got a friend that constantly tells me that I over-complicate the simplest things. Nothing is further from the truth when it comes to my productivity and personal systems.
You may think that you need that one, awesome feature in that new, shiny application. You probably don’t. The problem is that people that like the idea of “being productive” and gushing over productivity pr0n may artificially complicate projects and problems to create a need for a system that isn’t needed.
This takes me back to the quote that Einstein said that Mr. David Allen (of GTD fame) throws around:
“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Yes, your projects and your problems may be complicated, but you don’t need to make them more so because you have to figure out the right way to tag something or the proper naming convention for a text file (this one trips me up all the time!).
So, what can you do?
Some common advice still stands.
Try paper out for a while to find out what you need and don’t need in a system. Consider some simpler task managers and using straight text files. The omissions of functionality will be glaring and you won’t be able to put up with them for long. Then you can move on to the “proper” tools and systems that meet your needs.
Once you find those tools and systems. Stop. Then be productive with them by getting things done faster and better.
Good post.
I particularly like the bit about keeping it simple. I despair when I see decent, simple systems becoming unwieldy and complex as if to make it better. I dropped using GTD when David Allen started sending me emails promoting a 6CD set to assist with the system. D’oh!
While I’m here, I feel that I must clear up something regarding that Einstein quote. What he actually said was the slightly less simple:
“It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience”
Regards, John
The perfect tool is your own mind. Keep your mind clear and calm is the simplest way to get a lot of things done.
I am too a believer of mind power. Mind has solution to all problems, albeit we always underestimate it.
Keeping it simple is def the way to go… but in the Time Management research I’ve done I’ve come to one (rather simple) conclusion… it doesn’t matter what process you use, so long as you have one… it doesn’t matter what tool you use, so long as you use it… The biggest stealer of productivity is mucking about with (and/or not sticking to) whatever tool and process you’re using.
By all means change when you need to, but too many people change when they don’t…!
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[...] are important and what to do next. If you haven’t taken a step back and figured out just how your productivity systems should work together, this type of automation will likely keep you from getting things [...]
[...] are important and what to do next. If you haven’t taken a step back and figured out just how your productivity systems should work together, this type of automation will likely keep you from getting things [...]
Is no system is perfect ? I too accompany with you. Thanks for reminding the good tool with non stop usage. Thanks for sharing the great post.