Productivity Systems Are For Using, Not Tweaking
Your job is chopping trees, not sharpening axes.
“Every July and December I look at my workflows,” writes Evernote expert
, “and look to see if using different apps will help me work a little better.”Systems and tools are paramount for being an effective knowledge worker.
But they can also become a distraction.
After experiencing the difference in quality from working in an organized way, you’ll naturally want to keep improving your systems. But once you have a decent setup in place, the improvements will mostly be marginal.
There’s a quote often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln about working smart, not hard. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Fine tuning the productivity setup is a way of sharpening the proverbial axe. But where the apocryphal lumberjack-Lincoln had only one tree to chop down, knowledge workers have entire forests to deal with. We need to ensure the time we spend with the whetstone doesn’t get in the way of the actual chopping.
Tinkering with our productivity system is an easy trap to fall into. It feels like work. It’s more fun than work. But, more often than not, it’s actually a way to avoid engaging with the cognitive demanding activities that prompted us to establish a system in the first place.
We must not let the allure of tweaking the setup distract us from showing up and doing the work. Because it’s only through our work, our hard thinking, that we create value.
At the same time, our work and life are in constant flux. A configuration that is optimal today might become wasteful the next quarter. And every now and then, a new tool comes around that can truly make a difference in your efficiency
Which is why I like Jon’s approach. Twice a year, Jon revisits his setup to see if it’s serving him well for his current needs. At the same time, he runs experiments with possible changes, like moving from Evernote to Todoist.
A scheduled periodic review of your productivity system prevents your brain from using tinkering as an excuse to dodge hard work.
You can think of it in terms of explore-exploit. Spend some time, even better timebox, exploring different workflow and tools configuration to find one that suits your needs. Then, exploit it to get the work done.
A good setup should be frictionless. It should be easy to retrieve and modify items. Ideally, it should integrate with your calendar or at least have a reminders functionality so that you can outsource worries to it.
During the exploitation period, track ideas for tweaks to the system in a safe place, ready to be reviewed when the next scheduled exploration session comes up.
A productivity system is an axe that needs to be kept sharp. Sharpening it can be fun and invigorating. But at some point, sooner rather than later, you need to bear your finely sharped axe against a tree trunk.
Working smart beats working hard—but you still gotta work.
Originally published on giolodi.com.
What’s one thing I can do better? Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for the mention Gio... 2 months in and new system is working well. Ended up being all the same apps but with slightly different workflow. Have a good weekend.