If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely that you want to be more productive. And that’s a good thing. No matter what it is you’re trying to accomplish in this life, being more effective at it is worth working on. In many cases, the way to do that is by adopting a personal productivity system. But let’s look at why a personal productivity system is helpful in the first place. And while we’re at it, how should you go about choosing one from among those that are out there?
I believe there is one over-arching rule when looking at productivity systems: There’s no reason to adopt a personal productivity system unless you understand and agree with its foundational ideas.
By ‘foundational ideas’ I mean two things:
- the system’s output
- the primary forces it leverages to achieve that output
A personal productivity system is simply a tool that helps you take the stuff of your life from chaos to completion. That’s the what, and it’s dead simple.
The complication comes in with the how of these systems. Each system answers the question of how you go from chaos to completion differently. That’s where it becomes more important to choose the right system for you–given all of your ways of doing work.
They’re Just Tools!
Productivity systems are essentially just tools. And you only need to use a tool if you desire the output of whatever function the tool performs. In other words: If you don’t have anything to tighten or loosen, there’s no reason to grab a wrench.
Most of us do need a productivity system of some kind. But not all productivity systems are designed with the same output in mind. Again, the wrench tightens or loosens. The broom sweeps. Depending on the output you’re looking for, choose the right tool.
When it comes to choosing the right productivity system, the ‘output’ is a little trickier to define. On a naïve understanding of productivity systems, they all produce the same output of ‘completed tasks’. But it’s more complicated than that.
After all, no productivity system will get things done for you. That sentence is worth reading again, because for longer than I care to admit, I believed that the right system could get things done for me. But rest assured: No matter what system you choose, you’re responsible for taking its output and turning it into completed work.
With that in mind, the way to choose the right productivity system is to ask yourself this question:
What do I need more of in the space between the undefined stuff of my life and completed work?
Everyone will have a slightly different answer to that question, because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has different likes and dislikes. Everyone moves at a different pace, has different attention spans, energy levels, and lifestyles. Every one of those factors matters when it comes to which productivity system you’ll choose and ultimately stick with.
A Little of This, A Little of That
You can pretty much carve up the different kinds of productivity systems (and apps) by how they answer the above question. Here are a few examples.
GTD is for people who need more organization in between the undefined stuff and completed work. The whole system is built on a process that helps you divide things into reference material, projects, tasks, and things to review later. It further categorizes tasks based on contexts—which are based on the people, places, and tools of your particular lifestyle.
The Bullet Journal Method is for people who need more information and a space for reflection. BuJo provides a way to log what goes on each day, what’s on the schedule for the month, and what’s further in the future. It also provides space for you to think through projects, brainstorm, and link different sessions and projects together via pages and the index. Again, it provides information and a way to reflect on it, so you can integrate it into action.
Things like time-blocking and the Day Designer products center around scheduling. Some people need to leverage the rigidity of a schedule and the constraint of time to get more things done. So these systems leverage time constraints and cues as a way to ensure things successfully go from undefined stuff to completed work.
What Worked for Me
I created The Today System because while many of the above systems initially worked for me—after a while, they stopped working. At first, I thought it was because of something wrong with me. And I beat myself up quite a bit about it.
But what I came to realize is that GTD and BuJo were just not a good fit for me.
Going back to the question above, what I needed more of in the space between the undefined stuff of my life and completed work was not what those systems provided. After getting organized and learning how to log and reflect, I still didn’t have 4 important things: focus, prioritization, motivation, and feedback.
The silly index card with its quirky scoring system gave me those things—all in one 3 x 5 inch space. And as I began getting more done, and feeling more confident and competent, I built a little more complexity into the system. It still works for me. It’s a fit. It provides what had been lacking.
Ask the Right Questions
When looking at which productivity system is the best one for you, remember to ask two questions.
- What do I need more of in the space between the undefined stuff of my life and completed work?
- What does this productivity system I’m looking at center around? What are the primary gears of its machine? (i.e., collecting information, organization, scheduling, etc.)
If the answers to the first question seem to fit with those of the second, that system might be the right one for you.
But remember, needs change. What you need more of now to get things done may not be what you need a couple years from now. So if a system stops working for you after a while, ask these questions again. You may have grown out of it. And that’s okay. As luck would have it, there are plenty of personal productivity systems out there to try.
You may even want to give The Today System a shot! But no pressure…
