I wanted to talk about how I settled into my current productivity system and hopefully give you ideas on how to find your own.
Disclaimer: I’m not claiming to be a productivity expert; there are people who I believe are more qualified to talk about all the different ways you could be productive. Nonetheless, I did spend years of trying out different methods and their associated apps and its through this experimentation that I have settled (for now) on this system that I’m using. Oh and I have tried a lot, from simple pen and paper to more robust project management applications like Daylite and Omnifocus.
All of these productivity methods are good in their core offerings, but I have realized that the best to use really depends on the type and amount of work you have to manage, as well as your capability to use them. For myself, I manage projects in the office, personal projects, goals, habits and even errands I need to do. Although being able to manage this in one application (I have used Omnifocus extensively years ago) is the most efficient way to do this; I get overwhelmed with the volume of tasks too easily which tend to paralyze me and makes me procrastinate instead.
I currently use a combination of methods to manage my work. I use Workflowy to do brain dumps and organize my thoughts, then break them down into tasks. I then copy over any tasks I would need to do for the week to Reminders (iOS) and use my bullet journal to record the main tasks for the day. Doing it this way greatly lessens the tendency to be overwhelmed, helps me remember things better and keeps me away from my phone when I need to really focus.
This is my current productivity system which I believe I will be sticking to for the next few months before I consider any modifications. I have settled on this mainly because I wanted to lessen cognitive load with regards to managing my daily tasks daily and have a better ability to focus. Yours maybe different of course. If you’re wanting to figure out your own there’s a guide to the popular productivity methods, as well as a handy quiz that allows them to recommend the optimum method for your work style.
Side note: Lately I have gone back to Notion to help organize more complex projects. I have found their database feature so useful in creating catalogues of things I wanted to organize and manage. I’ll definitely write something about it once I get more comfortable with it.
