Apps Won’t Solve Your Time Management And Productivity Issues.
Over the last few weeks, an unusually large number of people have reached out to me asking for help sorting out backlogs, overwhelming task lists and massively double-booked calendars.
As I was helping to clear the decks, I realised there was a common denominator in most cases. The person had bought or downloaded an app and started using it without having a process.
Dumping all your tasks into a task manager and hoping by some miracle everything will be fine is not going to work. All that will do is give you a giant list of tasks — too many to do in one day, for sure.
If you are going to use a task manager to manage your tasks, you need a process or workflow in which the app will fit:
How would a task manager help you in your work and life?
What would you like it to show you daily?
Those are the fundamental questions. A task manager needs to show you what tasks you “should” be doing today and nothing else. Everything else is stowed away in holding pens such as; This Week, Next Week, This Month, and Long-Term and On-Hold. Anything you have decided does not need doing today can be hidden until its appointed day arrives.
Most task managers will do that, and at its very basic, a task manager needs to have the ability to set recurring dates, have folders or “projects”, and a dedicated Today view. But, again, most task managers will have these as standard features. This means it doesn’t matter what task manager you use as long as it ticks those boxes. Any additional features are unnecessary, which leads to a problem I see far too often with all productivity apps these days.
In the highly competitive productivity tool market, for an app to stand out, it requires two things. Something new to talk about and a YouTuber with a sufficient following to get people talking about it.
How many people started using Notion based on a video they saw on YouTube?Thousands, if not millions.
The issue here is all these additional features, while nice to have, do nothing to enhance your productivity or time management. Being more productive and better at managing your time has nothing to do with how many boards, colours, or tables you can add or whether you can add a “start date” AND a “due date”.
Being more productive and better at managing your time comes down to one thing. How much are you producing in the time you have available. It has nothing to do with how many bells and whistles the apps you are using have.
You will find that the more features your productivity apps have, the less productive you will be. You will play, tweak and fiddle, and while doing that, you will not be producing anything.
There’s a reason the most productive people are using the same set of apps they’ve used for the last 10+ years. They have learned how to use them properly. I was recently blown away by a client who had been using Microsoft’s OneNote since 2007. She had well over 20,000 notes in there, and the speed at which she could manipulate the data was awe-inspiring. Those notes represent her life from starting at university to the present day. She had her journal in there, her course notes, professional notes (meetings, projects etc.) and her self-development track. It was like a whole life was contained in one single space. It was beautiful.
My advice to anyone wanting to learn how to be better at managing their time and becoming more productive is to pick a simple task manager and notes app and focus on doing the work.
Collect everything into a trusted place (task manager, notes app).
Process what you collected and delete the unnecessary every 24–48 hours.
What you decide to keep, organise by when you will do the task.
Do the tasks.
For your notes app, set up the folders in the GAPRA format (Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources, Archive) and manage your projects from there. (You can drop essential information, copies of emails, research materials and anything else valuable for the project in there)
For your calendar, you can use the built-in calendar on your computer — Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook and make sure all your time commitments are on it. Personal and professional. Don’t have more than one calendar — you only have one period of twenty-four hours. Adding another calendar app for your personal life won’t magically give you another twenty-four hours.
From there, develop your system. We are all different, and your system and processes must work for you. I suggest people plan the next day before they finish this one. (For some, particularly those with a young family, that can be not easy.)
Decide your priorities for the day (no more than two) and what eight other tasks you would like to get done that day. (Clearing your calls list and responding to your actionable email are one task, not a different task for each call or email).
The goal is to keep things as simple as possible. Over thinking, things and constantly searching for the next shiny new app will not get your work done. If you want to be more productive and to free up time for the things you aim to do, then put all your focus and attention on getting your work done.
That is how you will become more productive and a master of time management.
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