Building a Simpler, More Minimalist Productivity System.
Over the winter break, I did a review of my overall productivity system looking at it with a birds-eye view. Seeing how it operates on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and judging whether it still serves me in the best possible way each day.
And as usual, whenever I do this kind of exercise. I discovered I had built up a lot of additional apps and processes that did not add any real value to my system but instead just added another layer of complexity.
Examples this time were:
Using Apple Reminders and Todoist for different purposes when Todoist can do it all.
Having calendars in Google calendar and Apple Calendar (I really don’t need two!)
Using Apple Notes for some types of notes and Evernote for others (no excuse there — that’s just SOS — Shiny Object Syndrome!)
Using Outlook/Spark on my computer and Apple Mail on my iOS devices — another case of SOS!
I am sure if you look around your own system, you will find similar cases for yourself. The trick is not to allow your brain to convince you you need all these additional apps and instead look at things more objectively and ask yourself if there are any apps that are duplicating your workflows. This can be painful because our brains want to hold on to apps we think will one day bring us value but, if we are being honest, are unlikely to ever do so.
There is also the “because such and such famous productivity person uses that app if I use it I will be as productive as they are” thinking. Of course, this is never going to be true. The app you use has nothing to do with how productive you will be. But when you learn that someone like David Allen uses Evernote as his digital storage app, it can be very hard not to be tempted to try Evernote even if you are a very happy Google Keep user.
Building your very own, simple and minimalistic productivity system comes down to three basic parts:
1 Collection
How can you collect tasks, events and ideas quickly, efficiently and without losing them? The fewer places you have to collect these, the simpler and easier your system will be. The more places you have, the more likely you will miss something and the more complex your system will be.
2 Organisation
How can you organise your collected stuff so you can find what you want when you want it? Again, the principle of “less is better” works here too. If you have Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive with different documents and folders in them, are you really able to quickly find what you want when you want it? Would it not be faster and simpler to make a decision about which one to use and remove all the others?
3 Doing your work
How can you maximise the time you spend doing your work and reduce the time spent organising your work? This one is important because, over time, we get “organisation creep”. This is where we end up spending too much time organising and reorganising our stuff instead of doing the work (a kind of productivity procrastination)
A simple, minimalist productivity system is built on these basic components. There’s no excess in the shape of additional apps doing additional tasks requiring additional organisational work. The best thing about many of the minimalist approaches to work is they are based on having one calendar, one notes app and one simple to-do list. Nothing more. No complex hierarchy of folders, sub-folders or tags. Just the basic collection tools.
When it comes to doing your work, understanding there is only a finite amount of work you can do each day is important. Know your limits. It’s when we try to push beyond our limits that things go wrong. Important deadlines get missed, we do not connect with the people we care about and our health and well-being suffer. Part of having a productivity system is it tells you what you have committed to doing and teaches you to say no to non-essential things trying to come into your life. You can see you do not have the time to adequately accomplish those ‘new’ things vying for your time.
So if you want a simpler, less hectic, less stressful life, take a good look at the way you are doing your work. How many different places are you collecting stuff? How long is it taking you to organise your stuff? How much time do you spend doing your work? These questions will help you simplify your life. They will help you be more mindful about what you are doing each day. When you do become more minimalist about things, you find you have more time to do the things you really want to do.
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