Friday, January 21, 2022

Productivity methods and why they failed (for me)

Trello. - someone made me use it. Confusing and visually noisy. Abandoned almost immediately. And it cost money to expand to enough board for me to use. 

Why it failed: overload from large team. 


Kanban board - found a lovely app that allowed me to color code my tasks and neatly see my progress. 

Why it failed: only worked on my iPad. So only available on one point. So abandoned because I’m cheap and won’t shell out for cross-platform. 


Bullet Journal - hasn’t failed per se. Adopted this after reading a lot about it and listening to productivity podcast. 

Why it would fail: tricky to track progress. Feels like treading water on small tasks. Also: only works where my journal is. 

Why it hasn’t yet: analog. Something pleasant about that. Satisfaction in physically crossing off tasks. Allows me to acknowledge tasks that I do but are not associated with an email. 


Inbox 0 - sorta working. Adopted 5 years ago so should be considered a success. Big thanks to Matt Kenworthy for getting me starting. 

Why it’s failing: does not differentiate between a 2-day task (rewrite this article) and a 30min one. So weight is given to shallow, short-duration tasks. Overwhelm from spam(ish) accounts as well. And I’ve abandoned checking the “waiting” and “someday” folders because...well overwhelm. But the biggest reason: it’s now (forcibly) split between two accounts. 


Time blocking - like the idea. Block time to deal with This Thing. Be realistic about what you really can do each day. 

Why it would fail? Because 2020/2021 that’s why. Labore interruptus. 


To-do list on a pad - literally the worst of all worlds. I would lose the pad and walk around feeling I missed something. I keep finding old ones from years ago. 


Suggestions? Other than Hermione's time turner?

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