It's Tidy Tuesday, and I'm back!
Two weeks into the year of small wins now, and I have another quick one for you. I've continued a slow plod through my Readwise backlog, and I've actually enjoyed the process well beyond the simple feeling of accomplishment when I finish reading an article and archive it. (I should hope so, since presumably I saved all this stuff in the first place because it was genuinely interesting to me.) At the rate I'm going, my queue will be empty sometime in March.
While there's a wide variety of topics covered in my collection of read-later material, organization-related posts come up every now and then. Last week, I read one from Joan Westenberg titled I Deleted My Productivity "Tools" (link goes to a paywalled Medium post, or you can try this alternative).
In the article, she describes how we get tied up in finding or building the "perfect" productivity system and end up not only wasting a bunch of time doing so, but ultimately sabotaging our own success by relying on things that are too complex and distracting. She ended up dialing everything back to the few built-in apps on her ecosystem of choice--Apple, so that means Notes, Reminders, Pages, and Safari. For Android users, that might be a matching suite of Google's tools. For those of us using Windows, perhaps the simple tier of Microsoft Office apps--although those can't always be considered "simple," and they're not quite as efficiently integrated as either Apple or Google's stuff.
I definitely recognize my own tendency to fall prey to "shiny object syndrome" when it comes to the latest and greatest apps or techniques. It's easy for me to spend tons of time digging into the myriad options that promise to help save time or make me more efficient. The return on investment can go negative pretty quickly if I'm not careful. I can justify it by imagining it's all Tidy Bytes research, but that's only partly true most of the time.
Of course, I can also just accept it as something I do for fun, or even as a hobby--learn about the latest developments in time management and efficiency, and occasionally try some of them out. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. However, I have plenty of other things I really want to spend time on, so hobby-level productivity research shouldn't get too much time.
This idea of abandoning the modern push towards enhancing productivity with fancy tools by reverting to intentional simplicity is actually pretty common. There are many articles just like the one above, as well as spirited discussions on Reddit and elsewhere from people who, with some exasperation, chucked it all in favor of a much more basic "system"--if you want to call sticky notes a system.
- "I'm wanting to go analog. Sticky notes limit you to realistic expectations."
- "I like using only the simplest apps. Nothing flashy, not having a million functions. Just like back to basics."
- "I write down 3 things I have to do in the day in my notebook, then cross it after finishing. Still the best feeling."
There's definitely truth here. I'm not about to ditch everything electronic it, but it reminded me of the One App, One Purpose post at the end of Apps Month in Tidy '24:
Install and use apps based on a specific task or goal, such as email, scheduling, note-taking, or task management. Then, you always use only that app whenever you work on that task or goal.
I stick to that rule pretty tightly, and I have since before I wrote that post back in 2024. Keeping a small, task-specific toolset makes it much easier to become proficient with those tools, to learn how they fit with your brain type and workflow and how to avoid falling into the trap of endless fine-tuning and experimenting.
The author of the article I read went one step further and chose tools that are limited by design, so she had to fit your workflow and habits into the relatively small box of functionality they gave her to work with. That approach solves certain problems (like analysis paralysis), but can add friction if you already have established habits that work well with a more flexible tool. She was ready for the drastic change, having become fed up with the inefficiencies of what she'd been trying before. You and I might not be prepared for such a choice.
There's always a balance, a trade-off between simplicity and flexibility. The two tools I use most often--Obsidian for writing and Amazing Marvin for task management--are actually some of the most flexible and potentially complex tools you can find for those functions. But I've long since stopped needing to customize them; I played around with settings and features for a while a first until I found something that worked, and now they just hum along happily doing exactly what I need without complaints or tweaks.
If you've achieved similar results, good for you! But if you find yourself fighting your apps sometimes, especially if they seem too complicated, you might consider reverting to something simpler--even as simple as sticky notes. Instead of fighting with something you know doesn't work well for you, experiment with a new approach.
Have you run into this issue before and considered doing something as drastic as abandoning fancy apps for simpler ones, or even switching to paper and pen? If you actually did it, how did it work for you?
Until next time, happy data-taming!