First, Determine What Is Important to You
In my recent post about my roles-based productivity system, I explained how I crafted a productivity system based on what I value and deem important. I determined these values based on an analysis of my life roles using the process pioneered by David Sparks in his excellent Video and “Personal Retreat Planning PDF.”
A lot of writers begin a discussion about productivity by discussing the tools that can be used for productivity. I think that’s a mistake. Productivity tools are of no value in themselves. It’s only when you use productivity tools to help you complete the tasks and projects that are important to you that they matter. You need to determine your Why before you determine your How.
Before you jump into putting together a productivity system made up of various tools, I encourage you to take a personal roles retreat and work through the process of identifying and processing your roles. Out of that work will emerge an understanding of what is important to you, and what tasks and projects you want to complete to further those values.
Next, Determine What Tools Will Help You Do What’s Important
Once you determine what’s important to you and what you need to do, you can focus on implementing a productivity system. There are many tools available, both digital and analog. They can help you to implement and keep up with your productivity system. The tools you use are not the solution, they are merely tools that help you to do what you’ve determined is important for you to do.
All of my devices are made by Apple, so my applications work and sync across my Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. Some of the apps I use are available on PC and android, some aren’t.
Don’t try to Use my Productivity System; You’re unique.
A word of warning: If you don’t already have a productivity system, you will be strongly tempted to just adopt outright the same tools that I use. That’s a mistake. I have selected the tools that work best for me, not you.
I urge you to try several apps in each category and find the one that best meets your needs, is easiest for you to use, and you enjoy using. Modify my system and applications to fit you. My system likely won’t work for you.
My Productivity Tools
1. Calendar
I use a digital calendar to schedule my appointments, meetings, and activities. Some find it helpful to “time block” or “hyper-schedule” the work periods they plan to do directly on their calendar. See David Sparks’ posts on the hyper-scheduling experiment and hyper-scheduling mechanics. I use a modified and simplified time block system on my calendar to fit my fairly uncomplicated schedule. I don’t time block all of my work, but some of it.
I recommend you use a digital calendar that syncs across all your devices. A paper calendar can be a mess when you make changes. In the past, I used the calendar app built into all Apple devices. Recently, I’ve been testing Fantastical, a calendar app with many more features than Apple Calendar.
2. Task Manager
I use a digital task manager as a place to dump all the tasks and projects I have in my brain and get them into a reliable system that will tell me what and when I need to get things done. As productivity guru David Allen wrote in his book, Getting Things Done, “Your mind is good for having ideas, not for holding them.”
My choice of task manager is Things. It’s easy to use, looks great on all my devices, and gives me all the features I want. I especially appreciate its beauty and simplicity.
Things enables me to define “areas,” or categories, that I’ve set up with my life role areas. As I enter tasks, I place them under the proper role category they fall under. When I review my tasks in Things, I can immediately see which role the task relates to. This helps me to place the task in context, and understand why I’m doing it.
I use Things to track one-time and recurring tasks, and also to manage and review projects. For a helpful review of digital task manager choices, see the excellent review in TheSweetSetup.
3. Idea Capture, Development, and Writing
I’ve learned that if I have an idea and don’t quickly capture it in some form, I’ll likely forget it. I use the Drafts application to quickly capture ideas on my Mac, my iPad, my iPhone, and my Apple Watch. When I open the app on any of my devices, I’m instantly greeted with an empty new page and a blinking cursor. All I have to do is start typing or dictating to get an idea down.
When I get a new idea for a project, the first step I take is to begin crafting a mind map in MindNode. Unless my project is extremely simple and straightforward, I always start with a mind map.
For me, it’s much more effective to explore and develop an idea in a graphic mind map than to use a traditional outlining application, such as OmniOutliner. I use mind maps to prepare my thoughts for topics I’m researching, articles I write, talks and presentations I give, trip planning, listing out the pros and cons of big decisions, just about anything I need to give focused thought to.
Last year, I switched from doing my writing in word processors like Microsoft Word and Apple Pages, to a Markdown word processor called Ulysses. I switched because of the simplicity, portability, and multiple uses for writing in Markdown. For an excellent introduction to the why’s and how’s of using Markdown, see the excellent Markdown Guide, and also the MacSparky Markdown Field Guide by David Sparks.
4. The Paperless Office
Except for a few archival paper documents, I have a paperless office. Once you scan your paper documents and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is applied, they become much more useful because they can be electronically searched. You can search both the title and contents of the file.
Unless you receive many paper documents each month, you can do all of your scanning and OCR with an inexpensive app on your phone like Scanner Pro. David Sparks has written an excellent comprehensive Paperless Field Guide in which he covers in step-by-step videos how to capture, process, edit, store, and share electronic documents.
5. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
Over time, I read and make notes, collect digitized book highlights, make electronic copies of articles on the web, and develop and complete projects. I store everything in hierarchical folders on my computer. All of my documents sync to all of my devices through iCloud. On my Mac, I can search for any document easily with the multi-purpose Alfred app.
In addition, I use the powerful program DevonThink to store my documents. This application has great search features, has the best web clipper I have seen, and allows me to use nested folders to organize my files. It takes any kind of file type I can throw at it, and gives me previews of any files I select.
The program will convert files to different kinds of files, has best-in-class built-in OCR capability, and allows me to edit files produced by any app from directly within DevonThink. It’s not the only solution for long-term storage, but is what works best for me.
6. The Morning Daily Routine and Review
Every morning after I get up, I sit down on the sofa with a cup of coffee and my iPad and work through my daily routine. I use apps to guide me through the process on a custom home screen I’ve designed for this purpose.
I review the weather, my to-do list, and my calendar. Next, I read posts from blogs I follow on my RSS reader, Feedly. My Readwise app gives me 15 random highlights from my collection of article and book highlights.
I have two language apps I’m using to learn Spanish, and get started entering my food intake for the day in the FoodNoms app. I end with a 5-minute mediation using the InsightTimer app. See my recent blog post about my morning routine for more details about my app-based morning routine and links to all the apps I use.
7. The End-of-Day Daily Review
At the close of each day, I try to do a brief daily review. I think about the work I did that day and whether I actually did the things I intended to do (was I productive today?). I think about things I did that were mistakes and how I might improve those.
I’m much more productive when I know the night before what I intend to work on (and when) the next day. If I wait until the next morning to figure out what I’m working on that day, I flounder about and have a harder time getting started.
I make it a practice to review my tasks listed for the next day in my task manager and calendar, then pick my top three priority tasks for the day. I write these tasks (and times) on pre-formatted cards obtained from Ugmonk. These cards stand in a holder facing me on my desk as I work. I’m constantly reminded of what I intend to do that day.
I also often schedule blocks of time in my calendar to work on my priority tasks for the day. For me, this seems to solidify and formalize my commitment to do the work.
8. The Weekly Review
On Sundays, I perform a weekly review. I have a custom template in the Drafts app that lists my roles and questions I want to ask myself about each. I review upcoming tasks and calendar events for the next week. I check locations that I typically capture ideas to process (like Drafts), and select my three work tasks for Monday.
David Sparks has written a very helpful blog post on how to do a weekly review. In this article, he discusses the value of a weekly review and provides a series of questions he uses to do his roles reviews, look at and evaluate the past week, and look forward to the coming week.
A call to action!
- First, determine what is important to you, and define the goals and projects you want to do to support those values.
- Next, decide what tools you want to implement in your personal productivity system.
- Start with identifying and learning how to use a digital calendar and a task manager.
- Add other applications for each of the other system categories as you go along.
- Use routines such as daily reviews and weekly reviews to remind yourself of what you consider important and keep yourself focused on doing that work.
No Magic Solutions
A productivity system isn’t a magical solution; it doesn’t do your work for you or make you feel productive or fulfilled. But it does help you to identify what’s important to you and gives you the tools to help you stay focused on “moving the needle” in the areas that matter.