The card represents the simplest, but most effective unit of personal productivity as I see it: today. But as with any tool, it’s in how you use it. There’s nothing special about the 3 x 5″ index card per se. It was something simple enough to keep me from getting lost in the weeds, but potentially powerful enough to compete with the other systems I’ve used over the years.Īnd for as nondescript as it seemed, sitting there on the shelf with 99 of its identical twins, it held the key to a system that I’ve used every day for almost a year now. What would end up being-at least for me-the saving grace of my journey in finding a personal productivity system. It was early Monday morning, and I had an entire week of ill-defined work bearing down on me. The Need for A Simpler SystemĪnd then one day, in a fit of frustration, I found myself in the office supply aisle in the grocery store, as I finished my usual weekly shopping trip. The already difficult work of keeping track of my work became even more…well…work. The systems would become too much to keep up with. But as the parade of work and life marched on, that enthusiasm would give way to a feeling of being overwhelmed. I was excited to put all my stuff into them, and to get to work tinkering with everything. Over the years, I’ve adopted various productivity systems and used all kinds of apps, planners, and paper-based schemes. And the less you trust it, the less it works. The less you engage with it, the less you trust it. So the more complicated and cumbersome that system is, the less likely you are to engage with it. It’s where you put things, with the knowledge that putting them there will lead to them getting done. After all, your productivity system is the hub where all your undone work goes, and where all of the work you’re going to do comes from. In nowhere is this more true than in personal productivity systems. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” One of my favorite quotes about building systems comes from Albert Einstein:
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