The garden of personal productivity
Personal productivity is an evergreen fascination of mine. I love thinking about systems and tools that can help us make the most of the time we have, and I love puzzling through what gets in the way.
There was a time in my life when I felt that personal productivity systems were an imperative; their absence the primary obstacle between me and being able to do everything I set my mind to. The search for a better task management app, a better filing system, a better approach to email was all that was standing between me and my dreams. This made personal productivity feel heavy and hard, which was doubly sad because it conflicted with my natural interest in it. By raising the stakes of something I felt drawn to, I lost touch with it. Confused, I let go of many of the systems to see what happened. Some things got worse, but other things got better. Mainly, I got more sleep and slowly came to accept that there are really only so many hours in the day.
More recently, I’ve returned to personal productivity in a softer way: as a hobby and a joy. Tinkering with tools and systems is a form of gardening for me. I’ll delight in the system for the week or two it stays in place, then try to be gentle with myself when it starts to return to soil. Perfectionism takes the fun out of personal productivity. But if I see personal productivity as gardening, it’s a living system that I can return to again and again—taking care of it, enjoying the process, admiring the view, appreciating how it all hangs together for a moment in time.
Looking out on my garden here in the spring of 2022, here are some of the tools and systems I’m enjoying now.
Craft—For taking notes during the workday, I love Craft. It’s packed with features, but two in particular drew me to it. One: Craft has snappy Mac and iOS apps that sync well. With the nature of my work now, I do less shared notetaking than I did as a product manager, so it’s fine to choose an app that’s just for me—but it still has to sync across devices. Two: Craft has a great Google Calendar integration that lets me start a note that’s titled with the name of the meeting I’m in. That’s it, and that’s most of what I was looking for.
iPad Mini with Pencil—The latest iPad Mini supports the Apple Pencil, and I find the smaller form factor to be perfect as a handheld e-reader / small notetaking device. I can put handwritten notes in Craft using the Sketch section type, and I can read academic papers on computer vision in PDF Expert. Something I would have been hard on myself about in the past is that there really aren’t that many hours in the week when it makes sense to turn to the iPad. For short bits of time, I nearly always turn to my phone (where I do plenty of reading in the Kindle app as well); for longer stretches, I usually intend to do some typing and pull out my laptop. The handheld tablet form factor, whether an iPad or a Kindle, belongs to an idealized kind of time that hardly ever seems to materialize—a dedicated window for relaxed focus. However, with a gardening mindset, dedicated time for relaxed focus is the crown jewel and something worth glimpsing in my peripheral vision as a dream to work toward.
Timers—My most reliable method for getting myself to use time intentionally is to make a plan, set a timer, and work toward that intention without distraction until the timer goes off. I know from experience that I can get a lot of anything done in twenty minutes—whether that’s reading, writing, working through my inboxes, decluttering the room I’m in, or anything else.
Readwise—I’m a longtime user of Readwise, a service for serious readers. Readwise tracks all of my Kindle highlights and sends me a batch from the past every day. This helps me reconnect to my identity as a reader and remember the most relevant snippets from reading I’ve done in years gone by. It also makes reading in the present feel more motivating: every time I make a highlight, I’m sending a gift to my future self.
Productivity podcasts—I’ve realized that I can get some of the satisfaction of personal productivity just by listening to other people talk about it. I especially like listening to Best Laid Plans, a podcast by Sarah Hart-Unger about “planning and all things planning-adjacent,” and Cal Newport’s Deep Questions. The #sundayreset hashtag on TikTok is another recent discovery—it’s very satisfying to watch time lapses of other people resetting their spaces for the week ahead. In a hard-on-myself mindset, I would say “just get it together and be productive yourself!” But something I’ve learned is that being hard on myself is not satisfying. If I relate to personal productivity as a hobby, I can bring hobby energy to it, where immersing in anything related to the hobby brings a hit of happiness. When I need a break from being in my own head but am not yet ready to tackle my own most important work, I like to listen to other people talk about organization and time management.
Screen cleaners—To make the most of the computer and iPad time I do carve out, something simple that makes a big difference is having a screen cleaner on hand. I like this microfiber cloth and tiny spray bottle; I have one set at home and one at the office.
My relationship to personal productivity has changed a lot over time. I’m in a peaceful place about it today and wanted to share some of the view from here.
For more on personal productivity, take a listen to this 2021 episode of the podcast I make with my best friend Lisa.