One of my personal favorite ways to waste time is messing around with shiny new tools that promise to save time.
My work schedule has been condensed significantly since my kids’ schools closed down, which has made it more important than ever to wisely use the hours I have available for work. A few weekends ago I took some time to do a full revamp of the systems I used to manage my schedule, tasks, and projects. I didn’t really have the time to spare but it needed to be done.
After spinning in circles for a bit and chasing a bunch of overly complex systems, I finally took a moment to define what makes a productivity app/tool/system worthwhile.
Here are the Productivity Principals I came up with:
- Simple is sustainable
- Productivity tools need to solve a specific problem
- Need a quick way to get things out of your head
- Need to be reliable
- Using tools for what they’re best at, not trying to force everything on to a single platform
- Does it bring me joy?
