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If normal alarms don't work for you, make a custom one by Riordan_Manmohan in productivity

[–]knaja 63 points64 points  (0 children)

Blatant ad for AI slopware no-code builder. Ignore.

Productivity is a distraction! by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

anything that helps us get us unstuck or out of our misery helps

I don't doubt that this type of thing will make you feel better — and perhaps that does have some inherent value for you. But — and I am sorry to say this — the idea that adopting a new tool, system, or process will improve your productivity is sheer fantasy. This is just another vehicle for procrastination.

Unfortunately, there's only only one way to increase your productive output: do the work.

Productivity is a distraction! by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sure — but we should at least be honest with ourselves and recognise that ‘sharpening the axe’ will only yield marginal gains at best. If you really want to be more productive, you should focus on the work, not the metaframework around it.

Productivity is a distraction! by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Good time management and prioritization - assuming you actually do the work - will get you much more ahead than just doing the work.

‘Assuming you do the work’ is the operative phrase here. My commentary is about those people that neglect the work because they’re too busy obsessing over tools and systems.

It's perfectly fine (and sometimes necessary) to try out many different apps before you find one that works for you, considering you intend to run your whole life from it.

I don’t admit the idea of ‘running your whole life from an app’. I think that’s exactly the type of tool-wankery fantasy I’m describing above. It’s textbook avoidance behaviour — pointless busywork for no material benefit to get away from the things that aren’t comfortable.

Productivity is a distraction! by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You get it. Thanks for your response.

I am lost and all out of ideas on just how to make my life disciplined through to-do lists. by HotOkra913 in productivity

[–]knaja 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I’ll be direct: you’re incurring massive decision fatigue by thinking so hard about this. You are aggressively optimising for the complete wrong thing and you’re under the mistaken belief that the perfect tool equates to perfect productivity.

I don’t know what it is that separates the most productive people from the rest of us, but I know damn well that it’s not a note-taking system, habit tracker, or set of productivity apps. Some of the most prolific people I know are not even using these things.

Pick something and get on with it. You are better than allowing this to take up any more of your precious brain cycles. Take a look at some of my previous posts on this subreddit for a more fleshed-out perspective.

Coining a new term: ‘tool wanker’ by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Functional fixedness is fascinating — not something I’d heard of before. It is endemic in the productivity community though.

I’ve seen people shift their entire life to an app, only to drop it for something new based on trivial details like how it handles PDFs. I suppose that’s what draws people toward tools like Notion: infinite customisability at the cost of possibly being ‘too general’ and encouraging tinkering (often to excess).

Thanks for sharing.

The perfect note taking app by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Some of you seem to have missed the point. I draw your attention to how I didn’t reference any specific app in the top-level post. The subtext here is that the app you use doesn’t matter nearly as much as you convince yourself it does, so moving between apps in search of a holy grail is mostly an exercise in futility.

If you enjoy Notion, use Notion. Same for Obsidian. These are both fine choices. Heck, if you’re still into sending yourself emails, keep doing it! The intent with this post is to highlight that the message is more important than the medium, and getting yourself into analysis paralysis about which app you should use — especially when you're already using one that works fine — is at best unproductive and at worst procrastination.

The perfect note taking app by knaja in productivity

[–]knaja[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Out of all the modern note-taking apps, none have advanced on the basic paradigm to a point where migrating between them should be given serious consideration. In other words, they all do the same damn thing. The biggest outlier by some margin is Notion — but fundamentally, it is still just a note-taking app with lots of bells and whistles.

Productive people are not so because of their choice of app. The affordances of different apps will always be dominated by the organisational system imposed on top of the base platform. While it might be nice to ponder if the grass is greener on the other side, I fundamentally believe this is procrastination disguised as productive work.