The 80/20 of Productivity

How to stop doing work about work and start finishing your projects.

Here’s a big problem:

As your responsibilities grow, so does the need to manage your time and energy.

So you try a bunch of different productivity tools, apps, and methodologies…

Until you find or build a system that kinda works for you.

Usually, this involves a task manager, note-taking app and your calendar.

You might add in some custom tags, project names, different priority levels… and have both a team setup and your personal one.

Now, breaking down your long to-do list into manageable tasks with their own time and place feels pretty damn good.

It’s a boost to your confidence. You’ve got this.

Only you don’t.

What you have is a neat and tidy organizational system at the surface level.

But in practice, you have multiple types of information across different tools and platforms.

This makes it hard to calmly evaluate where you should focus your attention next.

And so procrastination creeps in…

The “getting things done” is often left aside until a deadline forces you to act. You start managing your work based on urgency.

Enter: The 80/20 of productivity.

In this article, I’ll suggest that in order to stay on top of your workload, you need just 2 components:

1. Capture what’s on your mind.
2. Tell it when to show up.

I know, I should elaborate on that. So here it goes.

1. Capture it

Capturing is all about offloading information to external storage (i.e. other than your brain).

This could be on paper, your phone, sticky notes or goatskin parchment — if that’s your thing.

As a wise man once said:

Your brain was meant to be a factory, not a warehouse.

So every time something worth your attention comes about, you need a quick and easy way to capture it.

Whether it’s an item for your to-do list, a recipe, or an industry event you want to attend.

Now, this problem has largely been solved already.

Note-taking apps such as OneNote and Google Keep allow you to capture almost any type of information on any device.

And best-in-class Evernote allows for flawless paper scanning and a long list of other features.

So we may consider the capture problem solved.

What about the second part of our system — the problem with time-based information?

That’s what I’ll cover next.

2. Tell it when to show up

Now, it’s not enough to simply capture a piece of valuable information.

Although writing something down will help you remember it later, you need 100% assurance that you will see that information when the time is right.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with a growing pile of notes where only critical items surface to your attention later.

That’s better than nothing but may induce fear of important things slipping through the cracks.

The good news is this problem is also solved.

Task management apps like TickTick or Todoist let you manipulate time-based information with ease.

And a heap of other tools also make adding time-based attributes to your tasks a breeze.

So what’s the problem then?

Nowadays, both parts of our organizational system are available. You can capture (almost) any type of data with note-taking apps and you can tell it when to show up with task managers and other tools.

But this is where things diverge.

Why is that?

1. Note-taking apps suck at time-based organization.
2. Task managers suck at capturing information.

Here’s what I mean by that:

• While you can capture things to remember with Google Keep, OneNote and Evernote, these tools are inefficient when managing time-based information. True, you can add a time attribute using reminders. However, notes typically remain in the same list/folder when you add a reminder instead of removing these items from your current agenda.
• You can play around with due dates as you please in TickTick and Todoist but you’re mostly limited to capturing text-based information. In addition, manipulating captured data is very limited. You often can’t format text in comments, let alone more advanced manipulation like annotating images.

This begs a question:

Has anyone done it?

Why do big companies ignore the synergy between capturing rich information and giving it time-based attributes?

Well, that’s not entirely true.

One tool can do it all, as I’ve explained in another post.

Gmail

Yes, one of the most popular email clients in the world can capture and store pretty much any information. Plus, it can augment it with time-based attributes using the Snooze functionality.

So over 2 weeks, I used Gmail as the pillar of my organizational system.

That sucked.

I explain most of the reasons why at the end of my original post if you want to know the details.

In a nutshell, Gmail’s mission is different.

As an email client, the mode of work and frame of mind point in another direction. This is why Gmail is a sub-par solution when it comes to task and information management in general.

Connecting apps using Zapier/IFTTT

I’ve also used Zapier and IFTTT plus any native integrations that are available.

For example, you can capture anything with Evernote and have it automatically sent in Todoist — where you can tell it when it show up.

Long story short, this often creates waste, meaning you keep the same information in multiple places. Data will typically be delayed a bit and so it’s not great for a dynamic work process… and you’ll often find it’s still suboptimal in certain regards, depending on the tools and system you use.

All-in-one workspaces

So where do all these tools go wrong — note-taking apps, task managers, and email clients alike?

In my view, they get pigeon-holed into their respective field. But here’s the thing:

Tasks are not tasks, notes are not notes, emails are not emails. They are “items”. Data. Pieces of information.

Smart companies are onto this and they treat them appropriately.

I’m talking about all-in-one workspaces like Notion, Airtable, and Coda…

These fast-growing companies let you build a system around your personal work style.

That’s both their appeal and where things can go wrong.

It takes a mighty effort to adopt these tools for an individual, let alone a whole team.

Yet, they don’t eliminate the need to use a task manager, note-taking app, and a calendar. They do everything almost good enough.

Conclusion

So you don’t need elaborate methodologies with multiple levels, tags, and rules to stay on top of your workload…

You just need 2 components for an effective organizational system:

1. Capture it.
2. Tell it when to show up.

But these things must be done well.

At this point, I haven’t found a viable tool that completely serves this functionality.

Of course, I haven’t tried every single productivity app out there. So there is a possibility that a company somewhere is solving this problem. If you know about it, please share it in the comments.

And if you don’t, I’m playing around with the idea of creating a simple tool that lets you capture anything on mobile and tell it when to show up. If that’s something you might use, let me know here.