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On Productivity Methods

Published on October 13th, 2024, 1010 words, 4 minutes to read

This post serves as an update to my previous post How I Manage My Life and Productivity. So in case you haven't read it, it might be worth checking out first! (Please excuse the images not working in there at the moment)

So, after all those years, what's my view on GTD (Getting Things Done) as a productivity method, and do I still use it?

The short answer is: No, I don't!

The long answer is more complicated, but I'll get into it.

First of all, I don't think GTD was bad for me After I did the Todoist quiz on Productivity Methods I got it recommended after all. It's a good method for someone who enjoys overplanning and keeping track of all kinds of things.

And it did help! In fact, it helped so well that a lot of the things I had on my Repeating were completely habitualized after a few months of applying GTD to my life. Things that I put off or simply forgot for quite a while, finally doing them on time. The (pre-)planning with GTD combined with the Karma point gamification in Todoist was a good driving force in the right direction.

But sadly, my list wasn't only made up of repeating tasks. I also put on things like writing more blog posts about certain topics and a lot of other one-time things. I managed to slip in some things here and there, but finishing all the daily checkboxes on my to-do list was enough to satisfy both the gamification "tasks done streak" and myself.

Additionally, after I habitualized most of the things in my repeating task list, it turned into pretty much only the above: I didn't need my to-do list and the reminders anymore to actually do those things, I already did them after all. So, the only thing my list became good for was fulfilling the streak gamification of "day count and points go up".

After it became a hassle to me to just check off my list for that, while leaving a lot of the things untouched, I decided was time to stop. I first cleared out my to-do list of the not required repeating tasks and after not using it for a while I then completely deleted my Todoist account. It felt somewhat weird, but also satisfying to write "Todoist worked so well that I don't need it anymore" into my account cancellation reasoning.

What I am doing right now

You might assume that I now completely stopped with productivity methods or keeping track of stuff and now simply just go about my days as they come, right?

Wrong, but also a tiny bit right of course.

I switched to a bit more of a "traditional" way of keeping track of things I need to: A calendar!

The journey to finding the right calendar for me would almost be worth an entire blog post by itself, where there only are...

• Google Calendar frontends, which then require a Google account which is a no-go to me, for obvious reasons.
• Mac/iPad-only apps, which is a no-go since I use Windows too and I'd like my calendar to be easily accessible anywhere.
• Things that call themselves calendars but are just to-do lists again.

But, friends on the fediverse come to the rescue, and my dear friend Johann stepped in and recommended me Radicale, a self-hostable CalDAV and CardDAV server. I spun up my instance of it and now I have a calendar that I can use on my iPhone, MacBook, and Windows PC, adding/changing stuff without being limited to a specific software or platform. However it's a bit sad that I have to use Thunderbird just for calendaring since the Windows Calendar app does not support loading stuff from CalDAV endpoints at all.

Things to give you on the way

If you struggle with productivity like I did back in the day, here are some things to give you on the way that I learned through all of this:

• Overplanning, even if it's "cool and productive" at first, is not good. You fill up your list with all the things you want to do because there is a lot on your mind, but it will only lead to fatigue and stress later on. Focus on the things you struggle with doing and that got you into wanting to improve your life at first and progressively move forward.
• Even if you pick a productivity method someone invented, don't be afraid to change it to your way later. If you notice that it's not exactly what you need, make the changes you think help you get stuff done. Otherwise, if things go nowhere, also don't fret about looking into other ones.
• Find good to-do list apps to aid you on your journey. Most important for me was the ability to set reminders for tasks at specific times of the day. I personally vouch for Todoist here, but there are a lot of other free options too. You could even go super simple and use your systems Reminder app (like on iOS/Mac OS).
• Most importantly! It's fine not being productive all the time. Initially laying out all my tasks helped me to make me aware of how many things I do every day, and so it's probably also for you. You just don't notice things that much anymore if you habitualized them. Of course, there are always projects and cool things to do, but (most likely) you just want to do them, you don't have to. Take things step by step and don't overburden yourself, that's important for your mental and physical health.

That's it, the current state of my productivity and how I go about it! I hope this was insightful to you and maybe even gave you some pointers for yourself if you need them.