Tools for Thought

“I think there’s sort of a linguistic thing going on.”
Hearing the above remark by Clay Collins in a talk with Duff McDuffee about the limits of the word “productivity,” a frustration I’ve harbored for weeks suddenly uncoiled.
I’m over productivity. It’s outlived its usefulness as a focal point and framework for meaningful discussion.
Through overuse and misuse, [...]

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Last week, I switched to a paper organizer to manage my calendar and action lists, and found that I got nearly twice as much done as usual. During that week, a couple of computer problems converged to prevent me from using my laptop for writing, forcing me to work around the issue by writing exclusively [...]

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A couple of years ago I tried to pull myself away from the PIM-and-PDA approach to tracking projects and actions. I bought the requisite ruled Moleskine and eagerly transferred my lists and calendar, formatting the latter by hand. The experiment failed.
The failure had to do with my work-school situation. I was working 50 hours a [...]

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