The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. — Carl Jung

I’ve been tinkering with productivity systems since I can remember. So let’s start by telling the truth. There is no single productivity system that works for all. There just isn’t. The blog posts, the YouTube videos, and of course, the inevitable “second brain”. These are all very strange gods, depending on who you ask. I myself enjoy the productivity philosophies of Cal Newport, and I have even built a large part of my own system on his. But I do not religiously follow his productivity guides. He engages in multi-scale planning, rotated around university semesters. These plans then feed into a weekly narrative planner, which in turn feeds into a daily time block between 9-5 and a general evening plan.

I’m sure it works great for him. He’s a professor at Georgetown University, the author of multiple best-selling books, and a writer for The New Yorker. I’ve tested it, and it doesn’t work for me. Because I’m not Cal Newport. I’m myself. A 22-year-old Master’s student, coming up to my first SWE job, who commutes quite a bit. I have to work differently based on my constraints, roles, and goals. Now, you may be thinking that if I am writing about making a productivity system and I posted that quote at the top of the article, that I might be on the verge of giving cliches of “you gotta figure it out mannnn”. Quite the contrary. I’m going to tell you exactly what to avoid with some warnings and bits of wisdom I think are widely applicable. But before that, I want to reiterate what is lost in today’s productivity culture. The end goal of all the systems you use, whether tracking knowledge work or learning a new language, is that you achieve the goal of doing the necessary knowledge work or learning the language. Ideally, with minimal overhead and stress. It’s not a pissing contest over who can fit the most backlinks into a single notion document.

Warnings

Avoid The Productivity [REDACTED]

When you go on any form of social media, be it “x dot com”, YouTube, Instagram, or some new “escape” from Twitter, there’s some picturesque nonsense about how someone has built the best productivity system ever that got them into Harvard. Or they’ve used obsidian to build a trendy zettelkasten system that 10x’d their studies! The tutorial for creating such a system usually lasts longer than the actual tolerance you will have for its upkeep. It’s possible that the given individual actually uses this system and isn’t just clickbaiting. If this is the case, though, it’s likely because they’ve built it themselves or they have finally evolved their system of work to integrate these methods. A good example of this is Mischa van den Burg.

If your primary work is publishing research papers, I don’t doubt that a zettelkasten system can be helpful for generating insights. But if you’re a university student who needs to write a paper on a topic you will never use again, I’m sure a Zotero folder will suffice. Or if you’re an SWE documenting all your work to reference when solving a certain bug in prod, then bombs away on that elaborate knowledge system. But a lot of this stuff is just productivity marketing. It’s a way to generate views by posting a video that piques people’s interest and plays on an individual’s fear of missing out.

“IF I DON’T CLICK THIS VIDEO I’M GOING TO MISS OUT ON 10XING MY PRODUCTIVITY, AND I’M NGMI OTHERWISE!” You’ll be fine, I promise. These videos will inevitably garner lots of views from naive individuals who think this magical system will help them finish three papers they haven’t even started writing. Or it’s viewed by those who say it makes them “feel productive”. I’m afraid there is no hope for those lost souls besides mandated solitary confinement away from the productivity tubers. The primary purpose of such videos is not to help you. It’s to get you to watch the video. Do yourself a favor and get off the constant binge for the perfect system and just start experimenting for yourself. These videos do not have your best interests.

Systems Must Start Simple and Evolve

The bigger they are, the faster they fall. This is tightly coupled with the previous warning about how these “second brain” or zettelkasten systems are usually quite complex and give you a 25-hour part-time job figuring them out. But the nature of bigger systems failing is just a fact about systems. In systems engineering, it’s widely known that a system must start simple and evolve from there, increasing in complexity. This is because it ensures the foundations are stable; if they aren’t, the next iteration fails, and you backtrack to the previous working model. When you go about getting on top of your productivity system, to-do list, or any planning metric, just make it so simple that it doesn’t really require thought or resistance.

The first form of actual system that worked for me was in my undergrad. This was a to-do list and calendar combination. I would write my upcoming deadlines in my calendar and, based on that, create a to-do list of what needed to be done. That was my study and work day. It kept me on top of upcoming deadlines and removed any anxiety about upcoming tests. Easy to follow and hard to forget.

Hard Lessons I’ve learned

The Tools Are for You, You Are Not for Tools

Don’t build a system around a tool or software, then obsess over making optimal use of it or following it when it isn’t working. If you’re using an extravagant planning system, don’t let it take over your life or stress you out. The intended purpose of a productivity system is to help you. Not to accelerate your burnout and apathy trajectory.

The System Should Be Anti-fragile and Low Maintenance

If the system for you to track your tasks, write up a plan, or take notes requires extreme diligence, it will fail. You are human. And even with the simple systems, you will fail. So what’s the solution to making it anti-fragile? It should be easy to restart. That’s why to-do lists are handy. If you forget to check off a task the day before, you can just do it the next day. Or if you fall off the wagon for a week, you can just wipe the list and reorient yourself. Keep in mind if you need a long restart period to reorganize the workflow of the system, it’s not likely to work in the long term. A quick preventive measure is to designate time each day to manage the system, but this can be forgotten, and I wouldn’t suggest this is your last line of defense for your system’s success.

Have a Halt on the Problems or Tasks You Are Working On

For the longest time in my life, I always had a task board filled up to the brim with “In progress”. I never got the work done, except for the ones with due dates. But really, this isn’t a point about deadlines; it’s a point about workload. You need to start finishing work and stop starting work. That’s really it. To achieve this, I recommend setting a hard limit across all projects to 3 tasks at a time (excluding habits and other activities like meetings). That way, when you finish one task, you add a new one. But you cannot add more than three.

You might be reading this, saying, “Well, I can easily get more than that done in a day”. Great, just take from your backlog then. But don’t start with more than what’s easily doable. What matters in a productivity system is that you can track tasks and get them done. Don’t get into an ego contest with yourself about how much you can do in an hour, day, or week. What matters is getting stuff done.

Pick and Choose What to Track and How to Track

Too often, with productivity systems, people try to build broad-spanning monoliths to orchestrate every aspect of their lives. Again, this will fail. Pick and choose what you want to track and what you don’t. And how to track things. A Kanban board doesn’t really suit tracking workouts, in my opinion, but a phone notes app or a Notion table is great. Maybe you want all your career stuff in the Notion boards. But you want to learn guitar in the evenings, and a simple notebook will do.

Dissect Tasks into Either Recurring or One-Offs

The less you have to track and the less you think about, the better. Maybe you tell yourself you want to read one research paper a week, a day, or something. Just schedule time to do that thing. For example, you do it every morning and keep a doc or journal to note down when you complete them, so you don’t reread the same ones. You don’t need a task for this on a board. You’ve just created something that you do daily, no questions asked. You can’t do this for everything. But it’s useful when you can.

Break Up Your Tasks by Responsibilities

If you are in the position where you’re trying to do multiple things at once, maybe you’re writing and programming like me, or you’re an open source contributor and college student, just break up the tasks by roles. It gives a good bit of mental clarity. That’s really all. It’s much simpler and makes you realize what you’re doing most of your work on and what roles you’re neglecting. This can be done by making separate task trackers and using each to get an overview of the work for each role.

Ignore All and Don’t Be Afraid to Change or Rip Something Out if It’s Not Working

If you pay attention to nothing except this idea, then please do. If something isn’t working, then stop doing it. If you’re trying to do work at a certain time and it isn’t working, then move it. If you want to do something and you aren’t doing it, then ask “why?” Are you trying to do too much or are you not prioritizing it? Is something causing too much overhead? Get rid of it. Don’t be afraid to tear down some fences, just make sure there’s something else that’s being put up in its place.

Avoid Monoliths

Stop trying to track everything in a singular manner. Just have different systems for different things. How you manage your language learning endeavors and how you track your day job are going to be different, and that’s okay.

Helpful Things I’ve Found Work Well

Use a Calendar to Centralize the Future

Honestly, the one thing I’ve found that’s consistently helpful is writing something down on a calendar, be it a social gathering I’ve been notified about or a simple meeting. It’s great for not to get flashbanged by waking up one day and realizing you have something you didn’t plan for. Also helpful to plot recurring tasks so you know each Wednesday you do that one thing, and plan accordingly.

You Can Just Do Things

You don’t need an elaborate time-tracking or kanban board-organizing system to simply try something out, work on, or task-wise. If you want to start learning guitar, don’t get hung up on time blocking it into your 7-step planning routine. Just go do it, and if you like it, then keep doing it and integrate a system to better track your progress.

Break Up Your Time but Don’t Always Time Block

Time blocking is great, but exhausting. I would always recommend breaking up the day into rough blocks, but only use time blocks for things like a workday or a few hours a day. Too much can happen on a given day; it’s better to have a rough outline that can be quickly adapted.

Don’t Forget About Your Personal Life

Often, productivity systems start to suck in a person’s life like a black hole. Don’t let it happen. Use a calendar or something to record social events, and don’t become overly focused on fitting everything perfectly into its own bucket. You have a life beyond what you do, and it’s usually more important.