This post in reddit really made me to question myself; and the time I am wasting by tinkering with these productivity tools.

Q:

I spend more time looking at articles and reddit posts about how to be productive than actually being productive and it is freaking me out.

A: 

This whole sub is full of people like you. Luckily you have some self-awareness so you have a chance!
Just do the things you need to do. It’s hard to work out what that actually is, but look at the big picture and that’s probably a combination of sleep, healthy eating, exercise, study or work.
If what you’re doing isn’t impacting those things directly then you are wasting your time.
Use only a notes app or a calendar. Using multiple apps or paid subscriptions is just evidence you’ve been captured by the productivity industry, who want to sell you stuff, not make you more productive.
You don’t need a system, you just need to do the stuff that matters.
People that are successful don’t use dumb apps. They make a list of things that need done and they score off the list.
They don’t look at fancy charts and graphs of how they spent every second of their day. If you are doing this you are failing.

I agree with the Reddit answer. There’s a strong dose of unhealthy self-regard in a lot of the “productivity” forums, books, podcasts, and so on. When I see folks writing about their “workflow” I think, “ugh, we’re not machines”.

On the other hand, the workplace is increasingly difficult. With its constant demands for results, multitasking, and pervasive lack of training on basic work skills. So, it’s easy to see how people grasp at branches, hoping to get themselves out of the stream.

I tend to think we humans are engineers at heart. Were it another time, we'd be tinkering with refining the design and implementation of other things.

When I first discovered some (then paperbased) time management systems, it was a revelation. So naturally, I went overboard, planning not only my work day, but my home life. Calendars and tasks! I got so much done, then, about a week into it, realized I was also becoming desperately unhappy.

Now I try to hit a balance. I make lists of stuff I really thought I ought to get to, and tried to do 1-3 of them every day (with a smattering of things that are urgent, but not necessarily important). That left time to invite my soul, to smell the roses, to do things whose purpose was not productivity, but appreciation.

Yet here I am, with all you other CRIMPers. Kudos to whoever came up with "productivity porn."

I'm just such a sufferer. Today, a meeting slipped through the cracks and I could not find the email requesting it. If I had just one productivity app and one email app, it wouldn't have taken me an hour to establish that I have no idea if I wrote it down. I am inundated in spam, spent half an hour trying to decide between IMindmap, Scrivener, or Curio to use as a corkboard. Tomorrow, I'm going to decide on 1 productivity app (Things, probably), 1 calendar (Fantastical), 1 email app (Mail), and.........Tinderbox, or Evernote, or DevonThink, or Curio, or Notability to keep my notes. I'm leaning toward Tinderbox.

The main point of productivity apps, for me, is peace of mind. If you have a system, and trust it, then you don't have to waste extra brain power wondering if you forgot something. 2Do + Fantastical pretty much gives me that. The only problem is that 2Do doesn't allow for collaboration, so I end up using Todoist and/or Trello as well. If I spend time time still looking at productivity apps is precisely because would like to have everything all in one place. So far I haven't found that.

Good luck with that, Jeffery!

Yes, it is a kind of porn. But what I get very excited about, above all, is the conceptual side - the clever ideas that appear in so many of these apps.

As far as self-management is concerned, I'm steadily ripping down to just 3 apps: DynaList, Apple Calendar, UnClutter (for fast note-taking), with Notebooks as the big data repository. Oh, and MacJournal as my journaling software. So that's 5 apps...

oh well.

Hello. My name is Steve. I am a CRIMPer.

My CRIMP stems from my early days as a computer user in the 1980s. It astounded me what I could do with my new Compaq computer. I would wander into my local Egghead Software store and browse the apps. I spent way more money than I should have, but the things those DOS apps could do. Help me keep a schedule, write some documents, create a database of the books I read. The potential blew me away.

I still recall installing Sidekick on my work PC (386 processor with a 100mb hard drive, I think). It actually made it possible to copy some text out of one application (they weren't "apps" back then) and paste it into another. Holy cow! What a breakthrough. And then one day I found Grandview.

I think that sense of discover at what the computer could help me do still permeates my interest in exploring new applications, trying new processes to this day. I guess what I'm saying is that despite being ubiquitous, computer tools still tickle me with their potential. I just keep looking for the right combination of apps that completely fulfills that potential.

I love that sense of discovery when I try a new piece of software for the first time. It may not be the most effective route to productivity, but I'll be sad the day the computer becomes only a productive tool, like a hammer.

Steve Z.

I've definitely struggled with this. But now I look at it more as a hobby, and as such, order it as a hobby. The trick is to have bigger goals and make sure you are pursuing them first and foremost. That forces you to use something "good enough" that might feel a little messy.

Without any higher level accountability though, it's easy to backslide into masturbatory productivity spinning.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I think that sense of discover at what the computer could help me do
still permeates my interest in exploring new applications, trying new
processes to this day. I guess what I'm saying is that despite being
ubiquitous, computer tools still tickle me with their potential.

Well put, Steve. Same.

To me, Arabesque "Ecco" was the one app that did everything for me (except email, which was still in the future). Allowed me to dump PackRat, Desktop Set, Daytimer, and Ascend.