The 2 Types Of Tools For A Successful Productivity System

The sum of any person is all the tools the person stands behind and makes their life easier. To me, your productivity boils down to 2 aspects: your time management and your task management. Although I can go into a whole other tangent about the best practices you should take to ensure that you are completing tasks every day, this article is strictly talking about tools that you can download and start utilizing to their full potential.

But first, let me explain my philosophy. Fundamentally speaking, there need to be 2 tools in your life to ensure that you *capture your thoughts* and *schedule when to do them*. Think of it like this: what’s the purpose if you have 1,000 great ideas but no route for execution. Or conversely, if you have entire time blocks in to day to ensure you get stuff done but no outline of what it is you need to do? When you have a combination of the 2 things, you’ll see your productivity skyrocket. The gears will move with less friction as before, because no longer are your to-do lists flooded with “someday” tasks that lapse day after day. Finally, there will be a time and place for everything that needs to be done.

Although I haven’t found the perfect tool to be able to do the two harmoniously, here is my personal productivity system so far for my day-to-day productivity.

Tech Tools:

• Bear for note taking/general archiving of /stuff/ (articles from the internet, brain dumps, daily reflections, expense tracking, etc.) . It’s like a less intense Evernote.
• Pen and paper for daily task delegation. I usually take my brain dump from beginning of the week/day and physically write it down. This helps put it into perspective and is a great way to start the mornings
  • For example, in Bear I make everything linked to the pages I need to go to or web pages I need to fix, but on paper I just write “fix x webpage”. It’ helps it seem more manageable than a giant list of tasks
• Things 3 for task automation and scheduling. I enjoy a mix and digital and analog tools to help my work flow, and although nothing beats handwriting my tasks, I also enjoy a streamline way to schedule repeating tasks, enable alerts, and group tasks based on the respective area of my life.

What’s your favorite tool, and what’s the best way you enjoy using it?