Your Annual Productivity System Review
The holiday season is ending, which means the season of annual reviews, New Year’s resolutions, and goal setting is revving up. It’s a perfect time to review and tune-up your personal productivity system.
Habits are double-edged swords: helpful when they reinforce positive behaviors, harmful when they lock us into unproductive and/or unhealthy behaviors. Your productivity apps and tools can also both reinforce positive behaviors and lock in unproductive behaviors. For example, the easiest way to take a note on your digital device may be the native notes app, but that may not be the most productive way, especially if you’re not routinely reviewing your ad hoc notes. We are creatures of habit, sometimes to our detriment.
The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
– Socrates
This post helps you identify productivity slowdowns and sinkholes, and evaluate the individual applications in your personal productivity toolkit.
Slowdowns and Sinkholes
Productivity systems are not static—they change over time as our goals change, as our work environment changes, and as our devices change. Systems that worked suddenly fail because of an operating system upgrade. Ways of doing things that worked in the office don’t work as well at home. A job change or shift in our priorities exposes blind spots—things that weren’t getting done, but didn’t matter, become big issues.
Where are the slowdowns and sinkholes in your productivity workflows—the points where your productivity slows or precipitously drops? Moments when you can’t find the information you’re looking for, lose track of the steps in a project, or lose sight of your goals? Take a few moments to reflect on your sinkholes:
Where are you working? At home, at your office, in your car?
What task are you trying to accomplish?
What devices/tools are you working with? Your PC? Your phone? Your tablet? A notebook?
What applications are you using?
Describe these moments; include as much detail as you can. For example: “I’m at my desk in-front of my PC, responding to email, and can’t find the PDF version of the research report I reviewed and commented on.”
Once you’ve documented your slowdowns and sinkholes, look for commonalities. Are they happening:
In a specific environment?
When you’re trying to complete a specific task?
When you’re using a specific device and/or application?
When you’re trying to move information from one application to another?
Are you seeing patterns? If so, these are the productivity issues you need to prioritize in the first part of your review. If you’re not seeing any patterns, just rank the productivity issues you’re seeing from most troublesome to least.
A Short Guide on How to Interrogate an App
You now know where your productivity is slowing down, or in some unhappy instances grinding to a halt. Before you can figure out how to fix things, you need to be able to distinguish between three different potential points of friction:
The application’s conceptual model
The application’s functions and features
How the application integrates with the other applications in your toolkit
How the application fits into your workflow
Once you’re able to distinguish between these four aspects of an application, you’ll be able to pinpoint the source of your productivity trouble.
Conceptual Model
An application’s conceptual model is a manifestation of the mental model that its designers had in mind when they created the app. For example, a developer creating a scheduling application will probably use a traditional calendar as a mental model. The application interface, features, and functions will probably build on the kinds of things you traditionally do with a physical calendar, such as schedule appointments. Because it’s a software application, it will probably integrate additional features and functions supported by the device and operating system, such as reminders.
However, not everyone’s idea of how a calendar application should work is exactly the same. Occasionally, you’ll find that an application’s conceptual model just doesn’t work for you. For example, the layout of the calendar may not be to your liking, or the process for scheduling appointments may feel cumbersome, with too many options that don’t align with your expectations. If you don’t “grok” an application’s conceptual model, you’ll never have a good feeling for how to work with it. It will always feel foreign.
Functions and Features
Functions are the things an application enables you to do. Features are the controls and tools in the application that you use to access an application’s functions. For example, your calendaring application may have a “Share calendar” feature (a menu item or button) that you use to accomplish the “share calendar” task.
One reason an application may not work for you is that it doesn’t have the functionality you need. It just doesn’t do what you need it to do!
Another reason an application may not be working for you is using its functions is hard: its menus are hard to navigate, its controls and tools are hard to find or don’t work as expected. Key features are just missing or badly designed.
The distinction between functions and features is important: you need to make sure the applications in your toolkit have the functions you need and easy-to-find features that enable you to use those functions.
Integration with Other Applications in Your Toolkit
Like people, applications need to play nice with others. A well-behaved application needs to integrate with the device’s operating system and other apps in your toolkit to make it easy for you to import and export information and documents. For example, your email system should make it easy for you to send information to your task manager, so you can turn email messages into tasks that include the content in the original email message. An application that doesn’t play nicely with other apps will slow down your work and may even force you manually copy and paste, or re-enter information. Not good…
Workflow Integration
Workflow integration is also about seamless flow, but instead of tracking the flow of information through your system, workflow integration focuses on the flow of your attention. Sometimes moving from the conceptual model of one application to another feels natural. Your process and the tools you’re using at each stage of the process are aligned. Other times the shift disrupts your flow, because the tool you’re using doesn’t have the right functionality or features or just isn’t a good conceptual fit—the lens the application uses doesn’t give you the right focus.
In a well-tuned workflow, every tool has a unique job and all the tools in the workflow work together. (I’ll be writing more on workflow optimization in an upcoming article.)
Tidying Up Your Application Toolkit
Go back to your list of slowdowns and sinkholes. Use your new application interrogation skills to tease out the reason for the problem you’ve identified.
If the conceptual model of the app isn’t a good fit, try spending a little more time with the app’s documentation and/or help system. A small investment in learning how the app works may be all you need to get comfortable with it. If the app still doesn’t feel like a good fit, look for a different app with the same functions that feels less foreign.
If the app is missing key functions and/or features, swap it out for another app in the category that meets your needs. There are plenty of choices out there—free and paid.
If you’re having problems with the app importing, exporting, or sharing information with the other apps in your toolkit, again, check the documentation. You may need to tweak a few settings to enable its import, export, and sharing features. If that doesn’t work or is too difficult, look for a different app that’s more compatible with the other apps in your toolkit.
Don’t stick with an application that’s not meeting your needs, but don’t be too quick to abandon an application that’s meeting most of your needs. Make sure you’re using the latest version of the app and check the developer’s blog before you walk away for good. The capabilities you’re looking for may be in a recent update or coming soon.
House Cleaning
One other critical part of tuning up your productivity system is house cleaning, which in this case means deleting apps you’re not using or only using infrequently. There are two reasons to delete unused and infrequently used applications. First, applications take up storage space. If you’re tuning up a PC, storage space usually isn’t a problem. However, if you’re tuning up a phone or a tablet, storage may be more of a concern. A little app management will make room for more photos, music, and ebooks.
The second reason to delete unused and infrequently used apps is that it helps reduce your cognitive load. It’s much easier to find the tool you need in a toolbox that’s not overflowing with tools, and it’s also easier to understand and connect a smaller set of apps. In today’s connected world, it’s easy to reinstall apps you might need down the road.
Tuning In and Tuning Out
A well curated set of productivity tools is an important step in building a system you know and trust. Watch an accomplished painter at work… What you’ll often see is someone who fluidly moves from tool to tool without breaking their concentration.
Take this opportunity to review and refine your key productivity system applications and tools. Don’t settle for tools you’re comfortable with that don’t really measure up. Level-up your toolkit and your understanding of how to maximize your productivity with the tools you’ve selected. The payoff for your investment will be less stress, more productivity, and more free time in 2021.