How Productivity Tools Can Waste Your Time
Trying to be more productive? An explosionin technology aimed at helping people manage their time and tasks may actually be making it harder.
New productivity products 'have skyrocketed in the last couple of years. There is way too much out there to make sense of it all,' says Whitson Gordon of Los Angeles, editor in chief of Lifehacker, a website on using technology to be more productive.
Many people choose something that doesn't fit the way they think and work, or they jump from one tool to another,wasting time and energy. Rather than picking the right app or system on theirown, people 'let themselves be directed by the latest and loudest,' says DavidAllen, an Ojai, Calif., productivity expert whose book 'Getting Things Done'has sold more than 1.6 million copies in English.
Also, some systems are 'so complicatedto keep up that 80% of the people fail,' says Laura Stack, a Denver-basedspeaker, trainer and author on productivity.
It's a good idea to identify your ownweaknesses before committing to a productivity method. Most programs andtechniques promise help with one or more of four basic processes: collectingtasks and projects from all your notebooks, calendars and files into oneorganizing system; deciding on the next steps and desired outcomes for eachitem; organizing everything into categories, and making a habit of frequentlychecking and updating your to-dos and plans.
Among the most popular techniques isMr. Allen's Getting Things Done method, according to a 2012 Lifehacker surveyof 2,032 people. Others include the Pomodoro Technique, which trains users tofocus on tasks uninterrupted for 25 minutes; the Action Method, a task- andproject-management program by Behance of New York City; and the Kanbanapproach, which orders tasks for various projects into three categories(to-dos, next up, and just completed).
Mixing up your own hybrid method is apopular solution -- but this can become a job in itself. Lisa Hendey relies onGetting Things Done principles, such as breaking projects into action steps, tostay on top of her duties as an author, speaker, editor and founder of awebsite, CatholicMom.com. She maintains several color-coded Google calendarsand uses a program called Evernote for taking and organizing notes. She also istrying out four apps for making to-do lists.
'I'm constantly looking, wondering,what's the latest app?' says Ms. Hendey, of Fresno, Calif. 'Part of the problemis that you can jump into one thing, and another squirrel comes along down theroad and you go chasing after that one.'
Trendy digital tools aren't for everyone. Many people suffer when they try toeliminate all paper, says Ms. Stack; the tactile experience of using pen andpaper helps some think clearly. Some 'get creative flashes at random times,like at night in their beds,' when powering up a digital device may not bepractical, she says. Others say reading on a computer gives them a headache, ortheir fingers are too fat to type on a smartphone, she says.
Jackson Miller avoids systems thatrequire tagging each email, call or task with a project category. 'I don't likeoverly complicated programs,' says the Nashville, Tenn., business owner, fatherand marathon runner. He also avoids Web-based tools, because 'when you open upa browser window, there are 35 tabs there staring at you with stuff you need toget done, fighting for your attention,' he says.
Among his favorite tools is a workload-tracking program called RescueTime; itposts an alert on his computer screen if he spends too much work time onFacebook or running blogs. If he strays a second time, RescueTime locks him outof nonwork programs and apps.
Some people enjoy searching out newmethods, seeing the process as continual improvement. Daniela Bolzmann, amarketing manager for WeDeliver, a Chicago business-delivery startup, haschurned through 40 different apps since graduating from college in 2010. Shetossed out one after another because they didn't synch across all her devices,took too long to figure out, made it too hard to enter tasks -- or were justflat-out ugly. 'If it's not beautiful, I won't use it. It's got to be sexy,'she says. Her current favorite is a task- and project-management app namedTrello.
When picking a new system, remember tomake sure it is flexible and easy to update, says Julie Morgenstern, of NewYork, author of 'Time Management from the Inside Out' and a productivityconsultant. 'You should be checking it several times a day. It's your guide.It's your road map. And you have to be able to prioritize and re-prioritize onthe fly,' she says.
Put in time with each system, ratherthan giving up. Mark Musselman, an executive consultant for McGhee ProductivitySolutions, in Denver, says one senior executive he coached was so frustratedafter trying to learn a new system that 'he was ready to throw up his arms andstop doing it' after a month. Mr. Musselman encouraged him to keep trying bylikening the process to surfing, when just learning to stand up on your boardcan take weeks.
Being more productive almost alwaysrequires breaking bad habits -- such as reacting to email. 'Some people . . .get the twitches because they're not answering it,' Ms. Stack says. Managersand professionals spend 28% of the workweek on email, says a 2012 McKinsey& Co study.
Robert Brokamp tried and tossed severalproductivity approaches before cobbling together a recipe using Getting ThingsDone principles, Evernote, a spreadsheet for logging priorities and thecalendar and task-reminder functions of Microsoft Outlook. He has learned tohaul himself out of bed at 6 a.m. to make time for reading and planning for hisjob as a financial planner and writer for the Motley Fool, in Alexandria, Va.He sets a 25-minute timer on his computer to stay focused on tasks. He has evenenlisted a mentor at work to wield a carrot and stick. The mentor encouragesMr. Brokamp to take satisfaction in small gains, then fines him $10 every dayhe fails to finish two-thirds of his to-do list.
All this has helped Mr. Brokamp learn akey lesson, he says: Improving your productivity isn't about searching for abetter app or finding the right software. 'Ultimately it comes down to managing yourself.'