Tag: productivity

Why getting started is the real battle

We sometimes think of ourselves as lazy. In reality we are not. It is the starting that is difficult. Whether it be due to fear of failure, fear of unknown or sheer intertia, it is sometimes the starting that is tricky.

Fear of Failure

Many of us want to write, but don’t start because we are afraid it won’t be good enough. Or we are afraid we will realize we don’t think deep enough. Or that we have nothing to say.

Fear of rejection is very similar. With failure you are judging and rejecting yourself. Fear of rejection is when someone else rejects you. We feel like it is better not to even start. Or we think it is.

Fear of the unknown

I am afraid I won’t know how to ship a side project since it is not just about coding, I need to market it, support it and I might now know how to do it. I will have to learn new skills. And I might fail multiple times learning those skills. It goes back to rejection, fear of failure. Not laziness.

Intertia

It takes effort to do something new. It means going into the unknown. Sometimes we want to, sometimes we just want to not change and continue what we are doing. That is not laziness though.

But getting past the roadblock is worth it. Writing a blog post is more energizing that watching a movie. Doing some warmups and working out feels better than lying on a sofa after you do it. The reality is the consumption is easier and feels better while doing it; but creating something, while doing it is harder, but it feels better after and makes you rich.

Two powerful productivity tools

I spend a lot of time trying out different productivity tools and methods. Productivity for me is a way to keep track of things I want to do daily so that I do not miss important activities or reminders. I hate having to put in the effort to remember things or to try to recall them. The feeling that there is something that needs to be done and I might forget what it is gives me a constant sense of anxiety.

In the past year I tried out various tools. Starting with Evernote, other simple note taking tools like rememberthemilk.com and more complex ones like Obsidian I finally settled on Omnifocus.

Obsidian is amazingly easy to use. Easy here for me means, I can quickly switch to it in the middle of a meeting, add a task with a due date and get back to the conversation I was in. It comes with much more advanced functionality too – tags, repeating tasks, projects and views. Two convenience features I really love is that it is great at keyboard shortcuts and it allows daily views with some tags displaying each day even if they are not due on that day. that allows me to keep strategic tasks visible daily even if they don’t have deadlines.

The other productivity tool I acquired is the remarkable 2 electronic notebook. Writing on it feels like writing on paper, it has an E-ink display, is very light and doesn’t run out of paper. It allows relatively easy editing (cut, copy, paste) and after my phone and my kindle is a device that I always carry around. The fact that it does only note taking means it allows me to focus without any distractions. I have found myself thinking deeply without being distracted as I use the device.

Of course, these tools are not silver bullets. The hard part is being disciplined enough to remember to note down action items with due dates, be disciplined about deep thinking time and going back and rereading notes you have taken previously, all of which takes time and dedication. These tools definitely do help though.