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My issue is that with productivity theres a big factor of "good data in good data out". If a system is too overdesigned it often gets underutilized. I used to h
by CE02 4y ago
My issue is that with productivity theres a big factor of "good data in good data out". If a system is too overdesigned it often gets underutilized. I used to have complicated setups for my "productivity" but honestly I've paired it down to one google sheets time tracker with a few fancy features like time predicting on projects but not much.. and google calendar. It wasn't until I reduced my tools that my productivity increases.
I worry that overanalyzing productivity will innevitably lead people to forget the 1 rule of "do less".
- spiffytech 4y agoThis is why I like Mark Forster's productivity systems. They're built around giving minimal structure to your intuition, rather than trying to comprehensively analyze your situation.
- CE02 4y agoI'll have to check it out, haven't seen any of his work! I based my current system off of Cal Newports work. I basically intentionally designed and overly comprehensive and overly complicated system and paired it back until I had a good balance of inputs and outputs!
- daniel_sushil 4y ago@CEO2 - I loved Deep Work from Cal Newport! That books changed my whole mindset regarding productivity and was partly the inspiration for the app. I did build the methodologies from Deep Work into the app. Here are some of those: - Plan your day ahead of time and know exactly what you are working on next. In Floutwork, you can give time estimates for your tasks and it will suggest best times to work on those tasks on your calendar. It won't show those suggested times "as busy" on your calendar but you will know exactly what task to work on in between meetings etc.. - Focus for longer periods of time without interruptions. In our regular desktop setup, we constatly get inturrupted by chat notifications and email notifications. In Floutwork, you can mute them all in one shot and it is totally configurable. - When you are doing deep work and you remember you have to do something else, most people will drop what they are doing and go do that other thing because they don't want to forget about it. Now they just switched contexts completely and it would take them about 23 mins to regain focus on their original task. In Floutwork, you can pull up the command bar any time by pressing CMD+1 and quickly enter your task like "Get with Mike tomorrow at 4pm" and then continue doing your work without losing focus. - Cal Newport says measuring focus is hard. So I added a way to track how much time you spend on each app you use and also have a focus timer built in to measure your focus. These are just a few examples. I can go on but I just want to say I loved the book so much I wanted to implement practical features that will help people incorporate those concepts in their work environment.
- daniel_sushil 4y agoHey CEO2, I totally understand where you're coming from. There are a whole bunch of "productivity tools" out there. Many people try to stitch together multiple productivity apps in an attempt to improve their productivity. Floutwork is trying to solve that problem by bringing it all together into a single "work system" that helps you focus on your work, rather than the tools. It's designed to help you be productive by default, and you really need to go out of your way to be distracted. We would love for you to try it out and let us know what you think."
- CE02 4y agoHey Daniel, hope all is well. I completely understand and I'm sure I'll check it out at some point. I'm just saying in my experience I've yet to find a tool that justifies adding yet another tool in this space.