Shudder. If it’s easier to be productive than it is to write anything – and, oh my lights, it is – then it is easier still to pretend to be even more productive by forever trying out new software tools. I am completely fine with this. If I hadn’t played, I mean, investigated, then I wouldn’t now be using OmniFocus and where would we be then? We wouldn’t be here: you and I, talking like this, it would not have happened if I hadn’t moved to using OmniFocus to get tasks done. That’s a scary thought. I knew that software was transformative, but I say this to you and I remember when I was first trying it out and I considered going back to my previous To Do manager.
That was a near miss.
Anyway.
I am definitely pro exploring and investigating. Except there’s this fella, Frank Chimero, who argues that enough is enough and I think he has a spectacular point:
Being an early adopter is exhilarating in the same way that riding a rollercoaster can feel like travel. You’re moving, but you’re not actually going anywhere, only devising ever-increasingly complex methods to make yourself feel slightly more barfy. You are in a loop de loop of productivity, changing for change’s sake. I made an agreement with myself in January: no new apps on my phone or computer. Don’t do new stuff. Just do your work.
Text editor, spreadsheet, email, pencil, paper, Photoshop. OK. That’s enough.
Is Chimero his real name? Seems wrong for someone saying you should stop where you are. But he means it and you see there where he says he made this agreement with himself in January. We’re now in May and he has things to say about how it’s going in the full article here.