How to do a productivity reset | Part 2 – Prune the Branches

In my previous post, I mentioned that any productivity system can become bloated and that the first step towards tidying all this up is to Kill the Bloat – getting rid of tasks as projects that are no longer needed.  Today we move on to How to do a productivity reset | Part 2 – Prune the branches.  This is where we move to cut back any parts of our system itself that are not needed, slowing us down and causing us to waste yet more precious time.

Prune the Branches – The Apps you Use

This is an essential part of keeping your productivity system efficient and tidy.  There are so many reasons why we might end up with more apps than we need and this can be a killer for our efficiency and productivity.

Overgrown App Stacks

Some people are absolute purists when it comes to their app stacks.  You are only allowed one notes app, one cloud storage service, one task manager etc etc.  I am not such a purist but I do think there needs to be a very good reason to have more than one app in each type category.

Let me give you some examples of the ways the app branches get overgrown:

1. You’ve always used Apple calendar.  You’ve joined a sports team that organises everything in Google Calendar and your new job insists everyone uses outlook.  You now events in 3 different calendar services which you use.
2. You used Evernote for a long time but have decided to switch.  You ported some notes across to Notion and did some stuff in there for a few months. You didn’t like it so now you use Obsidian. You still have an archive in Evernote and a few live projects still in Notion.
3. You use UpNote for your notes but you’ve been using ClickUp Docs for projects.
4. Most of your files are in Google Drive but you’ve got some stuff in Dropbox and some stuff in OneDrive.

Or, in a more generic sense, we are working with two apps for basically the same purpose.  Both excel at different things and are incredibly weak in other ways so you continue to use both.

The more apps we have in our system, the more confusing it gets. More time needs to be spent maintaining it all. It increases the likelihood we will struggle to find what we need.

Every App you use – needs to justify itself

I am not against having more than one similar app in my stack on principle. I just need a good reason for it. 

For example, I use Two’s as journal/bullet journal notes and tasks app, alongside everything else.  Why?  Because I like having an app that, in my head, is outside my system.  It is great, when I feel overwhelmed, to go outside the system that is trying to tell me what to do and, independently of all that, write down a list of what I am going to do.

So, go through the apps you use, one by one and ask them point blank to justify their existence. 

Ask if you can replicate their purpose in any of the other apps you currently use.  What will you lose if if you cut this app and can that loss be mitigated elsewhere?|

Prune the branches – Organising for the sake of it

I’ve written about this recently in the post Productivity & my old SatNav…or don’t do things for the sake of it!.  The point is very simple, are there things you in your system that are of little benefit. 

For example, employing a complicated system and structure of labels and tags.  Or maybe it could be writing out a plan for the day in a notebook, a daily note, your journal and timeblocking your day in your calendar.

A common way this happens is through content from a productivity expert where they outline their own system.  It looks like such a good idea so you work to incorporate it into your system.  But, you do not stop to consider what value it adds. How does it fit within the context of the rest of your systems and processes?

So, examine the processes that you follow to organise your work, your tasks, projects, notes and files and ask the question – what am I doing here that ultimately serves no purpose other than looking nice and being impressive on YouTube/Social Media.

So, How to do a productivity reset | Part 2 – Prune the branches is all about your apps and processes. 

To be continued….

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E|F Muses on....

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