By Leo Babauta
I’ve noticed that most people (myself often included) make complicated task and organizational systems. Today I’d like to talk about why and how to simplify that.
Task systems that are overcomplicated require a lot of overhead work — if you have to spend a lot of time organizing and going through your system, you’re spending time on the system that could be spend doing something more meaningful.
Having better productivity systems doesn’t make us more productive. Actually being able to do the hard stuff isn’t down to the system — it’s down to your ability to face uncertainty and resistance. And that’s something you can train in — but it won’t be found in a productivity system.
Having better organizational or note-taking systems doesn’t make us more organized. It is busywork to distract us. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Why do we spend so much time figuring out our systems and making them so complicated? It’s simply fear. We’re overwhelmed and afraid we can’t handle it all. We think if we get a better system it’ll be the answer we need to start crushing things. We are afraid of dropping one of the many balls we have in the air. It’s simply fear, and everyone has it.
What I’m going to share here is a simple system — it’s not meant to be the perfect system, or the one you have to adopt to start crushing things. It’s meant to be a simple model that can show how simple things can be.
But perhaps more important is the mental view of tasks that underlies this simple system. I’ll talk about that as well. And then I’ll get to the most common obstacles or objections to this kind of simplicity.