Some one sentence thoughts in defense of fiddling with your system…
I often find that switching things up a bit, to a new task/productivity application or cool new paper product, often brings the “interstingness” in my productivity system back to life for me and gives a whole new spark to my productivity.
In other words, I am so excited by the shinny new car that I tend to drive a little faster, turn up the radio and sing along with a joy an exuberance I have long since lost.
While the basics of the system (capture, review, do) never really change, and neither do some of the tools that just plain work for me, I like changing things up a bit for freshness.
Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly people who are more interested in searching for the “perfect productivity system” then in actually implementing and sticking with one.
There are also people who think that the perfect piece of software or someone else’s methods will solve all of their productivity problems like the holy grail.
I am not defending this behavior.
What I am defending is people who have a system in place who regularly change out the tools they may use to implement that system just to try out new things and keep it all fresh.
It is all about developing a system you trust after all, if you have that then the tools should be fairly interchangeable.
4 thoughts on “In Defense of Fiddling”
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“the perfect piece of software . . . will solve all of their productivity problems like the holy grail”
It’s called emacs.
I totally agree. As the Dave says, you have to enjoy and WANT to use your system. So sometimes that means that you have to retool it. I am about to roll out my new Twitter/RTM/Sandy system that I have found really fun to use…which will make me more productive.
dydimustk- That sound you hear is 10,000 vi users rolling their eyes. 🙂
Michael – I know you probably have a ton of people on you to do this but… We would love to see a post on that at your site soon.
emacs vs. vi?
I can’t speak intelligently about emacs because I don’t use it. vi is the end all and be all of editors — which I guess makes me one of those 10000 eye-rollers.
Of course the perfect piece of software will solve all of your problems! The trouble is that precious few actually realize that the perfect piece of software is the one that they will actually use.