What sets someone who uses a productivity system apart from someone who doesn't?

You might be considering using a productivty system, and this question crossed your mind. There are countless perspectives from which to answer it. One of them can be pondering the steps taken by a person using a productivity system vs those taken by a person not using one.

Let's take a look a simplified look at each of those options.

5 steps for somebody using a productivity system:

1️⃣ Identify the right productivity system for you: Maybe not every system (Getting Things Done (GTD), Pomodoro, Kanban, Eisenhower Matrix, SCRUM, Bullet Journal (BuJo), Objectives and Key Results (OKR), Zen to Done (ZTD), Time blocking, Ivy Lee Method...) fits every person.

2️⃣ Write down all tasks: Writing down all tasks relieves your brain of the burden of having to remember them at the right time, a task for which it is not well suited.

3️⃣ Set deadlines for each task and prioritize them: Setting deadlines helps to establish constraints that force you to act upon those tasks, although artificial deadlines may end confusing your mind about them. Similar goes for the priorities: ABC or 123 type priorities usually become obsolete at the time they are established or when a new task enters the system.

4️⃣ Regularly review and tweak the system: Any system degrades from use, so it needs periodic maintenance review, both of the content/tasks and of the system itself, to keep it complete, up-to-date, actionable and ultimately reliable.

5️⃣ Use apps or tools to stay organized: You don't need anything mega-sophisticated, just something that allows you to create different lists of reminders (and a calendar is just no more than a list of reminders ordered chronologically). Pen and paper could do, although you could also opt for a digital task manager and calendar.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's follow-up, to review the approach of those withouw a productivty system.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. —Walt Disney