Doing it the simple way

It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one who’s switched to the killer productivity app of a plain text file:

I like making lists. A lot of people do. And this is reflected in the abundance of to-do apps available today. There’s a silly amount of them. Designed to augment and organise our lives, they end up being far more complex and clunky than they need to be. The rise of the overwhelming to-do app (web and native) has probably driven a bunch of people back to pen and paper and I don’t blame them. It’s basic. It’s boring. But it works. But it’s also pretty wasteful. Especially if you’re writing daily tasks. I prefer digital, but I don’t need filters, labels, colour coding, theming, reminders, calendars, timers, prioritisation, or integrations. I just want a simple and accessible task list in a clean environment that’s easy to use. Remember, this is just for my essential needs. I can totally appreciate that others might need some advanced features.

Having a text file open all day has been really handy. To-dos stay at the top, and random bits of ideas, save for later, and scratchpad type stuff go below. At the end of the day, I delete what I don’t need and save the stuff I do need in the right place. It’s a nice ritual to both start the day by making a list of priorities and finish the day by cleaning up that space so it’s ready for tomorrow.

I love over-engineering things. Like every geek, I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time figuring out how to automate tasks that take a few seconds.

I don’t want to knock that. Learning a scripting language is a useful thing and a fun way to explore the basics of programming. But it’s important to not lose sight of what’s a learning and fun versus trying to solve a real problem with a Rube Goldberg machine.

Learning to let go of that and not overcomplicate everything is more challenging than it seems. I had to basically stop wearing my Apple Watch because I couldn’t stop over-analyzing everything. I got a half-hour less sleep and my HRV is lower than it should be — what did I eat yesterday to cause this, should I be logging even more info, and this just fuels a self fulfilling prophecy of having a bad day.

And most tech companies don’t have the discipline to overcome this. Take Apple’s focus modes as an example. I want a simple switch to nuke notifications, but instead I have an insanely complex way of merely hiding the content of notifications. And I noticed how annoying this was last night when we were watching a video on my computer: despite Messages being closed, the notifications still interrupted our show. So now I have to remember to toggle on some focus mode. This is a bad design.

So much needless complexity.