My recent notification deep dive got me thinking: is it just me, or is this necessary evil getting more evil than necessary? Appalled by the unfolding attention span genocide, I can’t help but wonder: are there any apps that just don’t come knocking on my door at all? Are there…

Since this is a post on productivity, here’s a very relevant question: Are you into gardening? I don’t know the first thing about it, but when I think about notifications, a garden seems like a good analogy. A garden needs strategic planning before it can bear the fruit you actually…

They’re here, they’re there, they’re every-freaking-where. There’s hardly a more powerful irritant than notifications these days. Each ping feels like you’re drowning in a cesspool of don’t-miss-outs, breaking news, ends-soons, and 🔥🔥🔥’s of every kind. You’re not alone. You want to ignore this onslaught, but it feels like there’s no…

Most everything tells us the time these days. Just look around. Phones. Car dashboards. Ebook readers. Stoves. Microwaves. Thermometers. And, ridiculously, air humidifiers and AC remotes. Even my towel rack tells the time for some twisted reason (not that I ever bothered to set it correctly!) We know we check…

Three facts. Work always takes longer than you expect (aka “ Hofstadter’s Law “). Despite that, your plan for the day (or week) is routinely twice what you can possibly accomplish (aka planning fallacy). You’re perfectly aware of both these issues but, for whatever reason, you keep stepping on the…

If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, right? Don’t be so sure. It could still be a chick. Or a red-throated loon (that one can quack, too!) That’s one example how relying on seemingly obvious feedback can be misleading. Why is it…

But wait, isn’t productivity the goal? Nope, the goal is the goal, whatever it is. With the number of tasks we’re supposed to deal with — often simultaneously — growing beyond measure, it’s natural to look for ways to make the load more manageable. But the stubborn obsession with productivity…

Not a quitter? Your loss. As I wrote in my last post, once we start on a path toward our goals, we’re easily trapped into thinking that there’s no turning back. As a result, we often persist only to reach destinations that would have been better off abandoned. Let’s see…

What if a key measure of how good you are at hitting your goals is how well you abandon them? It’s common to hear that persistence and grit is how you should get anything done. Most don’t really question this premise. Why should we? Every ten-year-old knows Edison invented the…