And that brings us back to – figure out your own system first, then find tools that work at least adequately with it. If you then need a course in the thing, sure, go for it.
(Noting that this is something I aspire to, but don’t think I’ve accomplished yet.)
I would also ask myself first: what do I want to be productive for?
Interesting one… some random thoughts, playing with the latest hotness is not always wasted time, you can learn something about the new software plus something about possible ways to improve your own system even if you stick with the existing one.
If no one experimented none of us would probably be able to use this forum the software probably would not exist or failed through lack of take up.
That said probably none of this makes anybody more “productive” as nobody seems to have any more available time or can even quantify what they do with what they have purported to have saved. Basically unless you actually get off the treadmill it just goes faster and faster the more “productive” you are, nothing is really changing or being achieved other than social media and tech “influencers” get a living, telling everyone to move on to their new love.
…or at least remember the journey you’ve taken, and the important stops along the way, so you don’t wind up constantly repeating the same mistakes.
If, for example, your extensive work experience indicates that you prefer folders to tags, the odds are good that the a new tag-based app isn’t going to suddenly change your mind.
If you need four levels of nesting in your task manager, software that only allows two isn’t likely to be for you.
And then of course also have the list of things you’ve been looking for, and consider whether the presence of those things justifies a minor inconvenience.
If you’ve been around the block a couple of times, the odds of there being a new feature in App X that’s legitimately so groundbreaking you’ve never even considered the possibility before is minimal.
Agree. Personally though, I generally don’t even play with anything that’s not stable/feature complete enough for me to actually switch to. For the majority of people, playing with feature-incomplete, buggy betas is incredibly non-productive - especially if they have to jump through hoops to get the beta, and especially if the only reason they’re even thinking about it is a YouTube productivity influencer. 
The hilarious thing about that was that it got to the point where there were even templates available for the Avery 3x5 card printable sheets that had all the fancy planner features. I don’t think that’s what Merlin was going for, but…
Well, I think it’s fair for them to create that content. It’s what we as audience make of all that stuff.
I like to think of these productivity demigods as closing the webcam, looking at their calendar and saying: “Damn, I am late for another meeting, one of these days I need to get organized”.
A truly wonderful invention. I occasionally use a variation of it to this day.
Love this thread.
I will say, I fell into this rabbit hole. I remember how it started for me, I was about to give a talk at a parish and Evernote glitched up. Each time I opened/closed the app, there were syncing issues, it had worked perfect the night before as it always had every day. Granted, I ignored the signs that led to this, it became sluggish, bloated, etc. I had hundreds of tags, etc. On that day, I decided, no more. Let’s find something new. Unfortunately, after almost 7 years or so, I still haven’t found and I got tired of looking. I moved all my processes to Ulysses for public speaking. On occasion, I will check these new apps, if they can do what Evernote did, but nothing does, so I find another use for it.
Craft is great for events and conferences. Whenever I host a conference, I put all the info in Craft (teams, leads, questions, etc) and give the link to all the attendees.
Ulysses for all my writing, although it begins to give me sync issues, but can’t find something else to replace that I am happy with and honestly time is limited.
DevonThink is the research archive.
I am planning on doing some you tube videos, but they are more farming oriented than PKM oriented. First one is going to be how to properly tattoo a sheep for export or import into the USA.
Maybe I should do one on How I’m using Obsidian and GitLab together to to keep version control on only one folder in my system.
Step 1: Thaw the ink. 
A few points:
I’m just saying it’s not anyone’s job to police who’s recommending what app for what use case. If someone is trying to hustle and make a buck promoting an app that doesn’t already have several other courses dedicated to it… well, good luck! I assume that an intelligent adult interested in maximizing their productivity using Apple devices is going to be able to make an informed decision on if that YouTube course is really going to be $99 well spent. It’s not for me, but hey, maybe it’s for someone else. I doubt it, but I honestly don’t know.
Why not just let people have their fun?
My new job, which started in September, requires me to use Windows, which means I needed to shift several of my productivity tools. Also, some other areas of my digital life have also changed, which make changes to my tools desirable.
All of this is like hey there’s that big ol’ rabbit hole, Mitch, why don’t you just set up a camp next to it for a few weeks? What could go wrong?
Me too. I inherited a box of these and keep a little stack of them next to my keyboard for quick capture when typing something into my daily note isn’t an option.
…except it’s really not. It’s a cornerstone of a rather large number of marketing efforts and influence campaigns targeted at adults - and it’s successful. Wikipedia has a whole page talking about various uses of both FOMO and derivative concepts.
If it doesn’t affect you, awesome - I tip my hat to your self-mastery.
I’m all about people having their fun. But I think that if people are mostly “having fun” on both sides, there’s no need to use manipulative marketing tactics to get them to buy.
Otherwise-intelligent adults fall for hype and ridiculous claims every day. And I’m not a fan of anybody that uses fear-based marketing for that very reason.
Reading back through my post I can see I was unnecessarily harsh. Mia culpa. I wish I were immune to marketing, I’d be a much wealthier person!
Agreed.
I’m going to be a snob for a minute, but: the people actually getting their work done and making a valuable contribution to their fields don’t have time to switch apps every couple of months and produce gushing videos about how it’s life-changing. And “productivity” isn’t a field unless you’re David Allen (and even then, he built his career working directly with corporations and Getting The Work Done, before writing a book etc.).
I want to see real-life uses from people who haven’t made an income stream for themselves by being any type of productivity guru.
That’s why I find this forum so valuable to be honest. Actual professionals sharing their use cases, and there’s a whole mix of us so I can learn how other fields tackle the same problems. (And it’s why I make an effort to contribute my own examples, so that others hungry for real work examples can find what they need.)
(I might be drinking the Kool-Aid but I did find this refreshing about the videos coming out about Readwise’s Reader Beta - many of the videos showed people’s actual libraries with all their miscellaneous interests and how they’re sorting them. E.g. “this is a work thing, this is my slightly obsessive research into optimal gaming dice, this is a news article I won’t read”, etc. It was refreshing.)
I agree. There are usually a very small number of people in any organization that have, or are allowed to have, a lot of time to evaluate new software.
Changing software is expensive. And the greatest cost can be the time it takes to learn new software, or train your employees to use new programs.
That’s probably never going to happen. But it would be useful information.
When Satya Nadella introduced Office for iPad he said something like “bring me my iPad”. For a couple of seconds the camera showed his home screen and I thought “that iPad has not been set up for a demonstration”. It made his presentation more believable to me.
Tiago Forte makes a living selling the concept of a ‘second brain’ but not, to my knowledge, any particular software.
All of my +1’s on this.
I’ve learnt more in the last few months from reading here how people use tools and systems in real world scenarios than I have from multiple expensive courses and countless books (and I’ve done many courses, from BASB to multiple OF/Things/Notion/Obsidian courses which I did get value from of course)
I find it ironic given the origins of GTD that it’s now so difficult to find content that shows productivity concepts and real world workflow in a complex corporate environment. I really struggle with the relatability of the examples content creators (quite understandably) often use and the advise they give based on these workflows. One example is a theme I’ve picked up about not needing a ‘Waiting’ or 'Agenda’s/follow up tag or perspective. Of course that approach can work, but when you are relying on 100’s of people to deliver it’s not quite as binary as it’s often portrayed. It needs a fair amount of management and if that’s work to get done, it needs to be in my system.
I wish we had more threads like the attached, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone back to that one to help me think through my own workflow challenges.
As one who does have an Obsidian course, and makes videos on Obsidian this is something I struggle with. I try to show what I’m doing and the plugins/tools I’m using to make it useful. I’m sure I miss the mark sometimes, but I know I stop watching/reading people who seem to jump ship all the time to the latest hotness.
To @Bmosbacker I know I have lots of control of my time and can set my schedule and have no direct reports. I do use Obsidian for my regular coding work to document issues and processes so that any future dev doesn’t have to start from scratch like I did with a sprawling system.
