Productivity systems are guidelines or workflows that assist you in effectively completing various tasks and projects. These systems vary based on your personality and the nature of the task at hand. Everyone has different ways of working, and not all methods might suit your type of task. Mine may work well using the Pomodoro Technique, while yours may be perfect with the Time Blocking technique. There are, however, other methods, namely;
- Eat The Frog
- Getting Things Done (GTD)
- Systems
- The Eisenhower matrix and many more.
Table of Contents
What are the Elements Of a Productivity System?
Elements of a productivity system entail defining various tools, methods, and workflows that best suit your needs and personality. Each element in the productivity system has its specific purpose in setting up the workflow. Given below are the five basic elements of a productivity system.
- QUICK CAPTURE
This is a medium for capturing or adding any idea into the system. It’s all about lessing up the friction between you and the system in collecting ideas.
For this element, various tools like Drafts, Notion, Web Clipper, Bear, Voice memos, Sticky notes, Scan Pro and Google keep can be used in extracting ideas.
- JOTTING DOWN AND WRITING
This entails writing down your thoughts and ideas into the system when they cross your mind. Jotting them down helps you keep these notes handy. In this case, jotting down and writing are two different things, as jotting down entails writing down the valuable points from a video, speech, or book. In contrast, writing involves organizing your thoughts into an article, blog, or letter.
Notable tools for this element include Evernote, Notion, Onenote, Bear, and Ulysses.
- COLLECTION AND ORGANISATION
As humans, our brains are good at thinking but sometimes sucks at remembering stuff. You can’t store everything in your brain forever; you’ll need to store it in a safer place.
The collection and organization element here involves creating a knowledge and documentation database to store all thoughts and ideas so you can easily organize them. It’s responsible for translating all thoughts and ideas into actionable and non-actionable items after which you’ll categorize them into various types. Convert your actionable items into tasks or projects, as it will assist you in planning your time and set goals.
Notable tools for this element Include CODA, NOTION, AIRTABLE, AND EVERNOTE.
- DESIGNING
After collecting and organizing your ideas, you must design your goals with proper tasks in a well-defined timeframe. Remember always to track your progress and update them if need be. The most preferred method here is to work using a calendar and a To-do list. I call, don’t overload yourself. Ensure you plan the week based on your strength and capability.
Notable tools for this element include NOTION, CALENDARS, ASANA, TODOIST, THINGS, and any other task management or Calendar management app.
- COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT
The greatest source of distraction today comes from social media. To stay focused, you ought to manage your emails and chats faster. Doing this helps minimize the amount of time we spend on those apps, serving as a good team productivity tool. There exist various methods of managing communications, but for me, I prefer the INBOX ZERO method.
