A Year Of Simplicity

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Today marks a year of me living with a ultra-simplistic productivity system. In some circles I'm known as the 'productivity guy', and so I've used and built incredibly complex systems, both for myself and others. Writing this post today seems strange, but in the end, it's logical. Very.

Here's the system: I have my daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly plans in a Bullet Journal. I'm even using the official notebook now. That's the place where I write down someone's birthday, a conference I want to attend (virtual ofc these days), a task I'll have to complete. I love the pure simplicity of that system. It's very manual, requires a lot of menial labor, as some productivityists would call it. But, it's also very intentional. I like that. I see myself putting a lot less bullcrap in there. Only the truly important and valuable stuff. Other than the BuJo, I also have project tasks lists in Standard Notes, my note-taking app and overall second brain. They're very simple checklists, often with due dates, that I use when scoping a big project. I then migrate these during my weekly review to the BuJo.

For those unacquainted with the productivity underworld, this system might sound complex. Trust me, it's not. It's simple as hell. It's like level 3 out of 100 in terms of complexity.

I thought that this experiment was going to fail. I projected, anticipated, even, a crash sometime in the middle. I kind of assumed I'd go back to complex, digital solutions somewhere along the way. This analog/digital minimalism journey was just an experiment I thought I had to undertake to truly understand people using BuJo, to better complement my productivity trainings.

But it stuck with me. I'm much less stressed thanks to just a change of the system. I feel like I'm under control, but without stressing over micromanaging every second of my life. I don't miss deadlines, I'm never late to meetings. But I have space to create, to go off track, to explore. And that's something I never thought would be possible. I always thought its either or when it comes to staying on task and living stress-free.

Looks like, I've found balance. At least in one part of life.

The Search never ends.