A Cupboard Full of Tools
In this insightful piece, the writer Oliver Burkeman reflects on the nature of productivity techniques and their place in personal and professional life.
Dispelling the notion of a "silver bullet" solution, the article emphasizes that productivity techniques are tools, each serving a specific purpose. The author shares a personal example, highlighting the importance of viewing these techniques as part of a diverse toolkit rather than seeking a singular, all-encompassing solution.
Key Takeaways
Productivity techniques are tools, not a one-size-fits-all solution, and should be viewed as such.
Experimentation with various techniques, habits, and practices is encouraged, allowing flexibility and adaptability based on individual needs.
The article underscores the liberating realization that there is no master key or magic fix for life's challenges.
Full Article
In interviews, I’m sometimes asked whether, despite ranting endlessly against the excesses of productivity culture, there are any productivity techniques I do find helpful in my own work. Perhaps the hope is that I’ll reveal myself to be a total hypocrite, lecturing people about the evils of optimisation while being privately obsessed with squeezing the last drop of efficiency from my time. Or maybe it’s simply that if you’ve spent as long as I have marinating in this stuff, exploring its many shortfalls, then any technique I’m still willing to use must be pretty good — and might even be, perhaps, the silver bullet for Getting Life in Full Working Order at last.
The answer is: I use lots of productivity techniques! (And various habits that sometimes get lumped in when the question is asked, like meditation, journalling, and so forth.) The difference in my approach isn’t that I’ve stopped using practices for getting things done, or for otherwise making good use of my time. It’s that I understand, in a way I never used to, that productivity techniques are just tools, nothing more, and you’re free to use as many as you like, as consistently or inconsistently as you wish, whenever they seem useful. They’re no big deal. They’re certainly not the silver bullet for anything. And when you see them this way, they’re both much more effective, and usually more fun.
A case in point: the other day I heard the excellent psychologist and author Paul Bloom reveal that after a modest writing period each morning, he likes to work on his other tasks in six-minute bursts, using a timer, switching from one task to another when the timer goes off, even if he’s engrossed in what he’s doing. As Bloom described this splendidly nerdy approach, I felt an immediate surge of enthusiasm, and saw how it would turn some tedious personal finance admin, on which I’d been procrastinating, into a fun and fluid game. Sure enough, when I tried it that afternoon, I powered through a lot of items, and enjoyed myself in the process.
"The difference in my approach isn’t that I’ve stopped using practices for getting things done. It’s that I understand, in a way I never used to, that productivity techniques are just tools, nothing more, and you’re free to use as many as you like, as consistently or inconsistently as you wish, whenever they seem useful."
Here’s the moment at which, in a previous life, I’d have messed up. I’d have concluded (semi-consciously, since the idea is absurd when you put it into words) that henceforth I would use the six-minute system for all my work, and/or for the rest of my life. Then, within a day or two, I’d run into some obstacle: maybe I’d try to use the method for some project requiring deep focus, for which it’s obviously unsuited. Or maybe I’d find I just wasn’t in the mood. Then I’d throw the six-minute technique onto the scrapheap of systems that turned out not to be the silver bullet after all, and resume the hunt, a little more despondently than before.
These days, I mainly don’t make this mistake. Instead, I see a technique like this for what it is: another tool in the cupboard. It’s all any technique could ever be! And yet we seem desperate for some system that could save us – for the productivity trick or morning routine or life philosophy that would make everything run smoothly at last, so long as we kept following it. Thus a person encounters, say, a book of practices derived from Stoicism, and rather than thinking “How useful, some Stoic techniques to add to my collection!", instead concludes: “I’ll become a Stoic, which will fix all the ways I feel problematic, and then life will be plain sailing!”
I doubt a woodworker would make this error about her woodworking tools: “From now on, it’s only the chisel for me! No more planes or lathes or saws!” With physical tools, it’s obvious they’re just tools. But in the realm of human psychology and knowledge work, it seems much easier to make the mistake of treating any given tool as the potential master key to peace of mind.
We do this, I suppose, for the same reason people join cults or embrace rigid political ideologies: because it’s more scary to acknowledge the reality, which is that you’re in charge of your own life, whether you like it or not, and there’s no system or method that could lift that responsibility from your shoulders. You have to choose the tools for each job, day in day out, and you can’t wriggle out of that by resolving to use time-blocking or the Pomodoro Technique or bullet journalling to run your life. (Nor by becoming a devotee of Zen meditation or Pilates or the Alexander technique, if that’s more your thing.) There’s no system that will live life on your behalf. The master key is never going to be found.
Obviously, this is all rather unsettling. But ultimately, it’s wonderfully liberating, because it means you can call off the search for the master key/silver bullet/magic fix for your problems. (Moreover, you might begin to question whether you were really so in need of fixing to begin with, or if you’re perfectly adequate as you are – but that’s a topic for another time.) Instead, you get to play with time-blocking or bullet journalling or Zen meditation or any other method or philosophy you encounter, free of any sense that your experimentation must be part of a grim and increasingly hopeless hunt for a final and definitive approach.
To be sure, you might sometimes decide to summon a little discipline and keep going with a given practice even when it doesn’t feel fun, because your intuition tells you that’s what would be best for you. But you need no longer feel overwhelmed by the vast array of techniques, systems and philosophies that crowd the internet and the shelves of bookshops, promising ways to improve your life, because you’re not trying to discover the “right” one. Instead, you get to pick from them all, as you see fit, for whatever purposes you deem them useful – and only for as long as they actually serve to improve your experience of being alive.
Questions for Reflection:
Personal Toolkit: How do you currently perceive productivity techniques in your life? Are they seen as rigid rules or flexible tools in your personal toolkit?
Experimentation: Have you ever experienced the temptation to adopt a productivity technique as a definitive solution to all challenges? How did that approach work for you?
Liberty in Choice: Reflect on the liberating idea that there is no master key or magic fix. How does this perspective empower you to choose techniques that genuinely enhance your experience?
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