Be productive

If you, like me, suffer from Major Procrastination Disorder, you will likely try anything to increase your productivity. Recent posts at Orgtheory and Slate aim to help with this goal. At Orgtheory, Katherine Chen talks about the challenges of handling both structured and unstructured time, focusing primarily on the use of deadlines (both external and self-imposed). Two of these suggestions, understanding prioritization and breaking large projects into small tasks, might be aided by the topic of Farhad Manjoo’s article at Slate. Manjoo reviews an app called WorkFlowy, which is essentially an electronic way to make lists. If your lists look anything like mine (and, apparently, Manjoo’s), you end up with a piece of paper covered with writing in all directions, some of which is crossed out, circled, or highlighted. Manjoo recognizes that most note-taking applications don’t deal well with this sort of approach, but argues that WorkFlowy is different:

[T]his app is the easiest, best-designed, and most-flexible note-taker I’ve ever come across, and it solves many of the problems I’ve had with other software. In the weeks I’ve been using it, this new program has become my go-to place for storing and keeping track of everything—not just to-dos and grocery lists, but my ideas for articles, all the notes I gather while reporting, all the tasks I need to do for those articles, and even all of the stuff I’m gathering for a book I’m working on.

Now if I could just motivate myself to try it… Maybe I need to set a deadline.