The best productivity app is the one you actually use

Who would've thought! 🙃

Credits: Superlist

In April last year, I went all-in on using calendar events to manage my personal time. Time-blocking, the practice of scheduling chunks of time to get things done, is often praised by productivity gurus on the internet. Some even suggest planning an ideal week — a list of events you want to achieve in a given week.

So what happens when you actually follow the advice? Something like this:

Chaos, thy name is calendar

The problem with scheduling your whole life on a calendar with recurring events comes down to the lack of three things —extrinsic motivation, willpower, and intention.

When I set out to create a system, my extrinsic motivation and willpower were probably at their peak. While extrinsic motivation¹ comes and goes in waves, willpower is a depleting resource. Although I had the right intention when I began, as days went by, the calendar event notifications started to feel like a chore and I eventually started ignoring them.

My wake-up call to reassess the system I had created for myself didn’t happen because I wasn’t following through with the schedule though (I wish!). I was conveniently ignoring the huge chunk of time-blocked events on my calendar. It happened when I double-booked myself for two paid events. :(

Since my calendar was a mess with random recurring events dictated by my past self, I couldn’t process important events.

Here’s what I’ve done since then:

1. Hid all the recurring events (this was easy since I had already created separate calendar feeds for each)

2. Integrated Superlist with my calendar. Superlist automatically blocks time on the calendar for tasks you schedule (Also stopped creating recurring tasks :3).
   Would totally recommend it.

This is how my calendar looks now:

Very demure, very mindful

What did we learn, Palmer?

1. Scheduling/time-blocking something gave me a false sense of accomplishing the task. Does that sound like a me problem? Probably. Does the new approach work better for me? Absolutely.

2. Having a task management system means nothing if you don’t do said task. There, I said it.

3. Superlist is heckin awesome.

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Until next time.

Hearts if you liked it, subs if you loved it!

Stay sane,
Subin

1. As a side note, developing intrinsic motivation is the key to building long-term habits and it’s not as easy as it sounds. Convincing oneself to develop intrinsic motivation is a superpower and I haven’t quite figured it out yet.