✍️ Incoherent: On Pen & Paper for productivity

I have personally been obsessed with being able to do more “effectively,” but not so much that anything is not reasonably impactful.

This has led me to try out multiple experiments and ways to generate more time, some working well for a few months until they become hard to adhere to, while most fail quicker.

I have the opinion that nothing works all the time. The slightest of changes in your schedule, situation, or goals (and many more ways to say change) change the definition of a near-perfect plan. However, the only way I have tackled this constant change effectively was on paper using a pen.

Don’t get me wrong that pen and paper is the only way people should manage productivity and even project management — it would be crazy as it doesn’t scale. But for managing my own productivity, do I need exactly what scale means when hundreds of people need to collaborate?

The worst thing I can do to myself is to have nothing at all. Which means I am clueless about what it takes to be most effective on a given day — an anti-pattern (read the first line back again).

After experimenting with multiple ways to take it digital, the only thing that has digitally scaled for me is note-taking (writing this in a tool which I have on phone as well as laptop so I can always jot down details). However, when I am short on time, I take small notes on paper quickly so I can later expand them on a digital note-taker.

Any time at my desk I will have at least 4-5 notebooks I am actively using. There’s no hard-bound special purpose being followed but there’s a rough boundary:

1. Where I take short notes on a daily basis. Whatever strikes me as I go through the day, I simply put it here so I don’t need to let it occupy any 🧠space as I get back to it.
2. A full-fledged desk planner to plan the day
3. A separate list where I may be tracking some rituals (either personal or work-related) over a week or any undefined period
4. A list of eventual things to do within a month/quarter or just within when it is important to get it done (life, not work)
5. A work-related ongoing calibration notebook (track projects etc., high-level ongoing work fine-tuning)
6. A journal where I keep noting down interesting excerpts when reading something

. . . and maybe some more I cannot remember right now.

I cannot keep up with all that I write.

But did it help me? — it has been a constant catalyst in spotting every day what the most successful day looks like for more than the last 8 or 9 years now. If I have to draw parallels to anything at work — it is more like signals which are fuelling all the plans (however small or long).

But then why do I take notes digitally? — anything I need to track long term and need access to all the time requires a space where it is “highly available” and has “longevity“. Something that scales more than a pen and paper.

So what about pen and paper? — it is a constant. This first incoherent note started with some words on a paper with a pen as well (and now going digital as I would want to preserve it for longer). I am sure over time I will forget what I exactly wrote that led me to write this first note — it just lets me think less and do more (read the first line again if you again lost track).