Barbell — The Only Productivity System You Need To Thrive In An Unpredictable World

Imagine the perfect productivity system that can ever exist. This system would have the following nine characteristics:

• Effortless input, allowing you to enter new information directly before you even think about it twice
• Reliable retrieval, you receive the information when you need it. No need to do extra checking
• Invisible. The best systems are silently running, like your internet, water, heat, electricity, and phone.
• Zero overhead, no need to visit the system more than just retrieve information. Forget all you learned about weekly reviews, monthly checkups, yearly planning, etc.
• Easy to implement. allowing you to simply become the best version of yourself in less than one session.
• Laughable simplicity, mainly due to zero overhead and invisibility. The less you think about the system, the more it works.
• Antifragile, the more chaos and stress in your environment, the more powerful your system becomes. Thus, you can safely seek novel and risky experiences to gain luck while being reliable.
• Action-oriented, you can dedicate 100% attention to the activities in front of you while the system takes care of itself
• Finally, total presence. You are finally free to just be here and now, adjust to the present moment, and live in total happiness and freedom, wherever you are.

The barbell system, also called New 1-Glance or Lagrosen’s barbell (don’t use the last name), checks the criteria above.

It is so simple and easy to implement that you might laugh at it first. However, just as a real barbell is the most effective way to gain muscle (forget advanced machines…), the system allows you to forget its existence while your output and happiness break the atmosphere and beyond.

Your Two Extremes

To become antifragile, i e benefit from everything that happens, you want to pursue both extremes of the spectrum while avoiding the middle solution. I have written more about the concept and examples here.