The Easiest Productivity System Possible

A story of how to improve GTD

If you want to be more productive, one of the most common solutions out there is to use a productivity system.

There is this promise that once you have the system and the tools just right, you are able to get a lot more done, be free from suffering and achieve whatever you want, while enjoying the process at the same time.

But is it really that simple or is it overhyped? And if it is the magic solution we are all looking for, how can everyone build one of these as fast and easy as possible?

That was the question I asked myself four years ago. Since then, I have obsessed over productivity systems every day, so much so that I wrote and self published a book about it. Now you will hear the story of productivity systems, how you can quickly build and evolve your unique one the easiest way possible and also have the strategies to stick with it long term.

The origin of the productivity system

The need for a productivity system started to arise after World War 2. Technology was booming and because of the tensions between West and East, producing more and better was highly desired.

It was also during the 1950s and onwards that knowledge work became a thing. A consultant named Peter Drucker noticed that there was more and more demand for intellectual abilities and deep thinking rather than only having people running around in a factory.

But while there were huge innovations on the conveyor belt, with methodologies such as Kanban and LEAN being popularized, Drucker went the opposite way. He wanted the knowledge worker to be autonomous and left alone since the mental processes were too complex to measure. Instead, Drucker wanted deadlines, goals and objectives to hold the knowledge workers accountable, rather than a system. It was like “here are these targets that you need to meet, but you have to figure out how on your own, we are not going to help you with that”.

Drucker had an enormous influence and popularity, so much so that this “management by objectives” as he calls it is still used today. In pretty much any job nowadays, we have these expectations, OKRs, KPIs whatever and it’s our…