Productivity Without Time Blocking - Reverse Interview with Clemens Adolphs
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Introduction and Context
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Jonathan Stark: Hello and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I am joined by, well, sort of like a co-host, today's co-host Clemens Adolphs. Welcome, Clemens, to the show.
Clemens Adolphs: Hi, great to be here, thanks.
Jonathan Stark: So folks might have heard some of the reverse interviews I've done with Pranav Kale in the past, and Clemens reached out in Slack because he's been reviewing the book proposal or a book brief that I'm working on that's around a productivity type of subject. He thought it might be helpful to jump on, ask some questions about that to help me flesh out the ideas. Even though I've been following this system for 20 years, I don't talk about it that much, and it's really hard to articulate some of the reasons why it works, the sort of philosophy and psychology that underpins it, that makes it work for me. So today Clemens is going to ask me, he's going to grill me on what the whole thing is, how it works, but I don't really know what to expect. So I'm looking forward to handing the reins over. So Clemens, let's start by telling folks a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then you can start asking questions.
Clemens' Background and Interest in Productivity
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Clemens Adolphs: Perfect, thanks. Yeah, so I'm Clemens Adolphs, a co-founder of AICE Labs, where I'm a consultant on all things AI software development. But for the purpose of this call, I'm a productivity nerd a bit. I got into getting things done in the late aughts, then went down a deep Cal Newport rabbit hole because that mirrored my own academic trajectory, so deep work, these sorts of things, that's really relevant in that context. And then, for this purpose, it started with Jonathan having a few email newsletter posts about time blocking and why it doesn't work. I think the working title of the book brief is, uh, Time Blocking is a Joke. And, you know, that was a bit like shots fired for me. So we went back and forth a bit over email. But then, yeah, Jonathan invited me to also take a look at the book brief where he lays out the productivity system in a bit more detail. So then there I added some comments, had some questions, but then at the beginning of September, so almost two months ago, I thought, like, well, why not just try that system for myself, see how it works, where the friction is, if there's anything unclear. And, you know, so far my experience has been actually quite great. It's a very raw system. You get immediate feedback on anything. There's no hiding behind endless Trello boards separated by role. There's no wasted effort on endless planning and other pseudo activities that don't actually move you forward. So that's very nice. I was a bit like Yoda telling you to do or do not. There's no planning and shuffling around. But then, yeah, there's still some questions where, you know, maybe tactically, how do you do things in an effective way that are open?
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Overview of Jonathan's Productivity System
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Clemens Adolphs: Um, and maybe at the, you know, once we get past all the tactical things, we can revisit the whole time blocking angle and see, um, how that works. Um, yeah, so maybe one thing we can do is I can check my understanding of the core loop very briefly, and then you can tell me if I got it right. So that core loop of your productivity system is, let's say it's the middle of the day and you finished something like this podcast recording, so you come up for air. First thing is you check your lock screen for any emergencies, and so you don't even unlock the phone and open email, you don't open Slack, you just see if there's something, I guess a text from school that your kid needs to be picked up, that kind of thing.
Jonathan Stark: Exactly, yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Good. And so that's out of the way, then the next one is you check when your next appointment is on your calendar, and an appointment is always a time-based commitment that involves other people. It's not like you put on there that you wanted to do something, like work on something. It's always, you know, this podcast recording was on your calendar, so if you meet a trainer at the gym, that will be on your calendar, those things, coaching calls, all these things. And that gives you a sense of how much time you have left to do something else, and that is where you look at the today list of all the tasks that you have in your system and are specifically labeled as, you know, today. And there you pick whatever fits in the time available and you feel like doing in the moment.
Jonathan Stark: That is it.
Managing Inputs and Notifications
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Clemens Adolphs: Is that? Okay, perfect. Um, good. And so then, uh, I guess right away the first, you know, couple of questions are, um, you know, how do you, uh, for the input that make it to your lock screen, how do you, how do you keep that to a sane level, kind of technically, what do you do?
Jonathan Stark: Cool. Uh, you're starting with a softball. That one's easy.
Clemens Adolphs: Exactly.
Jonathan Stark: So there are certain people, uh, in my life who, uh, have the right to interrupt me, and I trust them to not interrupt me if it's not an emergency. So that's immediate family, not extended family, immediate family. In my case, other people might, you know, have an ailing mother or something, but whoever it is, whoever it is that you trust to not interrupt you with something that's not an emergency, um, and I just leave my phone in do not disturb 24/7, and you can add exceptions to the do not disturb for those people, and yeah, and that's it. So a couple of other things will show up on my lock screen. Certain Slack rooms will show up on my lock screen, but they're not emergencies. I check the screen, I'm like, okay, no emergencies, and it just, I'll see those later automatically from the loop, so I don't have to worry about them. It's just sort of an update. Uh, the only noise my phone makes is when one of those emergency people texts me, and it's specifically texting me. There's no other channel. And, uh, that's the only noise my phone makes. The other noise my phone makes is when a calendar appointment is coming up, and I have it make a very, very specific, unique noise so that I know it's an appointment, because that's really important. And, uh, the only other noise my phone makes is when someone makes a purchase on my website, it makes a cash register noise.
Clemens Adolphs: Nice. Okay.
Jonathan Stark: But that doesn't—that doesn't bleed through the—that doesn't bleed through the do not disturb.
Clemens Adolphs: Oh, got it. Good. Yeah, so—so in that sense, like, con—just controlling these inputs is—is quite important, and—and maybe that alone will already give peace of mind to a lot of people.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Deciding What Goes on the Task List
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Clemens Adolphs: That, yeah, I mean, I do that too, that nothing makes a sound on my phone. Perfect. Um, yeah, and then I guess then, uh, after that, so appointments, obviously they come from having made a commitment with another person. Um, the tasks kind of generally, you know, what is the top of your productivity funnel out of all the universe of things that you could be doing? How do the things actually make it into—how do you decide that step?
Jonathan Stark: Into the calendar?
Clemens Adolphs: No, into the—so the calendar is clear. It's like someone books an appointment or you make an appointment.
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.
Clemens Adolphs: Task list, well, there's an infinite number of things you could be doing, um,
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Clemens Adolphs: so that's kind of why I call it
Jonathan Stark: What do I put on the list?
Clemens Adolphs: funnel. Um, exactly what's even on there. Maybe that's outside of the systemic—it's like
Jonathan Stark: No, I think it's important.
Clemens Adolphs: philosophy, but
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: yeah, it is important.
Jonathan Stark: So, first I'm going to answer at a really high level and say that there are things that I do or need to do that I don't put on the list because I know I'm going to do them. So, something like walking the dogs in the morning. I don't need a reminder because the dogs are going to remind me. Things like that. So, you know, I don't need a reminder to, like, go to the bathroom. You know when you need, like, so stuff.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: So I'm not the type of person who, like, puts all of the things onto my list that I need to do or know I need to do just because I get the enjoyment of scratching them off.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Importance of Recurring Reminders
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Jonathan Stark: It's more like, to me, I almost hesitate to call them to-dos. I kind of don't want to call them to-dos in the book. They're reminders. So these are things that I would forget to do if I didn't have a reminder, or I'm pretty sure I would forget to do if I didn't have a reminder. So I think that's actually a huge, super huge important distinction, is that these are things that I do want to be reminded of. So then that leads into more of the meat of your question, which is like, how do I decide what I want to be reminded of? And that's going to be super personal for everybody, but for me, there's sort of two classes, two really important classes of things, and to me the much more important one is the recurring reminders. So let's talk about those first because they're probably not even the ones most people are thinking of. And by the way, I'm heavily influenced by, I agree with tons of stuff Cal Newport says, heavily influenced by GTD, but this next thing I'm going to say is something that I first saw written down in Atomic Habits, which is that I am motivated by streaks. I don't like to break a streak.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: And a lot of times when I do break a streak, it's over. Like, I don't pick it back up. So in Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about professionals, a professional baseball player, something like that. You know, there's something they're supposed to do every day, batting practice or something, or hit the weight. And yeah, they miss a day, but a professional doesn't miss two days in a row.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: And a lot of times, so it depends on the to-do, but a lot of times when I miss a day, that streak dies. Not every time. Sometimes I'm like the professional baseball player where I get back on the horse the next day, and the urgency to not break the streak is very high. I'll talk about specifics in a second, but I just wanted to bring up the mechanic of the power of not wanting to break the streak is very high for me. I don't know how true that is for everyone. Versus the mechanic of putting an appointment with myself in the calendar to say, you know, do podcast outreach, and then that day rolls around and 10 o'clock rolls around, and I said I was going to do podcast outreach in my calendar at that moment, and I'm like, ah, I don't feel like that right now, and then the day goes by, and that to-do that was in my calendar has disappeared, but that's a side topic. So the streaks are very important to me. Let me summarize that by saying time blocking just doesn't work for me, and I know it doesn't work for a lot of people because the day just goes sideways all the time, every day. Maybe it's because I have kids at home, maybe it's because I have pets,
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: maybe it's because I work from home. Whatever it is, time blocking doesn't work for me at all, and we could argue about exactly what time blocking is, but-
Clemens Adolphs: We can get there, but not for now, yeah. No, but yeah, you did say that for you, the recurring ones are the more important ones than the kind of one-offs.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so let me give you some examples. So my daily mailing list, I've been writing a newsletter every day since 2016, something like 3,350 emails.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Air quotes in a row, and even though I do that every day and I look forward to it, it can fall between the cracks because I can't remember if I did it yet today. Like, I know I have to do it every day, but sometimes I can't remember if I did it yet. And rather than go to my website and see if it's up there, check my email and see if there's one, it's easier for me to just look at my to-do list and like, is it scratched off or not? It's important for- I would forget to do it some days if I didn't have a reminder. I want to hold the exceptions and the really weird stuff till later, but if you can make a note to loop back on exceptions to reminders and the streaks and all that. Other ones are like, if I'm answering the question, what earns a spot on the reminders list, it's usually a pretty short task, probably take me less than 15 minutes, sometimes less than 5 minutes, but it's the kind of thing that if I don't do it every day, a bad thing is going to happen. So the things that I have on there are, it's a mix of, I draw no distinction between life and work. It's a mix of life and work or home and work. So like 100 push-ups is on there as a daily to-do. If I stop doing that.
Clemens Adolphs: In a row?
Jonathan Stark: What's that?
Clemens Adolphs: Do you, do you, do you do 100 in a row?
Jonathan Stark: On a good day, but usually it's more like 50, 30, 20.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Uh, but yeah, every day.
Clemens Adolphs: So then you do a few, and then once you have, like, done the full set, then you take- take it off?
Jonathan Stark: I do it in one sitting. I mean, uh, it-
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, I do 50 and then rest for a second, and then 30,
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: and then rest, and then 20. Usually it's that. When I'm feeling really good, I can do 100, but that doesn't happen very often. Same with sit-ups, same with stretching, same with practicing my martial arts forms and defenses. If I don't practice those every day, they get rusty very quickly. And why do I care? Because, like, why did those things earn a spot on the list? Because they're not the kind of thing you can cram for. You can't do 10,000 push-ups, you know,
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: once every 3 months. Doesn't have the effect. It's like flossing your teeth 300 times before you go to the dentist. It doesn't work. There's only one way to do these. They have to be these sort of daily or week-daily kinds of activities, or you are gonna lose it. You're gonna whatever the strength that you're you don't want to lose or, um, the skills that you don't want to lose. But the beauty of doing them daily is it takes it doesn't take me 5 minutes to do the sit-ups and push-ups. It's like over. You know, I could I could lose that time scrolling YouTube or something.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: And I would, I would, and that, because YouTube is much more seductive than push-ups. So if I don't have a reminder, I can get sucked into doing stuff that is basically eating candy for my mind or body and forget about these things that can only be done a little bit every day versus, you know, some Herculean occasional effort. So those are the, so I've got a- I've probably got, I mean, I could look, but it's about 10, 10 or 12 daily to-dos. Um, so I gave you an example of some personal ones and some business ones. Uh, I don't have that many business ones. So Slack rooms, like, there are certain Slack rooms that are paid Slack rooms, and even though they- since I have my notifications turned off for most things, um, which I prefer it that way, but I do like to have a reminder to, like, make sure that, you know, on a really busy day, I checked Ditcherville or I checked expensive problem or something like that, where, like, go through, check the activity tab, uh, is there anything on fire? Is there- there's never anything on fire, there's no emergencies in there, but, um, I don't want to, you know, leave it for 3 days and have not even logged into the Slack room.
Clemens Adolphs: And in general, do you have a recurring task that says, um, you know, check your email boxes, or does that just
Jonathan Stark: No, I don't need to be reminded of that one.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: It's it-
Clemens Adolphs: Exactly.
Jonathan Stark: But that's an important point is like you just observe your behavior, and you're like,
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: if you want to be fit or you want to get your black belt or you want to keep this streak of daily email going, which is the complete core engine of my entire business. So if I don't have those things, if I forget to do those things, bad things will happen or things that I would really, really hate, and it takes a long time to undo that mistake. So they're really important, but they only take 5 minutes. So email is just not one. Email is like YouTube. It's like I gotta try not to check it.
Clemens Adolphs: Exactly. Um, no, no, it sounds like a good way to deal with those kind of the quadrant 2 in the Eisenhower matrix of, you know, important, urgent, and so then the things that are important but not urgent, if you don't have these systems, then there's always something else you could be doing.
Jonathan Stark: That's a great way to put it, yes.
Capturing and Clarifying Tasks
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Clemens Adolphs: Right, and I guess, to bring that back to the original question of the productivity funnel, how do things end up on your list in the first place? It sounds like they're always in service to some area of responsibility. I think it's what David Allen would call an area of focus, these kinds of things where you want to maintain a certain standard or it's something you're responsible for. So then how do you work on that? It makes it very raw. If that area is important to you, here's the task that you have to do every day. That's maybe a good way to look at that. Okay, so next I have a bunch of questions about the capturing and clarification process. You talked about how important it is that it's very frictionless to capture a task, right? For you, it's a shortcut on the lock screen. I'm using Todoist, which has a global hotkey on the Mac, so whatever else I'm doing, if a thought pops into my head that I should do this or that, it's logged. But usually, that is a very ill-formed, vague thing because I just want to capture it very quickly. So let's say after this I decide, hey, I should start a podcast. I quickly fire off a task that says, start a podcast. That's a very bad task.
Jonathan Stark: Yes, yes, yes.
Clemens Adolphs: At what point do you then, if that happens to you that you add something, at what point do you then go and refine that, and what are your strategies for that refining?
Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. I think I have a real squirrel brain because if I don't capture it right away, I am going to forget it. I'll do exactly that, start a podcast, just to make sure it's saved, and something's going to remind me that I wanted to start a podcast. Next time I go through this while awake loop, maybe not the next time, but a next time I go through and I have no emergencies, no appointments, and I look at my list, and it's got maybe 20 things on it, 30 on a bad day, I'll say, oh, start podcast. At that moment, since I've got sort of free time, I will turn that into what seems like the very first task. I think it's a very David Allen thing. It's like, what's the next action? So start a podcast, I might think about it for a second, under a minute probably, and I'd say, what's the very first thing I could do? Like, what would I instruct myself to do? What's the first step? And it might be figure out what the first step of starting a podcast is. And then when I see that list, so if I come back to that list, and I probably check it 50 or 100 times a day because I come up for air that many times a day, I'll say, start a podcast. Every time I'll be like, yeah, it's too big of a, it's not a task, it's a project. So I'm like, all right, I don't care what the whole project is, and I'm not going to put research starting a podcast. I'm going to say find out what the first step is, and if I don't know what the first step is, and that applies to any largish projecty kind of thing, just like, I don't even know what the first step is. So I'd create a to-do to figure out what the first step is, not research starting a podcast. What is the first step?
Clemens Adolphs: And so why not research?
Jonathan Stark: It's too broad. You just end up for 2 years researching. What mic should I get?
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: You don't need to- that's not the first step is not picking a mic. Yeah. So it's like, what is the first step?
Clemens Adolphs: And research is, I guess, it's unbounded.
Jonathan Stark: That's the problem, right? But finding the first step's not unbounded. I just go to ChatGPT and be like, what's the first step of starting a podcast? Just the first step.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stark: And I say this, and I'd be like, yeah, that seems credible, and I can do that in under 15 minutes, so I'll put that in as the to-do.
Clemens Adolphs: Okay. I guess that applies to all sorts of, you know, think about tasks because that happens to me all the time because
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Clemens Adolphs: I look at the calendar and I'm like, oh, my mom's birthday is coming up, so I put think about a gift, and
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: I don't know, these are very vague, and on the work side, it's like, think about a productized service, think about positioning.
Jonathan Stark: That one's, that's a rough one. Yes, pontificate. Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Good. And so your strategy there is, in these examples, what is your strategy for making them more actionable?
Jonathan Stark: I mean, this might be just a trick that works on me, but I-
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: when I write them, it's like an action word, like do sit-ups, do 100 sit-ups. It doesn't just say sit-ups, and that's sort of an oversimplification. I mean, that's what I do. Sit-ups is kind of ridiculous to have to, like, obviously the verb is do, but I like to hit the list, and when I see the reminders, it's like me telling me what to do right now. Let me see if I have a good example. So the reminder for expensive problem, like I was talking about for work, I like to be reminded to check in just in case it doesn't happen organically. And it says check expensive problem. Doesn't just say expensive problem. Like, I don't have to- like, even that tiny bit of thinking, like, wait, why did I write expensive problem here?
Clemens Adolphs: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stark: I think that's the name of the Slack room. So it's like, check, just, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, check, check that. Or I'd drink water, floss teeth, that's a classic one that I would forget, practice defenses, prototype this new app thing, yeah, review those. So I guess the only one word on here is stretch. Take vitamins. They're all like these little, little, they're all very atomic, small activities. It's all very simple next steps. None of them, I mean, maybe the prototype one I'm going to break into much smaller steps, but that's a brand new one. I haven't broken it down yet. That one, like, literally, I put that on there yesterday, 2 days ago, and it needs to be broken down into just the next step. So,
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: but your question was
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, kind of open-ended thinking work. How do you handle that and break that down?
Jonathan Stark: What's an example?
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, I guess, I don't know if the idea is-
Jonathan Stark: Let's take the positioning one.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Draft 3 positioning statements.
Clemens Adolphs: Okay.
Jonathan Stark: Just try. They'll be terrible, and then once you have them, then be like, show these to Jonathan, show these to 3 people who are in my target market, you know, show- I wouldn't even say 3 people in my target market. I'd make 3 reminders or just 1 that says, "Show this to person."
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm. Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Put this into Ditcherville.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm. Cool. No, that's- yeah, and then I guess for similar questions so that no, it's like, you know, instead of think about birthday gift ideas for mom, it would be, you know, brainstorm 10 or maybe the next step is like talk to siblings or whatever it is, but it needs to be
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, whatever it is.
Clemens Adolphs: And you need to know when you're done.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, but sometimes in the capture phase, that's way too much work. So in the capture phase, just splash the thing in there, and the next time you work through and you've got a few minutes before an appointment, you can, I mean, I used to say Google, like, what is this, you know, but now it's like ask ChatGPT or Claude, like, what would be a good first step here? And it's going to hit you with probably 6, and you'd be like, oh, that one, I can do that.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm. Cool. And now with larger projects,
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Tracking Projects and Next Actions
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Clemens Adolphs: Um, no, so you're talking about only, so in the brief of the book, you say, yeah, you only track the next action and the rest of the project you track in some other system. Can you go a bit into detail where and how do you track those?
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, this is a good segue because, um, one of the things with Getting Things Done is, at least the copy I read, it made a big deal about, I think he called them contexts, and this is really smart, really smart back then because I don't want to be looking at a list of things that I can't do right now because I'm not at a phone. But now you're always at a phone. So, and the vast majority of things that, maybe that's overstating it, but many of the things people like us need to do every day are digital. So whenever I create one of these reminders, I want to have all the mat- like everything, I want my earlier self to have given my older self everything I need to like frictionlessly begin that activity. So if it was, let's say it was, review sales page for Clemens. In that to-do, I would want to have a link to a Google Doc. I want some kind of link that went right to the place. Sometimes I'll say like, a link right to a Slack message because maybe it's in the Teardowns channel in Ditcherville. I'll just copy the link to that, put it in the reminder because I can't do it right now, but I don't want to forget. So it's like, you know, do a teardown or review Clemens's positioning statement, and I'll click on it, it'll open right up in Slack, and I'm like right back where I was the last time I was there. And like the whole mental model is, I don't have to think creatively or use any energy on the context switching.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: Because it's like, boom, it puts me right back into the situation where I was when I said, oh, I need to be reminded of this exactly. So for a project, like, let's say, so a friend of mine,
Clemens Adolphs: Circuit migration.
Jonathan Stark: Yes, yeah, exactly. Ouch. So something like that, I would, um, a lot of times, the to-do would probably be, uh, the bad early big to-do would be like plan circle migration. And then when I get to that, I'd be like, okay, I need to figure out what the steps are here. A lot of times I'll just grab a piece of paper and a pen, and I'll brain dump what I think. I'll be like, okay, I need to deactivate the Slack accounts, and I need to make sure, but the timing has to be like this, and I just like puke out all of this stuff. It's all, it's all in my head. It's all right there, and I'll sort of puke it out onto the page, and then I might just take a picture of it and give it to my OpenClaw and say, "Create a Google Doc that organizes this," because it's really good at OCR, even with my handwriting. Or I'll type it in. In the olden days, I would, after I had the paper notes, I'd type it into just a plain text document, organize it into what I think might be a rough order of operations, and then I probably put it, but I really want it in a linkable place, so I wouldn't leave it in a text file on my desktop. It would probably go into Google- these days it would go into Google Drive. So in the to-do, it might say, I might even be lazy and say, do next step of circle migration and click through to the page and so like, okay, what's the next thing on the list and do it. I usually don't do that. I usually take the thing from the list and I put the next thing in my reminders. So if the next thing is, deactivate all of the non-paying Slack accounts, then I'd say, okay, that is the one. I pull it out of the project document or the outline or whatever, and I put that right in the reminders application, like my to-do list app, and then it has a link right there, and it's like, you know, you need to do this, not on any particular date, but it needs to get done, and I just have the link right there. I can click right through to- and the link I would put there is like right to the Slack admin. So I always want to have- I don't want to have to remember anything or like, what was I thinking, or where did I keep that, or, you know, was that in Claude, or was it in ChatGPT, or was it in Google Docs, or is it in my Dropbox? You know, I don't want to think any of that, like, wonder anything. I want to put myself right back into the kind of like rebuild the context that I was in when I created the reminder in the first place. So that's like, so I guess a sort of something I'm realizing right now is that I have a strong bias towards keeping projecty stuff or any of the context all digital, as much digital as possible. Not like it's okay if I capture notes on a piece of paper, because that's a really good way that switches my brain into a creative mode. It's much less distracted that way, but I cannot leave it on the piece of paper. It goes into a folder, you know, David Allen style, it goes into a thing, and I never look at it again because I can't link to it.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah. Now, so in a way, it then sounds that if you have a bigger project, you would have the next action in the to-do system, but also you would have a recurring reminder to make sure that something from that project is on your radar.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so-
Clemens Adolphs: And at that point, then it doesn't matter where exactly it was stored. Is it Google, is it whatever, Apple Notes?
Jonathan Stark: Basecamp, yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Basecamp, something.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so I'm pretty pragmatic about, you know, if I had a project with another person or a team and there was a project management system, I'm not going to recreate all of my to-dos in my to-do system. Uh, I'm going to, that's just too much work for me. I like no friction, easy is my favorite.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm, mm.
Jonathan Stark: But I will pull like the direct URL to the page where my responsibilities are listed, whether they're to-dos or whatever they are, or just like here's a bunch of stuff that needs to be done. And the reminder would be make sure you log into Basecamp or like log into Basecamp and here's the link and it goes straight to the page that has the next thing for me to do. And that works fine when- even on client- the client jobs, that works fine because if you're doing something every day on a client project, you're going to be moving the ball forward, and the client's going to be pretty happy. They're going to see this, like, activity, and, you know, this gets into the, you know, I don't- since I don't do timesheets or when I was doing these kind- that kind of work,
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: I always wanted the client to know that the ball was moving forward, and maybe there's no deadline, specific deadline. Everything was like as soon as you, sooner you, sooner the better.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: But there's no actual deadline, so I wouldn't, you know, there's no, there's no way I would put it in my calendar or even put dates on it. It's just like log into the Sticky Albums Basecamp or log into the Trello board for Sticky Albums and do the next ticket. Do the next ticket in Sticky Albums. That's a client I used to have. And so we'd click through, go right to Trello, and like, what's the next thing on my list? Just do it. And I'm not going to copy all the Trello tickets into my to-do list, which is probably, pro- I don't remember, I think David Allen is against that idea. I can't remember.
Clemens Adolphs: I don't know, but yeah, I think I feel the same about, yeah, whether it's issues on GitHub or tickets in Jira or
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, GitHub's another.
Clemens Adolphs: I guess, I don't know if you use a CRM, like, you know, CRMs, they can give you reminders of who you should follow up with, and so then they just have a recurring task that says, you know, check who you should follow up with in your CRM.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, check this dashboard, yeah.
Handling Errands and Contexts
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Clemens Adolphs: That's your thing, which, um, that makes sense. Um, great. No, I think, I think in terms of projects, clarification, uh, that handles that, and so then you don't keep like a master project list because it's just organically reflected. That's, it's, it's like a very nice thing with, with your system that in a way it's all emergent. What are your areas of focus? What are the things that you recurringly do? What are your projects? What are the things that have next actions in them? Mm-hmm. Um, you mentioned context and yeah, yeah, um, I think, yeah, the original idea from David Allen was like, yeah, you don't want to be remembered to make a phone call if you're not at a phone because that's annoying. Um, now we're always at a phone, always at a computer, except, uh, with errands. And that was like for me, even back with this David Allen system, this big, um, kind of sticky point, annoying point, because I don't randomly find myself in the context of doing errands. Exactly. Like, I, I don't know if I need to get, um, the battery on my watch replaced, I need to drive to the place.
Jonathan Stark: Plan. Yeah, you got to plan it.
Clemens Adolphs: Exactly. Um, and so
Jonathan Stark: It's not like you're commuting to work, and I'm gonna s- I got to remember to stop and pick up milk on the way home. And my to-do tracker is actually called Remember the Milk, and it's
Clemens Adolphs: Exactly.
Jonathan Stark: Right, that context doesn't exist for so many people anymore, where you're like
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: commuting and there's stuff you- you're- you are, you- you- you're
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: out for a different reason, and while you're out, you're- you want just efficiency-wise, you don't want to have to go back out for milk, you want to get it on the way home. But like you just said, I'm the same way. I don't do errands, so it's like I gotta s- like I would say like, "Oh, I gotta do these 3- oh, these 3 things are all things that I need to drive and go do, so maybe I'll do these 3 right now."
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, I was going to ask how it works in your system. You come up for air, you're like, there's like this much time, or do you pre-plan it a bit more deliberately, um, because you need to drive, like, maybe it depends on the errand.
Jonathan Stark: I'm not sure I understand the question.
Clemens Adolphs: Okay, so in in your system, uh, you come up for air, you have a certain amount of time to the next appointment.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Clemens Adolphs: There's a whole bunch of stuff you could do at a computer, or you could hop into your car
Jonathan Stark: Right.
Clemens Adolphs: and do this, this, and that.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, drop off- yeah, I've got
Clemens Adolphs: Um.
Jonathan Stark: to do right now, I have to drop off a whole bunch of clothes at the donation place.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, same.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah. So I just come up for air, no emergencies, no appointments. I've got 3 hours till the next appointment, plenty of time. Do I feel like getting in the car, getting some fresh air, going down there and dropping them off, maybe grab a Diet Coke on the way back or a Starbucks or something. Yeah, that- it's- it's totally like, do I feel like it?
Motivation and Task Selection
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Clemens Adolphs: Okay. And that is the perfect segue to the next question of, you know, I think that needs a lot of elaboration, but like, do you feel like doing them? Because, you know, some things on my list are chores that I don't ever feel like I have to, like, remove some old moldy caulking from my gift, like.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this question.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so the word feel—when I say I do whatever I feel like, the word feel is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Clemens Adolphs: Man.
Jonathan Stark: Because what you feel like doing is very complicated. You first, you know, I got a house, I got kids, I got pets, like I said before, so I have responsibilities, and that includes things like, you know, I got to take the air conditioners out of the kids' bedroom because it's starting to get cold, and I got to, you know, so, okay, so that need to do that. It's on me, nobody else can lift them, so it's not—unless I'm going to hire someone to go take the air conditioners out of the windows, which would be ridiculous. So do I feel like it? Well, I'd probably rather watch movies or something, but there is part of me that does feel like having it done for a variety of reasons. Wasting heat, the kids are freezing, you know, my wife wants it done. So these all contribute to me feeling like doing it. So it doesn't mean I'm like, I love it. If I loved it, I probably wouldn't even put it on my list.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: So feel's doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and it's complicated, um, it's complicated what makes you feel like doing it, but in other words, the motivations might not just be pure hedonism, you know, it's not hedonistic.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the, I think that's like a great Simpsons episode where everybody's, you know, he tells people he just does whatever he feels like, and then everybody else starts doing that, and mayhem ensues.
Jonathan Stark: I mean, I don't even like doing push-ups.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: But I feel like, you know, I want to be reminded of it. I don't enjoy push-ups. It'd be great if I didn't have to do that and still, you know, had the results of doing push-ups. Maybe they'll come up with a pill for that, but until that time, what I really want is the outcome, and when I balance the outcome between how easy it is to do this thing, because all the things are really pretty easy, or easy might not be the right word, simple. I think they're all simple.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: So they're all very small and very simple. And what's interesting, and maybe you were gonna ask this anyway, but sometimes I'll put things on the list and I keep snoozing them, and I'll be like, "Wow, I really don't want to do this." So then I have to ask myself, why did I put it on the list, especially a recurring one? It's less so with, you know, one-off
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: things like, you know, take the clothes to the donation place. But with recurring things, work on a book, that's a great one. Write 500 words today, you know, in the book. And it's like you're not doing it, snooze it, snooze it, snooze it, delete it, delete it, delete it, delete it. And it's like, do I really? I guess I don't want the outcome as much as I want to be in shape, and I do sit-ups every day, or I do push-ups every day. How come I'm not writing this book every day? Do I really want to be an author? Maybe not. Maybe I hate it too much. Or maybe I need to do something so that that increases the pain of not doing it in the moment, like having an accountability partner or a writing partner or someone who you, you know, you do even these like silent Zoom things where five people get together on a Zoom from
10:30 to
11:00, and they don't even talk, but their camera's on, mics are muted, and they're working on this thing that they know they—so if I saw that I kept on snoozing something, then I have to ask myself, do I really want to do this, or should I just delete it and be honest with myself about that I'm not prepared to do the uncomfortable piece to get the good result?
Clemens Adolphs: So there's this, um, I very much agree, it's like the revealed preference. Um, I think there was an interesting observation that I think Cal Newport made that, or that's why I heard it first, is that sometimes if you, especially with like an ambitious project like a book, if you're pushing it off too much, it's your subconscious telling you that you haven't really figured out yet how it's actually going to work, and that resistance keeps you from pushing it off. So maybe sometimes it's just you really don't want to do the thing, and in other situations it's you haven't done—you haven't broken down the project enough, or you haven't clarified the task enough, or you haven't convinced yourself yet that this task that you put down is actually going to get you to your goal, but yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, it could be all those things, but it's great because it just jams your nose in it every day.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: You're like, ah.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, there's no hiding it on some like, you know, nested goal, whatever, quarterly this.
Jonathan Stark: Quarterly goals or annual goals, yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Um, good. No, so that was on, on context and on those. Um, with, uh, so, so maybe one of about like how cluttered the daily list can sometimes get. Yeah. One is if there's a recurring task that really it only makes sense to do it in the evening, like, I don't know.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Tidy up the
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: house after the kids are
Jonathan Stark: Mine is start the dishwasher, and it does annoy me that it shows up before I can do it, but it's not horrible. So, but yes, that's exactly, it does bother me, and I think, I mean, there's no way I wouldn't, like, this whole book project would also come with an app. Like, I would definitely have an app that exactly models this system because you can make a lot of systems do it, but they're not optimized for the way I run it, and there are certain things that, like I can't reliably snooze some—like I could wake up in the morning, the simple solution would probably be to wake up in the morning and say like, I don't want to be looking at start dishwasher all day long when I can't do it yet, so maybe snoozing until 10 would be cool.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: But that the app, I don't—as far as I know, it doesn't support that, or certainly not a one-click operation, so I just deal with it. But there are some other features of the app that I use that may exist in other apps I should check, that I would really like to have that would make this, things like that okay. But
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: You can do things like, um, I always, I'm sort of anti-organization on the to-do list because I've found whenever I try to organize things, it's just a giant waste of time, and it doesn't help. I'm really just procrastinating.
Clemens Adolphs: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Stark: So these are the things, there's no color coding, nothing. It's like these are the things that I wanted to remind me of today, and we can talk about the radar date versus the due date, but okay, these are the things I want to be reminded of today. And they're alphabetized, honestly. There's no organization to it.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: And since there isn't any organization to it, there's no futzing around with anything. There's no color coding, nothing. It's just like, and the list is short enough that I can scan it quickly and be like, so now's a good time to do sit-ups,
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: or now's a good time to drop off the clothes or whatever. Um, now's a good time to check expensive problem. And it's like it all fits on one screen, you barely have to scroll to see them all, and
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: you're not like going through 100 things. But it would be kind of cool if, eh, you know, there was like today after 5 list, but
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: it's to me it's too much organization to do it.
Clemens Adolphs: Uh, cool. Uh, yet speaking of snoozing and rescheduling, um, when you snooze a task, um, just because it's like, yeah, you had it on your radar, um, but you decide like, well, there's like other things going on more important right now, I just want to snooze it. How deliberate are you in picking the next radar date? Do you just like punt it forward and then whatever is—
Jonathan Stark: I punt it forward.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: So it depends a little bit on the thing. So like, if it's something that I need to do for a client and I know we're meeting on Wednesday and it's Monday, I'm only going to punt it to Tuesday. I don't want to punt it past any sort of implicit deadline, but if it's something that is a lot more open-ended, I'll probably punt it to, uh, a Thursday or a Friday, or a Saturday, it depends on the thing. I'll punt it to the next day that I know I don't have a lot of appointments.
Clemens Adolphs: Okay.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, that's the logic. I punt it to the next day that I don't have a lot of appointments. So if I've got a, you know, like this week, it's Wednesday right now, my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week were—I had a lot of appointments. So when Thursday rolls around, I'm sure a whole bunch of things are going to pop up, and I'll probably punt half of them to Friday because I only have one appointment on Friday.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah. And do you do that kind of at the beginning of the—like, yeah, like, let's say because you, like, punted everything over to Thursday because you know there you have some open air. Do you then in the morning see there's like, oh, this huge list because of that radar thing? And do you then, you know, make that selection what you punt forward, or do you just roll with that list until you get to the evening or like you don't feel like doing anymore?
Jonathan Stark: No, I know. Like yesterday I did a—I had a live workshop with multiple people and two phone calls. I was like, there's no way I'm getting anything on this list done that's not due today. So I purposely punt everything off that isn't due, that wasn't, you know, let's say, let's say it's Tuesday right now, and I'm like back to back with appointments. Then anything that's not due that day is getting punted.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: It's getting snoozed to the next day when I've got some daylight in my calendar, which I have a lot of day. It's very unusual for me to have a back-to-back day.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: Very, very unusual. The system would probably be hard for someone whose calendar was jam-packed with actual appointments with other people,
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: not fake appointments. It'd probably be very hard, but I don't think any system solves that problem. That problem is you're overbooked, so, you know.
Clemens Adolphs: Exactly.
Jonathan Stark: Um, yeah, so I would boot them all that didn't have a deadline, which if we loop back to recurring events a little bit.
Clemens Adolphs: Yes.
Jonathan Stark: If I have a daily recurring event, it has an implied deadline at midnight, you know, that every day.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: So the radar date is today and the due date is today for a daily, by definition. A weekly is, so I have weekly, monthly, and annual. I don't think I have quarterly recurring tasks, but I have, but a weekly one, they usually pop up on Monday, and I like till the next, I basically have until the next Monday to do it. So the implied deadline on a weekly is 7 days, the implied deadline on a monthly is roughly 30 days. Um, eh, that's not always true, but largely, where it becomes important is the dailies because you can't punt them.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: There are some minor exceptions to that that would probably be boring to go into, but or maybe the devil's in the details, but the daily ones are, you can't really punt them. The weeklies, monthlies, all of those can always be bumped like a couple of days, at least, for the recurring ones. And then the, you know, whatever the one-offs are, that can be a wild range of things, and they usually can be punted.
Review and Maintenance Practices
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Clemens Adolphs: That's good. Um, now, so that's kind of what I had on the snoozing and rescheduling. Um, maybe, okay, and habits recurring we talked a lot about. Uh, so then I have just a bit on like review maintenance, big picture, and then a little bit more in time blocking if we have time. Yeah. Um, I mean, so getting things done, David Allen is very clear that the weekly review is the most important thing that keeps the system working and together, and it's also the single most frequent failure mode.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: When people fall off GTD.
Jonathan Stark: Yes.
Clemens Adolphs: Um, so do you do any sort of like meta maintenance, or is it all just in the daily, daily work and the punting?
Jonathan Stark: I don't. That's certainly not built into the system, but the system would support it if you wanted to do that. And so if I was going to implement a GTD system using my system, whatever it ends up being called, uh, I would put a Sunday to-do for weekly review, and if I found myself skipping it every week, deleting it, or, um, you know, snoozing it, I'd be like, I've demonstrated by my behavior that I am not going to do this. So, so what will be the consequences of not doing it? And is there some other way that I can avoid those consequences without this thing that I'm obviously not going to do? So, you know, I have one, so for example, I've got a monthly one that says review the attic, which is my version of maybe someday.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: And review the attic and see if there's any- because sometimes there'd be stuff in the attic that I actually did because I did remember them, and so I can go through and delete, not delete them, but done them. Um, but, and it's also fun to, to review the attic because it, you laugh at yourself, the idiotic things that you thought you were going to do. It's like, no, that is such a dumb idea. I don't even care about that anymore. Uh, but I don't delete them because I like that feeling of knowing that, that not everything is actually a great idea. I have another one that says prune to-do lists, which is where I would go in, and I think that one's monthly. It's definitely not weekly. It must be monthly, where I'm reminded to go look at my recurring lists and see if there's anything that I've decided that I don't care about anymore, and I never do that one. I always just delete it. It is extraordinarily rare for me to actually do that to do. I should just remove it completely. I don't- I- it seemed like a good idea at the time. I probably have done it once.
Clemens Adolphs: I guess it takes care of itself, right? If
Jonathan Stark: That's the thing. Yeah, because if I keep getting a- a- a to-do that- that, I guess with the longer ones, the annual ones, but they- again, it fixes itself. It's redundant.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm. Great. And so then, like, similarly, so- so part of that weekly review for David Allen is that he has this incompletion trigger list, so you think about all your responsibilities. Is there anything in the house? Is there anything with my kids? Is there anything with my professional development? And so then, uh, the idea is that sometimes it triggers new projects or new to-dos. Um, is- is there anything- now, obviously, your system would support that, but just having that as a monthly reminder, you know, think about if there's anything new you want to do. Um, do you- do you personally do that in your system?
Jonathan Stark: The only, I don't have a problem coming up with things for myself to do or having fun new ideas, so I don't need to be reminded of it. Uh, I, that happens through conversation. I'll be talking with smart people on a, you know, I'm taking notes now on a piece of paper with things that you mentioned that triggered good ideas and all of that stuff. Uh, so I really have no problem coming up with new things to add to the list that fit into my, mmm, the world I'm trying to build or the person I'm trying to be, I suppose. Uh, but I do have one that's, um, that's like end of the year, you know, think, you know, what- what is my- gonna be my strategy for next year? Like, what's my- gonna be my big focus or push or- or anything like that? I do have that, and I kind of- it usually ha- it comes, I usually do it organically anyway, leading into the winter holidays because there's a fair amount of downtime because nobody's working, and it's the kind of thing that I naturally think about. Um, so the answer is basically no, not really.
Time Blocking Discussion
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Clemens Adolphs: Yeah. No, that's cool. Uh, great. So, uh, maybe just to wrap up then now, it's a bit of the time blocking discussion. Um, and like the curious thing for me was that out of all the professions that, you know, can or can't do time blocking, I feel like, you know, self-employed solo operator, that would be the perfect position to make it work because you don't have a boss that comes in and drops some project on your plate last minute.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Clemens Adolphs: And you're not an ER doctor who's
Jonathan Stark: Yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: hanging out in the ER and whatever comes in, that's what they're working on. So you have all this autonomy, so in principle, you know, what Cal Newport would say about your system would be like, well, why don't you, when you wake up in the morning and you look at your to-dos for the day and your appointments for the day, why don't you make a few decisions before starting the day? And, and like, so, so I think the selling point would be by doing some complicated Tetris with what you do when you might squeeze out more, um.
Jonathan Stark: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That, okay, so that, this raises a really interesting question. This is probably a good place to leave it. I, I, I don't have another thing, but maybe you do. Um.
Clemens Adolphs: I don't.
Jonathan Stark: I don't consider this a- this is not a productivity system in the traditional sense.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: I've kind of been wrestling with what to call it. It's kind of- I've- some people have told me this is an energy management system, or it's some kind of time management system. I don't really see it as- I- I- in a sense, it is a productivity system, but it is not for maximizing your productivity. It's for maximizing your enjoyment of your life. So it is not about efficiency, it's about an enjoyment, doing what you feel like doing all day long, every day. So, you know, again, feel is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, not a fair.
Jonathan Stark: But it is not about grinding or hustling or squeezing out 10% more productivity. It's not that at all. There's a great story, it reminds me of a story, and I want to say it just so I don't forget it, that Derek Sivers tells about when he would go on a bike ride. He used to go, um, you know, he- he started- he was timing himself, and he's always trying to beat his time, and he did this one bike ride where he was just- just pounding out the ride, just sweating and uncomfortable, thought he was going to puke, and he got to the end, and it was only like 45 seconds faster than his normal, relaxed, fun bike ride.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: And that, I want the relaxed fun bike ride, and I don't
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah.
Jonathan Stark: think, and I think the, uh, if that sounds unambitious or something, I think people, to anyone who hears that and thinks it sounds lazy or unambitious or, um, or whatever, I would say to that person that you're completely underestimating the power of the daily to-dos, completely, because you can do little things every day and they compound. This is a total atomic habits thing. Little things every day that compound over time that, that create massive amount of leverage and just make your life way better.
Clemens Adolphs: And the fascinating kind of tension is that Cal Newport's latest book is called Slow Productivity, and he would 100% agree with the point isn't to grind out and to hustle, uh, and that these, you know, slightly more well-paced efforts over time add up to a lot, as long as you then make sure that what you do is quality. Um, so in a way, that's maybe how to reconcile it, that, um, maybe you leave a little bit of productivity on the table where it's, you know, or if you had been more deliberate about what to do when, you could have squeezed in like a few more, but it's not going to move the big picture needle.
Jonathan Stark: You- I find myself squeezing- so here- here's the funny thing about that, not to keep talking, but, um, if I've got 15 minutes before a meeting, I'm squeezing something in.
Clemens Adolphs: Mhm.
Jonathan Stark: I might drop and do 100 push-ups. Like, I'm doing something. I- it's like, I'm not just gonna veg. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I definitely, I can't. I mean, like, I hate social media in the first place, but I can't go on social media during the day. I can't watch a movie during the day. I cannot listen to music during the day. So I don't do any of that stuff. Like, I don't, and maybe this is, maybe this is, I don't know if this is meaningful in terms of what kind of person this would be helpful for, but I'm squeezing stuff in constantly because I feel like doing it. I've got 15 minutes I can do, like, I can write my day email in 5. I know exact- I just got off a call. I know exactly what I want to write about based on the call. I've got 15 minutes. This is going to take me 3. And so the productivity comes from creating systems and automation and maybe even delegation if you have employees or you have a VA or something. So you can get a massive amount of stuff done very quickly if you're doing these recurring things because you'll create systems around them to make them, uh, frictionless for you so that you only have to do the one hard piece or the one piece that takes your real attention and all of the other junk, all the other administrative stuff and moving files around and all that stuff, it's worth automating because you need to- you're doing this thing every day or every week. So you get super productive. It's just not the goal. It's not like productivity for its own sake.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, so, so in that sense, the, uh, because you brought up this analogy in the reverse interview with Pranav, uh, no, Pranav.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, Pranav.
Clemens Adolphs: Um, is the rocks, pebbles, sand. Well, you need to put the rocks first, um, so that everything fits in the glass. Uh,
Jonathan Stark: He, he might have said that. He might have said that because I would say turn everything into sand.
Clemens Adolphs: Ah, okay. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a good way to put it because, yeah, time blocking would say, no, you don't time log, you know, by placing your rocks first, right? Everything goes to hell because you just fill it with that many.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, it's like if you, I understand that, but I just don't,
Clemens Adolphs: Mm.
Jonathan Stark: it just doesn't work for me. Like, maybe time blocking works for everyone else except for me, but I've talked to, because of this project, I've talked to dozens of people who are like, yeah, I quit after two weeks. I was just moving squares around in my calendar or on a piece of paper, and it, you know, they just all fall off the horse. And, you know, it's like the opposite of survivorship bias, I suppose, because I'm not talking to the people. The idea doesn't resonate with people for whom time blocking does work, but it seems like, it seems like the kind of thing that would work better. Time blocking would work better for me if I had a private office, not in my house, that, and, and it was, and I didn't have emergencies, basically. So, like, I, I was, everyone knew that you cannot talk to me between 9 and 5. Can you don't even know where I am? So, okay, time blocking would work for me then. Still might not even work for me, but yeah. I mean, maybe I- maybe I'm just totally ADD, but I- I just flow with my energy all day long into the things I want to do. If I keep leaving the rocks or the- the- the pebbles that would leave to- lead to the rocks, if I keep not doing them, then I got to start being honest with myself. Do I really want to do this? Am I up to it? Is this the right time? Is there some way that I can make myself feel more like doing it? Because no productivity system is going to make you do stuff you really don't want to do, or you're really not going to do.
Clemens Adolphs: Yeah, and in a way that loops back to, yeah, the top of the funnel. Um, likewise, if there's too much in your funnel,
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Clemens Adolphs: no system can like match. That was like the initial kind of promise why everybody was drawn so much to GTD and every, uh, kind of productivity influencer that came after is this promise that, oh, if you just, you know, follow my complicated system, the actual work will be easy. But it's like, like 100 push-ups are hard and they're gonna stay hard, and like writing a book is hard and it's gonna stay hard. Um, yeah. Great. Um, maybe that's, uh, then the last, uh, part to wrap it up is that, you know, you need to find the right system for the right people. And so who would you say is your system definitely for, and maybe who is your system definitely not for?
Who the System is For and Final Thoughts
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Jonathan Stark: Yeah. It's definitely not for someone who has no control over their calendar. It would not work, I don't think. Um, no, maybe it would, but it's not for that person. It really is for people like us who don't have a boss, but kind of need one. So, like, younger me is my boss, and these are the things that older me should remember to do. And so for people who, you know, like it's come up already, it's like you have no boss, you work from home, you have things that interrupt you, could be kids, could be dogs, could be spouse, could be clients. There are things, emergencies can happen. You need some flexibility to go through your day, and you find that white-knuckling the time-blocking thing just doesn't work for you. So, like, if you've got 3 hours blocked out for yourself and something important, not an emergency, but something happens or you just really don't feel like doing it, this is resilient. It's a more resilient way to do it. So if a rigid system hasn't worked for you before, you're not going to find one more resilient than this. It's very flexible. Maybe that's a bad thing for some people. Maybe it's too flexible, but I tried to keep it so incredibly simple that there's nothing that you could really, there's no excuse, there's no procrastination. Probably the most painful piece is the initial, you know, what does he call it, facing the dragon, when you do your first inventory of all the inboxes that you have all over planet Earth and beyond, and you throw it all into a list, and you're like, I have 250 to-dos, and some of them have had a birthday. A lot of them have had a birthday. So that first triage I've actually done with people in person, not in person, but live remotely, and we're just like, look, put all this stuff in the attic. Maybe you'll do it someday, maybe it's a great idea. You can put a review to do in there for 6 months from now, but you got to get that stuff, you got to be realistic, like you're not getting that stuff done, it's not happening. So that's the painful part, and then once you've got things down to a low roar in your today list, it feels like surfing. I haven't been able to find a good metaphor for it. It just feels like—it's like skiing. If you're a skier, it's like downhill skiing, just like carving around moguls and stuff. A skier would understand that. I'm not a water guy, but a lot of people understand the surfing metaphor. You're just going with it. So that's probably—I don't want to take up too much of your time.
Clemens Adolphs: No, I mean, I could nerd out like much, much longer, but, uh,
Jonathan Stark: Maybe we'll do a part two.
Clemens Adolphs: I give it a few more weeks, months, um, but I definitely agree that initially I just put everything on a single list and just give everything a radar date of today because I guess at some point I wanted to be reminded of it, so why not today? And then, even with the punting, I just, you know, so then you go to like, oh, now there's 60 tasks on my today list, so let's see, and then now there's 50. And you have to have that mindset switch that it's not something you have to do today, it's something you wanted to be reminded of.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, that's key, yeah.
Clemens Adolphs: Um, I think maybe the thing too with, you know, the solopreneur, self-employed is the consequence for not doing any of those things in any given day is not catastrophic. You're not gonna get fired.
Jonathan Stark: Mhm.
Clemens Adolphs: Um, it's not like your boss told you to have that report, and then you don't have it. Great. Well, this was fun.
Jonathan Stark: Yeah, totally. That flew by, like, seriously flew by. Cool. All right, so we can leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on and doing this. It's incredibly helpful for me to try and get the ideas out of my head and into words, and it's great, great questions, so I really appreciate it. Where could people go if they need a machine learning genius to help them with their big projects?
Clemens Adolphs: They should come to aicelabs.com, with AICE spelled A-I-C-E.
Jonathan Stark: Excellent.
Clemens Adolphs: Also sign up for the daily.
Jonathan Stark: Do it. Love those. All right, folks, that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time on Ditching Hourly. Bye.
