A Productivity Filled Day

Last night I decided today was going to be extremely productive. I wrote a thorough To Do List on my ubiquitous capture notepad. Upon arriving at work this morning I realized that I had forgotten my notepad at home. Although I remembered everything on my list, I decided to create a web-based To Do List in case this ever happened again and I wasn’t able to remember.

I found TaDaList.com through a Google search and signed up for a free account. I started making my list and found that I barely understood the functionality of this powerful productivity app. I remembered that LifeHacker had posted an overview and went to check it out.

The post was extremely informative. It even included a list of other web-based ToDo applications. I decided that if I was going to start a web-based To Do List it needed to be on the best platform. After all, this would be affecting my daily productivity.

Lifehacker only had reviews of 4 out of 6 web-based To Do List options so I popped over to Lifehack.org to see if they had posted about the others. Lifehack.org had some great info, and even suggested creating To Do Lists with Gmail or Jott which gave me a couple new options.

I was almost ready to make a decision when it occurred me that I’d also be using this application with my Mac. I headed over to 43folders to see if any of the web-based To Do List applications integrated with Quicksilver, my favorite Mac productivity booster.

I ended up reading an article about the Hipster PDA and began to wonder if a web-based To Do List was really the way to go. What if inspiration struck when I wasn’t near a computer?

The whole To Do List idea was getting a bit overwhelming so I went to Zen Habits to reread the Zen To Done post that simplifies the GTD (Getting Things Done) system. While I was there I found a list of 50 Great Productivity Blogs. Not wanting to miss any productivity insights, I decided to add every site on the list to my feed reader.

In the process I found some new implementations of GTD but realized I was still a bit fuzzy on the original concept. I decided to reread chapter 7 of Getting Things Done for clarification.

When I finished reading it was time to go to lunch. I felt extremely productive because I was now slightly closer to implementing the ultimate productivity system. Unfortunately, my actual productivity did not reflect this satisfaction. I had not completed a single task from my original To Do list. Is it possible that productivity obsession drastically reduces productivity?

See Also: Hyper Productivity (cartoon).