Simplicity saves time and cognitive effort

Reading time: 1-2 min

I spent part of last year working on changing some of my workflows, systems and interfaces to raise the joy of productivity, to better align my wants/needs with my goals and tasks, and to become more productive in advancing towards long-term, important but not urgent goals, while keeping short-term, urgent but unimportant tasks at bay through constant digestion and completion.

I look back at that time and have to say to my past self:

It's okay to have a work-in-progress system and to switch whenever. There's no need to over-engineer it.

You don't have to design a perfect system to get started. You can modify it as you go, to suit your needs. You'll never get started with applying and using your system if you seek this perfectionist mindset.

Over-planning and over-engineering a system often introduces unnecessary complexity, and complicated systems introduce friction. Friction decreases the joy and increases the time wasted on using something. Keep it simple, convenient and straightforward instead.

For writing, that was the primary reason I started on and stuck to Standard Notes (SN). No other note-taking app or writing tool has been as reliable, convenient and friction-less as my writing system on SN.

Now-past self: Maybe I should seriously consider posting topics in reverse order. This again is another one of those pieces that could link to a past post for context. Except that past post hasn't been published yet at the time of writing this.