Matt Ragland argues the best productivity system is one that fits your life, not a perfect tool. He points to his friend Tim, who uses scattered Notepad files successfully, and recommends the SELF Journal and Clear Habit Journal as alternatives to pre-formatted planners with unused sections.
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Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome back to another Bullet Journal productivity video. In this episode, I'm going to be trying out a new series I'm calling Five Minute Friday as a way to share some of my opinions and commentary on things that I'm seeing when it comes to productivity and focus and the way that you do your work. Some things that I see that I think can be dangerous or can be really enlightening when it comes to how we think about our work, the way that we focus on the things the people, the projects, and the purpose that matter the most to you. The thing that I want to talk with you about today is this idea of the perfect productivity system. Now, this is something that I see a lot, whether it's about bullet journals or apps or whatever it may be. A lot of people, they get caught up in trying to figure out what the perfect productivity system is for them. Now, I want to take just a quick moment and say There's a difference between trying to consistently progress towards like what could be an ideal system for you, progression through action, and then there is the kind of like more fearful thinking of like, how am I supposed to make progress on this if I don't have the perfect thing set up? And so you don't end up taking action at all. Don't let the latter, the non-action part, be you. The best productivity system that you are going to figure out is one that fits and works best for your life. I hope that throughout the videos that I've been making for you over the past year and a half, you're seeing an overriding theme that I want to help you figure out what that is for your own life. And so I see a lot in the comments or in videos, the emails that I received from you, like, how can I make your system fit my life? Or like, this doesn't seem to make sense. One that I saw recently was like, why would you spend all this time making a custom bullet journal when there are hundreds, if not thousands, of pre-formatted journals that you don't have to outline everything? Because it's a really good question and one that I've seen a ton of. And my response to that though is I like to create something that is very custom and specific for me. Whenever I get into most pre-formatted journals, there's always a bunch of stuff that I don't care about or I'm not going to use. That feels wasteful to me. And I also like, I just like to make what I want to make. That's just me. If you don't want to spend the time formatting everything, you just want to write down your day and some of your goals, there are tons of journals. Check out the SELF Journal, the Clear Habit Journal are two of my favorites when it comes to pre-formatted journals that help you plan your day and achieve your goals. Another example of this is my friend Tim the other day said on Twitter, he just shared a little bit of his productivity system that includes opening as many Notepad documents as he feels like as ideas come to him, and then he organizes them afterwards. And so his desktop is just kind of littered with these notepads, and people saw the screenshots, they're like, oh my gosh, how do you do that? That, you know, that makes no, that makes no sense. Tim, make sure you do this instead. This is a better way to do it. But Tim, this is clearly, and props to him, he clearly, this is the system that works best for him. So as you're going through, whether you're learning from my videos or like Amy Landino is amazing, Thomas Frank is another one that talks about productivity, especially productivity in the digital age, no matter who you're learning from, make sure that you are taking all the advice and making it work in a system that fits your life, the people that you care about, the purpose that you are going after in this world. Thanks so much for watching this. Like I said, this is going to be the beginning of a little series test I'm calling 5 Minute Fridays, just talking about bullet journals and productivity systems and just opinions and outlooks that I have on how you can focus your attention and productivity on the work that matters most to you in the world. So look for these on Fridays. I hope to keep it really steady and can't wait to hear, can't wait to hear your comments and feedback on it. So thanks so much for watching, and I will see you with a new bullet journal specific video coming up very soon. Thanks, bye!
