Hello Anna,
My wife discovered your blog and shared it with me. We both really love reading your articles and get a lot out of them. I’m writing to you because I’ve found myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the potential methods and tools, unable to really make a good decision about how to proceed.
I’ll give you a little background. I stumbled across the Zettelkasten method years ago before it kind of blew up on the internet. While I found it was not really working for me, I did still like the tool I was using called Zettlr. I did end up writing many notes in there. But, I also had MS Word for many documents such as resumes, assignments, etc. Then, I made a switch from Zettlr to Obsidian, but recently thought that Obsidian has too much complexity for my needs.
Similarly for task management, I ran on ToDoist for a long time as well as the fun platform Habitica. I used ToDoist to manage GTD type work and Habitica for my habits. I was very good at capturing in my inbox with ToDoist, but looking back I also know that my GTD habits were not 100%.
Now, over the years, I’ve found that digital tools like my phone have increasingly become a distraction. My wife made a big move to analog methods and I followed suit. I use a Franklin Planner for daily, monthly, yearly planning, and follow their method of goal setting. I store my GTD projects list in the FP, but I also have a Traveler’s notebook that is used for next actions lists (work and personal). It’s easier to take with me while trying to get in the habit of always having it nearby. I also store a checklists notebook in there for things I do regularly (daily planning, travel prep, etc.).
For notebooks, I have one that I write in to capture reading notes instead of using Zettlr or Obsidian. It’s a fun spiral-bound book made out of an old science textbook.
I’ve found though that I need a place to store checklists for work (such as how to complete an RFP from start to finish) and thought that digital might be best. But, my MS Word subscription expired, so now I have another tool, Open Office. And I can’t decide - do I go back and use MS Word, Zettlr, Obsidian, Open Office… something else? I wasn’t sure if such things would work in a smaller checklist notebook like I have in my Traveler’s.
And then comes the overarching question of how I work… on the one hand, I felt I was much faster at getting things done with ToDoist because of the speed of digital and how Projects and Next Actions could be easily linked. And yet, I’ve done more planning and goal setting with the Franklin Planner than I ever did with just ToDoist. I do feel there is more friction with the paper that sometimes causes me to miss things, but I also love the way analog looks and feels. I don’t really want to abandon my analog methods but I’m always wondering about if I should be going back to digital or if everything just takes time to adjust.
Ultimately, I realized today that I’m paralyzing myself by being unable to decide on where to store things and in what format. I need to be able to move past this so that I can have the comfort of knowing I’m doing my best and not to continue second guessing methods and tools.
Do you have any advice for me to get out of this frozen state?
Sincerely,
Matthew Analysis-paralysis
Ooooh, this question is just in time for planner season…!Matthew, you sound like a highly organized person! And analysis paralysis is a problem that well-organized people who enjoy playing with systems often have.
There are SO many ways these days to manage our thoughts and plans. Being human, we can hold two contradictory truths simultaneously: one, the endless tweaking involved in the pursuit of optimization can be a form of procrastination. But / And two, we are dynamic, living beings; and our systems therefore must also be living, and responsive, as we change and grow through life. Organizational systems are much more like gardens than contracts.
And it sounds like your organizational garden, as it were, is in pretty good shape.
You’ve already got a way to think through and review your life goals and plans (the paper-based Franklin Planner).
You’ve got ways to manage work and personal tasks (the GTD system, and the way you use your (paper) Traveler’s notebook).
But now you want specifically to create checklists that help you complete requests for proposals (RFPs); and more generally, you are wondering about when analog is best, when digital is best, and feeling stuck due to too many choices.
Let’s climb out of this weedy patch by seeking a panoramic view.
We have one life, right? Limited time and energy to live that life. Ars larga, vita breva, and all that. (BTW I worked for a hospice for a couple of years.)
Our big picture goal, if I may be so bold, is to use more of your precious and limited life energy pursuing the interesting and perhaps terrifying (but surely worthy!) challenges in your Franklin Planner.
At some point, optimization becomes procrastination. I have no idea whether that is the case for you, but all too often it is the case for me.
If that is also the case for you, remind yourself that playing with systems is a popular human trick to avoid working on higher-stakes challenges that usually spook us.
So now, Matthew, I invite you to put on your RFP writing hat. Pretend you are your own client (stakeholder, partner – whatever language you prefer).
Your client Matthew needs an organizational system. Make some notes about the parameters for this project.
He needs a system that is functional, and good enough. “Define good enough, Anna!” Okay, I will: a “good enough” organizational system is the one where you are making real world progress, and investing real life energy and time, toward making real in this world, that which matters most to you. (Is your system working so that you are actually making real-life progress on: writing the book, building the business, planting the garden, spending time with people you love, working reasonable hours, getting ready to compete in the Galax fiddle contest, fill-your-life-aspirations-in-the-blank?)
Your client needs a system that is functional and good enough, but NOT perfect: we are obliged to create RFPs in this broken world because perfect is never an option, right?
If we could have what is perfect, we would have no need for RFPs. RFPs give scopes and timelines in this imperfect real world for what is good enough to get the job done, given real world constraints.
So, what’s the timeline for Matthew’s good-enough system?
How much time is reasonable for your client, Matthew, to settle on, and adjust to, changes in his organizational system? (I suspect you know your client pretty well… how long does it take for him to learn a new skill, or form a habit, or adjust to a new process or routine for himself?)
How will you know when something is just not working for your client? What are the red flags? When will you know that something just needs to be tweaked; when will you know that something must be outright abandoned?
What’s already working well enough for your client, and where does he need some additional structure?
From reading your letter, I would say that your Franklin Planner and Traveler’s notebook systems are working well. You said you have done more planning and goal setting with the (paper) Franklin Planner, than with the (digital) ToDoist. You also said the FP and the Traveler’s notebook work well to cover your projects and tasks (using David Allen’s GTD system), and that you have a checklist notebook for daily planning, and travel preparations.
It sounds to me like the RFP for your client Matthew might best be aimed toward settling on a system to manage workplace checklists.
….could it be? Could it be that we now have a SCOPE for this proposal? 😸
Some top-level principles: - Use what is fun for you to use. If it feels fun to use it, you will engage with it more. - Use what is convenient for you to use, given the context.
FWIW, most of my work checklists are digital (¡¡doesn’t matter which app!! ☠️ 🤯 It is the one that is good enough / functional enough / fun enough for me to use). I use digital checklists for stuff I am doing on my laptop anyway. If I wrote RFPs, I would probably create a digital checklist for RFPs, because it’s complicated and probably has all sorts of dependencies; and complex checklists can be more easily managed and revised with digital formats as opposed to paper. (But I do print out some of my digital checklists when I know I will be away from the laptop; so there’s that…)The friction with paper is that it is slow and laborious compared to digital. The friction with digital is that it is so fast it generates unbelievable clutter and cruft.
Digital is great for stuff that has limits; for containing information that has natural boundaries, that has a scope. Even if you create a very lo-o-ong checklist for completing an RFP, the process has a beginning, and an end. Same thing for digital calendars - they are limited. I personally keep my calendar online, and then copy out appointments in my paper planner when they are imminent, or will impact my longer-term planning. I do that for two reasons: the digital calendar is accessible on both my laptop and my phone, and I can schedule stuff like doctor’s appointments and vacations months – and often a year or two out – more easily than I could in a paper planner. But a calendar, like a checklist, has a scope, it has natural limits: calendars are for deadlines and appointments.
Paper is great for the unbounded stuff that your imagination and your intellect dream up. Like to-do lists! Or ideas for new blogs! (Guilty.) The friction with paper is partly what makes it so useful for thinking and planning. Digital tools make it too easy to capture trivia. We can waste a lot of precious time rearranging trivia on apps. Prioritizing… color-coding… sorting data… rehierarchizing the folder hierarchy… generating more tags than one can remember… trying to find the stupid settings toggle to opt out of the pop-up that nags me to add an emoji even though Gen Z and Gen Alpha mock all my Gen X emoji choices and it is extra work to scroll through what stupid emoji I’m supposed to use for stuff like: “updating checklists” ☠️ 🤯… categorizing endless things with tags and/or folders and headings and sub-headings… yeah. Been there, done that. If something is limited only by your imagination, paper gives you a natural constraint, a way to sort and sift your priorities to what is important enough, to take the trouble to write down on paper.
I personally abandoned digital for tracking my projects and tasks because I can think of infinity things I would like to create and get done! My imagination is THAT good and ambitious! Thank goodness for paper, which forces me to edit, thank goodness for the friction involved in recording and transferring thoughts and ideas. It keeps me semi-reality-based.
And speaking of things like scope, and limits, and endings and such, I hope this post has helped with the analysis paralysis. Do let me know what system turns out to be functional enough and good enough for your client!———–Copy and share – the link is here. Never miss a post from the Analog Office! Subscribe here to get blog posts via email.
Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.