A friend attended the screenwriting program at the local technical college. After he had been going for a few months, he was invited by one of the senior students to a writers’ circle they held on the weekends. After going once, he never went back. I asked him why, and I thought his response rang especially true.

“We’re all there ‘cause we want to be writers, but we’re not writing. We just sit around and talk about writing.”

What you’re saying meshes with that very well. The most important part about Doing Stuff is the actual Doing. Sitting around talking about all the really neat ways we’re gonna do stuff, that’s just masturbation.

Well stated, Merlin.

I blog about my language learning, and I’ve learned to be careful that blogging about it, or about some new site, or some new thing, doesn’t replace actual language learning.

Just to clarify—I don’t have any problem with trying new things or talking about these sorts of issues (obviously). I don’t think that necessarily is a complete waste of time at all.

My observation—that I should probably have been more explicit about—is that I’m now seeing people trying, literally, every new app that they can find, spending hours moving their stuff around, then abandoning it as soon as they get bored or find a new bauble to grab their attention. It’s a complete time sink, but it feels useful because it’s nominally about “productivity.”

I suppose this is why I tend to think that the most fruitful conversation of this kind is not “Do this” or “Don’t do this” but “Here’s who this might work best for” and “Here’s the terrible habit this helps me route around.”

That’s where I end up learning the most, anyhow.

I call this “Baillargeoning”, named after a friend in college. We were fellow computer geeks and he received a project from someone in the computer center. He set off in earnest preparing his environment for maximum productivity. He spent nearly 3 months (!) creating scripts and accelerators so that anything he could conceivably want to do could be done in two keystrokes. Mind you he didn’t actually do anything tangible, but now he was ready to do something. It was my daily ritual to say something on the order of “so, ya gonna start on the project?”. His response was “I’m just about there”. I don’t recall whether he got the project done or if he actually started it, as I totally lost interest and even amusement in his productivity masturbation. Even back then (~20 years ago) I decided I would never hire him, if given the chance.

That’s a brilliant story, Dean. And it hits way too close to home. Oh, man is that ever me.

I recently made a list of all of the tools I was using presently, with the goal of not using anything else for at least the next three months. If it’s not on the list, I can’t touch it. In the future I hope to push this to six months or even a year without new tools.

This is mostly to prevent dicking around with tools that don’t do anything I can’t already do. I already use Ta-Da lists and OmniOutliner, so as cool as it sounds, Sproutliner just isn’t something I need. If people are still raving about it in three months, I’ll give it a shot.

Course this goes for buying Moleskins and making HipsterPDAs, too. I think people are as fasciniated with the ability to be functional and organized as they are with actually being productive. If it works use it. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Most people don’t need more tools, they need more things to make the tools worth while.

The whole appeal of this site is wallowing in the “Macs and Moleskines” approach to productivity. This isn’t a criticism. Embrace the pr0n — it’s the point.

Well put: “No tool can save you from your own crap behavior, so as you approach these great new apps … please try to do it with a bit of perspective about how or why the old tools were not working for you.”

2005 will be remembered as the year I went “electronic???. Ditched the Franklin Planner – found I was wasting too much time “synching??? my Microsoft Outlook calendar with my paper planner. Outlook “rules??? – and I don’t mean it’s great – it’s just what everyone in my company uses. If you miss a meeting and try to say it wasn’t in your paper calendar – tough – no one cares. Every day or two I would sit down and write all my electronic appointments into my Franklin. Occasionally I would forget, and do you know what? It didn’t matter. Since I sit at my PC all day, Outlook is front-and-center. I can get along without the Franklin with the exception of a few areas: Notebook – “Crutch???: Everyone carries “something??? around here. I need something to carry with me to meetings for jotting notes, etc. What’s wrong with a notebook? Lord knows I’ve tried many, (my idea of fun is browsing, but not buying, any stationery or office supply store. But I can’t seem to settle on a system because the notebook doesn’t have a … “Physical Tickle System???: If I needed to perform a certain task – like mailing a letter/bill on a certain date, I would just open Franklin, find the date and attach the item to that day’s page with a paperclip. Archiving, Indexing System: Franklin had a great indexing/archiving system. You could even by hard cover binders for the year. I have such binders for every year dating back to 1997. Sounds hokey, but I’ve been saved a few times by going back to the archives to find some information someone else forgot.

43Folders has opened my eyes to the GTD system. Perhaps it’s time to invest in some folders.