To clarify. Absolutely—experimentation and change is critical. Job 1 for the accomplished alpha geek.

But diabetics need to avoid sugar and drunks need to stay off the juice. And, if you’re hitting rock bottom from a real productivity standpoint, the last thing you need to do is to spend three days re-arranging lists. In other words—your “firstly” is seldom a foregone conclusion, in my experience.

I’m not against play and experimentation at all, but it’s important to distinguish when play is appropriate and when you need to just put your head down and finish your dang work. From where I’m sitting there are a lot of folks who are playing and fiddling with productivity pr0n to the nearly complete exclusion of any actual work. Then they get all frustrated because “the system” is broken, and, well, the music goes round and round. Put differently, a TODO list is only as useful as your capacity to do the items it contains.

As someone who’s frequently accused of feeding that fix for fractal noodlers, I think it’s only responsible for me to also point to resources that help folks reign in their unrestricted dicking-around.

Sort of like the the 1-800 Gambling number in tiny print on your lottery ticket. ;-)