[YDL2.0 EXCERPT] Don't Let Complexity Creep Destroy Your System

Complexity creep is the evil force that has one goal: to destroy your productivity system. Here's an excerpt from my upcoming book, Your Digitial Life 2.0.

Your Digitial Life is out Monday 11th December 2017. Find out more right here

 

"The biggest risk to your system is ‘complexity creep’. This book has outlined a way to build a basic system. A framework if you like for you to build on and customise to fit your way of working and thinking. With that responsibility, though, comes the need for constraint. With this responsibility, comes the serious risk you will start adding things to your system in the belief it will make it better. The chances are it will not. Anything that may make your system better needs to be focused on one single area; how fast will it allow me to add a task, an event or a note? It’s really about speed.

If you maintain a strict rule to keep a hard edge between your to-do list manager, your calendar and your note-taking application you are certainly on your way to developing a system that will work for you for many years to come. The mistake I see so many making is they begin to try and merge everything together. In my experience when you do that, when you try to use one app to maintain your whole system, you are inviting in complexity and you will start to compromise the integrity of your system.  It is possible to create your whole system around one app, Evernote for example, will do it but in doing this you will have to make compromises and build workarounds in order for it to work. This is completely unnecessary. It is far better to use the tools you have for the purpose they were built for. After all, a Ferrari will tow a horse trailer, but why would you do that when a Land Rover Discovery would do the job so much better?"