The best pair of productivity apps

Originally published on 23 July 2013.

Let me get this out of the way first. I am a corporate hack and had been this way for close to ten years now. I am not an entrepreneur. I am also not an engineer nor a designer. Most of my days are spent in meetings with individuals, groups of people, groups of sub-groups of people, people in conference rooms, people in conference calls, people in interview rooms, hallways and smoking areas (second-hand smoker right here). So whatever I say in this piece and every piece in this blog for that matter are in the context of a cubicle farm resident trying to earn his place in the enterprise world day-in and day-out.

I, however, believe that there are plenty of similarities between the dark side (aka corporate) and the lighter side of the force. The differences lie in the scale and grandiosity of application of the methodologies. Leadership, people and process management, etc. Even in day-to-day ticking off of actionable items.

That said, I still believe that I am of some authority to say and declare despite my corporate-y credentials that the following apps are THE best productivity apps ever: email and calendar.

I’ve tried ‘em all. Mobile (iOS), browser-based and desktop client (Mac) productivity apps. Paid and free. Popular and nondescript. Groundbreaking and mundane. At some point after a few days or weeks, I go back to my default apps: email and calendar.

I think it is because most apps and their systems or processes tend to force the user to change their behavior. But maybe they don’t want that. Maybe I don’t.

This is why email, however broken, stupid and ancient it is, still reigns supreme in professional communication. I’ve tried several tools of collaboration and my collaborators and myself over time would go back to email. Heck, these tools still require you to use email notifications.

So I sucked it in and swallowed my quest for existentialism in productivity and reverted back to email. From then on, I try new and shiny productivity apps or systems with an expectation that it won’t last. And that’s okay.

My email is my to-do list. The great thing is that it has the best collaborative feature in that other people can list a to-do for you: the inbox. All they have to do is send you an email. The inbox is the ultimate shared working space and everyone has it.

Sure it can be messy. All collaboration spaces can be messy and that’s relative to the size of the team or organization. When there’s just plenty of people sending action items to you, that’s where inbox zero habits would make a difference. And your calendar.

Before I talk about the calendar, let me just preach about Inbox Zero. Look it up on the internet. It will change your life. The first few days will be hard since you’d have to clear the clutter first. But once that’s done, emails are easy-peasy. Act, delete, delay — those are the only choices I make on each email/to-do.

Act: if I can respond to it right there and then or take action without waiting, I’d just go ahead and do it.

Delete: if I don’t need to do anything on it or for it and it doesn’t need to stay in my inbox. Actually, I’d archive instead of delete thanks to gigabytes of email storage.

Delay: if I need to work on it some other time. Front and center, the calendar.

I just put a twenty, thirty, fifty-minute, an hour or two hours calendar marker for that action item that needs to be delayed. The duration, frequency and lead time would be dependent on the volume, complexity, importance and urgency of the action item. If the action item is too big like a project, I break them down into small and easy “dumb” tasks and spread them all over my free times in my calendar.

Why does this work for me and for most of us? It is because we have not changed the way we divide our working, playing and sleeping moments. We look at them as hours in a day, days in a week and so on. Unless there will be a fundamental change in the way we schedule our lives, the email and calendar system will remain the best pair of productivity apps there is.

So keep it simple and don’t bother with what’s new and trending. Live, work and have fun with what we have.