Productivity

Once upon a desk, there was always a notebook. In the older photos of my computer setups that I shared recently, charting the rise and fall of my monitor empire, you can usually spot a notebook or journal somewhere on the desk. Often it was a trusty Pukka Pad. Occasionally, when I was in my more self-consciously pretentious moods, it was a Moleskine or Leuchtturm 1917. Between 2017 and 2023 it tended to be a Self Journal, as I had been lured by their science-backed system. These were always nearby, always half-full of scribbled goals, tasks, reflections, and random facts and figures about my day. ...

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I firmly believed that my productivity was directly proportional to the number of screens on my desk. One screen? You’re a civilian. Two? Getting serious. Three? Welcome to the big leagues. Four? Now we’re talking. Five? You, sir, are a professional. Possibly even a Bond villain. For much of my adult life – from 1997 to 2022 — I was on a one-man mission to surround myself with glass rectangles. I wanted dashboards, terminals, Slack, Outlook, scrolling logs, live bond market charts, rolling 24-hour news, and maybe even some code all visible at once, like a NASA flight director minus the buzzcut and the cigarette. I told myself that it was efficient. That more screens meant more throughput. That toggling amounted to waste. ...