how do you pick the best productivity applications it's a tricky thing today I'm going to show you
three Frameworks that might suit you in terms of choosing the ones that are right for you
as a foundation to your productivity tools now remember before we begin if you already have tools
that work for you or a workflow that suits you there's no need to update and choose a different
tool if it works for you keep with it today we're lucky to have Miro as our whiteboard partner would
keep productive we'll be using it to visualize everything in today's video if you like it you can
check them out in the link in description and if you don't know what it is Miro is a collaborative
whiteboard for teams you can check it out below so let's look at this we've got three core types
of working and we call them classic hybrid and all-in-one so let's start with classic classic
is something that originated from the 1990s book David Allen's book getting things done and what it
essentially did was kick start the productivity tool movement in helping people to choose Three
core apps a Notes app a tasks app and a calendar app and naturally that's been probably something
that's lasted about 15 years until more recently when people have expanded out the main reason
behind that is because software only tended to do one job very well in terms of having a great Notes
app having a great calendar app and having a great to-do list out and we're still seeing that today
and a lot of people still go off this methodology I do it myself I just pick sort of something that
tends to work with notes tasks and calendar but it's a good framework to have because if you're
getting started with productivity having those three core sort of Trinity of applications can
be a great way for you to start getting things done and having those separation between them
means that you won't have any cross-contamination between certain things and it gives a place for
things to live and it's a great starting point if you're new to productivity application that
there has been an evolution in this in the last couple years and this is definitely more for the
technophiles out there that are more interesting and productivity applications but that brings
in hybrid now hybrid is like having two tools what it does is it takes one tool and does it
well but it takes another tool and combines the the use so for example you might have a
calendar and a task app in one and what it will probably do is it'll probably do that 80 to 90
percent well not necessarily as good as having a dedicated application for that but it saves
you potentially some money and potentially some effort interacting with three applications you'll
be interacting with two so essentially hybrid is becoming much more popular we're seeing calendar
tasks calendar notes apps and notes tasks apps they're sort of weaving to EXP appearances into
one like a jewel application maybe I should call it dual application instead of hybrid application
and then having a additional application on the side this is becoming very common for example many
people are going that calendar and tasks groups and having a Notes app on the side and we'll do
a video that sort of Dives a bit more into how and whether this might be suitable for you so
make sure you subscribe in this video and then there's a final category the all-in-one now all
in one productivity applications have been talked about for many years A lot of people are actually
saying there's not one there's not one tool to rule them all but there actually has been a very
big leap in what people Define as all in one applications like Coda airtable and notion have
been primarily dominating the space as all-in-one productivity application and a lot of people are
happy with that because they do 80 or 70 to 80 of the job very well so some of my like might use
notion for calendar notes and tasks in one place and be pretty happy with it so we're starting
to see that become a lot more popular and that really is best for the person that is more into
these tools but is willing to sacrifice quality of the experience and a bit more customization
and a bit more sort of initial learning curve to actually building these sort of setups that
might be suitable for you so moving on to a few questions a lot of people tend to ask okay I like
um say the concept of the classic traditional setup of three tools I'm using another tool for
work and I want to be able to manage projects this is actually something that I personally
hadn't experience with when I moved from being a student to doing freelance or running or starting
a company it's difficult because you want to have that separation between the things I tried it for
a long time with it just a tar sap and I'd use the filtering system behind it and I found it
quite stressful because I was like I've got all my todoist tasks here I was like it's overwhelming
but actually having a separate application for your projects can be quite helpful so that might
be something you want to add on to your experience is a project application because it gives you that
separation between work and personal tasks but that's really a decision that's just for you in
terms of looking what is best for you another thing is foundations typically when people try
and find productivity applications they assume that everything is on the productivity app if
it's not the productivity app solving it it's definitely that software's fault and it might be
actually your fault it might be the way that you tend to best work that might be the issue so for
example if you're somebody that chooses task app calendar app in a Notes app and you're somebody
that is not so good on the old you're better on the old calendar than a hybrid system with tasks
and calendar might be better for you being able to visualize your time using time blocking techniques
might be better for you so it's actually working out how you work before you work out what you work
with is a probably the best solution it's a like a house build Good Foundations and then obviously
everything on top of it will work well once you've built that ground work and also looking at how
you've learned productivity can be really really helpful now obviously there's a few additional
questions of how do you find tools how do you find all of these applications well I think a
lot of it is primarily research and making sure you learn from your past experiences and you do
some research that matches the needs of your current and long-term situation the one thing
I recommend is to look at yourself in the next three to five years and say am I going to adapt or
change my system in the next three or five years am I expecting to retire am I expecting to have
a child am I expecting to go back to studying and being able to map the tool to fit hopefully that
scenario in the long term it means you'll stay with the product of the app longer and you'll grow
with the productivity app which is really really important once you've found one optimize it really
learn how other people have used it set and forget set things up and then hopefully it will run like
a dream in the background instead of necessarily tinkering every single week put that time into
optimizing it first and refining it versus necessarily spending too much time on the actual
productivity tool which can be detrimental in the long term finally do we all need productivity
tools this is a great question that I tend to get because we cover so many tools here on the channel
we don't we don't necessarily need productivity tools my friends my wife they don't use
productivity tools and they're probably a lot more efficient than I am a lot of people find that some
people don't need tools and some people need you know systems typically tend to work better than
necessarily tools and it's important to be able to understand that you know like we had pretty
famous people back in the past Benjamin Franklin used a journal and that was a productivity tool of
his time but he was able to get quite a lot done in that time period so obviously we're in a very
luxurious time where we can add these beautiful tools that they aren't necessarily the solution
to our productivity the way we think the way we build our groundwork is better than the tool we
layer on top just something that I've noticed from years of reviewing tools and applications some
of the best people don't use any of them a good example is I've worked with managing director of
a company in the past and watching him not use any tools I learned a lot about how it doesn't
really matter about the tool so much he was able to keep an eye on a lot of stuff without getting
too stressed and be able to sort of holistically plan without any of these tools in place and it
was impressive to see as well as keeping Carmen collected throughout the experience teaching me
a lot of lessons that how tools don't matter as much you know to every single day managing your
productivity but they also if you do find Value in them they can be hugely beneficial interesting
story at least I hope you found this video useful folks if you haven't yet checked out mirror it'll
be linked in the description there are whiteboard planner here on keep productive but I hope you
found some useful advice from how to choose the best productivity app if you're new here
hit subscribe and I'll talk to you all very soon it's been great trying see you later folks bye
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