A Few Remarks About Productivity Tools
Feb. 7th, 2023 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI have very, very mixed feelings about all productivity tools, mostly because productivity tools often enable a lot of non-productive customization activity that feels productive. But, you know, does not advance anything towards a goal.
That said, I _also_ feel like people who do not maintain a calendar of activities / commitments / etc. are not Real Adults. If you are reading this and thinking, But My Spouse / Parent / Adult Child / Minor Child / Sibling / Etc. does this for me, I’m pretty sure that at this point the conversation is about done. If you are reading this and thinking, but I don’t _need_ to maintain a calendar, then we are _definitely_ done. I probably do know you, and none of this is a surprise to me, altho my opinion of you may be an unpleasant confirmation of suspicions you have developed over the years. Or, you know, you may be cackling with glee, you Peter Pan like joyful creature, you.
So while I recognize the potential for rabbit hole behavior around productivity tools, I _also_ believe that anyone participating in Adulting of the Planning Something variety (with or without other people) will need to make use of some sort of productivity tool, albeit potentially of the napkin or lined paper spiral notebook variety.
I kinda like paper. I really liked my paper calendar. I got one for years that had really nice bit blocks for each day, so I could just scrawl shit on there and walk past it in the kitchen every morning and things mostly worked. I liked having a note on the counter for the grocery list. Sure, it bummed me out when I forgot the list at home, but I could readily visualize what it had said the last time I looked at it. No biggie. Unfortunately, I could not convince other members of my household to either update, use or even consult either document with any consistency. They (okay, one in particular) insisted they wanted it on google calendar or similar.
Fine.
So I’ve been running the shopping list in Alexa and the calendar in iOS calendar with a copy to google calendar and visible via Alexa for years now. It _mostly_ works. It took a long time, because it turns out that the If It Is On My Phone I’ll Use It thing was mostly a lie, and so they then finally had to build habits of consulting the calendar that they really could have done with paper but tried to gaslight me to avoid doing that. I fooled them, tho! They have to use the calendar and the shopping list. Go me.
Now, however, offspring #1 has taken to tracking me down whenever I add stuff to the calendar to critique what I did. Sometimes, it is to say, hey, I know you did this thing, why isn’t it on the calendar yet. Sometimes it is, it is missing an invite to someone, or missing certain information. Lately, it has been increasingly obscure criticisms that amount to, this multi day thing displays incorrectly on my phone. I’m like, it’s right on mine. I don’t know why it is wrong on yours. Those things _usually_ turn out to involve time zone settings, altho not always.
Today, tho, I thought, how the hell is he even noticing stuff so quickly? And I thought about what I’ve seen him do with his phone, and I realized, aha! He goes to the list view and scrolls rapidly looking for new items and then clicking through on them.
And I realized, hey, I could do that pre-emptively and maybe head some of this stuff off. So I methodically went through the next few months, added travel related plans, explicitly set timezones where that seemed relevant, “accepted” or deleted events proposed based on email, etc.
I’ll try to remember to report back on how this turned out.
That said, I _also_ feel like people who do not maintain a calendar of activities / commitments / etc. are not Real Adults. If you are reading this and thinking, But My Spouse / Parent / Adult Child / Minor Child / Sibling / Etc. does this for me, I’m pretty sure that at this point the conversation is about done. If you are reading this and thinking, but I don’t _need_ to maintain a calendar, then we are _definitely_ done. I probably do know you, and none of this is a surprise to me, altho my opinion of you may be an unpleasant confirmation of suspicions you have developed over the years. Or, you know, you may be cackling with glee, you Peter Pan like joyful creature, you.
So while I recognize the potential for rabbit hole behavior around productivity tools, I _also_ believe that anyone participating in Adulting of the Planning Something variety (with or without other people) will need to make use of some sort of productivity tool, albeit potentially of the napkin or lined paper spiral notebook variety.
I kinda like paper. I really liked my paper calendar. I got one for years that had really nice bit blocks for each day, so I could just scrawl shit on there and walk past it in the kitchen every morning and things mostly worked. I liked having a note on the counter for the grocery list. Sure, it bummed me out when I forgot the list at home, but I could readily visualize what it had said the last time I looked at it. No biggie. Unfortunately, I could not convince other members of my household to either update, use or even consult either document with any consistency. They (okay, one in particular) insisted they wanted it on google calendar or similar.
Fine.
So I’ve been running the shopping list in Alexa and the calendar in iOS calendar with a copy to google calendar and visible via Alexa for years now. It _mostly_ works. It took a long time, because it turns out that the If It Is On My Phone I’ll Use It thing was mostly a lie, and so they then finally had to build habits of consulting the calendar that they really could have done with paper but tried to gaslight me to avoid doing that. I fooled them, tho! They have to use the calendar and the shopping list. Go me.
Now, however, offspring #1 has taken to tracking me down whenever I add stuff to the calendar to critique what I did. Sometimes, it is to say, hey, I know you did this thing, why isn’t it on the calendar yet. Sometimes it is, it is missing an invite to someone, or missing certain information. Lately, it has been increasingly obscure criticisms that amount to, this multi day thing displays incorrectly on my phone. I’m like, it’s right on mine. I don’t know why it is wrong on yours. Those things _usually_ turn out to involve time zone settings, altho not always.
Today, tho, I thought, how the hell is he even noticing stuff so quickly? And I thought about what I’ve seen him do with his phone, and I realized, aha! He goes to the list view and scrolls rapidly looking for new items and then clicking through on them.
And I realized, hey, I could do that pre-emptively and maybe head some of this stuff off. So I methodically went through the next few months, added travel related plans, explicitly set timezones where that seemed relevant, “accepted” or deleted events proposed based on email, etc.
I’ll try to remember to report back on how this turned out.