August 11, 2015

Productivity Woes

I am fascinated with personal productivity. I love making to-do lists and mapping out projects. I also love listening to how other people manage their productivity. I'm always looking for a strategy or workflow to make my own system better.

Four years ago I changed to a job where I had to juggle a lot of different projects at once. Trying to keep everything organized and moving forward, without anything slipping through the cracks, was a struggle. I set out on a quest to find some sort of system or app that would help me out. I've ready so many blog posts and articles. Every to-do list app for iOS & Windows that has been reviewed… I have read it[1]. I tried paper systems. I tried using Evernote. I tried iOS Reminders… and about 50 other iOS to-do apps[2]. I couldn't find anything that fit my needs exactly.

A little over a year ago I stumbled upon todoist. I can't remember where I head about it first, but Viticci's review is what convinced me to go from the free version to the paid tier. Todoist has been awesome. They have (recently improved) apps for iOS but also a great website that can be used in any browser. For the past year I used todoist to organize everything. If it needed to be done I had it on a list.

A few weeks ago I went in to the office on a Monday morning and pulled up todoist to start organizing my week. BLOCKED!! What?!?! My company had blocked my productivity app. This must be some sort of mistake.

I called our IT department and they instructed me on how to request to regain access. I sent a few emails and filled out a couple of forms and submitted my request. It was denied. They told me the todoist website was insecure and I should be using the built-in Lotus Notes had to-do functionality[3]. Ha!

Now I am a little bitter. I found something that allowed me to get more work done and it was inexplicably taken away. I had just renewed my premium (paid) todoist account. I still hope to use it, but in the first couple weeks since it has been blocked on my main computer I have found myself not bothering to pull out my phone to add something to a list. I am not bothering to go in and mark off my completed tasks until it occurs to me much later. Things are not looking good for todoist.

It looks like it is back to the drawing board. I am once again on the hunt for a perfect to-do system.

  1. I even read the famous Getting Things Done by David Allen.  ↩
  2. Wunderlist, Dash Plus, Carrot, Taskpaper, 2Do, Things, GoodTask, Clear, Gneo, Begin, Any.do… to name a few.  ↩
  3. I find it hilarious that the person even suggested using Lotus Notes.  ↩