Smart Thinking

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has become obsessed with productivity in recent years. To the point that I’ve read every productivity book going, and have turned over every last stone from every last dark and dusty corner of the internet — all in search of the ultimate productivity tips. I think the obsession arises because we feel we’re not alone — when thousands of people are contributing to productivity hacks and systems, we realise the problem is not just our own and occurs on a wider scale. Productivity guidance becomes a following, a source of comfort knowing that there are solutions to the problems that keep us awake at night — tasks overdue, workload piling up in an overwhelming bottleneck. Once the productivity hacks / books / articles are exhausted, we have an app store bulging at the seams with apps that promise the answer to our problems. Ironically (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) we find ourselves spending much valuable time on researching the productivity pr...

Clutter. Chaos, derangement, disorder, jumble, muddle — the synonyms say it all but lets stick with clutter. Yes clutter. Funny word. One of those where the more you see it, the more you question if it is a real word or not. You’ll see enough instances of the word in this brief article. Clutter has driven me to write this, in order to remove at least one piece of clutter from my mind - which is the annoyance that clutter imposes on my life these days. But what clutter in particular is causing my annoyance? All of it. And it manifests in so many ways. I’ll start with this screen and zoom out on my life. When I say this screen I mean….. Three Screens. Each with various tabs open. Actually I can technically zoom  in  on the clutter too as each screen is cluttered with tabs, which themselves are cluttered. I have five Google accounts, each with their own email, calendar, drive, photos. These are for a couple of companies, a side hustle or two and this writing side-line. Backing ou...