AI is Driving a Productivity Revolution
AI advancements are streamlining workflows and boosting efficiency for knowledge workers. Amidst all this innovation, I'm betting on......Evernote. (?!)
Source: ChatGPT
Regular readers will know I’m bullish on emerging AI technologies' capacity to improve our world. Self-driving cars, advanced drug research, and whether it is too much to ask AI to drive innovative climate solutions. All are possible if we are smart deployment. That said, my personal ambition for AI is more personal: getting my shit together.
I was introduced to the cult of productivity at an early age. At my first job, management bought everyone a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and paid for a staff training session. This would not be the last time an executive read a book and tried to convince the employees to convert. There are plenty of good ideas in GTD, some of which I still follow. But in general, it didn’t stick.
Over the years, I have tried dozens of systems and techniques. I discovered a tool called Workflowy, which is basically a text outliner. I have used it to create meeting agendas, outline presentations, and make grocery lists. Before I start any meeting, I use it to make the map. But it is basically a list maker.
I also use Google Calendar to block out time. There is nothing so wasteful as a day without blocking out time. Note that I say time blocks, not meetings. As I moved from a writer and editor to a full-time manager, I realized the value of creating those time blocks for myself. If you don’t block out your time, someone will come and take it from you. It could be your boss, or it could be an employee—it doesn't matter. None of them respect your time as much as you do. Your calendar is your first line of defense.
Even then, you have to ensure your time is aligned with your goals, that those goals are supported by projects, and that those projects are broken down into a prioritized set of tasks. This is where the system usually breaks down, and I resort to a page of paper filled with ToDos. That is fine, but I have too many plates to spin.
From the Archive: Asana Co-Founder Justin Rosenstein
My old company used Asana, which I find technically amazing and pretty much unusable. The developers tried to get the entire company to use Jira for, like, everything. Guess how that went? At Worth, we have a guy in the office who just discovered Trello and is repping with the evangelical zeal of a recent convert. I looked at Notion and saw the potential, but I know I will never create that learning curve. At the moment, I’m doubling down on an old dog that is doing its best to learn a few new tricks: Evernote.
Evernote is one of the OGs in the digital organization space. Started in 2000 by Stepan Pachikov, it was one of the first tools that promised to contain your digital life. I was sold early on. The killer app for me, and many Evernote users, is web clipping. Visit any web page, and you can save it to your notebook with a button. Recipes, research, and receipts are captured and stored in a searchable database for later review. Evernote is my funnel for the firehose of digital information that hits me every day.
Evernote has had its ups and downs but was recently acquired by Bending Spoons. Since then, the space for updates has increased dramatically. The interface has been overhauled and has a fairly robust task manager now. The company has also been working to incorporate more AI. The holy grail here would be to categorize content that is coming in automatically. I’m hoping to start using AI to align tasks and deadlines so I can start building my schedule using the tool. Motion owns this space right now, but there is a window there. At least until Google decides to roll it into its Calender.
Evernote won’t be the last organizational tool I use, but I’m leaning into it right now. Ultimately, I think the key message is to be open to adapting to new tools as they come online. Stay flexible. No one knows what work will look like in five years. But we know it won’t be the same.
My conversation with Evernote (then) CEO Chris O'Neill on the potential of machine learning and why Evernote is irreplaceable. (PCMag Fast Forward podcast, 2018)
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