Bullet journals, desktop calendars, online to-do lists … with so many productivity apps and hacks floating around, it's surely never been easier to reach peak productivity, right?
Wrong.
All those apps and life hacks promote organization and efficiency. And that's great! After all, living with chaos is stressful. When you're disorganized, important tasks and memos slip through the cracks, and you fall behind, which is enough to make anyone stressed.
But downloading a plethora of productivity boosters is not the answer. Apps like these are inputs – systems you use to receive and manage information. Excessive inputs are probably keeping you from achieving peak productivity. To actually boost productivity, you need to streamline your inputs.
Do you get emails to three different addresses? Divert them all to a single account. Do you get paper and online bank statements? Keep one and cancel the other. When you get a message on one social media platform, are you immediately notified through another platform? Mute those notifications. In fact, mute all your non-essential notifications!
Information overload can induce serious stress. Streamlining your inputs limits the channels through which information can reach you and makes coping with it much more manageable.