It’s About the Fundamentals not About the Tools
I was on a podcast binge recently, listening to all my podcasts dating back to November 2016 until recently.
I’ve noticed what I feel is a disturbing trend in the podcasts that I wanted to write a quick post on. There’s a huge push in the productivity and entrepreneur podcasts and blogs on apps and services. The main ones are Asana, Todoist and Sanebox.
I’ve no quibbles with the services or apps that are being pushed, this isn’t their fault, but I do have issues with the philosophy behind it and the way its being communicated.
I believe the various influential people in the email and task list interest spaces do this to make money, usually at the cost of being true to their passion. If you follow most of them back far enough in time you will see they flip flop between tools. Why? Because these things are highly individual and your preferences change over time, no one in these information sphere’s should be prescribing a tool to you.
They should be identifying the fundamentals of the process or philosophy and allowing you to choose a tool, service or physical product that works for you. It’s ok to show people how you can use various tool’s to fit your philosophy or process but not prescribing use of the tool at the sake of the core process and philosophy. Strangely, those that I speak to regularly who have always told me that it isn’t about the tool are now advertising go to multiple tools and services. It’s hypocrisy at its best.
What do I mean by this and do I have a good example? Well, through past posts you will know how I do not believe in this mass advertising push for people to use Sanebox. It doesn’t treat the root cause of the problem, its applying a bandaid to an issue at the expense of the user. Sanebox will mask your e-mail problems. Will it make your inbox more ‘Sane’ and help you be more efficient, sure. But it will cost you a hefty monthly fee to do so, for the rest of your life. I say the rest of your life, because as soon as you want to stop paying them your inbox will be back to the old chaos. In fact, maybe the chaos will be worse because due to your SaneBox use you have gone ‘sign up mad’ because Sanebox always used to take care of things for you.
At davidjmoore.com I believe if you come to my site you are coming to understand, learn and improve on your core productivity philosophy’s. This shouldn’t cost you money, unless you want to work with me directly or you identify a tool that fits your processes.
Focus on the fundamentals, the processes and not the tools or services.