"Productivity porn" is often proffered as a mix of humblebrag (a way to make other people jealous of your almighty "productivity") and denial (fiddling with your systems is a ready substitute for actually *doing* things). Many (most?) of the foremost self-appointed pitchmen for "lifehacking" are cringey charlatans peddling "courses" and other nonsense.

But if you keep digging, there's a solid foundation beneath all the rot.

7/

At its very best, this stuff is a way to figure out what you *really* want to do, and to organize your life so that the stuff you want to do is the stuff you're doing.

A lot of people get into this kind of thing thinking it'll let them do *everything*. No one can do everything. The best you can hope for is to make conscious decisions about which stuff you'll never get to, while leaving at least a little room for serendipity.

8/

Like I said, I want to do a *lot* of stuff. My organizing tactics are as much about deciding what I *won't* do as they are about deciding what I *will* do:

locusmag.com/feature/cory-doct…

Which brings me to another tool that everyone hates and I love: email. I live and die by email.

First, I filter all my incoming email: mail from people who are in my address book stays in my inbox; mail from people I've never heard from before goes into a mailbox called "People I don't know."

9/

Cory Doctorow: How to Do Everything (Lifehacking Considered Harmful)

I was there when “lifehacking” was born. It was the 11th of February, 2004, at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, held in a giant conference hotel in San Diego. I was on…

^{Locus Online}

When I reply to a message, Thunderbird adds the recipient to my address book, so the next time I hear from them, they'll stay in my main mailbox.

I also filter out anything containing the word "unsubscribe," sending it into a folder called "Unlikely" (but not if the message contains my name - which is how I can stay subscribed to mailing lists I don't have time to read and make sure to reply when someone mentions me).

11/

Second of all, I have a zillion Quicktext macros that I use to reply to frequently asked questions. I have one that spits out my mailing address; another that spits out my bio; and others for politely saying no to things I don't have time for, for information about how to pay one of my invoices, etc, etc.

11/

Third: I have a small folder of emails that I can't reply to right away (usually because I need some information from a third party), which I review every morning and answer anything that I can clear.

Finally, I save it all. I have *so much* saved email, which means that if you ask me about something from 20 years ago, there's a good chance I can find it - provided we organized it over email.

12/

All of which explains why I refuse - to the extent that I can - to do anything important over instant messaging, whether that's Signal or any of the other messaging tools that come with social media, workplace software, etc.

I understand why people like instant messaging: it does not overwhelm you with the burdens of the past. It is largely ahistorical, with archives that are hard to access and search. Its norms and register are less formal than email.

13/

And, of course, instant messaging is *far* superior to email in *some* contexts. If you're on vacation with friends, having a big group-chat where you can say, "I'm making dinner - is everyone OK with cheese?" is indispensable. Same goes for asking a friend for directions, announcing that you've arrived at someone's office, or confirming whether it's OK to substitute 2% for whole milk on a grocery run.

14/

But if you're like me - if you've figured out how to do as many of the things that matter to you as you can possibly squeeze in, then getting an IM mid-flow is like someone walking up to a juggler who's working on a live chainsaw, a bowling ball, and a machete and tossing him a watermelon while shouting, "Hey, catch this!"

15/

The problem is that if you are asking about something important, something that can't be instantaneously managed by the recipient, then they will have to drop everything they're doing and, at the very least, make a note to themselves to go back to your message later and deal with it. Instant messaging doesn't have an inbox with everything you've been sent. Of course, that's why people love it.

16/

But the fact that you can't see all the things other people are expecting you to answer doesn't mean that they aren't expecting it. It also doesn't mean that everything will be fine if you just ignore all those messages.

Instant messaging is a great tool for managing something that everyone is doing at the same time. It's also a nice way to keep an ambient social flow of updates from people in a rocking groupchat.

17/

But IM is fundamentally *unserious*. It is antithetical to the project of making a conscious decision about what you *won't* do, so that you do as many of the things that matter to you before you get to the end of the road.

18/

A massive email inbox is intimidating, but switching to IMs doesn't make all the demands in the email go away. It just puts them out of sight until they either expire or explode. Far better to decide what balls you're going to drop than to have them knocked out of your hand by a fast-moving watermelon.

19/

I'm coming to Colorado! Catch me in #Denver on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover:

eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow…

And in #ColoradoSprings from Jan 23-25, where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine:

firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/

Then I'll be in #Ottawa on Jan 28 at Perfect Books:

instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/

And in #Toronto with Tim Wu on Jan 30:

nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doct…

20/

Cory Doctorow Live at Tattered Cover Colfax

Join us for a great event with Cory Doctorow as we hear about his bestselling book: Enshittification.

^Eventbrite

Image:
Mark James (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

CC BY 2.5
creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

eof/

File:Email Silk.svg - Wikimedia Commons

^{commons.wikimedia.org}