People ask about my system as if it were a set of apps. It isn't. It's four refusals and one habit, and the apps are interchangeable.
The refusals
I don't start the day with a screen. Not because screens are bad, but because the first thing I read sets the temperature of the day, and I would rather choose it.
I don't accept a meeting without an outcome. "Catch up" is not an outcome. If I can't say what will be different afterwards, I ask for it in writing instead — which usually resolves it.
I don't do two kinds of work in the same hour. Teaching, building and writing use different parts of my head. Switching costs more than the switch saves.
I don't finish the day with the hardest thing undone. The hardest thing gets the first ninety minutes, before anyone else is awake and before the inbox has opinions.
The habit
Every Friday, twenty minutes, one question: what did I do this week that I would not do again?
That's it. Not a review of goals. Not a productivity ritual. One question, answered honestly, written down.
The answers accumulate into something more useful than any plan: a list of things I have already decided not to repeat. Most of my improvement has come from that list rather than from anything I added.
Why this is hard
Because it looks like you're doing less. Because the urgent thing is always more legible than the important thing. Because saying "no outcome, no meeting" makes you slightly less easy to work with, and being easy to work with is a genuine good that competes with the other goods.
I have not solved that. I just notice it now, which is most of the battle.
What I'd tell someone starting
Don't design a system. Subtract one thing this week and see what fills the space. If nothing fills it, subtract another. The system is what's left when you stop adding.
