Limit tools and increase intentionality

The effect can trickle into your personal life

Every day we use dozens of tools and apps. We use multiple tools to create, consume, and track things. At one point, I was using roughly six project management tools at my previous day job. Some were internal, others were client-facing, and a few were for personal workflows. This also rings true with document creation and editing. We write internal documentation in a wiki, create public content in a collaborative writing tool, and write out legal documents in a traditional word processor. This constant context switching and barrage of shiny objects takes up valuable energy and destroys focus.

What's the real problem here? Are the tools the issue, the abundance of them, or the switching between them? We as people have shit focus. Recently, I read in an edition of Platformer, by Casey Newton, that "the average time spent on a single task was 75 seconds"1. If we cannot focus on one task, normally, how are we supposed to focus when our tasks and documents are spread across dozens of tools?

I have talked about context switching and how it destroys productivity in the past. The easiest way to counteract this is to limit the tools, if at all possible.

How can we limit tools, increase focus, and be more intentional?

Audit

Think about all the tools you use in a day/week/month. This means the apps, services, professional software, and devices. Make a list, broken up by those categories. Find the intersection. Maybe you have 2-5 task managers, 3 project managers, or use redundant design or video editing tools. Find this overlap. Determine which of these tools are needed and which don't provide any true value.

As a digital ops consultant, I do this for a living, but I do it personally too. Just try to be thorough.

Centralize

After you have determined what tools and services you want to keep, you need to create an SST(single source of truth). This is the place where your journey starts. This tool doesn't need to be the one tool that rules them all, but it needs to be aware of all the others.

The best way to handle this is to set up a project mechanism in this tool. In this project, you can have all the links to the other tools. If there is legal documentation, link to Google Drive or the Microsoft Office doc. If there is a design file, link to Figma or the Photoshop file. If project management, link to Monday.com or Jira. You get the idea. Limit the confusion of where to start.

In a perfect world, this SST can also handle some of the workload, so you don't have to go out to other tools. This will be bespoke to your needs and workflow, but for me this is Notion. My business is run out of Notion, but not all of my work is done there. 85% of the work is in Notion. The projects, tasks, documentation, and the majority of communications happen there. But there are things it cannot do. I cannot whiteboard in it, I cannot manipulate spreadsheets, I cannot collaborate with a legal team in it. But beyond those workflows, I can mostly centralize my work there.

For you, this could be Notion or ClickUp, Google Drive, Microsoft Office, etc. Pick the tool that does the most, well, for your needs.

Not the decision-maker

What if you are not the decision-maker for tools and services? What if you work for a large organization or have clients with strict requirements? You can still follow the steps above, but multiply them for the challenge at hand. Instead of auditing your own tools, audit the teams’. Ask them to fill out a survey or have a chat with them to gather the data. Make that same list, comparing all the like tools. Present this to your manager or client. Prove to them that the tool(s) are redundant or not efficient.

Most people are set in their ways and don't like change. If you can present the value before advocating for change, such as time or money, they will be more likely to take the choice seriously.

Context switching plus an abundance of tools can be disruptive, not only to our work, but to our lives. Constantly hunting for documentation or recalling a specific task takes a toll on our cognitive load. By limiting the amount of tools, you can be more intentional and have greater focus. You might even be able to shave a few hours off your work day, allowing you to focus on your personal life.