2023 Productivity Year in Review

In December 2022, I wrote my first annual productivity review. As I started drafting the 2023 version, I hesitated about framing it like this again. Life is about so much more than being productive, right?

One of my professional foci is productivity. I love learning about productivity tools, trying out new methods, and discussing all of this with anyone who will listen. And I could certainly fill this full post with nothing but productivity-related apps, tips, and reflections.

But I’ve been really struggling with productivity lately, both in the typical sense (having trouble getting things done) and in a philosophical sense. Why should we focus on being productive? What does it actually mean to be productive? If we are at 100% productivity (whatever that is), what are we sacrificing to hit that questionable target?

I don't have the answers, but boy do I have thoughts. My topline working theory is that, in a sense, everything is about productivity, at least when we consider it in a broader sense.

I am referring to this as Holistic Productivity. Even though this sounds so new-agey that it should probably only be discussed while wafting energies from an essential oil diffuser, I think it’s the term that best captures the point. For the record, I'm certainly not the first to use this term, but I'm defining it for myself without consideration of how others have used it.

To explain what I mean, I'll walk through my top five productivity-related takeaways of the year and tie each to the concept of Holistic Productivity. So, here goes:

1. Core Tools: Obsidian + Todoist
I wrote last year about my implementation of Obsidian as my "offboard brain." It quickly became essential, and that remains true. The linking system makes it easy to organically connect everything, making it a reliable database of meeting notes, article highlights, project outlines, contact information, etc. That reliability is key — that's what allows me to truly use this as an offboard brain, putting less pressure on myself to remember details and instead using brainpower to be more in the moment in any given conversation.

I also continue to love how Obsidian can be as simple (once you master the basics) or complex (if you're up for it) as you want it to be.

I started noodling a few months ago with the idea of using a keyboard shortcut to pull a line from call notes into an appropriately categorized Todoist task, and sure enough, some independent developer had already made a plug-in to make this possible. Now, if I'm taking notes during a call and an action item pops up, I hit "control + T," and a Todoist task is created in my work project folder with the text of the action item and today's due date. Super slick addition to my workflow.

For as much as I evangelize these particular tools, I make a point to acknowledge that I love them because they work for me and the way my brain works. The same tools, no matter how powerful, may not be the right tools for you and how your brain works. That's got to be a key tenant of my version of Holistic Productivity (is "TBR Holistic Productivity" too pretentious or audacious?).

I found Obsidian and Todoist after learning about them from research and conversation, and I latched onto them because I gave them an honest go. To find your tools, you have to be willing to experiment, assess the results, and adapt.

2. (Wasting?) Time on the World Wide Web
Let's start with the, well, bad. Last year I got off Twitter, and this year I got on Threads. In no small part because of what I discuss in point number 4 below, I've been drifting towards short dopamine hits to keep myself distracted. Threads was fun out the gate, then lost momentum, and then got really interesting again. It's compelling enough that it has effectively replaced how I used to use Twitter, and that's not entirely a good thing. Some of my usage isn't really intentional — it's more a default behavior of what I can do when I'm bored for more than half a second. I would like to rethink this in the coming year.

On the good front, I continue to love RSS to aggregate news and articles. Reader continues to get better and better (shoutout to their super active team and detailed updates). Rather than pulling up a bunch of websites on the regular, I have just about everything sending passive updates to my RSS feed in Reader, which means that I can scroll through a curated, chronological feed of basically every source I'm interested in through one medium. That, combined with the spaced repetition system that tracks my highlights in companion app Readwise, continues to be my main inflow of news.

I'm also consuming longer form content, but in lower dosages. Life challenges plus Threads usage plus valuable utilization of RSS means less time for books, which feels problematic, even though I can't quite define why. Perhaps it's because General Mattis got in my head:

"We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical to not take advantage of such accumulated experiences. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you."

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

(an aside for workflow nerds: I found this quote, which I had previously highlighted in the Kindle app, which then triggered an automation to pull Kindle quotes into Obsidian, by simply searching for "Mattis" in Obsidian, which brought a list of times Mattis is mentioned in all my Obsidian notes, which led me to the note of quotes I highlighted from Call Sign Chaos, where I could then search for "illiterate" because I knew that was a keyword that would pull up that quote, and I remembered this quote because it has recently been served up to me by Readwise, which reminds me of things I've highlighted in past articles or books, effectively allowing me both a way to remember what I've highlighted and then find within seconds things I previously highlighted — which is both an actual demonstration of the system I use and likely an obnoxious/impenetrable description for most readers)

The connection here to TBR Holistic Productivity (ok what if I just start using that term and see how it feels?) is to be aware of and intentional about how you’re consuming media, rather than simply letting it consume you and your ability to get things done.

3. Coaching and Exposure
I put myself out there this year by joining a leadership development program. It pushed me in ways I didn't expect, it exposed me to folks I otherwise would have never met, and it made me grow as a person and as a leader,

I deliberately applied to programs outside of the veterans space. There are myriad things I still have to learn about and from the veteran community, but I'm immersed in that all day, every day. To grow my leadership capabilities, I recognized that I needed to work with folks from different sectors.

Of note, I applied to three programs and was rejected outright from the first two, despite very strong recommendations and, so I thought, clear alignment with the candidate profile the programs sought to attract.

Rejection is a regular and important part of life. There is always something to learn when you aren’t accepted. Societally, we don’t talk about this nearly enough.

Those rejections stung, and honestly, hurt my pride a bit. But they opened the door for me to apply to the Obama Leaders USA Program, which I was ultimately accepted to. I was intrigued from the program description, but it wasn't until I got to the second application that I was truly hooked: “What makes you, you?” My goodness. What a wonderfully unnerving question. As I thought about my answer, I knew I really wanted to be a part of this thing, as it spoke volumes about its priorities and the type of people I would get to work with.

Sure enough, I met folks from backgrounds wildly different from my own, and with ambitions I had never even considered. An unexpected takeaway was how ignorant I am about the experiences of people who are indigenous to this country. I'm thankful to have a better, albeit still deficient, understanding of those remarkable individuals and the lives they live.

One of the most beneficial aspects of the program was the individualized coaching it granted access to. I have more than a few cynical thoughts about the rise of "life coaches," but this ended up being critical to my year.

I've long been an outspoken advocate for therapy, and, fair warning, I think I'm about to be an outspoken advocate for coaching. I ended up with a coach with extensive nonprofit experience who takes the somatic approach that really resonated with me. Within 60 seconds — really, 60 seconds — of our first session, I felt like we were already doing useful work.

The biggest advantage of therapy, from my perspective, is that you have the ability to share your thoughts and feelings with a third party that you don't have to feel guilty about burdening with your thoughts and feelings. And when you find the right therapist, they can identify errors in your thinking and help you find the healthiest path forward.

Imagine that, but in the work context. Having a neutral third-party that I could bring any number of challenges to who could provide clear guidance based off of his own lived experience was instrumental in some of the bigger moves I made this year.

The TBR Holistic Productivity (still not sure I like this) lesson here, perhaps, is that very few things happen in isolation. Having the right support structure ensures you have the right foundation to get things done, and deliberate exposure to diverse viewpoints helps you understand your own beliefs and set values-driven priorities.

4. Humility and Grace in Productivity
In January, I reconnected with a particularly accomplished Warrior-Scholar Project alumnus. We came to the topic of productivity (surprise, surprise), and I mentioned how I give myself two options for daily ”priority one” tasks: either I get the thing done, or it has to hurt when I roll it over to the next day. His response was profound: what about giving yourself some grace?

I’ve wired myself in such a way that self-grace isn't really part of the equation. I feel tremendously accomplished when I, well, accomplish tasks, and I feel guilty when I don’t check high priority tasks of the list.

Little did I know how much I’d need to rely on this later in the year. Suffice it to say that family health and wellbeing had to be prioritized above all else, and I had to radically and continually reprioritize just about everything else in life. I had to give myself grace for not getting as much done elsewhere, and I had to be humble enough to admit I’m incapable of getting everything done.

In a typical sense, I was far less productive. But in a TBRHP (is it more palatable if I condense TBR Holistic Productivity into an enigmatic acronym?) sense, I was able to reprioritize and allocate whatever energy I have into the things that mattered more than anything else for this stage of life. I'd call that a win, no matter how many tasks I had to roll over to the next day.

5. Embracing Creativity and Projects Without Deliverables
Over the last two years, I have found a well of creativity and desire to make and build and break and learn and grow. I can't really pinpoint where it comes from, but I know creativity demands brain space. Being productive in other parts of my life (e.g. work), allows me to spend time letting my brain wander and seeing what happens. That then becomes a virtuous cycle, as I approach work with more creativity and open-mindedness.

This blog is one outgrowth of this desire to build and create. I don't have a measure of success, other than some sense of personal satisfaction. I like writing, and I think chronicling my path towards holistic productivity (feels less pretentious if it isn’t capitalized — maybe that's the key) can hopefully help others.

In the spirit of embracing new things, allow me to try something new here:

If you’ve made it this far, you’re either into what I’m talking about or you’re rage-reading with vehement disagreement. No worries - all are welcome! No matter how you got here, please consider subscribing here:

It’s free, and I don’t intend to ever charge for the basic blog I write here. But long story short, subscriptions make it easier for me to actually track who is interested in this content.

Thanks for reading or skimming. See you next year.

-Ryan

Postscript on AI:
I ended last year’s reflections with: “And no, none of this was written by ChatGPT.” That’s true again this year, but I, like everyone with a computer, am thinking about the role of AI in my life and society. To avoid further clogging internet tubes with yet another laborious take on this topic, I'll keep this brief: I’m fascinated by the lack of conversation on how successful generative AI innovation and integration could and should lead to a societal shift away from obsessive work culture. If AI can do some of our work for us, ideally that could carve our more brain space for creativity and, dare, I say, holistic productivity. Easy for me to say, I know, since I'm not in a career like graphic design. I'm not being dismissive of the very real and present costs many are feeling as a result of this generative AI boom. But from first principles, couldn't we imagine a way to leverage these stupendously powerful tools to actually make our collective lives better? I fear that we are on a very different path.