If it ain't broke...

Hello there! I'm Brennan Davis, the creator of CreaDev Labs, a place of learning and experimentation on productivity, creativity, and personal knowledge management. Each week I share tips, experiments, and resources to help you build your very own productivity and knowledge management systems. If you're new around here, be sure to check out my archive of previous newsletter editions. If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing with a friend!

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It's generally a good thing to make updates and iterate on your productivity system. It's how it continues to stay relevant and useful.

However, I often find myself tweaking my system just for the sake of it. For instance, I recently became obsessed with finding a different way of handling my tasks. I kept wanting to figure out ways to move it from my task manager, Things, to my Bullet Journal, or to my personal knowledge management app, Obsidian. I toyed around with the idea of moving it to GoodNotes as well. All of these apps are ones I use often, and the idea of further consolidating my list of apps was appealing. However, I couldn't get over the fact that I really like Things, and value a lot of the features it provides.

Eventually I was able to convince myself that the system I have really is good enough as is. It's been working quite well for me for a long time. There's no need for me to change it as it isn't really broken. Trying to do so was taking up a lot of time I could've spent in more important pursuits.

When you've reached the point in your productivity journey where you find something that works well for you, stick with it. The goal is not to be endlessly fiddling with your system. It's to accomplish the purpose for which the productivity system was built for in the first place (see Keys to Productivity: Focus). You only need to change it if things like tasks and notes start falling through the cracks. There's no need to force change if it isn't needed. As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

What's New on CreaDev Labs:

What is Markdown?
A brief explanation of the simple formatting syntax, Markdown. Also includes a most commonly used Markdown formatting cheatsheet.

Summary of The Bullet Journal Method: The Why
Sketchnoted summary of the chapter titled "The Why" from Ryder Carroll's book "The Bullet Journal Method".

Experiments:

I'm a fan of the minimalist approach to Bullet Journaling. I try to keep it as simple as possible so I don't spend more time setting things up than I do actually using them.

However, I do like some of the amazing page layouts people make in their Bullet Journals, and have been watching a few videos of people setting up their Bullet Journals. I don't necessarily want to do mine as fancy as those, but I would like to find something in between being completely minimal and creating works of art. I decided to start with drawing a simple header font I can use. I found some inspiration for a half block type font, which looks like this:

I'm going to use it for awhile and see how I like it. It's simple to draw, so it shouldn't slow me down too much, and it'll help spruce up my pages just a bit.

What I'm Reading / Watching / Listening to:

Article: Adam Savage on Lists, More Lists, and the Power of Checkboxes
I'm a big fan of the show Mythbusters, so I was excited to see this article by one of the Mythbusters himself, Adam Savage. I believe it's an excerpt from his book "Every Tool's a Hammer" (which I would now like to get). He talks about his simple process of using lists of checkboxes to break down and keep track of all the things he needs to do to complete a project. It's something that could easily be done inside a Bullet Journal, and I'd really like to try it in mine.

Video: Starting a NEW Bullet Journal! || Mid Year BuJo Set Up
This is one of the Bullet Journal set up videos I watched. It caught my eye because she's using the same journal from Archer & Olive that I am right now. Turns out she collaborated on the design for it with Archer & Olive, so I'm using one of her notebooks! I like how the design of her Bullet Journal turned out. It's a bunch of circles and simple lines, and it's looks really awesome. She also set it all up in one go, so now that's she done that, she can just spend her time using the journal. I think she's hitting pretty close to the place where I'd like to be, which is in between minimal and masterpiece. The font she used in her journal also partially inspired my new header font.

Questions or comments? Please send me an email at brennan@creadevlabs.com