Perfect Productivity Systems, Reading Books, and Evolving Your Thinking

Welcome to the Boldly Productive Newsletter!

Today I'm sharing the first in a series of articles detailing the principles I follow when crafting and evolving my personal productivity system. The principles form a convenient acronym: FIRST.

• Focus
• Iterate
• Record
• Simplify
• Trust

Read more about it below!

I've also been doing some experimenting with my book reading and note taking process. Up until now I haven't had a solid system for keeping track of my progress through each book, nor a consistent place to record my notes. If you struggle with this as well, I hope my experiment can provide some inspiration to you!

Lastly, I've shared a couple of articles around changing your perspective and thinking in new ways.

Now go forth and be boldly productive!

Build Your Perfect Productivity System with FIRST

When I first started building my productivity system in college, I was under the impression there was a perfect system out there for me to discover. I thought if I could find that system I would have the answer to all my productivity problems.

No dice, my friend.

I learned over the years of searching for that elusive perfect system that such a thing does not exist. At least, it doesn't exist out there.

Turns out there is a perfect productivity system for me. And there's a perfect system for you. You just have to create it yourself!

Experimenting With My Book Reading and Note Taking Process

It should come as no surprise that I love reading productivity books, yet I've struggled to develop an efficient tracking and note taking system for them.

My tracking and note taking is spread across my Bullet Journal, Obsidian, and GoodNotes, with no particular rhyme or reason. It's been difficult to find notes I want to reference because I haven't been consistent with where I put them.

I decided to bring some order to the chaos and define a solid book tracking and note taking process.

Read / Watch List:

Notes and ideas from others to explore

Article: How to Use Things 3 to Streamline Your Writing Process
This is a great example of using a productivity tool, the "simple" task management app Things, in ways the developers never even dreamed of. This guy wrote an entire draft of a book inside his task manager! This article has inspired me to continue to push the boundaries of what can be done inside Things, which is by far my favorite digital productivity tool.

Article: How to Train Your Brain to Think in New Ways
James Clear proposes that the key to gaining fresh perspective is to expand your number of mental models, or ways to explain how the world works. Combining these mental models together will help you form new models which will lead to new ideas and solutions.

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