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Indecision can be one of the powerful productivity inhibitors. It can be a powerful force against projects and actions that can help move your professional and/or personal life forward. We wanted this episode to help you make great decisions and provide you with strategies and techniques to combat indecision. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/064 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Indecision's Last Stand Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Show Notes | Indecision's Last Stand: How to Make Great Decisions Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, PhD Systems 1 and 2 thinking processes and cognitive reflection testing in medical students Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono, MD, PhD We discussed Six Thinking Hats methodology more in Episode 053, Optimism Versus Pessimism. Robust decisions Uncertainty decision model Pugh decision matrix Sample Pugh decision matrix template (Google Sheets workbook) (Note: Once you open the link above in your Web browser, use File > Download, or File > Make a Copy... to use this Google Sheets workbook as a template for your own decision-making.) SWOT Analysis Ego depletion (as explained in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, and John Tierney) Raw Text Transcript | Indecision's Last Stand Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:00 Hey there, productivity cast listeners. Before we jump into this week's episode, I wanted to make a small apology and a big announcement. First, you'll notice the delay in getting this week's episode out. Sorry about that. The reason why you'll notice as soon as the episode starts, the audio quality for my track is a bit wonky. I was on a cloud environment because of work travel, and had to record that way hoping the audio was usable. After a lot of internal debate. The audio is not ideal, but it's palatable. We always strive to give you as clean audio when we can as record across thousands of miles between us and time zones. So hopefully the content and audio over listening through this episode will be back to a quiet recording environment with next week's episode. Next, the big news. As some of you may know from being in my GTD meetups in Washington, DC in New York City, I'm hosting a live remote conference productivity summit on October 4, and fifth 2019. To learn more and register visit productivity summit.org. This is an idea I had about five years ago to bring together all the personal productivity experts and community I've met along my own personal productivity journey over these many years. Today, we have the technology to do that without having to travel but to our nearest desktop laptop, or mobile device, which you've already done if you're listening to me right now. So a few details about productivity summit, it will have four tracks track one is productivity, how to be more productive, using principles, strategies and techniques, track to his technology, what and how to use specific technologies to get things done. Track three is all about organization how to get your home or office more organized, and dealing with clutter and disorganization.

A recent article in The New Yorker, "Was Email a Mistake?," triggered a conversation around the veracity of email in the Digital Age. The author, computer science professor Cal Newport, discussed this on a recent interview on NPR. This is our response to the question, was email a mistake? (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/063 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Was Email a Mistake? A Response Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | Was Email a Mistake? A Response Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Was Email a Mistake? Write Email With Maximum Efficiency Using This Military System Scrum Microsoft Outlook Spike Feedly Stoop Inbox “Bursty” Communication Can Help Remote Teams Thrive Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26 And today we are going to be discussing email. And this is a topic that is perennial, but more importantly, Cal Newport, Professor Newport. he's a he's a professor of mathematics Computer Science at Georgetown University. And he recently wrote an article in which he discusses his topic was email a mistake. And he brings up several different angles at which he attacks email. And I wanted for us to have a discussion around really what he's talking about, and whether or not that's real, was email truly a mistake. And to start us off, I want us to kind of just take a litmus test just go around. And what was your initial impressions about the article? And where do you stand on your usage of email? are you stopping use of your email? Are you mediating email with other modalities in order to be productive? How are you using email today? Do you believe email was a mistake? Augusto Pinaud 1:34 I don't think email is a mistake, we may argue that the way we are using email and how it went out of control is a mistake. But it's not the email that will be equivalent to say, well, the fax was a mistake. It wasn't it was just a matter of what happened with email. I think email came in a moment where we were trying, we were in the verge of going global. And it broke, it brought a vehicle that allows to communicate with anybody, regardless where they are on a semi effective way. And dad in combination with other technologies that came at a time as a Blackberry, and people begin saying, Oh, I can really be more quote unquote, effective if I adopt these tools. The problem was, there was not really a solid execution plan, and we just got on the horse and let it run and hopefully turn into a monster, to be honest with you. Art Gelwicks 2:32 Email is a natural evolution of this back and forth method ...

Most don't think about it, but aside from finding the best productivity planner for ourselves, the very paper planner (a/k/a agenda, diary, journal, scheduler, notebook) didn't even exist until roughly 90 years. What did humankind do for the prior millennia upon millennia?! It wasn't until Gustav Grossmann came around with his own 200-page manifesto and leatherbound planning notebook in the 1930s, that the modern organizer was born. Today, we who pay attention to our productive lives take it for granted at the plethora of options for planners on the market, as well as learning how to use them effectively. In this week's episode, the ProductivityCast team discusses the factors that make the best productivity planner the right one for you. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/062 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | The Best Productivity Planner Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | The Best Productivity Planner Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. History of Day Planner Levenger Circa system FranklinPlanner Staples Arc system Day Runner Apple Reminders Remember the Milk OmniFocus The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll Casts referencing BuJo: 035 What Is the Bullet Journal? How Does It Work? – ProductivityCast051 Managing Digital Notebooks047 Reflections on Getting Things Done (GTD): What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two – ProductivityCast024 Can Productivity Be Fun? – ProductivityCast022 Productivity Pet Peeves – ProductivityCast016 The Power of Reflection – ProductivityCast013 Getting Unstuck! – ProductivityCast Time Design (Time/System)  FranklinPlanner Panda Planner Freedom Journal Productivity Journal Five-Minute Journal Volt Planner NeuroPlanner The High Performance Planner (Brendon Burchard) Commit 30 Planner Revo Journal (caveat: site was not loading, or loading very slowly, when we were trying to visit it: http://revojournal.com/) Travelers notebook Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Francis Wade 0:20I'm Francis Wade. Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud. Art Gelwicks 0:24 And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25 Welcome, gentlemen to this episode of productivitycast. And today we are going to be talking about something that a lot of people use every day. But they probably don't give very much attention to it. And so the people who are listening to this podcast you listening to this podcast, are you probably more aware of the concept than not. But I thought what we would do today is we would talk about the productivity planner, the what we would call a personal organizer, or a day planner,