Productivity systems — GTD, PARA, Bullet Journal, Zettelkasten as commonly practiced — optimize the loop between you and your tool.

The loop that actually matters is between you and the work.

These are not the same loop. A great GTD inbox can sit alongside ten years of unfinished work. A perfect PARA hierarchy can coexist with a writing practice that produces nothing. The system gets the dopamine; the work gets the leftovers.

The honest test of any productivity system is: does it produce more or fewer of the things I actually wanted to make this year? Most fail.

The systems that survive that test are the boring ones:

• Show up at the same time.
• Work on one thing at a time.
• Finish what you start (see On finishing).
• Quit what you've stopped caring about, deliberately.

None of these need a tool more sophisticated than a piece of paper. Most "productivity software" is a way to feel productive without producing.

I am not against tools. I'm against the substitution of tooling work for the actual work. The first is infinitely customizable; the second is hard.

Related: Quitting tools that didn't help me write (TBW), Note-taking is not knowledge.

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