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When friction works for you — a case study against automation
When we build our productivity system and workflow, we often want to automate as much as possible. However, there is also value in trying to find where friction adds value and enforce that friction to improve your productivity.
I’m currently taking RJ Nestor’s wonderful course AP Productivity. RJ is a mastermind in the Tools for Thought category and also has beautiful thoughts on productivity towards achieving our goals rather than just busy-ness. I can’t recommend this course enough — even if you don’t use Roam Research or Obsidian. Part of the reason for that recommendation is the community of course takers RJ is assembling — wonderful people happy to share their processes for getting things done and focusing on a bigger life.
While reading some of the posts in the Circle Community and watching this week’s videos for the course I had an “aha!”. Friction sometimes works to our advantage in a system. I’d like to share an example with you to illustrate this.
Each week — usually on Sunday — I sit down and review my schedule for the next week. This typically involves me typing out my schedule into my productivity tool/notes app — currently Obsidian.
In R.J.’s course, there is a lot of discussion about how to automate this activity. However, it made me realize I don’t…
