Who hasn’t seen a Youtube video that showcases the X ways you could save time by doing X, Y and Z, and the reviews of tools and apps that want to improve the way we handle things.

The basic idea is that using some tools will cut the time spent doing things that are not meaningful, or productive. I've been a tech blogger for almost 10 years, reviewing hundreds of products from simple online services to smartphone, fitness trackers and any type of mobile or computer app. What I'm going to say is going to sound extremist, but I can only say it because I exited that world, the world of consumer electronics, to enter another, more chaotic world, the crypto / web3 one.

I started getting this when I first subscribed to Oliver Burkman's newsletter, The Imperfectionist. Oliver, a long-time Guardian writer, is a philosopher that writes about the challenges of modern life. I started reading his newsletters a little more than 3 years ago, just when I was about to jump from the consumer electronics world to web3. If I felt I had FOMO whenever a new phone went out, I couldn't possibly know the anxiety and pressure I would feel when tokens go up and down and new apps, protocols and whole industry standards change and evolve in just days or weeks - for example, this new token standard that just went out last weekend!

How could one overcome this type of pressure, both from society and from within? You just can't, you either need to accept it (and burn out every few weeks), or fail at it, and know that if you fail only in the short term, you will win in the long run.

When I look at Youtubers and TikTokers showing the ultimate-productivity-minimal-automatic-whatever setup, I'm just confused at how these people really organize and go on with their lives. Yes, I do agree that timeboxing is a way to keeping you consistent over time, and just remember that, each day, you need to do this and that because otherwise you won't keep up in the long term, but does one's life really need to be constrained by timeboxes only?

I tried with everything, over the course of 10-15 years.

I was one of the first to have a second brain, what I called a personal knowledge base, on Evernote in 2013. Then I moved onto other apps like Agenda, Obsidian, Notion, and I don't even know what others. Now everyone seems like a guru with their own Notion templates for calendar, tasks, research, whatever.

But what's the purpose of a second brain? Do we really need to preserve all this knowledge for future reference? Ask yourself:

I see people saving entire articles and researches on Notion or other knowledge base platforms. To what end? Can't you just highlight the passages you need and save those? Why do you need to store everything you ever searched for?

That's the journey I was on, for 10+ years. I was so focused on saving and organizing everything, that I forgot what I really needed that for. That's why I recently simplified my 'productivity tooling' to just two main apps: Readwise Reader and Apple Notes. Of course I use other apps for work, but these are the ones that I use the most, and the flow is very simple: when I find something interesting, I save it on Reader through the iOS / macOS extension, and then I highlight the passages I actually want to remember in the future.

Readwise will propose them to me every day in a selection of 6 (custom number that I chose) notes to review every day either via email or through the widget on my iPhone / iPad / Mac.

Then, if I want to elaborate on something, I will put some notes in the Notebook section of the article. Otherwise, I could just open up Apple Notes, create a new note and write anything that comes to mind. I don't need to have a big folder structure: I use a simple PARA method (Projects / Areas / Resources / Archive) just because I can always have the most useful notes at hand. But I don't use tags - I just put really explanatory titles that I could find easily later.

When I want to publish some raw notes, I use montaigne.io, a very good and simple platform that connects an Apple Notes folder to a static website, so that each note gets created as a new blog entry. So simple that it's amazing. Here's the website I created: https://jaack.montaigne.io

That's the core of my statement here:

And it's very weird that few people got this until now - we should all have been used to the Apple Watch experience. At first, people thought that the Apple Watch needed to be used, touched, to justify the money spent on it. But the real deal is when you buy the Apple Watch and you don't use it: it just tracks everything and shows you things that you need, right when you need them.

I, for one, only touch the Apple Watch screen (= use it) in very limited occasions, when I:

• Need to find my iPhone so I use the Ping feature

• Need to light some dark spot with the Torch feature, when I don't have or can't reach my iPhone

• Answer to a message real quick and I can't reach my iPhone

• Start a workout

• Set an exercise as complete so that I can proceed onto the next exercise in the SmartGym app

I never randomly touch the Apple Watch's screen to doodle or waste time - there's nothing in there!

A lot of apps and tools are marketed as a way to save time, but the truth is that they need to have your attention, so they can't just make you touch a few buttons and go away. They need DAUs (Daily Active Users) so they can justify new funding to VCs, so they can grow faster so that they can find new ways to get more attention from you.

That's why some platforms are actually better than others, if seen in the right way. Here's a rundown:

• Apps that market themselves as tools to save time

• Social media platforms that market themselves as gateways to connect you with your loved ones but they make you meet strangers because click rates are better

• Apps that use very simple, existing infrastructure and/or tooling to enrich it without adding extra layers

• Social media platforms that market themselves as hubs for discussing things and find new interests

And here's to the last point of my argument:

You can decide if you want to waste your time doing unproductive things. But you need to be aware, and make the most of it.

There's no right way of using our time. If you think you should spend time doing what brings you most money, you'll be miserable when you least expect it. But if you decide to just let it go sometimes, you'll be surprised to feel how happy you can be.

I, for one, love staying with my wife: she's very nice, beautiful and has her own way of joking that makes me smile every time. We're great together.

But I also know that I love writing things like this one and jotting down my thoughts, sometimes once a month, some other time once a day, and that's what makes me happy. Or maybe sometimes I just want to spend a whole day writing code and not finishing anything, and that's fine as well.

Things don't need to be meaningful, they need to make you happy - whatever it is that you like doing. And it's fine if it's not a positive-sum action for the world, as long as it's for you.

Who hasn’t seen a Youtube video that showcases the X ways you could save time by doing X, Y and Z, and the reviews of tools and apps that want to improve the way we handle things.

The basic idea is that using some tools will cut the time spent doing things that are not meaningful, or productive. I've been a tech blogger for almost 10 years, reviewing hundreds of products from simple online services to smartphone, fitness trackers and any type of mobile or computer app. What I'm going to say is going to sound extremist, but I can only say it because I exited that world, the world of consumer electronics, to enter another, more chaotic world, the crypto / web3 one.

I started getting this when I first subscribed to Oliver Burkman's newsletter, The Imperfectionist. Oliver, a long-time Guardian writer, is a philosopher that writes about the challenges of modern life. I started reading his newsletters a little more than 3 years ago, just when I was about to jump from the consumer electronics world to web3. If I felt I had FOMO whenever a new phone went out, I couldn't possibly know the anxiety and pressure I would feel when tokens go up and down and new apps, protocols and whole industry standards change and evolve in just days or weeks - for example, this new token standard that just went out last weekend!

How could one overcome this type of pressure, both from society and from within? You just can't, you either need to accept it (and burn out every few weeks), or fail at it, and know that if you fail only in the short term, you will win in the long run.

When I look at Youtubers and TikTokers showing the ultimate-productivity-minimal-automatic-whatever setup, I'm just confused at how these people really organize and go on with their lives. Yes, I do agree that timeboxing is a way to keeping you consistent over time, and just remember that, each day, you need to do this and that because otherwise you won't keep up in the long term, but does one's life really need to be constrained by timeboxes only?

I tried with everything, over the course of 10-15 years.

I was one of the first to have a second brain, what I called a personal knowledge base, on Evernote in 2013. Then I moved onto other apps like Agenda, Obsidian, Notion, and I don't even know what others. Now everyone seems like a guru with their own Notion templates for calendar, tasks, research, whatever.

But what's the purpose of a second brain? Do we really need to preserve all this knowledge for future reference? Ask yourself:

I see people saving entire articles and researches on Notion or other knowledge base platforms. To what end? Can't you just highlight the passages you need and save those? Why do you need to store everything you ever searched for?

That's the journey I was on, for 10+ years. I was so focused on saving and organizing everything, that I forgot what I really needed that for. That's why I recently simplified my 'productivity tooling' to just two main apps: Readwise Reader and Apple Notes. Of course I use other apps for work, but these are the ones that I use the most, and the flow is very simple: when I find something interesting, I save it on Reader through the iOS / macOS extension, and then I highlight the passages I actually want to remember in the future.

Readwise will propose them to me every day in a selection of 6 (custom number that I chose) notes to review every day either via email or through the widget on my iPhone / iPad / Mac.

Then, if I want to elaborate on something, I will put some notes in the Notebook section of the article. Otherwise, I could just open up Apple Notes, create a new note and write anything that comes to mind. I don't need to have a big folder structure: I use a simple PARA method (Projects / Areas / Resources / Archive) just because I can always have the most useful notes at hand. But I don't use tags - I just put really explanatory titles that I could find easily later.

When I want to publish some raw notes, I use montaigne.io, a very good and simple platform that connects an Apple Notes folder to a static website, so that each note gets created as a new blog entry. So simple that it's amazing. Here's the website I created: https://jaack.montaigne.io

That's the core of my statement here:

And it's very weird that few people got this until now - we should all have been used to the Apple Watch experience. At first, people thought that the Apple Watch needed to be used, touched, to justify the money spent on it. But the real deal is when you buy the Apple Watch and you don't use it: it just tracks everything and shows you things that you need, right when you need them.

I, for one, only touch the Apple Watch screen (= use it) in very limited occasions, when I:

• Need to find my iPhone so I use the Ping feature

• Need to light some dark spot with the Torch feature, when I don't have or can't reach my iPhone

• Answer to a message real quick and I can't reach my iPhone

• Start a workout

• Set an exercise as complete so that I can proceed onto the next exercise in the SmartGym app

I never randomly touch the Apple Watch's screen to doodle or waste time - there's nothing in there!

A lot of apps and tools are marketed as a way to save time, but the truth is that they need to have your attention, so they can't just make you touch a few buttons and go away. They need DAUs (Daily Active Users) so they can justify new funding to VCs, so they can grow faster so that they can find new ways to get more attention from you.

That's why some platforms are actually better than others, if seen in the right way. Here's a rundown:

• Apps that market themselves as tools to save time

• Social media platforms that market themselves as gateways to connect you with your loved ones but they make you meet strangers because click rates are better

• Apps that use very simple, existing infrastructure and/or tooling to enrich it without adding extra layers

• Social media platforms that market themselves as hubs for discussing things and find new interests

And here's to the last point of my argument:

You can decide if you want to waste your time doing unproductive things. But you need to be aware, and make the most of it.

There's no right way of using our time. If you think you should spend time doing what brings you most money, you'll be miserable when you least expect it. But if you decide to just let it go sometimes, you'll be surprised to feel how happy you can be.

I, for one, love staying with my wife: she's very nice, beautiful and has her own way of joking that makes me smile every time. We're great together.

But I also know that I love writing things like this one and jotting down my thoughts, sometimes once a month, some other time once a day, and that's what makes me happy. Or maybe sometimes I just want to spend a whole day writing code and not finishing anything, and that's fine as well.

Things don't need to be meaningful, they need to make you happy - whatever it is that you like doing. And it's fine if it's not a positive-sum action for the world, as long as it's for you.