Personal effectiveness is the main topic of our blog, and despite the fact that articles on near–computer topics predominate in it, sometimes it is better and more efficient to solve the issue without involving high technologies. Not because they will interfere, but because it is faster and cheaper to use cheaper and more accessible and reliable resources.
If you are in doubt, then we can give you an example of organizing the work of an amazing number of people without involving any high technologies. For example, in India there is a company that delivers lunches, which employs about five thousand people, and it delivers a quarter of a million bowls of food. And no magic or GPS. Moreover, many workers are illiterate at all. This shows that more often the restrictions and requirements put forward by ourselves are artificial and not conditioned by the task.
From this we can conclude that the main thing in efficiency is understanding how best to use what is already there, and not searching for new resources – every new device and new program requires your attention at least for the training period, and sometimes longer, because gadgets need to be charged at least.
Take a closer look at how you do business, perhaps a simple pen and a notebook in a ruler, as in the "Auto-focus", which we wrote about, or a homemade GTD organizer will do more for you and will be much more effective than programs that you want to change to others every now and then, or at least upgrade to a new version. It is worth making sure that the system can do with a minimum of your attention on maintaining itself, giving your time to actually doing the work.
Another equally important source of effectiveness can be a critical attitude to the world, skepticism and constant attempts to understand "how it works". Do not be like the islanders who founded the "cargo cult", go along with the soviets (even ours;) ) without trying to understand what in the council will work for you and why.