I take full responsibility for the role I played in equating personal productivity with a tidy todo list and an empty inbox. But those are not what makes someone productive.
Keeping a tidy todo list, calendar & inbox are practices that help some people (like me) get the stuff done they say they will when they say they will. That's about being reliable and meeting obligations.
But taken to an extreme, email Tetris and todo list cross-offs are a busywork distraction from what you should actually be doing with your life and time.
(Most people don't actually know what they should be doing with their life and time. It's a question I perpetually ponder, and my answers change, and I adjust. Then I think more, and readjust.)
But back to productivity. To me, it's about creating more than you consume. Creating value that didn't exist before, given your time, thought, and effort. Thought being the key.
Three hours of staring into space thinking about what actually matters is a more productive use of time than an empty inbox, any day of the week.
And that is my tweetstorm for the year. Thanks for enduring it.
