The benchmark outside the system

Procrastination is often cited as a key problem for people who like to tinker with their tools and play around with building dashboards and knowledge management systems. Anne-Laure Le Cunff, for example, lists a few signs of it, such as spending more time organising than doing, piling up productivity hacks, and treating system maintenance like a job of its own.

I agree that these are important signs, but to me they describe symptoms rather than get at the root of the problem.

A balanced set of OKRs, or even simply a goal set for a specific timeframe, is an important tool for keeping the system in check. I don't believe that beating yourself up for tinkering with your system will necessarily improve your productivity. Not if you do it without evaluating your workflow against a benchmark that sits outside the system. If anything, it might make you feel even more anxious.

When I think about why I beat myself up so much for taking a day off, I keep returning to the talk Rick Klau gave about OKRs. I remember Klau saying that adding one objective too many to his quarter left him feeling burnt out. It reminds me that we need to be extremely disciplined about how much work we put in front of ourselves at any given moment. How do you keep yourself on track, and do you think tinkering with your system is a bad habit?

Yours, edited down,
Zhenia