Netflix has 15,000 titles but we end up seeing ‘The Office’ by Quinvez. Productivity apps make us the same

We have 15,000 titles in Netflix and we end up seeing ‘The Office‘For the fifth time. We have a complete suite of productivity apps on the mobile and we end up writing the tasks in A whatsapp with ourselves.

It is the same psychological mechanism working in two different contexts: when you have too many options, your brain is blocked and returns to the known.

The world of productivity has fallen into the same trap as the platforms of streaming. They sell us infinite customization as an advantage when it is actually a ballast:

• Notion It allows you to create any imaginable system.
• Obsidian has more than 800 pLugins
• Todoist It has configurations for each micronecessity of your workflow.

It sounds great until you realize that you have been configuring the perfect system and you have not completed a task.

There is fascinating investigation into this. Barry Schwartz showed That more options not only make us happier, but they paralyze us. Each configuration decision consumes mental energy that you could be using to do real work.

And here comes the paradox: We value less systems that come preconfiguredalthough they work better than those we have customized until death.

The solution is contraintuitive: The most restrictive systems are usually more productive. Apple, for example, understood it a long time. It doesn’t let you change almost anything from the iPhone, but that’s why it works. Limitation is not a bugIt is one feature.

You strength to act instead of optimizing forever.

The secret is to choose intelligent restrictions. Instead of looking for the tool that can do everything, Look for what does the three things you really need well.

Let’s look at a specific example: task management. Notion allows you to create relational databases with personalized properties, dynamic filters, multiple views and automation. You can categorize by project, priority, context, required energy, responsible person. You can create control panels that show productivity metrics and progress graphics. It is the dream of any obsessive control.

But While you build that perfect system, your real tasks accumulate. You spend more time thinking about how to organize the work than working. And when you finally have your masterpiece configured, it turns out that it is so complex that using it requires more mental effort than doing the tasks by hand.

Contrasts this with Things 3. You have three drawers: Inbox, today, and someday. Spot. You can’t create custom fields, you can’t do Dashboards Made, you cannot automate anything complex. It seems limited compared to Notion. But precisely because of that it works: you open the app, you see what to do today, you do it, you call it. Zero cognitive friction.

The usual lesson: Productivity is not about having more options, but about eliminating irrelevant decisions. Your mental energy is finite. Every minute you spend configuring is a minute you don’t spend creating. The most elegant systems are not the ones that can do everything, but those that make obvious what to do next.

In Xataka | In 2001 a productivity method was born that was going to survive everyone else: 24 years later, it is still immortal

Outstanding image | Sanjeev Mohindra