Let's start as always with questions about deep work. Our first question comes from Brandon. Brandon asks, "Does adopting a slow productivity mindset mean you should ditch your to-do list and capture systems? Am I doing too much if I need a full-fledged capture system?" Well, Brandon, in an ideal world, where you had complete control over what your working life looked like and you had no concerns about money, you were independently wealthy, so you could completely control your working life, I would say, yeah, it would be great if you didn't need all the things I talk about when I talk about time management.

You don't need complicated capture systems. You don't need weekly and daily time block plans. That would probably actually be ideal. And there are some people who do actually more or less accomplish this. The example that I like to give comes from probably the first article I wrote that began to scratch the surface on some of these ideas.

It's also one of the favorite articles I've written in the past two years. And it was for The New Yorker, and it was called "The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done." And the narrative spine of this article was Merlin Mann. So this name is familiar to a lot of Deep Questions listeners, but Merlin Mann, in the 2000s, started this blog called 43 Folders that was all about using modern technology to build these hyper-optimized, digitally enhanced productivity systems.

He had a job as a project manager that he took in the '90s, that as we fell into more and more of a culture of constant communication and constant email and constant work overload, the culture I talk about in my book, "A World Without Email," he got more and more overloaded, and he stumbled across David Allen and getting things done, and he was a real tech guy.

So he was like, "Man, I think if we could just build the right tools, I could stop feeling this way, where I'm completely overwhelmed and completely stressed out." And so he started writing about trying to build those tools, and a lot of other people felt the same way. So that website got very popular, and he became a real leader of the productivity movement.

Eventually, he was doing that website full-time and giving talks about it, and then he got a book deal to write a book about it, and that's when the wheels came off. And this is the narrative that was the spine for that article, is that Merlin Mann eventually figured out, "I can't fix this problem by organizing better the deluge of things that are coming towards me, by having better tools, having better systems, better processes for dealing with the deluges coming with me." He said, "Ultimately, I can fix this problem by reducing the deluge.

That instead of having a better system for having too much to do, what if I changed my notion of work so I didn't have that much to do, so that having these productivity systems that are so complex would be unnecessary?" And that's roughly what he did. He shifted into podcasting pretty early on.

He's like, "This is just what I'm going to do." And the way he explained it to me when I talked to him about it for the article was he doesn't really need those systems because his life is really simple. He has a recording schedule. "This is when I need to be in the studio to record my podcast." And that's kind of it.

Now, he keeps to-do lists for household stuff. "What do I need to buy at the grocery store?" or whatever. He basically simplified his working life down to the point where he didn't really need to manage it. So I think, yes, kind of ideally, a slow productivity ideal would be such that you're working on a small number of things one at a time.

It's clear what you're working on. There's not that much to track. You don't have to squeeze as much as possible out of an 8-hour day because you're juggling 16 different tasks and projects, and you have to make progress on each without losing your mind. You don't need 6 Trello boards each for different roles because you only have one role.

That's the thing you need to do right now. You're writing, or you're recording. So, yes, I think, Brandon, you're on to something. Ideally, you would not need all of these systems. Now, in the real world, it's hard to get all the way to that point. If you can't get all the way to that point, then having all these systems is what you absolutely need.

This weird step function here. So if you've simplified things, but there's still a non-trivial amount of work on your plate, by taming that with systems, you can actually get closer to the slow ideal. So having more systems is actually important when you're close to the slow productivity ideal, but not quite there.

I've been working through some of these thoughts recently about slow productivity. I mean, I think, for example, part of what you can do with systems if you're trying to be embrace more slow productivity is you can be much more automated about your small tasks. With the right systems, you can push these small tasks into certain times on certain days so that they're not weighing on your mind elsewise.

So you can't get rid of them, but you can tame them, you can automate them and control them and move them into certain places where they only take your time three hours a week at these set times. That requires a lot of systems, but that's compressing the impact on your schedule.

It's compressing the impact so your mind can be free in other times. I think being very careful about tracking what you're working on is critical if you're going to reduce that because you can figure out what is my limits, what is the limit of work that I can handle easily.

You can't figure that out if you're not carefully tracking this and tracking your time. So systems are critical for slow productivity. If and when Intel you reach the slow productivity ideal, then maybe you don't need them anymore. Most of us aren't going to get there. So Brandon, most of us need systems.

We want to be careful about our time so that we can protect that time. And then if we're lucky, we'll end up in a Merlin man type situation where we don't need the systems anymore. But until we get there, I think systems help make you do the best with what you can.