Learn and Work Smarter

136. Productivity Tools Are Useless (Unless You Do This...)

• Katie Azevedo • Episode 136

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Productivity tools come with big promises. Planners, apps, devices, software…they can all genuinely help you get things done – and they claim to do so.


BUT, the tool itself never gets you the outcome you want. I know, the irony.


In this week's episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I reveal why productivity tools are useless (yes, even the ones I love and recommend), and the mistake I see students and professionals make when they place all their hope in a shiny new tool.


Then I share the one thing that actually determines whether a tool works or becomes a hunk of plastic collecting dust on your desk (or a hunk of wasted pixels on your screen).


What You Learn:

  • The biggest mistake students and professionals make when they get a new productivity tool
  • Why even the most basic tools (yes, a sticky note) can change your entire workflow
  • Why even the most impressive tools (reMarkable, Asana, Notion) can do absolutely nothing for you
  • What actually gives a tool its power (hint: it's not the tool)
  • How to audit your systems so you know exactly where to start


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Well, hello, and welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie, your host. Today, we're talking about productivity tools and my claim that they are useless. Now, if you've been around here for a little while, you may or may not know that I have a previous episode titled My 10 Favorite Productivity Tools. Even if you've been around for a while, you probably don't remember that, but there you go . I'll leave that linked below. So it may seem like I am contradicting myself because I have an episode about 10 productivity tools that I love, and here I'm saying they're useless. But actually, I'm not contradicting myself at all, and you'll see why in a few minutes. Like I said, I'll leave that episode linked below. But here is the framework or the agenda for today's episode. I'm gonna explain my claim that productivity tools are useless, and then I'm gonna dig into how thinking the productivity tools can save your grade at school or make everything easier at work and essentially increase your productivity is a dangerous belief to have. And then, of course, as I always do on this show, I will shift into a different way to think about productivity tools and the thing that really drives our productivity at school and work more than tools, more than anything else. Remember, you can get a transcript to this show and access to all the links I mention at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/136. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. If you're listening in a podcast app, be sure to follow the show. You can find me on Instagram @schoolhabits. Oh, wait, and now I'm on TikTok . Yes, my students have convinced me to join TikTok for better or worse. I don't know. We'll find out. I am over there @schoolhabits_katie. I will have that linked below too. I think I am up to a whole 30 followers now, so basically, basically I'm famous . So I'm just seeing where that one goes, but come find me over there. Okay, why productivity tools are useless. Let's get this show on the road. All right, so I know that I'm being a little bit provocative here when I say that productivity tools are useless, 'cause I think it's probably pretty obvious that I talk a lot about and use productivity tools a lot. But stick with me. Okay, definitions first. Productivity tools, the way I'm defining it, can be anything from a pencil and a notebook, right? Those things can help us get things done. It can be a complex project management system. It can be an even more complex AI agent that you build to handle all your email. We're actually gonna talk about that in a sec. Email itself is a productivity tool. Okay? Essentially, anything that we use to get something done quicker or more efficiently to manage our school or workload, I'm considering a productivity tool. So think calendars to-do lists, things like Slack and Zoom and Teams, even sticky notes, computers, our devices notebooks. All of these are productivity tools that have the potential to improve our efficiency at school, at work, and I would say even at home. But the whole premise of today's show is that the tools themselves have no real inherent value Unless, wait for it, this is the second half of my claim today, unless there's a system behind the tools. So let me tell you a little story of a student I worked with in my private practice. This kind of illustrates everything that I'm gonna talk about today. We worked together for years, um, on executive function. She had ADHD, so that was our primary goal. Early on in our work together, she came in one day all excited that she had received a reMarkable for Christmas. Now, a reMarkable is like a digital tablet that's designed just for taking notes. Like, you, you know, don't scroll social media, and you don't go on YouTube Shorts. It's just for taking notes. You basically have a stylus, and you hand write your notes on what looks like a, kind of like an iPad, but it's not lit up like an iPad. It's more of a paper sensation, like a Kindle screen. There's a really neat way, it's kind of like built into the software of reMarkable, of storing your notes when you're done with them, of organizing them and searching for them, things like that. And she was all excited, thinking that this reMarkable was gonna revolutionize everything. It was gonna change the way she was doing school. It was gonna completely change, you know, her notes, and basically get her an A in the classes that she was taking notes in. She didn't come out and say that, but I know that's what she was hoping for. And I will say, when she brought it into the office, this is a, um, in-person client, I got a chance to hold it and to play with it, and it was really, really cool. And for a period there, I was like,"Wait," like, "I want one of these." But impulse control, I didn't get one. Anyway, I think they're really expensive, too. But she used the reMarkable, this, like, expensive tool, for no joke, maybe, maybe two weeks. And then one month in, it got to the point where she just didn't touch it. She essentially gave up on the whole thing altogether, and that's what I see a lot. People place a lot of hope in the tool itself. But if you don't have a system or a strategy behind using that tool, then the tool essentially just becomes a hunk of plastic or a hunk of digital pixels, whatever the tool is. Now, this was early on in our coaching, so we hadn't yet developed her full note-taking methods and strategies, okay? And so when she got this note-taking tool with no note-taking strategy behind it, of course the tool becomes useless, 'cause she didn't know what to write down in the first place. You have to have the strategies for keeping up with a fast-talking professor. You have to know how to organize your notes in a way that makes them really easy to study from. It's really helpful to know different note-taking methods and how to adjust your note-taking method depending on the course and the content, right? She didn't have any of these strategies or systems in place. She didn't know what to do with her notes when she took them. Now, I've got plenty of students who are, you know, decent at taking notes, but then they're like, "Great," like, "what do I do with these? How do I get these, you know, from out here," whether they typed them or wrote them or used reMarkable, "how do I get them into my head so that I can use that material, you know, that I pull from my head on a test?" The tool in this case, the Remarkable, had absolutely no positive impact on her school experience, on her note-taking, on her grades, 'cause she didn't have a method or a strategy behind note-taking in the first place. Now, let me give you another example, one that, again, I have seen a lot in my private practice. This example is gonna incorporate a really, really basic tool. Like, I don't even know if we can get more basic than this: the assignment notebook. Actually, I have another example in mind that I might use today that's probably a little bit more basic than the assignment notebook, but let's go with this one, um, at first. It was funny, I saw an Instagram post the other day that said, like, "I don't ne- know who needs to hear this, but you already have six blank notebooks at home." At first I laughed, then I was like,"Wait a minute, like, how rude and judgy. Like, I want a seventh." But then that Instagram post actually, or I think it was Instagram. I don't know, maybe it was on TikTok . Now that I'm on TikTok. Huh. Anyway, it inspired me to write a blog post called 10 Ideas for Using Blank Notebooks. I will leave that linked below if you are a notebook kind of person But anyway, at the start of the school year, back to school shopping usually for most students involves some kind of assignment notebook planner or a homework planner. Now, some students spend a lot of time and effort, and even money selecting the perfect planner. You may see yourself in this scenario too. You have to make sure the binding is right, the paper's right, the color's right, the size is right, all of that. And I- I'm that person too. I love it. Just holding this new assignment notebook or this new planner in your hand makes you feel more organized than you've ever been in your entire life, like in September, right? It has the promise of never procrastinating again and keeping track of everything forever. But again, the planner itself is just a bunch of paper with a binding and some lines and dates printed on it. It's the routine and the system for using that planner that make or break your productivity. Now, I did very intentionally bring up a note-taking tool, in this case Remarkable is what I was talking about in my example, and an assignment notebook as an assignment management tool. I intentionally brought up those two because they're super common and super relatable. Like most people have some kind of note-taking or task, you know, management tool, so to speak. And it also gives me a chance to remind you guys that I have two really accessible programs, the Assignment Management Power System and the Note-Taking Power System. Those two programs teach students the strategies and the systems behind the tools. In both of those programs, like I don't say, "You need this tool. You need that tool." It doesn't matter. They're tool agnostic. It's the strategy and the systems that will revolutionize your note-taking, not the tools. I teach you the strategies and systems that will get your homework done on time without the procrastination and the panic, not the tools for doing so, 'cause again, those like don't really matter. Those two little mini programs are always linked below. I don't wanna say mini to like undermine the impact. They're mini in that they're super accessible. They're $47. I can honestly charge hundreds of dollars for them, but I don't 'cause I want so badly for people to understand how simple it is to learn those two systems that can change so much. Now, another tool that promises massive productivity is a project management tool. Many professionals use things like Notion, Monday, Trello, Asana. I personally use Asana. It doesn't matter what you're using. I actually use the free version of Asana. I have never felt the need to get the paid version. You might have your own version of a project management tool if you're a professional. You might already have seen this for yourself too. Like, having the tool doesn't necessarily tell you what the right things are to be working on. It doesn't block out the distractions for you. It doesn't put your bum in the chair for you. It doesn't get the work done for you. The tool is really awesome for managing, like, the nitty-gritty micro steps of a larger project that might otherwise become overwhelming, but you need to know how to use that tool. You need to know how to break a larger project into the micro steps. You need to know how to look at the week ahead and say, "When am I even gonna work on these micro steps?" You need to know the strategy of reverse engineering. And effectively using a project management tool also means That you have a time management system in place so that you have an accurate representation of what your weekly schedule looks like. You know whether or not, and you can even work on those micro steps when you say you're gonna And a project management tool is completely useless, this one's big, if you don't have a routine for entering tasks and information into it. This is the same thing with calendars. Sometimes I work with clients on setting up like a digital calendar, and we're in the session together or we're on Zoom, we're setting up the calendar, we're adding all of the things, and we always do this in the simplest way possible. We're not adding, you know, 57 calendars and 92 colors. Simple systems always work best. And when we set up the calendar, like maybe in one or two sessions together, everything looks good, right? And they're like enthusiastic about it, and they're like, "This is gonna change everything." But if I don't teach a client the systems and the routines for using that calendar, for adding to it on a regular basis, of getting in the habit of opening that calendar and consulting the information that's in there, of really creating a relationship with that calendar so that it actually becomes useful and not just an annoying thing that you have to try to remember to open once in a while. And if we're not doing that without the routine and the system and the strategy and the habit, a digital calendar is completely useless And that's usually when people will be like, "Well, I tried calendars and it, they don't work for me." Okay, you may have tried the tool, but what about the system, the strategy, and the routine? Now I actually wanna do the opposite here and share some examples of really, really basic tools that you might think would have no impact on your productivity, but that actually really, really do if you have a strategy and a system behind them, starting with sticky notes. All right? This is the one that I was thinking of as being like there's nothing more basic than a sticky note other than maybe like a kitchen napkin. Literally, can you think of a lower tech, less fancy tool than a sticky note? So I would say that if you have a system behind using sticky notes, you can change the world. Right? You could be the most productive person in the world. I know that sounds bananas, but I don't really think that I'm wrong. So let's say that you have a stack of sticky notes that you keep at your desk, and every time you have an idea, you write it on the sticky note, like one idea per sticky note. And when you're working in your desk, anytime you have a distracting thought that comes up, instead of getting distracted and picking up your phone and doing the easier thing, you quickly write down that distracting thought on a sticky note. Okay? And let's say… So that's, that's your tool. Now let's say that your system for these sticky notes is that you put all of the distracting ideas over on the left side of your desk, and then all of your thoughts about tasks and things that you need to execute on are gonna go in a pile on the right side of your desk. And at the end of the week, you might have what looks like a really cluttered desk of distracting thoughts that occurred to you on the left and then ideas you wanna execute on, on the right. But if bit by bit, if this is your system, and bit by bit you pull a sticky note from that pile on the right side of your desk that contains an idea, right? And you sit down, and you execute on it one by one, this is how you move through your day. You know, of course some, using some prioritization of course, not just picking up random sticky notes, right? But that is a system. Like, that's how you could change the world, depending on what you wrote on the sticky note. And then let's say that once in a while you move over to the left side of your desk and you pick up one of those distracting thoughts one sticky note at a time, and you ask yourself, "Is this something worth acting on?" If it is, you move it to the right side. If it's not, you just crinkle it up and you throw it in the trash. Now, I'm not necessarily Recommending this system, I'm not saying that this is something that I teach, but I'm just coming up with an example of how it's not the tool, it's what we do with it. It's the routine we create around using the tool, following up with that tool, and then executing on the work that that tool is supposed to be connected to. That's where the productivity magic is. Does that make sense? That's where the productivity happens. That's where the tool gets its magic. The human doing the work with the tool is where the magic happens, but the magic is not in the tool itself. And then let me actually talk about the reverse of this. This is what happens a lot too. Let's say that somebody has a tool. I'm gonna stick with the sticky note example. Let's say they have the tool of using the sticky notes, and they're writing ideas and their thoughts down, and they're putting them, you know, on the left side. They're writing down tasks and, you know, micro steps to long-term projects, and they're putting them on the right side of the desk. So far, so good. You're using the tool properly. But let's say that they don't have a routine and a system where they're regularly and consistently saying, "Okay, now it's my time to sit down and pick up a sticky note and execute on it." If they don't have that routine, not only does the sticky note tool become useless, but now they have a giant mess on their desk, which almost makes things worse than when they started. Now, something similar can happen when people use like a complicated project management tool. Let's, again, say Asana. Okay? Somebody could get really excited about setting it up and adding projects and tasks to that software. But if they don't have a routine or a system where they're regularly and consistently logging into Asana and saying like, "What do I have to do today? What are my tasks today?" Then they run the risk of getting even more disorganized 'cause they don't even know where their tasks are. They don't know if it's in Asana or a sticky note or an email, and they don't trust their tool. And now they've used the program so infrequently that they don't even remember how to use it. And all the work that they put in up front in creating that system in the first place was a waste of time, and now they don't even know what their tasks are. So even if you start using the tool correctly, again, you need to have a system and a routine in place that gets you regularly into that tool with consistency and predictability so that you trust it. All right. How do we get this magic combination of routine, habits, systems, and the tool in order to increase our productivity? Well, there's a couple, you know, different ways to go about doing it. Some people choose the tool first. Some people try to figure out what systems they need first. Some people kinda try to get both going at the same time. My approach, I'm a huge fan of teaching the systems and the strategies first, and then tweaking those systems and strategies to the individual student or professional. Okay? Once we figure out, hey, this is how you work best, this is your unique schedule, this is the type of support that you need, this is the type of day you're most, you know, productive, this is the type of thing that works best for you… Then we go out and we find a tool that aligns with how they work in the work that they're doing. That's my recommendation. But I've also worked with people who say like, "Okay, hey, my school uses Notability." That's a note-taking app for the iPad. Some students essentially are forced to use this. And I work with them, I say, "Okay, well, if this is the tool that you have to use, what's the system or the routine and the strategies that we can create for you, you know, that will enable you to get the most out of this tool?" This also happens in the workspace a lot too, where someone might say, "Hey, our company uses Slack." Like, that's a task management and, and communication tool. But if you don't have control over the tool, you do have control over the way that you engage with the tool, and that's what I'll work with the client on. You've heard me talk about this a ton, but School Habits University is my signature program. That is where I teach students the strategies and the systems behind learning so that they have this complete ecosystem of strategies that get them the better grades with less effort. We're talking about time management, task management, note-taking, annotating, study skills, and organization. Those are the six skills that I teach in the program. The six most critical skills for managing an academic workload. And all of those six systems scale perfectly into the workspace. That's why I'm always saying that these skills are timeless. In that program, I don't really talk about tools. I mean, I do talk about digital calendars and how to set that stuff up, like I do a sh- you know, a screen share and a walkthrough, you know, of calendars and things, but it's the systems and the strategies behind the tools that I'm focused on. Because tools change all of the time. New ones enter the market, or the ones that we've been using forever get some weird update. That's just another reason why I don't focus on the tools. Anyway, in that program, the signature tier comes with a full year of live group coaching on Zoom. And a lot of questions that students bring to those coaching calls or that they submit in advance if they can't make the calls, are about tools. And of course, I answer those questions, always. I answer all the questions, but I'm always trying to spin it back to the system and what's the strategy behind those tools. Now, students who have been in the program for a while, I can start to see their questions. They're, they're sort of like shifting into questions about refining the systems that they're building in the program because they're learning that it's not about the tool. That's where the tweaking and the personalization bit matters because that's what I encourage people to first figure out before they go out and get the tool. And I'll help the students, like, you know, figure out the systems and tweak them and adjust them to who they are and how they work, and then maybe I can give a tool rec from that point. But let me give you an example of what this might look like to someone who's kind of like brand new to this whole productivity thing, or maybe who's not brand new, but you really know that that's an area you need to work on. Like you know what productivity is and you're like, "Yeah, but mine's just, mine's just not there yet". This is what I would encourage you to do: Do an audit of how you're working. So if you're a student, take a week or so just to observe yourself in class. Observe what you do after class. How are you taking notes? Are you taking notes? Are you doing anything with your notes? What are your email habits like? Do you only log into your email when you're expecting an email? What about studying? Do you study last minute? And you're like, "Wait, like, what do I even study?" Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you have a digital calendar somewhere but you're not really using it, or you only use it for, like, I don't know, maybe a week at a time? Are you trying to use your learning management portal or your school portal to track your assignments but you're still feeling overwhelmed and like you're missing things? And the teachers all use the portal differently, right? So you're feeling like it's not working. If you're a professional, observe yourself at work for a week. How are you engaging with your project management tool? What's your task management look like? Do you find that you're really focused in the morning or more focused in the afternoon or not focused at all? Do you find that there's default tasks that you spend a lot of time on that you wish you didn't spend so much time on, maybe like email and admin, because that's what's familiar and easy, and you're often neglecting the more important or challenging work and so … and you end up procrastinating on that because you have this default habit of, "Let me just check my email"? Are you getting distracted? Are you losing track of your tasks and what you're supposed to be working on? Are you always the last to know that there's a meeting because you don't check your calendar or you forgot to write it down or you don't have an effective email management strategy that involves you checking your email at reasonable intervals and extracting information that you need from that email? Do an audit for a week. Pick one system that you feel is the most out of whack. Is it time management? Is it task management? Is it organization? Is it note-taking? Yeah, even note-taking in meetings, so I would say note-taking and annotating are under knowledge management. Is that system out of whack? If you're a student, is it your study system? Do you not have a study system? And so you're just studying things at last minute, and you're kinda hoping that they're on the test, but then, like, it's not actually working. Pick one system that you want to start with, and then ask yourself, "What would make this easier? What would make…" Let's just pick, let's just pick email. Okay, what would make email easier? Is it that you go into your email inbox so infrequently that every time you go in there, you're overwhelmed by all of the emails, and it takes you forever to process them, and you don't even know what to keep and what to delete? You can't remember if that important thing you're supposed to do came in a text message or an email or a conversation in the hallway. What would make your email system easier? Is it too clunky to open? Do you not like the interface? Are there too many folders? Where's the friction? I've had so many people ask me,"Hey, what do you think about using AI tools to process, like, my email inbox?" And I'm like, "First of all, you couldn't pay me to do that. Second of all, if you still don't understand how email works or if you don't have a system or a routine for interacting with an AI tool that you're giving permission to manage your inbox, if you don't have a system or a routine for taking action on the things in your email that your AI tool extracted and told you were important," who knows if they really are, that's why I wouldn't trust it, "then the AI tool is a complete waste of space and time." So again, it's not about the tool, it's about the strategy or the system that you put in place so that the tool does what it's supposed to do Figure out what system you wanna work with first. That's usually the one that's the clunkiest, the chunkiest, the one that causes you the most stress, that gives you the biggest pit in your stomach, and then ask yourself, "What about tasks? What about email? What about studying? What about organization?" Whatever system you're picking, do I feel is complicated? And instead of going out and trying to find a tool to solve that problem, ask yourself, "What systems and routines can I put in place to reduce that friction?" For example, I'm just gonna go back to email 'cause we're already on it. What if you made a simple routine where you open your inbox just twice a day, once in the morning and once before you shut down work for the day, And you're doing 15 minutes for each check-in. In those two check-in, email check-in periods, this is what you're doing. This is your system. This is just an example. I'm not, like, prescribing this, but whatever. Let's say that your system that you've created for yourself is to say, "Okay, I'm gonna open every email that comes in," and you're saying, "Do I need to delete this? If so, delete it." You're asking yourself, "Does this contain a task?" So something that you need to do. If it does, you put that in your task management system, and then you can either save the email, you can archive it, you delete it, whatever you want. I don't think that matters. But you're extracting the information and putting it where it belongs. Second, you're asking yourself,"Does this email contain something that's time-sensitive?" If it does, extract that information and put it in your calendar. And then the third question is, or maybe, maybe this is the fourth question, I don't know. Who's counting? Does this email contain reference information that I might need at some point in the future? If not, delete it. If so, you can either just keep it there, you can drag it into a folder, you can archive it. But the real strategy here is say,"Every day, I am checking email twice a day for 15 minutes, and every email that comes in, I'm gonna address in one way or another," boom, boom, boom. I'm gonna delete it if it's junk, I'm gonna pull tasks from it, I'm gonna put it in the right system, I'm gonna pull deadlines and time manage t- uh, time-based things from it, and I'm gonna put it in my calendar. And if it's reference, I can choose to keep it somewhere. We're not acting on everything. We don't have time for that in one day. We're not doing all of the tasks at that time, but we are managing our email with a system. That's what email management looks like. So in that case, you can see it's not about the tool at all. It's not about whether you use Outlook or Google Calendar or an AI agent or whatever. It's about the system, the strategy, and the routine that you build around the tool that gives the tool itself the power. Now, if you're nodding along thinking, "Okay, this makes sense. I can see that tools themselves aren't inherently productive. I get that systems, routines, and strategies matter," but you're also like, "Shoot. I don't know what to do with that information. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to do this," then that's your sign to join me inside SchoolHabits University where this is exactly what I teach you. I teach you the six core systems to run your academic life, Whether you're in middle school, high school, college, graduate school, or an adult learner. Actually, I have working professionals inside that program as well, even though I designed it for students because, again, we're talking about the systems that scale right into the professional space. The link to SchoolHabits University is always in the description box if you're watching this on YouTube. It's also in the show notes if you're listening on an app. It's also just at schoolhabitsuniversity.com. All right, my friends, that brings us to the end of the episode. I hope i sold you on the concept of systems today, and if you feel like you need a little bit more explanation about personal operating systems and the six systems that I'm talking about, I have two additional podcast episodes that you might find helpful. Episode 113, that's where I dive deep into the six system ecosystem for school and work, and then episode 117 is called Building a Personal Operating System to Manage Information. You know, I also should have mentioned this. I don't even think I can edit this the right way. I'm just gonna put it here. But I should have mentioned this earlier. I have an episode that will help you go through that process of auditing your systems to determine which one to start with. That is episode 12. I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier. Remember, I was like, you know, "Audit your time. Figure out which system is the clunkiest." Okay, that's episode 12, Are Your Productivity Systems Broken? And I had forgotten this. I walk you through step by step how to assess whether your systems are locked and loaded and good to go or perhaps they could use a little tweaking and then how to know which one to start with. Again, everything is linked below. You guys are the best. Thank you for your time. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work. Keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning.

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Katie Azevedo

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