The Evolution Gap
Two hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens were walking with a relatively similar brain to one we currently have in our heads. If you would take a baby from thousands of years ago, it would grow indistinguishable from other people in present surroundings. Our brain physiology didn’t change much. But our environment changed drastically.
For example, in Homo Sapiens age you would need to make decisions about where and how to find food. Although, decisions would be familiar day-to-day. Fast forward to the 19th century, you’re an industry worker. You would have to decide on your clothes, what food to buy, or where to get a job. And nowadays, even before you reach a bathroom in the morning you already have to decide about your commute, which message to answer, or how to get more likes on Instagram. Compared to 19th century work at a factory, where instructions would be given, now you have way more options and decisions with more repercussions and more responsibility. Our modern digital life exploded exponentially with a number of decisions you need to make and information you need to digest.
Decision fatigue is not the only indicator of a sudden environmental change. Stress, which in the past was a fight or flight mechanism, is now hurting our lives. Instant gratification in paleolithic times would mean survival, but now the delayed-return attitude has the advantage. Cognitive dissonance which helped us be a part of a tribe and their beliefs is not allowing us to be open-minded. Information overload slows down our thinking. Cognitive biases make us irrational. The list of flaws goes on and on.
We are walking around with the 200 000 years old machine in our heads, which is non-reliable due to systematic errors arising from rapid environmental change. Our brain didn’t have time to catch up with the new surroundings - this is the evolution gap.
Closing the Evolution Gap
So what do we do about it? Movements like Second Brain or Getting Things Done (GTD) already validated personal information management tools as beneficial for closing the evolution gap. Applications like task management, habit trackers, note taking apps, and other productivity tools are all extending our limited mental capabilities. They interface with our brains to help us cope with the aforementioned problems.
Still, a lot of people do not utilize those tools fully. What is stopping us from adopting those tools more? I believe the reason is the early adoption phase, lack of education, culture, and not good enough products.
Adoption
One of the reasons personal information management tools haven’t been adapted yet is because we are still in an early adoption phase of these products. Yes, GTD and other ideas might be old (2001), but people’s habits are even older. People lack habits and comfort in using digital technology which would help them embrace those tools. A lot of people still prefer paper for note taking or to-do lists.
On the other hand, we have kids interacting with a touchscreen better than adults. We have school kids with smartphones for the first time in the history of mankind. They are learning to trust and leverage digital systems at a very young age at an unprecedented level.
Do you think a person from Generation Z or Generation Alpha will be able to meet future societal expectations without being tightly coupled with productivity technology? The evolution gap of their time will be even bigger. It is time to make a leap to digital tools.
Education
We lack personal knowledge management in schools. Education increases our knowledge but rarely does it teach us how to manage it. How many professional people are taking advantage of notes which we took in university or in high school? We learn about health hygiene, but not about information hygiene. Future education should teach people how to appropriately engage with the world through the use of personal productivity digital systems.
Culture
It is awkward to take out a phone during conversations and write down a note on a smartphone. It is awkward to put things in other person’s inbox while sitting a few feet from each other. It is awkward to have all birthdays written down for reminders. It is awkward to put non-work-related activities into the calendar. It is awkward to glimpse into your digital tool to know what should you be doing next.
A person observing such a behavior of a typical early adopter of personal task management, words like “cold”, “robot-like”, or “mechanical” often come up. It is not part of our culture to leverage productivity tools in a such way - not yet at least.
You could say that we are one step closer to becoming a dystopian cyborg with this type of behavior. That all of this technology is too much. But we already are cyborgs. Most likely at this moment, there is a cognitive enhancing device lurking nearby. It is your smartphone. We are already dependent on using technology as an extension of our minds. We are just not maximizing the benefits that technology can bring to our cognition.
Products
The productivity tech market is saturated with a lot of good tools, but it seems there is still a lot to be done.
If you search the web for the best “todo” or “task management” tool, the list of recommended options rarely drops below 10. Economists will see this competition as an ideal market state, but this also means there was no successful business to create a tool that would achieve big adaptability and disrupt the market. We have Google for web search engines. We have Airbnb for shared home rental. We have Netflix for streaming movies. Where is a successful giant in productivity space?
No productivity app successfully scaled further than markets consisting of managers, knowledge workers, or productivity enthusiasts - even though all people have commitments to manage, tasks to manage, things to prioritize, and decisions to make on an everyday basis.
Also, more functions of these products need to be more frictionless and automatized. For example, systems for tracking tasks should automate more both capturing and execution of tasks. Capturing a lot of incoming tasks can be automated through voice to text. Imagine automatized extraction of action items mentioned on meetings directly into your personal task management system. And for the execution of tasks in the system, a “Send an email to George regarding X” item should automatically open an email draft for you to send. “Read http://interesting-article” should extract the average reading time, so you can prioritize more easily. Why not have recommendations for your spouse and you on optimal calendar time to share some happy moments together?
“Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.” ~ Alfred North Whitehead
The importance of visceral and behavioral designs of such tools is underestimated. When people use current task management tools they still feel like they are at work. They see obligations, delayed tasks, and un-reached goals. Current management apps are re-enforcing your identity as somebody who is not getting things done. Instead, users should be feeling in control, stress-free, and happy. Design is not intelligent on an emotional level.
Lastly, a lot of apps suffer from something Don Norman (a father of UX) would call a “creeping featurism” - products compete in a releasing number of features they support, instead of focusing on perfecting the main value-proposition features.
“I have yet to discover any one perfect project-management tool. The plethora of applications that purport to serve that function are usually either too high-powered or too simplistic for what most of us need to manage.” ~ David Allen, Getting Things Done
Sorry Clickup. This product is a good example of featuritis. Notice how cluttered their dashboard is. They added a lot of features to compete with other products. Are we flying a plane or managing tasks here?
Why Now?
The evolution gap is hurting us more than ever. Covid pandemic could be viewed as an opportunity to make a big step in closing the evolution gap. In these times we acquired new habits and a new perspective on how work can be done. Our mental health issues increased, stress increased, and we are constantly distracted. We need more people relying on personal productivity systems to help us through tough times like this.
A critical mass of people connected, tools integrated, and affordable computer processing has been reached. There is no technology constraint preventing us from creating tools that will help people in this manner.
My Contrairan Opinion
I think the potential of personal productivity systems is undervalued, and new tech giants will likely arise from personal information management industry. In the future people won’t be asking you if you use a personal productivity system, but which system are you using.
What we need now is people who have a bigger vision about the future of personal productivity systems. We need to use the same technology that contributed to the evolutionary gap and use it to close that gap. We need to educate people on how to fight that gap and close it with help of productivity tools to enjoy a stress-free life. We need the peace of mind and mental health that we deserve.