The productivity silver bullet

Spoiler alert. There is not f*cking silver bullet.

Author

Ale Gnoli
April 08, 2024

One of the things I hate the most about productivity gurus is that they all sell you the same sh*t.

Here is the ultimate productivity system! If you only manage to implement this ‘super-simple’ process in 6,000,000 easy steps, you too will achieve sublime productivity and all of your dreams will come true.

-A random productivity guru on the internet

What these people are selling us is a productivity silver bullet.

Guess what?

❝

There is no f*cking silver bullet!

This, of course, is hardly news. In his 19861 paper No Silver Bullet—Essence and Accident in Software Engineering, Fred Brooks says: “There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity”.

This also makes sense intuitively. If a productivity panacea existed, we would all be taking it, and procrastination would be a thing of the past.

Delivering results requires us to think and analyze our current situation and figure out what is preventing us from achieving our goals. What is blocking us? What is standing in our way between where we are and the results we want to deliver? Once we identify what type of obstacle stands in front of us, we then need to reach into our toolbox and pick the right tool to overcome the obstacle in front of us. Sometimes we need a ladder, sometimes a wrecking ball, and sometimes we need to go around the boulder.

The key insight here is that each situation is different and getting stuff done requires more than just a hammer. It requires a set of tools and the ability to pick the right one at the right time.

The idea that a single system will allow us to overcome any obstacle is a mirage.

-Ale

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1  That’s almost older than me folks, and I’m old!