Delete these apps to be more productive. I'm serious...

I often talk about downloading new tools to increase productivity, but have you ever wondered when it becomes too much? At what point do you use so many productivity tools that you actually become less productive? I've definitely been there, and I've developed a super simple method to avoid it.

In my productivity system, I have five areas:

Emails

Note taking

Reminders

Browser

Communication

I order these based on how they appear in my Mac app bar at the bottom of my screen. For each area, I list all of the apps I use:

Emails - Outlook, Gmail, Spark

Note taking - Apple Notes, Notion, Google Keep

Reminders - Apple Reminders, Google Tasks, Todoist

Browser - Safari, Edge, Arc

Communication - Slack, iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram

Why am I sharing this list? Because in each category, there are often many apps we use on a daily basis. We switch between them constantly and spend extra time inputting the same information into different apps.

For example, many of my friends have both the Gmail and Outlook apps on their phones. Why use two apps when one will suffice? By doing this in every category, you end up with 10-20 extra apps that you need to open to do the same things.

So, how can you solve this? Here's what I recommend:

Copy the list of productivity system areas above and write down all the apps you use for each area.

Be honest with yourself and list all the apps you use on both your laptop and phone.

For each area, determine which app works best for you and transfer everything from the other apps to that one app.

Delete the other apps and stick to using only the app that works best for you.

For example, in the Emails area, I used to use both Gmail and Outlook. Now, I think Outlook is a better app for emails and calendars, and it doesn't let me log in to any other email app other than Outlook. So, I logged in to all my emails from Gmail into Outlook and deleted the Gmail app.

Another example is note-taking. I used to use both Apple Notes and Notion, but I didn't have criteria for what goes into each app. So, I made a distinction:

Apple Notes: Anything I need to note down quickly, and any notes from articles, books, etc.

Notion: Content writing (like this newsletter) and tracking project timelines.

By making this distinction, it became much simpler to use these tools separately and not have to worry about where I put a particular note.

Note that you don't have to do this for all areas of your productivity system. The intention of this newsletter is to help you recognize how much time you can lose every month in different areas of your productivity system and how you can optimize it.