The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Not few­er, but clear on which is for what

You might assume that a per­son who believes in the ben­e­fits of struc­ture as much as I do would rec­om­mend you to not use too many apps and lim­it your­self to a select few. Well, if you did, you would be wrong. I do not think that the solu­tion is to lim­it the num­ber of apps any more than I think that there would be few­er car crash­es (when peo­ple are dri­ving like crazy in all direc­tions) if there were only few­er vehi­cles. Rather, I would say that the solu­tion lies in estab­lish­ing clear rules — for traf­fic as well as for how we use our apps.

Do this

If you also feel that your life becomes more dif­fi­cult and messy when you save infor­ma­tion or doc­u­ments in sev­er­al tools and when you com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple in a count­less num­ber of apps and ser­vices, then cre­ate clear rules. You can, for instance, do so like this:

1. Grab a piece of paper and make a list on the left side of all the apps, ser­vices, pro­grams, or tools you use in your work and life. It can, for instance, be Out­look, Gmail, Reminders on your iPhone, the fold­er struc­ture on the com­mon serv­er, OneDrive, Google Dri­ve, Excel, Google Docs, LinkedIn — well, you get the idea.
2. On the right side of the paper, you now make a list of the dif­fer­ent func­tions or oper­a­tions you per­form with the apps, pro­grams, and tools, or the needs these tools help you meet. I imag­ine your list will be com­prised of things such as email, direct mes­sag­ing, chat, store doc­u­ments you need to keep, write notes dur­ing meet­ings, keep track of all your tasks, view your cal­en­dar, col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers, and much more.
3. Now draw lines between the var­i­ous tools and the func­tions that rep­re­sent what you use them for.
4. When you are done, take a look at the grid that has emerged on your paper and ask yourself:
   • When a func­tion has lines attached to it orig­i­nat­ing from sev­er­al apps, could you remove any of the lines, mean­ing stop using the app for this par­tic­u­lar func­tion in order to have a more clean and clear usage of all the apps and so that you do few­er oper­a­tions using each app? You could, for instance, start tak­ing notes in only OneNote and no oth­er appli­ca­tion. Or, you could stop writ­ing down things you have to do in a tool you actu­al­ly use for some­thing else but which hap­pened to have a list fea­ture as well and instead use your one and only to-do list.
5. Now do what you need to do in order to rearrange your work­flow, doc­u­ments, mes­sages, etcetera in order to fol­low the new­ly estab­lished traf­fic rules.

“This for that” will make your day flow

If you estab­lish rules and make it clear to your­self what every app or tool is ​“allowed” to do or be used for, you will spend less time look­ing for things you wrote some­where or what a col­league wrote in a thread or chat mes­sage some­where. Instead, you will know for sure what you use for what purpose.

No more sav­ing the same doc­u­ment in two places (or cre­at­ing the same doc­u­ment twice, for that mat­ter) or look­ing for the par­tic­u­lar thread in which you know some­thing spe­cial was men­tioned. Instead of steal­ing your time, the apps and tools will help you make your life and work easier.

What’s your way?

What have you done to keep track of all your apps and tools and to deter­mine which one you use for what? All your clever ideas and tricks are more than wel­come. Share them in an email to me!

(By the way, have you fig­ured out why you stop using the app you are test­ing?)