If you’ve ever sat back at a blinking cursor after an hour or seemed to be struck with the revelation that now is the right time for deep cleaning your refrigerator rather than got to the end of a report, instead of doing that. Procrastination Isn’t Just About Being Lazy There’s a real big emotional battle going on with our plates in terms of tasks. While the app stores are brimming with “productivity” tools just collect forth to be another thing to take care of, an amazing open source gem called Super Productivity is replacing the competition by addressing the root cause for why we stall. This isn’t just a different to-do list as it’s a detailed and complete free privacy focussed workspace built specifically to interrupt the super cycles that leave us in cycle of avoidance.
At its most basic, Super Productivity works more as a high-octane hybrid between a task manager and a time tracker, a kind of pick of the best features of paid giants such as Todoist, Trello and Toggl without the monthly subscription shops. It is designed for deep working but in reality where it really is shining is in the empathy for the user. Most apps take it for granted that you are already motivated and just need some place to put you notes. Super Productivity takes in mind that you may be struggling and includes a “Procrastination Buster” plugin which is deceptively simple and yet breathtakingly effective. By clicking on a small start icon in the toolbar, a site bar will open which will ask how you are feeling. Whether overwhelmed by a humongous project or bored by a tedious task, the app comes up with customized, applicable ideas to get through that particular emotional bottleneck.
One of the biggest impediments to getting started, then, is analysis paralysis – that feeling of having 50 things to do, and no clue where to even get started with any of them. Super Productivity solves this problem by making the Eisenhower matrix a part of its workflow. Instead of just being unimpressed by an enormous wall of text, you are able to drag your tasks into a graphical 2×2 grid with categories according to urgency and importance. This immediately clears the mind fog so that you can see what is in fact requiring your attention at the moment, and what can be safely ignored until later. By eliminating the decision fatigue which is often a part of “productive procrastination” the app helps you to put your energies towards where it’s actually moving the needle.
When something is seen as too much our brain will naturally want to run away to something that is easier. We call this kind of effort substitution of tasks (when you decide to put your to-do icons in order on your desktop in order not to start on your taxes). Super Productivity makes this super easy by making subtask creation super easy. The secret to beating a daunting project is to break the task down into “micro-wins” – tasks they are so small that they cannot seem to fail. Instead of one part of the assignment said “Write Article”; you can introduce smaller parts of ten minutes “Jot down the lead” or “Make the outline for the first paragraph”. These small victories build the momentum needed to touch on the larger goal, and the whole process does not feel like trying to climb a mountain, but step by step.
For people that need the more structured push there is a great Pomodoro timer within the app with some unique functionality that is dubbed ‘Domina Mode’. While regular Pomodoro technique works by committing to a still fairly short 25 minute work period, Domina Mode brings an element accountability. It allows you to develop custom motivational messages to be read out loud by the app using the text-to-speech at specific intervals. If you know that you focus often gets away at the fifteen-minute mark, you can make the app literally remind you to “get back to work”, or reminds you of the reward that’s waiting for you on the finish line. It’s a bit of hard love which can mean the difference between a session being finished and ending up in a you tube rabbit hole.
As Super Productivity is open-source, your data and privacy is respected. It does not have a center server cloud which sounds like a difficulty for some and instead, it is more controlling. With tools like syncthing, it is easy for a user to sync their data across windows, android, and Linux making sure that a user’s workflow will continue no matter where he is if he is at a desk or on the go. By combining all of the elements needed to attain proper prioritization of tasks, emotional support and the timing necessary to get the job done in one free package, Super Productivity has become a go-to for anyone sick of the “freemium” trap of modern software. If you are ready to forget about planning and just get down to business, this may be the last productivity app you will ever need to download.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article has been collected from publicly available sources on the Internet. Readers are requested to verify this information with available sources.
