Every Productivity System Is a Religion

35 points · October 2026 · 2 comments

I have tried nine of them. I have the notebooks to prove it: the bullet one, the one with the boxes, the one that wanted me to review my life every Sunday and that I abandoned on the third Sunday because reviewing my life was the thing I had been trying to avoid by buying the notebook.

Here is what I have concluded. A productivity system is not a tool. It is a religion, with all the parts: a founder, a book, a set of practices that must be done daily, a promise of a better life, a congregation that meets online to discuss lapses, and — this is the important one — a built-in explanation for why it has not worked yet, which is always that you have not been doing it properly.

That last part is what makes it a religion rather than a method. A method that does not work is abandoned. A religion that does not work is a religion whose followers have not tried hard enough. Every system I have used has had this clause, and every time I have believed it, and every time the belief lasted about six weeks.

I am not saying the systems are useless. Some of the practices are good. Writing things down is good. Deciding what to do next is good. But you do not need the founder or the book or the Sunday review to write things down, any more than you need a church to be kind to your neighbour. The practices are free. The religion is what costs.

What I do now is this. I write things down on whatever is nearest. I do the top one. That is the system. It has no founder and no book and no congregation, and it has not worked yet either, but at least when it does not work I know it is my fault, and not because I failed to review my life on a Sunday.