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Many people have likely gone through a period in their lives when life started demanding more than before. To meet these new demands, you need different tools for managing time and tasks. People start buying various task management, project management, and note-taking apps, and so on. What’s the result? Burnout. Sound familiar? Collecting Everything We Can. Why Does It Feel Like a Burden? Have you read David Allen’s book GTD (Getting Things Done)? It’s possibly one of the first books recommended by bloggers for becoming a productivity guru. There’s a piece of advice in it about the Inbox—recording everything that comes to mind in the “Inbox” folder to deal with later. Then, during the weekly review, we distribute tasks into folders, dates, and labels. The tasks pile up so much that it becomes overwhelming, and a slight sense of anxiety creeps in as soon as we open our task vault. Adding a task to the system is very (too) easy, but deleting it? Not so much, because there’s always a reason to come back to it later. ...

Please keep in mind that I am not an IT specialist (maybe just a little experienced) and I write philosophical stuff on this topic. Something Like an Introduction Lately, VPNs have become increasingly popular. It’s becoming more “trendy” and youthful to think about your privacy online. Especially after it was revealed that the NSA could secretly turn on users’ webcams. But is VPN really as great as it seems? VPN is Not a Panacea Yes, a VPN can provide partial privacy. But where’s the guarantee that the service providing it isn’t collecting your data, even if it claims not to? It might even turn out that your privacy is compromised and your browsing data leaks online or gets sold somewhere. If you’ve read that our ISPs and others are monitoring us—forget it, it won’t get any better. You might as well switch to pagers and stop using Google and its maps. ...

Did you use correction fluid during your school years? Were we allowed to make mistakes? Were you praised for your mistakes or scolded? Perfectionism for the Sake of Perfectionism There are people with a rich inner world (though I don’t think that’s the cause) for whom it is very important that everything is perfectly arranged—even objects. Here, perfectionism is more of an art form than a medical diagnosis. Seeing how such a person organizes material space or processes can be mesmerizing! But is it easy for such a person to live in our world? ...

A Bit of an Introduction Minimalism has become incredibly popular, though perhaps its peak has already passed. As we dive deeper into the world of virtual pleasures, tangible treasures become more valuable. The easier it becomes to purchase things, the more popular the idea that things aren’t necessary. Why Simply Getting Rid of Things Won’t Help There’s a wonderful book by Erich Fromm titled Иметь или быть. It’s not as simple as the title might suggest. It’s not just about not owning things. We strive to possess emotions, guarantees, options, status… I won’t even get into how much a person might want to possess another person—in every sense. ...

Yes - today, without offloading information from our central processor (the brain) to an external medium, it’s impossible to manage. There’s just too much information, and we can’t keep everything in our heads. With a phone at hand, we can easily record a smart thought at any moment so it doesn’t slip away—or we can easily open Instagram and check out what’s new there. Advantages of Technology An amazing tool for finding and organizing information. The only problem is that everyone online is trying to grab our attention, anyone who can. Unfortunately, those who create content that isn’t genuinely useful to us are often better at this. Nevertheless, some have managed to achieve the opposite. Here’s an example: How to Make Learning as Addictive as Social Media | Luis Von Ahn | TED. ...