PTPL 016 : Finding the Fun In a Practical Productivity System

My top 10 Obsidian articles, deep vs. shallow work, and the joy of creating your own physical or digital planner

PTPL image by Author

Welcome to the 16th in a series of posts documenting my plain text, paper-less, Obsidian-flavoured journey.

Each post is a 5-minute or less summary of what I’ve read, learned, and implemented since the last edition.

Today I’ll be talking about —

• Fun productivity system elements that have no practical purpose

• Dividing to-do lists into deep and shallow work

• Creating your own planner, physical or digital

• The RegEx I needed as a noob

• My top 10 Obsidian articles (as of August 2022)

Productivity Inspiration

Clive Thompson writes about the pleasure he gains from making computers — designed for high-powered, number crunching tasks — do flippant, whimsical things of no practical use.

“What exactly is the allure?” Thompson asks. “What’s so much fun about making utterly non-utilitarian software — code that exists not to solve a real-world pro…